Sapphire R7 265 Dual X Graphics Card review

The HD7850 has been a mammoth seller for AMD and is still available via major etailers today. AMD partners are still able to charge £169.99 for an overclocked HD7850 – which seems remarkable as it was initially released in March 2012… almost 2 years ago.

The R7 265 is being released today with a similar HD7850 performance curve, but the cost has been dropped to 110 euros. AMD have said that the price of the R7 260X will subsequently drop in price to $119 US/89 euros, to make way for the new R7 265.

Both HD7850 and R7 265 share the same 28nm Pitcairn GPU core. They have both 32 ROPS, 64 texture units and 1,024 shaders. While our Sapphire sample was running at reference speeds of 925mhz (up from 860mhz on the early HD7850), we highlighted that there was substantial headroom on the core – hitting 1,123mhz (+21%).

Obviously all samples will exhibit varying overclocking headroom, but the Sapphire R7 265 does indicate that AMD partners will be able to release modified, overclocked versions of the card running at 1,000mhz and higher. Sure, it may not be a monumental step up from the HD7850 in regards to performance, but with pricing set to start at only £100 inc vat, it is certainly the most cost effective solution for powering the latest games at 1080p.

What do Nvidia offer? Right now we have the Nvidia GTX760 and the GTX650Ti. The GTX760 is in a much higher performance ballpark, but you pay for the privilege – close to £200 based on current retail pricing. The fastest GTX 650 Ti solutions are priced between £100 and £120 inc vat, with the Gigabyte GTX650Ti we tested today available on Amazon for £112.99.

There is no doubt that AMD's R7 265 is a significantly faster card than the GTX650Ti but Nvidia have a new card waiting in the wings. Will it be enough to take the performance crown from AMD in the £100-£120 sector?

You won't have very long to wait before we can answer that.

In closing, the Sapphire R7 265 Dual X earns our MUST HAVE award today. Thanks to the excellent Dual X design, the card is cool and quiet and delivers excellent frame rate performance at 1080p with the latest Direct X 11 titles. When you factor in the massive core overclocking headroom and bargain basement price it is going to prove impossible to ignore.

The AMD R7 265 is set for public release at the end of February 2014.

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Pros:

• fantastic performance for around £100-£115.
• quiet cooling system.
• 2GB of very fast Hynix GDDR5 memory.
• massive overclocking headroom (+20%).
• can handle the latest Direct X 11 games at 1080p with high IQ.

Cons:

• Is basically a ‘tweaked' HD7850.

Kitguru says: A very capable video card that won't break the bank. You really don't need to spend a lot of money in 2014 to get killer 1080p gaming performance.

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