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

Kaapstad · 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??

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 said:
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.

Kaapstad said:
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.

Have just given this some more thought see my post above.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:30

An overclocked HD7970(R9 280) is giving 6500 in the chart. I strongly suspect,they might have use an FX9590,and IIRC Intel CPUs give better 3DMark scores.

teppic · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:33

They probably did use an AMD CPU for it, they did for all the other demos.

Since we've really got nothing to go on I think it'd be a mistake to make buying decisions when all this is due within a week or so. I'm disappointed we got no real info on the new card, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:34

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
An overclocked HD7970(R9 280) is giving 6500 in the chart. I strongly suspect,they might have use an FX9590,and IIRC Intel CPUs give better 3DMark scores.

Not by a huge amount, an FX8 gives 10K In firestrike @ 5Ghz, i think a 3770K is about 12K at 4.8

And the 7970 GE is ~7K GFX

whyscotty · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:35

Either way - those scores seem wrong

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:37

whyscotty said:
Either way - those scores seem wrong

Very, have to wait for NDA to lift, those slides are not right.

drunkenmaster · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:37

I still find it funny that people can't understand the basic difference between a Tech day AMD are holding for the media and an event for gamers who don't care about the tech. This wasn't the R290x launch. As for overclocked part, afaik trumedia was only compatible with the top few cards in the range so if it was purely software it would likely work with both last gen and the entire range. Meaning they are adding a few more performance oriented things to higher up range which is fairly new for AMD.

I'd also expect the 7970 replacement to have the 7790/R290x style boost in geometry power so I wouldn't expect it to be simply renamed cards below the top end but an entire new gpu line top to bottom with the new architecture.... which isn't surprising seeing as that is what they said it was give or take.

In terms of performance, not really sure why AMD used 3dmark numbers nor why people give them such importance. It's a very simple benchmark of performance to expect, nothing more or less and AMD are saying the 7870 got X amount, this card at a new price point gets around the same, this new top end gpu gets more than the last top end gpu.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:39

humbug said:
Not by a huge amount, an FX8 gives 10K In firestrike @ 5Ghz, i think a 3770K is about 12K at 4.8

We are not talking about big differences in scores though. So if an R9 290X does score 8000 with an FX9590 ,and a reference GTX780 scores around 8500 to 8600 with an overclocked core i7,that easily is enough to lower the score. We are literally talking around 6% to 10% or thereabouts in the 3DMark Fire Strike score.

Anyway,we better wait until we see actual reviews,before judging the card!!

Phixsator · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:42

Prices here in Denmark on both the 7970 ghz and nvidia gtx 780 has already dropped like 70ish quid from last i looked like like 1 week ago.

FoxEye · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:43

So when do we get real info on these cards? When's NDA lifted?

HighlandeR · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:43

http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+Soft+L...Programmable+Audio+in+Hawaii/article33449.htm

Zenduri · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:43

Dunno how true this is. Post live feed info?

Updates 1 through 3: R8-280X will be a rebrand. R200 will be 28nm. Tahiti getting Price cut.

teppic · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:46

FoxEye said:
So when do we get real info on these cards? When's NDA lifted?

Not certain, but the cards are available for pre-order the beginning of October, so by then at the very latest.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:47

HighlandeR said:
http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+Soft+L...Programmable+Audio+in+Hawaii/article33449.htm

There are some specifications in that article.

6 billion transistors!!

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:49

40% more than the 7970 ^^^

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
We are not talking about differences in scores though. So if an R9 290X does score 8000,and a GTX780 scores around 8500 to 8600,that easily is enough to lower the score. We are literally talking around 6% to 10% or thereabouts in the 3DMark Fire Strike score.

-6 to 10% would make it 10% faster than a 7970 GE.

The problem with that is the 780 score much higher than that in terms of GFX, hell the 7970 GE is 7K, you can run a 7950 @ 9K 24/7.

If we put it down to the CPU then we are making assumptions.

The numbers are just to low, if the R9 290X was just an overclocked 7970 GE then i could believe it, a 7970 in your or my hands would blow such an R9 290X out of the water.

Kaapstad · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:51

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
We are not talking about big differences in scores though. So if an R9 290X does score 8000 with an FX9590 ,and a reference GTX780 scores around 8500 to 8600 with an overclocked core i7,that easily is enough to lower the score. We are literally talking around 6% to 10% or thereabouts in the 3DMark Fire Strike score.

Anyway,we better wait until we see actual reviews,before judging the card!!

I think a GTX 780 will probably score a fair bit more than 8600 for graphics, I have just sent a single stock Titan round the block with my 3930k on 4.0 and scored 10429 for graphics.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/904386

I think we need to take the scores on that graph with a pinch of salt and wait for some reviews/benches.

teppic · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:54

I still think it's going to outperform the Titan by a little. They're rebranding a highly overclocked 7970 as a lower card, so of course they can't sell their top one being outperformed by it, as well as the last generation.

Maybe the NDA will be lifted by Monday, after all this is over and the press have had a chance to do benchmarks.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 00:54

humbug said:
40% more than the 7970 ^^^

-6 to 10% would make it 10% faster than a 7970 GE.

The problem with that is the 780 score much higher than that in terms of GFX, hell the 7970 GE is 7K, you can run a 7950 @ 9K 24/7.

If we put it down to the CPU then we are making assumptions.

The numbers are just to low, if the R9 290X was just an overclocked 7970 GE then i could believe it, a 7970 in your or my hands would blow such an R9 290X out of the water.

The problem there is litterally around 10% to 13% difference between an HD7970GE and a Geforce Titan in 3DMark Fire Strike,and less than that for a GTX780.

The Star Citizen demo was run on an FX9590(the dev mentions a 5GHZ FX CPU being used) and an R9 290X graphics card.

So,the point is this card could probably be easily GTX780 or Geforce Titan level performance if they used a slower CPU.

The other aspects,is clockspeeds for the card,which have been rumoured to be lower than an HD7970GE.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 26 Sep 2013 at 01:00

Kaapstad said:
I think a GTX 780 will probably score a fair bit more than 8600 for graphics, I have just sent a single stock Titan round the block with my 3930k on 4.0 and scored 10429 for graphics.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/904386

I think we need to take the scores on that graph with a pinch of salt and wait for some reviews/benches.

Looking at reviews with reference GTX780 cards,the score varies between 8300 to 8700:

http://img.hexus.net/v2/graphics_cards/nvidia/Titan/w324/3D.png
http://www.vortez.net/articles_file/23400_3dmark performance.png
http://legitreviews.com/images/reviews/2201/firestrike.png

The first review used a Core i7 3770K and the last two a Intel Core i7-3960X.

Just using a stock clocked Core i7 3770K dropped the score by around 5% or thereabouts.

I agree about waiting for reviews!

humbug · 26 Sep 2013 at 01:03

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The problem there is litterally around 10% to 13% difference between an HD7970GE and a Geforce Titan in 3DMark Fire Strike,and less than that for a GTX780.

The Star Citizen demo was run on an FX9590(the dev mentions a 5GHZ FX CPU being used) and an R9 290X graphics card.

So,the point is this card could probably be easily GTX780 or Geforce Titan level performance if they used a slower CPU.

The other aspects,is clockspeeds for the card,which have been rumoured to be lower than an HD7970GE.

yeah 900Mhz~

It has 40% more transistors than the 7970, 4.3bn vs 6bn = +40%

7870: 1280 SP's, 2.8bn Transistors @ 32 ROP's, 256Bit...| 2.8bn x2 = 5.6bn = 64 ROP's, 512Bit, 2560SP's... 2560 + 10% = 2816 > 5.6 + 10% = 6.16bn.

(-12ROP's) > 2560 SP's, 48 ROP's, 512Bit +10% = 6bn~? / 2880 SP's, 48 ROP's, 512Bit = 6bn~?