Reviews - AMD Radeon R9 295X2

[kompukare]

I think it might be time for AMD and nVidia to maybe think about reducing the wattage of their cards.
The power and cooling requirements are getting kinda ridiculous really.
Even sticking to PCIE spec, 375W for a single component? Even the top line of enthusiast grade Cpu's don't use more'n about 125W and the gamer grade's are generally under 80W.

Well, a graphic card is not just the chip though as it also contains power hungry GDDR5 memory and VRMs etc. An LGA2011 CPU running at stock might be 125W but the motherboard will draw a lot more than that (LGA2011 with a bit of overclocking will easily consume as much as an AMD's FX8350 for example).

There are a few trends pushing these power guzzling GPUs though:

• Silicon process nodes have slowed down a lot (no more 18 months cycles and even when they finally come the node may not offer much for high power draw chips like GPUs: TSMC's 28nm to 20nm will not only have taken a lot longer than 18 months it will also be optimised for low wattage SOCs).
• Some (so-called) hardware enthusiasts are willing to pay far too much for some kind of 'premium' product.
• GPUs are very parallel which and once the basic blocks are designed (GCN, Kepler etc.) it is relatively easy to scale those up.
• While it is possible to get more performance out of running large chips slower, very large dies tend to have yield issues. So large-and-slow is an approach more suited to mobile.

[YazX]

i love how this article sucks for AMD, you never included Titan Black nor Titan Z into the chart and comparison and yet calling it fastest card.

Mod Edit: Asterisked section removed - please don't use inappropriate language or asterisk out words on the forums

[AETAaAS]

I really like the cooler plate they put on the VRM and memory. Pleasantly surprised by how well the single 120mm rad does and pretty staggered by how far ahead of the old dual GPU cards it is, beating the 7990 and the 690 quite handily. I wonder if you could get one into a CM Elite 130.

i love how this article sucks for AMD, you never included Titan Black nor Titan Z into the chart and comparison and yet calling it fastest card

The Titan Black is kinda represented by the 780Ti here, the Titan Black just has a larger frame buffer and better FP performance. Most reviews show it neck and neck with the 780Ti for gaming so you can nearly assume them to be equal give or take a few percent usually to the Titan Black. And if you have a Titan Z for review, I'm sure there are a number of people who'd be interested in talking to you. Not least nVidia who might have a couple policemen and lawyers in tow.

edit: Might have been nice to see some high end SLI and CF thrown in.

[keithwalton]

They should of fitted a new type of connector so that power supply was definitely going to be upto the job.
The cables have more than enough csa to handle the current but i've never liked the connectors used my old desktops i was forever having to fiddle with the graphics cards power supply in order to get the machine to start if it had been off for a while. and back in the ati 9700 days a friends card burn't out the molex connector

What will be a problem is the ac-dc converters inside the psu cheap psu's all the wires end up piggy backed off the same set of converts so you might have loads of molex connectors but they all draw from the same source.

3dfx had the right idea by providing an external power brick!

[monkeysaintfun]

From what I have seen, the performance of this card is pretty identical to running dual 780TI's in SLi mode. So its nothing special. Titan Z will wipe it away and I am pretty sure of it. Its nice AMD is up there but they are still playing catch up.

[scaryjim]

Titan Z will perform exactly like 2 780 Ti's in SLI, so will perform exactly the same, and will cost twice as much. Not sure how that's going to "wipe away" the 295X2 ...?

If Nvidia release a genuine consumer-grade dual GPU card - a GTX 790, if you will - and they're willing to engineer the heck out of it, they might take back that fastest single card crown. But they haven't even released their announced dual-GPU card yet, let alone an unannounced, cheaper variant. Sure buying two top-end single GPU cards for SLI/Crossfire will get you similar performance for the same or slightly less money, but that's never been what these cards have been about. They're a halo product, and AMD's got a pretty shiny halo right now

[hiyayhi]

Brilliant article, insane card!
I would love to get my hands on one to replace my 6990 but that price is just killing me.

[heXuser]

This card is faster than the 780TI SLI and Titan Black SLI, its also cooler and quieter. It uses 80+ watts more over SLI/Xfire bcoz it has 2 fans (120mm) and 2 pumps.

The King of GPU`s is here at $1500 and I cant afford it (Damn it).. But think what the people wanting the Titan ZZZ will be feeling like at $3000 ROFLMAO. I doubt the Titan ZZZ will beat this anyway.

Edit: This review agrees with most others, but I feel the 290X seemed a bit slower vs what other sites have shown.. Oh well cant win them all every day.

[VijaySathyan]

If price seems to be the problem, then look at nvidia's offering(790=$3000) this dosent seem much.

[YoloSwag]

Great review dude.

I didn't expect a GPU of this sort would perform great. I was stuck in the thought that Dual-GPU setups were bad for a number of reasons but it seems this time the scaling was excellent.

You might be better off with one of these than a Titan Z or you could get a another and still end up cheaper than the Titan Z :O

ANOTHER REVIEW HEXUS! 2x R9 295X2

[MaverickWill]

i love how this article sucks for AMD, you never included Titan Black nor Titan Z into the chart and comparison and yet calling it fastest card

Yeah, Hexus! Why aren't you including the results for a Titan Z in this review? Or the GTX880? They'd be a perfect match for your Intel Skylake processor, and they come in colours to match my 128GB DDR4-3000MHz kit...

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

[Bugbait]

A niche, enthusiast product like this really needs to come with a waterblock only option but I’m sure/hope their OEM partners are already working on that. Strapping a 120 radiator to something like this is like putting a lawnmower muffler and exhaust on a Ferrari. Space concerns? Sticking this in tightly packed case doesn’t make much sense either. Those that want to keep to small will very likely have a custom water solution anyway.

[YazX]

why would you buy this oven crap if you cann get 2 x 780 Ti which would wipe the floor with it for less!!


"want the world's fastest graphics card? You're looking at it. AMD expects partners to have cards on shelves from April 21."

Stop kissing AMD a$$ because they paid you some cash to say so, this is not the fastest card, Titan Z is the fastest dual GPU card and we still waiting for GTX 790 which would wipe the floor with this one.

[johnniedoo]

This was an excellent article, great information broken down into digestible segments. Though certainly out of my foreseeable budget, I am still quite interested in the things which make this work and cost the added premium. Since a prerequisite seems to be the 4k set, that will need to come first. Love to be able to get both at the same time. Again, thanks for presenting such a well researched and comprehensive article. I know I would be sold , if i had the cash on hand.

[jackjack]

Excellent review Tarinder!
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 is the BEAST!!

[YoloSwag]

I don't know why some people here just don't know how to appreciate a good article.

Some claiming that a GTX 780Ti in SLi would perform better - in some cases it would, depends on the game especially if you have the latest Nvidia performance driver your NV card would perform relatively better than it did. You could save some money and buy two GTX 780Tis instead and it would perform close to this card or even better in some cases right here in this review but that's not the point of this article now.

It's technically a dual-GPU setup but in a single card, therefore you wouldn't need an extra PCI-E slot. It would fit in some ITX cases, and would be perfect for those who only have a small motherboard but want the best there is (currently).

One of the advantages of getting this over a Titan Z or a dual 780Ti is that it's already liquid cooled - this ensures that the card won't experience throttling in some cases.
If you didn't know that - GO READ THE REVIEW FIRST.
Another advantage of this over the Titan Z is it's less expensive - by how much? - by half as much compared with the Titan Z @$1,500.00 therefore you could practically buy another one if you have the ca$h for it...another thing would be an external PSU too. That card's power hungry.

I'm no fanboy here; the last two cards I owned were actually GeForce cards.
You guys should be smart consumers and not dumb angry fanboys
Heck, I think even less than half of us here could even afford to buy one, be it an R9 295X2 or a Titan Z, so why the arguments?

To be honest, the best SINGLE GPU card currently is the GTX 780 Ti, no doubt about that even if you're using the old driver and not the latest performance driver, so hail to the king!
If you have a tight budget for a GPU under $1,000.00 then getting this is way better than a Titan Black. It would cost less too and you could upgrade it later on if you want a dual GPU setup for extra performance. I'd be happy, really happy to own one

This article just gave the SINGLE card crown, not the SINGLE GPU crown, to the R9 295X2 and I see nothing wrong with that, only another review (with the Titan Z) could tell if this card keeps it's crown so that's that