AMD Radeon R9 295X2 CrossFire Video Card Review
If you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks then you missed the announcement of the fastest video card on the planet. On April 8th, 2014 AMD announced the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 video card. This single video card contains two full specification AMD Radeon R9 290X GPUs to enable CrossFire on a single card. This means dual-R9 290X performance out of a single card taking up only two slots. AMD set the MSRP on this performance beast at $1,499. The XFX variant is selling for $1529.99 with Prime Shipping.
The make this monster work AMD employs a custom Asetek closed loop liquid cooling system along with some air cooling to keep both GPUs cool and the power supply components cool. There are two pumps, one atop each GPU which exchanges heat out to a separate 120mm radiator with fan. This cooling system proved to be more than adequate at keeping both GPUs cool for hours of gaming. The cooling is so good that AMD even slightly bumped up the clock speed to 1018MHz on each GPU for a little performance boost over a regular AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU. What’s more, the clock speed was consistent, never failing, and never throttling performance.
In our evaluation we experienced gameplay that was absolutely phenomenal. We tested in an Eyefinity configuration on three displays at 5760×1200 and pushed the limits on a 4K display at 3840×2160. The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 never missed a beat, delivering rock solid performance and gameplay.