Graphic Cards Radeon 300 series launch date & pricing

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Crapmypants

Crapmypants

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Launch has been confirmed for June 16th at E3.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-hmb-gpu-launch-date,29268.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9335/amd-confirms-june-16th-date-for-upcoming-gpu-announcement

Pricing hasn't been confirmed but the below leak is making the rounds
http://www.techspot.com/news/60934-amd-radeon-300-series-graphics-card-pricing-leaks.html

Also, it looks like everything except Fiji and Tonga will be a rebrand. Hawaii is making a comeback but thankfully Tahiti is finally being put to pasture in lieu of Tonga.
http://www.techspot.com/news/60917-xfx-accidentally-confirms-amd-radeon-r9-390x-rebrand.html

note to mods, i was unable to create the thread in the news and article section (create thread button wouldn't show) hence it's here. can this be moved to the appropriate section please? thanks a ton :)
 
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iamnew said:
why cant i find any reviews of the rebranded r9 300 series?is there an embargo?
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How good/better are these rebranded cards usually? How much sense does it make buying these over the earlier ones? Sorry if that's a noob question.
 
I dont think there will be any major increase in performance.Hopefully we may get better performance per $. But seeing overall specs and prices i am a bit disappointed.
 
Not really a noob question.
usually rebrands end up getting priced at lower levels, thus, last gen's flagship becomes the next gens mid-range.
however, in this case it seems they've used the same chips (except tonga) in the same segments without being very disruptive with the pricing.
the new 300 series will have some newer features like better dx12 support, a-sync shaders, true audio, free-sync support and so on.
performance wise don't expect more than a 5% difference as they only have a slight bump in clock speeds with no apparent changes in architecture.
If you don't want these features then you can try looking for some bargains on older 200 series hardware.
It's really hard to say whether any performance or efficiency improvements can be expected from the rebrandeon line. fury however looks promising - particularly fury nano.
 
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I remember having read somewhere that the 200 series themselves were rebrands. If I'm looking for a budget gaming card around 10k, would the new 360 make sense? Can there be a price decrease on the 270x?
 
Yes, for the 200 series, except for the 290/x and the 285, all the others were rebrands from the 7xxx line and many are continuing on in the 300 series.
For the 300 series with the exception of the 285/380(tonga) and 290/390(hawaii) everything is from their original gcn line-up.
7790->260x->360x (bonaire)
7870->270x->370x (pitcairn)
7970->280x (tahiti)

i don't know if this is a cheap marketing tactic or a genuine vindication of the gcn architecture having held it's own against fermi, kepler and maxwell.

I forgot to answer your question. i dont think that the 360 will make sense because the 260x that it's based on was a gcn 1.3 chip i.e. it has all the new features that the 290x brought in such as true audio and free sync etc.
unless the 360 has some major advantage over the 260 it would be better to stick with the older one as it will be cheaper.
btw, the 260x is ~9-10k and the 270x is ~13-14k now.
i doubt if prices will drop for older hardware as retailers just overprice newer hardware instead. you can try haggling at local stores as they may want to get rid of old stock.
either way, best to wait for reviews to get a clear picture.
 
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Not confirmed but it seems like the NDA on reviews is set to be lifted on june 18th at 8(not sure if it's am or pm) est.
So we'll have reviews out by either 5:30 pm today evening or 5:30 am friday morning.
 
I am guessing that the Fury X would be some where between GTX 980 and GTX980 Ti maybe close to the later than former in games although a lot of people seem to be over rating it based on some benchmark slide from AMD presentation. Lets see how it fares in the benchmarks once the NDA period is over.

Also its kind of disappointing that they would put 4GB HBM in the new top of the line Fury while they put 8GB regular GDDR in the re-branded 390 line. Doesn't make sense. Bandwidth is important, but what would be the point if the memory quantity itself causes a bottleneck.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Also its kind of disappointing that they would put 4GB HBM in the new top of the line Fury while they put 8GB regular GDDR in the re-branded 390 line. Doesn't make sense. Bandwidth is important, but what would be the point if the memory quantity itself causes a bottleneck.
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That's actually because of a limitation of first generation HBM where each stack can have a max of 1gb at 4 stacks per die. the second iteration of hbm is already under development and will supposedly allow 4 times more ram at double the bandwidth. (it should surface in the 400 series and pascal)
considering the massive bandwidth and the gargantuan number of cores i think the fury will chew through data fast enough to keep the memory from bottle-necking it (in theory at least).

achingly waiting for the reviews to know how much of an impact hbm has.
 
Crapmypants said:
considering the massive bandwidth and the gargantuan number of cores i think the fury will chew through data fast enough to keep the memory from bottle-necking it (in theory at least).

achingly waiting for the reviews to know how much of an impact hbm has.
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Moot point if a game requires more than 4 GB to hold the textures and other stuff. All that memory bandwidth is within the graphics card i.e. between the GPU and VRAM, once you need to swap out from outside the graphics card, I don't think HBM is going to be of any help since the bottlenecks will be else where.

The whole point for AMD putting 8 GB VRAM on the 390X is to make it UHD resolution ready for future games. By having only 4GB in the top of the line cards, they have crippled it. It may run present generation of games at 4k, but 6 months down the line, with increasing texture resolutions and VRAM requirements, you might be forced to run at 2K or Full HD even if the GPU is computationally capable. 390X may be more future ready than Fury line from that aspect. I would rather that they put in 8GB GDDR than 4GB of HBM on the Fury line if HBM is still not ready.

On similar lines, GTX 980 and 970 are not really future 4k ready cards. You should ideally have a a GTX980 Ti with 6GB or Titan X with 12 GB for that. I bought a GTX 980 knowing full well that I would anyway be limited to 2k or Full HD till 2016.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Moot point if a game requires more than 4 GB to hold the textures and other stuff. All that memory bandwidth is within the graphics card i.e. between the GPU and VRAM, once you need to swap out from outside the graphics card, I don't think HBM is going to be of any help since the bottlenecks will be else where.

The whole point for AMD putting 8 GB VRAM on the 390X is to make it UHD resolution ready for future games. By having only 4GB in the top of the line cards, they have crippled it. It may run present generation of games at 4k, but 6 months down the line, with increasing texture resolutions and VRAM requirements, you might be forced to run at 2K or Full HD even if the GPU is computationally capable. 390X may be more future ready than Fury line from that aspect. I would rather that they put in 8GB GDDR than 4GB of HBM on the Fury line if HBM is still not ready.

On similar lines, GTX 980 and 970 are not really future 4k ready cards. You should ideally have a a GTX980 Ti with 6GB or Titan X with 12 GB for that. I bought a GTX 980 knowing full well that I would anyway be limited to 2k or Full HD till 2016.
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I beleive that no single gpu can actually drive more than 4k even now. You still need sli or crossfire for meaningful gaming at above 4k resolution. In that light having 4GB in single GPU is sufficient and that would become 8GB in crossfire for higher resolution.
This makes Amd fury x an optimal solution for 4k resolution with 4gb hbm ram.
There is no practical senario in gaming where more than 4GB can be UTILIZED(Not used. Utilization and consumption are two very different things) at any time in any game for 4k resolution.
 
^^ I am saying that 4GB is not enough for UHD. Even today, with just 1080p, you can go above 4 GB VRAM in games like Shadows of Mordor with Ultra resolution textures. Future games would require 6~8 GB of VRAM for proper 4k gaming.

There is no point to increasing screen resolution to UHD if the texture resolution is not increasing. What is the point of replacing 1 pixel in FHD with 4 pixels of same color shade in UHD. What we see today is games that can be run at UHD screen resolution with texture detail designed for FHD or QHD. When you have more pixels on screen, you would like more detail to be represented using those pixels and that means higher quality textures with more detail and resolution. Once games with higher resolution textures start cropping up, you will start needing more VRAM to use them.

And no, two Graphics cards with 4GB doesn't make it 8 GB. It is still 4GB with the same data replicated across both cards. Its just that two GPU's are operating in parallel.[DOUBLEPOST=1434697798][/DOUBLEPOST]http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-official-benchmarks.html

This benchmark result is supposedly from AMD themselves.
 
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Re-brands were never a problem to begin with and even Fury does not pose any problem for nVidia at the moment. What is the worst that can happen? Fury really forcing a couple of FPS more than 980 Ti here and there.

So what? nVidia's maxwell architecture is mature and stable now and they have been making a lot of sales of the 980/970. They can easily afford to slash $100 off the prices without losing their nights sleep. On the other hand, AMD has a lot of bleeding edge tech in the card and reducing prices won't be that easy unless they are desperate.

Further more showing a stock card with a sealed loop liquid cooler and even listing it has the only type of cooling option for Fury line in their website is in itself a bad thing and for many, it is a sign of desperation. Did AMD have to clock the GPU too high to match the 980 that they had to resort to liquid cooling? When was the last time AMD used liquid cooling as a stock option? It was when they made CPU's with so high a thermal envelope that liquid cooling was really the practical option.
 
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