AMD Readies Radeon R9 380X

[Sauron]

Fury cores. Hawaii is gcn 1.1

 

ohh right

[Mr.Dingle]

The 285 had 1792 S.P.s unlocked  ... Full Tonga should have 256 more ... 

 

Doesnt seem like a big change .. but i guess there is more to it 

[Megahurt]

The 285 had 1792 S.P.s unlocked  ... Full Tonga should have 256 more ... 

 

Doesnt seem like a big change .. but i guess there is more to it 

285 and 380 have 256 bit bus, this would have 384 bits and 3 or 6 GB of memory, should help with performance too.

[Berkut99]

I'm not entirely sure I understand where an R9 380X would fit in this line-up. If we hypothesize along perfect core and performance scaling a fully-unlocked Tonga would creep so closely up onto R9 390 territory that it's price-to-performance would make the latter card's sales grind to a standstill--8GB buffer be damned. AMD's already having a little trouble justifying the 100 dollar markup of the R9 390X when the R9 390 is such a great value.

 

But hey, don't misunderstand. If AMD wants to release a fully unlocked Tonga GPU under 300 dollars here in the States, I would be first in line to pick it up. It would easily become the price-to-performance king much like it's predcessor was.

[Prysin]

[spoiler=Radeon R9 380X Pictures]

I predict this card would be in the range of $230 - $250 USD, and should fill up a nice price point for many people looking to buy such a GPU. Expect it to have all the new AMD tech such as Freesync, a newer GCN and Asynchronous Compute (most likely for DX12). I'm going to go on an educated guess and say it'll perform very similarly to the 290, and should challenge NVIDIA's GTX 960 (unless they're planning to make a 960Ti which I highly doubt). People should already know this is a rebrand, but it should help AMD position itself better for the incoming DX12 titles. Oh, and AMD - don't do a 370X and limit this card to China only. Please.

Original Sauce (Chinese): http://www.expreview.com/42897.html

HEXUS' Translation: http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/86432-xfx-double-dissipation-amd-radeon-r9-380x-pictured/

This isnt a rebrand, simply because there has NEVER been a desktop Tonga XT card before (well there was a mobile chip, but mobile is always nerfed. so it doesnt count)....

[ivan134]

I wonder why the black and red instead of their usual black and silver. I'm guessing it's to broaden appeal with a younger audience but black and red is "MSI's thing." I hope it works out for them. XFX is underrated IMO.

[MEC-777]

Knew this card was coming. Was just a matter of time. Since the 380 already gives the 960 solid competition, this should steamroll it pretty easily.

[Raytsou]

Wait, isn't the fury a heavily modified Tonga? I don't think w we'll be seeing a full Tonga because that would bring it into the 390X territory and Renee the useless.

[HKZeroFive]

Wait, isn't the fury a heavily modified Tonga? I don't think w we'll be seeing a full Tonga because that would bring it into the 390X territory and Renee the useless.

Nope, Fiji is a brand new chip and uses HBM memory on top of that, and is VERY different to Tonga.

The 390X uses a heavily modified Hawaii chip (which performs better than the Tonga chip), and I highly doubt a full Tonga would render it useless or outperform it.

[xAcid9]

Does Nvidia have a new card to counter this? Extra gimped 970?

[Doughnutnator]

Does Nvidia have a new card to counter this? Extra gimped 970?

iirc the 970 competes with the 390, not the 380-380X

[itsmyjobtoknow]

Well...if this card does come out...I guess I found the perfect card for my girlfriend's pc...

[byalexandr]

Good thing I got a 290 while I could!

[Curufinwe_wins]

Yea a full Tonga should compete with ease against the cutdown Hawaii gpu which imho was why they never released it in the first place. They should have just made the 390 be a full Hawaii (and call the fury the 390x like the 780ti and the 980ti) and use a full Tonga as the step between the 380 and 390.

This is the issue I have with rumors of a 380x or a full Tonga core, it just is too powerful to sit in the a linup with cut down Hawaii gpus.

[Humbug]

This is the issue I have with rumors of a 380x or a full Tonga core, it just is too powerful to sit in the a linup with cut down Hawaii gpus.

It's not exactly like the 285 and 380 are nipping on the heals of the 290 / 390. There's quite a performance gap there. Even more at 1440p. Plus the 290/390 overclocks to stock 980 performance.

I don't see a problem with releasing the 380x except that they do not really need to... They don't need to because NVIDIA has left a big performance gap between the 960 and 970. If NVIDIA is prepping a 960ti then AMD will have to release 380x full Tonga.

[Curufinwe_wins]

It's not exactly like the 285 and 380 are nipping on the heals of the 290 / 390. There's quite a performance gap there. Even more at 1440p. Plus the 290/390 overclocks to stock 980 performance.

I don't see a problem with releasing the 380x except that they do not really need to... They don't need to because NVIDIA has left a big performance gap between the 960 and 970. If NVIDIA is prepping a 960ti then AMD will have to release 380x full Tonga.

Full tonga is either 2048 or ~2240 gcn 1.2 cores which if it's the latter would be stronger than the 2560 gcn 1.1 cores found on the 290 at the same frequency, not to mention being way better at tesselation and massively more power efficient.

Nvidia doesn't have a cut down that would work for a 960ti (970 can't be cut down any more and still beat the 960 and the 960 is a full core anyways. Literally the only option would be a kelper core.) It makes no sense to launch and I doubt very much they will try.

[Bouzoo]

Finally! Honestly I'm more interested in this than the Fury series. I think this is gonna be a card worth checking out. So, 960 Ti coming out?

[HKZeroFive]

Finally! Honestly I'm more interested in this than the Fury series. I think this is gonna be a card worth checking out. So, 960 Ti coming out?

If NVIDIA bothers to make a brand new chip with 1200-1300 CUDA cores, then maybe. I doubt it though.

[arvark]

 

Nvidia doesn't have a cut down that would work for a 960ti (970 can't be cut down any more and still beat the 960 and the 960 is a full core anyways. Literally the only option would be a kelper core.) It makes no sense to launch and I doubt very much they will try.

Exactly!! Remember the 660 Ti? It was a 670 with cut down memory bus so with less bandwidth, the 660 Ti is to the 680 what the 970 is to the 980, they should have made a 970 with full bandwidth for all 4GBs and then the actual 970 (with slow 0.5GB partition) should have been called 960 Ti,

[MEC-777]

Nope, Fiji is a brand new chip and uses HBM memory on top of that, and is VERY different to Tonga.

The 390X uses a heavily modified Hawaii chip (which performs better than the Tonga chip), and I highly doubt a full Tonga would render it useless or outperform it.

 

The 390 and 390x are Grenada Pro/XT chips - which are basically binned Hawaii Pro/XT chips. They aren't modified at all. The cards themselves, the PCB's, the components (memory modules) and power delivery has been improved/optimized for the Grenada chips, but the chips themselves are still Hawaii.

 

Yea a full Tonga should compete with ease against the cutdown Hawaii gpu which imho was why they never released it in the first place. They should have just made the 390 be a full Hawaii (and call the fury the 390x like the 780ti and the 980ti) and use a full Tonga as the step between the 380 and 390.

This is the issue I have with rumors of a 380x or a full Tonga core, it just is too powerful to sit in the a linup with cut down Hawaii gpus.

 

There's quite a performance gap between Tonga and Hawaii. I highly doubt a full Tonga would get up near Hawaii Pro or have anything against the 970. The 390 is aimed square at the 970, so AMD doesn't need another card in that segment. The 380x will be to fill the gap between 380/960 and 390/970. Just like the Fury fills the gap between the 980/390X and 980Ti/Fury X. 

[bobhays]

Full tonga is either 2048 or ~2240 gcn 1.2 cores which if it's the latter would be stronger than the 2560 gcn 1.1 cores found on the 290 at the same frequency, not to mention being way better at tesselation and massively more power efficient.

Nvidia doesn't have a cut down that would work for a 960ti (970 can't be cut down any more and still beat the 960 and the 960 is a full core anyways. Literally the only option would be a kelper core.) It makes no sense to launch and I doubt very much they will try.

Why can't the 970 be cut down more?

[Curufinwe_wins]

Why can't the 970 be cut down more?

Because it wouldn't beat a 960 anymore. There are only certain dividers that can be made of each core. For gm204 it's roughly segmented in eighths (due to higher order limitations on the way the core works). Look at the 970m which the next cutdown of the gm204 core. It doesn't beat the 960 in most cases, and certainly isn't strong enough to be a between step. Remember how GM204 and the 970 had that 3.5GB issue? Well for literally the exact same reason the 970m comes with 3 (or doubled 6) GB of vram, and the specific way in which the cut-down gm204 functions means it has massive performance losses due to cut-downs compared to say gm200 or gm206 (which is the only reason the 970 and 980 are so far apart in performance.)

[bobhays]

snip

sorry I'm not exactly understanding here. The difference between the 970 and 980 is 384 cores. If you take 384 from the 970 (1664-384) you'll get 1280 cores which should perform better than a 960.

 

Also, the difference in cores (384) is not an even fraction of 2048 (number of cores in the 980).

 

EDIT: But it is an even 1/8 of 3072 (number of cores in the titan x). If you have the number of cores in the titan you get 1536 not 1664.

 

 

With some math, if the GM204 core is divided into 16th's, then the 980 is 16/16 and the 970 is 13/16. So I believe they can cut it down in 16ths.

 

EDIT 2: Even the texture units are 13/16 in the 970, but the ROPS are 7/8 (14/16).

[xAcid9]

Because it wouldn't beat a 960 anymore. There are only certain dividers that can be made of each core. For gm204 it's roughly segmented in eighths (due to higher order limitations on the way the core works). Look at the 970m which the next cutdown of the gm204 core. It doesn't beat the 960 in most cases, and certainly isn't strong enough to be a between step. Remember how GM204 and the 970 had that 3.5GB issue? Well for literally the exact same reason the 970m comes with 3 (or doubled 6) GB of vram, and the specific way in which the cut-down gm204 functions means it has massive performance losses due to cut-downs compared to say gm200 or gm206 (which is the only reason the 970 and 980 are so far apart in performance.)

If they make a proper desktop "GTX970M" with better power delivery, cooling and higher board limit, it will be faster than GTX960 and probably on par in term of performance as full Tonga.

[Curufinwe_wins]

sorry I'm not exactly understanding here. The difference between the 970 and 980 is 384 cores. If you take 384 from the 970 (1664-384) you'll get 1280 cores which should perform better than a 960.

 

Also, the difference in cores (384) is not an even fraction of 2048 (number of cores in the 980).

 

EDIT: But it is an even 1/8 of 3072 (number of cores in the titan x). If you have the number of cores in the titan you get 1536 not 1664.

 

 

With some math, if the GM204 core is divided into 16th's, then the 980 is 16/16 and the 970 is 13/16. So I believe they can cut it down in 16ths.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-970m/specifications

 

The 970m is indeed 1280 cuda cores (and it would be the next cut-down available), but it doesn't out-preform the 960 (even at the same clocks), likely due to the SSM/ROP cutdown setup (whereas the 960 is a fully optimized full core.)