So I was watching the AMD Twitch Stream the other day. They were livestreaming Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare... and some of their tech people were doing a Q&A at the same time. I decided to send them an Origin "friend request" so I could play against/with them during their stream, they accepted. Well I was gaming with them for about an hour and then they started talking about a contest for a giveaway of a new R9-285, all we had to do was send out some Tweet about why we use AMD hardware... I sent my Tweet. Next thing I know my Twitter starts getting loud with retweets, then @AMDRadeon and some other gamer type people started to follow me... I was like WTF? Then I got the Tweet... I had won it. Anyways, how reliable will the card be since it is so new? Will there be driver issues or whatnot? If my rig is stable now... should I wait to install the 285 until I am certain it will not blackscreen me... I don't feel like removing drivers just for nothing. https://twitter.com/AMDRadeon/status/512365622920237056
Nice, enjoy! If you just change from one AMD card to another, it will be just fine.
It will have a little less performance than the R9 280 even though it only has a 256 bit memory bus and 2GB of vram. It uses less power and has a floating clock integer coupled with decent memory efficiency to almost hold it's own with the 280 & 280Xs. The card was designed to kill the Nvidia GTX 760 ... and it does in most games. And free is the best price I've seen ... enjoy!
I found the original livestream... AMD was celebrating the 1 year birthday of Mantle. It's cool when they give away prizes. http://www.twitch.tv/amd/c/5143305 That's me on top of the "Plants" leaderboard at 01:39:56 of the vid.
The R9 285 performs about the same or slightly better than the R9 280. The 256 bit memory interface is supposedly improved and optimized as well.
The R9 285 should work just fine. AMD, as well as any other company, always do some internal testing so that when they release the card, it'll perform well unless noted.
Damn lucky, enjoy than R9 285.
Thank you Sensei
SAPPHiRE R9-285 Dual-X OC version is what AMD sent me... here's a little video I made during installation, it is a very nice piece of hardware.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYsHEcQnMgU
Congrats