Introduction

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.

Packaging

We only received a card from AMD, without any accessories or its packaging. Rest assured that final retail cards will include the usual cables and adapters.

The Card

The Sapphire R7 265 looks very much like the existing Sapphire HD 7850 Dual-X. The cooler shroud also takes its inspiration from the company's R9 270. Dimensions of the card are 22 x 11.5 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI port. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.


One CrossFire connector lets you pair two of these cards up into a multi-GPU CrossFire configuration. The R7 265 can also CrossFire with the HD 7850.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back).

A Closer Look

Sapphire's card uses a copper baseplate with two heatpipes to keep the card cool. The heatsink's base also cools memory chips.


The card requires one 6-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is good for up to 150 W of power draw.


Our press sample came with the sticker on its antistatic bag instead of the PCB. Looks like quick re-branding to me.


Sapphire is using an OnSemi NCP4206 voltage controller on their card, which supports voltage control and monitoring via I2C.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by SK Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's Pitcairn graphics processor uses the GCN shader architecture. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, and comes with 2.8 billion transistors on a 212 mm² die.