AMD Radeon R9 290X with Hawaii GPU pictured, has 512-bit 4GB Memory

Gregster · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:12

TheRealDeal said:
8000 was as far as the graph went up and was there just to keep us guessing at the final performance. I think we can tell from the specs flying around that its gonna be in the ball park off 30% faster than a 7970ghz if the clocks are similar.

I hope you are right. If I was selling though, I would promote the speed as key if it was big and AMD did say they wasn't targeting the £999 GPU, so maybe that is the score.

Time will tell and not long to wait.

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:13

The lowest GFX score for a 7970 in the Fire Strike thread is 7507.

The highest is 10521

If the R9 290X is ~8K its in serious trouble, its like +5% on the (stock?) 7970 and -35% on the highest clocked one?

The slowest GTX 780 in that thread is 9465.

Gregster · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:14

Hades said:
Why two 7979's out of interest?

More clocking potential and if one dies, you have a back up while the other card is sent away (RMA can take weeks).

Kaapstad · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:14

TheRealDeal said:
8000 was as far as the graph went up and was there just to keep us guessing at the final performance. I think we can tell from the specs flying around that its gonna be in the ball park off 30% faster than a 7970ghz if the clocks are similar.

If they had scored more than 8000 they would be the first to tell us about it, they are trying to show their cards in the best possible light.

Suarez7 · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:17

Might be a series where people have to wait months for driver improvements again?

Hades · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:17

Kaapstad said:
If they had scored more than 8000 they would be the first to tell us about it, they are trying to show their cards in the best possible light.

Agreed. Can't see why they would not use that event to show it if the performance was stunning.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:17

Kaapstad said:
If they had scored more than 8000 they would be the first to tell us about it, they are trying to show their cards in the best possible light.

It depends on whether they are being cunning or not! It could be more a case of not giving too much away,so as for Nvidia to start price cutting GTX780 cards to rain on their parade.

teppic · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:17

Kaapstad said:
If they had scored more than 8000 they would be the first to tell us about it, they are trying to show their cards in the best possible light.

Since they didn't talk about performance of the card at all, that's not really true. This press event ended up being about future tech, not the new GPUs.

ToxicTBag · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:18

whyscotty said:
7990's

Could have sworn you had 780's

I did but plan on doing some seti/folding and the 7990s will give me more output in what I am doing .... that and the equivalent of £420 after selling the games, I begged n borrowed to get 2.

TheRealDeal said:
8000 was as far as the graph went up and was there just to keep us guessing at the final performance. I think we can tell from the specs flying around that its gonna be in the ball park off 30% faster than a 7970ghz if the clocks are similar.

Well that's not a bad start 30% ballpark how come people sound a bit deflated its early days? plus there will be the inevitable one offs/superclocks and improved drivers not a bad start for amd I reckon

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:18

Guys look at the fire strike results.

humbug said:
The lowest GFX score for a 7970 in the Fire Strike thread is 7507.

The highest is 10521

If the R9 290X is ~8K its in serious trouble, its like +5% on the (stock?) 7970 and -35% on the highest clocked one?

The slowest GTX 780 in that thread is 9465.

I got 6300 on a run of the mill 7870, i think i can get near 7K on my 7870 XT...

TheRealDeal · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:19

Kaapstad said:
If they had scored more than 8000 they would be the first to tell us about it, they are trying to show their cards in the best possible light.

Maybe but look at the arrow at the side its going way above the graph which suggests 8000+.

Kaapstad · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:19

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
It depends on whether they are being cunning or not! It could be more a case of not giving too much away,so as for Nvidia to start price cutting GTX780 cards to rain on their parade.

teppic said:
Since they didn't talk about performance of the card at all, that's not really true. This press event ended up being about future tech, not the new GPUs.

No salesman in his right mind is going to short change himself and understate his product, whether the info is given verbally or in written form.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:21

Actually isn't the R9 280X a slightly overclocked HD7970?

The graph places that at around 6500:

http://www.techspot.com/news/54124-...9-290x-alongside-new-r7-and-r9-gpu-lines.html

Considering that the arrow on the side goes higher I suspect,the score is probably over 8000.

Kaapstad said:
No salesman in his right mind is going to short change himself and understate his product, whether the info is given verbally or in written form.

Not if you consider you need to know when you can actually buy the cards.

If you release information way before cards are actually available it craters existing sales(Osborne effect) and means the competition has time to respond.

Nvidia did this with the GTX680. Remember all the screenshots with low clockspeeds, and all of a sudden just before launch,the magic drivers came out,showing the high boosting non-deterministic Turbo technology Nvidia had been working on??

This caught AMD totally off guard,and I suspect if they had an inkling earlier on,the HD7950 and HD7970 would have had higher clockspeeds from launch.

teppic · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:22

Kaapstad said:
No salesman in his right mind is going to short change himself and understate his product, whether the info is given verbally or in written form.

It wasn't a marketing demonstration, it was tech info for the media. They'll no doubt get benchmarks and info on the new card but it's under the NDA.

The new card isn't going to be outperformed by an overclocked 7970.

BS Dave · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:22

Well I'm taking 2 things away from this and they're saving me money, and giving me more performance. The 290x doesn't seem worth upgrading to from my 7970 which does 1200/1700 on 1.181 volts (lovely) and as bf4 will probably be the only game I seriously play over the next few years Mantle is going make my 7970 more powerful and last that bit longer, not to mention get more out of my average clocking 2700k. Plus i won't need to buy windows 8 to get the best performance in bf4 either. 64bit executable might mean with another 8 gigs of Samsung Green I have a very tidy system for what another £50 or even nothing. Nice work AMD!!!

Gregster · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:24

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Actually isn't the R9 280X a slightly overclocked HD7970?

The graph places that at around 6500:

http://www.techspot.com/news/54124-...9-290x-alongside-new-r7-and-r9-gpu-lines.html

Considering that the arrow on the side goes,higher I suspect,the score is probably over 8000.

Not if you consider you need to know when you can actually buy the cards.

If you release information way before cards are actually available it craters existing sales(Osborne effect) and means the competition has time to respond.

Nvidia did this with the GTX680. Remember all the screenshots with low clockspeeds and all of a sudden just before launch,the magic drivers came out,showing the high boosting non-deterministic Turbo technology Nvidia had been working on??

8001?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:27

Gregster said:
8001?

8009.9999997!

Kaapstad · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:27

TheRealDeal said:
Maybe but look at the arrow at the side its going way above the graph which suggests 8000+.

Actually doing the numbers and giving it some thought using a HD 7970 as a comparison the R9 290X should be looking at a graphics score around 9500 and an overclocked graphics score of 11000.

So yes there is something very odd about the numbers on that graph.

Gregster · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:27

Kaapstad said:
No salesman in his right mind is going to short change himself and understate his product, whether the info is given verbally or in written form.

I have to agree with this.

Give it the hard sell by stating the strong points and I didn't get that from this presentation. You will only have to look in a couple of forums to see people feeling deflated and those who waited will potentially buy something else (worst case scenario is buying Nvidia).

I am not a salesman by any means and I could be a mile off but I don't think so.

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:29

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Actually isn't the R9 280X a slightly overclocked HD7970?

The graph places that at around 6500:

http://www.techspot.com/news/54124-...9-290x-alongside-new-r7-and-r9-gpu-lines.html

Considering that the arrow on the side goes,higher I suspect,the score is probably over 8000.

Not if you consider you need to know when you can actually buy the cards.

If you release information way before cards are actually available it craters existing sales(Osborne effect) and means the competition has time to respond.

Nvidia did this with the GTX680. Remember all the screenshots with low clockspeeds and all of a sudden just before launch,the magic drivers came out,showing the high boosting non-deterministic Turbo technology Nvidia had been working on??

What they actually said was "04:14PM EDT - R9 280X - 3GB GDDR5, $299, > 6800 in Firestrike"

And then "04:14PM EDT - R9 290X, most powerful GPU AMD has ever built"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7368/amd-gpu-product-showcase-live-blog

7970 GE scores 6950 in Firestrike http://www.hardwarezone.com.ph/feature-futuremark-3dmark-fire-strike-graphics-performance-analysis