AMD Radeon R7 265 Review: Curaçao Slides In At $150

By Don Woligroski
published

With pricing all over the map, AMD wants to plug the gap between its Radeon R7 260X and R9 270. To that end, it's introducing a Curaçao-based Radeon R7 265 with better-than-Radeon HD 7850 performance at $150. Will that be enough to stave off Maxwell?

Results: Battlefield 4

We begin with Battlefield 4. The Radeon R7 265 can handle this game's Ultra preset, but we dialed MSAA back from 4x to 2x, set AA Post to Medium, and used SSAO instead of the more demanding HDAO setting.

For the record, we also ran a full set of numbers with Mantle enabled on the AMD cards. However, the numbers we are seeing from an overclocked Core i5-based platform weren't what we were expecting. For now, we'll set the very-beta API aside for a performance and image quality analysis at a later date.

Click for 1080p pop-up

The screenshot should be indicative of how good these settings look, even on mainstream hardware. AMD's new Radeon R7 265 performs well too, edging out Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 and approaching the more expensive Radeon R9 270.

Unlike our average frame rate figures, when it comes to frame time variance, less is better. There are some spikes evident in our benchmark, though typically from lower-end boards.

Don Woligroski
118 Comments Comment from the forums
  • yankeeDDL
    I think the pricing issue is a moot point.If There's an Nvidia card at $190, an equally-performing (or slightly slower) car will be sold for $180 making a good profit, not at $150 to kill Nvidia.Card manufacturer won't benefit from Nvidia being pushed out of the market.
    Reply
  • Novuake
    Compelling card, but sad that a price hike on the 270 had to force it. So seems useless now.
    Reply
  • meluvcookies
    A 25% increase on the R9 270 was, essentially, a betrayal of consumer trust by AMD. I was totally excited to get in at the $180 price point, but now I'm waiting for Nvidia's offerings in that neighborhood to see if they can offer anything as compelling as the 270 was a couple months ago when it was still at its original price.
    Reply
  • huilun02
    War on the high end segment over.Now Jihad style attack on mid end.
    Reply
  • firefoxx04
    Wow, If it beats the 7850, I wonder how it stacks up against my overclocked 6850. I have two in crossfire but being limited to 1GB vram can be a hindrance. When I bought my original 6850, it was only $150 and my second was $100. I wonder what AMD has for $250 that could smoke my current setup / aka be a good single card upgrade.
    Reply
  • Tzn
    i am not impressed at all, if it was under 100w then yes.
    Reply
  • huilun02
    12670915 said:
    Wow, If it beats the 7850, I wonder how it stacks up against my overclocked 6850. I have two in crossfire but being limited to 1GB vram can be a hindrance. When I bought my original 6850, it was only $150 and my second was $100. I wonder what AMD has for $250 that could smoke my current setup / aka be a good single card upgrade.

    http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_radeon_r9_280_in_the_works.html
    Reply
  • TechnoD
    All these price hikes are really becoming an issue. This card is launching at the same price I paid for my 7950 ~5 months ago.
    Reply
  • jin_mtvt
    And what does using more than 100W at full load has to do with this card? First we have someone complaining about not having enough " additional power pins " than someone compains about more than 100W usage on a "desktop" GPU. You are lame.Onto the pricing problem, i should not have to remind you that the prices in most of the world ( you know everywhere out of north america ) haven't followed the same trends as here . the 290 never went bozo up to 650$ in Europe ( if you use the exchange rate in position before december when the price was set ) . I would like to read more about who is really "jacking" up the prices . This card needs to be 150$, not 180$ of course , else it would be m00t .
    Reply
  • selvakumar13
    so you are saying that R7 265 is best GPU in this price range?
    Reply