Test – XFX R9 285 Black Edition: Review (2021 still relevant) Specs | Settings | CPU Performance | Config | Advantage (Pros) and Disadvantages (Cons) and other important features that will help you make better decision.
After testing the rather convincing XFX R9 280 today I will tackle a brand new addition to the AMD range, the R9 285 from XFX still in Black Edition and therefore overclocked from the factory. The R9 285 is equipped with the brand new “Tonga” GPU responsible for replacing the “Tahiti Pro” of the HD 7950 R9 280, with the program reducing the memory from 3GB to 2GB, a memory bus going from 384 bits to 256 bits but integration of the latest technology from the R9 290 such as TrueAudio, management of Crossfire without connector, etc.
Every time AMD releases a new range, it’s time to celebrate because in general it means lower prices, but not this time! Indeed the R9 285 are available around 225 € which places these cards at the same level as the R9 280X. The performance as well as the consumption will not be changed compared to the old R9 280 either, which is a bit of a shame and may not work in favor of the very last R9 285, but we will see this more closely in the tests!
Specification – XFX R9 285 Black Edition
XFX R9 28( Double Dissipation Black Edition | |
---|---|
GPU | Tonga |
GPU frequency with boost | 975 Mhz |
Memory Frequency | 1450 Mhz |
Amount of memory | 2 Go de DDR5 |
Memory bus | 256 bit |
Connectivity | 1 x DL-DVI-I 1 x SL-DVI-D 1 x HDMI 1 x mini Display Port |
Dimensions | 22 x 11. x 3.81 cm |
Food | 2 x 6-pin |
Guarantee | 2 years |
The first thing that strikes here is the size of the card, with its 22cm it is smaller than an ATX motherboard which can be a huge advantage in small cases.
With its 975Mhz for the GPU and 1450Mhz for the memory, the XFX R9 285 Black edition offers an overclock of 6% for the GPU and 5% for the memory compared to the AMD specifications (918Mhz for the GPU and 1375Mhz for the memory). The 2 GB of memory on a 256-bit bus offers a bandwidth of 185.6 GB / s compared to the 240 GB / s of the XFX R9 280, a fairly significant drop, let’s hope that AMD’s improvements coming from the R9 290 will make up for it. this drop.
The price of the XFX R9 285 Black Edition is currently not known but should certainly gravitate around 200-220 €.
Box and bundle
The box is in all points identical to that of the XFX R9 280, we find the model of the card, the presence of 2GB of memory as well as indications on the cooling system used (2 fans of 9cm, Ghost 2.0 design of at XFX ..).
Underneath the cover there is a classic cardboard engraved with the XFX logo.
Once the box is open we fall directly on the manuals and a compartment containing the rest of the bundle.
By removing the first compartment we fall on the graphics card wrapped in plastic and surrounded by cardboard to prevent the vagaries of transport. We can see here that the box clearly comes from another model because the cardboard is not adapted to the small size of the card, a little effort could still have been made!
The bundle consists of:
- 2 adaptateurq 2 x 4-pin molex -> 1 PCIe 6-pin
- 1 CD de drivers
- Manuals
The bundle offers here the minimum vital to connect the graphics card, we will not remember this model as having a disproportionate bundle!
The map
Here is the beast! As I said above it is small and the 2 9cm fans take up almost all the space on the fairing. The build quality is good even if it is below the R9 280 version, indeed the plastic is thin, the cooling system is really small and only fits with the 4 screws around the GPU on the back, hopefully that the 2 fans do not make all these little people vibrate.
In profile we can see that the cooling system is very small compared to what we can usually see on cards of this type, indeed with 4 heat pipes it is responsible for cooling only the GPU, point of special attention given to memory and only a small heatsink on the VRMs on the card.
The connection is identical to the R9 280, namely 2 DVI ports, 1 HDMI port as well as 1 Displayport port
Power is supplied by 2 x 6-pin PCIe.
We undress the map
Here is the beast undressed! Not many radiators other than the VRMs on the left, hoping that it is enough to cool the heat of the latter which tend to heat up more than they should.
The cooling system is composed of a copper base and held by 4 screws, the great classic here.
The test platform
The configuration used during the tests is as follows:
- Processor : Intel Core i4670K @ 4 Ghz
- Motherboard : Gigabyte Z87-UD5H TH
- Mémoire: Kingston HyperX 4 x 2 Go 1600Mhz
- Disque dur: WD Raptor 150 Go
- Power supply : Seasonic X650
- Drivers: Catalyst 14.7 beta (AMD) & GeForce 337.88 (nVidia)
- Operating system : Windows 8.1 64bits
All games will be tested in 1920 × 1080 detail in full detail (except the TressFX on Tomb Raider), which is the current ‘standard’, the graphics cards used in testing are as follows:
- XFX R9 285 Double Dissipation Black Edition
- XFX R9 280 Double Dissipation (tested here)
- MSI R9 290 Gaming (tested here)
- HIS R9 290 iPower IceQ X² OC 4GB (testée ici)
- Sapphire 7950 Dualx @ 900Mhz
- Sapphire 7970 Ghz Edition
- MSI R9 280X Gaming (tested here)
- Asus GTX770 DirectCU OC
Consumption / Temperature
The consumption test was carried out under OCCT Power Supply which makes it possible to push the consumption of the components to the maximum, note that this value reflects the total consumption at the outlet of the machine and not the graphics card itself!
With 337 Watts the R9 285 from XFX is on par with the R9 280 with 5 small watts more than the latter. As expected the R9 285 is not here to revolutionize power consumption, and it shows here.
Contrary to a priori the XFX R9 285 black edition is very well cooled with 71 ° maximum in load, this figure is very good but given the small size of its cooling there is necessarily something that will suffer, perhaps the level sound? Let’s see this!
Sound level
Warning: Part to be taken with a grain of salt, unfortunately not having access to the appropriate equipment and using an android application to take the readings The measurements below are only indicative! The readings were taken 20cm from the graphics card.
Ouch Ouch, yes indeed there are no secrets! The small size of the cooling system coupled with a slightly low target GPU temperature (71 ° max on the test board) means that the fans run rather quickly (in the 2500RPM) and therefore noise pollution suffers. With 48 dB in charge, the card is really not pleasant to hear and will quickly become unbearable if you are not wearing headphones. Note however that these results are obtained under OCCT and that in game the noise pollution is less, but do not expect to be silent for all that.
Powertune
To start, let’s take a look at the Powertune 2.0 that equips the R9 285. Powertune is responsible for keeping the temperature of the processor, the consumption of the card below certain values. During overclocking it is mandatory to be able to modify all the possible settings in order to get the best performance, for Powertune and the R9 285 series it is possible to increase the consumption limit of the card by 20% (50% for the R9 290 / 290X). There will be 3 different tests:
- 3DMark Fire Strike with factory settings
- OCCT with factory settings
- OCCT with factory settings + 20% at consumption limit
3DMark Factory :
With the original settings Powertune has no influence and does not affect the GPU frequencies, see under OCCT.
OCCT Factory :
As usual OCCT manages to spit the lungs of our little graphics card and Powertune is quick to intervene and put some order in it. The frequency of the GPU decreases never reaches the original 975Mhz and stabilizes at 925Mhz, it is very likely that consumption is the cause of this decrease in frequency here, let’s see this by increasing the maximum consumption.
OCCT + 20% Consumption :
With a maximum consumption increased by 20% the frequency of 975Mhz is finally reached on for a while but Powertune returns to the load when the temperature reaches 71 °, perhaps this is the maximum temperature not to be exceeded (as a reminder it is 94 ° on the R9 290 / 290X).
3DMark Fire Strike
Under 3DMark Fire Strike the R9 285 does a little better than the R9 280 without standing out, nothing really convincing here.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 gives the R9 280 a 2 FPS with its 46FPS against 44 for the XFX R9 285.
Bioshock Infinite
More speaking under Bioshock Infinite the XFX R9 285 takes precedence over the old generation with 68 FPS against 61 for the R9 280, a real gain here.
Crysis 3
A draw in Crysis 3 with the R9 285 showing 45FPS, just like the R9 280 and the 7950.
Hitman Absolution
Once again the results are very tight here with an R9 285 showing the same performance as the R9 280, point of real winner!
Tomb Raider
And yes once again the results are equivalent, 58FPS for the R9 285 against 57FPS for the R9 280, we gain 1FPS in one game and we lose 1FPS in another, what suspense!
Summary of performance
In the end, and as the results have shown, the R9 280 and R9 285 are very similar with around 2% more performance for the R9 285 but only thanks to Bioshock Infinite which gives the latter a real advantage. We can say that the 2 cards have equivalent performance.
The maximum overclocking achieved, with the help of the 20% additional consumption is:
- GPU: 1050 Mhz (+75 Mhz)
- Memory : 1575 Mhz (+ 125 Mhz)
Unfortunately I could not increase the voltage of the GPU despite my various tests, nothing helped, anyway given the aggressiveness of Powertune in terms of the temperature of the card and consumption I really doubt that this would have changed great thing.
With 1050Mhz (+ 7.7%) for the GPU and 1575Mhz (+ 8.6%) for the memory, overclocking is interesting without being really exceptional, the card being already overclocked from the factory, there is still a little margin left.
Consumption
With overclocking and the increase in maximum consumption, we go from 337Watts to 375Watts (still taken for the total configuration) which is not really a surprise. Here we are far from the consumption of an overclocked R9 290 for example and the limitations of Powertune are not foreign.
Temperature
Always this famous 71 ° which returns even in overclocking, the card definitely does not want to exceed this temperature! This will still be felt in terms of noise pollution with the increase in consumption it is necessary to cool the GPU!
Sound level
Once again it hurts the ears, we go from 48dB to 50dB and the fans go from about 2500RPM to 2800RPM, you can say goodbye to the silence that reigns in your room!
Powertune
What will our little Powertune say with the overclocking of the XFX R9 285? Let’s see this under 3DMark and under OCCT:
3DMark :
The map behaves very well here under 3DMark and no sign of the stopper that Powertune is.
OCCT ;
On the other hand under OCCT the situation is not the same, in fact as soon as the card reaches 71 ° PAF the little Powertune arrives on its high horse and lowers the frequency so as not to exceed this temperature.
Results
With the moderate overclocking of the XFX R9 285, the games also show a rather moderate gain, a few more FPS in all the games without really revolutionizing the pleasure of the game. A gain of around 8% can be observed here, for around 40Watts consumption in addition, it is up to you to see if the game is worth the effort.
Here we are at the end of this test, what is the XFX R9 285 DD worth?
New arrival in the “R” series from AMD, it aims to replace the aging 7950 R9 280, which is not really easy as the performance is good and the architecture has been mastered for a few years. In the end, and despite its memory reduced to 2GB instead of 3GB on the R9 280, the performance (at 1920 x 1080) is a bit better and the R9 285 also benefits from all the latest improvements from AMD.
The build quality and quite good, the cooling system is on the other hand clearly undervalued compared to the XFX R9 280 DD which it replaces and this is felt in terms of noise pollution.
The price of the XFX R9 285 Black Edition is not yet known in France but should gravitate around 200 €, at least this price would be good seeing its some small defects, beyond and its competitors would certainly be more interesting. If you are looking for a graphics card for your gaming setup it goes without saying that the performance of the XFX R9 285 Black Edition will not let you down
A big thank you to Jérémie from Goldenfish who allowed me to do this test.