AMD Radeon R9 295X2 review
Our Verdict
An impressive technical achievement, with excellent 4K performance, but altogether too expensive as a realistic graphics card purchase.
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The R9 295X2 is likely the final throw of the dice for AMD’s current spin of Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. It takes a pair of the fastest Radeon graphics chips available and squeezes them into one behemoth of a graphics card.
That’s a familiar refrain, with both AMD and Nvidia traditionally filling out their top-end lineups with dual-GPU cards based on their finest single-GPUs. This time around AMD have done things slightly differently.
Normally these dual-GPU cards operate with the top graphics chips, but in order to have them running effectively on a single PCB, their engineers will clock down those processors. With AMD’s previous dual-GPU card, the Radeon HD 7990, they’d clocked their Tahiti XT chips at 950MHz compared with the 1GHz clockspeed of the chips at the heart of their top HD 7970 GHz cards. Likewise with Nvidia’s GTX 690’s the GPUs were clocked at just 915MHz where the comparative GTX 680 was running at a hefty 1,006MHz.
This is one of the reasons I’m left rather cold by Nvidia’s announcement of their $3,000 GTX Titan Z. At some $1,000 more expensive than a pair of the GTX Titan Black cards that it’s based on, it’s also likely to run slower than that SLI pairing. The Titan Black’s GK110 GPU runs at 889MHz and the Titan Z is likely to be closer to 800MHz, if it follows tradition.
The R9 295X2 doesn’t follow that tradition.
Johnny 5?
Thanks to the Asetek-designed liquid chip-chiller they can actually run the R9 295X2’s twin Hawaii XT chips faster than the Hawaii XT GPUs in the Radeon R9 290X. This is the first time a reference-designed board has turned up either with water-cooling as standard or with the dual-GPU configuration setup quicker than the single-GPU cards it’s come from.
On the sample I’ve been testing that only amounts to some 18MHz faster than the 1GHz GPUs in the R9 290X, but I would have still been impressed if they’d kept the exact same core clock.
My reference R9 290X runs at 95ºC when it’s going at games full pelt. Trying to cope with two of those chips, at that temperature, with one dual-slot air-cooler, would have been almost impossible. The water-cooling route then was vital, and the fact the R9 295X2 is limited to run up to 75ºC before throttling back is interesting too. In practice my R9 295X2 barely runs much above 65ºC in-game.
And it performs some impressive gaming feats at those temps too, most impressively at 4K. That’s what this dual-GPU monster was designed for — offering genuinely playable gaming performance at resolutions as high as 3840 x 2160.
As well as being the fastest single graphics card available, it’s also probably the simplest way to get a decent gaming setup running on a 4K screen.
The simplest, but not the cheapest.
Because of the all the extra engineering effort and expense that’s gone into putting the R9 295X2 and it’s water-cooled, Titan-aping shroud together, it’s retailing for £1,100 / $1,500. In the UK that’s some £250-odd more expensive than buying a pair of R9 290X cards and linking them together in a CrossFire-capable motherboard.
It’s also more expensive than buying a pair of Nvidia GTX 780 Ti cards. But thanks to the huge 8GB GDDR5 frame buffer the R9 295X2 is sporting—filling out those twin 512-bit memory buses—the Radeon card is a far better bet for seriously high-resolution gaming.
Taking Battlefield 4 as an example, the AMD card is able to hit 60FPS at Ultra settings in 4K, while the SLI GTX 780 Ti is some 25% slower at 48FPS. It reads even worse for Nvidia in the GRID 2 benchmark, though the platform-agnostic Heaven 4.0 synthetic test still gives the win to Nvidia.
But yes, we are still talking about a single graphics card that likely costs more than most of our full gaming PCs.
It might make sense if you’ve already spent that much on a 4K-capable screen and need something to actually run games at that rarified resolution, but for the rest of us it’s an extravagant liquid-luxury.
That’s always what these cards are like though. They’re produced in such limited numbers that you’re more likely to see it shining out of the side of a LAN event show machine than out of the perspex side of your buddies’ rigs. These are tech showcase cards, proof-of-concept creations designed to demonstrate the extent at which different company’s technology can be pushed. As an example of what AMD’s GCN architecture is capable of when it’s scaled up and water-cooled the R9 295X2 is thoroughly impressive. It’s a great technical achievement to produce such a good-looking card with such low thermals and such slick performance. But as a card that I could actually recommend anyone buy? Not so much.
The R9 295X2 only makes sense if you’re looking for a seriously high-end, 4K-capable miniature gaming machine.
That’s the only place you need such efficient cooling and use of space. In a desktop rig, with a chassis capable of holding a pair of graphics cards, you can get the same level of performance from a pair of R9 290X cards. With third-party air-cooling solutions from the likes of Sapphire, you can get decent thermals and still hit the same 4K speeds.
I’m happy to applaud its design and performance, but I couldn’t recommend it as a sensible purchase; even if you can afford one or find one for sale.
It’s the performance of the R9 295X2 at 4K resolutions that really impresses, though the cheaper Nvidia SLI pair does have a few tricks up its sleeve when it comes to Heaven and the Unreal Engine 3’s Bioshock Infinite.
Power-wise you can also see where the Nvidia Kepler architecture is more efficient, with a pair of GTX 780 Ti cards drawing some 200W less juice at peak platform operation.
Synthetic 4K tessellation performance:
Heaven 4.0 – (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – (14) 30
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – (17) 32
Radeon R9 290X – (10) 17
GeForce GTX 780TI – (13) 22
DirectX 11 2560×1600 performance:
Metro: Last Light – (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – (17) 50
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – (12) 47
Radeon R9 290X – (17) 28
GeForce GTX 780TI – (20) 32
Battlefield 4 – (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – (27) 86
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – (64) 89
Radeon R9 290X – (34) 53
GeForce GTX 780TI – (42) 60
DirectX 11 4K gaming performance:
Battlefield 4 – (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – (13) 60
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – (18) 48
Radeon R9 290X – (12) 32
GeForce GTX 780TI – (22) 33
Bioshock Infinite – (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – (14) 58
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – (10) 67
Radeon R9 290X – (16) 30
GeForce GTX 780TI – (9) 42
GRID 2 – (Min) Avg FPS: higher is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – (80) 99
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – (58) 72
Radeon R9 290X – (44) 54
GeForce GTX 780TI – (45) 55
Thermal performance:
Max temperature — ºC: cooler is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – 75
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – 82
Radeon R9 290X – 95
GeForce GTX 780TI – 65
Peak power performance:
100% GPU – Watts: lower is better
Radeon R9 295X2 – 681
GeForce GTX 780Ti SLI – 485
Radeon R9 290X – 368
GeForce GTX 780TI – 389
AMD Radeon R9 295X2: Price Comparison
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AMD Radeon R9 295X2 review
An impressive technical achievement, with excellent 4K performance, but altogether too expensive as a realistic graphics card purchase.
Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he’s back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 review
11.5 teraflops in a single GPU — now that’s power. Hot on the heels of the reveal of Nvidia’s mammoth $3000 Titan-Z, AMD has completed work on its own halo product — the Radeon R9 295X2. It has much in common with its competitor: it brings together two top-of-the-line GPUs into one graphics card, effectively cramming two R9 290Xs into a single product.
AMD says that this card is meant for the ultra high-end enthusiast — those who crave top-end performance at 4K resolution.
But it’s in the differences with Titan-Z where we see the 295X2 come into its own. Cost-wise, there’s no competition. At $1500, it’s half the price of Nvidia’s upcoming offering. It also comes with the first hybrid air/liquid cooling solution found in a reference graphics card — and it needs it. AMD’s Hawaii chip is one of the most powerful GPUs on the market, but it also consumes a large amount of power, and produces excessive amounts of heat. It’s rated to operate at 95 degrees Celsius, and in the 290 and 290X, it will sit at that high temperature under load, often throttling performance in the sub-optimal reference design. Two of these things in a single card sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the extreme cooling solution utilised in the 295X2 is remarkable: mounted in a case and subject to heavy load, temperatures barely hit the 70 degrees Celsius barrier.
In fact, the cooling is so good that AMD even bumped up the card’s clock speed a tad over the standard single-chip R9 290X and lowered max operating temperature by a full 20 degrees, down to 75 Celsius.
Taking a look at the card itself reveals how this was done. In addition to the standard heatsink and fan, the 295X2 includes a closed-loop water-cooling system provided by specialist Asetek. Twin pipes emerge from the shroud, linking up to a radiator arrangement that you attach to a 120mm fan placement on your chassis. Gone are the days of simply slotting in the GPU and attaching some power cables — this requires a touch more effort. However, the end result is a cool GPU and a card that’s actually quieter than the R9 290X in its performance-sapping ‘quiet’ mode. In our case, the power supply fan was actually louder — perhaps not surprising, bearing in mind that AMD recommends a 1000W PSU.
In terms of build quality, this is an enormous departure from AMD’s recent, somewhat lacking reference designs — it features an anodised aluminium shroud, quality heatsink and decent fan, and even the back of the board itself is hard, durable metal.
Red LEDs highlight the cooling and the Radeon branding. This may not quite match the aesthetics of Nvidia’s top-end products, but it looks the part and the cooling performance speaks for itself.
Caption
Attribution
Connections are impressive, if minimalist. There’s a single dual-link DVI socket and four mini DisplayPorts. There’s a lack of HDMI here, but given AMD’s contention that this is not meant for 1080p/1440p/1600p gamers, that’s perhaps understandable — though we don’t agree with the premise. Regardless, the ability to drive five different displays from a single card will probably be useful, especially given AMD’s focus on its EyeFinity multi-monitor technology.
We went into testing the R9 295X2 with some level of scepticism. After the frame-pacing issues were fully revealed, AMD lost a lot of confidence with the high-end enthusiast — and with good reason.
Despite posting stunning benchmarks, frame analysis revealed that AMD’s CrossFire tech had fundamental issues — a good proportion of frames that were processed by the GPU were either displayed for a split second or never displayed at all. An initial driver fix was supposed to address the issue, but in our Radeon HD 7990 review we still found unsatisfactory performance — in essence, there were moments where the 7990 would act just like a single-GPU card, nullifying the whole point of the product — in our testing this wasn’t so much micro-stutter as macro-stutter. The 7990 annihilated GTX Titan in terms of raw benchmarks, but the single GPU simply produced more consistent, reliable performance, quickly becoming the enthusiast’s choice until the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti arrived.
Going into this 295X2 review, then, we had a number of objectives, principal among them discovering to what extent this card can run high-end games at 4K resolution as close to 60fps as possible. On top of that, while AMD is consciously pushing us away from using the 295X2 for lower resolutions, we wanted to see just how powerful the card was at 1080p and 2.
5K. Next, we wanted to re-evaluate CrossFire to see whether AMD’s attempts to fix the frame-pacing problems have actually worked this time — and by extension, whether a dual GPU product operates as it should. And finally, we wanted to put the whole focus of the «halo product» into perspective. Does the inflated price point actually make sense here? Or would you be better off buying two GPUs and saving a ton of money into the bargain?
First up, we benchmarked the new cards across the three major high-end resolutions: 1920×1080 (1080p), 2560×1440 (1440p) and finally, full 4K — 3840×2160. AMD suggests that the higher the resolution, the more effective the GPU becomes. 4K is effectively four times the resolution of 1080p, but the argument is that you won’t see a 4x hit to frame-rates. Certainly, the wide 512-bit memory buses attached to both of the Hawaii GPUs coupled with the large 4GB of GDDR5 available to each core should ensure that the video memory is there, along with a wide enough pipe to keep the shaders serviced.
Here are our results — based on presets ramped up to the max. We use FCAT analysis for all GPU benchmarks. This effectively uses video captures to properly ascertain performance, ensuring that what you see on-screen is what is being analysed.
«What quickly becomes evident in our tests is that at 1080p and even 1440p, we often hit CPU limits. Bearing in mind we’re running six Intel cores at 4.4GHz, that’s highly impressive stuff.»
The Radeon R9 295X2 put through its paces across six different games at max settings with v-sync off. Running the games unlocked sees us hit the GPU limit — assuming CPU doesn’t get in the way first, as you’ll see on Battlefield 4. Here we compare 1080p, 1440p and 4K performance across the same scenes.
| Radeon R9 295X | 1080p | 1440p | 4K |
|---|---|---|---|
| BioShock Infinite, Ultra+DDOF | 149.0fps | 108.1fps | 58.2fps |
| Tomb Raider, Ultimate, TressFX | 151. 5fps |
107.1fps | 55.7fps |
| Metro Last Light, Very High, SSAA | 74.0fps | 50.8fps | 26.4fps |
| Call of Duty Ghosts, Extra, SMAA | 118.0fps | 99.4fps | 63.7fps |
| Battlefield 4, Ultra | 85.0fps | 76.6fps | 45.2fps |
| Crysis 3, Very High, 2x SMAA | 101.6fps | 69.0fps | 31.5fps |
AMD’s argument that this is a 4K card — and that 1080p and 1440p are well served by the R9 290 and 290X — is correct up to a point. Assuming 60fps is the cut-off point, we see the R9 295X2 more than double that target in many games. However, if you have a 120Hz display and you want to target 120fps at 1080p, the card clearly delivers. And let’s not forget the importance of minimum frame-rates — dips below 60fps are far more noticeable than the theoretical maximums, which dissolve into a blur of torn frames on a 60Hz monitor.
Arguably, the sweet spot here is at 1440p, where in most cases we have the performance to hit and sustain 60fps with only minor settings management required to ensure a locked experience on most games.
To give some idea of the raw power on offer here, check out our specific Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 gameplay analyses below — top-end settings, 1440p and 60fps combine to produce a magical experience.
At 4K we see a big hit to performance, but clearly 4x the pixel throughput of 1080p is not resulting in a 4x hit to frame-rates. There is scalability here, but the benchmark scores suggest to us that ramping up quality settings to the maximum is not the solution. Dial back some settings and performance rises enormously. Take Thief’s very high settings, for example — this includes super-sampling anti-aliasing (effectively rendering at a much higher resolution, then downscaling). Remove that from the equation and the average frame-rate increases from 25fps up to 40fps. Similarly with Metro Last Light, our reported 26fps increases to 46.5fps by removing SSAA.
The results throw up some more curiosities — notably that even with 11.5 teraflops of power available, Call of Duty: Ghosts can still dip well below 1080p60 (the graphs here — both frame-rate and frame-time — need to be seen to believed) — suffice to say that this is the first and last time we use this title for benchmarking.
Secondly, we don’t see an enormous difference between Battlefield 4’s 1080p and 1440p scores, suggesting a CPU bottleneck. Finally, we noted that on the driver provided, Thief only seems to use one GPU — something that is curious bearing in mind that the game is CrossFire-capable, and works just fine on our R9 290 dual GPU set-up. This does illustrate an additional problem you may face with a multi-GPU card: games require bespoke support. It’s usually implemented, but sometimes issues can occur — a situation you won’t be facing on a single-chip graphics product.
«By comparing the R9 295X2 with the single-GPU R9 290X and GTX 780 Ti, we get some idea of scaling and we can compare frame-pacing.»
It’s rare to see a true doubling of performance over the R9 290X, even at 1440p, but the gap between the dual and single GPUs is clearly very significant.
| 2560×1440 | R9 295X | R9 290X | GTX 780 Ti |
|---|---|---|---|
| BioShock Infinite, Ultra+DDOF | 108. 1fps |
60.4fps | 77.7fps |
| Tomb Raider, Ultimate, TressFX | 107.1fps | 56.4fps | 60.8fps |
| Metro Last Light, Very High, SSAA | 50.8fps | 29.0fps | 31.4fps |
| Call of Duty Ghosts, Extra, SMAA | 99.4fps | 69.3fps | 74.7fps |
| Battlefield 4, Ultra | 76.6fps | 45.8fps | 48.8fps |
| Crysis 3, Very High, 2x SMAA | 69.0fps | 44.1fps | 44.4fps |
Frame-pacing is also fixed. To illustrate this, here we re-run the 1440p tests, comparing performance with the Radeon R9 290X and the Nidia GTX 780 Ti. It’s worth bearing in mind that two cards can never offer quite the same level of consistency as a single card, but the frame-pacing solution AMD has devised is very good — and we’d suggest that it’s a close match now for Nvidia’s solution. There’s clearly a lot of frame variance in many of these tests, and «runt frames» (those processed but essentially unseen on-screen) are very occasionally present, but they’re pretty rare.
We’ve reached a level now where extreme high-end performance usually comes with a price point to match. Nvidia’s GTX Titan set the precedent, but even the more value-minded AMD will ramp up prices for its top-end products. In actual gameplay conditions, we doubt many people could tell the difference between R9 290 and R9 290X performance, so we decided to try out the 295X2 up against a ‘budget’ solution — namely two R9 290s in CrossFire.
This alternative solution saves you hundreds of Euros/dollars/pounds compared to buying the single card — though obviously you miss out on the compact nature of the 295X2, not to mention the custom cooler. We ran the same benchmarks again (omitting Thief since it didn’t seem to work properly on the 295X2) at 1440p and 4K, again using FCAT to measure the outputs.
We also gave the GTX 780 in SLI a short test but quickly discovered that extreme resolutions and extreme settings (like SSAA) can quickly see you hit the 3GB GDDR5 limit per card, draining performance significantly.
Where Nvidia does command a clear advantage is in power efficiency. Two 780s in SLI hit a maximum of 710W drawn from the wall when used in combination with our 4.4GHz overclocked i7-3930K. The R9 295X2 saw that hit around 800-810W while the R9 290 CrossFire set-up hit 850W. You’re going to need a well-ventilated case to dissipate that level of heat.
«Our tests suggest that two R9 290s in CrossFire offers a vast proportion of the power supplied by the 295X2, but you lose out on the compact nature of the dual-GPU card — not to mention its remarkable cooling set-up.»
Can you get the ballpark power of the R9 295X2 with an existing CrossFire solution? Here we benchmark the new card against two R9 290s in CrossFire, demonstrating that there is a cheaper option — albeit one that is larger, hotter and a touch less power-efficient.
Alternative Video Benchmarks:
- 1440p Radeon R9 295X2 vs. CrossFire R9 290 Benchmarks
| 1440p/4K | R9 295X | R9 290 CrossFire |
|---|---|---|
| BioShock Infinite, Ultra+DDOF | 108. |
108.1fps/56.3fps |
| Tomb Raider, Ultimate, TressFX | 107.1fps/55.7fps | 93.2fps/61.0fps |
| Metro Last Light, Very High, SSAA | 50.8fps/26.4fps | 48.9fps/25.3fps |
| Call of Duty Ghosts, Extra, SMAA | 99.4fps/63.7fps | 93.2fps/61.0fps |
| Battlefield 4, Ultra | 76.6fps/45.2fps | 74.7fps/42.2fps |
| Crysis 3, Very High, 2x SMAA | 69.0fps/31.5fps | 63.8fps/31.3fps |
Regardless, the R9 295X2 clearly is the most powerful graphics card on the market, but practically, what can we do with that power in providing a state-of-the-art gaming experience? We set our sights high with Battlefield 4, opting to test two configurations. We first tried full-on ultra, with just one concession — the removal of multi-sampling anti-aliasing in favour of the excellent post-process alternative. 4K screens don’t just feature a higher resolution, we see a much higher pixel density as well, which should obviate the need for ultra-intensive AA. Looking to give the GPU more room to breathe, our second configuration sees us reduce all settings down to high from ultra — the lone exception being texture quality, which remains at the absolute high-end (something the 8GB of GDDR4 — 4GB per GPU — should be more than capable of handling).
The results are quite beautiful. Even on the ultra preset, we spend much of the time at 60fps, producing a simply stunning presentation. However, it swiftly becomes clear that multiple layers of effects work can severely impact the fluidity of gameplay, with alpha transparencies (smoke, explosions etc) causing particular concerns. However, our combination of the high quality settings with ultra textures cleans up most of the issues and looks simply stunning. Battlefield 4 running at 4K/60fps — it’s an experience. As the alternative analysis demonstrates, those who favour ultra-level image quality and anti-aliasing still have a reason to consider the R9 295X2 — you get virtually flawless performance at 1440p, even with deferred 4x MSAA in effect.
So far, so good. In our benchmarks, the R9 295X2 demonstrates that even at the highest levels, you should be able to get frame-rates north of 30fps on even the most demanding games, just as long as there is some level of realism attached to the quality presets (super-sampling at 4K really is utter insanity).
«In our gameplay field tests, the R9 295X2 gets off to a great start. With only minimal tweakery we can sustain 60fps at 4K resolution in Battlefield 4.»
See it. Believe it. Battlefield 4 runs at 60fps at 4K resolution on high settings with ultra quality textures. Ramping up everything — bar anti-aliasing — to ultra can see substantial frame-rate dips, particularly in effects-heavy sequences. We’d prefer to take the slight hit to image quality in favour of a more consistent experience.
Alternative Analysis:
- Battlefield 4 2560×1440: Ultra Settings
The Battlefield 4 test really makes things interesting though. By careful nurturing of quality presets, you can effectively double your frame-rate without giving up too much visual quality. Of course, we saw this before in our next-gen Digital Foundry PC piece — in Tomb Raider, we saw that turning off TressFX and lowering shadow resolution produced enormous gains in frame-rate, transforming the feel of the game with little visual impact. The same principle applies here, except that with 4K, the performance differential is even more dramatic once the engine really has something difficult to work with.
Battlefield 4 is one of the most technologically ambitious games on PC, but nothing quite comes close to Crysis 3 at its higher quality levels for truly stress-testing PC hardware. Back in the day, the measure of a gaming PC was defined by the answer to the question: can it run Crysis? In 2014, it’s still the franchise that defines the limits of PC technology, with the third game in the series able to push a triple-SLI GTX Titan set-up to its limits. So how would the R9 295X2 cope?
Similar to Battlefield 4, we ran two tests. Max quality textures, v-sync and 2x SMAA anti-aliasing were a given (multi-sampling here at extreme resolutions really is quite insane), and we kicked off with 2560×1440 — 2.5K, if you will — with two runs through Welcome to the Jungle at the high and very high (max) quality levels. The results show a pretty much locked 60fps on high, with only minimal stutter on very high. Supremely impressive stuff. But it’s 4K that’s the true challenge here, and as the benchmark run demonstrates, not even the R9 295X2 brings forth anything like the target 60fps, so we opted for a medium vs high quality comparison.
«The R9 295X2 hands in stunning maxed out Crysis 3 gameplay at 1440p, but more aggressive settings reductions are necessary for consistency at 4K.»
A range of Crysis 3 cut-scenes compared at two quality levels — medium vs high — at 4K. V-sync and 2x SMAA are enabled, with very high texture quality locked in. While a consistent 60fps is off the table, dropping down to 1440p (below) offers up the arcade-style performance we crave.
Alternative Analysis:
- Crysis 3 at 2560×1440: High vs. Very High Settings
Although there are areas where Crysis 3 can hit — or get close to — our desired 60fps, the reality is that Crytek’s extraordinary technological workout has claimed another scalp at the 4K level, with a wildly variable performance level that doesn’t feel particularly satisfying to play. The R9 295X2 is caught in a difficult situation here at 4K — the very high preset is simply too much work for the card to hold any kind of consistent frame-rate. Our preferred scenario here would be to engage a 30fps cap on the action and ramp up the quality presets as far as they can go — in this case, at the high level.
To be clear, you can achieve a perfectly playable, visually tremendous Crysis 3 experience at 4K — but this needs to be couched with the reality that the game is extraordinarily punishing on GPU hardware to the point where even the very latest GPU halo products can’t cut it at the top quality presets. Console yourself with the fact that at 1440p, the 295X2 still provides immense resolution and — for the most part — gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling that only 60fps provides.
We went into this review fully aware of the immense challenges AMD faced here — our previous experiments with 4K have all suggested that we need a huge amount of rendering power in combination with developer optimisation for the format to really work. On top of that, our review session with the 7990 in September last year suggested that the frame-pacing issues that have plagued CrossFire were far from resolved. Well, the good news is that the R9 295X2 isn’t just the most powerful graphics card we’ve ever tested in terms of teraflops or benchmarks, it fulfils its primary purpose very well indeed — you can get a great 4K experience from it, and at 1440p the performance is simply stunning.
That goes beyond the benchmarks. The gameplay experience is good, stutter is minimalised as well as a dual-GPU solution can be (and may even be marginally improved over Nvidia based on a quick FCAT comparison with the 780 set-up in SLI) — and yes, while extreme GPU power requires an outrageous cooling solution and a mammoth power supply, the reality is that the end result is stunning. Trades are required to hit consistent, high frame-rates in cutting-edge games, but the fact that we can enjoy a stupendous Battlefield 4 experience at 4K from a single graphics card speaks to the extent of the achievement here.
«It’s quite an achievement. We’re looking at a consumer product with 6.25x the GPU power of PlayStation 4 available less than six months after the console launched.»
While two R9 290s in CrossFire provides a similar experience at a significantly cheaper price, there’s a level of ingenuity to the R9 295X2 we can’t help but admire. Cooling performance and noise levels are exceptional, the more integrated design is preferable and the cost isn’t a huge amount more than two R9 290X cards.
Price-wise, this is clearly not cheap — halo products never are. UK pricing isn’t available yet, but at $1500 or 1099 Euros, it could have been a lot worse. Effectively we’re looking at small price-bump over two Radeon R9 290X cards bought together — and for that you’re getting an excellent liquid cooling solution and more space left within your chassis. If you’re looking for a ‘budget’ option, we’ve demonstrated that two R9 290s in CrossFire will get you close enough, but stay well away from the reference cards and instead choose an aftermarket cooling solution. We tested the MSI R9 290 Gaming with the TwinFrozr set-up and the difference compared to the AMD reference card is night-and-day.
Clearly we’re in ultra high-end enthusiast territory here. You don’t need 4K or the R9 295X2 to enjoy a simply brilliant PC experience. But over and above the extreme performance you can extract from top-end games, the basic existence of the R9 295X2 demonstrates the relentless pace of innovation in the GPU space — we’re looking at a consumer product with 6.25x the compute power of PlayStation 4 (and almost 9x Xbox One) available less than six months after the console launched. That’s just astonishing.
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card
- Edelmark rating 8.1 out of 10;
- Release date: April, 2014;
- Video card memory capacity: 8192 MB;
- Video memory type: GDDR5;
- GPU clock: 1.
018 MHz.
Features AMD Radeon R9 295X2
GPU
| GPU manufacturer | AMD |
|---|---|
| GPU name | Vesuvius |
| Platform | Desktop |
| Clock frequency | 1.018 MHz |
| Two processors | Yes |
| Reference card | No |
Performance
| Number of shaders | 5.632 |
|---|---|
| TMU | 352 |
| Number of ROPs | 128 |
| Computer units | 88 |
| Pixel fill rate | 130.4GPixel/s |
| Texture Fill Rate | 358.4 GTexel/s |
| Number of floating point operations (FLOPS) | 11.466 GFLOPS |
Memory
| Memory clock | 1. |
|---|---|
| Effective memory frequency | 5.000 MHz |
| Memory bus width | 1.024bit |
| Video memory size | 8.192 MB |
| Memory type | GDDR5 |
Energy consumption
| Energy consumption | 500W |
|---|
Comparison of Radeon R9 295X2 with similar graphics cards
Gaming performance
Video card tests performed on: Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Dirt3, FarCry 3, Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light, Thief, Alien: Isolation, Anno 2070, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Diablo III, Dirt Rally, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, FIFA 15, FIFA 16, GRID Autosport, Grand Theft Auto V, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
| Radeon R9 295X2 | no data |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 7. |
| GeForce GTX 980 | 7.8 out of 10 |
Graphics
Tested on: T-Rex, Manhattan, Cloud Gate Factor, Sky Diver Factor, Fire Strike Factor.
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 9.2 out of 10 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 7.2 out of 10 |
| GeForce GTX 980 | 8.7 out of 10 |
Computing power
Tested using: Face Detection, Ocean Surface Simulation, Particle Simulation, Video Composition, Bitcoin Mining.
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 7.9 out of 10 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 7.5 out of 10 |
| GeForce GTX 980 | no data |
Performance per Watt
Tested on: Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Dirt3, FarCry 3, Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light, Thief, Alien: Isolation, Anno 2070, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Diablo III, Dirt Rally, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, FIFA 15, FIFA 16, GRID Autosport, Grand Theft Auto V, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt, T-Rex, Manhattan, Cloud Gate Factor, Sky Diver Factor, Fire Strike Factor, Face Detection, Ocean Surface Simulation, Particle Simulation, Video Composition, Bitcoin Mining, TDP. nine0159
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 6.8 out of 10 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 6.6 out of 10 |
| GeForce GTX 980 | 9.3 out of 10 |
Price-performance ratio
Tested with: Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Dirt3, FarCry 3, Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light, Thief, Alien: Isolation, Anno 2070 , Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Diablo III, Dirt Rally, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, FIFA 15, FIFA 16, GRID Autosport, Grand Theft Auto V, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, T-Rex, Manhattan, Cloud Gate Factor, Sky Diver Factor, Fire Strike Factor, Face Detection, Ocean Surface Simulation, Particle Simulation, Video Composition, Bitcoin Mining, Best new price. nine0159
| Radeon R9 295X2 | no data |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | no data |
| GeForce GTX 980 | 5. |
Noise and Power
Tests used: TDP, Idle Power Consumption, Load Power Consumption, Idle Noise Level, Load Noise Level.
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 5.7 out of 10 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | |
| GeForce GTX 980 | 8.7 out of 10 |
Overall graphics card rating
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 8.1 out of 10 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 7.2 out of 10 |
| GeForce GTX 980 | 8.1 out of 10 |
Benchmarks Radeon R9 295X2
Bitcoin mining
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 614.07 mHash/s |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 332.46 mHash/s |
| GeForce GTX 980 | no data |
Face Recognition
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 116. |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 79.68 mPixels/s |
| GeForce GTX 980 | no data |
Ocean Surface Modeling
| Radeon R9295X2 | 1,997.66 frames/s |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 1,933.42 frames/s |
| GeForce GTX 980 | no data |
Particle simulation
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 651.4 mInteraction/s |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 844.6 mInteraction/s |
| GeForce GTX 980 | no data |
T-Rex (Compubench 1.5)
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 10.68 frames/s |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 7.65 frames/s |
| GeForce GTX 980 | no data |
Test Fire Strike
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 89.78 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX 980 | 76. |
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 85.37 |
Sky Diver Test
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 497.21 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX 980 | 434.58 |
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 485.55 |
Cloud Gate test
| Radeon R9 295X2 | 24.18 |
|---|---|
| GeForce GTX 980 | 22.51 |
| GeForce GTX TITAN Z | 24.93 |
Video reviews
AMD Radeon R9 graphics card review295X2. Two coolest vidyuhi on one board!
Is Titan so good? Nvidia Titan X vs AMD Radeon R9 295×2
Reviews of Radeon R9 295X2
+ Dmitry Rusanov line.
As a result, in old games, performance is adequate to the lines of cards, while in the latest games the 700 series merges everything. Look at the tests of old games with 760 vs r9270 / 780 vs r9290x and compare with new games. In which the cards from the reds compete not with the 700 series, but with the 900 series. The owners of the 700 series were simply thrown.
Hello everyone. AMD loses green only in heat dissipation and a delay in driver development. But as for color rendering and cost, the reds are already winning. I affirm this based on personal experience. My gtx670 failed, in order to find out which of the nodes of my destroyer (PC) failed, I had to remove the card from my son’s PC. This amd7770 is twice as weak as 670 in terms of characteristics, and what I saw, the picture became juicier. After that I bought 290 and don’t worry.
yes, it’s a good card, though my reference was on the turbine, and so the turbine just screamed like hell and the temperature in the room rose by a degree when it was playing)) and in terms of performance, yes, at the level of 970, but only this card was released as an answer to 780 and directly competed only with it, for the 12 thousand that I bought it it’s generally a sin to complain.
especially since I sold it for 16 ? I added a little and took 1070 quiet and drags everything on FullHD at 60+ FPS.
Look at the tests, downs! Not only is the consumption shitty, CrossFire itself is not very stable, but also a decent cross — 42 — 45K, and one 1080 — 43K. And a performance difference of 20% + deprivation of all new Nvidia technologies. AMD has been out of business since 2011, even then their cards were decently sucked in and did not go bankrupt only because of cooperation with pines. Nvidia is a monopolist, but someone else can’t come to terms with it. Well, what to do…
Tags:1.018MHz, 8192 MB, AMD, GDDR5, GPU, Radeon R9 295X2
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 | 54 factors
45points
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
Why is AMD Radeon R9 295X2 better than others?
- Pixel speed?
130.4 GPixel/s vs 95.53 GPixel/s
- VRAM?
8GB vs 7.53GB - Texture size?
358 GTexels/s vs 250.16 GTexels/s - Maximum memory bandwidth?
640GB/s vs 367.02GB/s - Memory bus width?
1024bit vs 252.54bit - Hatch patterns?
5623 vs 3232.14 - Textured units (TMUs)?
352 vs 151.09 - ROPs?
128 vs 58.11
Which comparisons are the most popular? nine0017
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
MSI Radeon RX 580 Gaming 8GB
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
AMD Radeon R9 390X
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Aero ITX OC
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 12GB
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
vs
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Price comparison
User reviews
Performance
GPU clock speed
1018MHz
The graphics processing unit (GPU) has a higher clock speed.
Turbo GPU
Unknown. Help us offer a price.
When the GPU is running below its limits, it can jump to a higher clock speed to increase performance.
pixel rate
130.4 GPixel/s
The number of pixels that can be displayed on the screen every second.
flops
11.46 TFLOPS
FLOPS is a measurement of GPU processing power.
texture size
358 GTexels/s
The number of textured pixels that can be displayed on the screen every second.
GPU memory speed
1250MHz
Memory speed is one aspect that determines memory bandwidth.
Shading patterns
Shading units (or stream processors) are small processors in a graphics card that are responsible for processing various aspects of an image. nine0159
texture units (TMUs)
TMUs take texture units and map them to the geometric layout of the 3D scene. More TMUs generally means texture information is processed faster.
ROPs renderers
ROPs are responsible for some of the final steps of the rendering process, such as writing the final pixel data to memory and for performing other tasks such as anti-aliasing to improve the appearance of graphics. nine0159
Memory
effective memory speed
5000MHz
The effective memory clock is calculated from the size and data transfer rate of the memory. A higher clock speed can give better performance in games and other applications.
maximum memory bandwidth
640GB/s
This is the maximum rate at which data can be read from or stored in memory.
VRAM (video RAM) is the dedicated memory of the graphics card. More VRAM usually allows you to run games at higher settings, especially for things like texture resolution. nine0159
memory bus width
1024bit
A wider memory bus means it can carry more data per cycle. This is an important factor in memory performance, and therefore the overall performance of the graphics card.
GDDR versions of
Later versions of GDDR memory offer improvements such as higher data transfer rates, which improve performance.
Supports memory recovery code
✖AMD Radeon R9 295X2
Memory troubleshooting code can detect and fix data corruption. It is used when necessary to avoid distortion, such as in scientific computing or when starting a server.
Features
DirectX version
DirectX is used in games with a new version that supports better graphics.
OpenGL version
The newer the OpenGL version, the better graphics quality in games.
OpenCL version
Some applications use OpenCL to use the graphics processing unit (GPU) for non-graphical computing. Newer versions are more functional and better quality.
Supports multi-monitor technology
✔AMD Radeon R9 295X2
The video card has the ability to connect multiple displays. This allows you to set up multiple monitors at the same time to create a more immersive gaming experience, such as a wider field of view. nine0159
GPU temperature at boot
Unknown. Help us offer a price.
Lower boot temperature means the card generates less heat and the cooling system works better.
supports ray tracing
✖AMD Radeon R9 295X2
Ray tracing is an advanced light rendering technique that provides more realistic lighting, shadows and reflections in games.
Supports 3D
✔AMD Radeon R9 295X2
Allows you to view in 3D (if you have a 3D screen and glasses).
supports DLSS
✖AMD Radeon R9 295X2
DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is an AI based scaling technology. This allows the graphics card to render games at lower resolutions and upscale them to higher resolutions with near-native visual quality and improved performance. DLSS is only available in some games. nine0159
PassMark (G3D) result
Unknown. Help us offer a price.
This test measures the graphics performance of a graphics card. Source: Pass Mark.
Ports
has HDMI output
✔AMD Radeon R9 295X2
Devices with HDMI or mini HDMI ports can stream HD video and audio to an attached display.
HDMI connectors
Unknown. Help us offer a price.
More HDMI connectors make it possible to connect multiple devices at the same time, such as game consoles and TV sets.
HDMI version
Unknown. Help us offer a price.
Newer versions of HDMI support higher bandwidth, resulting in higher resolutions and frame rates.