300 series Rebadge & Refresh confirmed

[Headfoot]

3 possibilities:
1) Respin, refresh = higher clocks on core and memory, more memory, less power. It appears they did not go this way
2) Refresh = new VRAM, or clock bump, or cooler or all of the above, but the same GPU silicon. Looks like this is what they did.
3) Rebrand = Exactly the same with a new box. They didn't do this.

No way anyone who knows anything about the market would spend that much money on a VRAM bumped Hawaii when you can get R9 290 Tri-X that's basically the same for $250 today. The 8GB VRAM is going to be a gimmick box to check. This is basically the same as what nVidia did with the 770 vs 680. Not terrible, but not exciting either. Except the prices on the 390 and 390x if true are awful

 

[svenge]

No way anyone who knows anything about the market would spend that much money on a VRAM bumped Hawaii when you can get R9 290 Tri-X that's basically the same for $250 today. The 8GB VRAM is going to be a gimmick box to check. This is basically the same as what nVidia did with the 770 vs 680. Not terrible, but not exciting either. Except the prices on the 390 and 390x if true are awful

The 680 -> 770 comparison doesn't quite match the 290x -> 390x situation for two reasons:

1) NVIDIA didn't add VRAM to the 770, only bumped the core clock ~40MHz and the memory clock by 1GHz.

2) NVIDIA dropped the MSRP on the 770 to $399, $100 less than the launch price of 680 (which was still selling for > $399 the day before the 770's launch) and equal to what the 670 launched for.

 

[SimianR]

Nano on the other hand is going to be a damn exciting card. My guess is its a heavily salvaged Fury chip for maximizing yields. 25% CUs are disabled per shader engine. I would guess 4 x 768 = 3072 sp and 850-900 Mhz at stock with 175W TDP. The chip will have the full 4 shader engines, 4 tesselation engines and 64 ROP, 4 GB HBM. Its going to be an excellent competitor against GTX 980 with all the latest architectural enhancements to performance and efficiency and that blazing fast HBM. :thumbsup:

The interview with an AMD rep I saw on Youtube seemed to suggest that the Nano wasn't going to be anymore cut down from the Fury (non-x) but would be limited by thermals and clock speed alone - and that under the right conditions it could reach the same level of performance (probably also limited by power - only one connector).

https://youtu.be/KIiNFXf00_U?t=7m55s

I'm not sure how much to read into this - just saw that it was interesting.

 

[3DVagabond]

The interview with an AMD rep I saw on Youtube seemed to suggest that the Nano wasn't going to be anymore cut down from the Fury (non-x) but would be limited by thermals and clock speed alone - and that under the right conditions it could reach the same level of performance (probably also limited by power - only one connector).

https://youtu.be/KIiNFXf00_U?t=7m55s

I'm not sure how much to read into this - just saw that it was interesting.

These marketing guys tend to "misspeak" a lot, then plead ignorance later.

If true, then the power connector shouldn't make too much of a difference. You can draw well above spec. Look at the 295x2. Now, the little cooler could end up the limiting factor. Would have to change that out.

 

[boozzer]

so, basically a rebadge to get rid of inventory? but why the stupid price hike? that is mess up. that is just bad, nv lvl even.

now it is go fury or bust.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Did the TDP get reduced in those slides? Its at 275 now.

 

[SimianR]

These marketing guys tend to "misspeak" a lot, then plead ignorance later.

If true, then the power connector shouldn't make too much of a difference. You can draw well above spec. Look at the 295x2. Now, the little cooler could end up the limiting factor. Would have to change that out.

It would be interesting to see if you could buy up a Nano and do something like a "ghetto" watercooling mod on the cheap compared to a full on Fury X - but get similar performance (at least as close as you could with a cut down chip).

 

[JDG1980]

The interview with an AMD rep I saw on Youtube seemed to suggest that the Nano wasn't going to be anymore cut down from the Fury (non-x) but would be limited by thermals and clock speed alone - and that under the right conditions it could reach the same level of performance (probably also limited by power - only one connector).

https://youtu.be/KIiNFXf00_U?t=7m55s

I'm not sure how much to read into this - just saw that it was interesting.

If the card has one 8-pin connector, then it isn't allowed to draw more than 225W according to the PCIe spec (150W from the 8-pin, plus 75W from the slot). Both AMD and Nvidia have violated the PCIe power spec before, but usually only on dual cards (R9 295 X2 and Titan Z).

 

[96Firebird]

Interesting, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 390X has a dual-fan cooler...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-125-791

 

[Riek]

Because we were told the performance is equivalent to 290X but at a much lower TDP. I highly doubt it will be priced at 500 if you can get a much faster Fury for ~550.

No we weren't.

we were told is had up to 2x the performance/watt vs a 290x and that is was significantly faster than the 290x.

Neither of the statements we know would indicate the performance is equivalent to the 290x.

 

[LTC8K6]

Interesting, the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 390X has a dual-fan cooler...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-125-791

Dual fan coolers were common on the 290X, so it wouldn't be unusual on the 390X.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, how disappointing. And what is with that R9 360 card? Is that a Bonaire, cut down? Less than a 7790? Wonder how they're going to price that. If it's more than $80-90, who needs it. GTX 750 can be had for around $100 AR, sometimes a tiny bit less. And it doesn't need a six-pin power connector.

 

[NTMBK]

Wow, how disappointing. And what is with that R9 360 card? Is that a Bonaire, cut down? Less than a 7790? Wonder how they're going to price that. If it's more than $80-90, who needs it. GTX 750 can be had for around $100 AR, sometimes a tiny bit less. And it doesn't need a six-pin power connector.

The 260X is faster than the 750.

But let's face it, we're stuck on 28nm, we're definitely in diminishing returns territory. Did we really expect refreshed low end cards at this point?

 

[Shmee]

Ya, disappointing. Guess we just got to wait for reviews and see what happens.

 

[iiiankiii]

These cards are weaksauce, yo!

 

[therealnickdanger]

Good move on AMD's part to go the NVIDIA 960 route and highlight nothing but LoL, DoTA2, and CSGO footage! Maybe their marketing people are learning after all. If every card is "guaranteed" to play those games at 1080p at max settings or 4K at max settings for higher-end cards, then they just put themselves on the radar of those gamers.

I'll tell you right now with 100% certainty - I will not buy a new/rebrand GPU without HDMI 2.0. Until mainstream HDTVs start coming with DP (never), it's just too limiting. 4K30 sucks.

 

[Creig]

390X review

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_review/1


Looks like the 390X hangs with the 980.

Let's shut up the naysayers before we begin. Yes, we know this isn't the Fury X. Yes, we know that normally we despise rebadged hardware as much as anyone. Yes, we appreciate this is a stop-gap measure and owners of the R9 290X need not apply. All got that? Good. Where were we...

We were all ready to hate on the R9 390X for all the reasons we outlined above, and certainly if our first experience was a reference card then perhaps we wouldn't be so impressed. But the key word in that sentence is impressed and we absolutely are. You would imagine that a card at this price and designed as an interim it would be aimed at a very small sector of a the market. Somewhere around a basic GTX970. That's exactly where we had it pegged based upon our experience of R9 290Xs and knowledge of how reticent the manufacturers are to give 'free' performance.


The MSI Gaming 8G take upon the R9 390X is spectacular though. Performance is slightly dependant upon which title you're benchmarking, but in general it's not just a good GTX970 that matches the R9 390X. Instead the MSI Gaming is more akin to a regular GTX980 and, sometimes, an overclocked one. We don't care what your relative thoughts about the wisdom of releasing a card that doesn't contain your latest GPU are. We don't really care about whether the Fury X will be a stunner. As always here at OC3D we live in the here and now, and right now the R9 390X, especially in the Gaming guise MSI have festooned it with, is a great graphics card for the money.

There is nothing about this card that is rebrand, its a totally new card. Also just to be clear this could have been called the MSI 290X Gaming V2 and we would be saying the exact same thing. This is in no way shape or form a number change on the box. This card has been designed from the ground up to be amazing and it did just that. Amaze..... (balls?)


The MSI accoutrements make a big difference to the product. The Twin Frozr V cooler and custom PCB ensure that the temperatures are a low 73°C and the card looks amazing. The backplate is as sexy as the front, and no matter what game you throw at it you'll be pleased with the results.
It costs much less than you might expect to pay for this level of performance, and does so whilst looking great, being quiet and cool, and generally finding itself utterly deserving of our OC3D Gold Award and your consideration.

 

[LTC8K6]

It looks and performs exactly like a 290X to me. I can't see any difference.

 

[Creig]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-radeon-r9-390x-gaming-8g-oc-review,1.html

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

nvm, misread.

 

[sandorski]

980 territory, not too bad. Still uses 50watts more, but a decent improvement over 290x. Will have to see how other reviews using other cards turn out.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's just a 290X as far as I can see.

 

[Zstream]

It's just a 290X as far as I can see.

Think you need glasses mate

 

[NTMBK]

It's just a 290X as far as I can see.

20% faster memory.

 

[LTC8K6]

20% faster memory.

So?

We were able to really crank up the SAPPHIRE Radeon R9 290X 8GB Tri-X, up from its stock GPU clock of 1020MHz to 1163MHz, while the RAM we were able to really drive up from 1375MHz to 1575MHz. This was a great achievement, with the card keeping itself nice and cool thanks to that Tri-X cooling technology.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7037/sapphire-radeon-r9-290x-8gb-tri-video-card-review/index11.html