The AMD Radeon R7 265 & R7 260 Review: Feat Sapphire & Asus
by Ryan Smith on February 13, 2014 8:00 AM ESTBattlefield 4
Our latest addition to our benchmark suite and our current major multiplayer action game of our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has finally reached a point where it’s stable enough for benchmark use, giving us the ability to profile one of the most popular and strenuous shooters out there. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
Our first review with Battlefield 4 finds AMD firmly in the driver’s seat, easily surpassing NVIDIA’s closest competitors while often putting more expensive NVIDIA cards in a bind. To this end we see that both the R7 265 and R7 260 are best suited for 1080p at medium quality, as the R7 265’s additional performance comes up a bit short of making high quality playable.
Ultimately we have the R7 260 beating the GTX 650 Ti by 19% and the R7 265 even beating the GTX 660, in the latter case by 12%. Unfortunately for AMD, Mantle is a bust here. In this GPU bound test Mantle is just as likely to cause a minor performance regression as it is to cause a minor performance improvement. Mantle’s strength is in CPU bound scenarios so this isn’t a big surprise, but it does reiterate the fact that Direct3D isn’t dead on AMD cards when you have the CPU power to keep it happy.
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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...