# AMD "Hawaii" R9 290X GPU Specifications Revealed



## btarunr (Sep 19, 2013)

Here are the first set of specifications for AMD's next high-end GPU silicon, on which the company will no doubt carve out several SKUs from. Codenamed "Hawaii," and slated for unveiling on the 26th in, well, Hawaii, the 28 nm chip is what AMD will take NVIDIA's GK110 silicon head-on with. It is based on AMD's second-generation Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture. 

With an estimated die-area of 430 mm² (18% bigger than "Tahiti,") the chip physically features 2,816 stream processors (SPs) spread across 44 clusters with 64 SPs each (a 37.5% increase over "Tahiti"). The chip features four independent raster engines, compared to two independent ones on "Tahiti." This could translate into double the geometry processing muscle as "Tahiti," with four independent tessellation units. The memory interface of the chip is expected to be 384-bit wide, based on the GDDR5 specification. Given the way TMUs are arranged on chips based on this architecture, one can deduce 176 TMUs on the chip. The ROP count could be 32 or 48. The chip will feature hardware support for DirectX 11.2, including the much hyped shared resources (mega-texture) feature.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 19, 2013)

Wow, 2816 SP was a lot more than I was expecting.  I guess they weren't exaggerating about die area efficiency.  Early specs had 2304 and the TPU GPU database (which seems to be ahead of the curve) only had 2560 predicted.

Just for comparison:
Tahiti has 2048 SP in 365mm^2 -> 5.61 SP/mm^2
Hawaii has 2816 SP in 430mm^2 -> 6.55 SP/mm^2

That means Hawaii is about 17% more die area efficient than Tahiti.  Granted, most of the auxiliary logic like the memory controller and PCI express controller don't increase in size with the number of SP, but it's still a nice improvement.


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## T4C Fantasy (Sep 19, 2013)

I am shocked also, and a bit happy.


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## Nordic (Sep 19, 2013)

Sounds impressive. I can't wait for reviews.


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## Xzibit (Sep 19, 2013)

Just what I suspected.

AMD wanted to be the first with full hardware support for Windows 8.1.  Not that it had to worry since its competitor is still doing only doing half compliance with software on DX 11.1.


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## T4C Fantasy (Sep 19, 2013)

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2460/radeon-r9-290x.html


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 19, 2013)

T4C Fantasy said:


> http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2460/radeon-r9-290x.html



Hopefully the 900MHz core clock means that the chips are power limited (like GK110) and can be clocked higher with proper power delivery and cooling, not that AMD is having problems with achieving higher clock speeds.

The Forbes interview indicated that they could achieve higher clock speeds at 28nm than 20nm, so that makes me wonder if either this 900mhz clock is too low or if the 20nm process is that bad.  I tend to believe the latter.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 19, 2013)

37.5% increase in core count for an 22% (w/o packaging. 17.8% as package) increase in die size...on the same process node?
Even if AMD managed a transistor density ~Pitcairn, that seems a little out of balance.


The Von Matrices said:


> Wow, 2816 SP was a lot more than I was expecting.  I guess they weren't exaggerating about die area efficiency.  Early specs had 2304 and the TPU GPU database (which seems to be ahead of the curve) only had 2560 predicted.
> Just for comparison:
> Tahiti has 2048 SP in 365mm^2 -> 5.61 SP/mm^2
> Hawaii has 2816 SP in 430mm^2 -> 6.55 SP/mm^2
> ...


Kind of puts Pitcairn's 6.04 SP/mm^2 to shame if that is indeed the case.


The Von Matrices said:


> The Forbes interview indicated that they could achieve higher clock speeds at 28nm than 20nm, so that makes me wonder if either this 900mhz clock is too low or if the 20nm process is that bad.  I tend to believe the latter.


Might be a case of transistor density translating into higher localised heat (i.e. the Ivy Bridge and Haswell effect)


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## Jstn7477 (Sep 19, 2013)

If this information is true, I think I might be buying one or more. I'll be waiting for the reviews first, of course.


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 19, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> 37.5% increase in core count for an 22% (w/o packaging. 17.8% as package) increase in die size...on the same process node?
> Even if AMD managed a transistor density ~Pitcairn, that seems a little out of balance.
> 
> Kind of puts Pitcairn's 6.04 SP/mm^2 to shame if that is indeed the case.



The SP section of the Hawaii die may have the same density as Pitcairn; it's just that since the size of the other logic on the die is relatively fixed, as you add more SP then the efficiency increases.


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## Roph (Sep 19, 2013)

Looking forward to seeing what the 97xx / 98xx are like


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 19, 2013)

The Von Matrices said:


> The SP section of the Hawaii die may have the same density as Pitcairn; it's just that since the size of the other logic on the die is relatively fixed, as you add more SP then the efficiency increases.



Wouldn't the uncore ( memory controllers and GDDR interface, I/O, thread dispatch etc) be more in line with Tahiti than Pitcairn- the latter after all requiring a smaller amount of die real estate from its 256-bit bus width? AFAIW, memory control/interface still makes up the largest part of the uncore


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## buildzoid (Sep 19, 2013)

So now I can go look for a buyer for my 7970


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## erocker (Sep 19, 2013)

I'd love to see a pre-release (sale) review... and a price. Though, if I'm not mistaken I thought I heard something that they'll be under $600. So that probably means $599 but you never know.


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 19, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Wouldn't the uncore ( memory controllers and GDDR interface, I/O, thread dispatch etc) be more in line with Tahiti than Pitcairn- the latter after all requiring a smaller amount of die real estate from its 256-bit bus width? AFAIW, memory control/interface still makes up the largest part of the uncore



You're right - I just did the math and my original statement couldn't be correct (that most of the increase in area efficiency could just be due to the increased number of SP).  If I assume that the die area occupied by everything other than the SPs is identical between Hawaii and Tahiti, then a set of linear equations can be formed:

2816x + y = 430
2048x + y = 365

where x is the die area per SP and y is the die area occupied by everything other than the SPs.    

This works out to be y (uncore die area) = 192 mm^2  and x (die area per SP) = 0.0846 mm^2.  This would mean that if Tahiti's SP's were identical to the ones in Hawaii then Tahiti would be 52% uncore.  But just looking at die pictures of Tahiti shows that this is obviously untrue.

 So some serious optimizations have to had been done.  Credit is due to AMD for making such a die area efficiency gain without reducing the process size.  Where performance lines up is yet to be told though.

*EDIT: this increase in efficiency not be true, see my post below*



erocker said:


> I'd love to see a pre-release (sale) review... and a price. Though, if I'm not mistaken I thought I heard something that they'll be under $600. So that probably means $599 but you never know.



The R9 290X is clocked 16% lower than the 7970 GHz Edition but has 37.5% more SP.  If the performance of Hawaii scales linearly with SP and clock speed with respect to Tahiti, then based on the TPU performance chart  the R9 290X should be 97% as fast as GTX 780.  If a dynamic boost mode is implemented (ala 7790) as has been rumored then they should be neck and neck in performance, possibly with the R9 290X being a little faster if it can boost over 1GHz consistently.  However, as with any product the price is what will really determine a winner.  But even if the R9 290X is priced the same as GTX 780, the R9 290X should be the better buy.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 19, 2013)

The Von Matrices said:


> The R9 290X is clocked 16% lower than the 7970 GHz Edition but has 37.5% more SP.  If the performance of Hawaii scales linearly with SPs and clock speed with respect to Tahiti, then based on the TPU performance chart  the R9 290X should be 97% as fast as GTX 780.  If a dynamic boost mode is implemented (ala 7790) as has been rumored then they should be neck and neck in performance, possibly with the R9 290X being a little faster if it can boost over 1GHz consistently.


Which would also account for the measured statement from Matt Skynner that highlighted perf/mm^2 rather than outright performance


The Von Matrices said:


> However, the price is what will really determine a winner.


Hopefully:
1. AMD and Nvidia don't reach some kind of unwritten (and non verifiable) _understanding_, and
2. Yields and production ramp is sufficient to make 1. unnecessary.

BTW: I Googled the Tahiti die shot image you posted, and a poster at B3D (fellix) cleaned up the image (or one very similar) which should make calculations easier....assuming of course that there isn't a radical difference in architecture which I think would be unlikely


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## MxPhenom 216 (Sep 19, 2013)

If these still have 32ROPs that is going to kill the performance if this GPU. Needs at least 48.


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## hardcore_gamer (Sep 19, 2013)

The Von Matrices said:


> the R9 290X should be 97% as fast as GTX 780.



I don't think AMD will release a flagship card that is slower than 780. If they can't beat their competitor's previous generation card, it will be a fail.


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 19, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Which would also account for the measured statement from Matt Skynner that highlighted perf/mm^2 rather than outright performance
> 
> Hopefully:
> 1. AMD and Nvidia don't reach some kind of unwritten (and non verifiable) _understanding_, and
> ...



Thanks for that - it makes things a lot clearer.  By some rough cropping I just calculated by pixels that since the entire die in that image is 1283058 pixels and the shaders are 622400 pixels.  That brings up a startling revelation.  That would mean the non-shaders is 51.5% of the die, which is exactly in line what what I said earlier.  *So maybe what AMD did is just tacked on 768 more shaders to Tahiti without any major reworking and called it a day.*  The only way the that die efficiency could possibly increase is if there were 48 ROPs squeezed onto the Hawaii die instead of 32 in Tahiti, which would mean everything else would have to be smaller.



hardcore_gamer said:


> I don't think AMD will release a flagship card that is slower than 780. If they can't beat their competitor's previous generation card, it will be a fail.



It all depends on the boost algorithm and how it is implemented.  As I said, if it can consistently boost past 1GHz then it should be faster than GTX 780 (by about 10% in that case).


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## Roph (Sep 19, 2013)

It's a newer GCN revision too though, so just comparing numbers of shaders isn't good enough to judge performance.


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## m1dg3t (Sep 19, 2013)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> If these still have 32ROPs that is going to kill the performance if this GPU. Needs at least 48.



48 ROPs with 512bit and i'd start touching myself


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## MxPhenom 216 (Sep 19, 2013)

m1dg3t said:


> 48 ROPs with 512bit and i'd start touching myself



It was said in another specification reveal that it'll be 384 bit bus with 3GB of memory again like the 7970.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 19, 2013)

Roph said:


> It's a newer GCN revision too though, so just comparing numbers of shaders isn't good enough to judge performance.


If anything, the real estate taken up by the cores (and by extension the Compute Units) should either be relatively static, or increase for a given node where performance increases.

What precisely would AMD cull to decrease size? Cache ? Vector and texture units ? the number of load/store units ?
The other alternatives are AMD have made some breakthrough in transistor density...or Tahiti was a badly laid out chip.


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## dom99 (Sep 19, 2013)

This gets my hopes up for something on par with the 780, if so and it doesnt costs stupid amounts I'm going to upgrade form my HD 6950 2GB that I bought on release. I missed to 7000 series due to the huge bump in price at release (much more sensible now at £270 for an HD 7970 GHZ) so lets hope they undercut Nvidia with the same performance.


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 19, 2013)

Roph said:


> It's a newer GCN revision too though, so just comparing numbers of shaders isn't good enough to judge performance.



Remember, 7790 was a newer revision of GCN as well.  But that meant nothing in terms of increased performance.  To quote Anandtech on the 7790 



> In this new microarchitecture there are some changes – among other things the new microarchitecture implements some new instructions that will be useful for HSA, support for a larger number of compute work queues (also good for HSA) and it also implements a new version of AMD’s PowerTune technology (which we’ll get to in a bit) – but otherwise the differences from Southern Islands are very few. There are no notable changes in shader/CU efficiency, ROP efficiency, graphics features, etc. Unless you’re writing compute code for AMD GPUs, from what we know about this microarchitecture it’s likely you’d never notice a difference.



So if this is the same revised GCN architecture as the 7790, which it probably is, I wouldn't expect anything noticeable in efficiency improvements.  The biggest improvement would be the boost algorithm, which is what would put this card over the GTX 780's performance instead of matching it.


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## SIGSEGV (Sep 19, 2013)

Wow amazing...
Burn burn burn baby.... XD

cant wait for benches and reviews.


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## VulkanBros (Sep 19, 2013)

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_hawaii_r9_290x_gpu_specifications.html


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## buggalugs (Sep 19, 2013)

My next card is nearly ready!! It will perform in between 780 and titan with better efficiency and of course much cheaper. I just hope they wack a good cooler on it.


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## RCoon (Sep 19, 2013)

buggalugs said:


> My next card is nearly ready!! It will perform in between 780 and titan with better efficiency and of course much cheaper. I just hope they wack a good cooler on it.



I think it will likely be on par with the 780 but at a lower price. I'm also hoping they use a cooler not too different from the 7990, because I personally quite liked that stock cooler.
They'll probably employ some kind of boost to certain specifications so they can claim top single gpu performance spot again. Then NVidia will spontaneously increase base clocks on their cards, and the clock war and Ghz edition malarchy will begin.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 19, 2013)

RCoon said:


> I think it will likely be on par with the 780 but at a lower price... They'll probably employ some kind of boost to certain specifications so they can claim top single gpu performance spot again


So the card will be on par with the 780...but surpass the Titan ???


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## jigar2speed (Sep 19, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> So the card will be on par with the 780...but surpass the Titan ???



You should remember after surpassing 780 there is not much left to over take Titan.


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## SIGSEGV (Sep 19, 2013)

jigar2speed said:


> You should remember after surpassing 780 there is not much left to over take Titan.



then might be nvidia would bring the ultra beyond supaaaah titan card out...


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## jigar2speed (Sep 19, 2013)

SIGSEGV said:


> then might be nvidia would bring the ultra beyond supaaaah titan card out...



That's competition my friend and it is always good for customers


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## Slomo4shO (Sep 19, 2013)

RCoon said:


> I'm also hoping they use a cooler not too different from the 7990, because I personally quite liked that stock cooler.



Beyond looking nice, the 7990s run hot and are loud.


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## RCoon (Sep 19, 2013)

Slomo4shO said:


> Beyond looking nice, the 7990s run hot and are loud.



Loud, only because its two hot GPU's. With any luck, this one will run a lot cooler because of the single GPU, so the cooler wouldnt need to be run so loud.


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## Casecutter (Sep 19, 2013)

The 430 mm² is more than I thought (lately), while 2,816 stream processors is over the top!  So yes huge efficiencies is die area!  What's this part going to pack in terms of transistors, GFlops, and need tessellation?

Remember they undoubtedly included the obligatory frontend changes that Bonaire received in the number of geometry engines and command processors (ACEs).  Also, there will assuredly be "Hawaii release drivers", that could bump them more than just what they could write for the original GCN architecture. Not the latest Catalyst 13.9 driver, basically certified for Windows 8.1

As to the cooler they won't need anything like a 7990, heck if the held the power why reinvent the wheel? Release with a 7970 version and the partners will build their own just as did with most everything GTX770/780 gets.


Edit:
I'm hoping we see again a $550 MSRP that would be the right move.  Like the 4870 gave us against the GTX260, 270/280, that's the formula the worked, and what I hope AMD does again. Given the prices' they're selling 7950 and 7970's I don't like that AMD would consider a $600 price for a 28Nm part that's only 18% decrease in candidates from the wafer.  Heck, if they can harvest 3 distinct derivatives from each wafer they'd probably easily make up for the die increase.


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## Akrian (Sep 19, 2013)

Do want. But at 450-499 price point + waterblocks. 
Then I would eventually get quadfire build again.


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## Prima.Vera (Sep 19, 2013)

m1dg3t said:


> 48 ROPs with 512bit and i'd start touching myself


Neh. 

64 ROPs/ 512bit if you want to start the party.


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## Casecutter (Sep 19, 2013)

After reading the translated version of the article at 3dcenter.org... this might not be as concrete (yes nothing ever is) as btarunr has us supposing.  I'd suggest you read that article, as they offer "two assumptions" and saying it comes from a "seemingly informed user"; although who knows how those word translated-out from the original German text is unknown.  
Wonder what the W1zzard’s take on that article is? I suppose he could be busy?

I want to see what the Ruby Tech Demo will look like this time.


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## mrwizard200 (Sep 19, 2013)

Sounds promising. I have $300 ready but it seems like that won't be enough. Is the 7970 still worth it?


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## fullinfusion (Sep 19, 2013)

I have a buyer for both my 7970's so hurry up AMD and get these new cards out


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## Hilux SSRG (Sep 19, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Neh.
> 
> 64 ROPs/ 512bit if you want to start the party.



That's what I'm waiting for!


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## manofthem (Sep 19, 2013)

fullinfusion said:


> I have a buyer for both my 7970's so hurry up AMD and get these new cards out



I like your thinking! 

I don't have buyers, but I'd love to trade in the 7970s if the card is beast!


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 19, 2013)

jigar2speed said:


> You should remember after surpassing 780 there is not much left to over take Titan.


I assume English isn't your native language. "on par" means "equal to".
Therefore, if RCoon's assumption is that the 290X is equal to the 780, how can it have greater performance than the Titan which is around 8% faster than the 780?
Quite simply it can't. It is contradictory. There is no outright performance metric for reference SKU's where the 780 exceeds the Titan.


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## RCoon (Sep 19, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> I assume English isn't your native language. "on par" means "equal to".
> Therefore, if RCoon's assumption is that the 290X is equal to the 780, how can it have greater performance than the Titan which is around 8% faster than the 780?
> Quite simply it can't. It is contradictory. There is no outright performance metric for reference SKU's where the 780 exceeds the Titan.



I apologise for the mixup, I should have said on par with the Titan, but as the 780 is a sparrow's fart away from the Titan that was the first thing that came to mind.
Though in honesty if its like 1-3% slower than a Titan, faster than a 780, and equal or cheaper than the 780, then it's going to be a no brainer in terms of price/performance when compared to NVidia's offerings.


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## radrok (Sep 19, 2013)

Can't wait to see the R9 290X Lightning :O


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## ensabrenoir (Sep 19, 2013)

must say this is one area where amd never disappoints.....true it must surpass nvidia or its meaningless.... nvidia will drop prices though.......


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## yogurt_21 (Sep 19, 2013)

Roph said:


> Looking forward to seeing what the 97xx / 98xx are like



one would hope they hit the 200-400$ price point with awesome bang for buck just like the original 9700 and 9800's.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 20, 2013)

RCoon said:


> Though in honesty if its like 1-3% slower than a Titan, faster than a 780, and equal or cheaper than the 780, then it's going to be a no brainer in terms of price/performance when compared to NVidia's offerings.


Sounds like a likely scenario. AMD certainly aren't going to release a card that isn't competitive in performance. The only real issues are what price tag AMD put on the card, availability, and whether the GPU is a relatively clean sheet design built with 28nm in mind, or whether it is something of a kludge based on Tahiti because the GPU cadence is out of step with the (20nm) process node- and presumably GDDR6 - also assuming that AMD and Nvidia look to boost bandwidth via memory frequency rather than add to the die area with added memory controllers.

Worst case scenario, the 290X and 780 trade blows and AMD tag it at $599. Nvidia would likely see the extra $50 for the 780 justified based on brand, its tenuous relationship to Titan (and presumably a Titan Ultra), and the fact that vendor designed and OC'ed 780's would be competing with a reference design 290X.

Best case scenario, the salvage part (Hawaii Pro) offers 85-90% of the performance of the 290X at a considerable cost saving. This part should be key to any real shakeup since Nvidia don't have an analogue - it should be daylight between it and the GTX 770 -as with the 780, which either leaves AMD without competition in a higher volume market, or necessitates the introduction of a Titan Ultra, with the Titan and 780 both moving down in the pricing hierarchy. Kind of depends whether Nvidia feel the need to commit that much resource...and how far way Maxwell is.


yogurt_21 said:


> one would hope they hit the 200-400$ price point with awesome bang for buck just like the original 9700 and 9800's.


That's not going to happen. a 425-440mm^2 on 28nm -even with fantastic yields, wouldn't make it viable. There is also the no small difference that Rory Read wasn't running thing back in the days of R300...and Rory only offers the LOW LOW PRICE! if the product is seriously outgunned by the competition.

Just a note: The 9700 PRO and 9800 PRO both launched at $450. The 9800 XT launched at $499


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## fullinfusion (Sep 20, 2013)

manofthem said:


> I like your thinking!
> 
> I don't have buyers, but I'd love to trade in the 7970s if the card is beast!



I know one thing, Im sitting at W1zzards front door waiting for the mail man to show up and run away with the package 

I have a local guy that's into the tec but don't mind waiting to upgrade. He just likes buying from me as I always sold him top notch hardware and isn't into upgrading as often as I do. He had one of my 7970's and just loved it over his 8800gtx's in sli on my old platform. He keeps sending me a friendly reminder that he has the cookie jar full of cash for when I want to upgrade.

It's all going to determine the performance of the new top end cards performance and the cost. You know I never use one gpu  one  just makes the case look so bare


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## Nordic (Sep 20, 2013)

fullinfusion said:


> You know I never use one gpu  one  just makes the case look so bare


Get smaller case.


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## german103 (Sep 20, 2013)

The Von Matrices said:


> *EDIT: this increase in efficiency not be true, see my post below*
> 
> 
> 
> The R9 290X is clocked 16% lower than the 7970 GHz Edition but has 37.5% more SP.  If the performance of Hawaii scales linearly with SP and clock speed with respect to Tahiti, then based on the TPU performance chart  the R9 290X should be 97% as fast as GTX 780.  If a dynamic boost mode is implemented (ala 7790) as has been rumored then they should be neck and neck in performance, possibly with the R9 290X being a little faster if it can boost over 1GHz consistently.  However, as with any product the price is what will really determine a winner.  But even if the R9 290X is priced the same as GTX 780, the R9 290X should be the better buy.



Nice calculations but 290X will actually be 7-12% faster than TITAN.

don't ask for the source


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 20, 2013)

german103 said:


> Nice calculations but 290X will actually be 7-12% faster than TITAN.
> don't ask for the source



First post from a new member. Check.
Unsubstantiated claim. Check.
Lack of parameters for said claim. Check.

Seems legit.


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## EpicShweetness (Sep 20, 2013)

Did some math hear if this chip is anything like "Bonaire" well hears a speculation. "Bonaire" is a 29% increase in SP count and this results in roughly a 25% increase in performance. This chip "Hawaii" at 2816 is roughly a 28% increase in SP count, so.... Well you see the pattern hear.
I'll be honest I'm a little disappointed, I was expecting to see 20nm, but if this card can bring 780 levels of performance at $500 or less  
Aside "Bonaire" proved to have little impact on power consumption (5-8%), but applied to the 238w of power consumption this chip (regardless of the lower clock speeds) is gonna be cresting 250w


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## fullinfusion (Sep 20, 2013)

EpicShweetness said:


> Did some math hear if this chip is anything like "Bonaire" well hears a speculation. "Bonaire" is a 29% increase in SP count and this results in roughly a 25% increase in performance. This chip "Hawaii" at 2816 is roughly a 28% increase in SP count, so.... Well you see the pattern hear.
> I'll be honest I'm a little disappointed, I was expecting to see 20nm, but if this card can bring 780 levels of performance at $500 or less
> Aside "Bonaire" proved to have little impact on power consumption (5-8%), but applied to the 238w of power consumption this chip (regardless of the lower clock speeds) is gonna be cresting 250w


Price is a speculation atm.. If you ask me 499$ is going to be the prive of the reference card.

The performance on this gpu is going to rock Nvidias socks off for the time being and I can see the Titan dropping to the 6 bill range just a few dollars more for the green crowd to be happy against the Amd 9 gen even though these are going to perform Tess and tress alot better, A LOT better then the 7970's


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## RCoon (Sep 20, 2013)

ensabrenoir said:


> must say this is one area where amd never disappoints.....true it must surpass nvidia or its meaningless.... nvidia will drop prices though.......



NVidia will never drop the prices of their two top end cards, because they see the high price of the cards as the cost to be a part of the green team. It's always been that way. Even if something performs identically to a Titan in every form, NVidia would still put a higher price on it compared to said identical card, purely for the right of passage into the green team.


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## the54thvoid (Sep 20, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> First post from a new member. Check.
> Unsubstantiated claim. Check.
> Lack of parameters for said claim. Check.
> 
> Seems legit.



Ah, the mighty troll banishing spell. 



RCoon said:


> NVidia will never drop the prices of their two top end cards, because they see the high price of the cards as the cost to be a part of the green team. It's always been that way. Even if something performs identically to a Titan in every form, NVidia would still put a higher price on it compared to said identical card, purely for the right of passage into the green team.



I think they shot themselves in the foot with Titan.  By keeping DP compute fully enabled with 6GB of RAM they sold their previously 'several thousand dollar' compute card for cheap.  That would have probably annoyed a few small scale compute users that paid top dollar.  I could see Titan just disappearing from inventory and a new GTX 785 (or something) that is a Titan without DP compute, 6GB memory but has higher power limits.

Nvidia only need to do that if the AMD card beats Titan.  To be fair - it should.  Titan is about 25-35% faster than 7970GHz.  AMD's next gen card should surely be 30% faster than it's previous gen?


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## RCoon (Sep 20, 2013)

the54thvoid said:


> Ah, the mighty troll banishing spell.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Titan isnt a full chip though is it? (Or am I thinking of the 780 when I say 1 cluster disabled?). So if something did beat the Titan from AMD, NVidia could happily rebrand the Titan 785, disable the DP Compute, and then release a Titan(Ultra?) with the extra cluster enabled - essentially the full quaddro chip.


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## Recus (Sep 20, 2013)

ensabrenoir said:


> must say this is one area where amd never disappoints.....true it must surpass nvidia or its meaningless.... nvidia will drop prices though.......



1. Create hype with unrealistic spec. Diagram
2. Silently lower spec till release.
3. Profit.



german103 said:


> Nice calculations but 290X will actually be 7-12% faster than TITAN.
> 
> don't ask for the source



440 TDP. Don't ask for the source.


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## m1dg3t (Sep 20, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Neh.
> 
> 64 ROPs/ 512bit if you want to start the party.



A party, indeed! 

I'd still touch myself with 48/512... 64/512 would be full on FAPfest 

If these cards are as good as i'm hoping, i'll have one around the new year i think 

@ 54thvoid: IIRC Titan is ~ 23% faster than 7970Ghz.


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## fullinfusion (Sep 20, 2013)

RCoon said:


> NVidia will never drop the prices of their two top end cards, because they see the high price of the cards as the cost to be a part of the green team. It's always been that way. Even if something performs identically to a Titan in every form, NVidia would still put a higher price on it compared to said identical card, purely for the right of passage into the green team.


And what did nvidia pay have there cards made $3.74C 

Either way were getting the short end of it all


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## jigar2speed (Sep 20, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> I assume English isn't your native language. "on par" means "equal to".
> Therefore, if RCoon's assumption is that the 290X is equal to the 780, how can it have greater performance than the Titan which is around 8% faster than the 780?
> Quite simply it can't. It is contradictory. There is no outright performance metric for reference SKU's where the 780 exceeds the Titan.



I did get what he meant, but 8 % faster Titan cannot and will not justify 350$ higher pricing.

EDIT: And about that performance metrics where 780 exceeds the Titan - please see this - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_780_SC_ACX_Cooler/26.html

EDIT 2: The above review clearly shows, there is not much to overtake once you are done beating 780.


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## ensabrenoir (Sep 20, 2013)

Recus said:


> 1. Create hype with unrealistic spec. Diagram
> 2. Silently lower spec till release.
> 3. Profit.
> 
> 440 TDP. Don't ask for the source.




YUUUP this is Amd here... forgot about that and the whole B-word debacle  (name will not  be spoken...or its flame on )


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## NeoXF (Sep 20, 2013)

EpicShweetness said:


> Did some math hear if this chip is anything like "Bonaire" well hears a speculation. "Bonaire" is a 29% increase in SP count and this results in roughly a 25% increase in performance. This chip "Hawaii" at 2816 is roughly a 28% increase in SP count, so.... Well you see the pattern hear.



You do have to take into account that HD 7790 is pretty damn bandwidth starved, you know that right...


God, I love all you guys getting your nerd on and doing all that pseudo-pointless math and all... but there's so many things that you have to take into consideration... by the time you're finished one of 2 things will happen:

1. You're going to look like a clown when you realize you forgot about factor X or Y or Z.
2. The card has launched anyway so it's redundant.

Example one: Has anyone forgotten about AMD's uber driver overhauls that kept on enhancing and squeezing more and more performance out of the GCN arch? Maybe this will happen again (or maybe not), but this time, they have their shit ready day 1.


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## EpicShweetness (Sep 20, 2013)

NeoXF said:


> You do have to take into account that HD 7790 is pretty damn bandwidth starved, you know that right...
> 
> 
> God, I love all you guys getting your nerd on and doing all that pseudo-pointless math and all... but there's so many things that you have to take into consideration... by the time you're finished one of 2 things will happen:
> ...



Thank you for the information.
The criticism, not so much. Anyway this is all speculation


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## mirakul (Sep 20, 2013)

I don't think the driver will fail this time. GCN has been around for 2 years. And AMD will smart enough to not release a new chip that cannot beat 780.
Now that will only be the price. If AMD bundle the card with BF4 for the same price as 780, who can resist to buy??


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## MxPhenom 216 (Sep 20, 2013)

jigar2speed said:


> I did get what he meant, but 8 % faster Titan cannot and will not justify 350$ higher pricing.
> 
> EDIT: And about that performance metrics where 780 exceeds the Titan - please see this - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_780_SC_ACX_Cooler/26.html
> 
> EDIT 2: The above review clearly shows, there is not much to overtake once you are done beating 780.



if you bought a Titan just for gaming, you should probably reevaluate your purchase.


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## NeoXF (Sep 20, 2013)

mirakul said:


> I don't think the driver will fail this time. GCN has been around for 2 years. And AMD will smart enough to not release a new chip that cannot beat 780.
> Now that will only be the price. If AMD bundle the card with BF4 for the same price as 780, who can resist to buy??



I don't think it'll cost as much as the GTX 780, then again I don't like the speculated $599 price either, considering HD 7970GHz's predecessor (HD 7970s...) launched at lower than both those prices and that was pretty frowned upon. Remember the "OMG and it's only 30% faster than GTX 580!?" reactions, I do...


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## The Von Matrices (Sep 20, 2013)

Recus said:


> 1. Create hype with unrealistic spec. Diagram
> 2. Silently lower spec till release.
> 3. Profit.



In a sense this would be the same as the 6970/Cayman hype.  Remember, Cayman was planned to be 32nm, and all the early specs were based on that.  But at the (relatively) last minute it was moved back to 40nm and cut down to make it a reasonable die size.  I would expect the same here - Hawaii was expected to be built on 20nm, TSMC couldn't deliver, and it was moved back to 28nm and cut down in size.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 21, 2013)

jigar2speed said:


> I did get what he meant, but 8 % faster Titan cannot and will not justify 350$ higher pricing


Stop trolling. The postings were concerned with - and only mentioned- relative performance of three cards- nowhere was pricing used until you just bought it up. Classic straw man argument. 


jigar2speed said:


> EDIT: And about that performance metrics where 780 exceeds the Titan - please see this - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_780_SC_ACX_Cooler/26.html


What part of "reference" don't you understand?


HumanSmoke said:


> Quite simply it can't. It is contradictory. There is no outright performance metric for *reference SKU's *where the 780 exceeds the Titan.


It may have escaped your notice that the EVGA GTX 780 SuperClocked isn't a reference SKU.
From the article that you linked to, here's W1zzard to explain the difference:


> The card is factory-overclocked and offers out-of-the-box GPU clock speeds of 967 MHz core and 1118 MHz GPU Boost *against the 863 MHz core and 900 MHz GPU Boost of NVIDIA's reference board.*


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## haswrong (Sep 21, 2013)

hope itll support ogl 4.4


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## the54thvoid (Sep 21, 2013)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> if you bought a Titan just for gaming, you should probably reevaluate your purchase.



Oi! That's precisely what I did 

At time of release Titan was far ahead of any other single gpu solution - that's why many folk ditched more 'powerful'  but very buggy dual gpu solutions.  Who'd a thunk Nvidia would've screwed us over with the 780? 

But on topic, I'm looking forward to seeing what the new AMD flagship has to offer.


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## radrok (Sep 21, 2013)

the54thvoid said:


> Oi! That's precisely what I did
> 
> At time of release Titan was far ahead of any other single gpu solution - that's why many folk ditched more 'powerful'  but very buggy dual gpu solutions.  Who'd a thunk Nvidia would've screwed us over with the 780?
> 
> But on topic, I'm looking forward to seeing what the new AMD flagship has to offer.



Titan is still miles ahead of the 780s imho, the added shaders when pushing 1300-1400 Mhz make a BIG difference.


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## TheHunter (Sep 22, 2013)

512bit @ 4Gb ram & 48 ROPs is pretty much confirmed. 














AMD Radeon R9 290X in a nutshell:

    GPU: 28nm Hawaii XT
    Memory: 4GB GDDR5
    Memory Bus: 512-bit
    Power Connectors: 6+8-pin
    Display Outputs: DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort
    Features: Dual-BIOS Support, Crossfire-X Support
    Phase PWM: 5+1
    Price: ~599 USD
http://videocardz.com/45723/amd-radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-gallery



And I dare to say it will be at least 30% faster then 780GTX/Titan, if 2800+ core then even more, kinda like 580GTX vs 7970Ghz


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## MxPhenom 216 (Sep 22, 2013)

radrok said:


> Titan is still miles ahead of the 780s imho, the added shaders when pushing 1300-1400 Mhz make a BIG difference.



Its not miles ahead. Especially if you only consider gaming performance, for $300+ difference is not worth it. Now if you do things that need compute power sure, since Titan has the full blown double precision compute still intact.


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## TheHunter (Sep 22, 2013)

And that Chinese site leaked some benchmarks too, actually a lot!
http://udteam.tistory.com/539

Like I had a thought 10-40% faster then Titan., Newer drivers will fix the rest, 7000 series driver boost anyone and extra 150-200mhz OC and its a killer gpu 

imo not bad at all for max 600€.


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## haswrong (Sep 22, 2013)

TheHunter said:


> 512bit @ 4Gb ram & 48 ROPs is pretty much confirmed.



too bad i cant afford liquid helium to cool it..


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 22, 2013)

TheHunter said:


> And that Chinese site leaked some benchmarks too, actually a lot!
> http://udteam.tistory.com/539
> 
> Like I had a thought 10-40% faster then Titan.Newer drivers will fix the rest, 7000 series driver boost anyone and extra 150-200mhz OC and its a killer gpu


According to the poster (getwinder) 1020/5000 effective *were the highest stable clocks he achieved with the card*. A better comparison would be stock vs. stock, or max oc vs. max oc. My guess is that he was running up against a board limit if the power delivery is 8+6 pin.

BTW: Those aggregated percentage "Overall analysis" charts...might pay to take them with a grain of salt. According to the chart,





 this supposed 290X has a 22.3% gain over the Titan for the Valley bench w/AA, yet the results chart has the AMD behind the Titan in both AA tests (along with both of the other benches) ???


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## haswrong (Sep 22, 2013)

TheHunter said:


> And that Chinese site leaked some benchmarks too, actually a lot!



korean site

*goes in hiding*


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## Blín D'ñero (Sep 22, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> [...]
> 
> BTW: Those aggregated percentage "Overall analysis" charts...might pay to take them with a grain of salt. According to the chart,
> http://cfile30.uf.tistory.com/image/21137437523E214027FF46
> ...


You totally misread. That chart merely shows the decline in performance when moving from 
 1920 x 1080 -> 2560 x 1600 . Per card. Again: *compared to itself from 1920 to 2560 resolution performance.*

EDIT: no sorry, that's their second set of 3 charts. The first (which you copied) is about the performance decrement between using no AA or AA. Per card. Compared to itself.
They say: "As you can see, the Titan and the 780 drop 33-34% in performance (when applying AA), whereas ........... Yes.  Yes ....... " ...the R9 290XT would drop 29.9% performance according to their chart.


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## german103 (Sep 22, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> First post from a new member. Check.
> Unsubstantiated claim. Check.
> Lack of parameters for said claim. Check.
> 
> Seems legit.



http://videocardz.com/45753/amd-radeon-r9-290x-slightly-faster-gtx-titan

yeye i know it's a rumor


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 22, 2013)

Blín D'ñero said:


> EDIT: no sorry, that's their second set of 3 charts. The first (which you copied) is about the performance decrement between using no AA or AA. Per card. Compared to itself.


Gotcha. My bad.
Kind of seems like an odd metric to use given the non-stock clocks, and the probabilities of the user of a $600-1000 card using no AA in their in-game settings. 
Anyhow the performance difference between OC'ed AMD part, the stock 780, and stock Titan using the highest game i.q. benchmarks comes out to be 1.7% and 4% over Titan at 1920 and 2560 respectively, and 7.8% and 11.6% over the GTX 780.





Not overly conclusive without knowing what the reference core/boost/memory clocks are on the AMD part


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## mirakul (Sep 22, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Gotcha. My bad.
> Kind of seems like an odd metric to use given the non-stock clocks, and the probabilities of the user of a $600-1000 card using no AA in their in-game settings.
> 
> Not overly conclusive without knowing what the reference core/boost/memory clocks are on the AMD part



I think using non-stock clock is the most accurate metric, because GPU Boost makes 780 and Titan run at ~1GHz out of the box, reference design. If you compare a non-OC AMD card with and auto-OC-but-claimed-default nVi card, the result will be a joke, just like TPU's benchmark of recent GPU.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 22, 2013)

mirakul said:


> I think using non-stock clock is the most accurate metric, because GPU Boost makes 780 and Titan run at ~1GHz out of the box, reference design. If you compare a non-OC AMD card with and auto-OC-but-claimed-default nVi card, the result will be a joke, just like TPU's benchmark of recent GPU.


The R9-290X is claimed to have a dynamic boost function also- therefore "stock" vs. "stock" is more applicable IMO.

There is also the no small matters of the card being benched obviously being a development/validation board ( shitty generic blower fan, jumpers on the PCB, relatively Spartan layout) which is in the AMD designs favour. The other matter is that the 2816 core version is supposed to reserved for FirePro boards while the Radeon part would have 2560 enabled- so which of the two is being benchmarked?


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## german103 (Sep 22, 2013)

2816 for firepro? source?

that would be disappointing


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 22, 2013)

german103 said:


> 2816 for firepro? source?


Sure


> AMD’s Radeon R9 290X equipped with Hawaii XT GPU is said to have at least 2560 Stream Processors. Some claim it will have 2816, which is not exactly confirmed. In fact the information we have indicates that the full Hawaii GPU will go straight to FirePro model, whereas the 2560 edition will be used for a Radeon flagship.


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## Xzibit (Sep 22, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> According to the poster (getwinder) 1020/5000 effective *were the highest stable clocks he achieved with the card*. A better comparison would be stock vs. stock, or max oc vs. max oc. My guess is that he was running up against a board limit if the power delivery is 8+6 pin.



Wouldn't that mean if the card is OC'd the card performes well enough to beat GTX TITAN and still use less power while being OC'd @ 1020/5000


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## Crap Daddy (Sep 22, 2013)

The leak appears to be legit. Regardless if it's OCed or not this card seems to be at/or above Titan levels which means around 35% increase in perf over 7970GHz edition. Great stuff. Since Nvidia moved the price up for flagships I can't see this card selling for less than $600, more like $650 with games bundle.


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## Prima.Vera (Sep 22, 2013)

TheHunter said:


> And that Chinese site leaked some benchmarks too, actually a lot!
> http://udteam.tistory.com/539



That "Chinese" site, is actually Korean. But who cares, Asians right?


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 22, 2013)

Xzibit said:


> Wouldn't that mean if the card is OC'd the card performes well enough to beat GTX TITAN and still use less power while being OC'd @ 1020/5000


Why would you be confused? The benchmarks are showing exactly that.

Which is why I noted that only a certain amount can be taken from the available information- i.e.
1. If the AMD card has a dynamic boost similar to Nvidia's then it would stand to reason that a better cooler would produce better results than the basic shroud of the engineering sample.
So, depending on the shipping clocks, and whether the card ships with a dynamic boost, the card could be faster...or slower than these benchmarks. Hardly definitive. The only certainty I think is that the shipping reference card overclocks better than 1020/5000 - at least I would hope so given what the GTX 780 and Titan can achieve with a larger die.

2. Maximum boost in benchmarks of the reference part will determine how it fares in reviews. Will an OC'ed card beating a more expensive card when overclocked is laudable. It is neither unusual, nor the basis for most comparisons. Case in point being that an overclocked HD 7950 or GTX 670 would also best a stock HD 7970 or GTX 680. While the benchmarks show the ability it is taken as read that the 7970/680 will also overclock in turn to restore the balance of power in most cases. A more recent example would be an OC'ed 780 beating a stock Titan - all kudos to the Jetstream, but no one is suggesting that turning up the frequency of the Titan will allow the 780 to retain its lead.


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## TheHunter (Sep 22, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> That "Chinese" site, is actually Korean. But who cares, Asians right?



Ah right lol  sorry all Korean ppl 



Anyway I can't wait on 25th!


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## jigar2speed (Sep 23, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Stop trolling. The postings were concerned with - and only mentioned- relative performance of three cards- nowhere was pricing used until you just bought it up. Classic straw man argument.



Wow, so when my argument is not as per your convenience,i am suddenly a troll ? 

The argument started when i said after overtaking GTX 780 there is not much left to overtake Titan - You yourself told me that Titan is 8% faster hence my argument was valid, i.e - there is not much left to overtake once you are done beating GTX 780. 




HumanSmoke said:


> What part of "reference" don't you understand?



Seriously ? Tell me whose the troll now ? - I gave you a link of a review of overclocked GTX 780 which beats Titan that means if AMD's flagship card is faster than GTX 780 it will easily be able to beat TITAN - hence forth i was showing you the valid point but you are smoking some good trolling stuff here.  - (Link for those who are lazy like me- 
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_780_SC_ACX_Cooler/26.html ) 



HumanSmoke said:


> It may have escaped your notice that the EVGA GTX 780 SuperClocked isn't a reference SKU.
> From the article that you linked to, here's W1zzard to explain the difference:



I don't think i need to explain again...


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 23, 2013)

jigar2speed said:


> Wow, so when my argument is not as per your convenience,i am suddenly a troll ?


Nope. You're suddenly a troll when everyone else is debating the performance and you're talking price.


jigar2speed said:


> Seriously ? Tell me whose the troll now ? - I gave you a link of a review of overclocked GTX 780 which beats Titan that means if AMD's flagship card is faster than GTX 780 it will easily be able to beat TITAN


If the AMD card is faster than the *reference* GTX 780 (as shown in the benches) it doesn't automatically follow that the AMD card is faster than an *overclocked* GTX 780 as you linked to.
Case in point: AMD card. Unigine Valley 1.0 bench at 4xAA (1920x1080) *70.1 fps*





GTX 780 overclocked (on air cooling). Unigine Valley 1.0 bench at *8xAA* (1920x1080) *84.3 fps*


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## RCoon (Sep 23, 2013)

jigar2speed said:


> Wow, so when my argument is not as per your convenience,i am suddenly a troll ?
> 
> The argument started when i said after overtaking GTX 780 there is not much left to overtake Titan - You yourself told me that Titan is 8% faster hence my argument was valid, i.e - there is not much left to overtake once you are done beating GTX 780.
> 
> ...





HumanSmoke said:


> Nope. You're suddenly a troll when everyone else is debating the performance and you're talking price.
> 
> If the AMD card is faster than the *reference* GTX 780 (as shown in the benches) it doesn't automatically follow that the AMD card is faster than an *overclocked* GTX 780 as you linked to.
> Case in point: AMD card. Unigine Valley 1.0 bench at 4xAA (1920x1080) *70.1 fps*
> ...



Calm your tits boys, wait 2 days and we'll see if all this arguing was even worth it over rumored benchmarks, which you do not know are false or not.


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## jigar2speed (Sep 23, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Nope. You're suddenly a troll when everyone else is debating the performance and you're talking price.
> 
> If the AMD card is faster than the *reference* GTX 780 (as shown in the benches) it doesn't automatically follow that the AMD card is faster than an *overclocked* GTX 780 as you linked to.
> Case in point: AMD card. Unigine Valley 1.0 bench at 4xAA (1920x1080) *70.1 fps*
> ...



Are you even making sense ? Was there a rule not to talk about pricing ? also, I never said any of what you are trying to say. 

EDIT: Oh and please don't start with pathetic attempts of show casing specific results that shows Titan is faster than AMD's flagship and in other GTX 780 has even higher scores. It just makes you look more sad, cause both the results were produced using different PC configs. 



HumanSmoke said:


> If the AMD card is faster than the *reference* GTX 780 (as shown in the benches) it doesn't automatically follow that the AMD card is faster than an *overclocked* GTX 780 as you linked to.



knock knock - Anybody home ? I have constantly said if AMD's card is faster than GTX 780 it will have no trouble beating TITAN - hence i gave the reference of Overclocked GTX 780. 

I see you are trying very hard to spin this, but it is clear now whose the troll here.


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## HumanSmoke (Sep 23, 2013)

RCoon said:


> Calm your tits boys, wait 2 days and we'll see if all this arguing was even worth it over rumored benchmarks, which you do not know are false or not.


Two days! I was under the impression that the 25th was reserved for AMD's PowerPointGasm. Unless some sites are releasing previews/reviews I think we're some weeks away from resolving anything other than the spec sheet....and I'm not wholly convinced that we'll get all the information in any case. I could see AMD playing this out for all it's worth. Presentation..>...controlled leaks....>...teaser previews from certain sites...>..reviews...>...actual launch.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 23, 2013)

HumanSmoke said:


> Two days! I was under the impression that the 25th was reserved for AMD's PowerPointGasm. Unless some sites are releasing previews/reviews I think we're some weeks away from resolving anything other than the spec sheet....and I'm not wholly convinced that we'll get all the information in any case. I could see AMD playing this out for all it's worth. Presentation..>...controlled leaks....>...teaser previews from certain sites...>..reviews...>...actual launch.



whilst im skint till christmass anyway , i do hope your wrong as the earlier they are out the better the chance of me getting one this fall(<americanism from me) for reasonable money


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## Xzibit (Sep 23, 2013)

*AMD Hawaii-based graphics cards to mass ship in October*


> As AMD is set to announce its next-generation high-end GPU codenamed Hawaii, graphics card players including Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI), Sapphire and PowerColor are expected to start mass shipping related products in October, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.


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