AMD's new Radeon R7 265 is not all that new. It is based on the company's existing HD 7850 design we first saw in March, 2012 - that is almost two years ago! Nevertheless, the card is, just like its predecessors, an excellent choice for budget conscious gaming in the sub-$200 space. While I wouldn't call it an ideal 1080p card, it still has enough performance for decent gaming at that resolution if you don't mind sacrificing some anti-aliasing or detail levels. Compared to other cards, we see an 8% improvement over the original HD 7850 which didn't have Boost. The R7 265 is also 10% slower than the HD 7870 and stays 6% ahead of NVIDIA's GTX 650 Ti Boost, which will soon be replaced by NVIDIA's upcoming Maxwell-architecture-based GTX 750 Ti.
Based on old technology, the R7 265 does not bring any improvements in power consumption to the table, which is something NVIDIA is rumored to have worked on a lot with the GTX 750 Ti. The R7 265 draws around 100 W during gaming, which is quite good, giving it a leading performance-per-watt score in our current test group. Sapphire's custom cooler does a good job of keeping the card cool, but I wish it would have been quieter during gaming. The card only reaches 60°C under load, so it would have been very easy for Sapphire to go for a really quiet experience that runs no hotter than 65°C. The card is whisper quiet in non-gaming states, though, which will prove useful to people who also focus on productivity, or media-PC setups.
Just like on previous Pitcairn-based products, overclocking works very well, easily yielding an additional 20% in real-life performance. We've recently seen many cards with Elpida chips that didn't overclock well, but Sapphire chose to use Hynix chips to ensure memory on the card can reach decent clock speeds. However, these results are almost exactly the same as in our HD 7850 review almost two years ago.
AMD tells us that they expect the Radeon R7 265 to retail at around $150, which is a very competitive price for the card's performance. You should definitely consider the R7 265 if you are looking for the best bang per buck; I seriously doubt NVIDIA's upcoming cards can compete in that metric (history tells us so). On the other hand, I'm sure NVIDIA has a few aces up their sleeves, so hold off a bit longer if you can as their cards will soon be released, which will have the whole picture emerge. The exact same card from a user's perspective, just slightly different in performance but with the same features, you could also look for a used HD 7850 or HD 7870 to save some more money.