AMD Says Grenada PRO and XT Are Not Rebrands of Hawaii, and They're Right... Sort Of.

[SpaghettiCarbonara]

Image: R9 290x PCB, RAM and Hawaii XT GPU, courtesy of VRWorld (see source)

 

With AMD's release of their new R9 300 series graphics cards, a wave of speculation that these GPUs are complete rebrands has followed. Many have pointed to the near identical specifications, with others reporting different programs recognising the cards as their predecessors.

 

According to VRWorld, here's what AMD had to say:

 

 

 “AMD is pleased to bring you the new R9 390 series which has been in development for a little over a year now. To clarify, the new R9 390 comes standard with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and outpaces the 290X.

Some of the areas AMD focused on are as follows:

 

1. Manufacturing process optimizations allowing AMD to increase the engine clock by 50MHz on both 390 and 390X while maintaining the same power envelope

 

2. New high density memory devices allow the memory interface to be re-tuned for faster performance and more bandwidth

 

   

- Memory clock increased from 1250MHz to 1500MHz on both 390 and 390X

- Memory bandwidth increased from 320GB/s to 384GB/s

- 8GB frame buffer is standard on ALL cards, not just the OC versions 

 

3. Complete re-write of the GPUs power management micro-architecture

 

- Under “worse case” power virus applications, the 390 and 390X have a similar power envelope to 290X

- Under “typical” gaming loads, power is expected to be lower than 290X while performance is increased”

 

 

While there appear to have been minor changes, I don't think these cards should be complete rebrands. I think the Fury X should've been the R9 390x, with Hawaii PRO and XT returning as the R9 380 and 380x respectively, and released at lower pricepoints.

 

However, while it's fine to be upset at the prices these cards have been released with, I think it's silly to just be upset that these are rebrands. When you think about it, the R9 290x was AMD's flagship back in the day, whereas now their flagship is the Fury X, making the R9 390x the modern-day equivalent of the 280x. In other words, technically the cards have moved down a rung in the ladder, they just haven't changed one number and have priced these cards incorrectly.

 

Source

[ZetZet]

If that took a year to develop you have failed AMD, I am just saying. Shouldn't have tried to say anything.

 

Memory speed doesn't even depend on them it's just better flash.  :wacko:

[sms1202]

Rebrands or not

8GB VRAM is tastier than 4GB VRAM

[Sauron]

I think the Fury X should've been the R9 390x, with Hawaii Pro and XT returning as the R9 380 and 380x respectively, and released at lower pricepoints.

 

The naming is pretty irrelevant, but I do agree they should have been cheaper if at all possible. I hope the difference is not just caused by drivers, because otherwise I'll start questioning why I didn't get a performance boost on my r9 290...

[Sauron]

Rebrands or not

8GB VRAM is tastier than 4GB VRAM

 

but utterly useless nonetheless.

[DildorTheDecent]

Well they now have their effective speed up to 6GHz now. 

 

Good job AMD. 

[ZetZet]

Eh, I don't think it failed. R9 390 is the same price as the 970, edges it out, and has double the VRAM. It can also only get better from here as drivers increase and DX12 rolls out

You just defined what R9 290/x was before R9 390/x came out. Nothing changed...

[Deli]

Why do people call Devil Canyon a "refresh", while 390x is a "rebrand"?

[Misanthrope]

The naming is pretty irrelevant, but I do agree they should have been cheaper if at all possible. I hope the difference is not just caused by drivers, because otherwise I'll start questioning why I didn't get a performance boost on my r9 290...

 

It is just drivers though, I was just discussing how a 290x non reference beats a 390x and its overall so close it might as well be margin of error. No improvements at all for most games. Which I agree with the OP isn't a problem except for the bullshit price increase

[ZetZet]

Why do people call Devil Canyon a "refresh", while 390x is a "rebrand"?

because intel called it a refresh. and AMD is trying to tell us that this is a new gpu, so we call it a rebrand.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Why do people call Devil Canyon a "refresh", while 390x is a "rebrand"?

Devils Canyon got actual changes made... being the TIM getting replaced from the shitty stuff,..to the good stuff under the heatspreader.

 

290x>390x seems no changes were made, bar an overclock you could do yourself (stolen headroom), and a bios edit, which is a reflash after editing.

The Extra Vram is a thing, but only if its used is it a benefit.

[Sauron]

It is just drivers though, I was just discussing how a 290x non reference beats a 390x and its overall so close it might as well be margin of error. No improvements at all for most games. Which I agree with the OP isn't a problem except for the bullshit price increase

 

I hope I get a driver update soon then - are the 300 series gpus using the beta one?

[ZetZet]

That still doesn't make it a failure IMO. It competes with the competition, and that's all you can really ask for in the PC market

it does. more expensive than last gen card with almost no improvement whatsoever. Today it's still fine, but it will stay like this for another year, no progress.

Atleast Nvidia improved power consumption even if performance hasn't changed much between 7xx to 9xx.

[KamiKatze]

Honestly i don't care about the 390(X) rebrand. Nvidia has done the same thing for some generations in the past. One rebrand is okay if the card is sold as a lower tier, i mean look at GTX 680 and 770. However the 390X has not sunk down a tier, which is sad, but at least they give us standard 8 GB of VRAM, so that's nice.

But that's not the reason why i would be mad.

 

The reason why i would be mad is because all the cards below the R9 390(X) are rebrands of cards from 3.5 years ago! January 2012 was the release of the HD 7970 for example! This is ridiculous! No matter what amount of RAM you put on those cards!

[DigitalHermit]

That still doesn't make it a failure IMO. It competes with the competition, and that's all you can really ask for in the PC any market

 

ftfy

[AlwaysFSX]

Well they now have their effective speed up to 6GHz now. 

 

Good job AMD. 

That extra 500-600MHz really makes a difference dontcha know!

[ZetZet]

Honestly i don't care about the 390(X) rebrand. Nvidia has done the same thing for some generations in the past. One rebrand is okay if the card is sold as a lower tier, i mean look at GTX 680 and 770. However the 390X has not sunk down a tier, which is sad, but at least they give us standard 8 GB of VRAM. So that's not the reason why i would be mad.

 

The reason why i would be mad is because all the cards below the R9 390(X) are rebrands of cards from 3.5 years ago! January 2012 was the release of the HD 7970 for example! This is ridiculous! No matter what amount of RAM you put on those cards!

r9 380 is only a year old too, it's r9 285, a failure from last year.

 

r7 370 (r9 270x, 7870) and below is tragedy.

 

I mean when 7870 came out it was golden, such a hit. But rebranding it 2 times is just sad. Even r9 270 wasn't that bad because price dropped. And R9 280 was okay because it had much lower price than 7950. But this time prices increased, which just blows my mind.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Eh no... It's still a rebrand, but a rebrand + Improvements. It did a great job competing with the 980 & 970...

[Deli]

Devils Canyon got actual changes made... being the TIM getting replaced from the shitty stuff,..to the good stuff under the heatspreader.

 

290x>390x seems no changes were made, bar an overclock you could do yourself (stolen headroom), and a bios edit, which is a reflash after editing.

The Extra Vram is a thing, but only if its used is it a benefit.

I don't think you can just overclock the 290x or even with new BIOS, to match a 980. There are some other refinements to allow the 390x to perform better. 

[SpaghettiCarbonara]

Rebrands or not

8GB VRAM is tastier than 4GB VRAM

Plus the new coolers are lookin bretty gud!

 

http://www.vrworld.com/2015/06/24/amd-moves-to-justify-radeon-300-series-rebrand/

 

Especially this one. (Sapphire Nitro)

 

Devils Canyon got actual changes made... being the TIM getting replaced from the shitty stuff,..to the good stuff under the heatspreader.

 

290x>390x seems no changes were made, bar an overclock you could do yourself (stolen headroom), and a bios edit, which is a reflash after editing.

The Extra Vram is a thing, but only if its used is it a benefit.

 

Dude, that's less of a change than Grenada... All they changed with Devil's Canyon - on the CPU itself - was the clock speed. That's it.

If we're judging how good of a rebrand/refresh it is by what they've done to the cooling, then AMD has done... Well nothing, but folks like Sapphire have done an outstanding job. (See above link)

[Khvarrioiren]

it does. more expensive than last gen card with almost no improvement whatsoever. Today it's still fine, but it will stay like this for another year, no progress.

Atleast Nvidia improved power consumption even if performance hasn't changed much between 7xx to 9xx.

 

The 390x performs about 10% all around within the same power envelope compared to the 290x. People who flashed their 290x's to 390x's had absolutely no performance gains.

There must be some actual changes to the chip itself. Still a crappy practice nonetheless.

[arnavvr]

Why do people call Devil Canyon a "refresh", while 390x is a "rebrand"?

 

Devils Canyon is based on Haswell, but Devils Canyon helped improve overclocks by a lot.

[zMeul]

what a load of BS! even AMD themvelves admited the ASIC is the same: http://techgage.com/article/amd-radeon-300-fury-series-preview

The company admits that the ASIC is the same, but stresses that there’s a lot more to a graphics card than its overarching chip.

they fck-up and now they're in full dmg control to sugar coat everything

XFX even used the same exact board as a 2xx reference

[ZetZet]

The 390x performs about 10% all around within the same power envelope compared to the 290x. People who flashed their 290x's to 390x's had absolutely no performance gains.

There must be some actual changes to the chip itself. Still a crappy practice nonetheless.

It's just clock differences. Already have been benchmarks clock to clock and they perform exactly the same. It's also proven to be drivers, some guy managed to fiddle with drivers and got his r9 290x perform better with tessellation on.

[KamiKatze]

r9 380 is only a year old too, it's r9 285, a failure from last year.

 

r7 370 (r9 270x, 7870) and below is tragedy.

 

I mean when 7870 came out it was golden, such a hit. But rebranding it 2 times is just sad. Even r9 270 wasn't that bad because price dropped. And R9 280 was okay because it had much lower price than 7950. But this time prices increased, which just blows my mind.

 

That sums it up very niceley.

 

Why the hell did they not use the R9 280(X) chip instead of that 285 BS?