Monday, September 30th 2013
Radeon R9 290X Launch Date Revealed?
At a local press gathering in Turkey, AMD revealed the launch date of its next high-end product, the Radeon R9 290X. The press NDA over the card will end on October 15, 2013, at 12:01 AM EST (Berlin time). This NDA expiry time was disclosed in the slides that AMD showed the press. There's always the possibility that the NDA expiry date doesn't match market availability. It could merely mark NDA expiry for the press to post reviews of their AMD reference-design R9 290X (the only kind of R9 290X that will be initially available). AMD is handling R9 290X launch much in the same way NVIDIA handled the GTX TITAN, in that there won't be non-reference design cards in the foreseeable future, with the exception of cards with factory-fitted full-coverage water-blocks.
Source:
DonanimHaber
28 Comments on Radeon R9 290X Launch Date Revealed?
1. The AIB's are just going to love AMD. No Windforce, No DirectCuII, No Lightning, No Vapor-X or IceQ.
2. With no AIB factory specials that pretty much means as soon as the hoopla from the initial reviews is over the card won't be gaining much in the way of PR except for game graphics performance reviews...much the same as Titan.
3. If that blower fan and shroud are going to be the face of the card through its production run would it have killed AMD to put some effort into making the card look less generic. A dual or triple fan shroud along the lines of the ACX, DCII, TwinFrozr, or Windforce can't be that hard to engineer surely. I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel cage that outperforms AIB designs.
But really, I don't like the look of any of the new AMD cards in terms of aesthetics. Also All the cards look to be rebrands but 2 of them. the 290 and 290x.
www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/vga-blocks/ati-radeon-full-cover-blocks/radeon-rx-200-series.html
:toast:
Now,who need some kidney and half witted soul ? :laugh:
The Titan-ish restrictions on the card is a downer. To be honest, I haven't been impressed with the reference coolers from AMD, hopefully they will improve that especially if the restrictions are true.
I'm not saying that one is better than the other, it just depends on the conditions imho.
Now if such news is accurate, AMD MUST deliver an exceptional blower reference cooler, at least as efficient and hushed as the Titan. If they don't and then hold-back on partners' offering customs that would be an appalling play by them. Do I care that reference coolers aren't always the utmost, no! Do I believe AMD should spend tons of R&D or impede launch or escalate the price on something its’ partners are there to add value with, heck no!
Traditionally it's been a concession most first adopters have to weigh/decide, or wait a few weeks to see what AIB offer. That said if AMD is holding back from letting partners release within reason time-frame, AMD must deliver a cooler that is not wrought with compromise.
If the cards aren't release until Oct 15, who in their right mind would order one based on the information now available?
What prizes do we have for our winner?
The whole point of the blower fan design is to place one fan at the end that blows the exhaust out the back of the case. You can't put more than one fan on a GPU without the added ones being propeller fans that just dissipate vs direct heat, which would just disrupt the airflow of the blower fan, limiting it's ability to exhaust the heat. So at that point you'd be better off just making them ALL prop fans with a non ref HS design.
So ref or non ref, and I prefer a good non ref btw, there's really only one or the other.
On a side note, an interesting and relating bit of trivia. I once asked EVGA if they'd ever make any non ref cooled video cards. At that time they said they had no plans to. Shortly after, they launched their first non ref cards. I then asked about one of the new models that was non ref, to see if they'd sent out any samples for review. The guy I spoke to insisted it would have roughly the same performance as their ref card, despite my suggesting their claimed 20c cooler temps might make it more OCable. His answer was that they only refer to stock speeds, making it clear they don't care about what is said regarding OC ability in reviews. Perhaps because it varies from card to card. EVGA is very conservative in stating their specs after all.
Anyways, regarding ref vs non ref, obviously non ref has proven to be cooler (and quieter). I think the only reason they launch cards like these ref only is they need to be sure they'll get enough orders before they commit to the vendors that want to build such types, and that in turn can depend on the yields they (Nvidia and AMD) get with the chips. That might also mean AMD will authorize non ref designs much sooner than Nvidia on their Titan, because it will probably be priced a lot lower knowing them. Then again, AMD's customers are used to low prices, so it will depend on how low they can offer it at launch, AND how good their yields are of course.
We're getting to the point now where between the die size and sheer power of these chips, the yield issue alone is more significant than it used to be. They're going to reach a saturation point with die shrinking unless the chip manufacturers can somehow make the process easier. I know Intel invested heavily in the use of Hafnium, and AMD even mocked their use of it once, but we all know Intel is the king of die shrinking.
Case in point: Think of what NVidia did. They had lots of trouble getting GF100 (a huge die) to work in the early life of 40nm, and they similarly had to cancel the huge GK100 on 28nm and wait for GK110 a year later. AMD has never released a huge die early in the life of a process, and I suspect it's exactly for that reason. The last huge die AMD/ATI released was R600, and that was made on a pretty old (at the time) 80nm process while the smaller chips in the 2000 series were based on the new (at the time) 65nm.
My prediction is that with their experiences on 40nm and 28nm both AMD and NVidia will initally favor small dies on 20nm to avoid defects. This will mean in 2014/2015 the AMD Rx 300 series & NVidia 800 series being only about 20% faster than the AMD Rx 200 and Nvidia 700 series, Then in 2015/2016 the AMD Rx 400 and Nvidia 900 series will be released with big dies on 20nm resulting in another 20% performance improvement. Everyone skipping upgrading this generation expecting a 50% performance improvement next generation is fooling themselves. Those days are over.
I think this decidedly marks a trend toward marketing based on features rather than performance, much like AMD and Intel have done in the CPU space, and toward an increasing focus on software optimization to improve performance when hardware cannot advance.
Reference does not mandate a blower fan, it's just that reference has become synonymous with that design partly because it represents a good trade off between function and manufacturing cost. Just to forestall the "But the 7990 is a dual GPU card" argument, so are the preceding HD 6990 and HD 5970.
3870 - 3870x2 - 5870 - 5870/5850 - 7970 it did involve some common sense though and being skint a lot:D or there would be more in that list
anyway,my main point is that 50% is easy doable next arch change for either vendor, both will be hitting out with some interesting tech, maxwell and its 1tb/s memory cache and as for pirate islands, anyones guess there , my guess would include on die l4 cache 256-512mb and 4-8 x86 cores probably jaguer(probably high end gpu though) and both these hit that 50% plus potential you speak of, Tsv(through silicon vias) could shake up the game if used right and creatively.