The wait is finally over as AMD has now officially announced its newest flagship graphics card based on two fully-enabled 28nm Hawaii GPUs, packing 2816 GCN2 Stream Processors each and a total of 8GB of GDDR5 memory, the AMD Radeon R9 295X2.


As noted, the new dual-GPU flagship Radeon R9 295X2 features two fully enabled 28nm Hawaii GPUs, same ones that were behind the flagship single-GPU Radeon R9 290X graphics card. Each of the GPUs pack 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs and each GPU is connected via 512-bit wide memory interface to 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The GPUs are interconnected via PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express 3.0 x48 bridge chip.

Two fully enabled Hawaii GPUs on a single PCB needed a special cooling so AMD has opted for a hybrid liquid+air cooler, co-developed with Asetek. The liquid part of the cooler features two pump/blocks connected to a 120mm radiator while a 92mm center placed fan takes care of the memory, VRM part and the PLX bridge chip.

Although it has a significantly higher power draw, AMD has decided to go over the specification and only place two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors.

Performance wise, the new Radeon R9 295X2 is a great flagship graphics card if your are looking at UHD/4K or 5760x1080 Eyefinity gaming. The Crossfire scaling works perfectly in most games and the choice of water cooling solution co-developed with Asetek is certainly commendable as the R9 295X2 does not throttle down in any game and keeps both GPUs well cooled with minimal noise.

As rumored earlier, AMD is asking US $1,499 for the R9 295X2 and now the attention draws to upcoming Nvidia GTX Titan Z and its US $2,999 price tag.





Source: AMD.com.