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AMD's New Radeons Revisit Old Silicon, Enable Dormant Features

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-mean-we-can-actually-use-the-whole-thing? dept.

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.

14 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Marketing Numbers by ScottCooperDotNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why didn't AMD's Marketing team name these 8000 series cards? Do they keep changing the naming scheme to be intentionally confusing?

    1. Re:Marketing Numbers by edxwelch · · Score: 5, Informative

      because there already is a 8000 series, which is a rebadge of the 7000 series. They rebadged so much that they ran out of numbers

    2. Re:Marketing Numbers by GrandCow · · Score: 2

      Why didn't AMD's Marketing team name these 8000 series cards? Do they keep changing the naming scheme to be intentionally confusing?

      Because there's a psychological barrier to naming a card 10,000 or higher, and as you approach that, the effect starts to show. It diminishes the numbers in your mind and makes it "pop" less. Because in certain peoples minds, going from a 7000 series to an 8000 series means more than going from a 10,000 series to an 11,000 series. The other option was to start using k, but then how do you differentiate different cards in the 10k series? 10k1? 10k2? Now you're in a different area where people don't want to pay $50 or $100 more to bump up a notch and "only" get 1 number higher.

      Now most /. readers will laugh and say "that's stupid" but that's not the group of people they're renaming the cards for. It's your novices or the guys that have the disposable income but don't care about doing research, they fall victim to things like model numbers and more expensive = better than.

      TL;DR: It's for the rich idiots.

      --
      "Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
    3. Re:Marketing Numbers by armanox · · Score: 2

      ATIs were sane for quite a while. In the Radeon X and HD series numbers were seven digits (ABCD), such as a Radeon HD 5770

      A: Generation name. A 7xxx card is newer then a 5xxx card
      B: Chip series. All chips in a generation with the same B number (x9xx) were based on the same GPU
      C: Performance level. A lower number was clocked slower then a higher one (so a 7750 was slower then a 7770). Exception: the x990 was a dual GPU chip
      D: Always 0

      So, to compare ATI cards, a x770 was slower then an (x+1)770 which was the newer gen, a x870 was faster then the (x+1)770 because it was a better chip to start (a first gen i5 is better then a second gen i3), and 7770 was clocked faster then the 7750.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    4. Re:Marketing Numbers by gman003 · · Score: 5, Informative

      ATI/AMD has actually been consistent for several years now - they're literally just-now changing their scheme

      The old system was a four-digit number. First digit is generation - a 7950 is newer than a 6870, and way newer than a 4830 or a 2600. The next two digits are how powerful it is within the generation - roughly, the second digit is the market segment, and the third is which model within that segment, but that's rough. They did tend to inflate numbers over time - the top-end single-GPU cards of each generation were the 2900 XT, the 3870, the 4890, the 5870, the 6970, and the 7970GE. Put simply, if you sort by the middle two digits within a generation, you also order by both power and price.

      The fourth digit is always a zero. Always. I don't know why they bother.

      Sometimes there's a suffix. "X2" used to mean it's a dual-GPU card, cramming two processors onto one board, but now those get a separate model number (they also only do that for the top GPU now, because they've found it's not worth it to use two weaker processors). "GE" or "Gigahertz Edition" was used on some 7xxx models, because Nvidia beat them pretty heavily with their 6xx series release so AMD had to rush out some cards that were essentially overclocked high enough to beat them. "Eyefinity Edition" used to be a thing, mainly it just meant it had a shitload of mini-DP outputs so you could do 3x2 six-monitor surround setups, which AMD was (and is) trying to push. And there were some "Pro" or "XT" models early on, but those were not significant.

      Now forget all that, because they're throwing a new one out.

      It's now a two-part thing, rather like what Intel does with their CPUs. "R9" is their "Enthusiast" series, for people with too much money. Within that, you have six models: the 270, 270X, 280, 280X, 290 and 290X. They haven't fully clarified things, but it seems that the X models are the "full" chip, while the non-X model has some cores binned off and slightly lower clocks. Other than that, it's a fairly straightforward list - the 290 beats the 280X beats the 280 beats the 270X and so on. Under those are the "R7" "gamer" series, which so far has the 240 through 260X, and an R5 230 model is listed on Wikipedia even though I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere.

      Sadly, it's still a bit more complicated. See, some of the "new" ones are just the old ones relabeled. They're all the same fundamental "Graphics Core Next" architecture, but some of them have the new audio DSP stuff people are excited about. And it's not even a simple "everything under this is an old one lacking new features" - the 290X and 260X have the new stuff, but the 280X and 270X do not. And it gets worse still, because the 260X actually is a rebadge, it's just that they're enabling some hardware functionality now (the 290X actually is a genuine new chip as far as anyone can tell). So far, everything is 2__, so I would assume the first digit in this case is still the generation.

      Oh, and there actually are some 8xxx series cards. There were some mobile models released (forgot to mention - an M suffix means mobile, and you can't directly compare numbers between them. A 7870 and 7870M are not the same.), and it looks like some OEM-only models on the desktop.

      But yeah, it is a bit daunting at first, especially since they're transitioning to a new schema very abruptly (people were expecting an 8xxx and 9xxx series before a new schema). But not much has really changed - you just need to figure out which number is the generation, and which is the market segment, and you're good.

  2. 7790 gets no love by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or have we reached a diminishing return point and/or a point where money is being spent elsewhere (consoles, mobile, tablets, etc)?

    The problem is that PC games have been cripppled for years by being developed on consoles and ported to PCs. Some do take advantage of the extra power of PC GPUs, but the majority will run fine on a GPU that's several years old, because it's more powerful than the crap in the consoles.

  4. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by un1nsp1red · · Score: 2

    I think we've hit a temporary lull, but you'll see renewed interest once newer, larger monitors start to enter the market. i.e., I'm fine with my rig so long as I can play any game with the settings maxed. Rules will have to change once 4k monitors become the new norm.

  5. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by 0123456 · · Score: 2

    It will certainly be an improvement, but from what I've read they're only comparable to current mid-range PC GPUs. By the time many games are out, a high-end gaming PC will still be several times as powerful.

  6. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 2

    And then there's star citizen. Honestly I'm looking at purchasing my first PC for gaming in over a decade. The last PC I bought primarily for gaming purposes was around 2001. Then the studios stopped producing the flight, space combat sims and FPS's like the original Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon games I liked to play.

    I've been looking around. I have a 3 year old desktop here that I'm thinking for $150 for a new PSU and 7xxx AMD card will get me through the beta for Star Citizen.

    So I've just started looking around. I'm glad to here these new cards use even less power making having to spend $50 for a new PSU maybe less of a need and I can put it towards a better graphics card...

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  7. Re:AMD/Radeon is dead by realityimpaired · · Score: 4, Insightful

    *shrugs* Everybody has their own experiences. I have a Core i5 2500k system with 16GB of RAM, and a Radeon HD 6970, and have never had a problem despite its age. It still runs all of my current games library without breaking a sweat (and that includes recent AAA titles on Steam running under WINE), and I've never had any of the issues you claim happened to yours.

    In fact, I'm at a loss to explain how it's even possible for a video card to set your system on fire. You could blow some capacitors, I suppose, if you have a cheap motherboard with cheap caps, you could crater a chipset by sending too much voltage, you could even wreck a cold solder, but the flash point on the plastic they use to make motherboards is high enough that the system would have shut down for critical heat *long* before it ever got hot enough to set the silicon on fire....

    All of the above would be solved by not having a crap motherboard, btw... I've seen all of the symptoms I've listed in computers, but every single one of them was either a cheap motherboard or a cheap power supply, and not really anything the CPU vendor could have controlled... (I've seen them all in Intel systems as well as AMD)

  8. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by chihowa · · Score: 2

    The gripe is not that consoles are less powerful than PCs. The gripe is that many games are designed around the limitations of consoles and don't take advantage of all of the power in a PC. Back in the days of yore, new games would be able to take advantage of cutting edge GPUs. Now they (often) don't.

    I'm just restating the OP, who said it very clearly himself:

    The problem is that PC games have been cripppled for years by being developed on consoles and ported to PCs. Some do take advantage of the extra power of PC GPUs, but the majority will run fine on a GPU that's several years old, because it's more powerful than the crap in the consoles.

    So yes, learn to read.

    --
    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
  9. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by citizenr · · Score: 3, Informative

    no, they support, not require

    --
    Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
  10. Re:Do the kids still chase the newest video card? by SuperAlgae · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's true that the OP's comment did not give much explanation, but it at least had a constructive tone to it. Your response, however, was sarcastic and insulting. You have some good insight. Your comment history shows a lot of intelligence, but so much of your energy seems to go into belittling others. If you take a more constructive approach, you'll reach a lot more people. Occasionally a sarcastic remark can be an effective way to make a point, but it usually just turns people away and makes your effort go to waste.