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AMD's New Radeons Revisit Old Silicon, Enable Dormant Features
crookedvulture writes "The first reviews of AMD's Radeon R7 and R9 graphics cards have hit the web, revealing cards based on the same GPU technology used in the existing HD 7000 series. The R9 280X is basically a tweaked variant of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz priced at $300 instead of $400, while the R9 270X is a revised version of the Radeon HD 7870 for $200. Thanks largely to lower prices, the R9 models compare favorably to rival GeForce offerings, even if there's nothing exciting going on at the chip level. There's more intrigue with the Radeon R7 260X, which shares the same GPU silicon as the HD 7790 for only $140. Turns out that graphics chip has some secret functionality that's been exposed by the R7 260X, including advanced shaders, simplified multimonitor support, and a TrueAudio DSP block dedicated to audio processing. AMD's current drivers support the shaders and multimonitor mojo in the 7790 right now, and a future update promises to unlock the DSP. The R7 260X isn't nearly as appealing as the R9 cards, though. It's slower overall than not only GeForce 650 Ti Boost cards from Nvidia, but also AMD's own Radeon HD 7850 1GB. We're still waiting on the Radeon R9 290X, which will be the first graphics card based on AMD's next-gen Hawaii GPU."
More reviews available from AnandTech, Hexus, Hot Hardware, and PC Perspective.
... that updating the BIOS on my 7870 might unlock these features?
... wait, what?
Or have we reached a diminishing return point and/or a point where money is being spent elsewhere (consoles, mobile, tablets, etc)?
Why didn't AMD's Marketing team name these 8000 series cards? Do they keep changing the naming scheme to be intentionally confusing?
The HD 7790 never seems to get any love in reviews -- it is always pointed out that its slower than such and such, or more expensive than such and such... missing the point entirely
The HD 7790 is only 85 watts. It is often compared against the GTX 650 Ti, which is 110 watts and is only marginally better than the 7790 in some benchmarks (the regular GTX 650 however, is actually very competitive in power consumption, but is notably slower in most benchmarks than the 7790)
Now we see this new R7 260X getting dumped on in the summary for essentially the same ignorant reasons. The R7 260X is supposed to use slightly less power than the 7790, but here it is being compared to cards that use 50%+ more power.. essentially cards in a completely different market segment.
Reviewers are fucking retards.
Talk about alphabet soup! Or, in this case, alphanumeric soup.
Is it just that I'm tired from a long day at work, or is the summary really that incoherent, disorganized and lacking even a rudimentary grasp of proper sentence structure? I hate to be one of those "Nazis" but I shouldn't have to read and re-read the bloody summary to tease meaning out of it.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
AMD/Radeon is dead. I was a big AMD/ATI guy for nearly a decade but their drivers and compatibility issues just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Their multi-monitor support is terrible. Their support for hardware accelerated video decoding took far to long to get straitened out. Their linux drivers dropped support for the majority of their older cards, which is silly as the majority of linux installs go on older computers. I have had ATI cards literally set 3 different motherboards on FIRE in the past few years due to compatibility issues... thank god for neweggs return policy. Finally I gave up, switch to Intel and Nvidea... no problems for 2 years now and thats on several dozen computer builds (I build computers for everyone I know basically, so much so that I have small business accounts with most retailers I buy from) Though intels recent switch to no OEM fan I found irritating.
All that combined with the all to obvious move by most people from PCs to tablets and I don't see AMD surviving the next decade. A friend of mine that works there says he sees the writing on the wall as well. I once spent $800 on an ATI card. I still have it, it's a work of art. But those days are long gone.
Marketing loves dealing with superlatives. ATI started with the Graphics Wonder card. After a while, new cards came out, and more superlatives were required. Combinations of superlatives were the new convention, ie: the VGA Wonder Plus, and the Graphics Ultra Pro. After the 3D Pro Turbo Plus card, no one tried using superlatives again.
ATI then proceeded to start naming Radeon cards 7000, 8000 and 9000 series. After MIPS 10k, no one wanted numbers larger than 10,000. As such, ATI tried the Radeon 300 series, and eventually made it to the X850 series, before trying 4 digit numbers again (ATI X1200 through AMD HD 8990).
Now ATI is copying the Intel i7-3220 convention and using dashed three digit numbers. Hence R9-260X. It is getting difficult for ATI/AMD to number the new cards differently than the old cards. Anyone want the 3D Pro Turbo Plus convention back again?
Your story is interesting to read. I have recently bought an AMD 7870 card for my main desktop system. The main cause for me to switch was the openCL support that AMD in their proprietary drivers has. True, I have had trouble with multi monitor support and stability that was only fixed (for me at least) very recently and I contemplated switching back. However, with the latest drivers, I have had no trouble so far and the openCL performance I get out of the card is way better than a similarly priced NVidia board would give me.
Would I buy another NVidia, or would I go for AMD for my next purchase? I guess it depends on NVidia getting their support for openCL instructions sorted out and fix the performance. I regularly have to do brute force password hashing for my work and NVidia is miles behind AMD in that, because they have a few openCL instructions not properly implemented in their hardware. If their next silicon fixes that, I wouldn't know which I'd choose. If by the time I want another card they are still behind, I would likely go for an AMD card.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'm going to hazard a guess and sugggest that you've posted in the wrong story.
Bought one of the 7970 launch cards a month later when price always evens out. At this point top end binning does not exist, so you have a much better chance of getting good sillicon. All cards identical design and cooling. I won that silicon lottery, 1.3Ghz 7970 on stock air, when last tested, cranked cry2 ultra butter smooth,1440p, stable with drivers last year. Seems many can do this if you use right bios and methods, little bit old school style. That's pretty much 780 beating performance. Water cooled models to do this were on the horizon for similar speeds but have not seen this yet (haven't really bothered to look either). Aftermarket air will make it a little quieter but I don't thrash it too often, so not a biggie.
Whole point of this tirade: Guys with more extreme setups have reached 1.4-1.5ghz or more.. these chips have heaps of head room in them. Extremely efficient already, so these new silicon revisions will clock hard if they have power circuitry to do it, that's the main thing holding it back.. aka they are fast enough to beat 780gtx with nearly 2 year old hardware already....
AMD mantle with GCN will speed up new consoles>pc port and enable much easier tweaking of graphics (or using original design details...) to enable seamless transitions between.
Found for very varied, trialing situations, e.g. re-timed/powered, 80m+20m cable runs, unusual resolutions, amd/ati output and drivers to be superior for most situations. But driving dual 1440p screens last year was a tear fest whatever i tried.. go figure.
One further advantage was 10bit support, 7970 is a great all rounder card, especially for compute users who can take advantage of it. Premiere pro now supports it too.
microstutter.. stick to one fast card at high res or go SLI for now.