AMD Radeon R7 265 2GB Review – Pitcairn takes another pass

Power Consumption and Conclusions

Users of graphics cards will tend to fall into two distinct groups; those that care about power consumption, and those that do not.  High end users will mostly fall into the realm of NOT caring, within reasonable boundaries.  Mainstream gamers have more to think about.  Does the power supply you have in your system provide enough juice to keep your purchased graphics card up and running?  Does it get hot and loud when used in a small form factor design?  Power consumption is the first clue to all of this.

These system-level power numbers show us a couple of things.  First, the R7 265 draws power right between the level of the R7 260X and the R9 270, which makes sense.  I will admit that the power draw of the 260X is higher than I would have expected, based on the relatively low performance it brought to the table in our benchmarks.  The GeForce GTX 660, based on Kepler, is pulling the most power of all the competitors although only in a couple of places was it much faster than the R9 270.  The GTX 650 Ti was the lowest power and also the lowest performer.

I don't think the power consumption of the R7 265 is outside reasonable limits but, as it stands now, there is definitely an opening for a card with lower power requirements in this part of the market.

Closing Thoughts

For gamers looking at a budget of $150, the AMD Radeon R7 265 is clearly the best card you can buy today.  Well, technically in the future, as it won't be for sale until the end of February or early March.  If nothing else changes (ha!) between now and then, I expect the R7 265 to be the most popular choice for mainstream gamers that want performance and don't have any power consumption concerns.  Running today's games at 1920×1080 with Ultra or Very High presets was completely feasible in most games. Only Crysis 3 presented a problem that would cause me to drop image quality settings.  That is an incredible feat for a $150 graphics card.

AMD Radeon R7 265 on the left…or the right…I'm not sure.

With an MSRP of $149, the direct competition for the R7 265 is the GeForce GTX 650 Ti which doesn't have the performance necessary to keep up with Pitcairn.  The GeForce GTX 660, priced a full $50 more (33% higher) is a strong competitor and, if NVIDIA drops prices, it could maintain parity.  If they don't, then AMD once again has the best performance per dollar option in this segment.  

The R7 265 is so good, that it has to eat into the market for the R9 270 and maybe even the R9 270X.  The R9 270 is priced with an MSRP of $179 but, due to GPU shortages, sells for $229 or more and only has a 10% performance lead in the best of cases to justify that cost gap of $30 (or $50 more realistically).  Compared to the R7 265, this might be too much for too little.  AMD made a similar move with the R9 290 release – offering performance very close to that of the R9 290X only with a much lower price.  

• GeForce GTX 660 2GB – $199
• Radeon R9 270 2GB – $179 (MSRP)
• Radeon R7 265 2GB – $149
• GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB – $149
• Radeon R7 260X 2GB – $119

My worry now is that cryptocurrency miners (Litecoin, etc) will be buying up all the R7 265 cards and make it impossible for gamers to actually find it for the expected MSRP of $149.  It has happened to basically every current AMD Radeon card starting with the R9 270 and above…

I do honestly hope that this is the last we hear of Pitcairn.  It was a great GPU, it has had an amazing run.  I'm ready for some new GPUs, with some new technology, to finally retire the two year old silicon that has been carrying AMD for so long.  

The AMD Radeon R9 270, R7 265 and R7 260X.

The Radeon R7 265 is a response to SOMETHING but, at this point, I am not sure what.  Recent financial numbers show that, despite the fact that AMD has "better" graphics cards in terms of performance per dollar at nearly every price point, NVIDIA continues to maintain or grow market share.  AMD is obviously pretty sensitive to this and, with the high volume $100-200 market up in play, AMD is betting a lot on the power of the R7 265 to bring more gamers to its side.

All of the business and marketing questions aside, the Radeon R7 265 is a great product that provides impressive gaming performance for $149.  If AMD had the ability to release these cards NOW then I think this launch would have been considered pretty much flawless.  As it stands, NVIDIA has a whole lot of time to plan and react with either new products of its own (or even just price adjustments).

Let the GPU wars continue.