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Review: Sapphire Radeon R7 265 Dual-X

by Tarinder Sandhu on 13 February 2014, 13:00

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), Sapphire

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacapf

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Conclusion

Spend $149 (£115) and the Radeon R7 265 offers solid performance at a full-HD resolution driven by high/ultra-quality settings.

The introduction of the Radeon R7 265 fills a small yet obvious gap in AMD's current mainstream GPU stack. Don't be fooled by the name, mind you, as this is a Radeon R9 270-class of card by another name.

Speaking of names, with no new GPU technology on the imminent horizon, AMD has taken 2012's Radeon HD 7850, increased the clocks, added a couple of features, and called it an R7 265. We don't have a problem with naming convention as long as it's consistent, but the R7 265 straddles the R7 and R9 rather uncomfortably.

Yet gamers care little for nomenclature or architecture and, instead, focus on how much performance is available for a set outlay. Spend $149 (£115) and the Radeon R7 265 offers solid performance at a full-HD resolution driven by high/ultra-quality settings.

The mainstream market is all about segmenting products such that they are better than their competition at a particular price point. With heritage going back to the HD 7850, the Radeon R7 265's introduction, for now, puts AMD in a strong position in the £100-£120 category. Sapphire's implementation of the card is thoroughly decent, mating the GPU to a proven cooler that's both cool and quiet.

The Good

Excellent cooler on Sapphire card
Good value/performance metric
Fills key gap in AMD's mainstream lineup

The Bad

Uses two-year-old technology
No bundled games

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Sapphire Radeon R7 265 Dual-X

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TBC.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.


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HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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Posted by MaverickWill - Thu 13 Feb 2014 13:34
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.
Posted by pfb201 - Thu 13 Feb 2014 14:44
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.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Thu 13 Feb 2014 15:11
It looks like the R7 260X is dropping in price to around £73:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/amd-radeon-r7-265-launched-with-25-performance-increase

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.

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-gm107-block-diagram-leaked-power-efficient-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/triplex-shows-off-slot-powered-radeon-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/R7_265_Dual-X/images/power_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.
Posted by sykobee - Thu 13 Feb 2014 15:14
If the 260X price drop is true, it's a great deal, and it's using the latest AMD GPU technology and TrueAudio too.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Thu 13 Feb 2014 15:39
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.

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

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