AMD 300 Series reviews ...

[3dilettante]

That's a 5% difference between different rigs. Depending on how variable it is between systems and runs, single digits may not need that big a grain of salt. Turbo variations and the case/room/random factors could tip things.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Turbo variations and the case/room/random factors could tip things.

With regard to review sites, I think the impact would be to "even the playing field" since the GPU's in question would be subject to the same conditions.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

An off-rant .... same boat as KitGuru?
http://semiaccurate.com/2015/06/19/amd-outs-caribbean-islands-aka-r9-300-series-gpus/

 

[3dilettante]

One bit of data in there that would be nice to know was the claim that AMD redid the layout for the R300 series. Another site said that the new products were optimized without changing the masks, but there may have been a language barrier for that.

 

[pjbliverpool]

An off-rant .... same boat as KitGuru?
http://semiaccurate.com/2015/06/19/amd-outs-caribbean-islands-aka-r9-300-series-gpus/

Some of the wording was definitely over harsh but I do generally agree with the sentiments around the slide deck. I mean, comparing 8GB VRAM vs 4GB VRAM in a graph? With Fury at the top of your product stack?

 

[Malo]

Some of the wording was definitely over harsh but I do generally agree with the sentiments around the slide deck. I mean, comparing 8GB VRAM vs 4GB VRAM in a graph? With Fury at the top of your product stack?

I'd have to agree. Putting that in a graph is reaching for something to say, especially given Fury as you state.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Charlie is a hater who is so lazy to read the footnotes.

 

[SimBy]

What the heck is going on here?!?!

 

[UniversalTruth]

What the heck is going on here?!?!

Nothing special. Just that the tess on Tonga is more advanced than that of Hawaii/Grenada.

 

[trinibwoy]

Catalyst 15.15 = magic tessellation driver?

 

[SimBy]

Nothing special. Just that the tess on Tonga is more advanced than that of Hawaii/Grenada.

That's not what I meant. Compare 285 15.5 vs 15.15

 

[UniversalTruth]

That's not what I meant. Compare 285 15.5 vs 15.15

I do not know because they show only two betas. Something broken in 15.5 was fixed in 15.15?

From these comparisons one would think that AMD (and their competitors) intentionally spoil the fun with artificially lowered performance. Which of course sucks.

 

[Malo]

Forced lower internal tessellation factor?

 

[3dilettante]

It looks like any example with Tonga and 15.15 takes a massive performance drop at low factors going by the way the Y axis is laid out, but this crosses over around 16 and degrades more gracefully. In the past, discussion of GCN's tessellation behavior brought up its apparent optimization for low factors and rapid falloff past that threshold. The newer driver might have taken a hit at <16x to allow for better consistency at higher factors.

edit: Correction, my eyes did not parse the off shades of orange correctly. Tonga in general takes a massive hit at low factors relative to the 290, but the 15.15 drivers do something that significantly smooths out the behavior past 16.

 

[Alexko]

Significantly indeed: at ×64, Tonga goes from ~10 FPS to ~40 FPS, which isn't very obvious since this is on a log scale. I wonder what's going on in the chip.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Correction, my eyes did not parse the off shades of orange correctly.

Well, someone should tell the guys at pcgh.de that the visible spectrum contains more than the red and blue colors.
That is probably the least ergonomic/legible graph I've seen in years.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

The representatives were quick to say this was no mere rebranding effort, however, using the R9 390 and R9 390X as examples. AMD says the GPUs were retooled for enhanced power management and efficiency. The memory subsystem was tweaked as well, both to support the 8GB of RAM that now comes standard with each card as well as to increase the memory clock speed to 6Gbps, from the older R9 290X’s 5Gbps.

AMD sent out a reviewer’s guide comparing the various R300 series cards’ performance against their Nvidia counterparts, but crucially, not the older Radeon R200 series. For folks solidly in the Team Red camp with no plans to buy anything GeForce, that’s obviously the key comparison.

Bottom line: We recommend waiting to pull the purchasing trigger until reviews of the new R7 and R9 300 series cards start to dribble out. You want to make sure you’re fully informed before spending hundreds on new hardware. Either way, it’s disappointing to see the bulk of AMD’s “new” graphics card lineup consisting of old GPUs, no matter how amazing the Fury X looks.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2937...phics-cards-released-why-you-should-wait.html

 

[Deleted member 13524]

AMD sent out a reviewer’s guide comparing the various R300 series cards’ performance against their Nvidia counterparts, but crucially, not the older Radeon R200 series.

Shameful display!

 

[SimBy]

Why exactly is that so crucial? We know what the differences are. Higher core and memory clocks, 4 more gigs and
much better cooling than ref R200.

Wasn't the R200 series blasted by every review site for being loud and hot? There you go, compare it again.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

That would be a valid argument except for the fact that no one has been making, distributing or selling reference 200 cards for a year or more.

Moreover, there is no reference cooler for the new 300 series. AMD simply decided that the OEMs' job has been better than their own at designing the coolers.
And the OEMs are simply using the the exact same coolers and PCB designs for the 300 series that they had been using for the 200 series.

So what happened is that AMD did a top-to-bottom rebrand of their line-up based solely on the OEMs' effort to avoid AMD's terrible reference cards.
Apart from the memory in Hawaii (which is also a bust, since the 390X costs more than the 8GB 290X models did) and demanding 6 MT/s GDDR5, there's really nothing of value here.