Sapphire Radeon R9 285 ITX Compact Edition Pictured

[btarunr]

Sapphire launched its first performance-segment "compact" graphics card to take on the likes of GeForce GTX 760 ITX cards by ASUS and MSI, even if it isn't the first AMD AIB partner to do so. Sapphire's card is based on AMD's swanky new Radeon R9 285 graphics chip, which is slated for September 2nd, 2014. Called the R9 285 ITX Compact Edition, the card is a little over 17 cm long, 11 cm tall, and 2-slot thick. It features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink, which is ventilated by a single 100 mm fan. The card draws power from two 6-pin PCIe connectors. A single 8-pin to two 6-pin adapter is included. Display outputs include two mini-DisplayPort 1.2, one HDMI 1.4a, and a dual-link DVI, which has analog (VGA) pins, and an adapter for that is included.

This is also likely the first/only R9 285 card to feature dual-BIOS, with a push-type BIOS toggle switch. This switch lets you select between a UEFI-ready BIOS that features a UEFI GOP driver, and a "legacy" BIOS. Both run the card at the same clock speeds - 918 MHz core, with 5.50 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. Sapphire is also readying an OC Edition variant of this card, which comes with a puny 10 MHz overclock (928 MHz core), and untouched memory clocks. Based on the 28 nm "Tonga" silicon, the R9 285 offers 1,792 GCN 1.1 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide memory interface, which holds 2 GB of memory on this card.



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[Shou Miko]

it's nice to see one more manufacturer to do a ITX GFX like Asus and MSI do, now it's just when will we see stronger GPU on those small ITX board?

 

[Sempron Guy]

can't wait for reviews

 

[dj-electric]

it's nice to see one more manufacturer to do a ITX GFX like Asus and MSI do, now it's just when will we see stronger GPU on those small ITX board?

Hopefully, maxwell will allow us to enjoy post-GTX 770 power on these type of cards.

 

[ironwolf]

+1 for the use of the word "swanky."

Wonder if they will jack the price up because of the smaller size and the more targeted usage (ie. overpriced mini-ITX type systems).

 

[Kaotik]

It's GCN 1.2 or even 2.0, not 1.1.
Sea Islands chips (Bonaire, Hawaii) are 1.1, Volcanic Islands (Tonga, Iceland) are newer, there's notable differences between as observed by Anteru at B3D:

• Instruction encoding with Tonga is longer compared to Hawaii (2152 bytes on Hawaii vs. 2232 bytes on Tonga). This is (as far as I can tell) only due to buffer loads, which are twice the size with the offset being now a separate 32-bit dword.
• A nop after 3 loads which was required on Hawaii is missing on Tonga.
• Scalar register usage is way up: 42 on Hawaii vs 94 on Tonga. This won't fly if they don't expand the number of SGPR.
• Some mac instructions got replaced by mad (no mac anymore, maybe)
• Some very minor control flow changes. A complex loop is set up slightly different (mostly instruction have been shuffled.)
• There's a v_add_u32 which was not present on Hawaii, and a v_mul_lo_u32 (possibly even more)

 

[Shou Miko]

Hopefully, maxwell will allow us to enjoy post-GTX 770 power on these type of cards.

that could be a dream Dj-ElectriC

 

[Disparia]

Cool stuff.

Time for a GTX 760 ITX, R9 770X ITX, and R9 785 ITX round up.

 

[GhostRyder]

I like this card, the size and having Mini-DP on it allows for so many different choices in connection in that SFF that it will make a great card to play with.

I really appreciate Sapphire making something this small so fast with this new GPU.

 

[dom99]

this would go great in that new mitx lian li PC-Q19 chasis just announced