Our AMD Radeon R7 & R9 Reviews

I wanted to let everyone know that we do have reviews in the works for the just announced Radeon R7 & R9 series. I have an R7 260X 2GB, R9 270X 2GB and R9 280X 3GB in my position. I knew that AMD was having the Tech Day broadcast from Hawaii, but was surprised to learn soon after that I would be receiving cards. I actually got the cards delivered before I got the emails from AMD. Following the cards there was a press briefing last week, along with the usual slideshow press deck.

Prior to this I was neck deep in two articles for the WSGF. The first article was looking at the gaming power of the latest AMD A10 APUs. I ran each chip through Geekbench, Cinebench, as well as a suite of gaming titles. In total I ran 14 tests on 9 titles. The second was a large CPU shoot-out to look at a range of CPU/APUs and their real-world impact on gaming. I tested 3 Intel CPUs, 4 AMD CPUs and 3 AMD APUs - each with three video cards. I tested three titles, each at 1080p and 3x1080p Eyefinity. In total I ran 180 gaming tests, in addition to Geekbench and Cinebench.

While I would have loved to jump into the new GPUs, I was simply too deep into the testing cycle on these existing platforms. That testing has completed, and I have updated my test rig to boot. I have migrated to an AMD FX-8350, and upgraded to a 480GB SSD as my primary drive.

While I'm working on the text for those articles, I will begin updating the drivers on the new rig and digging into the new GPUs. I will be testing at 1080p (and possibly 2560x1080 21:9 on the lower end card). I will then be testing 1080p Eyefinity, as well as UHD 4k (using a 2x2 Eyefinity group). Additionally, I've purchased an IR heat gun, an SPL sound meter and a Killiwatt power usage monitor to help provide a more well rounded look at the cards.

Thanks for your patience, and please let me know if there are any particular titles you would like for me to test. I probably can't get to everything up front, but I do plan to circle back around and do more articles on "best playable settings" for games on these cards.