AMD Radeon R7 265

The AMD Radeon R7 265 2GB brings more performance to the table for $149 and should be of interest to gamers running a single 1920 x 1080 display.

For the money, both cards offer decent bang for the buck, but the R7 265’s more powerful GPU and wider memory bus make it the more attractive option in our opinion. If you can muster the additional $30, it’s absolutely worth the investment, assuming the delta remains $30 by the time cards go on sale.

We'd recommend the R7-265 to the casual gamers with a monitor resolution of 1920x1080/1200 as absolute maximum. With the extremely modern games that are heavy on the GPU we do advise to look at something a hint stronger. For the casual gamer we can definitely recommend the product, and yeah... we are curious how the R7-265 will hold ground price/performance wise to the upcoming GeForce GTX 750 series from NVIDIA.

If AMD had the ability to release these cards NOW then I think this launch would have been considered pretty much flawless. As it stands, NVIDIA has a whole lot of time to plan and react with either new products of its own (or even just price adjustments).

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).

The Radeon R7 265's introduction, for now, puts AMD in a strong position in the £100-£120 category. Sapphire's implementation of the card is thoroughly decent, mating the GPU to a proven cooler that's both cool and quiet.

Our tests show that the Radeon R7 265 has the advantage over Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti boost in virtually all situations and performs roughly equal to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660. Considering the fact that on average, GTX 660 cards cost € 170, it's safe to say that the Radeon R7 265 offers an excellent good price/performance ratio, assuming that the card will actually retail at about € 130 later this month.

Meanwhile, anyone that wants an efficient, HTPC or SFF focused GPU should look to the TrueAudio-equipped, very affordable R7 260X. The R7 265 is nonetheless very appealing for anyone who doesn't want to step up to the R9-series or finds the other R7 offerings underpowered so it should do well provided we actually see it hit $149.