AMD: Volcanic Islands R1100/1200 (8***/9*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread

[Gipsel]

This was discussed earlier, right? Was the conclusion that fast 386 (Tahiti) IO blocks are larger than slow 512 (based on area of slow IO block of some lower level chip)?

It feels counter-intuitive.

But it is backed up by the huge PHYs evident on Tahiti die shots and Dave Baumann has said here in the forum, that Pitcairns PHYs are just a bit more than half the size or so (per 128bit segment) compared to Tahiti.

And it should be easier to create over-clockable board by populating the PCB with faster spec'ed GDDR5 RAMs, which board partners will love.

You will probably run into the limits of the memory controller before you hit limits of fast GDDR5 chips. I guess it's close to impossible to hit memory speeds significantly above 6GBps on a Pitcairn style interface no matter what chips you connect to it.

 

[swaaye]

Do any of you wonder if Hawaii has been finished for awhile but AMD has been sitting on it, milking Tahiti to the limit?

 

[redstrat]

R9 290X @1100 Mhz
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1334768
PS
old: 1000Mhz: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1255142

 

[Wynix]

Sigh @ AMD.

Source

 

[Nemo]

Sigh @ AMD.

UEFI BIOS?
http://videocardz.com/images/2013/10/11221-02-R9-280X-Vapor-X-3G-GDDR5-Specs.jpg

 

[silent_guy]

Sigh @ AMD.

Why the sigh? Don't leave us guessing!

 

[Wynix]

Why the sigh? Don't leave us guessing!

Because it's basically a rebadged 7870 @ $199, you can buy current 7870s lower than that.

 

[cal_guy]

Because it's basically a rebadged 7870 @ $199, you can buy current 7870s lower than that.

You can also buy plenty of 7870 that are more expensive.

 

[Xentropy]

Do any of you wonder if Hawaii has been finished for awhile but AMD has been sitting on it, milking Tahiti to the limit?

Perhaps, but I'm wondering if AMD wasn't just reserving the wafers allocated for Hawaii just in case the XBone and PS4 chips needed a bit more.

Once they saw they had good enough yields for the console chips, time to launch Hawaii.

Just a theory. :smile:

 

[Wynix]

You can also buy plenty of 7870 that are more expensive.

Congratulations for pointing out the obvious, did you also know that many 270X cards will cost more than $199? shocking isn't it.

My point(which i thought was obvious) is that the $200 range has not improved over what is currently available, if you take into account some 7950 prices it has gotten worse.

As a new generation only the 290/280 series seem to be an improvement, which is quite sad.

 

[Kaotik]

What I'm not getting is how does this work
- R7 240/250: Oland, CI/No Audio
- R7 260: Bonaire, CI/Has Audio
- R9 270: Curacao, should be VI since there hasn't been Curacaos before, but No Audio. If it's re-named Pitcairn, why was it renamed? Tahiti wasn't?
- R9 280: Tahiti, SI/No Audio
- R9 290: Hawaii, VI/Has Audio

The 260 and 270 simply don't fit the scheme here.

 

[gkar1]

Congratulations for pointing out the obvious, did you also know that many 270X cards will cost more than $199? shocking isn't it.

My point(which i thought was obvious) is that the $200 range has not improved over what is currently available, if you take into account some 7950 prices it has gotten worse.

As a new generation only the 290/280 series seem to be an improvement, which is quite sad.

At first glance it does look that way but the value proposition will look a lot different when we see the boost in performance Mantle will give to all of these GCN based cards.

It could also be that they know Nvidia has nothing coming down the pipe to drive their current prices down. And let's not forget launch prices of the 7870 and 7850 were $350 and $250 respectively.

 

[cal_guy]

Congratulations for pointing out the obvious, did you also know that many 270X cards will cost more than $199? shocking isn't it.

My point(which i thought was obvious) is that the $200 range has not improved over what is currently available, if you take into account some 7950 prices it has gotten worse.

As a new generation only the 290/280 series seem to be an improvement, which is quite sad.

It's as if the 270X isn't substantially cheaper to produce than HD 7870, or that the supply demand situation of the 270x isn't much more different than the HD 7870. Shocking.

 

[onQ]

What I'm not getting is how does this work
- R7 240/250: Oland, CI/No Audio
- R7 260: Bonaire, CI/Has Audio
- R9 270: Curacao, should be VI since there hasn't been Curacaos before, but No Audio. If it's re-named Pitcairn, why was it renamed? Tahiti wasn't?
- R9 280: Tahiti, SI/No Audio
- R9 290: Hawaii, VI/Has Audio

The 260 and 270 simply don't fit the scheme here.

My guess is that Bonaire was created from the Xbox One testing & Curacao XT was created from the PS4 testing.

Bonaire being the same as the Xbox One design = already customized to have a on chip Audio processor but instead of the Xbox One audio processor they used their own audio chip.


Bonaire & Curacao are the only 2 Sea island chips that I know of & they both just so happen to be around the same specs as the Xbox One & PS4 minus 2 CU's for redundancy.

Edit: I forgot about Oland.

 

[Kaotik]

My guess is that Bonaire was created from the Xbox One testing & Curacao XT was crated from the PS4 testing.

Bonaire being the same as the Xbox One design = already customized to have a on chip Audio processor but instead of the Xbox One audio processor they used their own audio chip.


Bonaire & Curacao are the only 2 Sea island chips that I know of & they both just so happen to be around the same specs as the Xbox One & PS4 minus 2 CU's for redundancy.

Oland is Sea Islands like Bonaire, Curacao, based on name, should be Volcanic Island

 

[Mintmaster]

My point(which i thought was obvious) is that the $200 range has not improved over what is currently available, if you take into account some 7950 prices it has gotten worse.

Price points almost never change with a new launch, aside from the HD 4000 series. AMD and NVidia price the new parts with a fair value of what they'd fetch in the existing market. Prices go down afterwards.

 

[onQ]

Oland is Sea Islands like Bonaire, Curacao, based on name, should be Volcanic Island

The review says that it's still the same chip.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-R9-280X-R9-270X-and-R7-260X-Review

AMD Radeon R9 270X – Pitcairn to Curacao

The next card down the updated AMD Radeon products stack is the R9 270X and will hit a price point of $199. The analog card from the previous product stack is the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, otherwise known as the Pitcairn GPU. The reference card I received from AMD actually had a label on the back that indicated a new ASIC name of Curacao, though when prodded for an answer AMD finally admitted that it was in fact NOT a new chip at all. Oh well, take that for what you will.

_____________________________________________________________________________________





http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...7-260X-Review/AMD-Radeon-R7-260X-–-Bonaire-wa

AMD Radeon R7 260X – Bonaire was an undercover agent
Maybe the most interesting product, at least released today, is the AMD Radeon R7 260X (replacing the Radeon HD 7790). Once again, the ASIC between these two cards is identical. Specifications and performance should be nearly indistinguishable when compared. I was intrigued to learn that the HD 7790 GPU was the test subject for two new technologies: an updated CrossFire integration and AMD TrueAudio. These hidden features have a chance to be enabled with future drivers.
AMD talked quite a bit about the TrueAudio technology during the Hawaii / GPU14 tech day live stream but to be completely honest I don’t think there is much to discuss quite yet. The idea and goal is clear and it makes sense to begin moving audio processing to the GPU. This is a great direction. This fully programmable audio pipeline is integrated into the ASIC but does not share the resources of the GPU directly; it can merely access some memory locations for shared data communication.

 

[kalelovil]

Techreport:
"One thing that may make grabbing a Radeon HD 7000-series card on clearance more attractive is the Never Settle Forever bundle that lets you pick two or three titles from a list of pretty decent games.
The new R-series Radeons won't take part in this program."

 

[DSC]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx

Even coming up on 2 years after its launch Tahiti will continue being a magical place for AMD, forming the basis of the R9 280X, in what’s essentially a lower clocked 7970GHz Edition.

On that note, while AMD is doing their best to drop codenames, they are still alive and kicking. Our R9 270X reference card is labeled Curacao, for example, despite the fact that it’s based on the venerable Pitcairn GPU. So AMD still has codenames internally, apparently including new names for existing GPUs.

Not a rebrand, huh?

Told you someone is a liar and got caught with their pants down.

 

[3dilettante]

What's with the code name reapplication?
I could be snarky or disappointed, but mostly snarky.
But I'm not.

Just, why?



Why?




?