Sapphire R7 265 Dual X Graphics Card review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire R7 265 Dual X 3. Sapphire R7 265 Dual X (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Unigine Valley7. 3DMark Vantage8. 3DMark 119. 3DMark10. Alien V Predator11. Sleeping Dogs12. Total War: ROME 213. Dirt ShowDown14. Tomb Raider15. Metro Last Light16. GRID 217. Splinter Cell Blacklist18. Battlefield 4 (Mantle)19. Thermal Dynamics20. Acoustics Performance21. Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

Today AMD release their new R7 265 graphics card which they claim is an outstanding performer at 1080p resolution. The R7 265 is set to supplement the more expensive R9 270 which was designed to replace the last generation HD7870. The R7 265 looks set to replace the HD7850, which has proven so successful that it is still being sold – 2 years after release. Rather than focus on a reference board for our review we look at a custom Sapphire R7 265 with Dual X cooling system.

The AMD R7 265 features 2GB of GDDR5 memory which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. It has 1,024 stream processors with the engine clock set to run at up to 925mhz.

The reference card features a single fan cooling system, but fortunately the version we review today has received some special treatment from Sapphire, featuring two large fans and thick copper heatpipes.

AMD R7 265 Specifications
Stream Processors	1,024
Engine Clock	up to 925mhz
Compute Performance	1.89 TFLOPS
Memory Configuration	2GB GDDR5 / 256-bit
Memory Speed	Up to 5.6 Gbps
Power Connectors	1 x 6 pin
Typical Board Power	150W
PCI-E Standard	PCI-E 3.0
AMD Crossfire Technology	Yes
API Support	Direct X 11.2 OpenGL 4.3 Mantle

Our review sample was supplied via AMD, so we didn't receive retail packaging, or accessories. The Sapphire R7 265 Dual X is a nicely designed graphics card featuring a two tone grey and black cooler, with dual fans.

The PCB is black, matching the rest of the card design.

The I/O plate has a DVI-I and DVI-D connector, alongside a full sized HDMI and DisplayPort.

It is widely known that AMD Radeon HD 7xxx parts (and earlier) currently can support a maximum of 2 HDMI/DVI displays, and the rest must be DisplayPort connections (or active DisplayPort adapters).

AMD Radeon R9 Series can now support up to three HDMI/DVI displays for use with AMD Eyefinity technology. A set of displays which support identical timings is required to enable this feature. The display clocks and timing for this feature are configured at boot time. As such, display hot‐plugging is not supported for the third HDMI/DVI connection.

A reboot is required to enable three HDMI/DVI displays. DisplayPort outputs are supported in addition to the three HDMI/DVI displays (up to 6 in total).

The Sapphire R7 265 takes power from a single 6 pin connector, shown above.

The card is Crossfire capable in a 2 way configuration.

Sapphire are using a cooler with two thick heatpipes running into separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core contact point. SKHynix GDDR5 memory is used on this board.

Above – An overview of the Sapphire R7 265 in GPUz. Does this look familiar?

Above, the GPUz screenshot from our VTX3D VChamp HD7850 review from last October. We can see the same PitCairn core built on the 28nm engineering process. Both cards have 32 ROP's and 64 texture units. The older VTX3D VChamp HD7850 is however clocked higher, at 1000mhz.

The Sapphire R7 265 which we received for this review is not in an overclocked state although it is using high grade SKHynix memory clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective).
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.



For our review today we are using the ForceWare 334.67 and Catalyst 14.1 beta 1.6 drivers. All video cards were retested for this launch article today.

We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.

We are using an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.

Comparison cards:
eVGA GTX760 SC (1072 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
VTX3D R9 270X X Edition (1,080mhz core / 1400mhz memory)
ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC (975mhz core / 1,400mhz memory)
VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE (975mhz core / 1500mhz memory)
VTX3D VChamp HD7850 (1000mhz core / 1225mhz memory)
ASUS HD7850 (860mhz core / 1,200mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX650TI (1,033mhz core / 1,350mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Rome 2
Dirt Showdown
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light
GRID 2
Alien V Predator
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Battlefield 4

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.

A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the settings shown above at 1920×1080.

Performance is better than the last generation, reference clocked HD7850 graphics card, averaging almost 47 frames per second.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We test with the settings above both at 1920×1080.

Again, performance is ahead of the previous reference clocked HD7850, around 3 frames per second quicker.Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

A score of 24,187 points in 3DMark Vantage gives a good indication of strong performance with the last generation Direct X 10 games.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

As we can see, the Sapphire R7 265 Dual X is holding pace almost with the overclocked HD7850 from VTX3D. The reference clocked Asus HD7850 scores around 600 points less.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

The graphics score of around 5,000 points is close to the overclocked HD7850 which we reviewed in depth last year.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 1920×1080 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

The Sapphire R7 265 Dual X is only a single frame per second behind the overclocked VTX3D HD7850, although the minimum frame rate is higher, which we would assume may be partially due to the higher clocked GDDR5 Hynix memory.
Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series.As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

This game is still a system killer at these maximised settings. We test at 1920×1080.

The Sapphire R7 265 card matches the VTX3D VChamp HD7850 in average frames per second, although it holds a slightly better minimum frame rate.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time.

Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city.

This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

To test the cards today we use the ULTRA profile settings shown above at 1920×1080.

Performance is very smooth at 1080p, holding at 30 frames per second or greater at all times.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test the hardware at 1920×1080 with the Ultra profile and 8 x MSAA.

Identical performance to the overclocked HD7850, averaging 55 frames per second.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We use the ULTIMATE profile shown above and test at 1920×1080.

Smooth frame rates throughout, dropping a couple of times between 30 and 25 frames per second.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark with very high quality settings at 1920×1080 – details shown in the image above.

A demanding engine however the frame rates are closely matched to the overclocked HD7850.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We test at 1920×1080 with the Ultra image quality preset, as shown above. 8x MSAA was enabled to improve image quality.

Smooth frame rates, holding above 40 fps at all times.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series.

The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base.

Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade. Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We test with a series of high image quality settings as shown above and with 4x MSAA and 16 x Anisotropic filtering enabled.

These settings are a little too demanding, with the frame rate rising and dipping above 25 fps during the test. Reducing the Anti Aliasing setting would help smooth out the frame rates.
Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled.

We test the Sapphire R7 265 in both ‘Direct X' and ‘Mantle' modes and compare against the Gigabyte GTX650Ti. We are using the latest patch as of 12th February 2014.

The Sapphire R7 265 dominates these settings, averaging 37 frames per second and maintain playable frame rates at all times. Impressive considering the high image quality settings.

The Nvidia GTX650Ti struggles to maintain playable frame rates, dropping below 20 several times.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.

Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The Dual X cooler performs well, holding gaming load temperatures at 66c in our specific environment.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. It isn’t a real world situation to be measuring with a case panel off only a few centimeters away from a video card.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Sapphire Dual X cooler is reasonably quiet, emitting only a low level of fan noise under gaming load conditions.
We initially tested with the Catalyst Control Center. We maxed the sliders out at 1,050mhz core and 1,500mhz memory.

The card was stable at these speeds, so we fired up Sapphire's TRIXX to see if we could push it any further.

We managed to achieve an impressive 21.4% overclock before instability would occur. The memory peaked at 1,573mhz (6.3Gbps effective) speeds before it would cause artifacting.

The substantial overclock helps to push the performance of the hardware just past the reference clocked R9 270 Direct CU II OC.
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.

You can discuss this review on our Facebook page, over HERE.

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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