AMD Tonga arrives in August, replaces Tahiti PRO

[LtMatt]

# Brand New Architecture
# More power efficient
# ACE
# XDMA
# True Audio

Next Month.

Only had my Hawaii for 2 Months

We have ACE units in out Hawaii's Matt, 8 of them... no idea what they do.

I expect the new Hawaii XTX will be GCN 2.0 in this case.

 

[ubersonic]

Looks like there might be a price cut coming for Tahiti.

About damn time, hopefully Nvidia will have to follow suit.

The question remains arises, are they normalising this gen prices so that next gen can explode into the gulf, or will next gen have sensible pricing too? I'm expecting the former lol.

 

[Orangey]

AMD’s new Asynchronous Compute Engines serve as the command processors for compute operations on GCN. The principal purpose of ACEs will be to accept work and to dispatch it off to the CUs for processing. As GCN is designed to concurrently work on several tasks, there can be multiple ACEs on a GPU, with the ACEs deciding on resource allocation, context switching, and task priority. AMD has not established an immediate relationship between ACEs and the number of tasks that can be worked on concurrently, so we’re not sure whether there’s a fixed 1:X relationship or whether it’s simply more efficient for the purposes of working on many tasks in parallel to have more ACEs.

One effect of having the ACEs is that GCN has a limited ability to execute tasks out of order. As we mentioned previously GCN is an in-order architecture, and the instruction stream on a wavefront cannot be reodered. However the ACEs can prioritize and reprioritize tasks, allowing tasks to be completed in a different order than they’re received. This allows GCN to free up the resources those tasks were using as early as possible rather than having the task consuming resources for an extended period of time in a nearly-finished state. This is not significantly different from how modern in-order CPUs (Atom, ARM A8, etc) handle multi-tasking.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4455/amds-graphics-core-next-preview-amd-architects-for-compute/5

 

[Marine-RX179]

The question remains arises, are they normalising this gen prices so that next gen can explode into the gulf, or will next gen have sensible pricing too? I'm expecting the former lol.

History is going to repeat itself

Nvidia launch GM204 on 28nm (GTX680) at £350/£420, then first proper fat Maxwell on 20nm in the form Titan II (Titan) at the usual £800+, and then mainstream 20nm flagship Maxwell (GTX780) with half the vram and cut-down compute capability and launch at £550-£620+

 

[bru]

Well it looks like AMD are doing a just what Nvidia did with the 760. Replacing a midrange card with a slightly lower spec/better clocked card to retain similar performance.

I do hope that AMD get just as much stick from everybody, just as Nvidia did when they introduced the 760.

 

[Martini1991]

History is going to repeat itself

Nvidia launch GM204 on 28nm (GTX680) at £350/£420, then first proper fat Maxwell on 20nm in the form Titan II (Titan) at the usual £800+, and then mainstream 20nm flagship Maxwell (GTX780) with half the vram and cut-down compute capability and launch at £550-£620+

AMD to milk for a few months as well then?

 

[Marine-RX179]

AMD to milk for a few months as well then?

Pfff...everyone knows AMD overpricing cards would result in them rotting on the shelf than flying off it I still remember the 79xx cards overpriced on launch, with it being on the today only deal and not one sold at the end of the day lol

So it's all down to the pricing

 

[LtMatt]

Tonga launching next month, according to Chinese VR-Zone. Tahiti performance for Pitcairn power consumption, based on rumors. (quote taken from beyond3d)

Reliable sources mentioned, AMD will be updated in August Radeon R9 280 graphics card, this shows the core card currently used for the Tahiti Pro.

In May of the report, we first mentioned AMD will launch a new member, named "Tonga" will be positioned between the earlier Radeon R9 270X and R9 280, but confirmed that according to the latest news, "Tonga "Currently Tahiti Pro will completely replace the Radeon R9 280, Radeon R9 275 does not have a name like appearance.

Source
http://chinese.vr-zone.com/119702/a...ron-r9-280-from-tahiti-pro-to-tonga-06302014/

 

[ubersonic]

Tahiti performance for Pitcairn power consumption, based on rumors.

What kind of tree hugging commie are you? who cares about power consumption, its wallet consumption I'm interested in

 

[LtMatt]

What kind of tree hugging commie are you? who cares about power consumption, its wallet consumption I'm interested in

Tonga launching next month, according to Chinese VR-Zone. Tahiti performance for Pitcairn power consumption, based on rumors.(quote taken from beyond3d)

 

[humbug]

Tonga launching next month, according to Chinese VR-Zone. Tahiti performance for Pitcairn power consumption, based on rumors. (quote taken from beyond3d)



Source
http://chinese.vr-zone.com/119702/a...ron-r9-280-from-tahiti-pro-to-tonga-06302014/

Pitcairn XT (270X) = 124 Watts
Tahiti XT (280X) = 207 Watts

That would make a 40% improvement in Power Consumption, pretty good

 

[AlamoX]

powr efficient, replaces GCN to newer build, add True audio and freesync, XDMA for crossfire, things that 280x 270x lack, even if iy's a rebranding, it's needed to update the build.

 

[LtMatt]

powr efficient, replaces GCN to newer build, add True audio and freesync, XDMA for crossfire, things that 280x 270x lack, even if iy's a rebranding, it's needed to update the build.

It's a rebranding, but it seems like a decent rebranding adding plenty of new features that Tahiti didn't have and supposedly lower power consumption.

 

[Boomstick777]

So Tonga is once again the 7970 aka 280X, but this time you're getting 1GB less vram on a lower bit bus to save some power..

Man these past couple years have been awful for innovation. I hope we do get some genuinely new architecture cards on 20nm. At this rate it won't be until late 2015 / 2016.

This is up their with AMD's 'new' CPU Roy Taylor tweeted about.

Hopefully this is all fud, the real GPU has 3072 cores 256 bitbus with 4GB to keep the power down. Maybe stacked vram etc. At least something new... Plz no more 7970 rebrands

 

[humbug]

So Tonga is once again the 7970 aka 280X, but this time you're getting 1GB less vram on a lower bit bus to save some power..

Man these past couple years have been awful for innovation. I hope we do get some genuinely new architecture cards on 20nm. At this rate it won't be until late 2015 / 2016.

This is up their with AMD's 'new' CPU Roy Taylor tweeted about.

Hopefully this is all fud, the real GPU has 3072 cores 256 bitbus with 4GB to keep the power down. Maybe stacked vram etc. At least something new... Plz no more 7970 rebrands

This is no different than the 750TI you had nothing but high praise for.

Your now saying exactly the same thing others said about the introduction of the 750TI, which you then defended.

Pot - Kettle

 

[bru]

Do we know for certain that Tonga will include all the new features or is it not known yet ?

Of course it would be a bit stupid of them to release a new chip and not have support for the latest features.

 

[LtMatt]

Do we know for certain that Tonga will include all the new features or is it not known yet ?

Of course it would be a bit stupid of them to release a new chip and not have support for the latest features.

Just rumours and speculation, as always at the moment. It would make zero sense to release a new card that does not support True Audio or Freesync etc though.

 

[Mei]

i think the 290's is the only amd card to support freesync right now?
duno if nvidia cards do
displayport 1.2a

 

[Boomstick777]

This is no different than the 750TI you had nothing but high praise for.

Your now saying exactly the same thing others said about the introduction of the 750TI, which you then defended.

Pot - Kettle

Well that's just nonsense but I would expect nothing less from bumhug

The 7970 was re branded into the 280X, now it looks like it's going to be re branded again, albeit with less vram and lower bus to use less power and probably similar price point.

The GTX 750 Ti you mentioned, is based on a new architecture (Maxwell) is an entirely new card (Not a rebrand) The appeal is it only uses around 60watts.

Why you're comparing the two I have no idea.

If Nvidia rebrand the 'GTX 680' 'GTX 770' again I could see the similarity, but not between the 'HD 7970' 'R9 280X' 'Tonga' VS GTX 750 Ti.

So just to clarify what I was saying, I don't want to see yet more mid-range re brands from either camp, this card (7970, 280X) has been knocking about since Dec 2011 (Paper launch). It's now July 2014, time to move on imho.

 

[Mei]

pram >>>> toys