The AMD R9280 launch was a confusing one
at the time because to the informed eye, it was obvious that what AMD had done
was create a lot of fanfare with a Hawaii launch event for what was other
than the R9 290 and 290X, which both featured newly designed silicon,
basically an exercise in taking existing card designs and giving them a shiny new
name. That means the current 200 series
is actually a mix of old and new hardware designs. It's fine from a
performance standpoint as long as the pricing makes sense, but it can lead to
confusion. Even at that launch event, AMD talked a lot about true audio, a
feature that up until now has only been supported on the R9260X and
R9290 series. And then again at CES this
year, they showed off Freync, a dynamic refresh rate technology similar to
G-Sync to reduce screen tearing, but since revealed that that also only works
on part of their current lineup because of this mix of old and new technology.
So with that out of the way, on to the card we're introducing today. The
R9285 based on new code name Tonga
silicon might not be earthshattering from a performance standpoint, but what
it does aside from delivering great power efficiency is bring the $250 price
point in line with high-end enthusiast cards from a feature standpoint with
improved mantle support along with support for true audio, bridgeless
crossfire, updated power tune, dynamic performance optimization, and finally
freeync.
With the purchase of a qualifying Intel processor, SSD, or Knuck, you could
instantly win an Intel gaming jersey and be entered in the draw for the ultimate
system. Click now to learn more. Now, when I said the card wasn't going to
deliver groundbreaking performance, I probably wasn't telling the very clever
among you anything you didn't already know. When we look at its specs compared
to the R9280 whose price point it pretty much replaces. It features the same
number of cores, texture, and render output units. It has a slightly lower
clock speed. It has a narrower 256-bit memory bus with 33% less memory overall.
So that's 2 gigs of DDDR5. Then it has a slightly higher memory clock to
compensate for some of those other deficiencies. And it features a 5% lower
TDP, meaning that heat output will be reduced. Of course though, with GPUs,
it's never about comparing specs head-to-head directly. And AMD has made
some tweaks under the hood that will improve tessellation performance,
compute performance, and memory performance that they hope will make up
for some of these spec deficiencies. On
top of that, AMD has added a couple of multimedia features, including automatic
configuration of the speakers in your iinity monitor or TV setup as left, mid,
and right channels, along with hardware H.264 4K encode, and decode support that
will significantly reduce power consumption when playing back 4K
content. This is a feature that even the new Hawaii R9290 series GPUs don't have.
AMD's engineers have been busy. Now, AMD
didn't send us a reference card, so let's take a minute to appreciate the
specifics of the Gigabyte Windforce Edition card that we have received. Like
all Gigabyte Windforce graphics cards, it features an open airflow
non-reference Windforce branded cooler. That enough Windforce for you? This one
features a dual heat pipe and aluminum fin design that did a great job of
keeping the 285 cool in our testing. It's got two DVI ports, HDMI and display
port. It's got dual 100 mm fans. It's
got reversed PCI Express power connectors, which is actually quite nice
for cable management. A PCI Express 16x slot on the bottom, and no bridge
connector at the top is needed thanks to the XDMMA Crossfire support in the Tonga
GPU. But you don't just want to watch me stare at this GPU thing for seven
minutes, do you?
No, no. You want to know about the performance? Well, here it is. Take it
away, Luke. All right, guys. Remember how I used to sound like a zombie all the time? Well, I'm back. Uh, first of
all, none of these cards are actually overclocked. A large number of you guys
have been asking us to run our benchmarks not overclocked for some time
now, and we've decided to see how it goes. There's also been a platform
change. We have swapped out our old platform for a new ASUS X99 Deluxe
motherboard, a 5930K running at stock,
and 16 GB of GSkill memory, also running at a stock speed of 2133 MHz. Due to a
horrible naming scheme, it can be a little bit confusing figuring out where the R9285 lands in AMD's product stack.
To try to show where the card falls in the general graphics card landscape, we
decided to benchmark it against a GTX 760, which should be fairly similar in
both price and performance. Then I threw it against a GTX 750Ti and an
R9290 in order to represent some other fairly common price points as well. AMD
fans will be happy to hear that the R9285 performed admirably in the games
that I tested in, beating out the GTX 760 in two out of three tests and
proving its worth in its price bracket. To be honest though, this is pretty much
exactly what was expected of this graphics card as the graphics card game
has been pretty easy to predict as of late. Well, that's it for Zombie Voice.
Back to you, Linus. So, there you have it, folks. It performs about as
expected, but here's something you might not have expected. AMD is refreshing
their Never Settle game bundle program. Now, it's Space Edition, and this one
qualifies for the gold level, so you can pick up to any three of the 29 games
available. Check it out. For gamers buying graphics cards, an appealing game
that they were planning to pick up anyway can be a very compelling value
ad. So, it's conclusion time. You get a
DirectX12 GPU that's feature complete compared to the rest of AMD's lineup and
performs about like you'd expect an AMD GPU that costs 250 bucks to perform.
Hard to go wrong. Not the most stunning or exciting conclusion ever, but this
isn't the most stunning or exciting card ever either. Not that being a trusty
workhorse is a bad thing. It's sold a lot of R9280s for AMD, and it'll do the
same with the R9285. Thanks for watching, guys. Like
this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment letting me know what you thought of the
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