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

[ZetZet]

That sums it up very niceley.

 

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

well r9 285 is sliiiiiiiiiiiightly more power efficient and is gcn 1.1 (? dunno which one)

[boboman342]

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.

The r7 370 is a 7850, NOT 7870.

[sms1202]

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)

 

 

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)

We should be friends

[ZetZet]

The r7 370 is a 7850, NOT 7870.

WAT THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. 

 

AMD PLEASE.

[Khvarrioiren]

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.

 

Yeah, just found the apples-to-apples comparison. Would like a source to the latter claim though.

[ZetZet]

Yeah, just found the apples-to-apples comparison. Would like a source to the latter claim though.

http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3aetyn/390x_tessellation_is_not_improved_performance/This thread was mostly thrown around. Need to wait for more comparison. But I don't see what else it could be. Since chip is the same.

[boboman342]

WAT THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. 

 

AMD PLEASE.

I KNOW WTF AMD?!?!?! You can get some "last generation" amd low-end gpus that are cheaper and miles more powerful than their "new" cousins.

[Khvarrioiren]

http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3aetyn/390x_tessellation_is_not_improved_performance/This thread was mostly thrown around. Need to wait for more comparison. But I don't see what else it could be. Since chip is the same.

 

God damn I hate Reddit's format. An eye-opening read nonetheless. Though I still hold doubts that the 390x is an utter and complete rebrand, since the memory overclocks so much better.

Just like I said earlier, a crappy thing to do no matter which way you look at it from a consumer standpoint. I maintain my objectivity on the matter.

[ZetZet]

God damn I hate Reddit's format. An eye-opening read nonetheless. Though I still hold doubts that the 390x is an utter and complete rebrand, since the memory overclocks so much better.

Just like I said earlier, a crappy thing to do no matter which way you look at it from a consumer standpoint. I maintain my objectivity on the matter.

Memory is not AMD's thing to improve, it's just better flash, amd doesn't make flash.

[Khvarrioiren]

Memory is not AMD's thing to improve, it's just better flash, amd doesn't make flash.

 

It's still the same ol' Hynix module used in the 290x bar Club3D, VisionTek and Powercolor from what I've gathered.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

I KNOW WTF AMD?!?!?! You can get some "last generation" amd low-end gpus that are cheaper and miles more powerful than their "new" cousins.

 

Like that Tahiti 280x, sad that its gone for good now though... but I guess AMD didn't want to have a whole bunch of cards again... They had like 19 card in the 200 series. 

14 cards in the 300 series, 2 of which being OEM cards.

 

Nvidia only has 5 in the 900 series currently  :lol:

[The Benjamins]

well r9 285 is sliiiiiiiiiiiightly more power efficient and is gcn 1.1 (? dunno which one)

285 is GCN 1.2 same as the fury

[LukaP]

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:

No. It heavily depends on the memory controller. You could have flash that can do 3GHz (12GHz effective) and it would be no good if the memory controller would shit itself on anything above 1.5GHz

[Khvarrioiren]

No. It heavily depends on the memory controller. You could have flash that can do 3GHz (12GHz effective) and it would be no good if the memory controller would shit itself on anything above 1.5GHz

 

Exactly my point.

[ZetZet]

No. It heavily depends on the memory controller. You could have flash that can do 3GHz (12GHz effective) and it would be no good if the memory controller would shit itself on anything above 1.5GHz

kay. Good to know. Still meh.

 

Exactly my point.

[LukaP]

kay. Good to know. Still meh.

well what it means is that the chip is much more robust now, meaning potentially much better overclocks, and with a more mature process, less power usage at those clocks

[Khvarrioiren]

kay. Good to know. Still meh.

 

Got to agree with that. On another point, was nice to finally have a civilized conversation instead of shitflinging.

[ZetZet]

well what it means is that the chip is much more robust now, meaning potentially much better overclocks, and with a more mature process, less power usage at those clocks

but it uses more power 

[Popingheads]

but it uses more power 

 

The numbers are all over the place on this card, benchmarks from Guru3D say it uses less, for example. Which of course matches up with what AMD says it should do, use less power while having slightly higher clocks. And although clock for clock performance might be the same the improvements they made do allow higher stock clocks, especially on the memory.

 

Proof: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_r9_390x_gaming_8g_oc_review,8.html

 

So the card was improved in a number of ways, not the same thing as a rebrand.

[ZetZet]

The numbers are all over the place on this card, benchmarks from Guru3D say it uses less, for example. Which of course matches up with what AMD says it should do, use less power while having slightly higher clocks. And although clock for clock performance might be the same the improvements they made do allow higher stock clocks, especially on the memory.

 

Proof: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_r9_390x_gaming_8g_oc_review,8.html

 

So the card was improved in a number of ways, not the same thing as a rebrand.

refresh at best, it's still bad and it should have been cheaper than r9 290x.

[Alurit]

I look at this way:

Is it a failure in terms of a generation jump? yes

Are the r9 390/390x bad products in themselves? No, the r9 390x is still a better deal then a 980 in term of price/performance, and the 39 390 is almost as good choice as the 970, 970 might be faster than use less power, but 2 r9 390 is better for 4k multi gpu setup then 2 970.

the 970 might be a bit better, but I saw someone buy a 390 I wouldn't call him an idiot.

and performance wise the 390x and 980 is like a 'K' version of an intel cpu, out of the box they perform similarly, but one is $100 more expensive so you can overclock it

 

under the 390 however is a disaster.

[Popingheads]

I think it would have made more sense around $370 as that is the going rate for 8 GB 290x's it seems, I do expect they are going to charge a little more for it though based on the minor improvements they did. So I guess $400 would have been a better price ($30 less than currently).

 

That being said you can find 4 GB 290x's for like, $300, so that is really what people should buy.

 

 

EDIT: @ Alurit. Actually the 280, based on the Tonga, sells for $200 and beats the 960 (which has the same price at best) in pretty much every benchmark I've seen. The 370 also beats the 750 Ti meaning that AMD has the entire mid range segment under their control, which is likely where most GPU sales happen. So they are winning in the largest market segment.

[79 Potatoes]

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

Still haswell, no such changes like AMD did. Haswell refresh had a TIM replacement and 0.1 GHz more.

[LukaP]

Still haswell, no such changes like AMD did. Haswell refresh had a TIM replacement and 0.1 GHz more.

well Hawaii -> Grenada is also still GCN1.1. and this has a more robust memory controller and higher clocks. So its the same situation. Its just intel can market it as a refresh, and AMD couldnt exactly, since they had to launch a new generation

[winningsince1337]

It is a rebrand... AMD just swapped memory and has been saving a stack of higher binned chips for this