Wednesday, June 17th 2015
AMD Also Announces Radeon R7 300 and R9 300 Series GPUs
In all the buzz surrounding the five products based on its Fiji silicon, AMD also announced five other mid-thru-performance segment graphics cards, the Radeon R7 360, the Radeon R7 370, the Radeon R9 380, the Radeon R9 390, and Radeon R9 390X. Aimed at competitive online MOBA gaming the Radeon R7 360 is good enough to play MOBAs such as "League of Legends," at 1080p, and most other modern games at 900p and 720p.
Based on the "Bonaire" silicon, the Radeon R7 360 features 768 stream processors, 48 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 1050 MHz, and the memory at 6.50 GHz (GDDR5-effective), translating into 104 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, and has a typical board power rating of 100W.
The Radeon R7 370 is designed for MOBA, FPS, and MMORPGs at 1080p resolution. It is expected to feature 1,024 stream processors, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB or 4 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 975 MHz, and the memory at 5.40 GHz (GDDR5-effective), belting out 179 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD has given this chip some energy optimizations, which lends it a typical board power of just 110W. The card draws power from a single 6-pin power connector.
The Radeon R9 380 is expected to strike a price-performance sweetspot, and go against the current segment leader, the GeForce GTX 960. This chip features 1,792 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus, holding 4 GB of memory as standard. The core is clocked at 970 MHz, and the memory at 5.70 GHz (GDDR5-effective), which works out to 182 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This chip has a typical board power of 190W, and draws power from two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. This card is designed to play games at 1080p with all settings maxed out, and even 1440p with moderately high eye-candy.
This brings us to the Radeon R9 390. This card is designed to play games at 1440p with all eye-candy maxed out, and can even play games at 4K Ultra HD with moderate-thru-high settings. It features 2,560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 1000 MHz, and memory at 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective), with a scorching 384 GB/s memory bandwidth. With a typical board power of 275W, the card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors.
The Radeon R9 390X has similar credentials to the R9 390, and will play games at 1440p maxed out, or 4K, with high eye-candy, at playable frame-rates. It features 2,816 stream processors, 172 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. The core ticks at 1050 MHz, and the memory at 6.00 GHz (384 GB/s memory bandwidth).
AMD announced a few exclusive features with these cards, including frame-rate targeting control (FRTC), which is essentially a frame-rate limiter that works on the driver's end, and tweaks clock speeds of the GPU and memory to maintain that custom-set frame-rate. If you're comfortable with 50 fps, for example, the driver could run the GPU at much lower clocks than are needed to render the game at 60 fps, resulting in tangible energy savings, and lower noise output.
VSR, or virtual-super resolution, is similar in function to NVIDIA's dynamic super-resolution (DSR). It lets you render your game at a higher resolution than your display is capable of, and resize the output with advanced re-sampling, so the output at your lower-resolution monitor looks better than if the game were to render at the monitor's native resolution, and use MSAA. VSR still comes at a high frame-rate cost, because your game is being rendered at a higher resolution.
The Radeon R7 360, R7 370, R9 380, R9 390, and R9 390X should be available starting June 18, 2015.
Based on the "Bonaire" silicon, the Radeon R7 360 features 768 stream processors, 48 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 1050 MHz, and the memory at 6.50 GHz (GDDR5-effective), translating into 104 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, and has a typical board power rating of 100W.
The Radeon R7 370 is designed for MOBA, FPS, and MMORPGs at 1080p resolution. It is expected to feature 1,024 stream processors, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB or 4 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 975 MHz, and the memory at 5.40 GHz (GDDR5-effective), belting out 179 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD has given this chip some energy optimizations, which lends it a typical board power of just 110W. The card draws power from a single 6-pin power connector.
The Radeon R9 380 is expected to strike a price-performance sweetspot, and go against the current segment leader, the GeForce GTX 960. This chip features 1,792 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus, holding 4 GB of memory as standard. The core is clocked at 970 MHz, and the memory at 5.70 GHz (GDDR5-effective), which works out to 182 GB/s of memory bandwidth. This chip has a typical board power of 190W, and draws power from two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. This card is designed to play games at 1080p with all settings maxed out, and even 1440p with moderately high eye-candy.
This brings us to the Radeon R9 390. This card is designed to play games at 1440p with all eye-candy maxed out, and can even play games at 4K Ultra HD with moderate-thru-high settings. It features 2,560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 1000 MHz, and memory at 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective), with a scorching 384 GB/s memory bandwidth. With a typical board power of 275W, the card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors.
The Radeon R9 390X has similar credentials to the R9 390, and will play games at 1440p maxed out, or 4K, with high eye-candy, at playable frame-rates. It features 2,816 stream processors, 172 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. The core ticks at 1050 MHz, and the memory at 6.00 GHz (384 GB/s memory bandwidth).
AMD announced a few exclusive features with these cards, including frame-rate targeting control (FRTC), which is essentially a frame-rate limiter that works on the driver's end, and tweaks clock speeds of the GPU and memory to maintain that custom-set frame-rate. If you're comfortable with 50 fps, for example, the driver could run the GPU at much lower clocks than are needed to render the game at 60 fps, resulting in tangible energy savings, and lower noise output.
VSR, or virtual-super resolution, is similar in function to NVIDIA's dynamic super-resolution (DSR). It lets you render your game at a higher resolution than your display is capable of, and resize the output with advanced re-sampling, so the output at your lower-resolution monitor looks better than if the game were to render at the monitor's native resolution, and use MSAA. VSR still comes at a high frame-rate cost, because your game is being rendered at a higher resolution.
The Radeon R7 360, R7 370, R9 380, R9 390, and R9 390X should be available starting June 18, 2015.
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