1440p metro last light backgrounds
In this respect, Nvidia is already ahead of the curve - its Kepler architecture has battled with AMD's current-gen chips in terms of performance, but it has always achieved its results with a greater degree of efficiency. To get the best out of the existing manufacturing technologies, AMD has had to adapt - it simply can't rely on its foundries to hand in smaller chips. The expectation has been that the new line of graphics cards would debut on the smaller 20nm process, but for whatever reason the transition to 20nm has been delayed. GPU chips have been manufactured at 28nm since the tail end of 2011. The timing of the R9 285's release is interesting. However, stock RAM speeds are unchanged from the standard design at 1375MHz (5.5GHz effective). It's worth pointing out that our review sample isn't an AMD reference card - the firm supplied us with a Gigabyte 'Windforce' variant, with a mild 55MHz overclock, taking us up from the stock 918MHz boost speed to 973MHz. Here, the R9 285 falls into line with the GTX 760: we get the standard DVIs, HDMI and the larger DisplayPort connection. Tahiti cards typically shipped with one or two dual-link DVI sockets, HDMI and twin MiniDisplayPorts. There's also been some rationalisation of the back-plate too. Launch prices see the R9 285 retail for around £170 in the UK, with a project $249 in the USA, pitching this directly against the GTX 760. Memory: 5.5GHz GDDR5 (2GB/4GB variants).Note that while the reference R9 285 is clocked at a max 918MHz, the Gigabyte board we reviewed sees this boosted to 973MHz. On paper, this may look like an R9 280 with a cut-down memory bus, but the performance you'll see suggests that the new Tonga GPU has been significantly enhanced. Clock speeds are also slightly reduced from the older R9 280. This has a knock-on effect on something that could prove crucial going forward - the minimum 3GB of GDDR5 that comes as standard with every R9 280 is gone, reduced to 2GB with 4GB options available at a premium, just like its Nvidia competitor. Most notably, the 384-bit memory bus that served the Tahiti cards so well in keeping up with their Nvidia competitors is gone, reduced to the same 256-bit bus as the GTX 760. The revised design does come with some potential negatives, however.
That's still 20W more than the GTX 760, but the reduced requirements made on your PSU are welcome nonetheless - just two six-pin power connections are required, rather than the six-pin/eight-pin combo found on the R9 280. Efficiency wise, the daunting 250W TDP of the R9 280 has been reduced to a more palatable 190W. By and large, we'd say AMD has succeeded.Ī visual inspection of the R9 285 demonstrates that, in terms of physical construction, it's considerably simpler and indeed smaller than its predecessor.
In short, with its new 'Tonga' design it wants to eliminate the inefficiencies from the old Tahiti chip that powers the 280 and at the same time take down its Nvidia rival. AMD's aim with the new R9 285 is simple - to make its product cheaper, easier to produce and more power-efficient.
#1440P METRO LAST LIGHT BACKGROUNDS 1080P#
Both cards can run just about any game you care to mention maxed out at 1080p with creditable frame-rates. It's at this point that we see the best balance between price and performance for the core gamer, and recently both Nvidia's GeForce GTX 760 and AMD's Radeon R9 280 have offered excellent value. The sub-£200/$300 graphics card market is fiercely contested - and for good reason.