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

R9 280X and R9 270X are taking advantage of some process updates; not ones that require new masks, but the product definitions are now optimized for the process changes. R9 270X also has a new PCB layout for optimising the memory performance and getting that PHY up to 5.6Gbps.

As for the "Islands" (and putting so much faith in the internet rumor mill!) they are meaningless in terms of extracting an understanding of the IP set. Anandtech has posed some time ago that Oland is based the same IP sets as R9 280X/270X.

 

Speeds aside, as a few reviews have pointed out, the additional features of R7 260X will be enabled on 7790 in a future driver update.

 

Thanks for clearing that up for us Dave, much appreciated.

 

7970 may run 50Mhz faster than R9 280X, but the latter was specially designed and optimized for Battlefield 4, so there's that.

That aside: the latest is a whopping $100 cheaper too, which makes it very hard to complain about it.

 

Ryan, go back and check your numbers and conclusion please. I've checked your numbers a bit more closely and they don't add up to what you are saying.

Going on your charts I get this -

Metro - 280X wins by 3%
CoH2 - 280X wins by 16%
Bioshock - 770 wins by 12%
BF3 - 770 wins by 15%
Crysis 3 - 770 wins by 16%
Warhead - 280X wins by 15%
Rome 2 - 280X wins by 3%
Hitman - 280X wins by 9%
Grid 2 - 280X wins by 3%

Overall the 280X beats the 770 by 1%. No idea where you're getting 5% faster for the 770, but it's not the first time. Your 760 review had it 8% faster than the 7950 Boost but it was more like 1% by your own numbers.

Update: The 290X DCUII TOP should have the 770 beat by 9%.

 

This seems a bit trollish (my apologies if that's not the case). But I want to be clear that I highly doubt there is some grand conspiracy going on at anandtech. Getting a review out right after a NDA expires is not a simple task and sometimes there may be errors. If your theory is true, can we cut Ryan some slack?

I don't want this thread turning into "the media is out to get poor AMD".

 

Yes I'm more than willing to cut Ryan some slack, I was just pointing out that I asked him to check numbers that didn't add up before in the 760 review.

 

For the 760 review, the numbers were crazily out of whack in some places. The worst offender was Dirt Showdown where the 7950 boost was only granted an 18% win when it in fact won by 37%.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/4

I had a long, hard look at that review and could not figure out where the 8% win had come from (I made a few posts about it here). I'm not saying it's a conspiracy but there is something going amiss between the graph being shown and the spreadsheet spitting out the final totals I think.

 

Where are you getting that?
[H] reviews an ASUS model which is $10 more than a vanilla 280X but still $90 cheaper than the 770 and it also beats the 7970ghz and 770 across the board: http://hardocp.com/article/2013/10/07/asus_r9_280x_directcu_ii_top_video_card_review/1

Techreport's review shows the 280x faster than the 770 across the board as well with better raw fps, better frame latency, etc.
http://techreport.com/review/25466/amd-radeon-r9-280x-and-270x-graphics-cards

 

The reference specification for R9 290X is 50MHz slower than 7970 GHz, but its not replacing that product / in that product segement. A more value comparison would be to 7950 or 7970 non-GHz.

 

If that is correct regarding the R9 290, I say:

 

Depends on how much money that is, exactly…

Interesting. Those are some pretty nice process updates to get such a boost to memory performance.

How would you say Hawaii's PHYs relate to Curaçao/Pitcairn's? Same, faster, slower?

 

Possible EU pricing:
http://videocardz.com/46558/amd-radeon-r9-290x-r9-290-european-pricing-unveiled

Very weird if true. There is 240€ price difference between 280X and 290...

 

So without the Audio chip which would you say is more advanced R7 260X or R9 270X ?


I'm guessing that R7 260X is more advance.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6837/...feat-sapphire-the-first-desktop-sea-islands/2

 

Audio chip or not the R7 260X is more advanced anyway, as Bonaire is GCN 1.1 whereas Pitcairn (or rather it's identical twin, Curacao...) is of course GCN 1.0.

 

1) Hawaii it's GCN 2.0 or 1.1?
2) GCN 1.1 it's second generation GCN architecture or second is GCN 2.0?
3) Rx 2xxxx "2" it's indicate second generation GCN for Hawaii at least, right?

 

R9 280X did you mean, I think

 

Do we actually know if the audio dsp is actually embedded on the same chip as the gpu? Maybe on some models it's a separate chip.

 

That's a good question really. I think most people are expecting it to be somewhat "new" but I haven't actually seen any evidence so far that the "gcn level" is different to GCN 1.1 (so same as Bonaire/Kaveri/Kabini). And obviously I have no idea if it's new if it would be called "2.0" or "1.2".

Well 1.1 is an improved GCN arch. Do you call this second version or rather tweaked first?

Marketing names usually have nothing to very little to do with the actual tech behind the products.