PowerColor R9 295X2 First Look

tinytomlogan

The Guvnor
Staff member


It's been a while since AMD have produced a dual-GPU card, and the 295X2 comes with two Hawaii XT GPUs and a water-cooling solution. We take a look.


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Such a shame it only has a 120 rad on it, a 240 would been so much better. Lower temps, lower noise and more overclocking headroom.

There are/soon to be full cover blocks for it now, so results from a fully watercooled 295x2 should be interesting. The Titan Z is out on the 29th as well, it will be interesting how the two compare.
 
Hi

Would love to have one, yet the AIO is not really what I hoped for. If it was an AIO with standard fittings so I could plumb it into a loop, now that would be cool. Its all a dream as I have not the money anyway.
 
Love this card. Really does look like its going to make the nvidia fanboys upset. Really can't see how the Titan Z could possibly match this in performance, noise and most certainly not heat. AND even if it does, it's still half the price!

Considering according to all the reviews I have seen this thing beats 2 780Ti in SLI 90% of the time, and even titan blacks, which is all the titan Z is after all. Due to thermals you would have thought the Titan Z will have to be clocked down since that cooler couldn't even keep the 690 (a pair of underclocked GK104) below 83c ish, I can't possibly see how it could keep 2 full GK110 cool, let alone at stock clocks.

Lets see. Regardless, can't wait to see this review!
 
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Except the Titan Black isn't a gaming card and neither is the Titan Z

It's marketed as a gaming card, part of the GeForce line, and nvidia use it for a LOT of their demos. Just because they gutted the FP64 performance less than their other cards and doubled its price doesn't mean its not a gaming card.

All of AMD's cards have better FP64 performance than any nvidia card excluding the titan/quadro cards, does that mean they aren't gaming cards and nvidia cards are? Of course not.

It's a gaming card AND a card for the most obscure workstation market imaginable.

And regardless of all of that, if you still think its not a gaming card, this still beats, or is at least neck and neck with the 780Ti SLI.
 
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It's marketed as a gaming card, part of the GeForce line, and nvidia use it for a LOT of their demos. Just because they gutted the FP64 performance less than their other cards and doubled its price doesn't mean its not a gaming card.

All of AMD's cards have better FP64 performance than any nvidia card excluding the titan/quadro cards, does that mean they aren't gaming cards and nvidia cards are? Of course not.

It's a gaming card AND a card for the most obscure workstation market imaginable.

And regardless of all of that, if you still think its not a gaming card, this still beats, or is at least neck and neck with the 780Ti SLI.


Ill soon tell you
 
All of AMD's cards have better FP64 performance than any nvidia card excluding the titan/quadro cards, does that mean they aren't gaming cards and nvidia cards are? Of course not.

It's a gaming card AND a card for the most obscure workstation market imaginable.
Yet AMD don't do as well as Nvidia when it comes to professional useage. Performance doesn't mean jack if it can't be used effectively. Professional applications (AutoCAD) are still leaning towards Nvidia, albeit AMD aren't completly useless whereas the slightly more consumer based programs tend to make better use of AMD.

Obscure markets such as game development or anyone who needs GPGPU CUDA rendering (its only slower then the Tesla and Quadro K6000 in that aspect) on the relative cheap( Its cheap compared to the Tesla/Quadro, which both cost several 1000).
 
Dear god, that thing looks horrendous. I don't care how well it performs, I wouldn't have it in my rig with a barge pole length riser card..
 
Yet AMD don't do as well as Nvidia when it comes to professional useage. Performance doesn't mean jack if it can't be used effectively. Professional applications (AutoCAD) are still leaning towards Nvidia, albeit AMD aren't completly useless whereas the slightly more consumer based programs tend to make better use of AMD.

Obscure markets such as game development or anyone who needs GPGPU CUDA rendering (its only slower then the Tesla and Quadro K6000 in that aspect) on the relative cheap( Its cheap compared to the Tesla/Quadro, which both cost several 1000).

Since the ONLY difference and reason you are saying that the Titan is not a gaming card is its FP64 performance, then you might want to consider these points:

AMD FirePros cards have higher FP64 performance than their quadro equivalent. In any software that is created with both FirePro and Quadro acceleration, and the intention is FP64, FirePro cards easily compete with quadros, certain times being faster and certain times slower. Regardless of that, you can't really base how good the hardware is on the fact that some certain software that was not created by the hardware manufacturer is programmed to work with something better than another piece of hardware, that's quite unfair really.

Game developers do not need FP64 performance at all, be it titans, or quadros. The only thing used in game development is the hardware you are expecting the consumers to be using. Unless you specifically mean Model/asset creation, in which case yes a workstation card is useful, but 95% of the time, the model won't be anywhere near complex enough to run slowly on any consumer grade GPU anyway.

CUDA use and performance is the exact same on both the Titan and the 780Ti, except in double precision performance. They both have the same amount of CUDA cores, and the extra FP64 performance is only useful if you are doing some from of GPGPU programming that is incredibly maths intensive which would obviously require double precision. If this were the case, you wouldn't plan to buy the titan anyway, because generally it is bespoke software specifically for doing certain calculations, in which case, you would go for a workstation card anyway since budget would most likely not be a factor, and since it is far better at double precision calculations, gets workstation drivers, ECC RAM etc.

Yes, the titan has better double precision that the other nvidia gaming cards. Yes, certain people might use it for development and/or professional use. That does NOT mean its not a gaming card, marketed as a gaming card, nvidia knows gamers will want it and will buy it. You can't say its not a gaming card just because it has better FP64 performance. It uses geforce drivers, is branded under geforce, has gaming plastered all over its page etc.

Regardless. This is not the place, you believe what you believe and I believe what I believe, lets just leave it at that.
 
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Love this card. Really does look like its going to make the nvidia fanboys upset. Really can't see how the Titan Z could possibly match this in performance, noise and most certainly not heat. AND even if it does, it's still half the price!

Considering according to all the reviews I have seen this thing beats 2 780Ti in SLI 90% of the time, and even titan blacks, which is all the titan Z is after all. Due to thermals you would have thought the Titan Z will have to be clocked down since that cooler couldn't even keep the 690 (a pair of underclocked GK104) below 83c ish, I can't possibly see how it could keep 2 full GK110 cool, let alone at stock clocks.

Lets see. Regardless, can't wait to see this review!

Wow very impressive and almost all wrong.:D

The performance of the 295 is actually crap to put not too fine a point on it. What I mean by that is you don't see any of them hitting 1100mhz on the core whereas two 290Xs will do it easy.

Two 780ti's will annihilate a 295 as they have very good overclocking headroom whereas the 295 has practically none.

Titan Blacks and Titan Z are totally difference to each other probably the only things they have in common is the full fat GK110 chip the name and possibly the vram chips. Other than that they have different PCB, power supply, cooling and yes you are probably right the Titan Z will almost definitely overclock like a lemon (just like the 295) but at least the two 8 pin power connectors on the Titan Z will be under less stress than the ones on the 295 as the GK110 uses less power than the Hawaii chip.

As to the cooler on the GTX 690, it is a dual slot affair unlike the one on the Titan Z, having said that the cooler on the GTX 690 works very well and you can put two of them in the same case with very little effort and no problems.
 
I think it looks quite the beast, I'm sure Tom will be a busy dude today getting this done, that is unless he spent the night on it! :|
 
I think it looks quite the beast, I'm sure Tom will be a busy dude today getting this done, that is unless he spent the night on it! :|

It has come to my attention that you are letting the forum down, there does not seem to be many new posts in your sexy ladies thread.:D

More new posts please !!!
 
It has come to my attention that you are letting the forum down, there does not seem to be many new posts in your sexy ladies thread.:D

More new posts please !!!

Hahaha there are no longer any woman to post, at least I can't think of any. It's time for the people to post. ;)
 
As well as this card may perform unless it was for a small form factor I think I would still prefer to have two individual cards
 
Got a Sapphire R9 295X2 on tuesday.Finally got to install it today(day off).Ran Unigine valley on my Samsung U28D590D 4K@60 hertz.I was pulling 600 to 660 watts from the wall while looping Valley.Had to zip tie the hoses to the shroud on left side,because it wouldn't stay down otherwise.Anyways, the picture doesn't do it justice.Hope you guys enjoy what little info i can share with you.
ps.....now i'm broke :D
 

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Got a Sapphire R9 295X2 on tuesday.Finally got to install it today(day off).Ran Unigine valley on my Samsung U28D590D 4K@60 hertz.I was pulling 600 to 660 watts from the wall while looping Valley.Had to zip tie the hoses to the shroud on left side,because it wouldn't stay down otherwise.Anyways, the picture doesn't do it justice.Hope you guys enjoy what little info i can share with you.
ps.....now i'm broke :D

Nice :) 600-660w isn't that bad for 2 290's, especially in Valley where the GPU usage is 100% near enough throughout. I've not seen any Valley results for 4k apart from yours but 1430 doesn't seem bad.
 
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