MSI Radeon R9 285 GAMING OC Video Card Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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MSI Radeon R9 285 GAMING OC Video Card Review - AMD has launched the $249 AMD Radeon R9 285 video card. We dive into this somewhat confusing GPU. We compare it to the GeForce GTX 760 as well as an AMD Radeon R9 280. We'll discuss GCN differences in this new video card that may give it the edge with some feedback from AMD.
 
Great Review, I'm not sure what to make of this card yet. I'm not terribly blown away but I'm thinking I'll hold off on this one to see if it can overclock well with some voltage adjustments. A reivew guru3d posted today shows a not so stellar overclock and performance but that is without voltage adjustment. Hopefully by the time [H]ardOCP goes back to review it's OC they will hash that out so we can see the full potential of this card.

Thanks for the interesting read gentlemen
 
Was this card benchmarked with its OC clocks or at reference? If it was with the factory overclock, that would give it some performance boost compared to 280. Given that, the fact that it has 1 GB less and slower memory (albeit not as big of a handicap due to some compression gains), seems to be not quite as good overclocker and is more expensive...meh.
 
Tested at out-of-the-box clocks. You can argue this if you like, but AMD did not have "reference cards" for this launch. So to me the "stock clocks" are more of an imaginary guideline put down by AMD. This is a retail product and was tested as such as we would have with any video card.
 
Are you able to confirm, such as via provided reviewer information or AMD, whether the the fab is TSMC or Global Foundries? Also what 28nm process?
 
Meeho said:
Ok, but.....<snip>
Click to expand...

Reading is fundamental.

In our follow-up we will overclock a custom GTX 760 and compare overclocks, then we will find out who really wins the performance race when these GPUs are maxed out.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your insight. Your point has been made twice, please let our thread about our review stay on topic.
 
Looks like a solid choice for the lower mid-range segment, especially with all the new tech it brings.
 
Interesting product, if I were shopping in this segment I think id be looking for a clearance deal on a nice 280 instead. But good to see they are trimming power and keeping performance similar. Im looking forward to what 20nm brings
 
psyclist said:
Interesting product, if I were shopping in this segment I think id be looking for a clearance deal on a nice 280 instead. But good to see they are trimming power and keeping performance similar. Im looking forward to what 20nm brings
Click to expand...

I think that FreeSync support should trump the slightly lower price on the 280 alone. Cards in this price range undoubtedly will dip frames under stressful situations and having that will be huge! There are just too many extra features on the 285 to justify trying to save a few bucks. Just look at the improvements chart in the article.

@Kyle and the crew. Great review even though I was kinda ticked that AMD didn't have Mantle ready for testing. In hindsight being able to reference this review with an updated Mantle driver will allow [H]ardocp to show what improvements that AMD has made. After reading what Groenke had to say, I began to understand that the new architecture will require more work with the driver team and game developers.

Also I can't wait for the 4GB 285 review. I want to see how these new improvements really shine with an adequate amount of VRAM. It's nice that they have a $249 card to compete with the GTX 760. But it was quite obvious that the card was held back by the lack of memory.

Thanks again for the great articles. :)
 
Thanks for the extra eyes. - Kyle
 
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Meeho said:
Was this card benchmarked with its OC clocks or at reference? If it was with the factory overclock, that would give it some performance boost compared to 280. Given that, the fact that it has 1 GB less and slower memory (albeit not as big of a handicap due to some compression gains), seems to be not quite as good overclocker and is more expensive...meh.
Click to expand...

The factory overclock on the MSI card is only 55MHz, that does not equate to a large gameplay difference. In my testing it isn't enough to change the value of the highest gameplay settings over the reference 285 clock speed. Therefore, the point is really moot.

The real difference in 285 performance vs. the other cards will come when we manually overclock it. Those changes might be big enough to make a real difference.

Finally, in future retail reviews we will match up comparison cards by price as always, and this may mean custom retail comparison cards will be compared with future 285's. In this launch review we needed a baseline with reference 760 and 280 to see where the 285 stands. There will be more evaluation of 285 to come.
 
I think nvidia has been using color compression since the GTX9800. Good to see AMD implementing it too. I seems to help a lot on bandwidth.
 
Interesting improvements especially considering the substantially reduced memory b/w, thanks for the article.

A concern with the new card is the support for 4K video scaling.
H264 will be hardware decoded as mentioned.
The 4K codec will be H265, I didnt see mention of it.

Does this mean hardware decoding is limited to H264?
H265 will require more power to decode than H264.
On CPU limited systems (for H265) it would be a shame if it wasnt supported on video hardware.
 
Stoly said:
I think nvidia has been using color compression since the GTX9800. Good to see AMD implementing it too. I seems to help a lot on bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Are you talking about the Nvidia feature where they turn the quality down for people running 4K TV's to get the frame rate up over standard HDMI if my memory serves me right? Is this the same thing if so? If I'm thinking of the wrong thing it's cool to burn me at the stake. :)
 
Not a bad article, but this question stood out to me:
Q. - If you knew Tonga was planned all along, then can you explain why you developed R9 280 (Tahiti) in the first place?
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I'm confused why this question was asked this way... The "R9 280" has only been around for 6 months but its just a re-badged 7950, which has been around for far longer. There really wasn't any developing it, just slap a new name to fill a hole in your lineup at a time when their cards were in super high demand due to the mining crap. Tonga brings that part of the market segment up to feature parity (or superiority) with the other new GCN parts and undoubtedly reduces costs by going to the 256-bit buffer and 2GB RAM. Two completely different goals between the two and considering the differences between the two cards I'm not sure anyone who bought a 280 is going to be crying foul now that the 285 is taking its place
 
Interesting card in the product lineup. If nothing else, am I wrong in thinking this bodes well for more powerful cards built with this architecture?
 
Still trying to figure out if I should be happy or sad with my 280 purchase since it was such a good deal. From what I'm seeing here I'm ok with it since it would be a while before the 285 would be at my 280 purchase price. It overclocked nicely so I guess I can't complain too much.
 
marc_with_a_c said:
Still trying to figure out if I should be happy or sad with my 280 purchase since it was such a good deal. From what I'm seeing here I'm ok with it since it would be a while before the 285 would be at my 280 purchase price. It overclocked nicely so I guess I can't complain too much.
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Close enough to not matter, game away!
 
what a fail gpu. I'm worried for AMD if they can't beat Tahiti pro performance for $250 in late 2014.
 
They arent trying to, they are trying to replace it.

Be that as it may, it does beat tahiti pro mostly.
 
The Mac said:
They arent trying to, they are trying to replace it.

Be that as it may, it does beat tahiti pro mostly.
Click to expand...

aside from the unreleased free sync and the unused true audio, it is a worse offering for the same price. it's slower clock for clock and despite claims, uses more power than the R9 280 in every review I've seen including this one. thing is, there was a time when a new card replacing in a price slot would be faster than the one it replaced, usually much faster. we've gotten two years of no improvements from AMD aside from Hawaii. not cool.
 
Grady

I do feel most R285's reviews were soft with AMD, your attempt to point at the shortcoming of this release with Q&A with Evan Groenke was unfortunately a waste of time as you did not press [H]arder on his non-answers.
Ultimately I believe that unless reviewer start penalize a lot more sidestep/painjob ASIC update, Chip-maker will have even less intensive to make more aggressive pref-bump in there product placement.

Down the line it's not so much that the TONGA architecture is not an improvement, it is that product placement of the Tonga PRO GPU is wrong as AMD chose not to make those improvement translate into performance gain for the end user. They made a better more clever ASIC that can do more with less but instead of giving the user "more" they gave barely the same, with less for tthe same price if not more with some sugarcoating to make the pill easier to swallow.

Allow me to renew my initial editorial question/request:
Don't you feel that this card is Stall/Sidestep refresh?
Don't you feel that apple to apple comparison would have been better served by a comparison against the MSI Radeon R9 280 GAMING OC Video Card you reviewed in June.
Don't you think that more Harshness should be applied in the notation of stall/sidestep/status quo refresh?

Cheers


PS: Are far as the R9 280 being close to extinction, In Europe retailers stills have stocks of 7000's to empty first..
 
In America the 7000 series is gone except for EBAY. I expect the 280's to disappear also. Maybe our retailers are sending them to Europe? Also I wouldn't get a 2GB card if I could help it. I'd wait and see what the 4GB card's performance and price is before I complain that these aren't worthy replacements for the 7950.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Interesting card in the product lineup. If nothing else, am I wrong in thinking this bodes well for more powerful cards built with this architecture?
Click to expand...

If it echos the 7790 release this is a test of the new architecture and we'll see something bigger in 6-12 months. Right now this is, for all intents, just a cost-reduced 280.
 
I'm kinda surprised how (relatively) well it does compared to the 280/7950. There really are architecture improvements; it's not just another rebadged/reconfigured 7950.

Still, after playing Titanfall, WatchDogs, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Evolve (alpha), Star Citizen, etc. - I'd be very uncomfortable buying a new high-end card with only 2GB of VRAM. Though I'm curious how the 4GB R9 285 would perform in VRAM-limited games, given the new memory bandwidth optimizations (despite having lower bandwidth on paper).

This all still seems like everyone's just biding their time while they wait for the new process shrink. Squeezing out software improvements (Mantle) and hardware improvements (GCN 3rd iteration) from effectively the same design is definitely commendable, but it's nothing radically new and exciting. I'm still extremely happy with how much mileage I've gotten (and continue to get) out of my old 7950 Boost.
 
Joga said:
Still, after playing Titanfall, WatchDogs, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Evolve (alpha), Star Citizen, etc. - I'd be very uncomfortable buying a new high-end card with only 2GB of VRAM.
Click to expand...

But $249 isn't really high-end though yah? $150-200 is like entry level gaming card.
 
this card's specs are fine. it's price is bad. this card should be no more than $200 and that is generous at this point. with the level of complacency we have among consumers now, it's crazy. just imagine if the 5850 was a rebadged 4850 and we got a 6950 that was a 5850 (and by extension 4850) with a smaller bus and less vram. why is it cool now?
 
xorbe said:
But $249 isn't really high-end though yah? $150-200 is like entry level gaming card.
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Well, true, but it can max out just about anything at 1080p, so that's high end enough for me :p

Regardless, it's powerful enough that it will be VRAM limited before it becomes processing-limited. One reasonably expects to run Watchdogs or Titanfall on Ultra settings with an R9 285, but it can't solely because of the 2GB. (An R9 280 with 3GB can max them out).
 
I am just not getting why anyone would be impressed with this card. Its really no better than the 280 and uses more power not less. That and only having 2gb of vram makes this card seem like a failure when you can get the 280 for the same price.
 
There are different 7950 and R9 280 as the numbers are 2L 3L 4L as the board layout is what makes them different and some have better ram that does 1500Mhz.. but I think the part most forgot is what the 7950 was built for and that is Eyefinity gaming and why it has the 384bit by 3Gb ram..

I save my judgment till overclock review is shown and I sure hope that MSI 280 does 1100/1500 as my Sapphire does.
 
fanboy said:
There are different 7950 and R9 280 as the numbers are 2L 3L 4L as the board layout is what makes them different and some have better ram that does 1500Mhz.. but I think the part most forgot is what the 7950 was built for and that is Eyefinity gaming and why it has the 384bit by 3Gb ram..

I save my judgment till overclock review is shown and I sure hope that MSI 280 does 1100/1500 as my Sapphire does.
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the gpu is identical though. those differences you can find between three random AIB 7950 (say asus, msi and diamond). take a reference and a custom card from each and you get the differences you just laid out between the 7950 and R9 280. it's a simple rebrand. as for the R9 285, it's worrying that while nvidia has a vastly improved performance/watt architecture like maxwell, AMD still haven't made one fifth of that efficiency improvement. and make no mistake, the R9 285 will overclock worse than both versions of the Tahiti pro. it comes on cheaper pcb that are made for pitcairn cards and has less available board power, even though it appears to consume more. this is a bit of a mess.
 
Activate: AMD said:
Not a bad article, but this question stood out to me:

I'm confused why this question was asked this way... The "R9 280" has only been around for 6 months but its just a re-badged 7950, which has been around for far longer. There really wasn't any developing it, just slap a new name to fill a hole in your lineup at a time when their cards were in super high demand due to the mining crap. Tonga brings that part of the market segment up to feature parity (or superiority) with the other new GCN parts and undoubtedly reduces costs by going to the 256-bit buffer and 2GB RAM. Two completely different goals between the two and considering the differences between the two cards I'm not sure anyone who bought a 280 is going to be crying foul now that the 285 is taking its place
Click to expand...

The reason why I specifically asked this question is because AMD disclosed to us that Tonga has been in development as part of the original roll out plan, so if Tonga was going to be produce all along, why did they even bother with a R9 280, which as you said is just a rebranded 7950, knowing that a GPU would be released with similar specs and confusion with performance and pricing of both products, and also knowing R9 280 would be a limited run and 285 would eventually replace it, why even bother with 280 then? I think our question was sufficiently answered, thank you AMD.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Interesting card in the product lineup. If nothing else, am I wrong in thinking this bodes well for more powerful cards built with this architecture?
Click to expand...

Yes, I believe there will be a 285X, and that 285X may outperform 280X, especially if has a 384-bit bus. That means it would sit between 280X and 290, a product placement point I believe that AMD wants to acknowledge.
 
its not like it took any extra money to slap a new name on the same chips, it seems to me it was just a place holder to standardize the new naming schema till tonga rolled out.
 
Quix said:
If it echos the 7790 release this is a test of the new architecture and we'll see something bigger in 6-12 months. Right now this is, for all intents, just a cost-reduced 280.
Click to expand...

same thing they did with the 4770 and then we got the HD5k series 6 months later. it's an easy way to test new architecture in the real world and not just test benches and theoretical in-house numbers.
 
Even at $250 the R9 285 only ties the 760 in performance, based on this review.

And as long as there are R9 280s out on the market the card is pointless.
 
The Mac said:
its not like it took any extra money to slap a new name on the same chips, it seems to me it was just a place holder to standardize the new naming schema till tonga rolled out.
Click to expand...

which begs the question who comes up with these names? the R9 285 is slower than the R9 280X. make sense? this card should have been released a year ago as the 270X or at least call it R9 275X. I forgot the name of the fellow at AMD who's in charge of naming and positioning the cards. he was in some videos at last year's Hawaii event. in any case, he's done a poor job for the most part until prices lowered this spring, but it's not like the engineers are giving him very much to work with.
 
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