Friday, May 1st 2015
AMD Cuts Prices of Radeon R9 285
As the Spring PC upgrade season heats up, AMD decided to woo mainstream gamers away from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 960, by working with retailers in the EU to introduce price-cuts on its Radeon R9 285 graphics card. The card can now be had for under 180€ (incl taxes). The GTX 960, in comparison, starts at 192€ (incl taxes). The R9 285 offers higher performance than the GTX 960. It is, however, let down by higher power consumption and noise figures. Based on the 28 nm "Tonga" silicon, the R9 285 offers 1,792 stream processors based on AMD's Graphics CoreNext 1.2 architecture, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory.
Source:
Hardware.fr
29 Comments on AMD Cuts Prices of Radeon R9 285
Why this is a possible reality is because nVidia will go in with full force to disrupt AMD new release of the 300X series with the new 980Ti and heavy price cuts on high and medium end cards. AMD is down for the count and nVidia smells blood so they are going for the kill, they will do what ever they can to try to finish of AMD's discrete graphic card business. If you think you seen a graphic card war in the past, it will be nothing compared whats coming around the corner starting this summer.
Cheack out 10 year of AMD vs. nVidia battle pictured in a graph at Sweclockers:
www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/20381-tio-ars-kamp-mellan-amd-och-nvidia-visualiseras-i-lattoverskadligt-diagram
But AMD is a well trained underdog, if they can pull of a successful 300X series release with supply that meets the demand AMD could be a force to recon with again. I really hope AMD won't screw this up some how because i don't think they will get another chance like they have with the 300X series. When nVidia releases 14nm with second gen HMB the fun is over for AMD.
Because it just seems you were ready to burst with that, lets call it "information" you just posted.
"oh gawd finally an article about AMD gpus, sweet relief"
Ohhh, and my reaction was to what end, why react now to a low end card like 960 when they did nothing when it really mattered when nVidia released GTX970/980.
I am not here to write what you think is proper to your opinion, i actually have my own. If you do not like it so be it, your comment was actually the one that contributed nothing to the article, go and troll somebody else.
The 970 or 980 or what happened in the past has nothing to do with anything here.
You are just assuming things with your "when it really mattered", you have no inside information on which sales matter more.
When will AMD learn that this strategy does not work? It didnt work for the 290x vs. the geforce 970, it wont work for this.
just give us the 300 series already.
Doubt 980Ti will take any thunder from the 390X if the performance rumors are true about it. Heck if things remain on track with Win 10 and running AMD + NV as Physx, I've no problem going back to Radeons. All this proprietary physics stuff is getting tiresome. If Win 10 forces NV to get the thumb out of it's butt then I'll be glad to keep one of my 460s for that stuff and get a Radeon for the rest. Will miss the SLI tho. Really gotten good longevity out of these.
Well either way, its not a bad trade since it is a better card than the GTX 960 in pure performance which at that range your already able to go pretty small on the PSU and looking for the most bang to yo9ur buck.
I do wonder if this price cut is really a move to better position against the 960 or if it is to start clearing stock of 285s before a potential product line update (where existing 285s could be rebranded?)
I honestly don't think AMD ever had that big of gelded Tonga's to really field a price war with a 285. In the states we saw some deals 4-6 weeks back, like a nice P-C version getting down to $160 after rebates and a code. Others have worked down to $170-180 in those same weeks, but as of late the number of available 285 SKU's seemed to have been drying up and prices are like $180-200. Nvidias' AIB's seem to be pushing the 960 price down the last 2 weeks with "in cart" pricing and small $10 rebates, there was a Gigabyte Windforce for $185 the other day and include a copy of Wicther. So there's movement from both sides.
I think most Tonga/Amethyst production is robust but AMD basically purchases wafers to meet Apples requirement for the R9 M295X, while whatever is binned goes to make a 285. I think the yield was not great at first, but now they just don’t bin enough to do any sort of battling and this is just a sell-off in Europe before the new release.
I think AMD has been signaling that they should have a card (rebrand 285) that's possibly less gelded than what the 285 is now and higher clocks as the Pro part, while there will be an XT version (similar as what was the 270/270X twins). As to power I think it will be improved, though not earth-shattering or to the level of the 960's. I might say a reference spec Pro that bests most 960 OC customs, with power that's a tad better than it was with Tonga.
I see this level of card that was 'mainstream' being the new "above entry" $160-170 price point for AMD. To offer 1080p the performance to play most previous title's with high and ultra-settings. While still newer Dx12 title's seeing playable results from the average build.
Now, don't get me wrong, but I find it amusing the replacement for the 1792sp Tonga will probably be a slightly different version of Tonga (named something else). Fact of the matter is it's placed completely wrong. If that's because of yields (probably, given such low clocks, high voltages, and only salvage parts released) who knows. They could make it work, though.
285 was clearly their take 680 with some slight improvements...but a couple years late and the market had shifted. It would seem to make sense to do something like the 270 (non-x), and clock it down to be more similar to 960 in performance and power. I think the key would be to get it under 150w....but we'd likely be talking 8xx/5000-5500 and .9v-.95 vcore and 1.35v ram. On one hand that would seem to be a waste of chips, but on the other they could probably use almost everything while actually being relevant.
On the other side of the coin, when is the full part coming? Obviously we shouldn't expect miracles....but do we really have to wait for nvidia to launch a 960ti (3/4 gm204) for them to find it relevant, at which point it will be in the exact same situation (probably a 225w part vs a 150w part with similar performance)? Is Tahiti really doing that well against 770-780, or more likely (as GhostRyder wrote), are their still that many Tahiti gpus (280x) on the shelves?
I find this game of price roulette and sku chicken (or whatever you choose to call what AMD is doing) most-annoying, and seemingly incomprehensible.
An uncut Tonga with 3-4 GB RAM at the 200-230$ price range would have a much easier time dealing with the GTX960. Atm you re paying the same price for 285 and 960 at roughly the same performance, while the 960 offers much better power consumtion, heat + noise values.
No thanks, even with a rebate I wont touch that card.
As for Tahiti they're kind of gone just a few 280's for as low $150 (with code/rebate), while 280X are I think pretty-well gone it's hit or miss on availability and good prices... there was Sapphire Vapor-X TRI-X for $190 (C/R). The 290/290X are still fairly prevalent, but more often dealing $240-280 still have a place to keep some buyers contemplating.
Now AMD had to do two things in the first half of 2015; sell off all channel inventory and amass a war-chest of good Fiji, HBM and get them on interposers. Yes it been annoying watching AMD the last 8+ months, but them clearing channel is something that they had to do, while it's not great for their performance, it was a good move to get it off their back now. Fiji/HBM I think they'll have a full supply in channel, but if as good as folk feel (I'm tempering my enthusiasm), AMD I think will have inventory to fill the initial demand for several weeks, at least better than they did with Hawaii.
This all adds up to what we already know of the GTX 960 which is its simply a more modern product then the R9 285. So the GTX 960 isn't a barn burning screamer but it wasn't intended to be. If people actually look up from game performance for a second they'll also note that the GTX 960 has the same HDMI 2.0 support (HDCP 2.2) as well as H.265 / HEVC encode (like the GTX 980 / 970) as well as H.265 / HEVC decode (unlike the GTX 980 / 970). So there is more to take advantage of then just the rated gaming performance.
i have heard it fucking all now xD
You can no longer consider DX11 benchmarks when making an intelligent decision regarding dGPU purchase.
In fact in DX12 the 3dMark API Overhead test produces 4million draw calls on an AMD A6-7400 APU ALL BY ITSELF!!!!!
In other words a sheap little $100 AMD APU in DX12 can absolutely CRUSH an Intel i7-4960 + nVidia GTX 980 when the Intel system is running DX11.
With DX12 the gloves come off.!!!!
About a month ago Anandtech ran some extensive 3dMarkv1.5 API Overhead benchmarks. They tested both dGPU and integrated APU's and IGP.
bit.ly/1GCjLzU
Here is an interesting fact.
Using DX11 as a baseline to compare the performance delta the following was undertood.
Intel i7 4960 and GTX980 can produce 2.2MILLION draw calls running DX11.
i7-4960 has 6 cores and 12 threads.
Intel i7-4960 = $1200
nVidia GTX-980 = $540
Total = $1740
Of course DX11 is the API that all benchmarks have been running up until now.
However when you run 3dMark API Overhead test using DX12 something interesting happens.
AMD's A6-7400 APU can produce 4.4 million draw calls.
AMD A6-7400 costs $90-150 depending upon outlet.
A6-7400k has 2 cores. Hmmmmm..... 2 cores vs 6 cores? $100 vs $1200?
Of course when you run the same benchmark on A6 using DX11 API the Draw Call Overhead drops to 513,000. When compared to the Intel/nVidia system costing $1700 the justification becomes clear. You spend the money for 2.2 million draw calls or a 4x performance increase over a $100 cpu!!!
Seriously? $1700 just for a 400% performance increase over a $100 APU?
Mantle and DX12 has changed the game.
Last year the media was comparatively benching very expensive dGPU silicon just gain a few percentage points for a score that NOW can be achieved with a $100 AMD APU.
Hmmm…. NOT ONLY achieved but can gain a 100% increase in performance over the more expensive system.
Still think DX12 will have no impact?
Intel and nVidia has been ripping off the consumer using DX11 when a much better API; Mantle and now DX12 makes low priced and low performing $100 APU's OUTPERFORM the "BEST ON THE MARKET".
Now that XBOX will be adopting DX12 the gain in performance will be far better than ANY combination of Intel CPU and nVidia GPU you can put together and currently running DX11.
In otherwords.....
...if you are happy and satisfied with the performance of your current DX11 $2000 gaming system then you should be ecstatic to achieve 2x the performance with a $400 DX12 AMD gaming system.
This type of miracle never existed in the hardware world son, i'm sorry.