ASUS Radeon R9 295X2 Dual Graphics Card

The Radeon R9 295X2 Dual Graphics Card from ASUS combines two physical GPUs in a single, full height, dual slot housing along with a separate 120mm cooling fan that needs to be installed next to the card. With a combined core clock speed of 2036 MHz and 8GB of RAM, Radeon R9 295X2 is designed for gaming, video editing, or any other applications that demand a substantial amount of graphics processing power. Thanks to parallel processing, much of the workload that was once the exclusive domain of your computer's CPU can now be transferred to graphics card. This means, not only will 2D and 3D display graphics render faster and with more detail, the card will also greatly accelerate computationally-intensive tasks, such as transcoding video. To get this benefit, it will need to be used in conjunction with software that supports the same APIs (application programming interface) as the card. OpenGL 4.3 is a good example of such an API.

As noted, the R9 295X2 GPU feature two 1018 MHz cores for total clock speed of 2036 MHz when working in parallel. To move data to and from the processors as efficiently as possible, there is a total of 8GB of 1250 MHz GDDR5 RAM, 4GB dedicated to each GPU. Because each GDDR5 cycle moves four words of data at a stroke, the effective memory clock works out to 5000 MHz. The RAM for each GPU is connected to a 512-bit memory interface (1024-bit total), making it possible to achieve up to a 640 GB/s memory bandwidth.

Although a lot of the power in this card will be going to other things, it can drive displays too. It features one DVD-D (digital only) and four mini DisplayPort outputs. The card can be connected to a range of display types, including computer monitors, HDTVs, projectors, and many 3D and 4K devices. And it is possible to connect up to six displays to a single mini DisplayPort output when employing and MST hub, available separately.