Sapphire Radeon R9 285 ITX Compact Graphics Card Review

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by Rob Williams on June 21, 2015 in Graphics & Displays

Finding a good graphics card for a small form-factor PC can be tough, but Sapphire helps make the decision a bit easier with a series targeting ITX builds. While we’re taking a look at the outgoing R9 285, it’s nearly identical to the R9 380, and as we find out, it’s worth a look.

Page 7 – Synthetic Tests: Futuremark 3DMark, 3DMark 11, Unigine Heaven 4.0

We don’t make it a point to seek out automated gaming benchmarks, but we do like to get a couple in that anyone reading this can run themselves. Of these, Futuremark’s name leads the pack, as its benchmarks have become synonymous with the activity. Plus, it does help that the company’s benchmarks stress PCs to their limit – and beyond.

3DMark

While Futuremark’s latest GPU test suite is 3DMark, I’m also including results from 3DMark 11 as it’s still a common choice among benchmarkers.

EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC - Futuremark 3DMark
EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC - Futuremark 3DMark 11 - Performance
EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC - Futuremark 3DMark 11 - Extreme

While driver improvements have put the ITX Edition 285 ahead of the MSI card I benched back in September, those improvements apparently don’t affect 3DMark. That being said, both cards do come ahead of the GTX 960, even if real-world tests didn’t reflect that all too often.

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Unigine might not have as established a name as Futuremark, but its products are nothing short of “awesome”. The company’s main focus is its game engine, but a by-product of that is its benchmarks, which are used to both give benchmarkers another great tool to take advantage of, and also to show-off what its engine is capable of. It’s a win-win all-around.

Unigine Heaven 4.0

The biggest reason that the company’s “Heaven” benchmark is so relied-upon by benchmarkers is that both AMD and NVIDIA promote it for its heavy use of tessellation. Like 3DMark, the benchmark here is overkill by design, so results are not going to directly correlate with real gameplay. Rather, they showcase which card models can better handle both DX11 and its GPU-bogging features.

EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SuperSC - Unigine Heaven 4.0 (1920x1080)

As with 3DMark, the GTX 960 somehow falls behind the R9 285, despite being faster in most of the real-world tests.

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Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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