380 and 380X will be R9 290/290X?
Rebrand for the lose?
For my FX-6300 I wasn't looking for anything more than performance of GTX 970, but everything is a mixed bag.
Both brands do it. AMD 7970 was apart of the AMD 7000 generation. AMD 7990 was the king of that generation. R9-280 is the rebrand of a 7970 with better frame time variance performance and tweaks. R9-380 and 380x is the rebrand of the R9-290 and 290x. Since the R9-390 and 390x are possibly having a nice TDP drop: Almost twice the Streaming processors with an idle TDP of a 290x, is what rumor-mills are hinting about in the R9-390, R9-380 and 380x will have a TDP below the current generation. R9-390 at idle, is hinted to have a TDP around 300 watts. So if R9-290x has a TDP around 300 watts on idle, R9-380 and 380x will have a TDP less than the R9-290. Basically, the new 380s will consume less power, and have the minor improvements it's been missing in the 290. R9-390 has the new GCN and all the premium stuff from the AMD camp.
For Nvidia, GTX 760 is a GTX 680 rebrand. GTX 960 is a GTX 780 rebrand. Since the economy is the way it is, effectively selling off leftover stock is not what it use to be for both sides. So NVidia and AMD play the game of rebranding old chips into the next generation of graphic cards to get people to buy them instead of a high-end card due to budget constraints. A chip not sold, or a graphic card not sold, is money lost in the long run.
I don't get the double standards imposed here. For NVIDIA, everyone is saying you don't even need 4GB, 4GB si plenty, who cares if it only has 3,5GB of high speed memory etc. And here we have AMD cards with exactly the same amount of (uncrippled) HBM stacked memory and everyone is questioning "would 4GB be enough". Confused much...
I think it's been stigmatized into every high-end, gaming enthusiasts' mind, who knows a thing or two about AMD and NVidia Graphic Cards, that NVidia is king at 1080p, and anything above that, AMD dominate. Dominates barely... This could explain the expectations set by the consumers, and for their response: "The 390 only has a 4GB Framebuffer, isn't that a little lacking?" In addition, if you look at the past few generations of graphic cards, NVidia comes out with 2GBs, AMD comes out with 3GBs in the same generation. This has always been the trend. AMD will always have 1 GB more worth of memory than the same tier and generation card as NVidia's Card. On the Nvidia side, they try to make up for it by having a higher memory bandwidth. This is there way of making up for the lost in performance. Personally, I don't think 5GBs or more is needed, and if they really need the extra VRam, consumers could have just gotten a Sapphire R9-290x with the 8GB Framebuffer, or a Titan-black. Now, speaking of the future, there's no doubt in my mind that some variant of a R9-390x from one of the vendors, a non-reference card, will have 8 GBs or more in the not to distant future. In addition, there's really no need to go that high unless you are going surround or 4K. I bet the number of consumers who are at that level, or being in the position to own a 4K tv or surround setup is anywhere from 1 to 10%. The remaining consumers will probably still hover around the 1080p resolution for the next 2 to 5 years. Only games that in theory, can go above 4GBs VRam, would be Star Citizens, and Skyrim with a heavy set of mods on a 1080p setup. Crysis 3, at full blast settings, could peak around 3.6 GB Vram. Maybe that Lord of the Rings, Mordor game on high textures can go past it on 1080p resolution.
edit: it's late, I edited my stuff, I don't give a shet if you are a grammar Nazi...
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