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AMD’s GTX 760 Killer? MSI Radeon R9 285 Twin Frozr IV Review
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AMD Radeon R9 285 Graphics Card
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by Rob Williams on September 2, 2014 in AMD-Based GPU

It may be a year late, but with its Radeon R9 285, AMD claims that it’s come up with the perfect recipe for taking on NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 760 – a card that hasn’t seen much of a price drop since its release. Featuring an updated GCN architecture, the R9 285 is an interesting card even outside of its elected battle, so let’s check it out.

Game Tests: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4

Given the sheer number of titles in the Assassin’s Creed series, it’s a little hard to believe that the first game came out a mere six years ago. You could definitely say that Ubisoft hit the ball out of the park with this one. To date, we’ve never considered an AC game for benchmarking, but given the number of graphical goodies featured in the PC version of Black Flag, that trend now ends.

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag - 1920x1080

Manual Run-through: The saved game starts us not far from the beginning of the game under a small church which can be climbed to synchronize with the environment. To kick things off, I scale this church and rotate the camera around once, making sure to take in the beautiful landscape; then, I climb back down and run all the way to the water (the top of this small church and the water can be seen in the above screenshot).

Note: For some reason, Ubisoft decided to cap the framerate to 60 FPS in Black Flag even if Vsync is turned off. For most games, this would ruin the chance of it appearing in our benchmarking, but because the game is graphically intensive, I’ve chosen to stick with it, as at higher resolutions, reaching 60 FPS is a perk that will belong only to high-end graphics cards.

MSI Radeon R9 285 Twin Frozr IV - Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (1920x1080)

MSI Radeon R9 285 Twin Frozr IV - Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2560x1440)

All five of the graphics cards we tested here can handle AC IV: Black Flag without issue at 1080p and max detail, but once 1440p is brought in, it separates the men from the boys. Well, kind of – they all still perform quite well. Interestingly, it’s an AMD card that tops the chart here, with the R9 285 sitting in the middle – and considerably ahead of the R9 280 from Sapphire that I took a look at a month-and-a-half ago (but used older drivers for the sake of better comparison against the GTX 760).

Battlefield 4

Thanks to the fact that DICE cares more about PC gaming than a lot of developers, the Battlefield series tends to give us titles that are well-worth benchmarking. Battlefield 3 offered incredible graphics and became a de facto benchmark immediately, so it’s no surprise, then, that BF4 follows right in its footsteps.

Battlefield 4 - 1920x1080

Manual Run-through: The Singapore level is the target here, with the saved game starting us on an airboat that must be driven to shore, where a massive battle is set to take place. I stop recording the framerate once the tank makes its way to the end of this small patch of beach; in all, the run takes about 3 minutes.

MSI Radeon R9 285 Twin Frozr IV - Battlefield 4 (1920x1080)

MSI Radeon R9 285 Twin Frozr IV - Battlefield 4 (2560x1440)

At both resolutions, AMD’s R9 285 pushes past NVIDIA’s GTX 760 a wee bit, and it basically matches the R9 280 perfectly.


  • xOptix78

    Thankfully this thing doesn’t make my 280X “obsolete” as the model number might suggest (280, 280X, 285, etc).

    With this new architecture it’ll be interesting to see what NVIDIA comes back with and when.

    • http://techgage.com/ Rob Williams

      AMD should have just called it the 370X or something. Of course, I guess NVIDIA did stick to the 700 series when it unveiled Maxwell, so…

  • The Focus Elf

    I respect the Editor’s Choice award, but I am not putting anything as dumb-sounding as a Frozr in anything. It sounds like a kids breakfast cereal.

    • http://techgage.com/ Rob Williams

      I thought similar things each time I wrote it. The card is great though, nonetheless :P

      • The Focus Elf

        You pay a premium for these cards, can’t they afford the “e”? Or even an “n?” SMH.

  • Casecutter

    I think when you say the 760 released a $250 that a little misnomer as not many went for that they all went 10-15% higher being Custom OC’s. So far 285’s which are all customs have been $250 on Egg no price premium that I’ve seen. The 760 hasn’t ever truly had any meaningful price movement. Nvidia set the MSRP of that GK104 at the lowest boundaries on those little smurf boards they could muster, and today they (and AIB) truly can’t work that price lower without cutting into margins. I perceive the GK104 production is fully vetted so today they see mainly 770’s. Being they don’t get all that many true “geldings”, they see it not worth fusing off the Cuda count to keep those higher clocked 760 variant going… Better to sell them 770’s at $275 and up. Nvidia will keep the 760 but there will be less and less of the AIB custom OC, and the move the original spec stuff on more low cost PCB’s. On those you might see lower prices but by that point it won’t be a factor. Nvidia is just going to leave the gate open and the let the 760 go to pasture, its held a good place.

    • http://techgage.com/ Rob Williams

      “that’s a little misnomer as not many went for that they all went 10-15% and even higher being Custom OC’s”

      That’s the case for most GPUs – even AMD’s. This seems to be a nice exception.

      “Did we ever see the 760 ever truly had any meaningful price movement”

      Not really. Like we discussed before, NVIDIA has really been able to price what it’s wanted. I did take a look at an EVGA GTX 760 a few months ago that was $250, though, and as far as I’m aware it was available for that price for a while before that.

      Ultimately, with the mine craze over (I think?), I hope the next generation can be a little more normalized with regards to pricing. It’s especially be interesting to see how NVIDIA’s 980/970 will fare once they drop.