[Rumor (Various)] AMD R7/9 3xx / Fiji / Fury

[LTC8K6]

I think even with 0 improvements at that price it will do ok on the market. The largest issue would be power consumption.

If it's tweaked at that price? I think it's the easy buy over the 980. Granted the 980 is a joke vs the 290x even at $500 for the 980.

Really it's amazing how strong the 290/x are as they still are close to the 980/970 and the 980/970s actual competitors come out next week.
Really the only place amd is lacking for me is the high end and they're about to address that.

Doesn't look like a joke at Anand bench. 980 still seems to have a decent lead over the 290X.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1439?vs=1442

Several 980 versions are now $479 or $489 at Newegg with a rebate, and Zotac has one at $479.00 without a rebate. Still get the free games, too.

Prices might be lower elsewhere, Newegg tends to be a little high.

980 prices are dropping, I guess.

 

[jackstar7]

Is there a reason people aren't comparing to the current 290x's with 8gb?

 

[LTC8K6]

Is there a reason people aren't comparing to the current 290x's with 8gb?

Price wise, there is a Sapphire 8gb 290X for $359.00 with a free game, at newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202144

 

[Tuna-Fish]

GDDR5 isn't cheap. The PS4s 8GB was supposedly $80-$105 in volume.

That was back when there was a single supplier of 4Gbit modules. The prices on those have now fallen significantly.

 

[shady28]

Is there a reason people aren't comparing to the current 290x's with 8gb?

Excellent point.

Cheapest at Newegg is R9 290X 8GB MSRP $389 marked down to $359.

 

[DiogoDX]

If they release the same 2013 Hawaii chip under the name of the 390X will be the jokest new séries launch since G92. And will sell nothing close that G92 selled back than.

 

[swilli89]

Excited to see what a Tonga XT and 384 bit memory bus can do. Agree with a few others that the 390x (updated Hawaii XT) would have been perfect at $299. Would have been the new 4870 easy.

 

[tential]

Doesn't look like a joke at Anand bench. 980 still seems to have a decent lead over the 290X.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1439?vs=1442

Several 980 versions are now $479 or $489 at Newegg with a rebate, and Zotac has one at $479.00 without a rebate. Still get the free games, too.

Prices might be lower elsewhere, Newegg tends to be a little high.

980 prices are dropping, I guess.

That literally proved my point that I don't see the 980 being a remotely good value over the 290x.

 

[HurleyBird]

Doesn't look like a joke at Anand bench. 980 still seems to have a decent lead over the 290X.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1439?vs=1442

You used the non-Uber 290X result, which isn't really indicative of any 290X card with an aftermarket cooler -- the vast, vast majority of cards being sold at this point in time.

 

[tential]

You used the non-Uber 290X result, which isn't really indicative of any 290X card with an aftermarket cooler -- the vast, vast majority of cards being sold at this point in time.

Ya I mean seriously if I pull a recent review like techpowerup or sweclockers both have these cards stupid close. I know full well I couldn't tell the difference between owning the 2. But I have to pay 100s more for the gtx 980? Not worr d about the 390x debuting at $390 as a 100%rebrand because it's still a better deal than the 980.
Imo 500 is the absolute maximum the 980 is worth at the moment.

 

[x3sphere]

You used the non-Uber 290X result, which isn't really indicative of any 290X card with an aftermarket cooler -- the vast, vast majority of cards being sold at this point in time.

Yeah... and I'm guessing the reference cooler will be improved this time with the 390X, so the 980 will have a minimal lead over it in reviews. Possibly the 390X will even be faster if it's not a straight rebrand and AMD has made other improvements.

 

[Stuka87]

Yeah... and I'm guessing the reference cooler will be improved this time with the 390X, so the 980 will have a minimal lead over it in reviews. Possibly the 390X will even be faster if it's not a straight rebrand and AMD has made other improvements.

I doubt there will be a reference cooler. Last week several AIB's were showing off their new coolers on current gen 290X cards.

Maybe AMD will offer a reference cooler, just seems unlikely. Finding reference 290X cards today is hard.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Excited to see what a Tonga XT and 384 bit memory bus can do. Agree with a few others that the 390x (updated Hawaii XT) would have been perfect at $299. Would have been the new 4870 easy.

Tonga XT still seems to be an imaginary product however. So dont get your hopes up.

 

[swilli89]

Ya I mean seriously if I pull a recent review like techpowerup or sweclockers both have these cards stupid close. I know full well I couldn't tell the difference between owning the 2. But I have to pay 100s more for the gtx 980? Not worr d about the 390x debuting at $390 as a 100%rebrand because it's still a better deal than the 980.
Imo 500 is the absolute maximum the 980 is worth at the moment.

^^ This this this so much!

I've long fantasized about putting fanboys in a test environment. Hoods over both cases and access locked to just gameplay. Like a pepsi challenge. One with one brand/tier of performance and one with the other.

I would place money ppl can't tell a difference between a 980 and 290x without a benchmarking utility like fraps.

 

[Stuka87]

Tonga XT still seems to be an imaginary product however. So dont get your hopes up.

Tonga XT does exist as the M295X. It just has not been put into a desktop variant.

 

[RussianSensation]

Really? $329 for a re-badged Hawaii R9 390 8GB when an R9 290 4GB is available today for $100 less? That's good news?

For anyone who has followed the GPU market objectively, no, it's not because after-market R9 290 has been selling for $230-250 for months, going as low as $200 last December. For the average Joe who only reads reference launch reviews, it will be like an all new card = cool, quiet, 8GB of VRAM. If performance is 2-3% faster than a 970, and power usage is slightly better, it'll be a very tough sell to recommend a 3.5GB 970.

Of course budget gamers are better off grabbing a $150 XFX R9 280 with lifetime warranty or a $220 after-market R9 290 if price/performance is the key metric. As has been historically the case with many AMD GPU launches, their older low-end and mid-range cards almost always have superior price/performance compared to new cards. This has been true for many generations now:

1. HD4000 series
> HD4870 was $120-125 and HD4890 was $175 when HD5770 came out for $179. Older cards = better value at launch.

2. HD5000 series
> HD5850/5870 for sure provided superior price/performance than HD6850/6870 at launch.

3. HD6000 series
> HD6950 unlocked cost $175-200 when HD7950 was $450. HD7850 for sure offered worse price/performance than an unlocked HD6950 at launch.

4. HD7000 series
When HD7970Ghz and HD7950 V2 came out, the standard HD7950 800-925mhz and HD7970 925-1000mhz cards offered better value. Also, recall when R9 280/280X dropped, they hardly offered better price/performance to more than a year old HD7950/7970 cards, only if we compared MSRP to MSRP.

Neither AMD nor NV will be able to touch R9 290 at $220, only some time after launch.

If these are straight REBRANDS, these are terrible. Anyone in the market for a 390X should just get a 290X now for way cheaper.

That's often the case when older gen cards go on fire-sale especially when their brand image has been tarnished into the ground. Who remembers GTX480 after-market cards selling for $299 when GTX580 launched at $499? I do. Who remembers when GTX480 was selling for $175-225 on Newegg when GTX570 was still $349? I do because I created a hot deals thread on those EVGA 480 cards.

Right now on a pure FPS price/performance metric in the mid-range, nothing can touch a $220 R9 290 or a $270 R9 290X, R9 390/390X shouldn't be able to do either at launch.

I plan on going 1440P soon, the R9 390X would be a great fit. I got three plus years out of this 7970, I could probably do the same with an 8GB Hawaii, especially if they can hit a bit higher clocks. I'll probably wait for it to get closer to $300, though.

I would wait for Fiji PRO or maybe R9 295X2 on a fire sale at $450. $390 R9 390X doesn't sound that great. BTW, your CPU isn't fast enough for many of these top cards. You'd be wasting a lot of their potential imo.

That would also garantee you console "feature level" being on pair unlike your 7970. So 3 years should be easy to get out of a 290X/390X with 8GB.

Umm...no. The performance increase in an R9 290X over an HD7970Ghz is only 35%. That's not enough to make that card last another 3 years compared to an HD7970 with a mild OC. In this case the extra feature level of R9 390X would hardly be relevant as future-proofing. The actual performance increase for his upgrade matters a lot more than DX12 feature levels.

In the context of time, a $389 R9 390X that's 50% faster than a 3.5 years old HD7970 is a pretty poor upgrade path. Since a 925mhz 7970 can easily overclock to 1150-1175mhz, this makes it even worse.

Are you talking about DX12 comparability of GCN 1 vs 1.1 / 1.2? I have a feeling it won't make a difference for a while. Considering the 7970 is already over three years old I'd say anything it can do with DX12 is a nice perk.

Exactly. There aren't any AAA DX12 games out, and as far as I know the first big one people are anticipating is Deus Ex Mandkind Divided, but it's launching only in 2016, that would be 12 months away. By that point we might be 3-5 months away from 970/980 Pascal successors.

The most important price is yet to be disclosed: Fury Pro

I like your train of thought. 2nd tier x50 cards have been sleepers since HD5850 gen.

$499 980 might experience collateral damage squeezed between a barely slower R9 390X with double the VRAM and a much faster $499-549 Fiji PRO card. 980 at $499 is still overpriced, I feel more price cuts for that card.

I2 - Users with midrange systems / off the shelf enthusiast systems. These would be higher end off the shelf boxes and a good percentage of custom builds. These typically have 400-500W PSUs and support a single 6-pin aka 75->150W GPUs. This is the realm of the R9 270, R7 265, GTX 960, and extreme overclocked variants of the 750Ti. Performance wise, Nvidia owns this and price differences are minor.

1. What modern 400-500W PSU has a single 6-pin connector? A 400-500W PSU with a 6-pin to dual 6+2 (8-pin x2) $10 adapter can support an R9 290X and a Core i5. Your power supply estimations are way off for how much power is necessary today for a high-end gaming rig at the PSU level. One absolutely doesn't need a 500W PSU to run an R9 270/270X/280.

Average / peak power usage
R9 270X = 119W / 130W
HD7950 = R9 280 = 135W / 149W

If the main "feature" here is 8GB, well that's just marketing IMO. Very few cases where that is useful.

8GB is marketing but 4GB isn't. 970 isn't a true 4GB card.

If R9 390 after-market card = cool+quiet and has at least 4GB of real GDDR5, 970 is a bad value at $330.

After-market 970s use 180W+ of power, a far cry from NV's 145W marketing TDP.

If an after-market R9 390 peaks at 240W, a lot of gamers would take a real "4GB" card (in this case 8GB) over 60W of power usage savings.

That literally proved my point that I don't see the 980 being a remotely good value over the 290x.

Using non-Uber reference thermal throttling 290X per AT's review? Compurbase shows that such cards run at 815-900mhz in games. In that case a 1070mhz R9 390X would literally be 19-30% faster. That comparison is in no way shape or form indicative of how an after-market $270 R9 290X performs (or in that case an after-market 1.05Ghz+ 390X vs. a 980).

Not sure why some gamers still keep linking reference blower 290X reviews when that card hasn't been relevant in at least 12 months.

Several 980 versions are now $479 or $489 at Newegg with a rebate, and Zotac has one at $479.00 without a rebate. Still get the free games, too.

Why pay $100 more for 5% more performance? Because that's how it's going to end up in the best case for a 980 against an after-market 390X since there are no longer going to be reference blower 850mhz 290X cards tested against it.

Also, your comparison of a $480-489 980 excludes the possibility of a $499-549 3500 shader Fiji PRO card that would annihilate it.


-------------

Per VideoCards [rumoured] slides, "AMD officially confirms in the latest presentation for its partners that Radeon R9 390(X), R9 380, R7 370 and Radeon R7 360 will support VSR."

http://videocardz.com/56182/amd-off...t-for-radeon-r9-300-and-r7-300-graphics-cards

^^ This this this so much!

I've long fantasized about putting fanboys in a test environment. Hoods over both cases and access locked to just gameplay. Like a pepsi challenge. One with one brand/tier of performance and one with the other.

I would place money ppl can't tell a difference between a 980 and 290x without a benchmarking utility like fraps.

The most classic biased argument this gen from certain people has been how a cool and quiet after-market $250 R9 290 4GB wasn't worth paying extra over a $199 960 2GB because of electricity costs and needing a $50 PSU upgrade that will last 10 years, but a 980 was worth $250+ extra over a $280-300 R9 290X for 15% more performance because flagship cards are excused from being overpriced. In one case buying NV was justified to save $2 a month on electricity while losing 50% of the performance and getting half the VRAM and yet in another case spending hundreds of dollars more was justified for a performance difference many wouldn't even feel without a FRAPs counter. It was shocking to see how biased some gamers on these boards when 50% extra performance for $50-60 was ignored but 15% extra performance for $250 was defended based on marketing perf/watt metric......absolutely insane.

Now, people are complaining that R9 390/390X are bad value against R9 290/290X cards but didn't recommend R9 290/290X cards over the overpriced 970/980 cards for the last 8 months, which means all of a sudden the amazing price/performance of R9 290/290X is finally getting recognized 9 months later, but before it was irrelevant? Amazing logic.

 

[yacoub]

definitely an improvement in looks for the reference blower. Hopefully the performance and acoustics are also improved

Regardless, I'm really tired of seeing the rodent-cage style blowers, as they're noisy, inefficient devices compared with a proper, bladed fan design. I'll never buy a GPU with one of those things on it. Looking forward to seeing what the AIBs provide for air cooling options.

 

[yacoub]

I like your train of thought. 2nd tier x50 cards have been sleepers since HD5850 gen.

$499 980 might experience collateral damage squeezed between a barely slower R9 390X with double the VRAM and a much faster $499-549 Fiji PRO card. 980 at $499 is still overpriced, I feel more price cuts for that card.

Yep, $499 for an 8GB Fiji Pro, if it performs better than a 980 (and hopefully close to the 980Ti in a few things), is the perfect choice.

 

[JDG1980]

For the average Joe who only reads reference launch reviews, it will be like an all new card = cool, quiet, 8GB of VRAM. If performance is 2-3% faster than a 970, and power usage is slightly better, it'll be a very tough sell to recommend a 3.5GB 970.

If that's what AMD has in mind, I don't think it is going to work. Yes, AMD made a blunder by having reference versions of the Hawaii cards instead of just going the AIB route right off the bat. Their reviews might have been a little better if they did that. But what do you think the R9 390/X reviews are going to say, if these cards are nothing more than straight rebrands of a 20-month-old product with more RAM and a slightly higher clock? They're going to say that AMD is trying to sell old wine in new bottles for an inflated price. The new reviews may not contain the same criticisms as the old ones, but they are definitely going to be critical of AMD for not doing any real work in bringing new midrange designs to market - and rightly so.

Aftermarket coolers can reduce the noise and temperature issues, but they don't substantially reduce power consumption. You're still looking at 253W in games and 316W in FurMark. And if they push the RAM to 1500 MHz, it will be even worse; increased RAM speeds is one of the reasons why the R9 200 series cards often had worse perf/watt than their 7000 series counterparts. I know that you've said that you don't care about power consumption and don't think anyone else should either, but the fact remains, this IS a big deal for many buyers.

I also expect Nvidia to take direct aim at AMD if the 300 series really is all straight rebrands. Traditionally, neither company has used this as a talking point in their marketing campaigns, since they've all been guilty of it to some extent. But at this point, AMD's entire retail $99+ lineup consists of first-run Maxwell cards (750, 750 Ti, 960, 970, 980, 980 Ti, Titan X). Sure, they've got rebrands of OEM crap and some stuff at the ultra low end, but nothing aimed directly at consumers, and certainly nothing like what people are speculating AMD has in store. Nvidia could easily destroy AMD with some commercials aimed at their practice of rebranding everything, if that's indeed what they are doing. The ads practically write themselves:
Caption: Nvidia Research and Development: Show some stock shots of a R&D lab with engineers working on projects, handling wafers in clean rooms, etc.
Caption: AMD Research and Development: Show a shabby room with badly-dressed, shady-looking people pasting new stickers over old stickers on boxes.

The bottom line is that AMD's current graphics lineup is not only out of date, but it has to compete with a massive backlog of overproduced stock and used ex-mining cards. If AMD wants to be able to charge higher prices, they need to actually produce new silicon, not just new stickers.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

I'd like to see more tonga stuff. Right now the 285 only seems to exist to get rid of the bad imac chips.

 

[jackstar7]

Regardless, I'm really tired of seeing the rodent-cage style blowers, as they're noisy, inefficient devices compared with a proper, bladed fan design. I'll never buy a GPU with one of those things on it. Looking forward to seeing what the AIBs provide for air cooling options.

I hope you get your wishes, but I am looking forward to efficient blower designs. Having an FT-02 makes one part of the small market for good blowers.

 

[JDG1980]

I'd like to see more tonga stuff. Right now the 285 only seems to exist to get rid of the bad imac chips.

As it stands, based on the leaks, it looks like we're going to get trash silicon for everything below the R9 390X.

The leaks indicate that there's only going to be a R9 380, not a R9 380X. This hints that it's going to be the same cut-down Tonga chip we're getting now. The Gigabyte box render indicates it has an 8-pin connector; the OEM page says two six-pins. This means no gains in power efficiency. It's worth pointing out that AMD could have fit Tonga in a single 6-pin (under 150W) if they wanted to; the FirePro W7100 does this. They just didn't care.

The R7 370 Pitcairn appears to be 1024 shaders (meaning it's a rebranded R7 265, which is itself a rebranded HD 7850). It's listed as being 20% more powerful than a GTX 750 Ti, and a full Pitcairn would do better than that (25%-30% better). Also, the OEM page indicates that the OEM 370 (which for some reason is R9 series instead of R7) is 1024 shaders. Why AMD chose to do this is baffling, since they can't possibly be having yield issues at this point in the 28nm process on a chip that small, and the existing R9 270 (non-X) already runs on one 6-pin power connector if they were concerned about that.

The OEM R9 360 is 768 shaders (cut-down Bonaire), so it's now safe to assume that the retail R7 360 will be the same. Here, this appears to have been done for power consumption reasons; according to AMD's page, the R9 360 doesn't have an auxiliary power connector. I guess this is supposed to be competition for the GTX 750, but I don't see it being a big seller when the GM107 cards are more powerful and more efficient for these kind of systems.

 

[3DVagabond]

never mind. Posted before I read the mod warning.

 

[JDG1980]

I hope you get your wishes, but I am looking forward to efficient blower designs. Having an FT-02 makes one part of the small market for good blowers.

Have you considered something like the Arctic Accelero S3? It's specced for up to 135W passively and 200W with the "Turbo Module" (a strap-on fan), but I suspect that you could do 175W or so on your FT02 without the "Turbo Module" because the case's built-in 180mm fans would blow across the heatsink fins in a parallel direction and exhaust the hot air out the top of the case. I'm considering trying something like this with the FT05 myself.

 

[JDG1980]

As far as people claiming they are broke and not having any R&D money though...

Laughable!

The problem is that AMD hasn't brought out a full lineup of new GPUs since 2012, whereas Nvidia refreshed their whole line top-to-bottom between Feb. 2014 and Mar. 2015. The optimistic interpretation is that AMD is saving their R&D budget for FinFET+ next year. The pessimistic interpretation is that they're broke and can't afford to develop anything new. It looks like we're going to get just two new chips from AMD in 2015 (Fiji and Carrizo). That's across all product lines. How sure are we that "Arctic Islands" is going to be all-new? Are we sure they're not going to give us one FinFET+ GPU at the top end and rebrand everything else yet again?

I think it was a questionable decision to blow this year's entire GPU R&D budget on a single high-end halo chip. HBM1 is a dead end, with HBM2 coming next year; and the 4GB limit means that Fiji will see limited success as a FirePro card. Can the high-end gaming market alone really justify the costs of developing this? It seems to me that AMD would have been far better off spending the same money tweaking GCN to improve power efficiency and creating replacement chips for Pitcairn and Hawaii (Tonga just needs a few minor updates). Forget about the ultra high end until 2016 and focus on the midrange.