Tuesday, March 4th 2014
AMD Chases Crucial $279 Price Point with Radeon R9 280
AMD's Radeon R9 200 series appears to have come a full circle with the company launching the Radeon R9 280, to capture the crucial US $279.99 price point, going against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 760. The R9 280 isn't too different from the Radeon HD 7950 from the previous generation, featuring higher clock speeds, and PowerTune with boost. Based on the 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon, the R9 280 features 1,792 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 3 GB of memory. The card features clock speeds of 827 MHz core, 933 MHz boost, and 5.00 GHz memory. The R9 280 is rated with the same 250W average board power as the R9 280X. AMD add-in board (AIB) partners have launched custom-design boards, including ones that feature factory overclocked speeds.
40 Comments on AMD Chases Crucial $279 Price Point with Radeon R9 280
Disgraceful.
8800gts
9600gt
9800gt
9800gtx
9800gtx+
gtx250
1 core, 3 generations of cards.
nothing new.
at least this has only been rebranded once.
stick around long enough and you will see it happen again too.
7970m
8970m
R9 290m
GPU are complicated chips .
still not sure on it now either....
Prices have dramatically changed, you could buy an HD5850 by the time 8800GT was only 2 years old for the same launch MSRP
You mentioned 9600GT there, it's like mentioning the GTX 660 Ti and GTX 680 has the same core.
Again, read it carefully,
"I cannot remember a time in my life where in-shelf hardware (especially an enthusiast's) had no progress in 28 months (technology and price wise)"
A year later, wa'ddayou know, The same card is being rebranded for 280$.
That's just sad. That's all.
As to the segment movement, it’s been so stretched-out to realize the node-shrink, at this point I’d almost say we might see Nvidia go again with a Maxwell on 28Nm in this mid-range market. Nvidia is just darn fortunate AMD is overwhelmed by the mining influx, cause I’d say they’d have a hard time selling GK104’s much lower. Just like the GK106 that gave the impression Nvidia didn’t find it lucrative at much below $150; I don’t think Nvidia could be viable on a GTX760 much below $220. Fortunately for Nvidia they don’t need to test those waters… If mining had not turn the market on its head what type of battle might be actually playing out right now?
If TSMC doesn’t start verbalizing they will be providing excellent commercial viability on 20Nm by mid-summer, I might say Nvidia could launching another Maxwell on 28Nm to blow this $200-300 segment open. Nvidia wants some of the Litecoin money, and as Hash/watt is so great with Maxwell they’re at a tipping point. Wait around for worthwhileness of 20Nm, which really only brings real significance in the high-end enthusiast parts. Especially when neither (Nvidia/AMD) want a repeat of TSMC ramp-up like the 28Nm again. If Nvidia could deliver a Maxwell that bests a GTX760 on a ≤ 220 mm² die, 130W, and hash that provides what this R9 280 provides, I’d say Nvidia has to do it.
Someone is mistaken... the TPU database shows the 7950 Boost as a 200W card, can't see those clocks kicking it up that much more. In W1zzard June 25th review of the reference GTX760 was bested 8% perf/watt by a standard 7950 by, while the GTX760 MSI Gaming was able to match the standard 7950.
The question is can AMD be viable on a 352mm die any more than Nvidia on 294mm? The thing is AMD can sell them at a whole new profit schedule, as the OEM’s are clamoring for stuff to sell. So I’d say the chance you see any of these in other than in the USA where the Litecoin is still making every AMD price “stupid crazy” is nil.
i dont even......
triC the 88gts was 220, the 98gtx was 240 the 98gtx+ was 240 and the 250 was 180 in gbp at launch on the shelves. those prices went up at times with demand too.
that was across 2 and a bit years too. but they was also sold as the top core cards for 2 years series. at least amd have knocked it down the range and released a new core at the top of the tree this time.
but to play devils advocate why would amd need to when the 7k cards had the 600s beat once they fixed the drivers?
much like nvidia was able to sit on the same card while ati took 2 goes at it with the 3k and 4k cards.
everything goes in cycles, just need to look back long enough to see them.
Laptops with a R9 290m are not any cheaper than they were the chips were called 7970m. Do you understand? I don't think I can dumb it down anymore for you. :shadedshu:
I don't even.....
if you was using it to illustrate the stagnation of the mobile market at times when the desktop cards are too then it is like pointing out the sky is blue and rain is wet.
of course they are, one follows the other...don't worry about dumbing it down, you started dumb enough.
This is nothing that hasn't happened before, and most enthusiasts won't ever buy them anyway. There is no doubt better cards at better price points.
On top of that, what you're asking for doesn't make sense. Maxwell is clearly based around 6smm and 2mb cache blocks. 750ti is essentially half of what a 8800gt was in a lower market...1 less smm released earlier on a larger process to compensate for the power increase (20% in power from logic + whatever clockspeed increases 20nm gives with such more logic in the same power envelope; probably around 1200mhz to 750ti's ~1150 for a complete difference of around 20-25%) while simultaneously working as class-leading <75w part. What you're asking for is essentially a part that is less than 2x gm107, which really doesn't make sense on 28nm short of something really weird like a low-clocked 9smm part with 24 ROPs/3mb cache on a 192-bit bus, which I doubt we see.
On the flipside, what do you expect of a higher-up part on 28nm? If you're expecting die savings compared to gk104, I think you will be sadly mistaken. The arch again is catered towards the higher logic use of 20nm (ex: the extra cache) while using less power for similar to slightly higher core clocks (rather than scaling to higher clocks with more voltage and less logic like most processes before it) and conceivably smaller/slower mem controllers to keep power down, which will become more-so apparent as they move to larger designs. In short, a 12smm part (the only one that makes sense versus gk104) would be faster per clock than gk104, probably larger (depending on cache + more units vs mem controller size offset), but proportionally use less power because of design efficiency/slower memory speed/bus. While I suppose it's possible they could keep such a design under 225w on 28nm, and it would be good for us, it would probably be bad for nvidia's bottom line (a wholly new design for what amounts to a small improvement).
That all said, when it comes to this 280...the price is indeed a shame compared to old product prices, but also reflective of the situation: the yields are good and the cost savings are already passed on to 280x (at least at msrp). The price difference is pretty much directly proportional to real avg shader perf per clock and memory speed differences....meaning at least these will probably clock decently and similar to 280x (as opposed to 7950 which was power/clock limited) so it should be able to wiggle a decent spot between 760 and 770 if priced accordingly.