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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chizow - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Sorry, not a completely valid excuse, Nvidia surprisingly did release 4 entirely new ASICs even though we stalled on 28nm with impressive gains for each over their predecessor (GM107, GM204, GM206, GM200).Nvidia did plenty, they realized they wouldn't get 20nm and went forward with impressive results on 28nm. AMD probably wasn't as prepared, and ended up with 1 seemingly impressive GPU, but was forced to rebrand the rest.
Macpoedel - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
The rumor has been for a while that the 20nm node process at TSMC isn't suitable for high power chips, like desktop GPU's (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199101-amd-nv... That's why Apple can make a 20nm mobile SoC, but AMD and Nvidia can't build a powerful GPU with it. I don't know this for a fact, but if true, building a desktop GPU on that node could prove disastrous. So it's not about "buying in". And if I might point you to an already famous 20nm product: the Snapdragon 810, which is prone to overheating. Both AMD and Nvidia will be skipping 20nm and go for 16nm finfet immediately (the fact that TSMC's isn't finfet, probably has something to do with the overheating).chizow - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Its true and has been know for some time, the next GPUs from Nvidia/AMD will be 14/16nm FinFET (3D transistors).JDG1980 - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
Yes, during Financial Analyst Day, Lisa Su specifically said that 20nm was not viable and that the upcoming AMD products in 2016 would be on FinFET.NvidiaWins - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
No real performance increase in 300 series cards.........good job AMD, another star studded failure of re-brand.....ES_Revenge - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
The rebranding was known/expected but what happened to 3xx series was going to be OEM? Now they've gone full retail with the rebranding nonsense and only added the Fury as something new (which isn't even out yet) and more VRAM to Hawaii (which probably won't even improve much except a higher price)? WTF?Sad part is there's no 380X. 'Nice' that they removed the venerable Tahiti (given it is "old" and missing features like TrueAudio, HEVC, etc.) but why doesn't Tonga get an XT variant? R9 285 is Tonga Pro, R9 380 is Tonga Pro. No XT or "full" Tonga? Why NOT?! I mean if you're going to take rebranding to this degree (and you did nearly the same in HD 7xxx/8xxx to R9 cards) you'd expect they put a *little* effort into doing a few things different...at the very least.
But nope we get Fury (Fiji) and some more VRAM on Hawaii and that's all she wrote. Fiji, impressive as it may end up being, is going to be beyond what most people can either afford or justify spending. 8GB of ram on Hawaii does nothing except for benefit maybe a few games at 4K+ resolutions, while "justifying" keeping the prices high on Hawaii based cards, no doubt.
Then take out Tahiti, a GPU that was still more than competent despite its age, and replace with something in between it's Pro and XT variants--Tonga Pro. Don't offer something to fill the gap left by removing Tahiti XT, just make people jump to Hawaii Pro or buy into what I'm sure will still be an overpriced Tonga card. Yay they've raised the clock a bit--so what? It's not like that couldn't be achieved with a mild OC anyway. If Tonga is anything like Tahiti, 1Ghz is an easy/mild/no-sweat OC, so going from 918 to 970 on it is trivial. What is needed is a Tonga GPU with over 2000 shaders and not a penny more than $199.
This is a mess, that's all I can say. I'm glad for Fury to be coming out sometime soon but they could have at least done the rebranding part a little more elegantly and offered a few more things than new names and similar pricing. I mean there's rebranding and then there's just repackaging and this seems more like the latter.
At the very least I thought there would be a Tonga Pro card at $150-180 and a Tonga XT at $200 ish. But nope, forget that, just new names and Fury hype. And that's all this is anyway...hype leading to Fury. Same cards, very close to zero tweaks/improvments, new names, and a pathway for Fury to launch and blow people sock's off...at prices of $600+. Good grief.
neonisin - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Wow, Anandtech really dropped the ball on the review of the Fury X. Bye guys.epuigvros - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
I understand that AMD is maybe stuck in making progress in performance under 28nm. What I cannot understand and I think is a complete insult to us, the customers, is all this bullshit about "the new era of PC gaming" when your 300 series is a complete rebrand of the 200 series.mapesdhs - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
So I see now that the 'new era in PC gaming' was just same or less speed than a 980 Ti, while having to deal with the issues of fitting a wc into a case which more than likely already has one, sold at a price which isn't usefully less than a 980 Ti. *sigh*And really AT, no Fury X review? Wow...
mapesdhs - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
ES_Revenge, I should add, sadly my socks are very much still in place, and that was from reading one of the more +ve leaning reviews on Fury X (comments suggest other site reviews are less favourable).