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AMD Radeon R9 M395X

AMD Radeon R9 M395X: Review of an Outdated Giant for Enthusiasts in 2025

April 2025

Introduction

In an era where ray tracing and neural network technologies have become the norm, the AMD Radeon R9 M395X serves as a reminder of a time when gaming performance was measured in teraflops rather than RTX frames. Released in 2015, this graphics card was once the top option for mobile workstations and gaming laptops. In 2025, it still retains a niche audience. Let's explore who might find it useful today.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The R9 M395X is built on the 3rd generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture, which at the time provided breakthroughs in energy efficiency and parallel computing.

Manufacturing Process: It is produced using a 28nm process by TSMC. By modern standards, this is a "dinosaur" — new GPUs utilize 5nm and 4nm nodes.

Unique features:

- Mantle API — the predecessor to Vulkan, optimizing hardware interaction.

- FreeSync — adaptive synchronization that remains relevant today.

- Eyefinity — support for multi-monitor configurations (up to 6 displays).

Missing: Hardware ray tracing (RT Cores), and no equivalents to DLSS/FSR 1.0+. The card is incompatible with FSR 3.0 and newer due to driver limitations.

2. Memory

Type and Size: 4GB GDDR5 — modest for modern games, but sufficient for older projects and basic professional tasks.

Bus and Bandwidth: A 256-bit bus provides 153.6 GB/s. For comparison, modern cards with GDDR6X achieve over 900 GB/s.

Impact on Performance: In games from 2015 to 2020 (e.g., The Witcher 3, GTA V), the memory size is enough for medium settings at 1080p. In newer projects (2023–2025), drops may occur due to a lack of VRAM even at low presets.

3. Gaming Performance

Average FPS (1080p, medium settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (no RTX): 25–30 FPS.

- Red Dead Redemption 2: 35–40 FPS.

- Fortnite (Performance mode): 60–70 FPS.

- CS2: 90–110 FPS.

1440p and 4K: Not recommended — FPS drops below 30 even in less demanding games.

Ray Tracing: Not supported natively. Software emulation (e.g., through Proton for Linux) reduces performance by 3–4 times.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing: In Adobe Premiere Pro (OpenCL), rendering 1080p video takes 2–3 times longer than on modern GPUs.

3D Modeling: In Blender (Cycles), rendering a moderately complex scene takes 15–20 minutes, compared to 2–3 minutes on an RTX 4060.

Scientific Calculations: OpenCL support allows the card to be used for machine learning, but the absence of Tensor Cores and low computing precision make it impractical.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 125W — a high value, even for 2025.

Cooling:

- A system with 2–3 fans or liquid cooling in the case is mandatory.

- Recommended cases: those with good ventilation (e.g., Fractal Design Meshify 2).

Tips:

- A power supply of at least 500W (with headroom for upgrades).

- Regular thermal paste replacement — overheating to 85°C is possible under load.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues from 2015–2017:

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M: Comparable in performance but better in energy efficiency (TDP 100W).

- AMD Radeon RX 480 (desktop): More powerful (5.8 TFLOPS vs. 4.0 TFLOPS for R9 M395X).

Modern Budget GPUs (2025):

- NVIDIA RTX 3050 (6GB): 2.5 times faster, supports DLSS 3.5 and RTX.

- AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT: Comparable in price on the second-hand market but more efficient in games from 2020 and beyond.

7. Practical Advice

Power Supply: Minimum of 500W with an 80+ Bronze certification.

Compatibility:

- PCIe 3.0 x16 — works in PCIe 4.0/5.0 slots but without speed gains.

- OS support: Official drivers were discontinued in 2022. It’s better to use Windows 10 or Linux with open-source drivers (AMDGPU).

Drivers:

- Avoid new games with DirectX 12 Ultimate requirements.

- For older projects, Adrenalin drivers 22.11.2 work well.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price on the second-hand market ($50–80).

- Support for FreeSync and multi-monitor setups.

- Reliability — lasts for years with proper cooling.

Cons:

- No support for ray tracing and FSR 3.0+.

- High power consumption.

- Limited performance in modern games.

9. Final Verdict: Who is the R9 M395X For?

1. Owners of Old PCs: For upgrading systems with processors like Intel Core i5-4xxx or AMD FX-8xxx.

2. Retro Gaming Enthusiasts: Ideal for projects from the 2010s at max settings.

3. Budget Builds: Suitable for those looking to build a PC for $200–300 for office tasks and streaming.

Why choose it? It's a nod to nostalgia and a practical choice for those not chasing cutting-edge technology but valuing proven hardware. However, for modern tasks, it's better to consider budget new releases from 2025 — like the AMD Radeon RX 7500 or Intel Arc A580.

Conclusion

The Radeon R9 M395X is a relic that reminds us: technology rushes forward, but older hardware can still be useful. It should only be purchased if you are aware of its limitations and are willing to make compromises. In a world where even budget GPUs can outpace it by leaps and bounds, it remains a symbol of an era when every game was optimized with care.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

May 2015

Model Name

Radeon R9 M395X

Generation

Crystal System

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

5,000 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

128

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 3.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

1250MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

160.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

23.14 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

92.54 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

2.961 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

185.1 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

2.902 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

2048

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

75W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.3

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.902 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Mobile

3.102 +6.9%

FirePro W7170M

3.02 +4.1%

Radeon R9 M395X

2.902

Radeon HD 6870 1600SP Edition

2.774 -4.4%

Radeon R9 370X

2.69 -7.3%