 For the ultimate no compromises compact gaming PC look no further than the obsidian series 250d from Corsair click now to learn more. Thanks to our generous monthly contributors we have a fun money budget to do videos about stuff that we don't get a sample of sometimes so we spent about a hundred of it paying two-way shipping for this monstrosity so we could borrow Austin's AMD r9 295 x2 dual GPU behemoth of a graphics card for some benchmarking fun. We'll kick things off with specs and I actually think the most interesting thing about them is how uninteresting they are. Normally when we get a dual GPU graphics card we get to analyze how many CUDA cores or stream processors were cut and hypothesize about how the manufacturer decided what reduced clock speed to run at to stay within power and thermal limits. Not here. This card is just a big pile of aluminum shrouded fully backplated sexiness with two flat out r9 290x hawaii core GPUs on it each with all 2816 stream processors all 4 gigs of glorious video memory connected via a non-nerf 512 bit memory bus and the best part is both of them are actually rated at slightly higher boost clocks compared to an r9 290x which due to its unique cooling solution it even manages to sustain consistently unlike a stand alone r9 290x. Wow. We've also got the usual AMD technologies including zero core which turns off the second GPU at idle to save power, direct x11 and future direct x12 support, AMD mantle support, true audio, ifinity with support for up to 5 direct attached displays and more with mst hubs, bridgeless crossfire with up to 2 of these monstrosities, capable of running a 4 GPU setup and excellent open cl compute performance. But that's all normal stuff. What about the challenges that had to be overcome to build this bad boy? Aside from designing its complicated PCB and beef-tastic power delivery circuitry which you'll find under a dedicated copper heatsink under its own dedicated red LED fan, AMD had to find a way to cool a card that they have rated at a massive 500 watt TDP. I mean that is well beyond any previous reference graphics card. The most we've seen before is 375 watts and it meant we were either going to end up with a leaf blower attached to the card or a pretty exotic cooling solution. Fortunately AMD went with the exotic cooling solution route and that's what you see here. This card has an all-in-one liquid cooler from Asatec included out of the box. It's not the world's most exceptional AIO with a single 38 millimeter thick 120 millimeter radiator and dual block slash pump combo unit design. And in fact it's not even the first time a dual AMD GPU card has been handled this way. I'm looking at you Ares too. But the remarkable thing about it is that this is the first reference card from AMD or Nvidia that uses a solution like this. So what are the pros and cons of this unique and expensive card aside from the price? Advantage number one, with water we can carry heat away from the GPUs much more quickly than we can with air to a large heat exchanger, in this case a radiator, with lots of surface area that we can cool with large relatively quiet fans and in practice it works. The R9 295X2 runs at about 70 degrees under load, well under the 95 degrees of a 290X. Advantage number two, because this radiator can be located some distance away the heat can be exhausted directly from the case and the card can remain a reasonable size so it will actually fit in a fairly standard albeit longer than usual at 305mm two slot form factor. So more space and cooler operation for your other components. Sounds dandy right? Well hold on. Drawback number one, to power this sucker you need two PCI express 8 pin power connectors and not just any old ones. You can't use daisy chained plugs that lead to a single connector on your power supply and you'll even need to check which power supply connectors are wired up to which 12v rails on a multi rail power supply in your PSU's manual. Ensure you've got at least 28 amps on each of them to correctly power the card or you could be looking at a fire situation. Drawback number two is the form factor. It'll fit in your PCI express slots for sure but you'll need extra clearance between the card and the side panel for the tubing to come out, extra clearance behind the card for its over 12 inch length and you'll need a nearby 120mm fan mount with 65mm of clearance for your liquid cooling radiator and fan. Fortunately AMD includes long enough tubing that you should be able to rear or top mount it in most cases. Drawback number three is heat and power consumption. Yes the heat is managed but it's still being kicked out into your room which might be a boon in the winter but isn't so much fun in the summer. And even compared to a GTX 780 Ti SLI setup this card consumes between 100 to 200 watts more power in games which if you're in California and you game for about 3 hours a day will amount to about an extra 5 to 7 dollars on your monthly power bill. And then of course the last drawback is price but if you didn't know this card was going to be expensive then stop dreaming. So now after all that the last thing you're probably waiting for is performance but before I hand off to Luke I would like to take a moment to genuinely thank AMD for making this card. People complaining about all those crazy requirements I outlined before and how much of a crazy Frankenstein science fair experiment of a solution this card is compared to most products that actually get a consumer release need to go away and go buy something that was made for them. What AMD has delivered here compared to their competitors like Intel and Nvidia is the first product that I've seen in years that I can say is truly enthusiast grade. But what does enthusiast grade mean to me? To me it doesn't mean fast or elegant necessarily. I mean it's great if it can be fast and elegant but what to me it means is pushing the boundaries of what's possible with modern engineering and manufacturing and if that results in a little bit of hassle during the setup process and a little bit of heaven forbid actual research and planning before you can use it then so be it. I've been calling for Intel to do away with their 130 watt TDP limit and give us a proper enthusiast grade extreme edition for ages something that requires water cooling with a top grade motherboard to work properly but that legitimately stomps on the consumer grade offerings available and they just don't do it. As it is an extreme edition costs hundreds of dollars more than a K and delivers a couple percent better performance. It's fast yeah but it's not actually tailored to the enthusiast. Nvidia does slightly better in this regard they do enable partners like EVGA to build crazy stuff like the twin series and kingpin series cards but AMD has upped the ante by creating a reference product that really pushes the boundaries and I applaud them for it. Over to you Luke. Alright guys so today we're testing an AMD 295 X2 versus dual 780 Ti's from Nvidia. For the AMD card I've done my overclocking settings in AMD overdrive over overclocked the core by about 8% and I've overclocked the memory by 135 remember that's times by four when calculating the overall memory bandwidth. For the Nvidia cards I've only changed their core speed and I've increased it by 250 this is because of auto balancing power rail so I don't really mess with the memory too much. If you guys want to see all the rest of my overclocking settings be sure to check the overclocking dock linked below in all of these graphics cards comparison videos and let's move on to see how those results end up. In Bioshock Infinite and Thief these cards trade back and forth and it's not by huge amounts so it's not too surprising. And then in Assassin's Creed 4 we see that there was a bottleneck somewhere else in the computer. I wanted to show this result because it shows that they perform very well on their own but then it's not that great in comparison because again there's something else in the computer slowing these cards down. If you guys want to learn more about bottlenecks be sure to check out Linus's Tech Quickie episode Fast As Possible talking about bottlenecks and all that kind of stuff you can learn about bottlenecks there. In terms of general observations I'm fairly happy with this card. When I first heard it announced I expected it to be 1. Loud and 2. Really, really hot but it's neither. In AMD Overdrive it caps its temperature at 75 degrees and its audible level is pretty consistent through the whole time of using it due to that external radiator so I'm quite happy about those things. Alright guys thanks for watching. Please don't forget to like and dislike this video and leave your comment down below. If you guys do want to comment on this video on the forum I would highly suggest doing that while you're on the forum if you get annoyed by ads or anything like that. Be sure to become a contributor as all those ads will disappear immediately. It's quite fantastic. And just so you guys know we do sell shirts as well. There should be down in the description below and I know there's a new I'd mount that one with a cooler on it that a lot of people are freaking out about on Twitter so that should be cool. There's something cool coming in the works in the shirt department fairly soon that Edsel is going to be cooking up so pay attention to that. I will see you guys next time. Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe.