I forget that expensive GPUs existed even then. I just never even looked at them because there was so many great cards at lower prices then. Still it was only half the price of the Titan Z. I wish you a great 2023. I can see the improvements since your first videos.
Yeah, adjusted for inflation, the 295X2 is more expensive than the 4090. That's why unlike a lot of people, I don't necessarily hold the 4090's price against it. In my opinion it's the only card of the new generation that actually earns its price tag. The pricing of everything released after it sucks though.
@@Kryptic1046 it is still too expensive though. Especially where I live. The 4090 MSRP is about 2200 USD but sold for around 2500-3000 USD. This includes 25% VAT.
@@wertywerrtyson5529 - Yeah I agree that's too much. I definitely would not even consider it at those prices. It's a shame so much of the rest of the world gets bent over so hard on GPU prices.
Also for back then big prices would really have to mostly be a way over engineered GPU like the one on the video, they don't make a dual GPU die graphic card for a damn long time. Also over the years there was some laptops with true desktop CPU and GPU built-in which is something that probably also doesn't happen for some time either which is totally normal with the crazy power requirements of nowadays hardware it would need a damn HUGE heavy cooler and a crazy big power supply 😂
those old high prices cards were really rare like limited edition e.g. some asus 7800gtx back then. if u look into professional area cards were like 10k. only difference was the driver and ecc vram. but if u look now, midrange cards are in the top price area. cpu prices? stayed the same. ram? kind of in the same range for entry/mid/high end tier selection, but now gpus? the same as the rest of the compenents! they can charge 1k+ for highend limited cards, but not with mass production. look for older cards priced much lower that were limited and selected, e.g. 7900gtx, gtx290, hd4870x2. that were 2 chips, 2 whole chips. now u pay 2k for only 1 cutted chip.
What a beast, I was on a GTX 970 back then I think, but I imagine having spent that amount of money and then seeing it carry you into 1440p gaming almost a decade later? I'd say that's a pretty good investement.
It is but dual GPUs aren't supported anymore by most modern games from ~2018 onwards since both nvidia and amd have dropped crossifre or sli. So you'll be running the card in single GPU mode most of the time nowadays.
I got a r9 390x 6 years ago for 350$. And I can run most optimized games at 4k maxed or 1080p-1440p max or decent on less optimized games. I am still running it right now, but I did order a 4080 waiting on it to come in..
I ran two R9 380s in crossfire from 2014 to 2020. Performance pretty much matched these charts. I remember blowing my console friend away by running Witcher 3 at 1440p 55fps Ultra (less Hairworks, of course.)
When AMD released this card they had a community event where they hosted a private battlefield 4 match with AMD employees and depending on what players did in the match they got a certain amount of raffle entries to win an r9 295x. We played something like 3 or 4 maps and I ended up having the highest raffle entries but unfortunately didnt win the card. I had a GTX 780 at the time which was a great card so I wasn't too upset.
@@eternalsphereoflight9004 It sure was... And the 295X2 was the devil in the form of a GPU (possibly the last time AMD beat Nvidia at the top). I remember my disbelief when it came out with benchmark numbers that smoked my GTX 690 to oblivion! Although I don't think the 295X2 would fit inside the SFF SilverStone SUGO SG03 I had at the time (which the 690 barely fit after replacing one of the front case fans with a Scythe Kaze Flex slim fan)... Those were the days (when I could still spend that kind of stupid money on graphics cards 😂)!
@@IOSam The 290 was basically a Titan with 4 GB for half the price, the 690 also had only 2 GB VRAM. The true competitor for the 690 would have been the 7990, which still had 3 GB. And the prices were much better, even with inflation you can't explain top GPUs cost 2K. Its not only the highend, also the midrange is overall more expensive now, you can hardly get more performance than you got years ago and then get shit products like the 6500 XT. In the up to 300 € range you can only buy used or get 4 years old products for the same or higher price (Turing 100 series).
I missed a Cyberpunk benchmark to see how it handles the heavyweights of today. Could probably do 1080p60 Medium if it used both GPUs efficiently. Actually a good video series: Test 10 year old GPUs(top or popular ones) on current titles.
I had to watch this. I handed down this card to my daughter a couple years ago. Still playing 1080p max settings on games. Fantastic card and still going strong, I can hear the air in the water loop when it starts up.
@@Johnjrambo75 You're talking about a return that's more gradual than mining Litecoin on a single GTX 1080. I'm sure this gentleman @Chris Beck is just fine with not replacing something that isn't broken. E-Waste and all that. This was an absolute flagship beast for it's time and not marketed to gamers. Edit: Alright, I have to bend knee a little here. My man in the video was showing his gauges pulling 530w while running.... Unigine... from 2010. Damn. Compared to modern cards that comparably handle 1080p for 300w less, it may be worth looking into in the future.
@@Johnjrambo75 I will be replacing it soon with my 5700 xt asus tuf card, which is in my current rig once I can get a hold of the red devil 7900 xtx. :)
Thank you! Hope I did not disappoint. The card surely still has something to offer, but with limited game selection that utilizes both cores, it's not that easy to live with. But, if it works, would be shame to not use... :)
i took apart a radeon pro duo 8gb, its a fascinating design but its so complex with custom made pumps and tube runs, its trully amazing seeing how much design and tought went into a product so niche and i have to say, even if its not that relevant anymore, i am glad to own one
I miss these days... 2010ish to 2014 had some of the coolest tech on the high end imo. As Also, my R9 270X 4GB did quite well back then, so this would have been absolutely insane.
I swear this video unlocked a deep deep memory that I had totally forgotten about of this card lol. Would love to find one of these cheap just to mess with
@@nexus_tech I love your videos on obscure and forgotten GPUs and hardware, keep the great content coming. I actually just found one for sale on a site for $150! trying to work out a deal as we speak lol.
@@jakestocker4854 These are great times, because you can get these cards cheaply now. For example, I bought a Fury Tri-X for 70 € last year. For that price the performance is still decent and wipes the floor with any other low budget option. I won't pay over 100 € for a used 1650/1060. The Fury has a bad reputation, but its a decent stepup from the 290X 4 GB.
@@eternalsphereoflight9004 that's actually funny you mention that because I had a PC business on the side a for a few years and about 2 years ago this guy I would buy bulk GPUs form for really cheap had something like 50-100 Fury's and no one wanted them even at super low prices. Only downside is they were all the longest model and wouldn't fit in a lot of budget options. I'd end up getting them for like $20-$30 a piece and would just grab 5 at a time when I'd buy other stuff from him since he was having trouble selling them. This was before the market for ruined by Covid and lots of stuff eaf cheap but obviously at that piece nothing was coming close lol.
@@jakestocker4854 20 $ for a working Fury? Thats incredible. And they should always come with a good cooler and have more performance than a 290. The only downside is their power draw, but for the price its fine. They can still run entry 1080p / older titles.
2014, those were definitely the multi-GPU gaming days. I was rocking dual HD 7970's in Crossfire and killin' it in Battlefield 4. Lived through and experienced some of the struggles of multi-GPU scaling; HD 7900 and R9-200 series were where we finally saw up to 90%+ scaling with the second GPU. When I had my Crossfire HD 5850, I think the second card only gave +50% or something.
Back in the day my friend had a 290x one day he phones me up really excited asking if he can borrow my dremmel tool he had found a 295x2 on Facebook for spares it was dead but he took the pumps off removed one from the loop then cut the shroud on his 290x and fitted the pump onto it . Apart from cutting a hole for the pipes to stick out the mounting brackets fit straight on
@@nexus_tech thanks happy new year to you too and keep up the videos your testing and information is not only entertaining but it's helping cut down on e waste by showing people even a 10 year old card in a 12 year old office system can still game
i still have mine, i ended up repasting it and putting new thermal pads on it, also i changed the radiator to a 240 and changed the coolant, it runs 3 degrees cooler at idle and never passes 63 degrees C at full load. love it.
@@arenzricodexd4409 no way! Fury X performed so much better once drivers were optimised. Even though it had so much hate in the mainstream for the people who owned them it was incredible, one of my favourite cards I ever owned. Very cool, quiet and super fast! 👌
@@arenzricodexd4409 That's highly debatable. Yes 4GB of VRAM was a partial limitation but 4GB of HBM would choke much later than 4GB of GDDR5 would so that wasn't so horrible. As for performance, Fury back then performed better than a 980 whilst costing the same (sometimes less), which made it an obvious choice. As for the 980ti and Fury X, it was skewed quite a bit towards the 980ti, which made the argument harder but AMD did improve the drivers (regardless of whether you view it as good or bad) and by maybe 2018, Fury X had pretty much caught up (albeit maybe too late).
Enjoyed the video. In fact, I just bought one on eBay to add to my collection. One thought though; I’d suggest you set the affinity through the task manager after loading the game. Most PC games, by default, employ all CPU cores and threads and this isn’t necessary on older games. Reduce the core / thread count to between 4-8 and this will eliminate the stuttering you are getting. Cheers.
Thks for the vid !♡ love kind of this content ☆! When tech channels nowaday is full of those expensive stuffs like " two thousand USD 4090 " , your clip like this somehow bring me a fresh air my friend ☆!
Glad you enjoy it! I'm not against new tech, it has it's place. But, there are so many older cards many do not even know existed. Someone needs to do it! hahaha!
I remember this gpu so well. This generation of gpus was around when I was first getting into computers. I remember being so fascinated by how crazy and powerful this gpu was. Amazing how well it still works.
it was the final nail. the writing is already on the wall when majority of modern game engine at that time start using tech that did not work well (or cannot work at all) with multi GPU tech.
Love seeing older hardware tested I remember wanting all the dual gpu cards back in the day but they were too expensive. But now I have a better job and I can buy stuff like a 4090. I find all the different designs and technical specs of gpu’s very interesting.
@@nexus_tech yea picked up a gaming oc 4090 it was that or a msi gaming trio seemed like they made up the bulk of the 4090s at launch. I really wanted a strix, master or surprim but those were impossible to get at the time. But I’ve been very impressed with the gaming oc it runs very quiet and cool especially the gddr6x and in games gpu stays in the 50s maybe hitting 60. Really hadn’t tried to push it to the max yet but got 3ghz out of the it. And I was surprised how efficient it was it pulls less power than my ftw3 3080ti in its oc bios. But I switched from a 750 watt psu to a 1300 watt just to be safe and for future upgrades. I was running a 5950x but put in a 5800x3d to help elevate the cpu bottleneck some but im waiting for 7000 series 3dvcache models for my next upgrade.
I found one of these a while back (somewhere in 2022), for 125€. Instead of paying top dollar during COVID, I got me this one to keep my system up & running. I just lóve this card! Combined it with a 3600XT & 32GB.
Nice video! I have this one, but with 16Gb of VRAM instead (8Gb per chip) It is a shame that all this cards was 4gb x 2, mainly because of this it struggles in 4k, but perfect for QHD resolution.
Even with the framerates pretty high I wonder what the frametime graph would look like, I can see stuttering on all tested games. It doesn't really matter how much fps you get if it doesn't feel smooth and responsive.
Exactly what I just commented. What's better is that AMD lied about it from 2010 to 2015 or so, denying it was a thing, until it was proven by frametime delivery testing and then they were like "awww dang you got us. We'll fix it sometime in the future." Truly hilarious that their astroturfing team pulled them out of the fire in subsequent years enough to re-trick people into buying their hardware.
Yep. Owned 1... watercooled it. Then.... I swapped it for Asus Ares 3. Basically same card but custom pcb. Did some bios memory mods to it with Gupsterg .... beast of a card.
Great review. Nice to see it being fully used most of the time. I think mine has an issue with the vrm fan, it only runs at 3000 rpm or stops completely with nothing between and it seems to go on and off randomly. By the sounds of it yours doesn't have this problem.
I've always been blown away with the R9 series of GPUs! My first enthusiast GPU was an R9 280X (which was such a great performer and was held back by my FM2 CP until my PSU killed them both); I've got a faithful ASUS R9 270X which was my primary GPU for ages, then got passed on to my Partner and now is our back-up GPU in case anything goes wrong, and I've had an R9 290X which honestly blew me away after I custom cooled it with a Raijintek Morpheus. R9 series - gone but not forgotten.
@@nexus_tech it was my own fault for buying a no-name PSU! Still have the 280X in the cupboard, thinking of giving it the heat-gun treatment! I upgraded from my 270X to an RX580 which I recently gave to my partner after finding a great deal on an RX6650XT - I'm a bit of an AMD fan if you couldn't tell! What's your favourite AMD gpu you've tested?
I remember having dual asus r9 290x cards paired with an i7 980x on my x58 board with a whopping 24gb of ram (at that time it sure felt like a lot) MAN was that a hot computer. The room temperature litterally went up everytime I pushed the pc in any way. later around 2016 i got the gtx 1080 , then in 2017 got anoher one fo sli... and had that until rtx 3080 was released.
You just destroyed me with the dropping of the fact that Alien: Isolation released in 2014. I was certain that it released in 2019 or something. OOF Happy New year mate! Thank you for the great videos, I really do enjoy watching them!
I am happy to own this card (I have my little dual GPU collection) never imagine this thing was that expensive, I have stored next to a R9 Fury X in a bucket full of Pc Fans
Only owned a semi-working 295X2 around 2018, it came without a cooler and the 2nd GPU was dead/semi-operational. I frankensteined the hell out of it with dual CPU tower coolers to test it out, when it worked, i didn't see temps above 70°C at full load. It looked janky, but it worked. I did/do still own my fav AMD...well, technically ATI, card, the Radeon HD 5970. Got both a normal 2x1GB Sapphire one and one o bought a few years ago, the XFX Black Edition, the 2x2GB edition. Got to say...there's no actual difference, atleast it's not that impactful.
They don’t make back plates for it but you can run a dual pump in line with the existing card because if those pumps go to fail, you have a pump that’s already running as a back up and still using the plates that are against the jeep used as a liquid hot plate, still keeping its liquid cooling functionality to be hole which is what I plan on doing in the next couple years when I start seeing the spike at 50 or close to that at idle I know it’s time to turn it into open loop
Asetek closed loop coolers *will* die of coolant fouling due to the use of aluminum radiators with copper coldplates. It's not a matter of "if" but "when". I'm amazed that worked at all.
I remember when i bought 2 of these in 2014 when building my system with the amd 8 core fx9590 piledriver, the comsumption of my pc alone with all watercooling not including the monitor etc was an eye watering 1450watts
Its crazy that in 1080P this graphics card achieved more frames than an RTX 2060 yet tech power up says its graphic performance is less than a 980ti and gtx 1660. Probably has to deal with the 8GB gddr5
Bought one during the summer of 2021 for $100. I was in the midst of flipping stuff at the time and sold my RX 5700XT to hopefully upgrade to a 6800XT by the end of the summer. Still needed a video card to video edit and damn, this card was a beast and was able to handle really intense workloads pretty decently. I still have the box for memorabilia reasons, but I've sold it off.
I owned this. Problem was, they didnt make the radiator and fans big enough and it would throttle. If it had a thick 240 or such it would have been glorious. I replaced the fans and push/pulled and it helped. I remember playing Thief or something with this and a 4790k i think and was pulling 770watts at the wall lmao. I sold it and bought a 980ti, then a 1080ti. Those were the salad days, fellas.
Hello mate, Thanks for sharing :) I saw no problems with my units, actually pleased with how relatively cool and quiet the card was, but for the power draw haha! Nice, are you still rocking 1080 Ti ?
I browsed /r/pcmr a few years ago and there was a guy who built a system with a 295x2, and an fx 9590 on a liquid cooler. He had a 1500w power supply, and after seeing just how power hungry one of these behemoths is, it was fully justified.
I miss Crossfire and SLi. It was a pain, but man was it rewarding when a game had good support those technologies. Seeing multiple GPUs chugging away in my case made me tingly.
i had one of these about 6 months ago . i bought it on ebay as non-working/dead, turns out the guy didnt have a big enough PSU when he tested it , worked flawlessly when i tested it with a decent 750w psu, used it for a week to properly test it ,then sold it to a friend of a friend it did indeed run very very cool and quiet
@@nexus_tech i paid £50 for it buy it now on fleabay,and was paid £250 (the going rate on fleabay for working ones) when it was fully tested ,to be honest i was going to keep it for myself but the guy was desperate for a gpu (this was when vegas were selling instantly for £500 and you couldnt find any gpu in the shops due to miners)
At one point during Black Friay, I was shopping around for a new GPU and found ebuyer selling brand new R9295X2's for £449.99! That was insane at the time. I'd been looking for a KFA 980 and was so tempted to spend an extra £60 and get the 295X2, but my 650PSU wouldn't have been too happy about it. Wish I'd taken the plunge now ofc. But I opted for a £220 GTX970 instead.
@@nexus_tech Yup. Hadn't seen a 295X2 for ages that was actually in stock, and then they suddenly appeared and at a sick price. Seriously considered it for days, but realized I'd need to spend £100 or more on a new PSU and that put me off. Right now I'm using an RX6700XT.
@Nexus Tech it was. the performance blew me away every new game ran above 60fps always wanted to get the 295x but thought it was way overkill 1080p 60fps was still the norm for PCs, consoles still at 30fps
@@nexus_tech oh yeah, it definitely caught me by surprise. I know using CF can be more of a hassle than it's worth these days but still awesome to see what it could push. Actual 4K gaming in 2014 is crazy thought
you've used SSAA on metro 2033 redux, no wonder it hit so much lower fps, it's literally supersampling so at 4K it was rendering 8K image back to 4K resolution
Great card even today. Still runs most of my older games at much higher fps (144 hz). As a bonus it becomes a nice heater for my gaming room. I am glad I got this card for free because it is unfortunate that dual cards; both SLI and Cross-link were quickly abandoned after this release. Luckily I still have my GTX 480 as a backup for heat purposes.
you aren't the only person having a hard time getting a 4k 60hz display out. I bought s second 290x to run in crossfire 2 or 3 years after the card came out. I ended up buying the active dp1.4 to hdmi 2.0 adapter from club 3d and had tons of trouble using it on these cards. I then sold those cards and bought a gtx 980 ti and that adapter worked perfectly on it. I do miss my og 290x a lot but it was definitely buggy as hell.
Thanks for sharing William! I looked up the issue and was surprized to see the amount of posts describing this issue. That has to be the worst attribute of this card! Nice upgrade - still going strong that 980 Ti ?
I got this card for 350$ when it barely came out and it was great. Wish they kept improving on the Dual GPUs with water cool tech. It did warm up the room in the winter lol. Even after switching to GTX1080, I do miss this specific card. Feels like there was lots of unused performance they could have squeezed out of the card even with SAM (My experience was one GPU mainly utilized per game). I had a dual CPU opteron and dual GPU (hydra) setup so this mix was not popular and the server hardware side is hardly supported at the time. Multicores are nowadays more popular, so I think there would be support now for better optimization (eg Dual Ryzen Threadripper CPUs + 295X2Hydra).
Thank you so much for this. It seems like most gamers nowadays started back when the RTX 10xx series came out.. so they have no idea how much flagship GPUs should actually cost. I had paid like $1000 for a 980ti Lightening years ago. It was amazing. I just paid $200 more over a decade later for a 4080 that crushes everything out there to a FAR greater degree than that 980ti did at the time. But I'm supposed to be angry because I guess I'm entitled to an $900 4080. Ya know.. reasons.
Kind of amazing how low their driver overhead is. I'm surprised by the performance in some of these games that people still use to benchmark modern high end GPUs. I hope my 6800xt holds up like this.
@@nexus_tech Blashpy! you should try to get two RX 6600 non-XT's & try mGPU on those. I'm pretty sure Deus Ex mandkind divided should work with those two RDNA2 cards. Then you can comeback & compare those to this R 295x2.
I forget that expensive GPUs existed even then. I just never even looked at them because there was so many great cards at lower prices then. Still it was only half the price of the Titan Z. I wish you a great 2023. I can see the improvements since your first videos.
Yeah, adjusted for inflation, the 295X2 is more expensive than the 4090. That's why unlike a lot of people, I don't necessarily hold the 4090's price against it. In my opinion it's the only card of the new generation that actually earns its price tag. The pricing of everything released after it sucks though.
@@Kryptic1046 it is still too expensive though. Especially where I live. The 4090 MSRP is about 2200 USD but sold for around 2500-3000 USD. This includes 25% VAT.
@@wertywerrtyson5529 - Yeah I agree that's too much. I definitely would not even consider it at those prices. It's a shame so much of the rest of the world gets bent over so hard on GPU prices.
Also for back then big prices would really have to mostly be a way over engineered GPU like the one on the video, they don't make a dual GPU die graphic card for a damn long time.
Also over the years there was some laptops with true desktop CPU and GPU built-in which is something that probably also doesn't happen for some time either which is totally normal with the crazy power requirements of nowadays hardware it would need a damn HUGE heavy cooler and a crazy big power supply 😂
those old high prices cards were really rare like limited edition e.g. some asus 7800gtx back then. if u look into professional area cards were like 10k. only difference was the driver and ecc vram. but if u look now, midrange cards are in the top price area. cpu prices? stayed the same. ram? kind of in the same range for entry/mid/high end tier selection, but now gpus? the same as the rest of the compenents! they can charge 1k+ for highend limited cards, but not with mass production. look for older cards priced much lower that were limited and selected, e.g. 7900gtx, gtx290, hd4870x2. that were 2 chips, 2 whole chips. now u pay 2k for only 1 cutted chip.
What a beast, I was on a GTX 970 back then I think, but I imagine having spent that amount of money and then seeing it carry you into 1440p gaming almost a decade later?
I'd say that's a pretty good investement.
It is but dual GPUs aren't supported anymore by most modern games from ~2018 onwards since both nvidia and amd have dropped crossifre or sli. So you'll be running the card in single GPU mode most of the time nowadays.
I got a r9 390x 6 years ago for 350$. And I can run most optimized games at 4k maxed or 1080p-1440p max or decent on less optimized games. I am still running it right now, but I did order a 4080 waiting on it to come in..
@@turboimport95 I want what this guy is smoking
@@turboimport95 dont spew bullshit please.
@@raibatsu He didn't say at what framerate or what settings, so it could be 10fps on low settings for all we know
I ran two R9 380s in crossfire from 2014 to 2020. Performance pretty much matched these charts. I remember blowing my console friend away by running Witcher 3 at 1440p 55fps Ultra (less Hairworks, of course.)
Thanks for sharing! Great idea, I bet that must have felt real good haha! What are you using now ?
When AMD released this card they had a community event where they hosted a private battlefield 4 match with AMD employees and depending on what players did in the match they got a certain amount of raffle entries to win an r9 295x. We played something like 3 or 4 maps and I ended up having the highest raffle entries but unfortunately didnt win the card. I had a GTX 780 at the time which was a great card so I wasn't too upset.
man a gtx 760 still works for 1080p and good for 720p
@@kurtlamprecht93 Hello cringelord
@@kurtlamprecht93 Considering that I could get an i5 2400 + gtx 760 build for less than $20, 720p is good enough for that price
@@kurtlamprecht93 that's your opinion
@@cxssv well, it's the truth
Ah 2014 tech... Good times!
Awesome video as usual man!!! Keep up the great work in 2023!!
Happy new year!
The 290 was anomalous, it handled 1080-1440p well for the rest of the decade. It aged incredibly well compared to the 780 Ti.
@@eternalsphereoflight9004 It sure was... And the 295X2 was the devil in the form of a GPU (possibly the last time AMD beat Nvidia at the top). I remember my disbelief when it came out with benchmark numbers that smoked my GTX 690 to oblivion!
Although I don't think the 295X2 would fit inside the SFF SilverStone SUGO SG03 I had at the time (which the 690 barely fit after replacing one of the front case fans with a Scythe Kaze Flex slim fan)...
Those were the days (when I could still spend that kind of stupid money on graphics cards 😂)!
@@IOSam The 290 was basically a Titan with 4 GB for half the price, the 690 also had only 2 GB VRAM. The true competitor for the 690 would have been the 7990, which still had 3 GB.
And the prices were much better, even with inflation you can't explain top GPUs cost 2K. Its not only the highend, also the midrange is overall more expensive now, you can hardly get more performance than you got years ago and then get shit products like the 6500 XT. In the up to 300 € range you can only buy used or get 4 years old products for the same or higher price (Turing 100 series).
damn card still holds up, nice review too. and not to sound weird but soothing voice too. defo subbing.
Thanks mate! Appreciated :)
Such a detailed and well presented review deserves to be more recognized. 1499 for a gpu was crazy back then and it still is now.
I missed a Cyberpunk benchmark to see how it handles the heavyweights of today. Could probably do 1080p60 Medium if it used both GPUs efficiently. Actually a good video series: Test 10 year old GPUs(top or popular ones) on current titles.
I had to watch this. I handed down this card to my daughter a couple years ago. Still playing 1080p max settings on games. Fantastic card and still going strong, I can hear the air in the water loop when it starts up.
Save yourself some money on electricity and buy your Daughter an RTX 3050.
@@Johnjrambo75 You're talking about a return that's more gradual than mining Litecoin on a single GTX 1080. I'm sure this gentleman @Chris Beck is just fine with not replacing something that isn't broken. E-Waste and all that. This was an absolute flagship beast for it's time and not marketed to gamers.
Edit: Alright, I have to bend knee a little here. My man in the video was showing his gauges pulling 530w while running.... Unigine... from 2010. Damn. Compared to modern cards that comparably handle 1080p for 300w less, it may be worth looking into in the future.
@Randy Marsh or an rx6600 for an actual performance jump. 3050 is embarrassing
@@Johnjrambo75 I will be replacing it soon with my 5700 xt asus tuf card, which is in my current rig once I can get a hold of the red devil 7900 xtx. :)
Thank you! Hope I did not disappoint. The card surely still has something to offer, but with limited game selection that utilizes both cores, it's not that easy to live with. But, if it works, would be shame to not use... :)
i took apart a radeon pro duo 8gb, its a fascinating design but its so complex with custom made pumps and tube runs, its trully amazing seeing how much design and tought went into a product so niche and i have to say, even if its not that relevant anymore, i am glad to own one
Glad you’re finally getting some recognition mate, keep up the good work 😊
Thank you kind Sir! I'm not sure what happened, dang! Likewise, let's smash this year!
I miss these days... 2010ish to 2014 had some of the coolest tech on the high end imo. As Also, my R9 270X 4GB did quite well back then, so this would have been absolutely insane.
Yup, hence existence of this channel. Thanks for sharing & stick around, there are some cool cards on test bench soon :)
you mean 2003-2016
@@Gamehighlight2023 eh, FPS guys weren't always big into having sexy wizards on their GPUs lol
I swear this video unlocked a deep deep memory that I had totally forgotten about of this card lol. Would love to find one of these cheap just to mess with
Aw! Glad to hear, thanks for checking it out :) Well, just takes time and some luck on eBay, it can be done :)
@@nexus_tech I love your videos on obscure and forgotten GPUs and hardware, keep the great content coming.
I actually just found one for sale on a site for $150! trying to work out a deal as we speak lol.
@@jakestocker4854 These are great times, because you can get these cards cheaply now. For example, I bought a Fury Tri-X for 70 € last year. For that price the performance is still decent and wipes the floor with any other low budget option. I won't pay over 100 € for a used 1650/1060. The Fury has a bad reputation, but its a decent stepup from the 290X 4 GB.
@@eternalsphereoflight9004 that's actually funny you mention that because I had a PC business on the side a for a few years and about 2 years ago this guy I would buy bulk GPUs form for really cheap had something like 50-100 Fury's and no one wanted them even at super low prices.
Only downside is they were all the longest model and wouldn't fit in a lot of budget options.
I'd end up getting them for like $20-$30 a piece and would just grab 5 at a time when I'd buy other stuff from him since he was having trouble selling them.
This was before the market for ruined by Covid and lots of stuff eaf cheap but obviously at that piece nothing was coming close lol.
@@jakestocker4854 20 $ for a working Fury? Thats incredible. And they should always come with a good cooler and have more performance than a 290. The only downside is their power draw, but for the price its fine. They can still run entry 1080p / older titles.
2014, those were definitely the multi-GPU gaming days. I was rocking dual HD 7970's in Crossfire and killin' it in Battlefield 4. Lived through and experienced some of the struggles of multi-GPU scaling; HD 7900 and R9-200 series were where we finally saw up to 90%+ scaling with the second GPU. When I had my Crossfire HD 5850, I think the second card only gave +50% or something.
"multi-GPU gaming days", brought to you by 3dfx in 1998 introducing SLI, and pretty much ending with this 295X2 and the Titan Z.
Back in the day my friend had a 290x one day he phones me up really excited asking if he can borrow my dremmel tool he had found a 295x2 on Facebook for spares it was dead but he took the pumps off removed one from the loop then cut the shroud on his 290x and fitted the pump onto it . Apart from cutting a hole for the pipes to stick out the mounting brackets fit straight on
Happy New Year and thanks for sharing, now that's awesome!
@@nexus_tech thanks happy new year to you too and keep up the videos your testing and information is not only entertaining but it's helping cut down on e waste by showing people even a 10 year old card in a 12 year old office system can still game
i still have mine, i ended up repasting it and putting new thermal pads on it, also i changed the radiator to a 240 and changed the coolant, it runs 3 degrees cooler at idle and never passes 63 degrees C at full load. love it.
Hello mate! That's wicked, thanks for sharing! I did think about it but in all honesty, the card never goes past 67 and is very quiet as is :)
FOLKS, LADIES AND GENTELMEN, that short introduction skit was fantastic, well done.
KUDOS to AMD, a great product launch :)
@@nexus_tech That was part of AMD's product launch? It's so much less cool now lol.
A stepping stone to the r9 fury x, one of the best GPUs ever made.
Fury X? Not saying it is a complete failure but it is one gpu that is hard to recommend for people to buy.
Oh yeah, that is coming on channel soon. Maybe two! :)
@@arenzricodexd4409 no way! Fury X performed so much better once drivers were optimised. Even though it had so much hate in the mainstream for the people who owned them it was incredible, one of my favourite cards I ever owned.
Very cool, quiet and super fast! 👌
@@arenzricodexd4409 That's highly debatable. Yes 4GB of VRAM was a partial limitation but 4GB of HBM would choke much later than 4GB of GDDR5 would so that wasn't so horrible. As for performance, Fury back then performed better than a 980 whilst costing the same (sometimes less), which made it an obvious choice. As for the 980ti and Fury X, it was skewed quite a bit towards the 980ti, which made the argument harder but AMD did improve the drivers (regardless of whether you view it as good or bad) and by maybe 2018, Fury X had pretty much caught up (albeit maybe too late).
@@ericyoung7007 not saying it was totally bad but hard to recommend to people.
This is literally gold. New subscriber man, keep up the great work 🥇
Awesome, thank you! Welcome :)
Enjoyed the video. In fact, I just bought one on eBay to add to my collection. One thought though; I’d suggest you set the affinity through the task manager after loading the game. Most PC games, by default, employ all CPU cores and threads and this isn’t necessary on older games. Reduce the core / thread count to between 4-8 and this will eliminate the stuttering you are getting.
Cheers.
This is the best Tech intro I have ever seen in my life lol
Awesome! KUDOS to AMD - that is how one launches a product!
Thks for the vid !♡ love kind of this content ☆! When tech channels nowaday is full of those expensive stuffs like " two thousand USD 4090 " , your clip like this somehow bring me a fresh air my friend ☆!
Glad you enjoy it! I'm not against new tech, it has it's place. But, there are so many older cards many do not even know existed. Someone needs to do it! hahaha!
I remember this gpu so well. This generation of gpus was around when I was first getting into computers. I remember being so fascinated by how crazy and powerful this gpu was. Amazing how well it still works.
Thanks mate :)I agree and looking forward testing other AMD dual GPU's, hopefully soon :)
Keep up the hard work mate, love the videos great seeing the channel grow. Proud 😁✊🏻
Awesome! Thank you, appreciate your feedback, more to come soon! :)
I had one of these. I got it half price. This thing was an absolute beast of a card.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing, I hope you enjoyed the video :)
Sucks that Dx12 and Vulkan basically killed SLI and Crossfire.
it was the final nail. the writing is already on the wall when majority of modern game engine at that time start using tech that did not work well (or cannot work at all) with multi GPU tech.
I seriously thought i was watching a parody movie. the intro was so well made
Thank you! Hope you enjoyed the video in the end, the intro was hilarious :)
Love seeing older hardware tested I remember wanting all the dual gpu cards back in the day but they were too expensive. But now I have a better job and I can buy stuff like a 4090. I find all the different designs and technical specs of gpu’s very interesting.
Thank you, appreciate it :) Did you buy the 4090 ? :)
@@nexus_tech yea picked up a gaming oc 4090 it was that or a msi gaming trio seemed like they made up the bulk of the 4090s at launch. I really wanted a strix, master or surprim but those were impossible to get at the time. But I’ve been very impressed with the gaming oc it runs very quiet and cool especially the gddr6x and in games gpu stays in the 50s maybe hitting 60. Really hadn’t tried to push it to the max yet but got 3ghz out of the it. And I was surprised how efficient it was it pulls less power than my ftw3 3080ti in its oc bios. But I switched from a 750 watt psu to a 1300 watt just to be safe and for future upgrades. I was running a 5950x but put in a 5800x3d to help elevate the cpu bottleneck some but im waiting for 7000 series 3dvcache models for my next upgrade.
The 4090 is only half a dual GPU card .. for the same price. Pure rip-off.
@@elmariachi5133 The 4090 is far ahead of anything in its class. Until something else can compete with it, it's stupid to call it a rip off.
@@jaketapper8910 It's stupid to justify anything without exception, no matter how extreme. everything in this world has it's measure.
old gpu testing ?? u are the best Thank you!
I found one of these a while back (somewhere in 2022), for 125€.
Instead of paying top dollar during COVID, I got me this one to keep my system up & running.
I just lóve this card!
Combined it with a 3600XT & 32GB.
Nice video! I have this one, but with 16Gb of VRAM instead (8Gb per chip)
It is a shame that all this cards was 4gb x 2, mainly because of this it struggles in 4k, but perfect for QHD resolution.
Happy New Year!
They made these with 2x8gb of memory? Which model?
@@coldvaper sadly they dont, it was a custom build. I replied bit more in the comments below, in the r9 390x2 thread
Even with the framerates pretty high I wonder what the frametime graph would look like, I can see stuttering on all tested games. It doesn't really matter how much fps you get if it doesn't feel smooth and responsive.
Exactly what I just commented. What's better is that AMD lied about it from 2010 to 2015 or so, denying it was a thing, until it was proven by frametime delivery testing and then they were like "awww dang you got us. We'll fix it sometime in the future." Truly hilarious that their astroturfing team pulled them out of the fire in subsequent years enough to re-trick people into buying their hardware.
@@CyberneticArgumentCreator ....what?
Great video. Look at these temps, really surprising. No matter the price, this card is winner of the 2014.
Thank you - much appreciated :) Agreed, perhaps it would be less of shock if the reference 290X was not that bad in first place :)
Yep. Owned 1... watercooled it. Then.... I swapped it for Asus Ares 3. Basically same card but custom pcb. Did some bios memory mods to it with Gupsterg .... beast of a card.
Thanks for sharing and wowers! Those are hard to come by! One day...:)
I thought you somehow got David Tennant to do that skit at the beginning
Wow I didn't even know this card existed! Thanks for the content
Great review. Nice to see it being fully used most of the time.
I think mine has an issue with the vrm fan, it only runs at 3000 rpm or stops completely with nothing between and it seems to go on and off randomly. By the sounds of it yours doesn't have this problem.
Happy New Year! Mine run great, assume you tried swapping the rad fan ?
Dude this card still runs like a beast!! Holy
I also remember the HD 7990 which was an unimaginable beast.
It really was! Thank you :)
7970 with 7990 bios for us cheapos that didn't want to pay full retail price for the same piece of silicon :D
I've always been blown away with the R9 series of GPUs! My first enthusiast GPU was an R9 280X (which was such a great performer and was held back by my FM2 CP until my PSU killed them both); I've got a faithful ASUS R9 270X which was my primary GPU for ages, then got passed on to my Partner and now is our back-up GPU in case anything goes wrong, and I've had an R9 290X which honestly blew me away after I custom cooled it with a Raijintek Morpheus. R9 series - gone but not forgotten.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing, that PSU has done some damage, dang! Those R9's were superb value for money, especially the 270X, what GPU you on now? :)
@@nexus_tech it was my own fault for buying a no-name PSU! Still have the 280X in the cupboard, thinking of giving it the heat-gun treatment!
I upgraded from my 270X to an RX580 which I recently gave to my partner after finding a great deal on an RX6650XT - I'm a bit of an AMD fan if you couldn't tell!
What's your favourite AMD gpu you've tested?
I remember having dual asus r9 290x cards paired with an i7 980x on my x58 board with a whopping 24gb of ram (at that time it sure felt like a lot)
MAN was that a hot computer. The room temperature litterally went up everytime I pushed the pc in any way.
later around 2016 i got the gtx 1080 , then in 2017 got anoher one fo sli... and had that until rtx 3080 was released.
You just destroyed me with the dropping of the fact that Alien: Isolation released in 2014.
I was certain that it released in 2019 or something. OOF
Happy New year mate! Thank you for the great videos, I really do enjoy watching them!
Sorry! Huh! Happy new year to you too! Glad to hear, I hope to bring more in 2023
I am happy to own this card (I have my little dual GPU collection) never imagine this thing was that expensive, I have stored next to a R9 Fury X in a bucket full of Pc Fans
Thanks for sharing :) Oh my, bucket full of PC fans and R9 Fury X hahah
@@nexus_tech thats true, no joke, because they are warercooled, I cant fit tenporarly where the “normal” GPUs are
Wait you only have 2330 subs?! You deserve way more dude. Take mine!
Interesting video, thank you very much for providing such good content !
Only owned a semi-working 295X2 around 2018, it came without a cooler and the 2nd GPU was dead/semi-operational. I frankensteined the hell out of it with dual CPU tower coolers to test it out, when it worked, i didn't see temps above 70°C at full load. It looked janky, but it worked.
I did/do still own my fav AMD...well, technically ATI, card, the Radeon HD 5970. Got both a normal 2x1GB Sapphire one and one o bought a few years ago, the XFX Black Edition, the 2x2GB edition. Got to say...there's no actual difference, atleast it's not that impactful.
Great 2.5K and 1080p card for next 10 years. ;-)
They don’t make back plates for it but you can run a dual pump in line with the existing card because if those pumps go to fail, you have a pump that’s already running as a back up and still using the plates that are against the jeep used as a liquid hot plate, still keeping its liquid cooling functionality to be hole which is what I plan on doing in the next couple years when I start seeing the spike at 50 or close to that at idle I know it’s time to turn it into open loop
Should be noted that due to inflation the $1499 price tag has the same value as an MSRP of $1853 Today
Asetek closed loop coolers *will* die of coolant fouling due to the use of aluminum radiators with copper coldplates. It's not a matter of "if" but "when".
I'm amazed that worked at all.
I own 3x of em, all perfectly fine so far. Might be luck ?
I have this card with EK water block on it in storage somewhere to donate to a museum in the far future.
Lol, thats a funny opening. I love it man.
I remember when i bought 2 of these in 2014 when building my system with the amd 8 core fx9590 piledriver, the comsumption of my pc alone with all watercooling not including the monitor etc was an eye watering 1450watts
Woah, these are cool! I remember I had the MSI R9 280x Twin Frozr and I remember seeing these online and really wanted on at the time!
Great video!
Would be interesting to see it overclocked, with how good your temperatures are etc !
why have manufacturers forgotten the lost of art of thermal pads on backplates these days
I don't know! Also, not all backplates are metal, would make sense to prolong life of memory modules ?
Its crazy that in 1080P this graphics card achieved more frames than an RTX 2060 yet tech power up says its graphic performance is less than a 980ti and gtx 1660. Probably has to deal with the 8GB gddr5
"Relative performance" :) Thanks for tuning in - hope you enjoyed
Bought one during the summer of 2021 for $100. I was in the midst of flipping stuff at the time and sold my RX 5700XT to hopefully upgrade to a 6800XT by the end of the summer. Still needed a video card to video edit and damn, this card was a beast and was able to handle really intense workloads pretty decently. I still have the box for memorabilia reasons, but I've sold it off.
Thanks for sharing :) Do you miss it? hah
remember i had 2 of these when they came out in one setup , overkill lol
Wow! What a setup! I'll be testing pair too, hopefully soon :) What are you on now?
@@nexus_tech nothing crazy , just a 12700K/3090 Loop with 3 rads
I owned this. Problem was, they didnt make the radiator and fans big enough and it would throttle. If it had a thick 240 or such it would have been glorious.
I replaced the fans and push/pulled and it helped. I remember playing Thief or something with this and a 4790k i think and was pulling 770watts at the wall lmao. I sold it and bought a 980ti, then a 1080ti. Those were the salad days, fellas.
Hello mate, Thanks for sharing :) I saw no problems with my units, actually pleased with how relatively cool and quiet the card was, but for the power draw haha! Nice, are you still rocking 1080 Ti ?
I remember seeing this back then as a high schooler and it seemed like the pinnacle of GPUs, oh how times haven't changed....
Mental engineering for this. I remember wanting to own the 4870X2 when I was a teenager. I had a 7870LE in Xfire.
I browsed /r/pcmr a few years ago and there was a guy who built a system with a 295x2, and an fx 9590 on a liquid cooler. He had a 1500w power supply, and after seeing just how power hungry one of these behemoths is, it was fully justified.
Had one back in the day. Put a block and custom loop on it. Beast at the time.
Awesome, thanks for checking out the video and sharing. What happened to that card?
i have it on my pc, 7 years old now, i rember that i bought it for 707euro. Super GPU, fast and cold.
That TDP is my household's overall power consumption 😭
And 8 Years later it's getting reborn at 4k with FSR2.1....
Future Video Title - "Why this generation of GPUs was the least selling of all time"
Just seeing this intro gave me driver flashbacks. Jesus was i stupid back then.
Such a high quality build of GPU, I only had a radeon 6850 1gb gpu at that time.
I got mine for 599 on new egg a year and a half after its release. It was a beast for crossfire enabled games.
I had the r9 290x back in the day and it was an amazing card, and my first time going to 4k resolution, but it ran hot AF.
wow that intro is really cool, haha
I use to run the R9 295X2 in Crossfire. Was a fun time.
Wowers! Sounds awesome, I'm expecting 10900X for X299 board in mid Jan and will 100% throw 2 of them for bit of fun :)
This card + FX-9590, and you were more than ready for the winter.
Never had a 295X, yet I had 290 Crossfire few years ago and I was surprised about those cards' performance!
My rx 580 also watching this video with me...
Awesome! Thanks for sharing and checking out the video :)
I miss Crossfire and SLi. It was a pain, but man was it rewarding when a game had good support those technologies. Seeing multiple GPUs chugging away in my case made me tingly.
i had one of these about 6 months ago . i bought it on ebay as non-working/dead, turns out the guy didnt have a big enough PSU when he tested it , worked flawlessly when i tested it with a decent 750w psu, used it for a week to properly test it ,then sold it to a friend of a friend
it did indeed run very very cool and quiet
Thanks for sharing, that's awesome and too bad for previous owner lol :) How much did you ask for it?
@@nexus_tech i paid £50 for it buy it now on fleabay,and was paid £250 (the going rate on fleabay for working ones) when it was fully tested ,to be honest i was going to keep it for myself but the guy was desperate for a gpu (this was when vegas were selling instantly for £500 and you couldnt find any gpu in the shops due to miners)
At one point during Black Friay, I was shopping around for a new GPU and found ebuyer selling brand new R9295X2's for £449.99! That was insane at the time. I'd been looking for a KFA 980 and was so tempted to spend an extra £60 and get the 295X2, but my 650PSU wouldn't have been too happy about it. Wish I'd taken the plunge now ofc. But I opted for a £220 GTX970 instead.
Oh my! 295X2 for under 450£ was a steal! Thanks for sharing - what are you on now? The 970?
@@nexus_tech Yup. Hadn't seen a 295X2 for ages that was actually in stock, and then they suddenly appeared and at a sick price. Seriously considered it for days, but realized I'd need to spend £100 or more on a new PSU and that put me off.
Right now I'm using an RX6700XT.
Holy heavens.. 500 watt power consumption is insane... at that time I didnt even have a 500 watt power supply..
There will be more...:)
i remember having a 290 then and thinking it was more power than I would ever need lol
This, WANT VS NEED! I think a R9 290 would have been the best value card out there in 2013!
@Nexus Tech it was. the performance blew me away
every new game ran above 60fps
always wanted to get the 295x but thought it was way overkill
1080p 60fps was still the norm for PCs, consoles still at 30fps
Seeing how well these modernish games that support dual GPUs run is nuts!
Totally! Solid results. I rarely show games that don't work with CF, this vid was to show off it's strengths, hope it worked :)
@@nexus_tech oh yeah, it definitely caught me by surprise. I know using CF can be more of a hassle than it's worth these days but still awesome to see what it could push. Actual 4K gaming in 2014 is crazy thought
you've used SSAA on metro 2033 redux, no wonder it hit so much lower fps, it's literally supersampling so at 4K it was rendering 8K image back to 4K resolution
Wow impressiv yes it was damn expensiv in his time but in Full HD Gaming still a Monster 🔥
This must be the card that made pc gamers always trash on console but couldn't affford it
In Metro, SSAA is Super Sampling. running at 4k with 2x SSAA is effectively running it at 6k. and 1440p 2x SSAA is effectively running 4k.
Thanks
YESSS love it man great video!
Appreciate it!! Happy New Year!
@@nexus_tech happy new year!!
Great card even today. Still runs most of my older games at much higher fps (144 hz). As a bonus it becomes a nice heater for my gaming room. I am glad I got this card for free because it is unfortunate that dual cards; both SLI and Cross-link were quickly abandoned after this release. Luckily I still have my GTX 480 as a backup for heat purposes.
I still have this card. I did go with a custom OCcool water block on mine, with a custom water loop as well.
I sweated that GPU so much back in the day, I even remember OC3D doing a Crossfire benchmark!
you aren't the only person having a hard time getting a 4k 60hz display out. I bought s second 290x to run in crossfire 2 or 3 years after the card came out. I ended up buying the active dp1.4 to hdmi 2.0 adapter from club 3d and had tons of trouble using it on these cards. I then sold those cards and bought a gtx 980 ti and that adapter worked perfectly on it. I do miss my og 290x a lot but it was definitely buggy as hell.
Thanks for sharing William! I looked up the issue and was surprized to see the amount of posts describing this issue. That has to be the worst attribute of this card! Nice upgrade - still going strong that 980 Ti ?
ah yes reminds me of the good old days when i had two 290x and a i7 970, now i got a 5800x3d and 6800 xt.
Nice! Thanks for sharing, I myself are looking for the 7000 series X3D chips :)
I miss the good old days of the multi-GPU's.
I got this card for 350$ when it barely came out and it was great. Wish they kept improving on the Dual GPUs with water cool tech.
It did warm up the room in the winter lol. Even after switching to GTX1080, I do miss this specific card. Feels like there was lots of unused performance they could have squeezed out of the card even with SAM (My experience was one GPU mainly utilized per game). I had a dual CPU opteron and dual GPU (hydra) setup so this mix was not popular and the server hardware side is hardly supported at the time. Multicores are nowadays more popular, so I think there would be support now for better optimization (eg Dual Ryzen Threadripper CPUs + 295X2Hydra).
Wow, what a legend.
Thank you so much for this. It seems like most gamers nowadays started back when the RTX 10xx series came out.. so they have no idea how much flagship GPUs should actually cost. I had paid like $1000 for a 980ti Lightening years ago. It was amazing. I just paid $200 more over a decade later for a 4080 that crushes everything out there to a FAR greater degree than that 980ti did at the time. But I'm supposed to be angry because I guess I'm entitled to an $900 4080. Ya know.. reasons.
WANT vs NEED ? huh! Thanks for sharing - the 980 Ti was a legend on it's own, really & soon to be tested
I remember you could get one of those cards for around 800-1000 here in the us a few months after launch
Thank you, that must have been a sweet deal then, I would buy one :)
Now, it's time to test Geforce 7950 GX2
Yes 🙂 I'm keeping my eyes open for one
My friends 295x2 went back to XFX 3 times because it kept melting the rad tubes and killing the pump.
Kind of amazing how low their driver overhead is. I'm surprised by the performance in some of these games that people still use to benchmark modern high end GPUs. I hope my 6800xt holds up like this.
Thank you :) Yet to get my hands on the high end 6000 series...
@@nexus_tech Blashpy! you should try to get two RX 6600 non-XT's & try mGPU on those. I'm pretty sure Deus Ex mandkind divided should work with those two RDNA2 cards. Then you can comeback & compare those to this R 295x2.