- May 6, 2014
- 7
- 0
- 4,510
Welp, I told myself I would save up money for this when I heard about it, so it came out, and I got one. Before I tell you my problems I shall tell you about my set up.
AMD FX-9590 4.7Ghz Eight-Core AM3+
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD (Only PCI 2.0)
16GB Corsair Vengence DDR3 Ram
Nvidia GTX 660ti (overclocked edition) 2GB ( my Previous card! Switched to R9 295x2 now)
1050w Corsair power supply
240 GB Corsair Force 3 Solid State Hard Drive
500 GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
1000 GB 7200 Hard Disk Drive (in which I install all my games on)
H100 Corsair Water Cooling System
HAF932 Red Edition Full Tower
In my opinion a pretty powerful system. Ran everything in medium/high settings perfectly fine. Perhaps back then I didn't pay too close attention to the FPS of games, but now that I switched to a card that can supposedly handle anything I started to look at what was happening.
Initially when I installed this on my Windows 7 64b machine I was getting BSOD whenever I would turn off my monitor... very frustrating, my only choice was to fresh install Windows because I was not going to sit around trying to figure out the details. I decided to upgrade to Windows 8.1 which has indeed solved my BSOD issues.
However now that I finally am over that and able to sit down with my games I feel as if this card is simply not performing the way it should. Keep in mind I am only gaming at 1080p, not 4k.
The only game I am actually able to get great, and expected, performance out of is Tomb Raider. Max Settings all the way through, I can get about 140 FPS. and if I turn off the TressFX Hair I can even get up to 260 FPS. HOWEVER, I have had random crashes during game play.
Thief also runs relatively great, but I can only get up to 60 FPS is seems, or perhaps a little higher. Just thought it should be more running with 8GB of Video Memory at only 1080p
Dark Souls 2 I am downsampling from 4k to 1080p, and it also runs pretty smoothly, If I don't downsample I get a constant nice 60 fps.
I hear that Guild Wars 2 is horribly optimized, but I love it, so I ran it anyway, At MAX settings, which this card should EASILY do I can get any where between 20 and 40 FPS depending on the areas. Sometimes 60 if there is no one around. However, my laptop which has a 765M can also run the same, and even better, and it only has 2GB of memory for the graphics. So what's up with that?
Warframe won't even run! It crashes right after logging in.
Firefall, I know its in BETA, but I have horrid artifacts every where, its completely unplayable.
Bioshock Infinite looks gorgeous at MAX settings but hiccups an awful lot for a card of this power. I feel like it shouldn't, It even crashes, especially during scene changes (Think of the end game, when going from light house to light house scene.)
Skyrim runs alright, but I am also getting a bunch of artifacts, and I feel like the loading time are crazy, when on my 660ti they were not bad at all. Admittedly, I do have it heavily modded, so I might have to tweak that.
Heaven and Valley Benchmarks, I can max out the settings but I feel like it hiccups a bit too much, and at 1080p I can drop to 30 FPS sometimes, Average around 70ish, and maxing at 120 FPS. The hiccups are the problems.
TLDR; I feel like the R9 295x2 is not performing the way it should. Especially for all the power that it boasts. My thoughts on the problem:
Could it be my PSU isn't powerful enough? Despite being 1050watts, I am thinking perhaps because I have a power-hungry AMD FX 9590, cooled with an H100 closed-loop liquid cooling system, that maybe my PSU is hitting its limits?
Could it be because my MOBO is PCI 2.0? Although I heard that it shouldn't matter, and even 3.0 might have lacking performance at this point in time.
Could it simply be that the drivers just aren't mature yet?
In any case, for now I am simply not impressed! I could SLI two 780tis and get better performance and save a few hundred bucks. But I really want to gives this card a chance.
Thanks for all the help anyone can give. There are still a few tests I'd like to perform, like turning off that Raptr gaming app that runs in the background, although I think my system should be powerful enough to handle all that I throw at it.
PS) Should I be checking off the "Crossfire" option in AMD Catalyst? I know this card is "Two in One" is it considered Crossfire??? I have had it checked for now, and do believe I notice a bit of a difference with it on.
AMD FX-9590 4.7Ghz Eight-Core AM3+
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD (Only PCI 2.0)
16GB Corsair Vengence DDR3 Ram
Nvidia GTX 660ti (overclocked edition) 2GB ( my Previous card! Switched to R9 295x2 now)
1050w Corsair power supply
240 GB Corsair Force 3 Solid State Hard Drive
500 GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
1000 GB 7200 Hard Disk Drive (in which I install all my games on)
H100 Corsair Water Cooling System
HAF932 Red Edition Full Tower
In my opinion a pretty powerful system. Ran everything in medium/high settings perfectly fine. Perhaps back then I didn't pay too close attention to the FPS of games, but now that I switched to a card that can supposedly handle anything I started to look at what was happening.
Initially when I installed this on my Windows 7 64b machine I was getting BSOD whenever I would turn off my monitor... very frustrating, my only choice was to fresh install Windows because I was not going to sit around trying to figure out the details. I decided to upgrade to Windows 8.1 which has indeed solved my BSOD issues.
However now that I finally am over that and able to sit down with my games I feel as if this card is simply not performing the way it should. Keep in mind I am only gaming at 1080p, not 4k.
The only game I am actually able to get great, and expected, performance out of is Tomb Raider. Max Settings all the way through, I can get about 140 FPS. and if I turn off the TressFX Hair I can even get up to 260 FPS. HOWEVER, I have had random crashes during game play.
Thief also runs relatively great, but I can only get up to 60 FPS is seems, or perhaps a little higher. Just thought it should be more running with 8GB of Video Memory at only 1080p
Dark Souls 2 I am downsampling from 4k to 1080p, and it also runs pretty smoothly, If I don't downsample I get a constant nice 60 fps.
I hear that Guild Wars 2 is horribly optimized, but I love it, so I ran it anyway, At MAX settings, which this card should EASILY do I can get any where between 20 and 40 FPS depending on the areas. Sometimes 60 if there is no one around. However, my laptop which has a 765M can also run the same, and even better, and it only has 2GB of memory for the graphics. So what's up with that?
Warframe won't even run! It crashes right after logging in.
Firefall, I know its in BETA, but I have horrid artifacts every where, its completely unplayable.
Bioshock Infinite looks gorgeous at MAX settings but hiccups an awful lot for a card of this power. I feel like it shouldn't, It even crashes, especially during scene changes (Think of the end game, when going from light house to light house scene.)
Skyrim runs alright, but I am also getting a bunch of artifacts, and I feel like the loading time are crazy, when on my 660ti they were not bad at all. Admittedly, I do have it heavily modded, so I might have to tweak that.
Heaven and Valley Benchmarks, I can max out the settings but I feel like it hiccups a bit too much, and at 1080p I can drop to 30 FPS sometimes, Average around 70ish, and maxing at 120 FPS. The hiccups are the problems.
TLDR; I feel like the R9 295x2 is not performing the way it should. Especially for all the power that it boasts. My thoughts on the problem:
Could it be my PSU isn't powerful enough? Despite being 1050watts, I am thinking perhaps because I have a power-hungry AMD FX 9590, cooled with an H100 closed-loop liquid cooling system, that maybe my PSU is hitting its limits?
Could it be because my MOBO is PCI 2.0? Although I heard that it shouldn't matter, and even 3.0 might have lacking performance at this point in time.
Could it simply be that the drivers just aren't mature yet?
In any case, for now I am simply not impressed! I could SLI two 780tis and get better performance and save a few hundred bucks. But I really want to gives this card a chance.
Thanks for all the help anyone can give. There are still a few tests I'd like to perform, like turning off that Raptr gaming app that runs in the background, although I think my system should be powerful enough to handle all that I throw at it.
PS) Should I be checking off the "Crossfire" option in AMD Catalyst? I know this card is "Two in One" is it considered Crossfire??? I have had it checked for now, and do believe I notice a bit of a difference with it on.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram