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

The PCI Express Interface probably? I was pondering too, if that were additional memory controllers, but they do look very different from the ones that are aligned with the L2-Caches at the side of the CUs. I don't think that AMD went through the trouble of designing different memory controllers for one chip.

The rotated position in which Tonga is mounted on the PCB does imply that it might be a shorter routing from the short side to the PCIe connector as well.

 

The area is far too large to be the PCI Express interface.

 

All the six GDDR phy clusters are visible. The display interfacing is at the lower left edge, the PCI-E is north of that.

 

I still fail to see where you see addtional MCs. I'll concede that they have approx. the same size, yes. But a visually totally different structure.

 

The individual pieces of the MC aren't rotated:

 

I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing that out

Even more impressive by AMD to increase the transistor and functional density without sacrificing other important things! I updated my article accordingly.

 

You're welcome. I'm glad you posted those images, they were not included in the press-deck I recieved.

 

They weren't in the/your Carrizo-Thingie? They sure were in mine.

 

A 384 bit 32 CU Tonga could have done significantly more damage than the current 285.

Why did AMD not release it right away?

 

That way the rebrand into R9 380X comes with something new?

 

Looks like Tonga is essentially Tahiti, with an updated ISA and double the setup pipes. The command processor is also quite a bit larger. And it took the the more compact memory phy padding from Hawaii, to cut down on the die-size.

 

Well that certainly puts tonga in a better light, but why no full tonga?

 

Why go 384-bit on Tonga if you're not increasing shaders or ROPs? Unless AMD are upping the ROPs to 48(which imo should've been on Tahiti) or 64(staggered again?) or 96(which sounds la-la land).

And TR's Scott Wasson vindicated,

 

Or because the channel inventory for Tahiti was in the stratosphere? I think that makes more sense. I don't see why one would leave a considerable amount of money on the table for over 10 months just to make a lineup look better. Especially since it was already a bit of disaster anyway... The other reason would be yields, but that's not very realistic either for 28nm.

 

Tin-foil hat: Every R9 3xx is just Tonga with varying levels of disabled parts!

 

Are there ECC-enabled Tonga derivatives as well? I am not sure right now.


WRT to why AMD did not yet release a „full Tonga“: Until a few weeks back, R9 280-cards were priced VERY compellingly here in germany, probably clearing stock from the channel. That might have played a role.

 

A more clear picture of Fiji:




p.s.:

Fiji presentation at Computex (skip to 4:00 mark):

 

Possible leaked prices slight increase ...

http://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/20623-amd-radeon-300-serien-dyker-upp-i-prislista
Edit:
So R9 390X 8GB may be about $600. If true this means R9 390X, and not Fiji will compete against the GTX 980ti.

 

That does not look like one of them is Tonga XT with full configuration.

 

more like 500 us vs 500 euro as the doller is bad for us atm.