The review embargo has listed on the AMD Radeon R9 295X2, and the reviews have all been published. As always, I recommend turning to Tech Report and PCPerspective for video card reviews, since they look further than most. Especially when dual GPU is involved, average FPS means a whole lot less important than raw frame time measurements. It’s what we do in our video card reviews using FRAPS, and these guys do to, using FRAPS as well as FCAT (provided by Nvidia, this tool reads frames using video capture, to record exactly what the user sees).
So what happened when Scott Wasson at Tech Report compared the Radeon R9 295X2 to 780 Ti in SLI and other high end cards? It wasn’t pretty:
Radeon R9 295X2 Value Chart. Source: Tech Report
Despite an amazing amount of horsepower, it looks like the drivers just aren’t ready to hold it all together. Therefore, the Radeon R9 295X2 performed no better than a single GeForce 780 Ti. Ouch.
It fared a bit better at PCPer, but they tested at a lower resolution, where results were in the 80-90 FPS range in BF4 for instance.
Since we are mostly concerned with hardware that the masses are interested in, there’s really not much more to say. If you are ready to blow $1400-1500 on your GPU, there are your choices. Things may change, as they often do, when AMD’s drivers get a chance to mature.
