Thursday, September 26th 2013
Radeon R9 and Radeon R7 Graphics Cards Pictured Some More
Here's a quick recap of AMD's updated product stack, spread between the R9 and R7 series. This article can help you understand the new nomenclature. AMD's lineup begins with the Radeon R7 250 and Radeon R7 260X. The two are based on the 28 nm "Curacao" silicon, which is a variation of the "Pitcairn" silicon the previous-generation Radeon HD 7870 was based on. The R7 250 is expected to be priced around US $89, with 1 GB of RAM, and performance rated at over 2,000 points by 3DMark Firestrike benchmark. The R7 260X, features double the memory at 2 GB, higher clock speeds, possibly more number crunching resources, Firestrike score of over 3,700 points, and a pricing that's around $139. This card should turn up the heat against the likes of GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost.
Moving on, there's the $199 Radeon R9 270X. Based on a chip not much unlike "Tahiti LE," it features 2 GB of memory, and 3DMark Firestrike score of over 5,500 points. Then there's the Radeon R9 280X. This card, priced attractively at $299, is practically a rebrand of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with. It features 3 GB of RAM, and over 6,800 points on 3DMark Firestrike. Then there are the R9 290 and R9 290X. AMD flew dozens of scribes thousands of miles over to Hawaii, and left them without an official announcement on the specifications of the two. From what AMD told us, the two feature 4 GB of memory, over 5,000 TFLOP/s compute power, and over 300 GB/s memory bandwidth. The cards we mentioned are pictured in that order below.
More pictures follow.
Radeon R7 250
Radeon R7 260X
Radeon R9 270X
Radeon R9 280X
Radeon R9 290
Radeon R9 290X
Moving on, there's the $199 Radeon R9 270X. Based on a chip not much unlike "Tahiti LE," it features 2 GB of memory, and 3DMark Firestrike score of over 5,500 points. Then there's the Radeon R9 280X. This card, priced attractively at $299, is practically a rebrand of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with. It features 3 GB of RAM, and over 6,800 points on 3DMark Firestrike. Then there are the R9 290 and R9 290X. AMD flew dozens of scribes thousands of miles over to Hawaii, and left them without an official announcement on the specifications of the two. From what AMD told us, the two feature 4 GB of memory, over 5,000 TFLOP/s compute power, and over 300 GB/s memory bandwidth. The cards we mentioned are pictured in that order below.
Radeon R7 250
77 Comments on Radeon R9 and Radeon R7 Graphics Cards Pictured Some More
If the 290X scores ~8000, and the 280X rebadge scores 6800 (according to the two AMD slides), wouldn't it follow that AMD's own calculation is that the 290X is 17-18% faster than a warmed over 7970GE ?The Crossfire bridge is good for 2.5GT/sec (gigatransfers) which is 250MB/sec, not 2.5gb/s
Like Bonaire XTX aka R7 260X; It supports this new TrueAudio would this mean the original Bonaire always had this but wasn't implemented? Or is this XTX an new spin of the original? If the Fire Strike numbers projected are factual, I'm not overwhelmed as 3500-3600 was what most claim the 7790 offers, AMD's slide says 3700 that’s like 5%? What’s so XTX about it? Then that price of $140 even giving it 2Gb it's not great, I believe a GTX 650Ti Boost is 3800.
The R9 270X as at $200 has me feeling 7870 with not any extra performance given the 5500 score seems blasé. A R9 280X (7970Ghz) at $300 seem to come out alright the supposed recent MSRP of a 7970Ghz was like $380, but hasn't been hard to find at $275 working rebates and code.
They might be all okay once we see some real gaming B-M, but I want(ed) more than a bump in clocks. I hope AMD did something more than re-name Pitcairn as Curacao, they had to do some minor tweaks or this is almost more underwhelming than what Nvidia got away with. :confused:That's a very reasonable use of the data. Good call! And a little unnerving...
While it's nice to wax lyrical about benches its premature to be stating any numbers as fact or one as beating the other.
All will be revealed when the nda clears and wizzards review arrives.
R9 290X = Hawaii XT (Full Chip - 2816 SP, 4GB w/512-bit, ~$600)
R9 290 = Hawaii Pro (Binned Chip - 2304 or 2560 SP, 3GB w/384-bit, ~$400)
R9 280X = Tahiti XT2 (7970 Ghz - 2048 SP, 3GB w/384-bit, ~$300)
R9 270X = Tahiti LE (7870 XT - 1536 SP, 2GB w/256-bit, ~$200)
R7 260X = Bonaire XT (7790 - 896 SP, 2GB w/128-bit, ~$139)
R7 250 = Cape Verde XT (7770 - 640 SP, 1GB w/128-bit, <$89)
The R7 250 is the unique card because while all the other rebrands have equal or higher clock speeds than their predecessors, the R7 250 is a 7770 with lower clock speeds to fit into the 75W PCIe power specification. It would surpass the 7750 in performance due to the extra shaders, but it would not surpass a 7770 due to the lower clock speeds.
It would seem that Pitcairn is dead. This also makes a lot of sense considering Tahiti is a relatively big chip and if the lineup only contained full Tahitis and full Pitcairns you have nowhere for partially defective dies to be used. The reason the R7 250 is a Cape Verde chip and not a cut down Bonaire is that it doesn't feature the audio processing hardware.
I'm pretty sure my analysis stands up to scrutiny a whole lot better than some of the emotive arguments flying around the forums
If you aren't sold on AMD's own comparative benchmarks on their own products what does that say about the level of confidence you (or anyone else) has in what the company? If their own internal benchmarking is flawed or spurious, what about the company's other claims? Or is this more a case of picking and choosing depending upon the feelgood factor ?Seems spot on...I had reached much the same conclusionon another site, so in the interests of self-interest I'd say your guesstimates are excellent! :laugh:
Another slide from that site, showing a more updated chart with 1050-1100MHz/6000MHz (same speculated specs for R9 280X) Radeon HD 7970 shows it getting more than 7800 points. How exactly is that the same thing with 6800...
On that same test system, w/ the 4,5GHz i7-3960X, QC DDR3-1866CL9 and SSD, I'd wager R9 290X would go for over 9000 marks (no joke intended).
Do AMD use different system specifications when doing comparative testing?
Are AMD's technical staff too ignorant to interpret a benchmark?
Are AMD deliberately lying?
You have to give them credit, they are finally learning to take a hint.
Hell, keep this up they may eventually be considered the bad guys.
I would not mind buying this card but im still waiting on wizards review as yours is poor and largely unfounded opinion.
Based on possibly a rumour tickling graph.
Let me put a widely sensible supposition to you Say Amd release a top spec card and at the same time they Know there competition can release a similar spec card specialy cooled if needed to piss on the fire slightly by present day benches in pr terms not good even if it were a paper launch.
They are and have kept details secret on And with purpose . THAT is a fact.
This would mean that except for the R9 290 (non-X) that AMD would be using only fully-enabled dies. This seems to make no business sense since any chips with defects can't be sold. Granted, 28nm is a mature process, but usually manufacturers have two tiers of product - a fully enabled one and a feature cut one to use the defective dies. Especially for Tahiti - a 365mm^2 chip has to have a significant number of defective die, and I doubt AMD wants to put a disabled Tahiti into their mobile lineup due to power concerns. I guess then have OEM products to use the defective parts?
In that case the lineup would look like this
R9 290X = Hawaii XT (Full Chip - 2816 SP, 4GB w/512-bit, ~$600)
R9 290 = Hawaii Pro (Binned Chip - 2560 SP, 4GB w/512-bit, ~$400-450)
R9 280X = Tahiti XT2 (7970 Ghz - 2048 SP, 3GB w/384-bit, ~$300)
R9 270X = Curacao XT (7870 - 1280 SP, 2GB w/256-bit, ~$200)
R7 260X = Bonaire XT (7790 - 896 SP, 2GB w/128-bit, ~$139)
R7 250 = Cape Verde XT (7770 - 640 SP, 1GB w/128-bit, <$89)I disagree that it's specific to AMD; that's what most electronics-related press conferences are like nowadays. Think of the 2013 Microsoft and Sony press conferences at E3; they were basically identical in structure to the AMD press conference and revealed very little about the hardware itself.
Please let me simplify:
Either the charts AMD posted are correct- in which case information can be extrapolated from them OR they are incorrect and AMD is either lying or has some serious QC and/or internal communications problems.
It is either one or the other.
For someone who isn't "assed if the card blows a fart" you seem to be posting an awful lot. Personally I am interested in the new releases, both from an enthusiast standpoint, and as someone who advises and builds systems for others. If you don't like what is said please use, by all means use the ignore function in your CP.
YW
I expected more, especially with 3840x2160 firmly in the sights of consumers over the next couple of years.
I can only hope it drives prices down, and that Nvidias answer will be better than this. I hope this for the sake of GPU's getting faster overall.
Also, WTF with their new naming scheme :/Thanks Hilux SSRG, you pulled a fanboy.
there's talk that maxwell will also be 28nm in 2014, then a 'big maxwell' late 2014 or even early 2015 at 20nm
i dont expect miracles without massive architecture changes or massive size changes
i'd rather have 2 separate chips, gaming & compute, but that's expensive to do (we can see the results of such a split, 680 has much better gaming even though it has worse compute over 580)
the other area to boost is software, which is what mantle is doing, we'll see what bf4 will be like in december
youtu.be/3MU-DIKvY3U?t=11m38s