The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
Thief
Our newest addition to our benchmark suite is Eidos Monreal’s stealth action game, Thief. Set amidst a Victorian-era fantasy environment, Thief is an Unreal Engine 3 based title which makes use of a number of supplementary Direct3D 11 effects, including tessellation and advanced lighting. Adding further quality to the game on its highest settings is support for SSAA, which can eliminate most forms of aliasing while bringing even the most powerful video cards to their knees.
Our first major review with Thief finds AMD taking a small lead at 2160p, with NVIDIA returning the favor at 1440p. In the case of 1440p both the AMD and NVIDIA setups are able to deliver well over 60fps (despite the heavy use of SSAA at this setting), while at 2160p even the 295X2 falls just a hair short of cracking 60fps even with the slightly lower quality settings.
Meanwhile when it comes to minimum framerates, while AMD and NVIDIA are close together at 1440p and 2160p with Low quality settings, moving to 2160p with High quality settings pretty much busts the NVIDIA SLI setup. It’s difficult to say for sure on the basis of a single SLI setup, but it looks like the memory requirements at these settings may be overwhelming the 3GB NVIDIA cards, especially in light of the GTX Titan Black’s unusual performance lead over the GTX 780 Ti. The additional buffer handling for SLI further eats into the pool of memory available for these cards, which in turn further hamstrings performance.
On the other hand, other than the GTX 780 SLI’s initial bottoming out in this benchmark, NVIDIA does deliver stronger frame pacing performance. In both cases the 295X2 delivers acceptable consistency, staying under 20% variance, but it’s still a wider degree of variance than what we’re seeing with the GTX 780 Ti SLI setup.
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HalloweenJack - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
cheaper set of 780ti`s? 2 of them is $1300 > $1400 and the 295 isn't even in retail yet....anandtech going to slate the Titan Z as much? or is the pay cheques worth too much. shame to see the bias , anandtech used to be a good site before it sold out.
GreenOrbs - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Not seeing the bias--Anandtech is usually pretty fair. I think you have overlooked the fact that AMD is a sponsor not NVIDA. If anything "slating" Titan Z would be more consistent of your theory of "selling out."nathanddrews - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
What bias?http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1187?vs=107...
Two 780ti cards are cheaper than the 295x2, that's a fact.
Two 780ti cards consume much less power than the 295x2, that's a fact.
Two 780ti cards have better frame latency than the 295x2, that's a fact.
Two 780ti cards have nearly identical performance to the 295x2, that's a fact.
If someone was trying to decide between them, I'd recommend dual 780ti cards to save money and get similar performance. However, if that person only had a dual-slot available, it would be the 295x2 hands-down.
The Titan Z isn't really any competition here - the 790 (790ti?) will be the 295x2's real competition. The real question is will NVIDIA price it less than or more than the 295x2?
PEJUman - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I don't think the target market for this stuff (295x2 or Titan Z) are single GPU slots, as Ryan briefly mentioned, most people who are quite poor (myself included), will go with 780TI x 2 or 290x x 2, These cards are aimed at Quads.AMD have priced it appropriately, roughly equal perf. potential for 3k dual 295x2 vs 6k for dual titan-z. Unfortunately, 4GB may not be enough for Quads...
I've ventured into multiGPUs in the past, I find these rely too much on driver updates (see how poorly 7990 runs nowadays, and AMD will be concentrating their resource on 295x2). Never again.
Earballs - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
With respect, any decision on what to buy should made but what your application is. Paper facts are worthless when they don't hold up to (your version of) real world tasks. Personally I've been searching for a good single card to make up for Titanfall's flaws with CF/SLI. Point is, be careful with your recommendations if they're based on facts. ;)Sidenote: I managed to pick up a used 290x for MSRP with the intention of adding another one once CF is fixed with Titanfall. That price:performance, which can be had today, skews the results of this round-up quite a bit IMO.
MisterIt - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
By drawing that much power from the PCI-lane, won't it be a fire hassard? I'v read multiple post about motherboard which take fire at bitcoin/scryptcoin mining forums due to using to many GPU without using a power riser to lower the amount of power delivered trought the pci-lane.Would Anandtech be willing to test the claim from AMD by running the GPU at full load for a longer period of time under a fire controlled environment?
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The extra power is designed to be drawn off of the external power sockets, not the PCIe slot itself. It's roughly 215W + 215W + 75W, keeping the PCIe slot below its 75W limit.MisterIt - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Hmm allright, thanks for the reply.Still rather skeptical, but I'll guess there should be plenty of users reviews before the time i'm considering to upgrade my own GPU anyways.
CiccioB - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Don't 8-pin molex connector specifics indicate 150W max power draw? 215W are quite out of that limit.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Yes, but it's a bit more complex than that: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4209/amds-radeon-hd-...