Radeon R9 390X and R9 390 to Feature Faster Memory, Core Over Predecessors

[v12dock]

That is but just one card. The whole 3XX line is pretty much the same exact cards from last generation. How much more performance does an extra 50MHz on core realistically give you in games? The OC headroom I fear will be close to nil. Factor on top of that the 290/290X were BOTH overheating beasts that needed to be tamed by AIB partners ASAP because reviews were bashing the crap out of AMD's reference boards. When the 390/390X come out, please compare the prices with current 290/290X and tell me if that is competition.

If the 390X is as fast or faster than 970 and cost slightly less or equal then how is there not competition. You are also assuming that they have not addressed the heat and power issues of the 290X. Given the capitalistic environment in which both companies exist AMD isn't going to create a package that won't sell. Also Maxwell doesn't offer any features that AMD can't offer with GCN.

So far with the leaks we have seen AMD has an answer to the entire Maxwell line up.

 

[Hayder_Master]

i hear HPM memory max support 4gb, how they make it 8gb ?

 

[happita]

i hear HPM memory max support 4gb, how they make it 8gb ?

This is the first generation of HBM, which only supports one stack that totals to 4GB if I'm not mistaken. Next generation of cards will have 2nd generation HBM totaling 8GB.

If the 390X is as fast or faster than 970 and cost slightly less or equal then how is there not competition. You are also assuming that they have not addressed the heat and power issues of the 290X. Given the capitalistic environment in which both companies exist AMD isn't going to create a package that won't sell. Also Maxwell doesn't offer any features that AMD can't offer with GCN.

So far with the leaks we have seen AMD has an answer to the entire Maxwell line up.

How can you address overheating by adding 4GB more VRAM and also a slight overclock with no architectural changes to the chip design? I just don't see the logic there. But like everyone else, I guess we will have to wait and see when they are properly reviewed.

 

[bogami]

Everything tells me thes predestined price for AMD R-9 390X is how much profit NVIDIA generated by larger RAM capacity on TITAN-X.
And now margin and tax away. $ 200 price is quite a lot of $ 100 for the development which is zero, $ 100 production -which is over kill. Poor customers! Crooks love to fuck us!
Card has demonstrated its strength in the 4k gameplay has a lot of usage and size compared to the GTX980. Well RAM is obtained at a better price. How much it actually benefits is the question. 8GB RAM R-9 290X was more expensive and equally effective as 4Gb RAM R9-290X.
How much has been changed on processor ,or was only the name change?

 

[moproblems99]

i hear HPM memory max support 4gb, how they make it 8gb ?

Simple, the 390/X does not use HBM and instead uses GDDR5.

 

[ne6togadno]

.... Aaargh it makes me mad. I was waiting almost 8 months for fucking nothing...

on the other hand, 290s prices will drop cause all vendors would like to ride them off and get "new" 390s so you can catch really nice deal for 290x oc it and have 4gb version of 390.
i have 7970 and 290x and 290x is much better so it will worth.

edit: keep an eye on this guys

 

[v12dock]

This is the first generation of HBM, which only supports one stack that totals to 4GB if I'm not mistaken. Next generation of cards will have 2nd generation HBM totaling 8GB.



How can you address overheating by adding 4GB more VRAM and also a slight overclock with no architectural changes to the chip design? I just don't see the logic there. But like everyone else, I guess we will have to wait and see when they are properly reviewed.

More effective cooling and changes to the manufacturing process GloFo high density libraries among other things. We will just have to wait and see.

 

[R-T-B]

How can you address overheating by adding 4GB more VRAM and also a slight overclock with no architectural changes to the chip design? I just don't see the logic there. But like everyone else, I guess we will have to wait and see when they are properly reviewed.

Making a better cooler, I am guessing. Aftermarket R9 290X's did not overheat bad (if at all).

 

[cuneytcam]

When the reviews will be up? Is it going to be published after AMD event?

 

[Dia01]

What's stopping anyone flashing their current 290 with a 390 BIOS or am I missing something?

 

[Aquinus]

4 GB of HBM, with a proper scheduler from driver, can do the same thing 12 GB of GDDR5 able to do at 4k.

That's bull because there comes a point where the latency from streaming textures from system memory takes too long to be useful because you need all of the data for the scene to get rendered on the GPU. Yes, HBM is faster but you know what isn't? PCI-E and DMA via memory mapped I/O. You're not going to stream textures any faster when GDDR5 is already faster than the PCI-E bus. On top of that, bandwidth isn't the problem half of the time, it's latency. I suspect HBM will shine when a lot of VRAM is used, however it does absolutely nothing to change the requirement of any size of VRAM for any task. It's still limited by where it gets it's data from if it suddenly has to resort to streaming from system memory which is the problem I'm encountering now with my 6870s.

Also streaming textures slows down performance linearly because it has to re-send data that the GPU doesn't have on every redraw, so the bigger the share, the longer the draw takes (and more time GPU spends doing nothing I might add.) I can't underestimate how much that destroys performance as it's many factors slower than dedicated memory.

Simple fact is that 4GB, is 4GB, is 4GB.

 

[Ralfies]

So,

Grenada = Hawaii
Antigua = Tonga
Trinidad = Curacao = Pitcairn
Tobago = Bonaire

I'm not a fan of AMD's new tactic of giving old GPU's new codenames when they're rebranded. Also, as great as Pitcairn was, it has no place on a GPU lineup in 2015. A further cut down Tonga would have made more sense (though maybe not financially).

 

[R-T-B]

What's stopping anyone flashing their current 290 with a 390 BIOS or am I missing something?

Well, 8GB, for starters...

 

[Dia01]

Well, 8GB, for starters...

Yeah I realised that quickly after posting

 

[btarunr]

What's stopping anyone flashing their current 290 with a 390 BIOS or am I missing something?

The PCB is the same, but reference 390 has 8GB, and reference 290 has 4GB. Memory timings will differ. Memory brand support will differ, too. You will brick your card.

 

[ne6togadno]

Making a better cooler, I am guessing. Aftermarket R9 290X's did not overheat bad (if at all).

the only time i have seen 72C on my card was while running gpuz render test. fans hit 50% and was barely audiable

 

[Xzibit]

How can you address overheating by adding 4GB more VRAM and also a slight overclock with no architectural changes to the chip design? I just don't see the logic there. But like everyone else, I guess we will have to wait and see when they are properly reviewed.

Temps were never a problem for AIBs.

The current 390/X that have been show have improved cooler over there 290/X part.

 

[arbiter]

The R&D already done was the Tonga. They'd just have to transplant that on top of R9-290X and into the R9-390X like it was speculated from the very beginning. Instead they've gone into the shitty rebranding. FU AMD. Rebranding of R9-380X, I'd accept that, but 390X as well, no. Just no.

Yea if they named it 380x would got away with it mostly, still some backlash but not making it 390x. I won't even say it, even with all flak i got last few weeks/months.

Both companies made an effort to produce top-tier GPUs only, and will probably be reducing prices of the rest of the lineup graudally, as times passes by

Not sure if you were paying attention, Nvidia didn't produce just top tier only gpu's. Well less you consider 960 top tier which wasn't its mid range one.

4 GB of HBM, with a proper scheduler from driver, can do the same thing 12 GB of GDDR5 able to do at 4k.

That's bull because there comes a point where the latency from streaming textures from system memory takes too long to be useful because you need all of the data for the scene to get rendered on the GPU. Yes, HBM is faster but you know what isn't? PCI-E and DMA via memory mapped I/O. You're not going to stream textures any faster when GDDR5 is already faster than the PCI-E bus.

Mirakul as Aquinus said, that is complete BS. that 4gb buffer gets full which at 4k is pretty easy even with newer games 1440p can do it, it CAN'T do the same. 640GB/s memory can be brought to a crawl if data is stored in system memory which will be crippled to ~30GB/s. It would be like 2 computers doing photo shop on using say 10MP images. 1 has 4gb ram and an SSD, other has 16gb ram but an HDD. yea SSD will make the 4gb machine a bit faster but when you have to constintly access the ssd for data or store data instead of system memory which is much faster it will slow things down.

i hear HPM memory max support 4gb, how they make it 8gb ?

This is the first generation of HBM, which only supports one stack that totals to 4GB if I'm not mistaken. Next generation of cards will have 2nd generation HBM totaling 8GB.

HBM1 is limited to 4gb as happita said, HBM2 which isn't completely ready yet has a max of 32gb.

When the reviews will be up? Is it going to be published after AMD event?

When ever the NDA ends is when you will see them. Would have to ask someone that knows the date of that if they know and can say.

 

[RejZoR]

Exactly. I'd kinda ignore it if it was only R9-380X and below that got rebranded. But also rebranding R9-390X is juts unacceptable.

 

[GreiverBlade]

well ...

i have a 390 so ... albeit the fact that i can't reach a stable 1500 on vRAM... (1050 core is stable but i keep it at 1000)

i could only run one heaven but it always hang up at the 25/26 scene xD

 

[Joss]

This KitGuru video sums up things very well.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/amd-fiji-hbm-and-product-rebadging/

 

[mirakul]

well ...

i have a 390 so ... albeit the fact that i can't reach a stable 1500 on vRAM... (1050 core is stable but i keep it at 1000)

i could only run one heaven but it always hang up at the 25/26 scene xD

The trick for stable 1500MHz is an increase in memory voltage, which was locked in 290/290x

 

[haswrong]

Hmmmm...so now what to do. My 6850s are just not cutting it anymore but I don't see a reason to buy something this generation. I was hoping AMD would trim power consumption / heat from the 390/X. My ambient temps are around 28C and I don't feel like having a 300 watt heater next to me.

I was going to buy a 970 but I don't like being lied too (I know it still performs excellent and overall is an excellent card but they knew it wouldn't sell as well if they advertised it as 3.5gb and they tried to blow smoke up our asses as a miscommunication between departments - bs).

you could get a second hand 970.. i wouldnt hold it against you.

 

[moproblems99]

you could get a second hand 970.. i wouldnt hold it against you.

That very well is a possibility. I already checked on 290Xs but they are averaging just a touch below retail so not much incentive there.

 

[64K]

Both companies made an effort to produce top-tier GPUs only, and will probably be reducing prices of the rest of the lineup graudally, as times passes by. Until real new architecture, based on 14/16nm arrives...

Nvidia actually provided something for everyone with Maxwell

Entry Level 750/750 Ti
Mid Range 960/970/980
High End 980 Ti/Titan X