AMD: Pirate Islands (R* 3** series) Speculation/Rumor Thread

[Grall]

It will be interesting to see performance comparison vs 390X on this one now that Tonga finally gets full memory bus unlocked. I wonder how close the two will end up, thanks to color compression.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The difference to a 390X should still be large because it still has 37.5% more compute/texturing units, twice the theoretical fillrate and the clocks are rather aggressive.

What this could get very close to - depending on the 380X' clocks - is the older 290, since it usually operates below 950MHz.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

Looking at it, a highly clocked Tonga 6gb might be worth $275 or so to the right people. It should come in under, but not really dramatically under a 970. And having 2gb more of ram, under the right circumstances then even beating out the 970. Some quick estimates place a fully enabled Tonga clocked 10% higher than a 380 at a nigh 60 fps average for maxed out (1080p, no MSAA) Witcher 3, Battlefield 4, and Ryse. Not bad at all for sub $300 card.

Not sure where a 3gb version might come in though.

 

[gamervivek]

384-bit without 48ROPs? I was hoping it to be that though it most probably will be just like 285/380 only with more shaders. It wasn't like AMD were hurting for bandwidth.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9621/77385.png

 

[Frenetic Pony]

ROPs are only relevant for resolution scaling (or MSAA). Considering you'd not run this card above 1440p without MSAA then 32 ROPs is probably enough if the clockrates are high enough.

 

[sebbbi]

ROPs are only relevant for resolution scaling (or MSAA).

That is a common misconcemption and not true at all. When the resolution rises, the pixel shader invocation count rises equally, meaning that you need equal improvements in TMUs and ALUs as well. If you only scale up ROPs, you need to simplify all pixel shader code (less ALU, less TMU usage) to scale up to higher resolutions.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

That is a common misconcemption and not true at all. When the resolution rises, the pixel shader invocation count rises equally, meaning that you need equal improvements in TMUs and ALUs as well. If you only scale up ROPs, you need to simplify all pixel shader code (less ALU, less TMU usage) to scale up to higher resolutions.

Well, yes. But this was in a response to the directly above post, Gamervivek's. The 380x has more ALUs and may be clocked higher. But it's probably not going to be ROP bound whether it has 48 ROPs or 32 ROPs, at least not before its ALU bound.

 

[gamervivek]

Well, it was more about AMD losing the crossbar after Tahiti, or did they?

As for cards being more ALU bound than ROP bound, GCN1.2/3 cards don't perform in the recent DX12 benchmarks in harmony with Hawaii and this is often blamed on lack of ROPs for the Fiji cards.

 

[Putas]

As for cards being more ALU bound than ROP bound, GCN1.2/3 cards don't perform in the recent DX12 benchmarks in harmony with Hawaii and this is often blamed on lack of ROPs for the Fiji cards.

But why, Fiji's ROP/ALU ratio is still higher than that of Hawaii.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, it was more about AMD losing the crossbar after Tahiti, or did they?

A generic crossbar hasn't been there since prior to R600 (which had the ring bus, but was dropped subsequently). Tahiti was an exception due to the number of engines relative to number of memory channels, and even then it is not a full crossbar (in that all engines can't reach all channels); in 256b configurations Tahiti effectively drops the crossbar as well.

 

[gamervivek]

Rumor of 380X performance, 3dmark score placing it near a 290.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=28712523#post28712523

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Near a 290 in 3dmark 11, which is downright ancient..

 

[Frenetic Pony]

Near a 290 in 3dmark 11, which is downright ancient..

Oh no! The midrange card that will cost like $270 isn't a brand new world beating flagship card! Whatever shall we do obvious and bad Nvidia shill? Who will save us!!!?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I meant that 3dmark 11 is ancient and therefore it should be a lot more CPU-bound than other, more recent games or benchmarks.
I wasn't saying the 290 is ancient.

 

[eastmen]

I just got a 290 off ebay for $100 to replace my 7950. The performance leap is really good. I think $270 would be to high , if they can price it at $200 they would have an excellent seller

 

[Pressure]

Nice deal, I just upgraded to a Radeon HD 5870 for $20

It will hold me over nicely until FinFet hits us all.

 

[eastmen]

Nice deal, I just upgraded to a Radeon HD 5870 for $20

It will hold me over nicely until FinFet hits us all.

that's a good deal too, I sell a lot on ebay so I just watch cards . The card I won had a bad fan but I slap a water cooler on it anyway.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I just got a 290 off ebay for $100 to replace my 7950.

Are you sure you didn't get a malfunctioning one? The 290 usually goes for $250 or more.

 

[Lightman]

Are you sure you didn't get a malfunctioning one? The 290 usually goes for $250 or more.

Even if it malfunctions, there is nothing an oven can't fix

Great deal on R9 290 BTW!
I've sold my modified R9 290X OC with Gelid + org backplate + super silent fans to my brother for £150 and he too was stepping up from 7970GHz.
When 290's launched the step up in performance was not huge but with current games and engines the cards really perform in different categories.

 

[eastmen]

Are you sure you didn't get a malfunctioning one? The 290 usually goes for $250 or more.

The fan didn't work. Guy listed it as so , I've ran everything I can on the card and haven't had an issue yet. 3dmark passes with pretty much a spot on score , I played sw battle front for hours with no issue.

This is just a cheap pick up to help with VR , next year when the 16nm cards hit in the fall I will be buying two of those.