AMD Launches Retail Radeon 300 Series: A Prelude To Fury
by Ryan Smith on June 18, 2015 10:35 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 300
Throughout the last couple of months AMD has been in the process of carefully and deliberately rolling out their latest generation of video cards. In a multi-staged process we have seen AMD engage in a what is best described as a drawn-out teaser and an early technical briefing, announcing their intention to roll out a new high-end video card this quarter, further teasing the public with pictures of the card, and then in the middle of all of that giving the technical press an in-depth briefing on AMD’s key next-generation memory technology, High Bandwidth Memory. While AMD did their best to make sure the details of the cards were kept under wraps – with varying results – AMD definitely wanted to make sure the world would know that their card was coming.
Catching up to the present, earlier this week AMD held their 2015 GPU product showcase, dubbed “The New Era of PC Gaming.” As the latest stage in AMD’s master plan, AMD held a public event in Los Angeles similar to their 2014 GPU product showcase in Hawaii, where the company announced their product lineup ahead of the full launch of the products in question. In the presentation we learned some (but not all) of the details surrounding AMD’s Radeon 300 series, including the numbered products from 360 to 390, and of course the company’s new high-end flagship video card, the Radeon R9 Fury X.
All told the showcase itself was something of a teaser itself – we got prices, but not complete specifications – but we also received confirmation of AMD’s rollout plans. The next stage, coinciding with today’s article, is the formal launch of the numbered members of the Radeon 300 series, which are product refreshes based on existing AMD GPUs, similar to what we saw with the 200 series in 2013. Meanwhile today is also the greater unveiling (but not the launch) of the Fury series, with AMD allowing us to share more details about the new card and its specifications. Following today’s announcements and launches, the Radeon R9 Fury X will be launching in just under a week from now, on June 24th, and then after that the R9 Fury (vanilla) will be launching on July 14th.
| AMD R9 300 Series Specification Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon R9 Fury X | AMD Radeon R9 Fury | AMD Radeon R9 390X | AMD Radeon R9 390 | |||
| Stream Processors | 4096 | (Fewer) | 2816 | 2560 | ||
| Texture Units | 256 | (How much) | 176 | 160 | ||
| ROPs | 64 | (Depnds) | 64 | 64 | ||
| Boost Clock | 1050MHz | (On Yields) | 1050MHz | 1000MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 1Gbps HBM | (Memory Too) | 5Gbps GDDR5 | 5Gbps GDDR5 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 4096-bit | 4096-bit | 512-bit | 512-bit | ||
| VRAM | 4GB | 4GB | 8GB | 8GB | ||
| FP64 | 1/16 | 1/16 | 1/8 | 1/8 | ||
| TrueAudio | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||
| Transistor Count | N/A | N/A | 6.2B | 6.2B | ||
| Typical Board Power | 275W | (High) | 275W | 275W | ||
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | ||
| Architecture | GCN 1.2 | GCN 1.2 | GCN 1.1 | GCN 1.1 | ||
| GPU | Fiji | Fiji | Hawaii | Hawaii | ||
| Launch Date | 06/24/15 | 07/14/15 | 06/18/15 | 06/18/15 | ||
| Launch Price | $649 | $549 | $429 | $329 | ||
Overall AMD is launching an almost top-to-bottom refresh of its product lineup overnight. Between now and July 14th the company and its partners will introduce cards from $109 to $649, and while there are a few gaps that AMD is almost certainly purposely leaving in place to give them something to announce later this year, overall we’re seeing more or less AMD’s entire hand for 2015 and early 2016 in one go.
As for the subjects at hand today, there are really two stories to talk about. The first is of course the Radeon R9 Fury series, the products that will house AMD’s newest flagship GPU, Fiji. While I won’t butter up Fiji from an architectural standpoint at this time, what Fiji does bring to the table are two very big changes for AMD. The first of these is of course high bandwidth memory, which not only gives AMD more VRAM bandwidth than ever before, but it outright changes how GPUs video cards are constructed. The second big change is that Fiji is just very big. At 596mm2 AMD went right to the reticle limit, putting AMD squarely into the big GPU race.
But before Fury comes the rest of the 300 series. We'll take a look at Fury in due time - while we've been briefed on the subject and have been authorized to discuss it, we want to hold back for when we have the hardware in hand - so our focus for today will be on what's launching today, and that's the Radeon 300 series.
Being released today are five new cards from AMD’s partners, which will form the backbone of the Radeon 300 series from $109 to $429. To our regular readers these parts will be familiar – and to some, perhaps more familiar than they’d like – while for AMD the 300 series represents their 3rd generation of retail 28nm products.
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Pantsu - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
It seems to me a foolish hope to think they'd be ahead of schedule give HBM1 actually started volume production in Q1 2015 instead of what was marked on this product map. If anything, HBM2 is further delayed.colhoop - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Why do people always talk about NVIDIA's software environment as if it is some major advantage they have on AMD? It seems to me that they are both just as good, and from my experience with NVIDIA and AMD is I've had less driver issues with AMD believe it or not.But yeah the Fury X has benchmarks released by AMD using Far Cry 4 4k Ultra Settings and it outperforms the Titan X by more than 10 average fps. I know the benchmark isn't as reliable since it was released by AMD obviously but still, it really makes you wonder. I definitely think it will outperform the 980ti especially if AMD claims it can outperform the Titan X but of course we shall see :)
Pantsu - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Nvidia certainly spends a lot more money and effort on their software currently.- They have more timely driver updates aligned with big game releases
- SLI support is much better than AMD's sparse and late updates to CF
- GeForce Experience works much better than AMD's third party equivalent
- Better control panel features like DSR, adaptive V-sync. AMD's efforts tend to be like half-baked copies of these. AMD hasn't come up with anything truly new in a long while and all I can do is smh at 'new features' like FRTC that's so simple it should've been in the control panel a decade ago.
I do think for single GPU driver performance and stability there isn't much of a difference between the two, regardless of how many driver updates Nvidia does. Actually the latest Nvidia drivers have been terrible with constant TDR crashes for a lot of people. But that's anecdotal, both sides have issues at times, and on average both have ok drivers for single GPU. It's the above mentioned things that push Nvidia to the top imo.
xthetenth - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
I like people talking about how AMD didn't get drivers out for Witcher 3 immediately and ignore that NV's drivers were incredibly flaky and they needed to be reminded Kepler cards exist.Zak - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
What? Zero issues playing Witcher 3 since day one.blppt - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
"I like people talking about how AMD didn't get drivers out for Witcher 3 immediately and ignore that NV's drivers were incredibly flaky and they needed to be reminded Kepler cards exist."Pfft....to this DAY the Crossfire support in W3 is terrible, and ditto for GTA5. The former is a TWIMTBP title, the latter is not---even has AMD CHS tech in it. I run Kepler Titan Blacks and 290x(s) and there is no question NVIDIA's drivers are far, far better in both games. Even the launch day Witcher 3 drivers are superior to AMD's half-assed May 27th 15.5 betas, which havent been updated since.
For single cards, I'd agree, AMD drivers are almost as good as Nvidia's, except those Gameworks titles that need to be reoptimized by AMD's driver team.
But there isnt even a question that Nvidia gets betas out much, much quicker and more effectively than AMD.
And if you arent into betas, heck, AMD hasnt released an OFFICIAL R9 2xx driver since December, LOL. Which is what annoys me about this Fury launch---once again, AMD puts out this awesome piece of hardware, and they've been neglecting their current parts' drivers for months. What good is the greatest videocard on the planet (Fury X) if the drivers are rarely and poorly updated/optimized?
chizow - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
@xthetenth - complete rubbish, while AMD fanboys were boycotting the game over PC only features, Nvidia fans were enjoying the game on day 1, courtesy of Nvidia who gave the game away to new GeForce owners.How is CF+AA doing in Witcher 3 btw? Oh right, still flaky and broken.
Yojimbo - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
I am mostly referring to their growing investment in gaming library middleware, i.e., GameWorks.TheJian - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Have you heard of Cuda, Gameworks or DAY1 drivers for game releases? You seem to be oblivious to the fact that cuda runs on 200+ pro apps and is taught in 500+ universities. Never mind the fact that NV releases drivers constantly for games when they ship, not 4-6 months (sometimes longer) later. You are aware the last AMD WHQL driver was Dec correct?http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=W...
Dec 8, is NOT GOOD. They can't even afford to put out a WHQL driver every 6 months now. Get real. Nvidia releases one or two EACH MONTH. And no, I don't believe you have more problems with NV drivers ;) I say that as a radeon 5850 owner currently :)
AMD's R&D has been dropping for 4yrs, while NV's has gained and now is more than AMD with less products. Meaning NV's R&D is GREATER and more FOCUSED on gpu/drivers. Passing on consoles was the best thing NV did in the last few years, as we see what it has done to AMD R&D and lack of profits.
AMD needs new management. Hopefully Lisa Su is that person, and ZEN is the right direction. Focus on your CORE products! APU's don't make squat - neither do consoles at the margins they made to get the deals. There was a VERY good reason NV said exactly that. They passed because it would rob from CORE PRODUCTS. We see it has for AMD. It hasn't just robbed from hardware either. Instead of approaching companies like CD Projekt for Witcher 3 to add TressFX 2+yrs ago, they wait until the last 2 months then ask...ROFL. That is lack of funding then excuses why perf sucks and complaints about hairworks killing them. An easy fix in a config/profile for the driver solves tessellation for both sides (only maxwell can handle the load) so it's a non issue anyway, but still AMD should have approached these guys the second they saw wolves on the screen 2+yrs ago showing hairworks.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-...
Check the pro results...AMD's new cards get a total smackdown, 3 of the 5 are by HUGE margins. Showcase, Maya, Catia all massive losses. Note you'd likely see the same in Adobe apps (premiere, AE, not sure about the rest) since they use Cuda. There is a good reason nobody tests Adobe and checks the cuda box for NV vs. OpenCL for AMD. ;) There is reason Anandtech chooses Sony, which sucks on Nvidia (google it). They could just as easily test Adobe with Cuda vs. AMD with Sony vegas. But NOPE. Don't expect an AMD portal site to run either of these tests...LOL. Even toms won't touch it, or even respond to questions about why they don't do it in the forums :(
chizow - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
@colhoop it is largely going to depend on your use cases. For example, GeForce Experience is something many Nvidia users laud because it just works, makes it easy to maximize game settings, get new drivers, record compressed video. Then you have drivers, driver-level features (FXAA, HBAO+, Vsync that works), day 1 optimizations that all just work. I've detailed above some of the special reqs I've come to expect from Nvidia drivers to control 3D, SLI, AA. And the last part is just advertised driver features that just work. G-Sync/SLI, low power mode while driving multiple monitors, VSR, Optimus all of these just work. And finally you have the Nvidia proprietary stuff, 3D Vision, GameWorks, PhysX etc. Amazing if you use them, if you don't, you're not going to see as much benefit or difference.