AMD Radeon R9 M290X Crossfire vs AMD Radeon R9 M295X

AMD Radeon R9 M290X Crossfire

The AMD Radeon R9 M290X Crossfire (also known as CF or CrossFireX) is a combination of two high-end graphics cards for big and heavy laptops. Usually, each single R9 M290X renders a single frame in an alternating manner. Therefore, it may suffer from micro stuttering in low frame rates below 30 FPS due to staggering timespans between two frames (e.g., irregular delays between sequential frames). Compared to the Radeon HD 8970M CF, the R9 M290X CF offers exactly the same amount of shaders and the same clock rates.

The R9 M290X is based on the desktop HD 7870 Pitcairn chip with 1280 1D shaders and 80 texture units. The GCN (graphics core next) architecture supports DirectX 12 (FL 11_1) and OpenGL 4.3. More information on the features of the single R9 M290X can be found on the GPU page.

Performance

The Performance of two R9 M290X GPUs in Crossfire mode is just slightly below the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M SLI, but cannot compete with the GTX 880M SLI. Regardless, modern and demanding games like Battlefield 4 or Metro Last Light are still playable in high resolutions and max. settings with anti-aliasing.

Features

Features of the M290X include the new UVD3 video decoder for decoding MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash, Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos directly from the AMD GPU.

The M290 series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, each M290X can directly support up to 6 connected monitors using Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features of the M290 series include ZeroCore for reducing power consumption when the display is turned off. Power Gating, however, is not supported according to AMD. PowerTune allows automatic overclocking and underclocking of the graphics card as long as the GPU is within its TDP range. For example, the chip may be underclocked when running FurMark and OCCT, but will overclock in certain games like Lost Planet, Crysis or Resident Evil 5.

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it now allows audio to output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the CF combination is very high (2x 100 Watt) and thus only suited for very large desktop replacement laptops.

AMD Radeon R9 M295X

The AMD Radeon R9 M295X is a mobile graphics card that first appeared in the 5K iMac Late 2014 as an upgrade to the Radeon R9 M290X in the base model. The M295X is based on the new Tonga chip and therfore used the third generation of the GCN architecture. The power consumption should be between 100 Watt (like the 780M) to 125 Watts (680MX).

Our gaming benchmarks in the 5K iMac position the M295X usually somewhere between a Geforce GTX 880M to 970M. For demanding games in 5K however, the performance is not enough.