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

Note how it says „2nd generation of products featuring AMD GCN Architecture“ instead of „2nd generation of AMD GCN Architecture“
 
New pricing range revealed:
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-300-series-pricing-confirmed-aggressive/

- Hawaii now only exists in 8GB cards, priced between $330 (Pro) to $390 (XT).
- Tonga Pro (R9 380) now undercuts GTX 960, at $195.
- 2GB Pitcairn Pro (R7 370) now on $135
- 2GB Bonaire for $107.

Even though the naming still sucks and the lack of new chips still disappoint, at least the price is compelling...
8GB Hawaii Pro for $330 seems like a very nice future-proof card to get, and it should be even cheaper to find another within a year or so, for Crossfire and/or DX12 multi-adapter.
 
Probably, the lack of new working fab-node disappoint more AMD engineers then us :LOL:

Anyway, 28nm GPUs are becoming serious competitors to house radiators.
 
Radeon 300 graphics cards coming from Sapphire on June 16th

The first thing I noticed is the absence of Fury. Maybe this card is simply using a different name, or maybe Fury is not ready yet, and we should expect these cards to be available later. I hope not, that would really make me furious..

The facts however are that manufactures are slowly sending out the information to distribution centers, which are later picked up by online sellers. The list sent by Sapphire does not include Fury yet.

The leaked Sapphire lineup is exactly what we expected. There are two Hawaii-based Radeon R9 390(X) graphics cards, both equipped with 8GB memory, two R9 380 (Tonga), two R7 370 (Curacao) and one R7 360 (Bonaire).
Click to expand...

http://videocardz.com/56171/sapphire-radeon-300-series-listed-online
 
silent_guy said:
Price drops are great, but isn't that what AMD has been trying for the last 9 months with very little to show for?
Click to expand...

This time there might be a full Tonga thrown in, and an overclocked Hawaii with extra RAM (assuming this is what "enhanced" means). I don't know if that will be enough, though.

In particular, it's going to be hard for AMD to argue that Fiji doesn't need any more than 4GB of RAM but that Hawaii really benefits from 8GB.
 
Alexko said:
This time there might be a full Tonga thrown in, and an overclocked Hawaii with extra RAM (assuming this is what "enhanced" means). I don't know if that will be enough, though.
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Yeah, that's really the only positive in the whole lineup. But easy to counter by Nvidia by cutting down a 970 some more. Or they could just not bother and lower the 970 price a bit: with 3 out of 16 SMs disabled, it should already have killer yields.

I don't think overclocked Hawaii will make a dent: aren't all 290X cards already overclocked anyway?

In particular, it's going to be hard for AMD to argue that Fiji doesn't need any more than 4GB of RAM but that Hawaii really benefits from 8GB.
Click to expand...
Yes, we're going to be seeing a lot of spinning. (And they better don't give the task to this Hallock guy: his FL12_1 comments could have been spun a little better IMHO.)
 
Alexko said:
This time there might be a full Tonga thrown in, and an overclocked Hawaii with extra RAM (assuming this is what "enhanced" means). I don't know if that will be enough, though.
Click to expand...
AMD was also missing a halo product (not based on a dual-GPU solution), something that seems to make some difference.

Alexko said:
In particular, it's going to be hard for AMD to argue that Fiji doesn't need any more than 4GB of RAM but that Hawaii really benefits from 8GB.
Click to expand...
Agreed. And Macri's excuse of "we've thrown a couple of engineers to work on a software solution to that" isn't really going to work, if they're making sub-top products with twice the memory.
Even if they pull something like a "Hypermemory 2.0" for Fiji, reserving something like an extra 4GB at the 10-15GB/s that PCIe can do, they're going to have a bad time explaining the 8GB on Hawaii.
 
kalelovil said:
Hopefully, although we are a week from launch and a 380X has been noticeably absent from the line-up rumors (correct me if I am mistaken).
Click to expand...

It's not absent from the rumors but it's absent from the premature listings we've seen so far.
But then again, so are the Fiji cards. And we know for sure that those are coming in June 16.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
AMD was also missing a halo product (not based on a dual-GPU solution), something that seems to make some difference.
Click to expand...

True but they've then gone and separated the Halo product from the rest of the range by calling it something else. That wokred for NV with Titan because the 980 itself was already a Halo product and it's based on exactly the same IP.

I think AMD would have been far better naming Fiji as the 390 and then pushing everything else down 1 product level. They're already priced at that level and Bonaire really shouldn't be any higher than 350 level by this point which is incidentally missing from this lineup.
 
ToTTenTranz said:
It's not absent from the rumors but it's absent from the premature listings we've seen so far.
But then again, so are the Fiji cards. And we know for sure that those are coming in June 16.
Click to expand...
Actually we don't know that - we know they'll be unveiled on 16th, but according to rumours even before any date was confirmed they said they'll be unveiled on 16th but availability wouldn't start 'till week or so later
 
pjbliverpool said:
I think AMD would have been far better naming Fiji as the 390 and then pushing everything else down 1 product level. They're already priced at that level and Bonaire really shouldn't be any higher than 350 level by this point which is incidentally missing from this lineup.
Click to expand...

We'll certainly agree on that. The naming scheme for the 300 series is terrible IMHO and they should do exactly what you mentioned.
Having Radeon 2xy = Radeon 3xy on performance will give the consumers a really bad perception about company. It's even worse in the mobile parts, where M2xy >= M3xy.
They won't fool anyone and The Internet (reviewers, youtubers, forum posters, commenters, etc.) will crap on them massively.
 
pjbliverpool said:
True but they've then gone and separated the Halo product from the rest of the range by calling it something else. That wokred for NV with Titan because the 980 itself was already a Halo product and it's based on exactly the same IP.

I think AMD would have been far better naming Fiji as the 390 and then pushing everything else down 1 product level. They're already priced at that level and Bonaire really shouldn't be any higher than 350 level by this point which is incidentally missing from this lineup.
Click to expand...

Hawaii is already competitive with the 980 and is almost 2 years old. 2 years of tweaks to manufacturing , some faster ram with faster clocks and 8GBs could make it a very potent 4k card and if the pricing is true for the 8 gig card it will be a very cheap 4k card.

Then you have Fury to compete with the TI and Titan .
 
eastmen said:
Hawaii is already competitive with the 980 and is almost 2 years old.
Click to expand...

Depends how you define competitive. Using the link posted earlier in this thread the 980's almost 30% faster at 1080p and 1440p. The gap closes at 4K but I don't think either of those cards are fast enough to make 4K a serious proposition moving forward tbh.
 
eastmen said:
Hawaii is already competitive with the 980 and is almost 2 years old. 2 years of tweaks to manufacturing , some faster ram with faster clocks and 8GBs could make it a very potent 4k card and if the pricing is true for the 8 gig card it will be a very cheap 4k card.
Click to expand...
I already considered this a standard SKU since at least three different manufacturers offer this already. Higher memory clock did not help, justification for 8 gigs is hard to find. Hawaii is behind a card with smaller chip and ~100 Watts lower consumption. At midrange it is similar, sending fat chips 256 bit cards against 128 bit... I would never thought to see AMD so far behind.
 
CarstenS said:
Note how it says „2nd generation of products featuring AMD GCN Architecture“ instead of „2nd generation of AMD GCN Architecture“
Click to expand...
It also mentions "new functionality", though (which could refer just as well to new hardware features as to new software features, but it leaves the window open)
 
pjbliverpool said:
Depends how you define competitive. Using the link posted earlier in this thread the 980's almost 30% faster at 1080p and 1440p. The gap closes at 4K but I don't think either of those cards are fast enough to make 4K a serious proposition moving forward tbh.
Click to expand...

In HardWare.fr's latest review, the GTX 980 is only 8.7% faster at 2560×1440:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/935-19/recapitulatif-performances.html

That seems like a reachable target for a mild refresh. As for 4K, it might be doable with a Crossfire.
 
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