AMD Launches Retail Radeon 300 Series: A Prelude To Fury
by Ryan Smith on June 18, 2015 10:35 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 300
Throughout the last couple of months AMD has been in the process of carefully and deliberately rolling out their latest generation of video cards. In a multi-staged process we have seen AMD engage in a what is best described as a drawn-out teaser and an early technical briefing, announcing their intention to roll out a new high-end video card this quarter, further teasing the public with pictures of the card, and then in the middle of all of that giving the technical press an in-depth briefing on AMD’s key next-generation memory technology, High Bandwidth Memory. While AMD did their best to make sure the details of the cards were kept under wraps – with varying results – AMD definitely wanted to make sure the world would know that their card was coming.
Catching up to the present, earlier this week AMD held their 2015 GPU product showcase, dubbed “The New Era of PC Gaming.” As the latest stage in AMD’s master plan, AMD held a public event in Los Angeles similar to their 2014 GPU product showcase in Hawaii, where the company announced their product lineup ahead of the full launch of the products in question. In the presentation we learned some (but not all) of the details surrounding AMD’s Radeon 300 series, including the numbered products from 360 to 390, and of course the company’s new high-end flagship video card, the Radeon R9 Fury X.
All told the showcase itself was something of a teaser itself – we got prices, but not complete specifications – but we also received confirmation of AMD’s rollout plans. The next stage, coinciding with today’s article, is the formal launch of the numbered members of the Radeon 300 series, which are product refreshes based on existing AMD GPUs, similar to what we saw with the 200 series in 2013. Meanwhile today is also the greater unveiling (but not the launch) of the Fury series, with AMD allowing us to share more details about the new card and its specifications. Following today’s announcements and launches, the Radeon R9 Fury X will be launching in just under a week from now, on June 24th, and then after that the R9 Fury (vanilla) will be launching on July 14th.
AMD R9 300 Series Specification Comparison | ||||||
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X | AMD Radeon R9 Fury | AMD Radeon R9 390X | AMD Radeon R9 390 | |||
Stream Processors | 4096 | (Fewer) | 2816 | 2560 | ||
Texture Units | 256 | (How much) | 176 | 160 | ||
ROPs | 64 | (Depnds) | 64 | 64 | ||
Boost Clock | 1050MHz | (On Yields) | 1050MHz | 1000MHz | ||
Memory Clock | 1Gbps HBM | (Memory Too) | 5Gbps GDDR5 | 5Gbps GDDR5 | ||
Memory Bus Width | 4096-bit | 4096-bit | 512-bit | 512-bit | ||
VRAM | 4GB | 4GB | 8GB | 8GB | ||
FP64 | 1/16 | 1/16 | 1/8 | 1/8 | ||
TrueAudio | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||
Transistor Count | N/A | N/A | 6.2B | 6.2B | ||
Typical Board Power | 275W | (High) | 275W | 275W | ||
Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | ||
Architecture | GCN 1.2 | GCN 1.2 | GCN 1.1 | GCN 1.1 | ||
GPU | Fiji | Fiji | Hawaii | Hawaii | ||
Launch Date | 06/24/15 | 07/14/15 | 06/18/15 | 06/18/15 | ||
Launch Price | $649 | $549 | $429 | $329 |
Overall AMD is launching an almost top-to-bottom refresh of its product lineup overnight. Between now and July 14th the company and its partners will introduce cards from $109 to $649, and while there are a few gaps that AMD is almost certainly purposely leaving in place to give them something to announce later this year, overall we’re seeing more or less AMD’s entire hand for 2015 and early 2016 in one go.
As for the subjects at hand today, there are really two stories to talk about. The first is of course the Radeon R9 Fury series, the products that will house AMD’s newest flagship GPU, Fiji. While I won’t butter up Fiji from an architectural standpoint at this time, what Fiji does bring to the table are two very big changes for AMD. The first of these is of course high bandwidth memory, which not only gives AMD more VRAM bandwidth than ever before, but it outright changes how GPUs video cards are constructed. The second big change is that Fiji is just very big. At 596mm2 AMD went right to the reticle limit, putting AMD squarely into the big GPU race.
But before Fury comes the rest of the 300 series. We'll take a look at Fury in due time - while we've been briefed on the subject and have been authorized to discuss it, we want to hold back for when we have the hardware in hand - so our focus for today will be on what's launching today, and that's the Radeon 300 series.
Being released today are five new cards from AMD’s partners, which will form the backbone of the Radeon 300 series from $109 to $429. To our regular readers these parts will be familiar – and to some, perhaps more familiar than they’d like – while for AMD the 300 series represents their 3rd generation of retail 28nm products.
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chizow - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
AMD already dropped their prices thanks to Nvidia, so the customer already won, you're welcome.FMinus - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Indeed they did, and there will be many more happy customers when Fury releases.Time to ask those who bought those Titan X if it was worth spending $350 for 2 and a half months, before the 980Ti released. I doubt many are still that happy. If AMD kicks the 980Ti price down below $600, I think they might be happy again.
Nagorak - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
The people who bought it don't care. The only people who spend $1000 on a graphics card are people who make way more money than they know what to do with, or who are frivolous spenders who just blow money without thinking.chizow - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Well, I certainly had to give pause, there's always choices to be made with disposable/discretionary income, but in the end, seeing some of these games at 1440p with full maxed details and 4xMSAA or in 3D Vision (GTA5 at 70FPS per eye in 3D) are just jawdropping, so yeah. money well spent.RSIlluminator - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
You're missing a huge demographic here, and that is professional users. Titans are basically used by scientists, engineers, previz architects etc. A gamer doesn't really need a Titan card, unless they want the latest and greatest.Trenter - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Fury x will dominate titan x in double precision, nvidia had to strip all their dp hardware out to compete with fiji.MapRef41N93W - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
A) Who cares about double precision, it's used only by actual professionals and mostly for scientific simulations.B) NVIDIA developed the Maxwell architecture years ago and it was designed to remove DP for the purpose of saving power. Fiji was not even a blip on the radar when Maxwell was in development
C) How much is AMD paying you for these comments?
chizow - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Nah, Nvidia won't drop prices at all, even if Fury X is +/-5% as expected. AMD knew exactly what their target was and they hit it, barely, needing a WCE and 275W to do it. Any 980Ti will be able to meet or beat that performance with just a slight OC.As for Titan X, certainly worth it and happy, it still looks to retain the top end performance and it certainly won't be subject to concerns about VRAM, like the Fury X will at the resolutions and settings it is expected to run at, especially in multi-GPU configs. I wasn't sure so I went through the paces myself, even 6GB with 2x980Ti wasn't enough, so I traded them for a 2nd Titan X and cash. Now I'm happy and will be until Pascal drops next year or 2017. :)
MapRef41N93W - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
I'm extremely happy with my Titan X that I have under water and running at 1520/8200 clocks. My card will eat any Fury X for dinner (5278 FS Ultra score) as Fury's will be lucky to hit even 1200MHz based on that extremely dense die + what we've seen from GCN in the past.Also lets not forget about 4GB VRAM. Don't care if it's HBM or not, it's still 4GB. The minute it was clear that Fury would not have 8GB (as originally rumoured) and instead 4, I bought my Titan X.
FlushedBubblyJock - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
Yes I see the average OC on water for Titan X core is an astounding 1497... hahahah oh man now wonder it's all silent on everything about it except amd fans whining about the price.They are so sad. the average OC on water for their failed precious 290X is 1187.
Let's face it, the Titan X is an OVERCLOCKING MONSTER.