The AMD Radeon R7 265 & R7 260 Review: Feat Sapphire & Asus
by Ryan Smith on February 13, 2014 8:00 AM ESTSynthetics
As always we’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance. Since the R7 265 and R7 260 are based on the same venerable AMD GCN GPUs we've come to know over the last 1-2 years, there shouldn’t be any surprises here other than slight performance differences..
Right off the bat, TessMark highlights an interesting outcome of AMD’s clockspeed choices when paired with their geometry frontend design. Since both Pitcairn (R7 265) and Bonaire (R7 260) have the same 2 triangle/clock geometry rate, the higher clocked R7 260 actually offers better tessellation performance than the lower clocked R7 265. In gaming workloads of course there’s more than just geometry throughput to be concerned about, but this does bring to light one of those amusing edge cases where cards on either side of a GPU upgrade aren’t always faster than they first appear.
3DMark also finds an interesting edge case for us, once again relating to the number of processing units in R7 265. Texture throughput on R7 265 is slightly below R7 260X due to the fact that R7 260X’s 1.1GHz clockspeed more than makes up for the 12% deficit in the number of texture units available. The end result is that R7 260X is able to push more texels in a second than R7 265 can, even with fewer texture units to do it with.
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edzieba - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Are Anandtech considering a switch from average framerates to latency/frame-rating (either with Fraps or FCAT)?Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Frame pacing is an additional tool we run from time to time as is appropriate, but it's not something we'll use for every review. Frame pacing is largely influenced by drivers and hardware, neither of which shift much on a review-by-review basis. So it's primarily reserved for multi-GPU articles and new architectures as appropriate.And especially in the case of single-GPU setups, there's not much to look at. None of these cards has trouble delivering frames at a reasonably smooth pace.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU14/873
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Yeah, that's what you guys said before the whole frame latency thing broke, too. It's a shame you aren't doing proper monitoring to catch it the first time and are setting up a scenario where it flies under the radar yet again the next time AMD decides to get lax on making drivers.Then again, this article is in red, right? AMD News is right next to it. Hell, even the comment button is red. I'm guessing the AMD overlords wouldn't like it very much if you were constantly harping on something they dropped the ball on so completely that their competitor had to slowly explain to them how to even see the problem and then how to fix it.
gdansk - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
It's a shame. I'm with your argument. AnandTech should try to include as many indicative benchmarks as possible. At times FCAT is indicative.But sadly, calling someone a shill with only coincidence is no better than libel. You have made an unsubstantiated allegation. It is decidedly unscientific to insult one's professional integrity with mere coincidental insinuations and no evidence. Why would you do that?
Death666Angel - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
So they are in the pocket of nVidia, Intel, AMD, Android AND Apple? Wow, those companies must really be idiots then.Gigaplex - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
I don't know where you got all the other brands from, but technically yes Ars is in the pockets of AMD. See http://www.anandtech.com/portal/amd - this is sponsored by AMD.Gigaplex - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Bah, AnandTech, not ArsDeath666Angel - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
I know _that_. But he is clearly insinuating that their opinions are bought by AMD. And since products from all those companies I listed (who are all competitors) regularly get recommendations, and Anandtech gets then accused of being paid shills, I find it funny that anyone thinks that is true. If they are bought by AMD as suggested, how come they don't come up with a benchmark track that makes AMD CPUs shine? Or how come they slammed the R9 so much for the noise? It's all pretty silly.nader_21007 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link
It seems that it hurts you how come this site is not biased and doesn't admire every thing Nvidia, like other sites? well you can go read Tom's Hardware, WCCFtech and every other hardware site, and be sure they will satisfy your needs.zodiacsoulmate - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link
Yea, it's like trying to compare samsung to apple again, sure you can say there is no way to compare which one is better hardware considered, the user experience is just not on pair...