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

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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: Grid 2

Although Grid 2 is a good-looking game, we know it to be more platform-bound than anything else. As a result, we're able to crank up the title's Ultra preset, enable soft ambient occlusion, and turn on 8x MSAA.

Click for 1080p pop-up

The Radeon R7 265 never falls below 41 FPS at this maxed-out setting. Even Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti keeps its nose above playability, despite a couple of small dips below 30 FPS.

Aside from a couple of spikes, measured frame time variance is low in this game.

118 Comments Comment from the forums
  • yankeeDDL 13 February 2014 13:51
    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 13 February 2014 14:14
    Compelling card, but sad that a price hike on the 270 had to force it. So seems useless now.
    Reply
  • meluvcookies 13 February 2014 14:36
    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 13 February 2014 14:54
    War on the high end segment over.Now Jihad style attack on mid end.
    Reply
  • firefoxx04 13 February 2014 15:06
    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 13 February 2014 15:09
    i am not impressed at all, if it was under 100w then yes.
    Reply
  • huilun02 13 February 2014 15:13
    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 13 February 2014 15:39
    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 13 February 2014 16:50
    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 13 February 2014 16:55
    so you are saying that R7 265 is best GPU in this price range?
    Reply