Radeon r7 265: AMD Radeon R7 265 Specs

The Radeon R7 265 makes its debut

News

A couple of days after the announcement of the Radeon R7 250X, AMD continues to revamp the lower ranks of its GPU lineup with today’s introduction of the Radeon R7 265. Like the 250X, the R7 265 isn’t based on new silicon; it’s simply the rebranding and repositioning of an existing product.

In this case, the R7 265 has roots in the Radeon HD 7850, which first debuted just under two years ago at a price of $250. Since the R7 265 is based an older chip, code-named Pitcairn, it doesn’t support newer Radeon features like TrueAudio or XDMA for CrossFire.

The R7 265 does partake of some additional goodness the passage of time has allowed. The 265’s GPU clock peaks at 925MHz, while the 7850 was clocked at 860MHz. Also, the R7 265’s 2GB of GDDR5 memory can transfer data at 5.6Gbps, up from 4.8Gbps on the 7850. Those slight upgrades, since they come together, ought to translate pretty directly into higher all-around performance for the R9 265 compared to its predecessor. Here’s how the basic specs compare.

	Peak GPU clock (MHz)	ROP pixels/ clock	Texels filtered/ clock (int/fp16)	Shader processors	Memory transfer rate (Gbps)	Memory interface width (bits)	TDP
Radeon HD 7850	860	32	64/32	1024	4. 8	256	150W
Radeon R7 265	925	32	64/32	1024	5.6	256	150W

The other bit of good news here is that the R7 265 represents something of a price adjustment. The few Radeon HD 7850 cards still in stock are generally selling for around $189.99 online right now, although they’ve ranged between $150 and $170 in recent months. The R7 265 establishes an official base price of $149.99. This change also pushes the Radeon R7 260X down to a suggested list of $119.99.

The bottom line on the R7 265 is that folks can pick up a video card with graphics hardware that’s extremely similar, in terms of both architecture and performance, to what’s in the PlayStation 4 for 150 bucks. At least, such a purchase will be possible at the end of the month, when AMD expects the cards to hit store shelves.

Here’s a look at the R7 265 review sample we received from AMD this past Monday.

Notice the sticker that’s been peeled off the back? Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is a Sapphire 7850 that’s been upgraded to R7 265 status via a BIOS flash. Then again, that may mean this card is entirely representative of the final R7 265 products. If so, that’s just fine with us. This is a very capable video card for 1080p gaming at a decent price.

Damage Labs has been humming away testing this thing, but I don’t quite have a review ready for you just yet.

AMD has almost certainly repositioned its products this week in anticipation of some movement in this space from its competition. In fact, there was a mysterious mention of a «750 Ti» as the primary rival to the GTX 265 in the press briefing. Perhaps we’ll know the rest of the story fairly soon.

AMD Radeon R7 265 Graphics Card Benchmarks and Specs

AMD Radeon R7 265 Graphics Card Benchmarks and Specs

Specifications of the AMD Radeon R7 265 graphics card dedicated to the desktop sector, with 1024 shading units, its maximum frequency is 0,9GHz The table below makes it possible to observe well the lithography, the number of transistors (if present), the offered cache memory, the quantity of texture mapping units, of render output units, the release date, the GFLOPS performance, the values obtained in the benchmark platforms.

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Specifications:

Graphics card		AMD Radeon R7 265
Market (main)		Desktop
Release date		Q1 2014
Model number		215-0828062, Pitcairn PRO
GPU name		Pitcairn
Architecture		GCN 1.0
Generation		Volcanic Islands R7 200
Lithography		28 nm
Transistors		2.800.000.000
Bus interface		PCIe 3.0 x16
GPU base clock		900 MHz
GPU boost clock		925 MHz
Memory frequency		1. 400 MHz
Effective memory speed		5,6 GB/s
Memory size		2 GB
Memory type		GDDR5
Memory bus		256 Bit
Memory bandwidth		179,2 GB/s
TDP		150 W
Suggested PSU		450W ATX Power Supply
Multicard technology		—
Outputs		2x DVI 1x HDMI 1x DisplayPort
Cores (compute units, SM, SMX)		16
Shading units		1.024
TMUs		64
ROPs		32
Cache memory		512 KB
Pixel fillrate		29,6 GPixel/s
Texture fillrate		59,2 GTexel/s
Performance FP32 (float)		1,9 TFLOPS
Performance FP64 (double)		118,4 GFLOPS
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Price: For technical reasons, we cannot currently display a price less than 24 hours, or a real-time price. This is why we prefer for the moment not to show a price. You should refer to the respective online stores for the latest price, as well as availability.

TMUs: texture mapping units. This unit was a physical processor separated from the main graphics processing units. It is able to distort a bitmap image, and also to resize it, to rotate it and to place it as a texture onto a plane of a specific 3D model.

ROPs: render output units. The other name of this unit is raster operations pipeline. This hadware component is taking pixel and texel information, and processing it through vector and matrix operations. The result will be a depth value or a final pixel. It is able to control antialiasing with the merge of several sample into one pixel.

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Performance with the benchmarks:

Performance comparison between this graphics card and those of equivalent power, for this we consider the results generated on benchmark softwares and rendering performances.

Pixel fillrate performance comparison for this graphics card:

	Pixel fillrate performance in GPixels/s
AMD Radeon RX 470	38,59
Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 (OEM)	38,5
Nvidia Quadro M2000	37,22
AMD Radeon Pro 570	35,36
Intel Arc A310	32
AMD Radeon R7 265	29,6
Intel UHD Graphics P750	28,8
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630	28,56
EVGA GeForce GTX 1630 SC Gaming	28,56
Nvidia Quadro P600	24,91

Note: Commissions may be earned from the links above. These scores are only an
average of the performances got with these graphics cards, you may get different results.

The term pixel fillrate is refering to the number of pixels that the video card is able to generate every second. This performance is achieved by multiplying the raster output units (ROPs) by the clock frequency of the graphics processor unit (GPU).

Texture fillrate performance comparison for this graphics card:

	Texture fillrate performance in GTexels/s
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 SSC Gaming	61,76
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming X	61,24
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 SC Gaming	61,24
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Aero ITX OC	60,72
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 OC	59,72
AMD Radeon R7 265	59,2
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050	58,2
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 FTW DT Gaming	58,2
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming	58,2
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 LP	58,2

Note: Commissions may be earned from the links above. These scores are only an
average of the performances got with these graphics cards, you may get different results.

The term texture fillrate refers to the number of map texture elements (texels) that the GPU is capable of generating per second. This performance is achieved by multiplying the texture mapping units (TMUs) by the clock frequency of the graphics processor unit.

FP32 performance comparison (single precision; float; floating-point 32) for this graphics card:

	FP32 Performance in GFLOPS
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 SSC Gaming	1.976
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming X	1.960
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 SC Gaming	1.960
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Aero ITX OC	1. 943
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 OC	1.911
AMD Radeon R7 265	1.894
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming	1.862,4
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050	1.862
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 FTW DT Gaming	1.862
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 LP	1.862

Note: Commissions may be earned from the links above. These scores are only an
average of the performances got with these graphics cards, you may get different results.

Single precision floating point format, also known as FP32, is a computer number format that typically occupies 32 bits in PC memory. This represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values that employs a floating point.

List of comparisons:

AMDAMD RadeonAMD Radeon GraphicsAMD Radeon HDAMD Radeon HD 6000AMD Radeon HD 7000AMD Radeon HD 7800AMD Radeon HD 8000AMD Radeon MobileAMD Radeon ProAMD Radeon Pro MobileAMD Radeon R2AMD Radeon R4AMD Radeon R5AMD Radeon R6AMD Radeon R7AMD Radeon R7 200AMD Radeon R9AMD Radeon R9 200AMD Radeon RXAMD Radeon RX 300AMD Radeon RX 400AMD Radeon RX 500AMD Radeon RX 5000AMD Radeon RX 5000 MobileAMD Radeon RX 6000AMD Radeon RX 6000 MobileAMD Radeon RX 7000AMD Radeon RX VegaAMD Radeon VegaAMD Radeon Vega 11AMD Radeon Vega 3AMD Radeon Vega 6AMD Radeon Vega 8AMD Radeon Vega MobileAppleARMARM MaliARM Mali-400ARM Mali-450ARM Mali-470ARM Mali-G31ARM Mali-G51ARM Mali-G52ARM Mali-G57ARM Mali-G610ARM Mali-G68ARM Mali-G71ARM Mali-G710ARM Mali-G72ARM Mali-G76ARM Mali-G77ARM Mali-G78ARM Mali-T720ARM Mali-T760ARM Mali-T764ARM Mali-T820ARM Mali-T830ARM Mali-T860ARM Mali-T880ASRockAsusAsus GeForce 4000ATIATI Radeon HDATI Radeon HD 3000ATI Radeon HD 4000ATI Radeon HD 5000BFGBroadcomBroadcom VideoCoreColorfulColorful GeForce 4000DellDMPEVGAEVGA GeForce 1000EVGA GeForce 1600EVGA GeForce 2000EVGA GeForce 3000GainwardGainward GeForce 4000GigabyteGigabyte GeForce 4000ImaginationImagination PowerVRImagination PowerVR SGX543Imagination PowerVR SGX544IntelIntel ArcIntel Arctic SoundIntel HD GraphicsIntel Iris GraphicsIntel Iris Plus GraphicsIntel Iris Xe Graphics G7Intel Iris Xe Graphics MobileIntel UHD GraphicsIntel UHD Graphics 610Intel UHD Graphics 620Intel UHD Graphics 630Intel UHD Graphics 730Intel UHD Graphics 770Intel Xe GraphicsLeadtekMicrosoftMicrosoft XboxMSIMSI GeForce 3000MSI GeForce 4000NintendoNvidiaNvidia GeForceNvidia GeForce 1000Nvidia GeForce 1000 MobileNvidia GeForce 1600Nvidia GeForce 1600 MobileNvidia GeForce 2000Nvidia GeForce 2000 MobileNvidia GeForce 3000Nvidia GeForce 3000 MobileNvidia GeForce 400Nvidia GeForce 4000Nvidia GeForce 500Nvidia GeForce 600Nvidia GeForce 600MNvidia GeForce 700Nvidia GeForce 700MNvidia GeForce 800M seriesNvidia GeForce 900Nvidia GeForce 900MNvidia GeForce GTNvidia GeForce GT 1000Nvidia GeForce GTXNvidia GeForce GTX 1000Nvidia GeForce GTX 1000 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 1600Nvidia GeForce GTX 1600 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 400Nvidia GeForce GTX 500Nvidia GeForce GTX 600Nvidia GeForce GTX 600 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 700Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 800 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 900Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 MobileNvidia GeForce MXNvidia GeForce RTXNvidia GeForce RTX 2000Nvidia GeForce RTX 2000 MobileNvidia GeForce RTX 3000Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 MobileNvidia GeForce RTX 4000Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 MobileNvidia GM20BNvidia Quadro seriesNvidia TeslaNvidia VoltaPalitPalit GeForce 4000PNYQualcommQualcomm AdrenoSamsungSaplosSapphireSonySony PlayStationValveVeinedaVivanteXFXYestonZotacZotac GeForce 4000Graphics cards groups

List of benchmarks:

FP32 performance

See also:

AMD Radeon R7 260AMD Radeon R7 260XAMD Radeon R7 265X OEM

Equivalence:

AMD Radeon R7 265 Nvidia equivalent

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Information:

We do not assume any responsibility for the data displayed on our website. Please use at your own risk. Some or all of this data may be out of date or incomplete, please refer to the technical page on the respective manufacturer’s website to find the latest up-to-date information regarding the specifics of these products.

AMD Radeon R7 265

Not all islands are very expensive. There are cheap Curacao ….

Content

• Part 1 — theory and architecture
• Part 2 — Practical acquaintance
  • Features of the video card
  • Stand Configuration, List of test instruments
  • Results of synthetic tests

  9000

• Part 3 — Results of game tests (performance)

If Nvidia gives code names to its latest processors by the names of world-famous mathematicians and physicists, then AMD has other preferences. Islands rule here. Yes, yes … The larger the islands, the more powerful the GPU. No coincidence 290X was called Hawaii before the announcement. But Curacao is already a more modest island in the Caribbean. But, again, in the tropics… Like, the new AMD GPUs are beautiful, like a «bounty» with white beaches and azure sea. But in vain they did not choose Margarita Island, which is in the neighborhood. It is bigger and the name is more beautiful.. AMD Margarita… It sounds!

However, Curacao is the Radeon R9 270… And the R7 265 is already a stripped-down version of the latter. Interestingly, when moving from 270 to 260, the R index changes: R9 goes into R7, which indicates a sharp change in price and performance segments. However, if the R7 260X/260 were indeed based on the actually less efficient Bonaire core (similar to the Radeon HD 7790), then the R7 265 is based on a faster Curacao — in fact, a copy of the former Pitcairn (Radeon HD 78xx). So he is a kind of link between the R7 and R9 group, and it would be more logical to give him the name R8 265. However, it is still R7. Alexey Berillo will tell the rest in the theoretical part.

Part 1: Theory and Architecture

In our theoretical material devoted to the new line of graphic solutions of the Radeon R7 and R9 families from AMD, we cited only those models that were supposed to be released in the nearest time to the then announcement. The further release of video cards with modified characteristics (for example, based on graphics processors cut in terms of capabilities) did not cancel these plans. And over the past months, several more Radeon models have been released that were not presented in that review material. nine0003

For example, February 2014 was a rather interesting time for the budget video card market. We already recently wrote about the Geforce GTX 750 Ti video card that was released at that time, which became the first model based on the new GPU architecture from Nvidia. A less productive model, the Geforce GTX 750, was also announced. In turn, AMD made a traditional attempt to deliver a preventive strike against the competitor’s positions by updating its family of video cards of the corresponding price positioning, releasing a new solution on February 13, right before the announcement of the rival. nine0003

About a month ago, the Radeon R7 family of video cards was expanded with two models: the Radeon R7 250X, based on the long-known Cape Verde video chip — a successor to the Radeon HD 7770 and a competitor for the Geforce GTX 650, as well as a much more interesting model for budget gamers Radeon R7 265. The launch of these solutions was part of a major shake-up in AMD’s $100 to $200 graphics card lineup, one of the most important price segments for manufacturers. nine0003

Simultaneously with their release, anticipating the announcements planned by the competitor, AMD also reduced the prices of already sold products in order to improve the competitiveness of its line and close the «holes» in it, although there are fewer of them, and the line is becoming denser. As a result, along with the price drop of the Bonaire-based Radeon R7 260X to $119, AMD decided to launch an even stronger competitor for the Geforce GTX 750 Ti. nine0003

This solution was the Radeon R7 265, which has taken an important place in the company’s product line. After dropping the price of the Radeon R7 260X to $119 and the Radeon R9 270 to $179, there is some wiggle room between the two. Which AMD decided to fill with the Radeon R7 265 graphics card based on the Pitcairn GPU. In fact, if we consider the Radeon R9 270 a variation of the Radeon HD 7870, then the R7 265 is a clear follower of the Radeon HD 7850 case. Compared to the old counterpart, the new product received an increase in GPU frequency and video memory, just like the R9270 compared to the HD 7870. Therefore, the Radeon R7 265 will be slightly faster than the HD 7850 to provide a level of performance between the R7 260X and R9 270 models.

modern games for the majority of low-end players, giving them high performance and an excellent combination of performance and price. Compared to the competing model Nvidia Geforce GTX 750 Ti, the main advantage of the novelty should be a slightly higher performance for about the same money. nine0003

Since the model of the Radeon R7 265 video card in question is almost the same Radeon R9 270, but with the “cropped” Pitcairn graphics processor, previously known to us from the previous Radeon HD 7800 series, it will be useful to familiarize yourself with detailed information about early solutions of the company:

• [02. 12.13] AMD Radeon R9 270: Curacao is far from Hawaii, but close to the mass consumer
• [28.10.13] AMD Radeon R9 290X: Reach out to Hawaii! Get new heights of speed and functionality
• [10/08/13] AMD Radeon R7 and R9 — updated line of video cards: new families yet without their flagship Radeon R7 accelerator 265
  • Chip code name: «Pitcairn»
  • Manufacturing technology: 28 nm
  • 2.8 billion transistors
  • Unified architecture with an array of common processors for streaming processing of multiple types of data: vertices, pixels, etc.
  • DirectX 11.1 hardware support, including Shader Model 5.0 shader model
  • 256-bit memory bus: four 64-bit controllers with GDDR5 memory support
  • Core frequency up to 925 MHz
  • 16 active (out of 20 physical) compute GCN units, including 64 (out of 80) SIMD cores, consisting of a total of 1024 (out of 1280) ALUs for floating point calculations (integer and floating formats are supported, with FP32 and FP64 precision)
  • 64 (out of 80) texture units , with support for trilinear and anisotropic filtering for all texture formats
  • 32 ROPs with support for anti-aliasing modes with the possibility of programmable sampling of more than 16 samples per pixel, including with FP16 or FP32 framebuffer format. Peak performance up to 32 samples per clock, and 128 samples per clock in no color mode (Z only)
  • Integrated support for up to six monitors connected via DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces

  Video card specifications Radeon R7 265

  • Frequency cores: 900 (925) MHz
  • Number of universal processors: 1024
  • Number of texture units: 64, blending units: 32
  • Effective memory frequency: 5600 MHz (4×1400 MHz)
  • Memory type: GDDR5
  • Memory bus size: 2506-bit 9007 memory: 2 gigabytes
  • Memory bandwidth: 179 gigabytes per second.
  • Compute performance (FP32): 1.89 teraflops
  • Theoretical maximum fill rate: 29.6 gigapixels per second. nine0008
  • Theoretical texture fetch rate: 59.2 gigatexels per second.
  • Support Crossfire
  • Shin PCI Express 3.0
  • Sences: Two DVI DUAL LINK, HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2
  • Energy consumption: up to 150 W
  • One-pin power supply

  9000 : $149

  Curiously chosen name of the novelty, which reveals all the imperfection of the naming system for AMD video cards, which we have repeatedly written about. Firstly, the video card had to be called a non-circular number between 260 and 270, since the «X» suffix is ​​already taken by the R7 260X model, and there was simply no room for a minor modification on the Pitcairn chip. Although everything is not so bad, because they could give the novelty another suffix — «L», for example, which would lead to even more confusion. nine0003

  Secondly, judging by the name, the Radeon R7 265 for some reason belongs to the R7 series, and not to the R9, which includes only a slightly more powerful solution based on the same Pitcairn chip. It turns out that the R7 line now includes both Pitcairn-based video cards that do not have TrueAudio support and some features of the GCN 1.1 architecture, as well as Bonaire-based solutions with support for these technologies. And similar boards on Pitcairn belong to completely different R7 and R9 families. In general, the confusion arose just wild, as we warned about in the first articles on the updated line and naming system for AMD video cards. nine0003

  The Radeon R7 265 sits at the bottom of the company’s new lineup, between the R9 270 and R7 260X, and is very close in performance to the previous generation Radeon HD 7850. The difference from last year’s board is the increased clock speed, but the difference not so big. The recommended price for the Radeon R7 265 is fully consistent with the price of a similar solution from a competitor in the same price segment — Geforce GTX 750 Ti, this model is the only rival for the Radeon R7 265 after they stopped producing Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost. nine0003

  The most productive model from the Radeon R7 series, which we are considering today, like the older modification R9 270, has two gigabytes of GDDR5 memory, which is quite enough for resolutions up to 1920 × 1080 (1200) even in modern demanding games with high quality settings, not to mention the fact that for such an inexpensive video card there is simply no point in installing more fast and expensive GDDR5 memory, but a smaller one would have a very negative impact on its performance. nine0003

  The specifications of the Radeon R7 265 reference board, the design of the board and its cooling devices do not differ from those of the Radeon R9 270, and are not at all particularly important, since AMD partners immediately offered other options with their own PCB design and original coolers, as well as a higher frequency of the GPU. At the same time, all of them are content with only one 6-pin power connector, but they may differ in the set of connectors for displaying an image. nine0003

  Architectural and functional features

  We talked in detail about the well-known Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture using the Tahiti chip as an example. All modern solutions of the company are based on this architecture, and even the newest Hawaii graphics chip differs from Tahiti only in a large number of execution units and some modifications in terms of computing capabilities (in the form of support for more simultaneously executed command streams), support for some additional DirectX 11. 2 features and improved AMD PowerTune technology. nine0003

  Not to mention other solutions that differ from Tahiti only quantitatively. The basic building block of the architecture is the GCN Compute Block, from which all AMD GPUs are assembled. The GCN compute unit has a dedicated local data storage for data exchange or local register stack expansion, as well as a first-level read-write cache and a full-fledged texture pipeline with sampling and filtering units, divided into subsections, each of which works on its own stream commands. Each of the GCN blocks deals with planning and distribution of work independently. nine0003

  The Radeon R7 265 model can be considered as a stripped-down version of the R9 270. The graphics processors of both models are very similar in characteristics, except that four computing devices were turned off in the younger one (out of 20 computing devices, 16 remained active), which gives we have 1024 streaming cores instead of 1280 cores for the full version. The same applies to texture units, their number has decreased from 80 TMU to 64 TMU, since each GCN unit has four texture units. But the rest of the chip has not changed, all ROP blocks have remained in place, as well as memory controllers. That is, this GPU has 32 active ROPs and four 64-bit memory controllers, giving a shared 256-bit bus. nine0003

  The operating frequencies of the video card of the new model are identical to those offered by the Radeon R9 270. That is, the graphics processor in the Radeon R7 265 model received the same base frequency of 900 MHz and a turbo frequency of 925 MHz, and the video memory of the new product runs on frequency at 5.6 GHz. The use of sufficiently fast GDDR5 memory gives a relatively high bandwidth of 179 GB / s. By the way, this model has 2 GB of memory, which is quite logical for a budget video card. The typical power consumption of the video card has not changed either. The official power consumption figure for the Radeon R7 265 remains the same as for the R9270 — 150 W, although in practice the consumption of the younger model should still be somewhat lower.

  Naturally, the new Radeon R7 265 graphics card supports all the same technologies as other models based on the same GPU. We have repeatedly written about all the new technologies supported by AMD graphics chips in the corresponding reviews. In particular, the solution reviewed today has support for the new Mantle graphics API, which helps to more efficiently use the hardware capabilities of AMD GPUs, without being limited by the shortcomings of the existing graphics APIs: OpenGL and DirectX, since Mantle uses a thinner software shell between the game engine and GPU hardware resources, similar to how it has long been done on game consoles. nine0003

  Most importantly, Mantle was developed at AMD with significant input from top game developers DICE, and Battlefield 4, the first game to use Mantle, is seeing a pretty decent performance boost from Direct3D to Mantle. And among those interested in Mantle, several companies can be especially distinguished: Crytek, Rebellion, and the previously mentioned Oxide, Nixxes Software and Cloud Imperium Games. The number of game engines and projects with Mantle support is gradually increasing, but among the already announced projects for Battlefield 4, Thief and Star Citizen can be added for now. nine0003

  Theoretical performance evaluation, market positioning and conclusions

  In this part of the material, we only preliminary evaluate the performance of new solutions, based on theoretical data and brief testing conducted at AMD. First, let’s take a look at the peak theoretical performance of the performance-reduced Pitcairn GPU on which the Radeon R7 265 is based, compared to the full chip in the Radeon R9 270 and lower-end Radeon R7 260X based on the less sophisticated Bonaire GPU. nine0003

  Judging by the theoretical figures, comparing the Radeon R7 265 with the R7 260X gives mixed results. The new product is much faster in terms of ROP performance and has a much higher video memory bandwidth, but in terms of performance of mathematical calculations and texturing, it is even inferior to its younger sister! Yes, the difference is a miserable 4%, but it still exists and can affect many games, because these parameters are the most important. In the case of focusing the rendering speed on the memory bandwidth or rasterization, the Radeon R7 265 is able to outperform the younger model based on a less complex GPU by almost half. nine0003

  As for the comparison with the older model on the same Pitcairn chip, the difference in performance between the Radeon R7 265 and R9 270 video cards is due solely to the different number of active execution units included in the available GCN computing units. The additional four CUs give the older model a 20% increase in theoretical peak math and texture sampling and filtering performance. In turn, the performance of the ROP units and the video memory bandwidth of these models are absolutely equal. And in games, the difference will be visible if the overall performance is limited by the speed of execution of shaders or texture fetches, which is most often encountered in practice. nine0003

  Let’s take a look at the preliminary performance indicators of AMD’s novelty relative to junior solutions in real applications — in particular, in the popular 3DMark FireStrike test. In this particular benchmark, according to the company’s own measurements, the speed of the new Radeon R7 265 graphics card is almost 25% faster than the Radeon R7 260X — according to the positioning of these boards.

  Unfortunately, the company does not compare the new video card with competing Nvidia models and with the Radeon R9 270, we will have to do it ourselves in the following parts of the material. Instead, we’ll take a look at the relative average frame rate gains achieved with the latest Battlefield 4 game enabled for the new Mantle graphics API, which was released in late January. Unfortunately, the figures are not for the Radeon R7 265 model, but estimate the increase by the R9 numbers270X and R7 260X is quite possible.

  This chart shows the performance gain from using Mantle compared to the Direct3D version on a system with an AMD A10-7700K CPU. Moreover, ultra-quality game settings are applied, full-screen anti-aliasing of the 4x MSAA level is enabled, and the resolution was applied at 1920 × 1080. In such conditions, the speed increase on top models exceeds 30-40%, because a weak CPU prevents them from “opening up” in the D3D version, but on solutions at the level of the board in question, the FPS increase will be less than 10%. However, this is not bad, because at the moment Mantle is already supported by several game engines (including Frostbite and CryEngine), a dozen developers, and the number of games under development is several dozen. nine0003

  Even according to theoretical and preliminary data, we can say that we have before us the most high-performance video card of the Radeon R7 series. Since the Radeon R7 265 has become part of the global reconstruction of AMD’s budget video card line, it is no wonder that the new product has moved the lower solutions in price. For example, the R7 250 video card models have finally moved into the price range below $100, and the R9 270, in turn, are sold for $180 and more, so the R7 26x range remains from $100 to $150. Naturally, the older one R7 265 is sold for $149, and the price of the R7 260X dropped to $119. In general, the AMD lineup was already very densely packed with various models, and now another video card has also wedged in.

  As for the competition with Nvidia, judging by the specifications and the recommended price of the novelty, the Radeon R7 265 model should be a very strong contender for victory in its class. On the day of the announcement of this AMD board, Nvidia did not have a direct competitor for the R7 265 at all, since the Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost had already been “decommissioned”, the GTX 660 was obviously faster and more expensive, and the GTX 750 Ti had not yet been released. But now on the market, the Radeon R7 265 is opposed by the latest model from the Californian company, which we recently reviewed. nine0003

  We will definitely check the performance of AMD’s new product in the next parts of our article, but already now we can say that the presented model of the AMD Radeon R7 265 video card has become one of the most profitable offers in its market niche.