New GCN 2.0-based GPUs to go head to head with NVIDIA’s in battle for the performance crown.
New GCN 2.0-based GPUs to go head to head with NVIDIA’s in battle for the performance crown.
AMD‘s GPU ’14 Tech Day set the stage for the unveiling of AMD’s latest GPU and GPU architecture. Hawaii and GCN 2.0 respectively will be at the centre of AMD’s flagship range of graphics products moving into 2014, but that much was already known. They revealed some of the details of the product range refresh, and some of the technical capabilities of the new GPUs.
For the first time AMD have spelled out their entire product range for 2014. The R7 and R9 series are aimed at the price/performance and enthusiast markets, ranging from the R7 250 through to the R9 290X. Starting at just $89 MSRP, the R7 250 includes 1GB GDDR5 RAM and will have a 3DMark Firestrike benchmark of over 2000 points. By contrast, the R9 280X will retail for $299 MSRP, with 3GB GDDR5 and be pegged at >6800 in Firestrike.
GPU Lineup Suggested Pricing (US$):
R7 250: 1GB GDDR5, <$89
R7 260X: 2GB GDDR5, $139
R9 270X: 2GB GDDR5, $199
R9 280X: 3GB GDDR5, $299
R9 290X: Memory config unknown, price unknown.
R7 250: 1GB GDDR5, <$89
R7 260X: 2GB GDDR5, $139
R9 270X: 2GB GDDR5, $199
R9 280X: 3GB GDDR5, $299
R9 290X: Memory config unknown, price unknown.
AMD went into a little more depth when it came to the flagship Radeon R9 290.
* The first GPU to support DX11.2 natively
* Scalable architecture; scales from 1W packages
* 6 billion transistors
* Capable of over 5 TFLOPS (single-precision)*
* Memory bandwidth of over 300GB/s
* 4 billion triangles/sec
* Scalable architecture; scales from 1W packages
* 6 billion transistors
* Capable of over 5 TFLOPS (single-precision)*
* Memory bandwidth of over 300GB/s
* 4 billion triangles/sec
*for reference, GTX TITAN = 4500 GFLOPS
The R9 290X will be available to preorder from 3rd October 2013 in a special Battlefield 4 Limited Edition. Unfortunately pricing information for the R9 290X wasn’t presented at the time of writing.
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TrueAudio Technology is a new innovation AMD are incorporating into key SKUs within the RX 200-series. The new technology introduces programmable audio in a thematic successor to the programmable graphics shaders which were first features of the ATi 9700Pro and are now a mainstay of the industry now. TrueAudio Technology allows the audio engine to access positional information directly, generating much more accurate virtualised sound. Additionally many more realtime voices and audio channels can be integrated into the game, allowing for a much more immersive experience.
AMD are working with games, audio and middlewear developers including EIDOS, Audiokinetic and Genaudio to bring the advantages of TrueAudio Technology to the games you’re likely to see in the coming months and years.
True Audio Technology will be a part of selected GPUs only: the R9 290X, 290 and R7 260X. This may indicate a fragmentation in the lineup or that some of the range are GPUs rebadged from the 7000-series line. We will keep you posted on this.
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Those seeking support for extremely high definition displays will welcome the news that AMD’s updated Catalyst software suite will support UltraHD 4K displays. Rather than the current manual configuration currently required, the software will begin to perform this process with some automation, although exact details aren’t quite clear. UltraHD monitors such as the new Panasonic Viera which comply with a new AMD-proposed VESA standard will be detected automatically and supported seamlessly.
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AMD Partnership with RAPTR for game setting optimisation and social community.
more soon
