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for the ultimate no compromises compact gaming pc look no further than the

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obsidian series 250d from Corsair click now to learn more

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thanks to our generous monthly contributors we have a fun money budget

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to do videos about stuff that we don't get a sample of sometimes so we spent

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about a hundred of it paying two-way shipping for this monstrosity

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so we could borrow austin's AMD r9 295

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x2 dual GPU behemoth of a graphics card for some benchmarking button we'll kick

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things off with specs and i actually think the most interesting thing about

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them is how uninteresting they are normally when we get a dual GPU graphics

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card we get to analyze how many cuda cores or stream processors were cut and

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hypothesize about how the manufacturer decided what reduced clock speed to run

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at to stay within power and thermal limits not here this card is just a big

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pile of aluminum shrouded fully back plated sexiness with two flat out r9

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290x hawaii core gpus on it each with

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all 2816 stream processors all four gigs

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of glorious video memory connected via a non-nerfed 512-bit memory bus and the

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best part is both of them are actually rated at slightly higher boost clocks

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compared to an r9 290 x which due to its unique cooling solution it even manages

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to sustain consistently unlike a standalone r9290x wow we've also got the

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usual AMD technologies including zero core which turns off the second GPU at

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idle to save power directx 11 and future directx 12 support AMD mantel support

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true audio ifinity with support for up to five direct attached displays and

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more with mst hubs bridgeless crossfire with up to two of these monstrosities

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capable of running a four GPU setup and excellent opencl compute performance but

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that's all normal stuff what about the challenges that had to be overcome to

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build this bad boy aside from designing its complicated pcb and beef-tastic

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power delivery circuitry which you'll find under a dedicated copper heatsink

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under its own dedicated red led fan AMD

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had to find a way to cool a card that they have rated at a massive 500 watt

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TDP i mean that is well beyond any previous reference graphics card the

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most we've seen before is 375 watts and it meant we were either going to end

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up with a leaf blower attached to the card or a pretty exotic cooling solution

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fortunately AMD went with the exotic cooling solution route and that's what

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you see here this card has an all-in-one liquid cooler from asatech included out

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of the box it's not the world's most exceptional aio with a single 38

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millimeter thick 120 millimeter radiator and dual block slash pump combo unit

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design and in fact it's not even the first time a dual AMD GPU card has been

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handled this way i'm looking at you ares too but the remarkable thing about it is

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that this is the first reference card from AMD or NVIDIA that uses a solution

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like this so what are the pros and cons of this unique and expensive card aside

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from the price advantage number one with water we can carry heat away from the

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gpus much more quickly than we can with air to a large heat exchanger in this

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case a radiator with lots of surface area that we can cool with large

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relatively quiet fans and in practice it works the r9 295 x2 runs at about 70

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degrees under load well under the 95 degrees of a 290x advantage number two

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because this radiator can be located some distance away

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the heat can be exhausted directly from the case and the card can remain a

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reasonable size so it will actually fit in a fairly standard albeit longer than

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usual at 305 millimeters two slot form factor so more space and cooler

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operation for your other components sounds dandy right well hold on drawback

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number one to power this sucker you need

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two pci express eight pin power connectors and not just any old ones you

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can't use daisy chained plugs that lead to a single connector on your power

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supply and you'll even need to check which power supply connectors are wired

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up to which 12 volt rails on a multi-rail power supply in your psu's

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manual ensure you've got at least 28 amps on each of them to correctly power

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the card or you could be looking at a fire situation

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drawback number two is the form factor it'll fit in your pci express slots for

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sure but you'll need extra clearance between the card and the side panel for

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the tubing to come out extra clearance behind the card for its over 12 inch

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length and you'll need a nearby 120 millimeter fan mount with 65 millimeters

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of clearance for your liquid cooling radiator and fan fortunately AMD

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includes long enough tubing that you should be able to rear or top mount it

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in most cases drawback number three is

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heat and power consumption yes the heat is managed but it's still being kicked

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out into your room which might be a boon in the winter but isn't so much fun in

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the summer and even compared to a gtx 780 ti sli setup this card consumes

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between 100 to 200 watts more power in games which if you're in california and

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you game for about three hours a day will amount to about an extra five to seven dollars on your monthly power bill

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and then of course the last drawback is price but if you didn't know this card was gonna be expensive then stop

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dreaming so now after all that the last thing you're probably waiting for is

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performance but before i hand off to luke i would like to take a moment to

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genuinely thank AMD for making this card

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people complaining about all those crazy requirements i outlined before and how

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much of a crazy frankenstein science

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fair experiment of a solution this card is compared to most products that

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actually get a consumer release need to go away and go buy something that was

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made for them what AMD has delivered here compared to their competitors like

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Intel and NVIDIA is the first product that i've seen in years that i can say

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is truly enthusiast grade but what does enthusiast grade mean to me to me it

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doesn't mean fast or elegant necessarily

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i mean it's great if it can be fast and elegant but what to me it means is

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pushing the boundaries of what's possible with modern engineering and

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manufacturing and if that results in a little bit of hassle during the setup

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process and a little bit of heaven forbid actual research and

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planning before you can use it then so be it i've been calling for Intel to do

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away with their 130 watt TDP limit and give us a proper enthusiast great

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extreme edition for ages something that requires water cooling with a top grade

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motherboard to work properly but that legitimately stomps on the consumer

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grade offerings available and they just don't do it as it is an extreme edition

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costs hundreds of dollars more than a k and delivers a couple percent better

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performance it's fast yeah but it's not actually tailored to the enthusiast

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NVIDIA does slightly better in this regard they do enable partners like evga

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to build crazy stuff like the twin series and kingpin series cards but AMD

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has upped the ante by creating a reference product that really pushes the

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boundaries and i applaud them for it over to you luke

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all right guys so today we're testing an AMD 295x2

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versus dual 780 ti's from NVIDIA for the AMD card i've done my overclocking

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settings in AMD overdrive i've overclocked the core by about eight

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percent and i've overclocked the memory by 135 remember that's times by four

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when calculating the overall memory bandwidth for the NVIDIA cards i've only changed

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their core speed and i've increased it by 250 this is because of auto balancing

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power rails so i don't really mess with the memory too much if you guys want to see all the rest of my overclocking

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settings be sure to check the overclocking dock linked below in all of

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these graphics cards comparison videos and let's move on to see how those

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results end up in bioshock infinite and thief these cards trade back and forth

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and it's not by huge amounts so it's not too surprising and then in assassin's

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creed 4 we see that there was a bottleneck somewhere else in the computer i wanted to show this result

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because it shows that they perform very well on their own but then it's not that

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great in comparison because again there's something else on the computer

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slowing these cards down if you guys want to learn more about bottlenecks be

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sure to check out Linus's Techquickie episode um fast as possible talking

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about bottlenecks and all that kind of stuff you can learn about bottlenecks there

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in terms of general observations uh i'm fairly happy with this card when i first

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heard it announced i expected it to be one loud and too

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really really hot but it's neither in AMD overdrive it caps its temperature at

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75 degrees and its audible level is pretty consistent through the whole time

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of using it due to that external radiator so i'm quite happy about those

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things all right guys thanks for watching please don't forget to like and

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dislike this video and leave your comment down below if you guys do want to comment on this video on the forum i

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would highly suggest doing that while you're on the forum if you get annoyed by ads or anything like that be sure to

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become a contributor as all those ads will disappear immediately it's quite

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fantastic and just so you guys know we do sell shirts as well there should be

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down in the description below and i know there's there's a new i'd mount that one

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with a cooler on it that a lot of people are freaking out about on twitter so that should be cool there's something

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cool coming in the works in the shirt department fairly soon that edsel is going to be cooking up so pay attention

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to that i will see you guys next time thanks for watching and don't forget to

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