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AMD Tonga arrives in August, replaces Tahiti PRO

Boomstick777 said:
They already have the 'HD 7970' 'R9 280X' in response to GK104. What we don't want is this card to re-branded once more. Unless it's coming in at the low end this time, at least that would indicate a shift in performance for the higher end cards. If HD 7970 AKA R9 280X is once again rebranded for the midrange than it's set to look very dull until 20nm and some new architecture arrives.
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I totally agree it is not needed from consumer point of view. But I was merely pointing out the possible reasons "for AMD" to do it. If the Tonga is cheaper to make than Tahiti Pro, not only they would be able to reduce production cost, but boosting their profile with the "new architecture" or "new releases", regardless of it is really needed to replace the Tahiti or not.

The 280 and 280x was boring because it was straight rebrand (and relatively high power consumption and hot for the bracket that' they are seating on), but "lower power consumption and heat", "performance of GTX670 upward to sitting between the 280x and the power hungry 290" could be attractive for some. It's worth bearing in mind there's no doubt be people can't wait for 20nm, and is only willing to spend around £200 for graphic upgrade.
 
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AFAIK,the GF 28NM process looks to be better than the TSMC one. If you look at Jaguar when compared to Mullins and Beema,the latter moved over to GF,and clockspeeds increased and TDP dropped a decent amount.

So what needs to be seen is whether the GM204 is still 28NM or 20NM.
 
So it's a GCN 1.1 version of a 7870 LE/XT? not that interesting, but I do think they need new GCN cards between the 260x and 290. It's make true audio more viable.
 
Boomstick777 said:
They already have the 'HD 7970' 'R9 280X' in response to GK104. What we don't want is this card to re-branded once more. Unless it's coming in at the low end this time, at least that would indicate a shift in performance for the higher end cards. If HD 7970 AKA R9 280X is once again rebranded for the midrange than it's set to look very dull until 20nm and some new architecture arrives.

If the 'HD 7970' 'R9 280X' became the new X70

Plus the 'GTX 680' 'GTX 770' became the new GTX X60

Than at least this would show some progression, and indicate the higher end cards would indeed be higher end.
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Was it not you who said that more effisiant GPU's are a good thing, and that AMD need to work on that?

Well, here it is, so why are you not happy?
 
The 280X stock cooler never came to market as far as I know

The picture identifies itself as a AMD-R9-280X-3 so my guess is still on the authors using it as a 280X picture, even though we've never seen one that looks like that!
 
humbug said:
Was it not you who said that more effisiant GPU's are a good thing, and that AMD need to work on that?

Well, here it is, so why are you not happy?
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'efficient'

I would have liked to see an efficient 290X, not another '7970' '280X' re-brand and priced for midrange. The same said of Nvidia, do not want another '680' '770' re-branded for midrange. It's time to move on surely.

For example if the 290X had become new midrange and more power efficient it would have been brilliant.

It looks like things are set to stagnate until 20nm, or possibly mature 20nm.

Meh.
 
Boomstick777 said:
'efficient'

I would have liked to see an efficient 290X, not another '7970' '280X' re-brand and priced for midrange. The same said of Nvidia, do not want another '680' '770' re-branded for midrange. It's time to move on surely.

For example if the 290X had become new midrange and more power efficient it would have been brilliant.

It looks like things are set to stagnate until 20nm, or possibly mature 20nm.

Meh.
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Boom; Your praise at Nvidia for the 750TI could not have been higher, because it is so 'efficient' so much more 'efficient' than AMD. when pressed on the fact that its just another mid range GPU rehash in a sea of mid range GPU rehashes your argument was its not, because its so much more 'efficient', so how is what AMD are doing here any different?

Do you just place far to much emphasis on AMD always being the great saviour.
 
David Bisset said:
The 280X stock cooler never came to market as far as I know

The picture identifies itself as a AMD-R9-280X-3 so my guess is still on the authors using it as a 280X picture, even though we've never seen one that looks like that!
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The picture is wrong, It's an R290 (maybe 290X) you can tell looking at the card. The big give away is the dual DVI-D ports, the 290 was the first consumer GPU to ditch DVI-I completely (IIRC).
 
Boomstick777 said:
'efficient'

I would have liked to see an efficient 290X, not another '7970' '280X' re-brand and priced for midrange. The same said of Nvidia, do not want another '680' '770' re-branded for midrange. It's time to move on surely.

For example if the 290X had become new midrange and more power efficient it would have been brilliant.

It looks like things are set to stagnate until 20nm, or possibly mature 20nm.

Meh.
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I think it all boils down to timing and opportunities.

As you yourself has personally predicted, mid-range GM204 most likely not going hit the shelf till some time in the 2015. Regardless of what we think, or we like it or not, if there's opportunities for business for sales of graphic card at the £200 +/- range for this year, there's no reason not to take it. I mean not every who got around £200 to spend of upgrading graphic will waiting till next year to do it; people who build new gaming PC before then for example would still need graphic card...and if there are cards that's more attractive, efficient and better performance than the current GK104 and Tahiti line-ups for the same price, I don't think they would complain at all. When the mid-range GM204 eventually launch at around £180-£240, AMD could then just push the price of the Tonga down to £150 or below (like what they did for 7850/7870 to R7 265/270), and to become the new entry level cards instead...which would make lots of sense.

I doubt we will see a new AMD card that perform as well as the Hawaii AND efficient any time soon, BUT if there was a card which performance sit between the GTX770 and the R9 290 that's lower price consumption, and is priced below R9 290, then there might be interests in such a card.
 
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ubersonic said:
The picture is wrong, It's an R290 (maybe 290X) you can tell looking at the card. The big give away is the dual DVI-D ports, the 290 was the first consumer GPU to ditch DVI-I completely (IIRC).
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+1 all my 280Xs have the plus-symbol shape on the stock DVI port, my 290s are like the pic in the article
 
Boomstick777 said:
'efficient'

I would have liked to see an efficient 290X, not another '7970' '280X' re-brand and priced for midrange. The same said of Nvidia, do not want another '680' '770' re-branded for midrange. It's time to move on surely.

For example if the 290X had become new midrange and more power efficient it would have been brilliant.

It looks like things are set to stagnate until 20nm, or possibly mature 20nm.

Meh.
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'would have'
 
ubersonic said:
The picture is wrong, It's an R290 (maybe 290X) you can tell looking at the card. The big give away is the dual DVI-D ports, the 290 was the first consumer GPU to ditch DVI-I completely (IIRC).
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Interesting, good spot & thanks for that :) I'd not noticed they were both dvi-d's. Been so long since I connected anything with VGA that I kinda forgot about it.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
To be completely honest though...I use to bash the reference cooler design a lot before getting the reference 290(x), but after using it, I must say it is very effective in terms of cooling capability...it is just the the amount of heat from the 290/290x that it has to put up with that's causing it to be noisy, as the fan need to spin at very high rpm to coup. Had the cooler been for a lower power consumption card, I doubt noise would really be an issue.

But yes I do agree that the look of the cooler design can definitely be better. But if AMD were to charge £30-£40 price premium on the cooler like Nvidia does for their "Titan cooler", I would rather AMD just stick with using the not-so-good-looking cooler and keep the price down, and I'd just put the £30-£40 toward replacing the cooler with far more efficient 3rd party cooler instead...and it would be actually be better for people who are planning on watercooling in the first place as well.

One of the biggest advantage that AMD has comparing to Nvidia is that it offer similar performance at a lower price point; if the "fancy cooler" is gonna push the price of the AMD cards up, it might actually make people to think about to just jump onto Nvidia instead, since the price difference is not that significant.

If a "fancy cooler" doesn't lead to increase in the price of the cards, then of course it would be welcomed.
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Don't really agree with that, it doesn't need to be a "fancy" cooler just a far quieter one than what they have provided for years now. People have been complaining about the noise of the then ati coolers since the x850, it was their first double slot card with a specific style of cooler, then iterations of it got used on the x1900 series which were also hot and loud. 2900xt same deal, 4870 wasn't quite as bad.

The question has to be why don't they put more effort into their coolers? Its been a point of complaint for far too many years now and they seem to do bugger all about it. 6990 was touted as being cool and quiet, that was bs, 7990 was touted as being whisper quiet with a titan rivalling cooler, that was also bs unless you happened to be a reviewer or one of the 2 people on the planet that got one that didn't hit into the 90c range.

I find it hard to believe the thermal engineers at amd are that incompetent, just seems like limited resources are put into the coolers compared to the NVidia counterparts. Its something that needs to change, amd only got their thumbs out of their asses regarding frame stutter in crossfire when a test got developed that showed their cards in a bad light despite review sites badgering them for literally years to fix the issue. It just amazes me that with their coolers having a bad rep for the better part of 10 years that they still don't seem to have done anything about it.
 
Looks like there might be a price cut coming for Tahiti. :)

AMD might possibly be preparing to offer another round of price-cuts on their Radeon R9 280X and Radeon R9 280 series graphics card in preparation of the upcoming Tonga GPU. According to Sweclockers, AMD’s is planning to slash prices on the two Radeon R9 280 series graphics cards which feature the Tahiti graphics processing unit which has spanned two and a half years in the graphics industry making it one of the most longest running desktop graphics card entry in the company’s history.
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For specifications, the card will be built on a new architecture which is presumably the GCN 2.0 design and not the GCN 1.1 architecture which has been featured on Bonaire and Hawaii. The Tonga graphics architecture will be built on the 28nm node from TSMC (if rumors are to be believed) and would feature a new design scheme introducing latest architectural improvements such as new ACE (Asynchronous Compute Engine) Units and more focus towards compute shaders. It is also mentioned that Tonga will retain the basic technologies of the Radeon lineup such as Mantle, TrueAudio and XDMA for CrossFire support. Performance efficiency would be a main focus of the new card and the ratings could be expected somewhat similar to Maxwell if not the same. Details specific to clock speeds, stream processors, memory bus and VRAM are not known except rumors but we expect to find them out soon since launch of the Tonga GPU is just around the corner in August 2014.
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Full Article
http://wccftech.com/amd-slash-radeon-r9-280x-radeon-r9-280-tahiti-cards-prices
 
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humbug said:
# Brand New Architecture
# More power efficient
# ACE
# XDMA
# True Audio

Next Month. :D

Only had my Hawaii for 2 Months :rolleyes:

We have ACE units in out Hawaii's Matt, 8 of them... no idea what they do.
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Tonga is only meant to be replacing Tahiti anyway.
 
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