A Graphics Solution For Around £1000: Sapphire 295X2’s

Rikki Wright / 10 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing (accurate at the time of writing)

These Sapphire R9 295×2’s are some of the more expensive units on the market, averaging around £700 per unit. However, in recent weeks, we have seen a sharp decline in prices and some flash deals from the likes of OverclockersUK for around £499.99. Sadly when writing this review, prices have seemed to have plateaued at around £600.

Summary

The R9 295×2’s have been nice to have a play with. It’s always nice to test something that pushes the envelope. Yes dual graphics core cards have been made before, but this comes with water-cooling as standard; already saving the end-user time, money and hassle of water-cooling in the future to prevent high temperatures.

I love the simple and sleek design of these cards, very robust and very understated. Also the water-cooling, yes I keep banging on about it, but its rare finding a factory reference card that comes with water-cooling. Not only do they come with water-cooling, but it’s a very good water-cooling unit at that. Now onto the performance, well apart from Metro Last Light, we saw at least 30% scaling through our tests with around 70% on average. Our initial thoughts have been proven mostly correct, these are without a doubt, the best graphics card solution to purchase for around £1000

Now everything has a bad point and this card is no exception. Metro I guess would be a good start. Lacking any utilisation of the extra 2 graphics cores, which is disappointing. However, we saw very good gains through our other testing. I guess another issue could be size. This card is massive, along with needing additional space for the 120mm radiator and also baring in mind you need additional clearance for the pipes.

If I was to recommend anything for this, it would be an adjustable or customisable LED fan light. Even though it is an AMD reference card and AMD is Red; having to dictate your entire colour scheme off a graphics card can be a pain if the graphics card is the last piece you buy. Apart from that, I found this card very nice to look at and easy to use.

Pros

Top performer
Factory water-cooling
Super cool and quiet
8GB provides some “futureproofness” to allow some safety new and more demanding titles
Unrivalled price to performance point

Cons

Extremely long, might cause problems in smaller cases
Need to have an available and close 120mm fan space spare for the radiator
Water-cooling pipes make this a fairly tall card, so cases with tight sides need to be careful

“Looking at building a top of the line computer for mid range money? Grab a pair of these Radeon R9 295×2’s and game happy.“