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

[LtMatt]

Price drops on the current 7XX stack, then Titan Ultra released to reclaim the performance crown, although it will be priced out of most people's reach. That would be enough until 20nm.

Titan ultra. Can't see Nvidia dropping prices dramatically. People will still buy them regardless of cost.

 

[LtMatt]

Looks like Charlie from SemiAccurate called it sometime ago and is going to be spot on.

It looks like new GPUs are coming this fall with AMD’s Hawaii now set for late September. This one is going to change the market mainly because there is no competition for it this year.
As SemiAccurate said in April when we reported about Nvidia’s cancellation of the GK114 Kepler update, the company is showing severe financial stress related cracks in the development roadmap. Hawaii and the Volcanic Islands family is coming this fall and a late September public show likely means an October silicon launch. This is a massively updated GPU vs the minor tweaks in the last round. Given the timing, Hawaii is unquestionably a 28nm part so no shrink related performance bump but the architectural changes should more than make up for that. It is unlikely to be an incremental advance.

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/amd-to-launch-hawaii-in-hawaii/

 

[LtMatt]

Every time my old 7970 gets mentioned i have to have a quiet moment to myself and think about the good old days.

 

[LtMatt]

How old is old though Matt?

Roughly June 2012 to June 2013. She lived fast and died young and spanked many a 680 into oblivion.

 

[LtMatt]

All rumours thus far seem to be pointing towards a new single GPU performance crown.

Not sure why people keep asking why it's clocked so low...call yourselves overclockers? Seems to be a lot of speculation regarding price even though we've been given an indication...albeit I find it hard to believe given the firms history.

Clocked low to stay within TDP i reckon. I bet there is a second bios which unlocks the true power, higher voltage, bigger TDP etc. I also bet they use GDDR5 Hynix memory underclocked at 1125-1250. So i would expect a massive overclock potential on the memory.

Bad clockers 1600mhz
Average 1700mhz
Good 1800mhz
Golden 1900mhz+

My two cents.

 

[LtMatt]

I wouldn't be surprised if it had lower OC'ing potential on the core, not that it's a bad thing.
But the 69XX certainly overclocked worse than the 58XX.

I would expect similar core overclocks, give or take, to what the 7790 achieved. That as well as Hawaii was GCN1.1 or 2.0 if you prefer. Faster performance than the 7770 it replaced but at the same TDP.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/03/22/sapphire-radeon-hd-7790-1gb-review/9

We naturally wanted to see just how much it could really do. We used AMD's own OverDrive software for the task, and eventually settled on a core frequency of 1,200Mhz. This is the maximum that the software permits, and represents an overclock of a whopping 20 percent from stock speeds

Bit tech got 20% more from the 7790.

Vortex got the similar. (http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/his_hd_7790_turbo_review,22.html) So did eteknix, twice on two different 7790's. (http://www.eteknix.com/gigabyte-hd-7790-windforce-oc-2gb-graphics-card-review/17/) & (http://www.eteknix.com/club3d-hd-7790-royalking-poker-series-1gb-graphics-card-review/17/) both maxing out CCC clocks of 1200mhz.

I'd expect you'd get anywhere from 15-30% more with Hawaii.

Speculation from me obviously, but thats what my money is on.

 

[LtMatt]

The 7790 replaced the 1GB 7850, not the 7770.

The 7790 was introduced to tackle the gap between the 7770 and the 7850. It was also a good chance for AMD to test GCN1.1-2.0.

Launching today is AMD’s second new GPU for 2013 and the first GPU to make it to the retail desktop market: Bonaire. Bonaire in turn will be powering AMD’s first new retail desktop card for 2013, the Radeon HD 7790. With the 7790 AMD intends to fill the sometimes wide chasm in price and performance between their existing 7770 (Cape Verde) and 7850 (Pitcairn) products, and as a result today we’ll see just how Bonaire and the 7790 fit into the big picture for AMD’s 2013 plans

Source
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6837/...w-feat-sapphire-the-first-desktop-sea-islands

 

[LtMatt]

Pretty sure Gibbo (Or maybe Rawz) said it was replacing the 7850 1GB.
And the 7850 1GB has all but disappeared.

There's a few reviews that mention it ;
http://www.pcgamer.com/review/sapphire-hd-7790-review/

For one.

Anand have pretty good ties with AMD so ill take their word that it was primarily designed to fill the gap in performance between the two cards i mentioned earlier, rather than replace a 1gb 7850 which it is slower than. It was also supposed to be compete with the 650TI but it ended up being a little bit slower.

 

[LtMatt]

Pretty sure Gibbo (Or maybe Rawz) said it was replacing the 7850 1GB.
And the 7850 1GB has all but disappeared.

There's a few reviews that mention it ;
http://www.pcgamer.com/review/sapphire-hd-7790-review/

For one.

EDIT : Some reviews have it pinned as replacement, other ones have it pinned as expanding the range.

Either way, the 7850 1GB has pretty much disappeared.

Anand have pretty good ties with AMD so ill take their word that it was primarily designed to fill the gap in performance between the two cards i mentioned earlier, rather than replace a 1gb 7850 which it is slower than. It was also supposed to be compete with the 650TI but it ended up being a little bit slower.

“It posts mediocre benchmark figures – worse than the HD 7850 1GB for much the same price, even when overclocked.”

Taken from your link. That's why its not supposed to replace the 7850 Martini.

 

[LtMatt]

Is and going up against titan/780 only or 770 too?

Titan/780. 7970ghz already matches up well against a 770.

 

[LtMatt]

The 7770 launched higher priced than the better 6850.

HD7770 is faster than a 6850.

I'll dig through the archives for ya...

3298. GFX Score 3508. 7770. Air cooling. Physics Score 12803. CPU 2700K @ 5.0 Water cooled - LTMatt

HD7770 is a little bit faster than a 6850. 7790 is what, 10-15% faster than a HD7770, probably looking at around 15-20% extra performance.

Probably looking at a tad more.
Your overclocked 7770 beat my overclocked 6850 by 20%, we were both running average overclocks of around 20-25% as well.

I'm not too sure how well the 7790s clocks like, gotta be the same as all the other 7*** series though.
Either way it's a half decent upgrade, if the OP could find the extra couple of quid for a 7850 he'll be laughing (or get lucky with the clearance lines, what's annoyingly empty atm)

Thanks for chirping in Tone.

The Hd7770 is not to be under estimated once clocked. Like all AMD 7xxx cards it scales well (though not as well as 79xx cards) with overclocking. In most current DX11 games it beats a 6850 with both cards at stock settings, though its not by much. I will grant at stock the 6850 is generally the faster in my opinion due to the 128bit bus on the 7770 but once you overclock the 7770 it catches up.

Found my score.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=22908510&postcount=1339

980/1150 (not 1300 like i thought, i think that's one of my other 6850s that do that)

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4573393

 

[LtMatt]

The 7770 when it launched, stock for stock, wasn't faster than a 6850.
It came out higher priced too.

Look at reviews.

From anandtech ;

Drivers.

Also always take user benchmarks over review site.

 

[LtMatt]

But it didn't launch with those drivers, and the point was the launch.

Present Day >> Pasty Tenths.

The 7770 is the faster card. I know i own one.

 

[LtMatt]

But it didn't launch with those drivers, and the point was the launch.
I think the 7770 actually launched near 6870 pricing, I bought some 6870's for about 120-140 each 2 years ago.

Got my HD7770 for £90 with free games from ocuk just before christmas last year.

 

[LtMatt]

It needed to drop.
I got my friend one for about 80 quid a little a while ago with 5 games, it does him fine.

The annoying this was the 7790 launched not long after and i would have much rather got that for the GCN1.1-2.0 performance optimizations +30% for only a 5% higher TDP. Alas it wasn't to be.

 

[LtMatt]

I thought that was a joke until i saw the link at the bottom of your post.

What time in the UK will the live stream be on?

 

[LtMatt]

Its going to equal or slightly beat a titan, being 33% smaller in die size whilst being considerably cheaper. Wish i could afford one.

 

[LtMatt]

Am thinking around £579.99 for the top tier asus/evga etc £549.99 palit/gainward and as soon as gouging is over they will settle back to £499.99 in the space of a fortnight

Only Asus out of the ones you listed are an AMD AIB.

 

[LtMatt]

typo but the prices I will stick with cheers LtMatt

Interesting. My prediction is £425-£500.

 

[LtMatt]

Have spent that much time thinking of these cards, what they might bring will I change over from NVidia that I cannot even get Amd aib's right I plumbed for the gigabyte 7990's on special over the weekend and be done with it.
Would certainly like to roadtest one of the new cards but will have to wait another month, what are your plans LtMatt?

I'm stuck with what i have. Thanks to OCUK my cards are not worth selling any more.