Tuesday 22 April 2014

AMD OEM Radeon R9 295X2 First Thoughts!

When the first Hawaii GPU R9 290X came out, it was good but a Hot Hawaii. And I said it before that with a good cooler, taking heat out of the equation totally will make cards like that run stable.

AMD has responded with this solution for the Dual GPU.

Meet the Video Card that claims to do just that: The Radeon R9 295X2.


I wasn't expecting AMD to come up with a Dual GPU Solution this quickly. And AMD crafted a Dual GPU being cooled by both Air and Water powered by Asetek's line of AIOs.

This idea of hybrid cooling is not unique. Not long ago, ASUS introduced the Tahiti Based ARES II that consists of 2 7970 GHz Ed. GPUs in CES 2013. It was however a large card in terms of width despite being a 2 slot card so it won't fit in narrower chassis. It was limited to a set number of cards as you might expect from most flagship ROG goods. And EXTREMELY power hungry; with 3 8-pins as opposing to 2 for the 295X2.

As you can probably notice, the card fits in line within most narrower chassis and cases and has a slightly larger center fan.

Tom's Hardware and Guru 3D have tested this card. Heat is entirely out of the equation so throttling problems should be practically non-existent. As you would expect, this card will not be for the meek of wallet and outlets in Singapore are not selling it yet (as far as I know). Users will be happy that this dual GPU Card will work especially well for a small form factor build (Below), just need to make some room for the rad. An mATX build will be the sweet spot for a less cramped build.

My wishlist: Someone to send me one to test here.