Monday, June 15th 2015
Radeon R9 390X Taken Apart, PCB Reveals a Complete Re-brand
People with access to an XFX Radeon R9 390X graphics card, took it apart to take a peek at its PCB. What they uncovered comes as no surprise - the underlying PCB is identical in design to AMD reference PCB for the Radeon R9 290X, down the location of every tiny SMT component. At best, the brands on the chokes and bigger conductive polymer caps differ; and 512 Gbit GDDR5 chips under the heatspreader, making up 8 GB of the standard memory amount. The GPU itself, codenamed "Grenada," looks identical to the "Hawaii" silicon which drove the R9 290 series. It's highly unlikely that it features updated Graphics CoreNext 1.2 stream processors, as older rumors suggested.
Sources:
1, 2
89 Comments on Radeon R9 390X Taken Apart, PCB Reveals a Complete Re-brand
VideoCardz - Sapphire shows off Radeon 300 series, confirms Radeon R9 Fury X
That Fury better be damn competitive in prices.
R9 Fury X (2015 Fiji)
R9 Fury (2015 Fiji)
R9 390 8GB (2013 Hawaii)
R9 390 8GB (2013 Hawaii)
R9 380 4GB (2014 Tonga)
R7 370 2GB (2012 Pitcairn)
R5 360 2GB (2013 Bonaire)
next year it might look like
R9 Fury Maxx (2016)
R9 Fury Maxx (2016)
R9 Fury X (2015 Fiji)
R9 Fury (2015 Fiji)
R9 390X 8GB (2013 Hawaii)
R9 390 8GB (2013 Hawaii)
R9 380 4GB (2014 Tonga)
All to give their new card a stand out prestige name? I can understand the business model but at least now perhaps some specific people won't be so quick to champion AMD as a transparent and honest company.
They're not breaking the law but they're certainly marketing old tech as a new.
People supposedly already bought cards in BestBuy and they were too fucking dumb to test it against R9-290X benchmarks. Dafaq!?
Some guy even said it was barely catching R9-290X. Like seriously dude, if it's a rebrand, it would be IDENTICAL, not "barely" catching it.
So saying the silicon looks the same as Hawaii based on looking at the GPU from half a meter distance feels like a massive pile of bull manure. People don't realize that only 0.5mm larger chip on each axis can result in thousands and thousands of new transistors.
And also the DX12 factor. With R9-200 series, we were still within the DX11 era. They could pull off rebrand without any regrets. This time around, making DX12 exclusive to Fury series, that would have to be the dumbest business decision in history of Radeon graphic cards. That's why I find it hard to believe. Unless Fury costs $300 and we'll all buy that one without even thinking abour anything else. Which is again, a so unlikely scenario it makes it basically non existent.
Either way, it surely looks more and more that other than firmware and software, its a 290X rebrand. Again, going by the vast majority of tech sites.
Also, firmware is enough to make a card faster, its why folk flash em.
Well, if you'd paid attention you would have realized that AMD conferred DX12 status to every 200 series R7 and R9 some time ago, along with the OEM 300 series rebrands of the 200 series.
As for DX12, even Radeon HD4870 can run on DX12 API. Just without ANY DX12 features...
EDIT:
Ok, if AMD has really rebranded R9-290X to R9-390 directly, then they officially fucked it up. Like batshit insane fuckup...
I mean its industry standard. Even nVidia does it all the time.
And recycling PCB designs is also a common habit. GTX 670, GTX 760, GTX 970 used all nearly identical PCBs...
If they fail to deliver on THOSE series of GPUs (Fury and Arctic Islands), then it is, most likely, over. I would like to see AMD more competitive than they are now to keep Nvidia in check (price-wise). I shouldn't speak for everybody but I get the feeling that more than half of us are waiting for next year with 16nm/14nm FinFET and better stacked memory (HBM).
For now, my Nvidia cards are doing fine as long as I don't use the newer drivers they released. It's bad enough with Nvidia pulling some pretty shady stunts lately. I will probably switch to AMD in 2016 ASSUMING both companies are on equal terms by then...and I can say that only because Samsung WILL deliver 14nm FinFET to AMD and SK Hynix WILL deliver HBM2 (to both Nvidia and AMD).
Anyway, it has been a vicious cycle for the red camp. Lack of money > lack of R&D > lack of GPU > lack of money again and so on :(
Hopefully the rumor of a move from Samsung is true. That would mean I have to dye my cape blue, but hey...
But as we all know, Fury will be the new high end. And that's not a rebrand. What we don't know is pricing yet. So why does everyone rant about this rebrand thing without knowing AMDs plans on pricing? Only the pricing decides if it is crap or not.
Nobody knows yet what minor tweaks have been made on the card R9 390/390X.
AMD has allways said that they would do a respin of the R9 290x/290
As for Fury, everybody can dream of a Ferrari with a brand new engine, but only a few will actually pay what it costs.
Im one of those guys, if the card delivers on preformance, thats all I think about. I will still buy a new card next year anyway when HBM2 is in line.