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

[Deleted member 13524]

7950 have allways been a really attractive choice, specially after the cut down on price ( end of 2012 if im right ) and the bundles. if you are'nt in the market for the best performance, want the max for benchmarks, and dont search the highest fps you can see on review.. and they overclock really well too if you have voltage control...

The little brother is offtly really attractive from both nvidia and AMD ( 570-670, 5850-7950 as example )

Yes but now they're starting to appear in the used market at ~180€. 360€ and you get Titan performance. It's crazy..

The only thing setting me back at the moment is memory amount. I'll wait and see what the next-gen ports push from VRAM. I wouldn't be surprised if 3GB cards become memory-limited in mid-2014, even for 1080p.

 

[lanek]

This is a victory for AMD no doubt. Fast card at the right price.

However, NVIDIA has enough TDP headroom to easily beat the 290X with a "Titan Ultra". Perhaps that is what the 780Ti will be.

Still, thank you AMD for the kind pricing. :smile:

If the rumors i have see are true, the so called ultra have become the TI... but at what price ?

I dont think it is a fully enabled SMX Titan, but mostly a Titan with 3GB and higher clock.

 

[Nemo]

What about double-precision compute on 290X?
290X has 1/4 or 1/8?

tom's hardware review says that 290X has 1.4 TFLOPS DP:

Whereas Tahiti boasted up to 32 Compute Units, totaling 2048 shaders and 128 texture units, Hawaii wields 44 CUs organized into four of what AMD is calling Shader Engines. The math adds up to 2816 aggregate shaders and 176 texture units. Operating at up to 1 GHz (this becomes an important distinction later), that’s 5.63 TFLOPS of floating-point or, given the same ¼ rate, 1.4 TFLOPS double-precision compute performance.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650.html

but the Anandtech review shows other performance of DP compute:

and Hardware.Fr review said that 280X faster than 290X in DP compute performance
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/910-8/specifications-radeon-r9-290x-reference.html

 

[lanek]

What about double-precision compute on 290X?
290X has 1/4 or 1/8?

tom's hardware review says that 290X has 1.4 TFLOPS DP:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650.html

but the Anandtech review shows other performance of DP compute:


and Hardware.Fr review said that 280X faster than 290X in DP compute performance
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/910-8/specifications-radeon-r9-290x-reference.html

huum, i was ask me the same thing, at the same time, about this particular folding@home benchmark, i cant tell if it is linked to the client they use or something else but it seems reflect a lower DP rate.
At teh same time, the 780 is completely gimped on DP rate vs Titan and 7970, and they are over them. I will not use F@H benchmark for bring DP performance on the table.

 

[jimbo75]

http://hwbot.org/submission/2441980_smoke_3dmark11___performance_4x_radeon_r9_290x_41531_marks

Interesting to see it beat 4xTitan at lower clock speeds.

 

[lanek]

http://hwbot.org/submission/2441980_smoke_3dmark11___performance_4x_radeon_r9_290x_41531_marks

Interesting to see it beat 4xTitan at lower clock speeds.

Damn, that was fast...

 

[Dave Baumann]

$549? Nice move AMD. They should've invested in better cooling though. The high temp target is interesting - wonder if that was planned from the start or done out of necessity.

This is pretty much always the temp targets for high end boards, the previous fan controller programming (fan curve table) tends to put them a little lower, but also wondering around in both temps and fan speed. The "fuzzy logic" fan programming, in conjunction with PowerTune, is now explicitly targeting that temp and acoustic level and holding them steady and then keeping the power in check by altering the clocks when we are at the TDP limits.

TPU had some decent graphs showing this - we will allow the ASIC temp to ramp to its limit first, then the fan will ramp to the limit, then PowerTune will keep the power in check.

 

[xDxD]

Good vga but i suspect this chip was designed for 20nm

For the price, no way to set much higher of 550$ with these performance (and actual market share)

 

[homerdog]

Still.. crossifred HD7950s is starting to look so good... Those are getting really cheap in the used market.

Hell, you can score a new 7950 Boost with 3 great games on Newegg for $214 shipped. That is tremendous value (and my most recent purchase :smile.

The only thing setting me back at the moment is memory amount. I'll wait and see what the next-gen ports push from VRAM. I wouldn't be surprised if 3GB cards become memory-limited in mid-2014, even for 1080p.

At 1080p, 3GB should be plenty for at least the next couple of years. Remember, a good chunk of the 8GB RAM in consoles is not available to games, and what is available is shared with the rest of the system.

2GB cards may see a bit of a squeeze, but even those should be fine for the most part.

If the rumors i have see are true, the so called ultra have become the TI... but at what price ?
I dont think it is a fully enabled SMX Titan, but mostly a Titan with 3GB and higher clock.

A 3GB Titan (minus the full DP rate) with higher clocks should handily beat the 290X with the same or lower power consumption as the 290X. They could price it at $599, with a 6GB version coming in at $699. The original GTX780 should move to $499 IMO or lower.

Mantle could mix things up if adoption is good.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Finally, it would have been nice to see a bit more coverage of TruAudio. Thats the big differentiator for me with the 290X but it's gone virtually ignored in the two reviews I've read. Can't we get some more details and examples of what it wll bring to the audio table?

We lifted the NDA of TrueAudio with the first round of reviews because it is applicable to R7 260X. Take a look there for more details. Other than that, we have the first game will be coming in Q1.

 

[Zaphod]

Edit: Wrong thread.

 

[no-X]

What about double-precision compute on 290X?
290X has 1/4 or 1/8?

It's 1:8 (704 GFLOPS DP).

 

[trinibwoy]

Now I understand AMD's insistence on 4k benchmarks. 4k is a boondoggle at this point but there's no arguing that the 290x's high fillrate and bandwidth kicks ass when needed. Also it's still plenty fast at resolutions people actually use.

The 780 simply has to drop in price or it's dead in the water. It will be interesting to see how nVidia responds in a few weeks. The current boost temperature targets are relatively conservative (80 degrees) and the 290x seems to be running about 30-60w more than Titan.

I wish I has a temperature based limit on my current card. The cooler is excellent and the chip barely gets to 60 degrees because of the stupid TDP and voltage limits.

 

[mczak]

It's 1:8 (704 GFLOPS DP).

Source? Most reviews still claim 1:4 (but with nothing to back it up neither).

 

[no-X]

mczak: AMD

 

[xDxD]

290 tests? http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18551414

 

[flopper]

290 tests? http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18551414

yea, the 290 will be the best value for money in 15 years in this arena.

 

[LittleJ]

Nice card and chip by AMD, and of course killer price. Definitely looks like AMD is pushing Hawaii to the very limits wrt power consumption and temps. For me that isn't an issue as I throw blocks on my cards anyway. Certainly, I'd like to play around with a couple MSI Lightning 290Xs when they are available and see what they will do with some clocking and shoving some extra voltage into them.

Currently running two EVGA Hydrocopper Classified 780s clocked at 1300MHz and I'm curious of a comparison between a couple 290Xs and my current cards at high overclocks.

 

[xDxD]

yea, the 290 will be the best value for money in 15 years in this arena.

i think over 50 years actually.

 

[Mintmaster]

It's a shame then that they are a losing a significant chunk of perf/mm2 by losing in the perf/W department. Just a different way of looking at it.

I don't know what's the big shame. Perf/$ is all that matters unless you have FX5800 type noise.

If NVidia thinks they can get more performance, they're free to try. AMD has to devote some silicon to measure temperatures so precisely and adjust speed so quickly. If you don't have that technology, then you need to leave some performance on the table to avoid the worst case scenario that can spike temperatures up before you can react to it.

Don't forget that AMD's partners can also beef up the cooling solution. They seemed to do a superior job with the 280x.