There are few days left until AMD will introduce "new" generation Radeon R300 graphics cards. I put quotation marks because, as you know, the only really new GPU will arrive now, Fiji, was not included in this range, it will be named Radeon Fury (GeForce style Titan). So Radeon R300 generation will be composed only of renaming, one to one, the current Radeon R200.
Ba Some GPUs have a history of more than three years, from family Radeon HD 7000. Today we talk a little about the best models in the series, Radeon R9 and R9 390X 390. They are based on the same GPU R9 290X and R9 290, Hawaii, which did little to lead us into error was renamed Grenada.
I hoped that even Hawaii Tonga will receive treatment and will be brought to the GCN architecture 1.2 for the benefit of texture compression. And frankly we do not know what investment would have required such a change. The fact is that AMD chose not to, and preferred to bring us the same Hawaii I knew, of 438 mm2 and 6.2 billion transistors, GCN architecture 1.1 and 28 nm process technology. GPU-Z confirmed, displaying the same Device ID.
AMD still walked a little in common, and doubled the amount of memory available. So it can sweeten hoax. In short, Grenada in 2816 Radeon R9 390X will stream processors, 64 ROP's and 176 texture units, plus 44 computational units. It achieves frequency 1050 MHz and will have access to 8GB 6000 MHz GDDR5 512 bits.
And in R9 390 will include 2560 stream processors, 64 ROP's and 160 texture units, plus 40 computational units will go up to 1000 MHz, and will use all 8 GB GDDR5 512 bits to 6000 MHz. Some sources say they had been able to significantly reduce electric consumption. What? The process technology is mature 28 nm long, and no other changes could not see how AMD TDP decrease and increase frequencies simultaneously.
Do not get me wrong. Not a bad thing to keep a product in demand, as long as competitive (good or not good is when the competition comes with interesting new things). Or to keep him competitive on price. And AMD is a company known for such tactics. But lately it seems completely gave up the fight on all fronts. Processors without integrated graphics FX series we have not seen from Piledriver, and in the last three years only occurred three new GPUs ...
Worse, if rumor will come true prices for R9 and R9 390X 390, the $ 390 and $ 330 respectively. When R9 290X is $ 300 and R9 290 starts at $ 250.
