For the review today we are using the latest Nvidia Forceware 344.07 and AMD Catalyst 14.7 beta drivers. All of the AMD and Nvidia hardware in our reviews today used these drivers.
We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by DINOPC and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.
We include test we have run with other graphics cards in the last 10 days. We test at 1080p and 1600p and some game engines we try to push to 4k – just to see how the hardware fares.
Comparison cards:
Asus GTX780 Ti Direct CU II OC (954mhz core / 1750 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Reference (1126 mhz core / 1753mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC (1040 mhz core / 1300 mhz memory)
MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G (1140 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Palit GTX780 6GB (902 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
Asus GTX970 StriX OC (1114 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1260 mhz memory)
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 2014
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
Why are many reviewers of the R9 285 card saying that it has 32 ROPs when it has 64 ROPs? (GPU-Z) its funny because they state that it has 32 ROPs and they have a picture of GPU-Z saying 64 in the same page lol
The fact that the Sapphire card is able to consume so much more power and stay cool and quiet while being that size really is quite impressive, and I hope it means we see more high-end cards in that form factor. But yeah also means the new 970 ITX that’s coming will likely stomp it quite badly, 20nm can’t come soon enough!
970 is in other range of performance, but product and price too. it would be more comparable to a itx 960 or 950 ti.
That is very fair and I must admit I didn’t even consider what the price difference is, I was mainly thinking from a performance in ITX perspective.
I have this exact problem: GPU-z the latest version says 32 ROPs whereas most of the online reviews of the R9 285 ITX state 64 ROPs. Does anyone have a clue what the issue is here? Software bug in GPU-z? Thanks.