Reviews - AMD (Sapphire) Radeon R7 265 graphics card

[HEXUS]

Bringing down the cost for full-on 1080p gaming.

Read more.

[MaverickWill]

I know this is going to sound picky, but can you add in your most recent benchmark results for an actual 7850? Saying "This card is just like that one!" and then omitting the results of one of those cards seems odd.

[pfb201]

Seconded. As they said in the article we will see what the "Maxwell" powered 750 will get up to. AMD as usual needs a new architecture out quite soon rather than just a rebake.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It looks like the R7 260X is dropping in price to around £73:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/a...mance-increase

Seconded. As they said in the article we will see what the "Maxwell" powered 750 will get up to. AMD as usual needs a new architecture out quite soon rather than just a rebake.

AMD has a perfectly fine architecture for the time-being and that is why Sony and MS invested billions into using them for consoles. Moreover,Nvidia has rebranded plenty of cards including the entire GTX700 series upto now,yet you seem to be fine with that?? Funny that.

Current Kepler based cards including my GTX660 are horrible at compute in consumer applications,outside the expensive and massive GK110. Both Intel and AMD have vastly better compute performance in mainstream parts especially for OpenCL which used in Adobe CS.

But as you know 28NM Maxwell is not a fully new architecture :

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-maxwell-g...ent-28nm-gpus/

Its bascially Kepler with a redesigned shader block,more cache and improved sleep states,which means better power consumption and compute performance. In terms of die space the GM107 is not that much improved as it only has 640 shaders as opposed to the 960 shaders of the GK106,and it only has a 128 bit memory controller.

Its slower than a GTX660,consumes less power due to it being bus powered and has a 128 bit memory controller according to leaks.

However,it seems to be clocked quite highly too when compared to the GTX660,so I do wonder how much boost will affect the benchmark scores.

Yes,it looks like it will be a nice bus powered card,but even as this review indicated an R7 265 would run off a 300W PSU.

Hence,I expect it to suffer when AA is ramped up,or in bandwith limited situations. Even if the R7 265 consumes more power for a gaming desktop,it has decent overclockability and 256 bit memory controller which are going to be useful at 1920X1080. OTH,there were bus powered HD7850 2GB cards too:

http://www.techpowerup.com/185003/tr...n-hd-7850.html

AMD made a reference design for a bus powered HD7850 but it was expensive to implement so it only had some limited availability in Asia.

The normal R7 265 and HD7850 cards consume around 85W to 95W:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Sapphire/R...er_average.gif

The PCI-E slot can supply 75W,so even if he GTX750TI has HD7850 level performance,it is not doing so at massively lower power consumption. Considering when AMD Pitcairn was launched I am so sure how impressive the lower power consumption of the GM107 will be,especially considering the HD7850 and R7 265 use a salvaged AMD Pitcairn die too.

Full fat Kepler will come when 20NM arrives and you have no clue what AMD is also up to regarding their own GPUs. The fact that Nvidia are releasing another version of the GTX780TI indicates the high end is still months away.

[sykobee]

If the 260X price drop is true, it's a great deal, and it's using the latest AMD GPU technology and TrueAudio too.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If the 260X price drop is true, it's a great deal, and it's using the latest AMD GPU technology and TrueAudio too.

It was excluding VAT it seems,so probably £85 to £90 it seems. Minor excitement over!!

[pfb201]

Seconded. As they said in the article we will see what the "Maxwell" powered 750 will get up to. AMD as usual needs a new architecture out quite soon rather than just a rebake.

AMD has a perfectly fine architecture for the time-being and that is why Sony and MS invested billions into using them for consoles. Moreover,Nvidia has rebranded plenty of cards including the entire GTX700 series upto now,yet you seem to be fine with that?? Funny that.

Definitely not fine with that at all. I still think AMD has it at this price point and at every price point TBH. I myself have a 7970 or should I say R9 280X. It's the rebadging that is irritating but I do understand they have done a great job at stretching the lifecycle of GCN.

We will see how far Maxwell is away and what they can do with it because I don't see them doing anything else with the GK110 part. I believe they are maxed out on the architecture even moving down to a 20nm process.

[HalloweenJack]

Nvida are rebadging this generation themselves gtx 770 is a gtx 680 with slightly higher clocks.....

[mercyground]

I find it more entertaining NV are launching maxwell... with low end cards. That speaks volumes alone.

But dont worry. its all TSMC's fault... again... /deep sarcasm.

[awg1031]

I know this is going to sound picky, but can you add in your most recent benchmark results for an actual 7850? Saying "This card is just like that one!" and then omitting the results of one of those cards seems odd.

looking at anandtech gpu bench result..it seems that 265 beats 7850..however, it seems negligible to me..