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The AMD Radeon R9 285 Thread

The EOL of 280x just means with the 285 from my perspective there's now no viable alternative to a 290, which will send me down the 2nd hand route (either 280x or 290) or peeking over the fence.

From a 7850 2 and half years old (best card I ever bought) which has 2GB am I really going spend 170 notes on this?

Nope.
 
David Bisset said:
I'm surprised how much trouble people have understanding this. If 'cheaping out' on the RAM means people can enjoy good performance at a lower price point then I'm all for it. I'm still not impressed by the advertising suggesting these cards for 4k gaming, but that doesn't make the card bad in the slightest, most people are still on 1080p for which it looks fine.
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For 4K these cards are an absolute non starter.
 
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I would say this gets an f for effort. It's just not good enough. The whole industry is getting a little depressing and stale. Amd and Nvidia need to start moving things forward after years of 28nm. I am sure AMD could have done better and hopefully the 285x redeem's them. Over to Nvidia now with the gtx980/70 release.
 
Kaapstad said:
Sapphire Radeon R9 285 Dual-X OC review @Hexus

This ones got some 4K benches.


http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/74033-sapphire-radeon-r9-285-dual-x-oc-28nm-tonga/
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The R9 285 does better than expected in BioShock Infinite, improving the R9 280's performance by a significant 21 per cent. One reason why it's so much quicker, even though it shouldn't be if we go via specification alone, is the effectiveness of the improved geometry/tessellation in the Tonga GPU. BioShock relies on just that for speedy frames.
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Ok so some architectural improvements over the old.



Right, so it is stronger at rendering 4K.



Remember how we spoke about the benefits of the Tonga architecture that may not be evident when looking at a spec sheet? Here's an example of where the spec sheet doesn't lie. Reduced memory bandwidth and lack of available compression optimisations open to the R9 285 means poorer performance than the outgoing R9 280.
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Yeah, thats 176 GB/s vs 240.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Regarding power consumption in a number of reviews it is noticeably lower than the R9 280 yet in others around the same. Really not sure what to take from that TBH!
I was looking at the TR review and it seems tessellation performance is better than the R9 290X:
http://techreport.com/review/26997/amd-radeon-r9-285-graphics-card-reviewed/2

Still not sure why its 5 billion transistors though(bigger than the Tahiti chip in the R9 280X),so I wonder if there is an R9 285X being released??
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Not all the shaders are enabled according to techpowerup, so a 285x will be coming.
Pure speculation but I have a feeling much of the design was for a smaller process, so the transistor budget spent for the updated architecture and I wouldn't be surprised if in its current implementation at 28nm they simply settled for a reasonable die size and went ahead with production as a stop gap.
 
eddyr said:
Not all the shaders are enabled according to techpowerup, so a 285x will be coming.
Pure speculation but I have a feeling much of the design was for a smaller process, so the transistor budget spent for the updated architecture and I wouldn't be surprised if in its current implementation at 28nm they simply settled for a reasonable die size and went ahead with production as a stop gap.
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Why is it bigger than Tahiti? relative to Tahiti Hawaii is a lot smaller per Stream Processor, how did that happen?

Its a little strange, unless something a lot more is lurking in the Die. its nearly as big as Hawaii.
 
humbug said:
Why is it bigger than Tahiti? relative to Tahiti Hawaii is a lot smaller per Stream Processor, how did that happen?

Its a little strange, unless something a lot more is lurking in the Die. its nearly as big as Hawaii.
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Perhaps Hawaii architecture improvements were more limited/localised compared to Tonga with little or no complexity added to the shader design. More are packed in to get more performance in hawaii. Whereas Tonga may have a more complex shader (requiring more transistors for improved performance). Being such a significant component of the gpu it has a significant size impact.

Interestingly the guy at techreprot speculated:
Another question these numbers raise is whether Tonga natively has a 256-bit memory interface. Generally, the size of a chip like this one is dictated by the dimensions of the I/O ring around its perimeter. Since Tonga occupies almost the same area as Tahiti, it's got to have room to accommodate a 384-bit GDDR5 interface. Surely we'll see a Radeon R9 285X card eventually with a fully-enabled Tonga GPU clocked at 1GHz or better. If I were betting, I'd put my money on that card having a 384-bit path to memory
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which is an interesting theory. Only looked at a few overclocking results and it suggests that performance is bandwidth limited. So if above is the case a fully enabled 285X part could perform significantly better. Not going to help perf/watt though.

Edit: according to techreport the die size is smaller 365mm2 (Tahiti) vs 359mm2 (Tonga), quotes the figures as coming from AMD.
http://techreport.com/review/26997/amd-radeon-r9-285-graphics-card-reviewed/2
 
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VisionTek Introduces Its Radeon R9 285 Graphics Card

VisionTek Products LLC, a leading manufacturer of award-winning, high-performance upgrades and accessories for PCs and Macs, today announced the VisionTek Radeon R9 285 graphics card. The new, best-in-class card features up to 945 MHz clock speed, 2 GB GDDR5 RAM, support for 4K Ultra HD 4K gaming, realistic audio, and 3DMark Fire Strike scores that beat the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760.

Designed For Serious PC Gamers
Specifically designed to enable PC gamers to play the most demanding games at maximum detail better than any card in its class, the VisionTek Radeon R9 285 is loaded with the latest technology advancements in Graphics Core Next Architecture, including AMD Eyefinity Technology, DirectX 12, and Mantle support.


Best-in-Class: Outperforms GTX 760
To compare the VisionTek Radeon R9 285 to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760, 3DMark Fire Strike, the world's most popular gaming benchmarking tool, was used to determine each card's overall score in two demanding settings, Performance and Extreme. In both instances, the VisionTek Radeon R9 285 significantly outperformed the competition:

3DMark Fire Strike Performance Setting Overall Score:•R9 285: 7066
•GeForce GTX 760: 5650
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme Setting Overall Score:•R9 285: 3513
•GeForce GTX 760: 2774
See What You've Been Missing with 4K Resolution
The VisionTek R9 285 supports 4K Ultra HD 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution, which is 4x the resolution of 1080p. Typically, configuring a graphics card for use with a high resolution monitor must be done manually. However, AMD's Catalyst Graphics Drivers will perform automatic "plug and play" configuration of supported 4K Ultra HD displays. Further simplifying the ability to use 4K displays is the card's use of AMD Eyefinity technology which can span multiple monitors into one large panoramic display.

Hear What You've Been Missing with TrueAudio
With an onboard audio processing chip powering AMD's TrueAudio technology, the VisionTek R9 285 can deliver accurate 3D surround sound within games and special audio effects like reverbs and room simulations while reducing CPU load. Now you can hear more real-time voices and situational sounds in-game with any and all audio hardware already owned.

Available Immediately and Lifetime Warranty Backed
The $249.99 MSRP VisionTek Radeon R9 285, available immediately at www.visiontek.com, comes backed by a lifetime warranty. The new graphics card's specification are as follows:•Video Memory: 2 GB GDDR5
•Memory Interface: 256-bit
•DirectX Support: 12
•Bus Standard: PCI Express 3.0 x16
•Core Speed: Up to 945MHz
•Memory Speed: 1375 MHz (176GB/s bandwidth)
•Stream Processors/Shading Units: 1792
•Compute Units: 28
•Compute Performance: 3,226 GFLOPS
•Supported Outputs:
(1) Dual link DVI-D connector
(1) Dual link DVI-I connector (VGA supported with included DVI to VGA adapter)
(1) HDMI connector (supports video and audio)
(1) DisplayPort connector
•Number of Monitors Supported: Four
•Warranty: Limited Lifetime
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http://www.techpowerup.com/204820/visiontek-introduces-its-radeon-r9-285-graphics-card.html
 
XFX Rolls Out its Radeon R9 285 Double Dissipation Graphics Card

XFX joined the Radeon R9 285 launch party with its compact R9 285 Double Dissipation graphics card. Built on an black, custom-design, matte-finish PCB, XFX' card features a lightweight version of its twin-fan cooling solution, which has been featured on its older performance-segment cards, such as the R9 270X. The cooler features a dense aluminium fin stack, to which heat is fed by four 6 mm thick copper heat pipes, which is then ventilated by a pair of 80 mm spinners. The card sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 918 MHz core, and 5.50 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. Based on the 28 nm "Tonga" silicon, the R9 285 features 1,792 Graphics CoreNext 1.2 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory on this card. Expect it to be priced at US $249.
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http://www.techpowerup.com/204818/xfx-rolls-out-its-radeon-r9-285-double-dissipation-graphics-card.html
 
Howdy folks,

I'm no expert so these questions might seem a bit simplistic but I'd appreciate the help. Also, I think this is probably the best place to post this...

It's about time I upgraded from my 7850 and I've been considering the new R9 285 cards. However, I haven't ruled out the R9 280X's yet as reading up a bit seems to indicate that 3gb DDR5 minimum is important to consider.

Budget is £250 max really.

i) This is a pretty important factor for me - Are the R9 280X's all over 26cm long or are there versions with comparable dimensions to the new R9 285 cards? (I'm in for a fight with my case if so)
ii) Is the 3gb+ DDR5 as important as some are making out?
iii) How long is it likely to be before the 4gb versions of the R9 285 start to appear, and what price point are they likely to be?
iv) Are the new Nvidia cards (960?) that are being mentioned going to be in the same price bracket or £300+?

v) Lastly, what's your personal recommendation?

Thanks folks
 
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