Tuesday, April 1st 2014
Radeon R9 295X2 Pictured in the Flesh, Specs Leaked
Here it is, folks! The first pictures of what you get inside the steel briefcase AMD ships the Radeon R9 295X2 in. AMD got over the stonewall of having to cool two 250W GPUs with a single two-slot cooling solution, by making it an air+liquid hybrid. The cooler appears to have been designed by any of the major water-cooling OEMs (such as Asetek, Akasa, etc.), and most likely consists of a pair of pump-blocks plumbed to a single 120 x 120 mm radiator, over a single coolant loop. The coolant channel, we imagine, could be identical to that of the ROG ARES 2 by ASUS. There's also a 90 mm fan, but that probably cools heatsinks covering the memory, VRM, and PCIe bridge. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which as you'll soon find out, are running at off-specs.
The Radeon R9 295X2, codenamed "Vesuvius," runs a pair of 28 nm "Hawaii" chips, routed to a PLX PEX8747 PCIe bridge. Each of the two have all 2,816 stream processors enabled, totaling the count to 5,632. The two also have 352 TMUs, and 128 ROPs between them. The entire 512-bit memory bus width is enabled, and each GPU is wired to 4 GB of memory totaling 8 GB on the card. Clock speeds remain a mystery, and probably hold the key to a lot of things, such as power draw and cooling. Lastly, there's the price. AMD could price the R9 295X2 at US $1,499, half that of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN-Z. In that price difference, heck, even for $500, you could probably buy yourself a full-coverage water block, and a full-fledged loop, complete with a meaty 3 x 120 mm radiator.
Sources:
ChipHell, WCCFTech
The Radeon R9 295X2, codenamed "Vesuvius," runs a pair of 28 nm "Hawaii" chips, routed to a PLX PEX8747 PCIe bridge. Each of the two have all 2,816 stream processors enabled, totaling the count to 5,632. The two also have 352 TMUs, and 128 ROPs between them. The entire 512-bit memory bus width is enabled, and each GPU is wired to 4 GB of memory totaling 8 GB on the card. Clock speeds remain a mystery, and probably hold the key to a lot of things, such as power draw and cooling. Lastly, there's the price. AMD could price the R9 295X2 at US $1,499, half that of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN-Z. In that price difference, heck, even for $500, you could probably buy yourself a full-coverage water block, and a full-fledged loop, complete with a meaty 3 x 120 mm radiator.
72 Comments on Radeon R9 295X2 Pictured in the Flesh, Specs Leaked
As this information... IDK the card looks "real" enough, but the rad/fan assembly appears just too generic. It looks like an early engineering sample and not a finished production unit. I might concede there will be initial cards in the fancy case at $1500, as unfortunately collector units, which I don’t subscribe to. Hopefully AMD that's not completely the "case", and just some "Special Edition" with a bunch of bundled crud, while there might a be the a reference package at $1300.
I just would consider they’d stuck to "more or less" standard style water blocks, while I might have gone with something truly exotic like vapor chamber that’s then cooled by water?
Plus, is a single 120mm rad enough to cool almost 600W TDP? Maybe in AMD's world it is......
And frankly, given the grunt offered, I am glad to see price increases. With all the "PC GAMING IS DEAD" "OC IS DEAD" "DESKTOPS ARE DEAD" and "EVERYTHING IS DEAD", sales have dropped, so of course prices are on the rise. Those that do buy high-end hardware...still buy it, too, so why wouldn't they increase prices?
With the price of a 290X being $750, $1500 for a dual GPU card seems right. It's not less, simply because of the size of the GPU die(3870 was much smaller), plus this card pulls more power(3870x2 was 6+8 pin).
I also take that to mean that prices of AMD cards will not drop any time soon.
But then, given the date, this is all probably BS. I am just gonna turn my PC off now...
makes me not doubt its validity
Most all AMD's offerings (270 Non-X on up) are sitting a proud MSRP but not as they were.
I see just 3 290X above $700 on PCpicker, but many are working torward at least decent like the PowerColor PCS+ AXR9 290X 4GBD5-PPDHE for $570 w/FS at Egg. There some 7 specials that show between $570-600 (5-10%). Just to contrast there are like 6 780Ti which are under MSRP and one Gigabyte GV-N78TOC-3GD at $660 or 5%.
I can get one single 290X for $699..the MSI GAMING. 290 non-X is still $550+
Anyone not getting immediately by intuition that this is an April's joke, is a full year's fool. :D
Why people choose to compromise so much by going with dual GPU cards is beyond my feeble mind, but I guess there must be a market for such cards.
I can't wait for people with a modicum of inteligence to cut off that puny radiator and connect the hoses to something more reasonable to cool off 500W of heat output, like a 120x360mm radiator.
Then again, people with a modicum of intelligence will not go for this card (or any other dual GPU card) in the first place :shadedshu:
EDIT: oh, I just realized the date! Nice one TPU, you give really went the extra mile for this one! :toast:
Looks like a hybrid of
But your right prices in Canada aren't following suite... strange I don't normally see North America (not Mexico) as off by all that much.
Just looking today NCIX on the US site has that PowerColor PCS+ AXR9 290X 4GBD5-PPDHE for $650 USD [$716 CAD] terrible, although on the Canadian site it's $680 CAD [$616 USD]. That means you in the Great North are getting a price break (5%) but it's still out of wack.
Working from the $550 USD MSRP, in Canadian Dollars that $606 CAD or using that $680 CAD price about 12-13% above MSRP, while Egg at $570 today it's just 3-4% higher than MSRP.
Sorry didn't mean to confront, but was just pointing out at least here in the Continental 48 it has gotten much better.
The dual Hawaii card will likely be no different, and there will be no guaranteed clock speed. It will vary sample to sample.
oh well it would have been good if the "hybride" was a "Poseidon" type ... and if a ARES II can cool 2 7970 GHZ why not ... oh wait ... do the rad here is a 25mm or a 4.6" x 5.8" x 1.9" like the ARES II :roll:
also why everybody ask price and wattage and others give a different answer each time. isn't it supposed to be 500w and ~1500$ :roll:
tho 1500$ is cheap compared to a Titan Z :D