Sapphire R9 285 Dual-X OC 2 GB

[W1zzard]

Today, AMD launches the Radeon R9 285 based on their brand-new Tonga GPU, which replaces Tahiti, promising to be faster and more power efficient. Sapphire's board comes with a custom cooler and is overclocked out of the box for some extra performance.

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[darkangel0504]

How sad is this card high power consumption, a really weak performace

 

[v12dock]

Come on AMD...

 

[bubbleawsome]

RIP Tahiti. After 2 years AMD has finally replaced it. With something no better.

 

[buildzoid]

WTF is this it sucks. It's barely faster than a 760 it pulls much more power than a 760 and more importantly it's even power hungrier than the original HD 7970 while pulling more power. WTF AMD WTF are you doing. Just sell lower clocked cheaper R9 280Xs instead of trying to make a new GPU that no one needs or wants.

 

[Lionheart]

Only an 8.0? ..... Was expecting at least a 9.0 from the performance you get from it which takes me to this!

• "Quite slow, performance not improved" Uuuuuuhh what? This card is aimed at the GTX 760 and beats it in every benchmark... What were you expecting?

That power consumption needs some fixing though Wtf AMD!!!

 

[ISI300]

The chip has 5 billion transistors:
http://techreport.com/review/26997/amd-radeon-r9-285-graphics-card-reviewed/2

 

[Sempron Guy]

It was meant to replace the R9-280 so performance either on par or faster. It does the former but that on lesser memory bandwidth, with added features like the R9-290 and 260s has and is a bit power efficient. Price is almost the same plus added game bundles. Where's the hate coming from?

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Looking at these charts it's a real shame nvidia didn't make the 760 based on the 670. It rules the midrange but can only be had second hand now.

Looking at the broader picture this whole market has been kinda stagnant and boring for way too long now if a two year old card still rules the midrange. You'd think in two years AMD would have at least beat it in efficiency but no. Seriously whats the deal here? To make matters worse the die shrinks aren't coming till next year.

 

[W1zzard]

Only an 8.0? ..... Was expecting at least a 9.0 from the performance you get from it which takes me to this!

• "Quite slow, performance not improved" Uuuuuuhh what? This card is aimed at the GTX 760 and beats it in every benchmark... What were you expecting?

That power consumption needs some fixing though Wtf AMD!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500302

That's the problem for R9 285, and main reason why low score/no award

 

[Steevo]

They choked the memory too much to compete with the 770, which performance per dollar and watt, is really where they needed to be to make it. Unless they plan on making a new spin of Tonga to drop power consumption this card is meh, find a 7970 and clock it up and get better performance and close power consumption.

 

[Undyingghost]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500302

That's the problem for R9 285, and main reason why low score/no award

Yeah but even that 770 have only 2GB vram, we need to get away from those cards. I would still take my 280X over any of this.

 

[Casecutter]

Well this is a disappointment... Being still at TSCM and their cost and same old processes’. It really is a marker for the coming round, I was hoping we'd see at least some things get mixed-up... but more of the same. As I saw early 2014 this year was looking to be a bust, then Tonga came into the rumor mill and hoped it would offer variety and some new diversity. NOT!

There not much hope on price either, being it appears to be the same die size.

 

[W1zzard]

Yeah but even that 770 have only 2GB vram, we need to get away from those cards. I would still take my 280X over any of this.

We need to get away from these VRAM legends. This card is for 1080p, for which 2 GB is perfectly fine, even for 1440p

 

[Disparia]

On a positive note, it's the best of the ITX cards? MSI has a GTX 760 and R9-270X at 170mm, and Sapphire has announced an R9-285 so if the jump in power usage is acceptable to the user, can't get better in that size range.

 

[HalfAHertz]

They choked the memory too much to compete with the 770, which performance per dollar and watt, is really where they needed to be to make it. Unless they plan on making a new spin of Tonga to drop power consumption this card is meh, find a 7970 and clock it up and get better performance and close power consumption.

They made the memory bus 40% more efficient, read the article: http://techreport.com/review/26997/amd-radeon-r9-285-graphics-card-reviewed/2

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

at 256 Bit, can reach 384 bit performance.. not a good point at all?? and lower memory clock .. the conclusion need to revised I guess

or this R9 285: 14.30 Beta 2 was the problem?

compare to this 14.7 Beat 2

 

[Sony Xperia S]

The card has some improvements but depending on gaming applications, performance fluctuates from being higher to being lower compared to the R9 280.
Hope is to improve over new driver releases.

Tessellation is improved, and also:

New video decode block. The R9 285 also includes a new video decoder block for full hardware decode of H.264 4K streams. H.264 base, main, and high profile up to 5.2 are all supported. That means the new block can handle decoding 4096×2304 streams at 60 fps. There’s also a new fixed function video transcoder unit (VCE) that supports full hardware encoding to H.264, but AMD didn’t provide additional details on features or capabilities that distinguish this new unit from previous generation hardware.

 

[Steevo]

They made the memory bus 40% more efficient, read the article: http://techreport.com/review/26997/amd-radeon-r9-285-graphics-card-reviewed/2

Synthetic VS real world, perhaps if all you play is fill rate game, thats great, but in the real world, 12% memory overclock resulted in a direct 12% increase of performance, despite a 17% core clock increase, all else equal it looks like its starving for data, or perhaps they need new drivers...... like we haven't heard that before.

I would rather have waited to get the hardware out if they had issues with software. But I don't think thats the case here, I believe they were trying to design a new performance chip for a new process node and it isn't ready so they rushed out this turd, its the same size as the chip its replacing, only marginally better energy consumption, mediocre performance for the money, and unneeded.

 

[the54thvoid]

It was meant to replace the R9-280 so performance either on par or faster. It does the former but that on lesser memory bandwidth, with added features like the R9-290 and 260s has and is a bit power efficient. Price is almost the same plus added game bundles. Where's the hate coming from?

I question where your love is coming from. It's being released as an efficient replacement for the 280(x) variant. It kind of fails... A bit less than a Titan running 6Gb memory? I've got nothing against red but let's face it, the card's a bit 'meh'. If you think it's great, fair enough but it's perf/watt is mediocre as well.

EDIT - misread, a bit more consumption than a Titan.

 

[alwayssts]

What did you guys expect? Cue wall of text.

Memory bw (for compute units) is tied to both this arch's biggest boon and largest drawback...as they also do special function...been saying it for years. This seems to have improved the bw thirst some (larger cache per CU or something to that effect?), probably very purposely so 2048 at ~10xx/7000 actually makes sense when using all shaders (for extra compute effects) vs on their old design where it only would have been enough for the ideal shader-special function/rop efficiency of most games; closer to 18xxsp (roughly 2/3 Hawaii)...that would've been a HUGE waste, especially given how amd is now marketing their stack. More on that in a second.

Hynix memory might clock slightly better (and hence scale performance more linearly), but still...Pretty close to a 7970ghz or so best-case it would appear, which will probably also be the stock performance of 285x. I don't think anyone would be surprised when after they release 285x, this becomes very close to $200-220 and 285x replaces it at around to slightly above this price (perhaps starting even higher). This intermediate period is likely purely for stretching profitability out: 285x can't compete with 770 because of bandwidth and power efficiency (outside of compute performance) issues; this part can compete with 760 (especially when compute is heavily involved). 760 is currently around this price, so they start with a msrp reflecting their strongest aspect. 285x must be cheaper than 770 by the ratio of base performance, even if their 'msrp' tries to inflate it to a proportionate level it is faster in compute. This hand has been tipped as their game-plan given amd tried to not only market this product performance via Firestrike benches, but also the rest of their stack using the same compute-heavy bench while expounding their value as higher (of course it is, price has to reflect avg base performance in the market). Given all that, plus gm204, 285/760 prices will fall, 285x price will fall. 770 will probably stay similar depending on gm204. Do not be surprised when I estimate: this is your typical refresh amd has always done...it's just being marketed differently so they can adjust price of new products with the market to their actual ideal price, rather than start there and bring margin to zero.

Give it a little time...even if you don't agree on the logic I think they're using, prices usually fall 15% after launch (on lower-end/refresh parts) relatively quickly. Always have as far back as I can remember. The difference between old amd/ati and new amd (after Rory Read) is new amd figures this drop into their launch msrp...now they just found a way to justify it.

I'll add the part you're looking for btw...Looking at conceivable ranges, this is probably the smallest amount realistically amd could have said is a better base part. If you take compute away, is it purely only the better choice at the exact same price. In other words: straight competition...and knowing amd, it'll probably actually be cheaper all said and done.

ASUS GTX 760 DC Mini1130 MHz1810 MHz84.3 FPS
MSI GTX 760 HAWK1225 MHz1880 MHz90.9 FPS
MSI GTX 760 Gaming1180 MHz1960 MHz87.8 FPS
NVIDIA GTX 7601140 MHz1760 MHz79.2 FPS
Gigabyte GTX 760 OC1190 MHz1850 MHz86.6 FPS
Palit GTX 760 JetStream1140 MHz1750 MHz82.9 FPS
EVGA GTX 760 SC1220 MHz1840 MHz88.8 FPS
ASUS GTX 760 DC II OC1175 MHz1840 MHz86.5 FPS

 

[mroofie]

Lol dat power consumption
Beware incoming Amd fanboys

 

[Hilux SSRG]

Excellent review W1zzard, I appreciate you comparing this new release to the older 670/680s and 7950/7970/7970Ghz series.

I really thought this card would be close to 280X performance levels. I new there was going to be much power efficiency gains, but damn this card is just not worth the $250. Huge disappointment. This card will be selling at the $200 range within a few months./

 

[Steevo]

What did you guys expect? Cue wall of text.

Memory bw (for compute units) is tied to both this arch's biggest boon and largest drawback...as they also do special function...been saying it for years. This seems to have improved the bw thirst some (larger cache per CU or something to that effect?), probably very purposely so 2048 at ~10xx/7000 actually makes sense when using all shaders (for extra compute effects) vs on their old design where it only would have been enough for the ideal shader-special function/rop efficiency of most games; closer to 18xxsp (roughly 2/3 Hawaii)...that would've been a HUGE waste, especially given how amd is now marketing their stack. More on that in a second.

Hynix memory might clock slightly better (and hence scale performance more linearly), but still...Pretty close to a 7970ghz or so best-case it would appear, which will probably also be the stock performance of 285x. I don't think anyone would be surprised when after they release 285x, this becomes very close to $200-220 and 285x replaces it at around to slightly above this price (perhaps starting even higher). This intermediate period is likely purely for stretching profitability out: 285x can't compete with 770 because of bandwidth and power efficiency (outside of compute performance) issues; this part can compete with 760 (especially when compute is heavily involved). 760 is currently around this price, so they start with a msrp reflecting their strongest aspect. 285x must be cheaper than 770 by the ratio of base performance, even if their 'msrp' tries to inflate it to a proportionate level it is faster in compute. This hand has been tipped as their game-plan given amd tried to not only market this product performance via Firestrike benches, but also the rest of their stack using the same compute-heavy bench while expounding their value as higher (of course it is, price has to reflect avg base performance in the market). Given all that, plus gm204, 285/760 prices will fall, 285x price will fall. 770 will probably stay similar depending on gm204. Do not be surprised when I estimate: this is your typical refresh amd has always done...it's just being marketed differently so they can adjust price of new products with the market to their actual ideal price, rather than start there and bring margin to zero.

Give it a little time...even if you don't agree on the logic I think they're using, prices usually fall 15% after launch (on lower-end/refresh parts) relatively quickly. Always have as far back as I can remember. The difference between old amd/ati and new amd (after Rory Read) is new amd figures this drop into their launch msrp...now they just found a way to justify it.

I'll add the part you're looking for btw...Looking at conceivable ranges, this is probably the smallest amount realistically amd could have said is a better base part. If you take compute away, is it purely only the better choice at the exact same price. In other words: straight competition...and knowing amd, it'll probably actually be cheaper all said and done.

A lot of words, card still sucks. Honestly is this what we do now, here? Post reasons why a card that is mediocre with slightly better power draw and temps is the "replacement" for a good product lineup already?


Well sir, you could buy a 2013, 2012, car with all the same real world features, and spend less, or your could buy the 2014 car with shiny new chrome trim around the cup holders, sure its a bit mroe, and goes slower, but its quieter since it goes slower. Ayyy, now there is a game changer, we have been looking at this all wrong, who wants faster, you could crash and get hurt, lets all go slower, you know Island time.

 

[Sempron Guy]

I question where your love is coming from. It's being released as an efficient replacement for the 280(x) variant. It kind of fails... A bit less than a Titan running 6Gb memory? I've got nothing against red but let's face it, the card's a bit 'meh'. If you think it's great, fair enough but it's perf/watt is mediocre as well.

EDIT - misread, a bit more consumption than a Titan.

People getting shocked at the results like it is news. The card runs a bit faster than the 280 - check. It consumes a bit less power than the 280 - check. It's not like they built a hype right from the start that the 285 will offer "phenomenal" power efficiency and performance.