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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ruggia - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I'm looking at results from pcper and toms too and I see nothing "broken". In most cases variances are better than 780 sli or low enough to not be an issuemagnusmundus - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
With a closed loop cooler for both GPU and CPU, you might as well go for a full custom loop and get better cooling and nicer aesthetics.kyuu - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Er... no? Two CLCs are still quite a bit different from setting up a custom loop.cknobman - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Your gaming test suite kinda sucks, please update it.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The gaming test suite is a constant work in progress, so we're always looking for new games to add to it.Do you have anything in particular you'd like to see? (Keeping in mind that it needs to be practical to benchmark it)
Earballs - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
Titanfall at or above 1440 would be most lovelyjkhoward - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
I still think that WoW should still be included in these benchmarks..devione - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Is it really impossible to cool this card without using an AIO cooler, like the Titan Z?mickulty - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
That would require either huge amounts of binning that drives price right up (like the Titan Z), and/or significant reductions in clock speed to accommodate reduced voltage (almost certainly like the Titan Z), resulting in a card that's both overpriced and underpowered (like...). Of course, it's not really fair to compare a card that's with reviewers now and on the shelves in 2 weeks with a card that has only ever been seen as a mockup on one of nvidia's slides =).devione - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Fair points.I just have an irrational dislike for AIO coolers. I would hope to see custom aire cooled via 3rd party variants, but for a variety of practical reasons I doubt that is going to happen.