Monday, March 16th 2015

More Radeon R9 390X Specs Leak: Close to 70% Faster than R9 290X

Mar 16th, 2015 17:47 Discuss (99 Comments)

Earlier today, AMD reportedly showed its industry partners (likely add-in board partners) a presentation, which was leaked to the web as photographs, and look reasonably legitimate, at first glance. If these numbers of AMD's upcoming flagship product, the Radeon R9 390X WCE (water-cooled edition) hold up, then it could spell trouble for NVIDIA and its GeForce GTX TITAN X. To begin with, the slides confirm that the R9 390X will feature 4,096 stream processors, based on a more refined version of Graphics CoreNext architecture. The core ticks at speeds of up to 1050 MHz. The R9 390X could sell in two variants, an air-cooled one with tamed speeds, and a WCE (water-cooled edition) variant, which comes with an AIO liquid-cooling solution, which lets it throw everything else out of the window in psychotic and murderous pursuit of performance.

It's the memory, where AMD appears to be an early adopter (as its HD 4870 was the first to run the faster GDDR5). The R9 390X features a 4096-bit wide HBM memory bus, holding up to 8 GB of memory. The memory is clocked at 1.25 GHz. The actual memory bandwidth will yet end up much higher than the 5.00 GHz 512-bit GDDR5 on the R9 290X. Power connectors will be the same combination as the previous generation (6-pin + 8-pin). What does this all boil down to? A claimed single-precision floating point performance figure of 8.6 TFLOP/s. Wonder how NVIDIA's GM200 compares to that. AMD claims that the R9 390X will be 50-60% faster than the R9 290X, and we're talking about benchmarks such as Battlefield 4 and FarCry 4. The expectations on NVIDIA's upcoming product are only bound to get higher.

Source: VideoCardz

Add your own comment

99 Comments on More Radeon R9 390X Specs Leak: Close to 70% Faster than R9 290X

#51

librin.so.1

newtekie1But then again, advertising the core clock at 600MHz would be an embarrassment...

600MHz? Does it really fall down THAT much?
I mean not counting those [sadly, rather often] cases when clueless average joe users have coolers covered with 2 years worth of dust. (But to be fair that sometimes even pushes otherwise normally cool cards to critically downclock to minimal clocks in effort not to melt. And that is a fault of user negligence, not fault of "bad design")

#52

newtekie1

Semi-Retired Folder

Vinska600MHz? Does it really fall down THAT much?
I mean not counting those [sadly, rather often] cases when clueless average joe users have coolers covered with 2 years worth of dust. (But to be fair that sometimes even pushes otherwise normally cool cards to critically downclock to minimal clocks in effort not to melt. And that is a fault of user negligence, not fault of "bad design")

Yep, brand new cards in my Corsair 650D, on the quiet BIOS the cards actually went below 600MHz, on the extreme BIOS I saw as low as 600MHz after a while gaming(roughly half an hour).

#53

arbiter

Vinska600MHz? Does it really fall down THAT much?
I mean not counting those [sadly, rather often] cases when clueless average joe users have coolers covered with 2 years worth of dust. (But to be fair that sometimes even pushes otherwise normally cool cards to critically downclock to minimal clocks in effort not to melt. And that is a fault of user negligence, not fault of "bad design")

Think about it, it would drop to 800mhz stock fan curve, in an Open air bench. Now stick that in a case with bad air flow so it gets pretty hot. 600mhz is very possible.

newtekie1Then do what nVidia does and pick an at least obtainable base clock that can be maintained constantly. Then let the card boost if temperature allows. Give at least a guaranteed base clock that the card won't go lower than. But then again, advertising the core clock at 600MHz would be an embarrassment...

Well nvidia cards can do 90+c as well but they prefer to keep it lower. It does cost performance but life of the card is enhanced. I offset temp target of mine to 85c even though never gets there. Was running around 65-70c on AC with it clocked about 1500mhz.

#54

HumanSmoke

15th WarlockWhat's weird is that one of those slides was leaked a couple of days ago, and ppl called it out as a fake because of a couple of typos. Notice how "functionallity" was misspelled

The typo actually makes it more likely that the slide is genuine IMO

15th Warlockand Direct X 12_Tier has a weird underscore.

That isn't a typo. Decimal point for DX revision,underscore for feature level.

15th WarlockNow in this new leak, the typos have been corrected; oh well, it might that the slide was fixed between the time it was leaked and this new presentation... Kinda suspicious though :wtf:

Conscientious ~~AMD PR flack~~ leaker. Real time leak revision - now that is good hustle!

arbiterThink about it, it would drop to 800mhz stock fan curve, in an Open air bench. Now stick that in a case with bad air flow so it gets pretty hot. 600mhz is very possible.

I think W1zzards own review hereindicated a drop to that. The drop was transient, but the trend is/was apparent.

#55

timta2

I don't think +70% faster than a 290x at $700 will be very impressive, if that's what it will be.

#56

15th Warlock

timta2I don't think +70% faster than a 290x at $700 will be very impressive, if that's what it will be.

Well I can't say I agree, yes, the price might be a tad high, but 290X was $549 on release and went all the way up to $799 a few weeks after due to the bitcoin bubble. That was over a year ago.

Now this new card, if it includes an AIO water cooler, that sorta justifies the $100 premium, over the $549 original launch price for the 290X with its lackluster cooler; as far as that 60~70% faster at 4K figure, we haven't had such a high performance jump in many generations, for me that is very impressive, considering we've only seen a 10~15% performance jump for quite a few generations now.

So 40~50% performance jump from GTX980 to Titan-X, but at a $999 price. Anything over 60% performance jump from AMD's previous flagship, probably putting this card in the same league as a much more expensive card from the green team, sounds like quite an impressive achievement to me.

No matter what, we are in for a dozy as PC gamers. 4K maxed out rendering from a single GPU will finally become a real possibility, and the release of the VR headsets towards the end of the year will require the all the GPU power available in these new cards.

#57

ensabrenoir

if Amd gotta charge $700 to make a profit and survive and the card delivers $700 worth of performance...... I say well done! If this is fluff.......i feel sorry for them. There is not gonna be another mining boom and major cpu releases are a year(hopefully) away....they need a home run ....right now.

#58

arbiter

15th WarlockNow this new card, if it includes an AIO water cooler, that sorta justifies the $100 premium, over the $549 original launch price for the 290X with its lackluster cooler; as far as that 60~70% faster at 4K figure, we haven't had such a high performance jump in many generations, for me that is very impressive, considering we've only seen a 10~15% performance jump for quite a few generations now.

700$ for what probably be 4gb card. If you are a 4k a adopter that probably won't be enough ram wise. Can only guess what 8gb version will cost but i would put guess probably 900$ for that extra ram. That 60-70% figure AMD claims probably was using that 8gb card not the 4gb card. If that turns out to be the case well can't give nvidia any more crap over Titan pricing anymore.

200$ premium is within realm of possible as its 120$ atm for 8gb 290x over 4gb one. Just due to fact of new type of memory gonna be bit a more $.

edit: as i think about it, wouldn't shock if those graph's were 290x 4gb vs 390x 8gb card. They don't say it on graph so in all likely hood that is what it was

#59

Kyuuba

erockerI'll be quite disappointed if the pricing is true. I mean, if the PC market is stagnant (which it is), throwing a 200 dollar markup on their top tier cards is probably not the way to go.

Also, with the factory cooling it seems like there will be a variant with the liquid cooling, not all of them.

As for the current status of AMD's marketshare expect that price, they need to recover some money.

#60

natr0n

very excite.

#61

GhostRyder

newtekie1And the advertised specs on the AMD actually skewed benchmarks which lead to worse than expected performance by the consumer. I'm amazed that people are totally ok with AMD listing and advertising clock speeds that they know their cards can't maintain in stock form. However, nVidia lists some incorrect specs on private spec sheets, specs that they don't advertise openly, and everyone freaks out.

Then do what nVidia does and pick an at least obtainable base clock that can be maintained constantly. Then let the card boost if temperature allows. Give at least a guaranteed base clock that the card won't go lower than. But then again, advertising the core clock at 600MHz would be an embarrassment...

Simple solution, turn the fan speed up another notch or cool it another way. Though again after the update from amd mine never throttled in a single gpu config on uber mode. I don't think most people care about the specs being wrong in the 970 except the memory itself.

Vinska600MHz? Does it really fall down THAT much?
I mean not counting those [sadly, rather often] cases when clueless average joe users have coolers covered with 2 years worth of dust. (But to be fair that sometimes even pushes otherwise normally cool cards to critically downclock to minimal clocks in effort not to melt. And that is a fault of user negligence, not fault of "bad design")

Well my three didn't throttle at least on uber, they went to around 800 on quiet. But that was my test bed in an lanboy air case.

15th WarlockWell I can't say I agree, yes, the price might be a tad high, but 290X was $549 on release and went all the way up to $799 a few weeks after due to the bitcoin bubble. That was over a year ago.

Now this new card, if it includes an AIO water cooler, that sorta justifies the $100 premium, over the $549 original launch price for the 290X with its lackluster cooler; as far as that 60~70% faster at 4K figure, we haven't had such a high performance jump in many generations, for me that is very impressive, considering we've only seen a 10~15% performance jump for quite a few generations now.

So 40~50% performance jump from GTX980 to Titan-X, but at a $999 price. Anything over 60% performance jump from AMD's previous flagship, probably putting this card in the same league as a much more expensive card from the green team, sounds like quite an impressive achievement to me.

No matter what, we are in for a dozy as PC gamers. 4K maxed out rendering from a single GPU will finally become a real possibility, and the release of the VR headsets towards the end of the year will require the all the GPU power available in these new cards.

Everyone is shooting for 4k as the goal right now. At this point either of these GPUs will do the lower without breaking a sweat so the real question come to who can do the higher part better.

It's exciting to see such a massive jump!

#62

jateruy

GhostRyderSimple solution, turn the fan speed up another notch or cool it another way. Though again after the update from amd mine never throttled in a single gpu config on uber mode. I don't think most people care about the specs being wrong in the 970 except the memory itself.

Well my three didn't throttle at least on uber, they went to around 800 on quiet. But that was my test bed in an lanboy air case.

It's exciting to see such a massive jump!

But...I don't want my mom to think I'm still up just done shower using her hair dryer in the midnight or I'm boiling water making a coffee while snapping some food when I'm not supposed to, and then she comes check me realized I'm right in hot gaming and all the sudden you know what's gonna happen...

#63

Xzibit

jateruyBut...I don't want my mom to think I'm still up just done shower using her hair dryer in the midnight or I'm boiling water making a coffee while snapping some food when I'm not supposed to, and then she comes check me realized I'm right in hot gaming and all the sudden you know what's gonna happen...

#64

Sony Xperia S

15th WarlockThat's gonna be one monster of a card!

AMD were first and perhaps the only ones with GDDR4, later with GDDR5, now with HBM. Not to mention all process jumps done before nvidia.
Indeed, it will be almighty card, and will not have the stupid titanIC name. :D

15th Warlock

Maxwell doesn't support DX 12 Tier 3, it is restricted to lower Tiers.
AMD again on the win here. ;)

#65

the54thvoid

Intoxicated Moderator

Sony Xperia SIndeed, it will be almighty card, and will not have the stupid titanIC name. :D

It looks indeed to be s great card, perhaps my next. However, if you think Titan is a silly name, perhaps you should be reminded of the AUSUM (awesome) switch on the 6990, which unlocked Uber mode....
AMD do silly as well.

#66

RCoon

Would be a pleasant surprise if AMD come out on top this time. AMD hasn't been able to control pricing structure since the release of the 7970! Even then it was tame.

Sony Xperia SAMD again on the win here.

Doesn't mean much if they can't turn a profit for at least one quarter this year.

#67

bogami

Is 1.25 Gbs Taipo? 5 Gbs on R9-290X ! 4Q R9-395X :)

#68

Relayer

15th WarlockThat's gonna be one monster of a card!

Wonder if the AIO cooling solution will get in the way of multiple card configs, I'm sure I wont be able to fit two separate 120mm or 140mm coolers on my current HAF-XB Radeon build...

What's weird is that one of those slides was leaked a couple of days ago, and ppl called it out as a fake because of a couple of typos:

Notice how "functionallity" was misspelled, and Direct X 12_Tier has a weird underscore.

Now in this new leak, the typos have been corrected; oh well, it might that the slide was fixed between the time it was leaked and this new presentation... Kinda suspicious though :wtf:

Source: www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-radeon-390x-wce-water-cooled-edition.html

Might have been purposeful so AMD can track leakers???

newtekie1And the advertised specs on the AMD actually skewed benchmarks which lead to worse than expected performance by the consumer. I'm amazed that people are totally ok with AMD listing and advertising clock speeds that they know their cards can't maintain in stock form. However, nVidia lists some incorrect specs on private spec sheets, specs that they don't advertise openly, and everyone freaks out.

Then do what nVidia does and pick an at least obtainable base clock that can be maintained constantly. Then let the card boost if temperature allows. Give at least a guaranteed base clock that the card won't go lower than. But then again, advertising the core clock at 600MHz would be an embarrassment...

A bit off topic, don't you think? Accident?

15th WarlockWell I can't say I agree, yes, the price might be a tad high, but 290X was $549 on release and went all the way up to $799 a few weeks after due to the bitcoin bubble. That was over a year ago.

Now this new card, if it includes an AIO water cooler, that sorta justifies the $100 premium, over the $549 original launch price for the 290X with its lackluster cooler; as far as that 60~70% faster at 4K figure, we haven't had such a high performance jump in many generations, for me that is very impressive, considering we've only seen a 10~15% performance jump for quite a few generations now.

So 40~50% performance jump from GTX980 to Titan-X, but at a $999 price. Anything over 60% performance jump from AMD's previous flagship, probably putting this card in the same league as a much more expensive card from the green team, sounds like quite an impressive achievement to me.

No matter what, we are in for a dozy as PC gamers. 4K maxed out rendering from a single GPU will finally become a real possibility, and the release of the VR headsets towards the end of the year will require the all the GPU power available in these new cards.

I don't think the AIO is the culprit. It's probably more to do with HBM and yields. Although I don't really know what yields are like on a design like this. I'm just guessing maybe not good because of the new tech.

#69

HumanSmoke

RelayerMight have been purposeful so AMD can track leakers???

You mean that the leaks co-incidentally just happen to go public within two days of AMD's main rivals flagship card launch, and AMD aren't a party to it - moreover, they lay traps to actively discourage anyone from crashing Nvidia's party...

RelayerI don't think the AIO is the culprit.

I'm inclined to agree. Complexity and the publicized costs of the interposer package make HBM and its packaging the likely cause

BTW: Triple posting??? Are you new to internet forums?

#70

Ferrum Master

the54thvoidIt looks indeed to be s great card, perhaps my next. However, if you think Titan is a silly name, perhaps you should be reminded of the AUSUM (awesome) switch on the 6990, which unlocked Uber mode....
AMD do silly as well.

Well nothing beats Creative in the silly department...

Well no matter what... I guess I will need to put an AMD sticker on my piggy bank... the question is... how many pigs...

#71

HumanSmoke

Ferrum MasterWell nothing beats Creative in the silly department...

And that's just their driver team

/rimshot

#72

Space Lynx

Astronaut

Caring1Wow, you guys are whinging about the alleged $700 price point, but that is $1,000 (roughly) when converted to our currency, and I can't see the base 390X selling for less than $1,200 here, the Liquid cooled version will most likely be around $1,500 once converted to Aussie dollars.
The cheapest new 290X is still $500 here.

If I lived in Australia on a "sunshine coast", I would rarely, if ever, play games. <3 You are still the winner in this, ;p

#73

nunyabuisness

lynx29my $200 newegg gift card is ready. and sell my 290x hopefully for 150 or 200, so 300 outta pocket... not bad if the price of $700 is rumored true.

I did the same thing 2 weeks ago. I dumped my R9 290 windforce. I bought it 2nd hand for 270AU and I sold it for $275AU on ebay. I thought I did well haha. I have a crappy 6450 2gb as a stand in, waiting on seeing some real reviews of the 300 series, if its not as good as they say, and if the 380 (R9 290 respin) doesnt save a lot of power. ill be buying the 980 when Nvidia drop the price to compete

#74

buggalugs

arbiterI under stand things are never perfect in most people's systems, but in case of 290x even with Open air benches which does help keep video card cooler. A lot of reviews under stock fan profiles would seen a 15-20% drop in clocks to 800-850mhz after 5-10min. AMD could manned up and spent some $ on the cooler that could least keep the card near the 1000mhz they said. If on open air bench couldn't keep barely over 800mhz in testing that is terrible. Yea i know can after market cooler for them but shouldn't need to rely on that for card to run at speeds they claim.

Those reference cooler cards disappeared after a few weeks anyway, non-reference cards came out early and anyone who has a 290X got the partner cards like ASUS DirectCUII, Sapphire Tri-X, Gigabyte Windforce etc which came with beefy overclocks , and its not an issue. So not only did it not throttle, it had big overclocks and still didn't throttle. So that whole issue is irrelevant.

You cant even buy a reference 290X now, and I havent seen them on sale for ages at my local stores.

Anyhow the 390X looks good, it will be interesting to see if the water cooler improves performance over a good non reference cooler like the DirectCUII, Tri-X, or Twinfrosr. I'm going to bet that its not......unless AMD decide to bin chips for the WC model and I cant see them doing that.

#75

Tsukiyomi91

What I really liked is that AMD has finally taken up SK Hynix chips for the VRAM, which is a good thing. Up to 8GB of High Bandwidth Memory on a super-massive 4096-bit Interface is crazy with bandwidth speed at 640GB/s, which is around 2.5 times more faster than my current pixel pusher. DX12 & Mantle Ready aside, I think the price tag once converted will be around MYR2.5k range with tax applied. Crazy, but in a good way. NVIDIA I think will start having sales issues once the R9 390X makes an entrance in the high end VGA card market.

Add your own comment

More Radeon R9 390X Specs Leak: Close to 70% Faster than R9 290X

99 Comments on More Radeon R9 390X Specs Leak: Close to 70% Faster than R9 290X

Latest GPU Drivers

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts

More Radeon R9 390X Specs Leak: Close to 70% Faster than R9 290X

Related News

99 Comments on More Radeon R9 390X Specs Leak: Close to 70% Faster than R9 290X

Latest GPU Drivers

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts