Radeon R9 295X2 8 GB Review: Project Hydra Gets Liquid Cooling

Test Hardware And Benchmarks

As always, the hardware and benchmarks used in today’s review are important. However, methodology is also more relevant than ever, particularly in light of the dynamic clock rate behavior we described when AMD’s Radeon R9 290X first launched.

To that end, all of our testing happens in the aforementioned Rosewill Throne chassis. And rather than simply firing up benchmarks after an idle period, we heat up every card with several minutes of gameplay prior to recording results. If a configuration is prone to throttling, that gets documented. Really though, AMD effectively addressed variability on its reference Hawaii-based board through a driver, and most third-party solutions are better-cooled.

AMD claims that the Radeon R9 295X2 is designed for gaming at 3840x2160. However, we also ran benchmarks at 2560x1440, which is still a popular enthusiast-oriented resolution. All tests at QHD are run through our FCAT system; numbers are generated using video captured from a DVI display output. Testing at Ultra HD was conducted through a mix of technologies; the GeForce GTX 690 and Radeon HD 7990 wouldn’t cooperate with the dual-HDMI method of getting FCAT working at 4K. This shouldn’t be an issue when frame pacing is working properly, since there are no dropped or runt frames to report. Where it results in suspect data, however, we’ll call that out.