Today seems to be an interesting day for AMD announcements since the company has not only launched the Radeon R9 285 graphics cards and FX-8000 series processors but they are also offering a promo on the Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card. Available through specific retailers, the new promotional price which is open to all and not just OEMs will allow users to grab the flagship enthusiast graphics card for a low price of $999 US.
AMD Promo Offers You The Radeon R9 295X2 Graphics Card For $999 US
AMD has officially announced this promotional deal which will last for a while through specific retailers which will soon have the deals up on their end. The promotional is open to all which include end users like consumers and OEMs too. So we may see some lower priced OEM PCs with the Radeon R9 295X2 in a matter of days. The Radeon R9 295X2 is currently AMD's flagship graphics card and is also the fastest graphics card on the planet. It was originally launched at a price of $1499 US compared to the $2999 US price of its direct competitor, the GTX Titan Z from NVIDIA which offers just around the same performance. The price of the GeForce GTX Titan Z was also recently dropped to 37% at $1830 US however compared to the promotional deal of the Radeon R9 295X2, that is still $830 more for a asking price of the GeForce GTX Titan Z.
I think the $999 US is a great price for the card since who doesn't like the Radeon R9 295X2? It looks good, runs great and performs exceptionally well at 4K. The Radeon R9 295X2 was a huge engineering feat from the AMD team since its just mind boggling how they were able to run two hot Hawaii cores on a single PCB clocked up to 1018 MHz. The cooling assembly and the heatsink were a great achievement by team Red and we can't wait to see a similar cooling design on the single chip GPUs in the future.
With two Hawaii XT GPUs on the same board, the specifications equate to 2816 x 2 stream processors, 176 x 2 texture mapping units, 64 x 2 Raster Operators and 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on each chip which equates to a total of 8 GB GDDR5 memory. Double these and you get an impressive 5632 stream processors, 352 TMUs and 128 ROPs for an unprecedented amount of gaming and compute performance.
Clock speeds are maintained at 1018 MHz for the core which is impressive considering AMD managed to clock their chip 18 MHz faster than the stock variant without worrying about the heat. This shows that the new cooling design has things kept well under control. The 8 GB GDDR5 memory runs across a 512-Bit X 2 memory bus that is clocked at 1250 MHz effective clock speed (5.00 GHz effective clock speed). This pumps out a total of 640 GB/s memory bandwidth.
Power is pumped through dual 8-Pin connectors which represent a 300W limit while the PCI-E connector adds an addition 75W power so we are looking at a total of 375W TDP however the card is rated at 500W officially for the Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card . Each Hawaii core has a 5+1 Phase VRM which was the standard design and as noted features the CPL-made chokes and DirectFET International Rectifiers.
Both of the Hawaii chips are linked together via the PLX PEX8747 chip while the XDMA technology will improve the scaling efficiency. Display output include four Display Port 1.2 and a single DVI slot which will easily drive 4K Eyefinity resolutions and beyond. This will help drive games at 4K Eyefinity resolutions for better and immersiv experiences across a range of AAA gaming titles.
To cool their Hawaii chips and a huge PCB with several VRMs, AMD adopted a neat new Hybrid cooling design they refer to as Project Hydra. AMD went with a 120mm radiator that can be equipped with two fans and assembled inside the PC chassis which leads two 38cm coolant pipes straight to each Hawaii core. The pump and radiator are made by OEM ASETEK who are the leaders in liquid cooling products for graphics and processor technologies.
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 and Dual GPUs Comparison Chart:
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 | AMD Radeon HD 6990 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 | AMD Radeon HD 7990 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z | AMD Radeon R9 295X2 | |
| GPU Codename | Fermi GF110 | Antilles | Kepler GK104 | New Zea land | Kepler GK110 | Vesuvius |
| GPU Process | 40nm | 40nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| GPU Transistors | 3000 Million | 2640 Million | 3540 Million | 4313 Million | 7100 Million | 6200 Million |
| GPU Cores | 512 x 2 (1024) | 1600 x 2 (3200) | 1536 x 2 (3072) | 2048 x 2 (4096) | 2880 x 2 (5760) | 2816 x 2 (5632) |
| TMUs | 64 x 2 | 96 x 2 | 128 x 2 | 128 x 2 | 240 x 2 | 176 x 2 |
| ROPs | 24 x 2 ROPs | 16 x 2 ROPs |
32 x 2 ROPs | 32 x 2 ROPs | 48 x 2 ROPs | 64 x 2 ROPs |
| Core Clock | 607 MHz | 830 MHz | 915 MHz | 1000 MHz | TBC | 1018 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 855 MHz | 1250 MHz | 1502 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1752 MHz | 1250 MHz |
| Memory Bus | 384 Bit X 2 | 256 Bit X 2 |
256 Bit X 2 | 384 Bit X 2 | 384 Bit X 2 | 512 Bit X 2 |
| TDP | 365W | 300W | 375W | 375W | 375W | 500W |
| Power Connectors | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin |
| Cooling | Dual Slot | Dual Slot | Dual Slot | Dual Slot | Triple Slot | Dual Slot Hybrid |
| Launch | 2011 | 2010 | 2012 | 2013 | Q2 2014 | 8th April 2014 |
| Price | $699 US | $699 US |
$999 US | $999 US | $2999 US ($1830 US OEM Only) | $1499 US ($999 US Promo) |
