AMD Radeon R7 265 Review: Curaçao Slides In At $150

[firefoxx04]

shut up about the miners already. bitcoin has gone from $1000 to $400 a few times now. it's hardly stable. miners have every right to buy as many cards as they want. price goes up until it finds an equilibrium with demand. take s basic econ class. until their is a surplus of cards, the price is going to stay high.

 

[TechieNewbie]

Question: Would two of these in crossfire provide better performance (assuming that it does stay @ the $150 price point) than one card that is at the relative $300 price point?

The Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280X (300ish) has a Passmark score of 5,119.a single 660 (let's be fair, it's basically comparable to this card) is at 4,115.I'm not sure how much multiple GPU configurations affect performance (perhaps someone more savvy could enlighten me) but I think it's safe to say that you'd be at or over a $300 card with two of these.Also Yay, quoting worked for me.

 

[jin_mtvt]

mohit9206: i don't see having multiple choices from sub 100$ up to ~200$ as a problem.The lower in the price you get, on a budget system, the more a 10$ difference is accounted for. On a 2000$ computer budget, a 50$ additional may only sound marginal, but for someone with a 300-600$ budget, 10 or 20$ on each components might make a difference. More options is never bad, and AMD does not have to work very hard on the "rebadged" models to offer it to market, thus it is worth it for everybody. I also find it funny how 600$+ 290 cards were still selling out, how 280x @ 400$ is still sold out everywhere .. It is frustrating for someone who is on the market to purchase a GPU while the prices are boosted, i've been 3 times in this situation ( personal and 2 family computers build ) since last october, when it is solely for gaming use ( VS mining users ) . Very hard to decide on a 380$ 280x when your brother just paid 310$ for his 2 months before, but as some have pointed out,supply and demand. If "idiots" would've refrained from purchasing 290 and 280 @ ridiculous prices on newegg, the prices would've eventually come down faster.On another note : DON = could you please explain the problem you ecountered using Mantle API for testing ??

 

[rolli59]

No surprises here of course an overclocked HD7850 will beat a std clocked one!

 

[TechieNewbie]

Question: Would two of these in crossfire provide better performance (assuming that it does stay @ the $150 price point) than one card that is at the relative $300 price point?

If you're going by Passmark scores it seems as though two of these in Crossfire should meet or exceed a single $300 GPU.

 

[CaptainTom]

At the very least AMD should be profiting more if the re-sellers are. It's just not fair that they don't get any of the glory. And, if AMD did make those companies kick some of that profit back to them; they would think twice about price gouging...

 

[de5_Roy]

At the very least AMD should be profiting more if the re-sellers are. It's just not fair that they don't get any of the glory. And, if AMD did make those companies kick some of that profit back to them; they would think twice about price gouging...

simply: since there's no need to drop the msrp due to high retail price, the a.s.p. and revenue will go up. thanks to cryptocurrency mining trend (mainly litecoin), amd can sit back and rake in the green.

 

[Novuake]

At the very least AMD should be profiting more if the re-sellers are. It's just not fair that they don't get any of the glory. And, if AMD did make those companies kick some of that profit back to them; they would think twice about price gouging...

Supply has nothing to do with price gouging, although it makes a good excuse.

 

[jin_mtvt]

TechieNewbie : as from charts that usually pops at the end of gpu charts on here, the lower price point usually goes with higher value ( perf for $ ) so knowing that crossfire usually gives near double performance of a single card ( ~90%?? ) it is probably wise to believe that 2 cards will exceed a 300$ one ( but we do not have a 300$ one right now ) just as 2 270x or 2 280x will exceed the card above ( 280 and 290 ) ..but with the 270x+ the base value is more than the card it beets up.

 

[logainofhades]

A 25% increase on the R9 270 was, essentially, a betrayal of consumer trust by AMD. I was totally excited to get in at the $180 price point, but now I'm waiting for Nvidia's offerings in that neighborhood to see if they can offer anything as compelling as the 270 was a couple months ago when it was still at its original price.

You really don't know how supply and demand works do you? Not to mention AMD doesn't set the prices that stores sell the cards for. AMD sets a target MSRP at most. Board partners and retailers don't have to comply with said MSRP.

*Resists posting Billy Madison clip*

 

[cleeve]

I'm sorry but I'm getting more than a little irked by this author "Don Woligroski" he writes poor articles...
...AMD does not own the "Market".

You can be irked at me all you like. Having said that, I'm not going to write an article that ignores the current pricing issues. I'm going to do my best to make the issue known for potential buyers. I'm not going to unconditionally pour praise all over a card that is paper launched that potentially makes it to market at significantly more than the MSRP. When it gets here, as long as it's $150, you're going to see me barf love all over it.

As for AMD, I'm not sure what your beef is. AMD is a company, I'm telling it like it is. Its company that paper launches a $110 card (the 260), and then a month later it barely shows up on the market, and at a significantly higher price to boot.

You would prefer I just blindly trusted everything the company says after that? Yeah, I'm more worried about telling my readers and potential buyers the actual possibilities in the graphics card world, rather than put hands over their eyes and tell them that everything is perfect.

Sorry, that's just me. Like I said, you're entitled to stay irked as long as you like.

 

[mczak1]

"Four of Curaçao/Pitcairn's Compute Units are disabled, leaving 18". Yes sure because 20 - 4 = 18

 

[MajinCry]

"As for AMD, I'm not sure what your beef is. AMD is a company, I'm telling it like it is. Its company that paper launches a $110 card (the 260), and then a month later it barely shows up on the market, and at a significantly higher price to boot."Retailer's fault.You're placing the blame at the wrong end of the supply chain.

 

[cleeve]

"As for AMD, I'm not sure what your beef is. AMD is a company, I'm telling it like it is. Its company that paper launches a $110 card (the 260), and then a month later it barely shows up on the market, and at a significantly higher price to boot."Retailer's fault.You're placing the blame at the wrong end of the supply chain.

I don't remember blaming anyone. Read the article:

"But at the end of the day, we're left wondering why AMD is setting prices if it can't control what you pay for its hardware?"

That's not blame, it's showing that AMD's MSRP all too often has little bearing in the real world lately.

As far as fault, it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. I don't care if it's AMD's fault, the vendors, or the AIBs.

I'm going to tell people about it, though.

 

[alextheblue]

JDFan, they already have at least one 260X card for $120. I pointed one out in the 250X article: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125497 - it's clocked at 1188 out of the box so it will actually perform a bit better than the one tested here. Anyway, that would give you a lot more breathing room on your PSU. I'd rather get a decent PSU and then replace the graphics card down the road, than to get a slightly faster GPU and replace them both later. I mean, that leaves you with $80 for a PSU, so you could get something efficient and reliable with room to grow like an 80 Plus Gold 550W Seasonic or FSP PSU.

 

[Lessthannil]

AMD took a potentially good naming scheme and ruined it. This is what I would of done:

R7 240
HD 7730 > R7 250
HD 7750 > R7 250X
HD 7770 > R7 260
HD 7790 > R7 260X
HD 7850 > R9 270
HD 7870 > R9 270X
HD 7950 > R9 280
HD 7970 > R9 280X
R9 290
R9 290X

There was really no need to have a R7 265 if AMD was being more resourceful about how they named GPUs. The R9 270 was a waste of a monkier becuase the HD 7870 is already featured in this series. That could of been used for the HD 7850 instead of the awkward and dissonant "265". Another one that can be argued is the R7 260. Is there really much reason to strip down Bonaire when the 7770 GHz (which i now believe is the 250X if im not mistaken) would be enough of a step down?

The naming for the 270 and the 270x confuses me the most. This would be like NVIDIA labelling an overclocked 660 as the 660 Ti (which I guess GeForce -Ti = Radeon -X now) which would mislead the public into thinking that the two are totally different GPUs.

The HD 7850 was the value king before the Radeon R2XX series and it makes me dumbfounded to see it have such a name as the "R7 265" which would of made me think that its the 260X overclocked or came with sprinkles.

This is a personal rant but I had to get it off my chest.

 

[JDFan]

JDFan, they already have at least one 260X card for $120. I pointed one out in the 250X article: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125497 - it's clocked at 1188 out of the box so it will actually perform a bit better than the one tested here. Anyway, that would give you a lot more breathing room on your PSU. I'd rather get a decent PSU and then replace the graphics card down the road, than to get a slightly faster GPU and replace them both later. I mean, that leaves you with $80 for a PSU, so you could get something efficient and reliable with room to grow like an 80 Plus Gold 550W Seasonic or FSP PSU.

Yes I realize there are a few available at $120 already but most of those up until just this week were with MIRs (which I don't consider since many times they lose the paperwork etc. and your out the $ for 3-6 months anyway !) OR like the one you linked have only 1GB of VRAM rather than the 2GB of most of the cards so are not suited for 1080P resolutions with AA\AF etc. - Which is why I hadn't ordered yet ( along with the 128 bit memory bus which means reducing some settings in games at 1080P resolutions - notice the benches in this article on games that actually give the memory bus a workout and you'll see how the 265 pulls ahead of the 260x on those titles when the bus width starts to become a factor (ie. this is where the memory bandwith of 179.2 GBs on the 265 pulls ahead of the 104.0 GBs of the 260x) - also notice the spikes on the Frame time variance chart where the 260x runs into delays (ie. stuttering) also due to the lack of bandwidth at times.

This is the same as last generations 7770/7790 vs 7850\7870s which had the same sort of results. so having the new 265 as a choice in a similar pricing level is reason enough to wait a couple weeks to order. Since I game at 1920x1080 resolution and like to use higher levels of AA\AF the difference in the bus width is worth the extra $.

As far as PSU goes that is a given when building a system, I always over invest in the PSU since the stability of the entire system is at stake so no upgrade to it will be required with which ever GPU I decide to get.

 

[smeezekitty]

What AMD really needs to do is plug the gap between the 270X and 280X that was previously filled by the 7950

 

[osamabinrobot]

pretty sure the xfx and gigabyte r9 270s are already 1024 shaders...

 

[cleeve]

"Four of Curaçao/Pitcairn's Compute Units are disabled, leaving 18". Yes sure because 20 - 4 = 18

Good lord. Nice catch, fixed!

 

[InvalidError]

A 25% increase on the R9 270 was, essentially, a betrayal of consumer trust by AMD.

The prices AMD announces are nothing more than the price point AMD is intending their chips for but AMD does not manufacture or distribute the actual cards and individual manufacturers/distributors/vendors are free to charge whatever they wish for them. If the GPU miners are willing to pay $200 extra to soak up all the higher-end models, there isn't much AMD can do about it... except maybe raise the chip prices to get their slice of that inflation pie.

 

[AidenR]

svgf

 

[vertexx]

There is no way this card is going to slide in at $150. It will actually turn out to be a decent little litecoin mining card, probably getting 350KH/sec or so. With the market price for the R9 270 sitting at $230, the price for the 265x will be closer to $190 before it's all said and done.

And even approaching $190 it will be a good value. I know this drives the Tom's editors nuts, but this card will be perfect for someone interested in dabbling in litecoin (or any other script) mining. Just pop this into a PC, use it for mining when you're not gaming. It's not going to overheat your system like a bigger card might, and by the end of the month, you'll have a nice $30-40 rebate (yes, net of electricity). Of course there is risk in that, as the prices are fluctuating, but it could be double that (or it could be zero). Even so, I think it's better odds and quicker than a mail-in rebate. Plus, if it works out, you get that rebate coming in month after month.

Just another take on "Value". The inflated prices of the AMD cards really are justified for those gamers who are savvy enough to take advantage of that.

Finally, for those complaining about AMD prices who are not well versed in economics 101, neither AMD NOR the vendors set prices. The MARKET sets prices. If anyone tries to fix prices lower than what the market demands, the result will be a shortage of cards. So, the inflated pricing is what the market is willing to pay, and the only thing that will cause the prices to fall will be a decrease in demand (i.e if crypto currencies continue their current plunge) or if more suppliers jump into the mix. Otherwise, it's useless to blame anyone.

 

[RedJaron]

Anyone else wondering about the huge frame time variance difference between the 7850 and 265 in BF4?

 

[Djentleman]

Is this gcn?