AMD releasing an R9 380X

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It appears the first pictures of the R9 380X have been leaked:
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/216002/amd-readies-radeon-r9-380x-xfx-ready-with-card.html

This is supposed to be based on a fully enabled Tonga GPU which has not been released in a desktop card yet.

Hopefully it should get close to an R9 390 at 1080p.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Tonga has a 384 bit memory controller AFAIK.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

256-Bit, as used in both R9 380 and R9 285.

Mobile Radeon R9 M295X was also Tonga based, specifically the "full" Tonga with 2048 Stream Processors and a 256-Bit bus

http://wccftech.com/tonga-xt-hsa-support-384-bit-bus/
http://www.techpowerup.com/205811/amd-tonga-silicon-features-384-bit-wide-memory-interface.html

None of the SKUs have the full memory controller,and I would suspect that the R9 M295X used in the iMac only has a 256 bit memory controller due to TDP and PCB size limitations.

After all,Tonga is basically the same size as Tahiti.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A R9 380X or GTX960TI might be a good upgrade from my venerable GTX660 after my GTX960 decided it wanted to go kaput.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's 0-10% faster but when you factor lower PSU requirements and the free game, the 380 ends up being 30-40% more expensive! That's just insane considering the 960 isn't an amazing bang for buck..

Dude both will run fine off my XFX PRO 450W PSU.

Seriously, the melodramatics...

I was running overclocked 8800GTS 512MB and HD5850 1GB cards off a SFF Shuttle 450w PSU and it was a group regulated non 80+ design. The system lasted nearly 5 years.

My Core i7 and a GTX660 or GTX960 was lucky to see 200w at the wall when gaming.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would take the average performance difference between the 280 and the 280x, and apply it to this likely scenario.

The R9 380 matches the R9 280X now in many games. Remember it has improved tessellation over GPUs like the R9 290 series.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

One of the chaps who works for WCCFTECH actually leaked some more information in the comments of this article:

http://wccftech.com/amd-arctic-islands-16nm-launch-coming-quarters/







If that 3DMark11 score is correct that places the R9 380X closer to an R9 290 than to the R9 280X!

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is that colorfire 3 fan card a 380X? That is one real long PCB considering how much shorter the 380 is.

Their R9 380 is long too:

http://item.yixun.com/item-2226010.html

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anyone seriously thinking of buying one this late in the day? Seems a totally pointless release to me.

Emm, you mean apart from the huge gulf in performance between the R9 380/GTX960 and the R9 390/ GTX970??

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Price is $249 according to that link.

So ~£200 here.

It will offer performance a little higher than a 280X. In fact the 280X has for several years given people the same price/perf the 380X will give, at pretty much the same price point.

Hardly going to set the world on fire, is it. Most people will have upgraded to the 280X or 960, and the 380X is pretty much a like-for-like replacement, only updated to the latest GCN.

Who is the market for this card? People who didn't want a 960, didn't want a 280X, but want a similar card for similar money, a few months before a major performance jump hits with a new generation?

OK, then.

I know loads of people who would not want to spend more than £200 on a new card and only play at 1080p. Unless,Nvidia release a GTX960TI,then the GTX960 will need to drop down even more.

You also do realise the R9 380 is equaling or exceeding the R9 380X and there is still a massive gulf between the £150 GTX960 and R9 380 and the £250 to £300 GTX970 and R9 390 cards especially at 1080P.

Plus on top of this the R9 380X at least offers Freesync compatibility and better tessellation throughput and even has the same VR featureset as the Fury cards.