Introduction

Radeon R7 265 Market Segment Analysis Radeon

HD 7790 Radeon

HD 7850 Radeon

R7 260X GTX

650 Ti Boost Radeon

R7 265 GeForce

GTX 660 Radeon

HD 7870 Radeon

R9 270X GeForce

GTX 660 Ti GeForce

GTX 760 Shader Units 896 1024 896 768 1024 960 1280 1280 1344 1152 ROPs 16 32 16 24 32 24 32 32 24 32 Graphics Processor Bonaire Pitcairn Bonaire GK106 Pitcairn GK106 Pitcairn Pitcairn GK104 GK104 Transistors 2080M 2800M 2080M 2540M 2800M 2540M 2800M 2800M 3500M 3500M Memory Size 1024 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB 2048 MB Memory Bus Width 128 bit 256 bit 128 bit 192 bit 256 bit 192 bit 256 bit 256 bit 192 bit 256 bit Core Clock 1000 MHz 860 MHz 1100 MHz 980 MHz+ 925 MHz 980 MHz+ 1000 MHz 1050 MHz 915 MHz+ 980 MHz+ Memory Clock 1500 MHz 1200 MHz 1625 MHz 1502 MHz 1400 MHz 1502 MHz 1200 MHz 1400 MHz 1502 MHz 1502 MHz Price $115 $150 $130 $130 $150 $190 $190 $200 $260 $240

The sub-$200 market of the past couple years has emerged as AMD's fiefdom. The upper end of the company's Radeon R7 200 series and the Radeon R9 270 series are leading the company's lineup there. But NVIDIA's plans to stir things up with the upcoming GeForce GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti have forced AMD into preemptively focusing on this market segment between the $130-ish R7 260X and $180-ish R9 270. A pretty deep gorge if you ignore previous generation options such as the HD 7850 and HD 6870, it calls for a re-branding of the former.AMD's new Radeon R7 265 is AMD's explanation for giving the R9 270X and R9 270 an identical core configuration of the 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon, with minor clock-speed differences. The new card has a lot in common with the Radeon HD 7850 from the previous generation in that it features 1,024 of the 1,280 stream processors and just 64 of the 80 TMUs present on the chip. Also featured are 32 ROPs and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The core is clocked to 925 MHz and the memory runs at 5.60 GHz (GDDR5-effective), both of which are higher than the 860 MHz core and 4.60 GHz memory the HD 7850 originally launched with. At US$149, the R7 265 is AMD's attempt to patch up the gap between the R7 260X and R9 270.We have with us a Sapphire-branded Radeon R7 265 2 GB graphics card. It is based on the aging HD 7850 Dual-X.