[BitsAndChips]390X ready for launch - AMD ironing out drivers - Computex launch

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DearLord

Junior Member
Mar 22, 2015
17
1
6
Batman and Witcher 3 are the two biggest titles of the year?

Witcher 2 didn't come anywhere near biggest title, and Batman sales vs COD?

I know the new Batman is supposed to be somewhat of an upgrade visually and allow more enemies on the screen however the recommended system requirements I found online say 6950/660. I don't see this being a game pushing users to purchase a Titan X if they were thinking about waiting.

Additionally both games you name are Gameworks titles. If users are of the opinion that these are the two biggest releases of the year, I don't see them purchasing AMD.

I was saying that those wanting to play such 'summer blockbusters' on high/ultra at 60+ fps would be looking hard at the 970, not the titan, especially if they were building new or upgrading. and if the 390/x were dropping by the end of may in a reachable price range, I think many would jump on it gameworks be damned.
 

dacostafilipe

Senior member
Oct 10, 2013
803
301
136
The 290X vs. 290 scaling doesn't work because there is not a linear increase in ROPs/memory bandwidth. R9 390X should have more than double the effective memory bandwidth increase over R9 290X and more than 50% increase in shader, texture and pixel fill-rate. But even if we assume your 45.6% increase, that puts us 2-3% behind Titan X. At $700, that would already make it a better buy than the Titan X. Now imagine R9 390 nonX just 10% slower than an R9 390X --> we would end up with a chip 13-14% slower than the Titan X for $500. Say hello to 2 of those in CF! Good-bye Titan X! :biggrin:

I agree with you 100%.

Those 45.6% should be the minimum to expect.
 

showb1z

Senior member
Dec 30, 2010
462
53
91
Batman and Witcher 3 are the two biggest titles of the year?

Witcher 2 didn't come anywhere near biggest title, and Batman sales vs COD?

I know the new Batman is supposed to be somewhat of an upgrade visually and allow more enemies on the screen however the recommended system requirements I found online say 6950/660. I don't see this being a game pushing users to purchase a Titan X if they were thinking about waiting.

Additionally both games you name are Gameworks titles. If users are of the opinion that these are the two biggest releases of the year, I don't see them purchasing AMD.

This isn't about being the biggest franchise, it's about being the biggest PC game. COD doesn't sell dGPU's.
I don't know about Batman, but Witcher 3 is definitely the biggest reason to upgrade this year for a lot of people. So AMD better get a driver out to fix Gameworks in that game ASAP, they can't afford to wait 3 months.
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
This isn't about being the biggest franchise, it's about being the biggest PC game. COD doesn't sell dGPU's.
I don't know about Batman, but Witcher 3 is definitely the biggest reason to upgrade this year for a lot of people. So AMD better get a driver out to fix Gameworks in that game ASAP, they can't afford to wait 3 months.

Unless it requires a game patch that's out of their control.
 
Feb 19, 2009
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Both Witcher 3 and GTA V are big reasons for PC upgrades. GTA V devs are pushing their game engine to the max to make for a great PC experience, so expect lots of ultra textures & huge view range that will punish GPUs.

I'm confident these developers will get it right and optimize for AMD during development even-though they are with GameWorks. If not & AMD runs like crap, I'll prolly just get a 980ti and join aboard the GW train. Waiting 4 months for a AMD performance patch is not right. :/
 

showb1z

Senior member
Dec 30, 2010
462
53
91
Unless it requires a game patch that's out of their control.
Let's hope CDPR lives up to their rep then, they surely can't be worse than Ubisoft.
But I didn't get rid of my GTX970 to go crawling back to Nvidia, I'm getting a 390 either way.
 

dacostafilipe

Senior member
Oct 10, 2013
803
301
136
You are missing Battlefront guys.

With the new Starwars movie releasing end 2015, this will create a huge hype around this game.

Could lead to a lot of people wanting/needing to upgrade.
 

showb1z

Senior member
Dec 30, 2010
462
53
91
Remains to be seen whether Battlefront will be a big improvement over BF4 though. Hardline looks the same/worse.
 

dacostafilipe

Senior member
Oct 10, 2013
803
301
136
Remains to be seen whether Battlefront will be a big improvement over BF4 though. Hardline looks the same/worse.

Yeah, but it's more mainstream then BF4 ... even if it's only on par with BF4, it should require an upgrade for most people.
 

guskline

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2006
5,338
476
126
Since Computex in Taipei has opening ceremonies on June 2, looks like we only have 2 more months to wait for the R9 390 and then the comparison can begin.

As to TitanX, like every other highest end component, you pay a premium for it, regardless. I should know, I just bought a 5960x!
 

guskline

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2006
5,338
476
126
Let's hope CDPR lives up to their rep then, they surely can't be worse than Ubisoft.
But I didn't get rid of my GTX970 to go crawling back to Nvidia, I'm getting a 390 either way.

Feel the same way!:awe:
 

Cloudfire777

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2013
1,787
95
91
Arctic Islands, aka R9 400 series will be the cards that will use a new architecture. A lot of sites are writing about it today. Also that the upcoming APUs will feature HBM and graphics from it. 400 series will be out in 2016, and will be built on 16nm FinFET most likely.
http://wccftech.com/amd-greenland-gpu-rumored-launch-year-part-radeon-r400-arctic-islands-family/

R9 300 series will be pretty dissappointing architecture wise, mostly rebrands which we have already seen, and they will be based on the same 2012 architecture with a few extra features like XDMA and TrueAudio. R9 390/390X will have very high power draw and TDP and there will be countless comparisons against GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti where AMD may not gain much if the cost HBM drives the price up toward GTX 980 Ti price. The efficiency vs Maxwell will be what will be dragging them down, and if performance is the same as 980 Ti or worse, with the price similar, AMD will have huge problems regaining any market share.

R9 360, 370 and 380 (+X) will all be rebrands, renamed to fit the "Pirate Islands" theme, to try to trick people in to buying rebrands. With the current news and the latest roadmaps and the driver leak, I am not very hopeful for AMD.
 
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Rvenger

Elite Member <br> Super Moderator <br> Video Cards
Apr 6, 2004
6,283
5
81
I just bought a 295x2 because it was so cheap and wanted to check out the AIO. Definitely not going with the WCE. Runs cool and quiet but raises the temps on all my other components due to exhaust restrictions. Losing that 140mm rear fan has a huge deficit under idle conditions.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
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:rolleyes:

You seem to not understand this simple concept:

1) When SLI/CF doesn't work, if there is a $500 GPU with 87-90% of the performance of a $1000 Titan X, that's HALF the price for 10-13% less performance.

2) When SLI/CF does work, that's 50-70% more performance for a similar price.

In other words, that's a win-win situation because 10-13% less performance will not make Titan X more playable in games, while having a 2nd GPU when CF/SLI works provides a huge improvement in performance.

No one advocates buying dual GPUs with similar performance to a single-chip flagship if the prices are similar. In other words, no one would advise someone to buy GTX760 SLI over 780Ti/R9 290X or GTX970 SLI over a $700 GM200 6GB / R9 390X (assuming it has 90% of the performance of the Titan X). However, it should be obvious that there are clear situations where dual videocard setups are hands down better than a single GPU option. 2 primary examples are $660 GTX970 SLI vs. $550-600 980 OR R9 295X2 $650 vs. $550-600 980 for 4K gaming. Your desire to always ignore multi-GPU setups as irrelevant dismisses specific cases where dual-GPU setups are simply the better option.

The minute there is a card with 87-90% of the performance of a Titan X for $500-550, the Titan X is history/irrelevant. You don't have to agree but many will. As 3DVagabond mentioned, the Titan X at $1K is grossly overpriced. It's way out of line based on the price/technology curve and it's obvious to anyone who follows the GPU industry. Even though there is a small group of enthusiasts who always buy the best, it doesn't change the facts that a cheaper priced GM200 6GB is inevitable, as well as a way superior price/performance AMD R9 390 option.



Ya, I get that. There are going to be people buying 3-4 Titan Xs. However, in 3-6 months from now, there will be cards with similar performance for $600-700. If someone is in no rush (i.e., has a backlog of games), is still waiting for FreeSync vs. GSync monitor debate to settle down, and could care less about bragging rights, the Titan X is an easy skip. Again, many called that the original Titan a huge rip-off and a card that was launched at the wrong time for gaming; and that turned out to be 100% true. The Titan X's performance increase over the 980 is less than the original Titan's was over the 680 but the price is the same. That makes the Titan X's relative performance standing even worse, especially so since the rumoured specs for an R9 390X are simply beastly.

Don't forget that some gamers buy 2 GPUs when they upgrade. If for example I can get 87-90% of the performance of Titan X SLI in R9 390 nonX CF/GM200 6GB SLI for 40-50% less, it's worth waiting for 3-6 months. Some people disagree, but for me it's also the principle - I won't support $999 single GPU prices even though I can afford it because I think sending a signal to NV that these prices are OK does more damage to the GPU industry then it helps.

Totally with ya here....

Right now, I have money to burn on GPUs but there isn't a hugely-compelling option from either camp...

I nabbed a Titan X but then just re-sold to defray some future upgrades. Maybe will just end-up waiting for 14/16nm and get (2) top or 2nd-tier SKUs then. Titan X is 'OK' but I don't feel the $1k price is justified. The 4xx series really looks to be bringing some good stuff for AMD, so maybe I will just wait it out until we see Pascal vs. 4xx.

At this point, the 390/x will only sway me if it has some good OCing abilities...otherwise I don't feel like upgrading again in just a year.

I miss my 5870...had that for a LONG time. :)
 

Cloudfire777

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2013
1,787
95
91
Who in their right minds would call GTX Titan cards a failure? The only failure was AMDs inability to compete with the cards when they launch. Hence the price of the cards.
The price of these cards is high, I totally agree that $999 is very high for any GPU, but you are totally out of your mind if you think they bunked. GTX Titan was a huge success, outsold GTX 690 in only 3 months, a GPU that was launched 10 months after GTX 690.
GTX Titan X will probably not be such a huge success due to neutered FP32 performance, but it will still be a success due to idle fingers from enthusiasts plus developers that doesnt need the double precision but use CUDA for their projects.

AMD once again is absolutely horrible at marketing, they seem to live in their little la-la land. What they should have done the minute GTX Titan X launched was to release a statement to the press about an upcoming card(s) and/or have many reviewer sites do a preview of R9 390X. A few words about HBM, what changed with 390X vs previous 200 series, no definitive performance data but enough to call for attention. That would have put a damper in to Nvidia`s sales of GTX Titan X. The leaks videocardz posted with a graph showing performance over 290X and a little more about HBM was to a small group that met AMD and had to sign NDA about the 390X. Those slides should have been public from day 1 after Titan X launch, because many people buy GTX Titan X (or any other card) because a rumor is, well a rumor. But an official statement from AMD, well thats an entirely different matter and would have made more people wait to see 390X before buying anything.
 
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RaulF

Senior member
Jan 18, 2008
844
1
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I completely agree with the above statement. The silence from AMD after Titan X is not very comforting.
 

Omar F1

Senior member
Sep 29, 2009
491
8
76
I completely agree with the above statement. The silence from AMD after Titan X is not very comforting.
Exactly, AMD has been silent all along and that isn't a good indicator.

Personally, I'm not optimistic until they prove otherwise.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
As to TitanX, like every other highest end component, you pay a premium for it, regardless. I should know, I just bought a 5960x!

Congrats!! As crazy as it sounds, I can actually understand the guy who buy a 5960X.If you need many cores for specific workloads (rendering, encoding, etc.), then you actually save time with this processor. Time is A LOT more valuable than FPS because with more free time you can do anything you want - that means you are paying not only for performance but time savings which brings more flexibility in your daily life.

Secondly, a processor such as 5960X will probably last 5+ years at 4.4Ghz for gaming and it will still command a solid resale value even in 2-3 years from now. As a result, the overall cost of ownership of 5960X will likely be much lower than a $1000 graphics card unless one perfectly times the resale of a $1000 card right before the next best card launches. With a $1000-1500 GPU like Titan X / R9 295X2 at launch, you aren't going to feel like you have top-of-the-line or near top-of-the-line GPU for 2+ years, but with a 5960X you will. In a matter of 1 year, there is a card as fast for nearly half the price, and in 2 years a $700 card will be 40-50% faster than the Titan X. Since the day 5960X launched, there was no faster CPU overall under $1k.

R9 390/390X will have very high power draw and TDP and there will be countless comparisons against GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti where AMD may not gain much if the cost HBM drives the price up toward GTX 980 Ti price. The efficiency vs Maxwell will be what will be dragging them down, and if performance is the same as 980 Ti or worse, with the price similar, AMD will have huge problems regaining any market share.

Titan X already uses nearly 250W of power on its own. At this point who cares if 1 card uses 250W of power and another 290-300W. It'll come down to features, noise levels, availability of AIB offerings, overclocking and price/performance. When an informed gamer is buying a card in the $600+ range, 50W of extra power usage is meaningless in a system that already uses 390-400W power.

9381


R9 360, 370 and 380 (+X) will all be rebrands, renamed to fit the "Pirate Islands" theme, to try to trick people in to buying rebrands. With the current news and the latest roadmaps and the driver leak, I am not very hopeful for AMD.

You keep repeating this over and over. Ok, tell us what benefit would it give AMD to take an R9 290 that today sells for $250 and R9 290X that today sells for $290-300 and re-release the exact same chip for $249 and $299?

Do you ever think about this point?

MSI Gaming 290 = $250
HIS IceQ 290 = $250
PowerColor R9 290 = $250
XFX R9 290X = $290

Unless you think AMD will sell R9 380 for $199 and R9 380X for $249, what exactly would they gain by re-branding R9 290/290X as R9 380/380X?

Also, as others already pointed out, Pitcairn does not even support FreeSync and Huddy officially stated that all GPUs moving forward will support FreeSync. He also said that FreeSync support can't just be added on a PCB/via a display controller as it requires a redesign of the ASIC itself. So what you are saying is AMD will just redesign Pitcairn to fit a new display controller and UVD to support FreeSync and H.264 hardware decoding but make 0 other changes to the chip in terms of clock speeds due to improved 28nm node, and any other components such as geometry performance, colour compression, etc.?

I just bought a 295x2 because it was so cheap and wanted to check out the AIO. Definitely not going with the WCE. Runs cool and quiet but raises the temps on all my other components due to exhaust restrictions. Losing that 140mm rear fan has a huge deficit under idle conditions.

Why not set the GPU exhaust at the front of the case or the top of the case and leave the rear for your CPU heatsink tower?

Titan X is 'OK' but I don't feel the $1k price is justified. The 4xx series really looks to be bringing some good stuff for AMD, so maybe I will just wait it out until we see Pascal vs. 4xx.

That's a good point. If you have a card like 970 OC or similar, you can probably coast to next year's 14nm/16nm GPUs unless you absolutely need 60 fps in every title with ultra quality.

Who in their right minds would call GTX Titan cards a failure? The only failure was AMDs inability to compete with the cards when they launch. Hence the price of the cards.
The price of these cards is high, I totally agree that $999 is very high for any GPU, but you are totally out of your mind if you think they bunked.

Sales do not always indicate that the product is actually good. There are plenty of products that sell well but aren't worth the money. The point is 780Ti doubled 580's performance for $700 in about 3 years. Titan X doubles HD7970Ghz performance in a similar 3 year period but it costs $1000. If it was $700, it would be a lot more acceptable/reasonable. With your logic, should NV raise the next Titan's price to $1200-1300 because they can? They certainly could because Titan X seems to be selling even better than the original Titan based on what Computerbase reported.

The Titan X GPU itself is very good but the price is out to lunch. In a span of 4.5 years NV convinced some gamers that a flagship shouldn't cost $500-650 (280/480/580) but $1000. If you think that's perfectly acceptable, that's fine. There are plenty of PC gamers who find the Titan X's price acceptable and I am sure even if it was $1300-1500, they would also buy it. A lot of us view it as NV arrogance and a marketing money grab because NV keeps removing features like DP but keeping prices the same, not to mention Titan X's performance advantage over 980 is less than the original Titan had over the 680. All that bashing the 7970 received, the Titan X gets almost none of it on our forum.

AMD once again is absolutely horrible at marketing, they seem to live in their little la-la land. What they should have done the minute GTX Titan X launched was to release a statement to the press about an upcoming card(s) and/or have many reviewer sites do a preview of R9 390X.

No, absolutely not. That's called the Osborne Effect in business. Remember Nokia announcing that they are ditching Symbian in favour of Windows OS but it was still a long time away until they would even release the first Windows phone? The minute they did this, sales of all Symbian phones tanked as consumers knew Nokia would not support them in the future. The result was excess inventory of Symbian phones that had to be sold at highly reduced prices, which resulted in very little profits and even losses. Similar mistakes have been made by many firms such Sega when they killed Sega Saturn just 3 years in the US by prematurely announcing the Dreamcast, or Nintendo this month when they already announced the Nintendo NX for 2016! Goodbye Wii U sales.

These mistakes are made over and over in business and that's why they are taught at the top business schools in the world as case studies later on.

AMD reduced its inventory in the channel to clear all R9 200 series of cards as was reported by many sites. It's clear to anyone who follows the news that most of NV's market share gains came NOT from them taking away AMD's sales but from AMD simply stopping to ship new products in the channels for the last 2 quarters. Whether or not you agree with AMD's inventory reduction strategy is a point of discussion but it's obvious AMD needs to sell all of those old R9 200 cards before launching the new series.

If we look at NV's GPU sales, they are still at about 9-10 million, which is no change at all based on historical data or last 8 quarters (except that dip to 7). Had NV gained AMD's sales, their sales would have jumped to 12-13 million. That's not the case. It's obvious AMD is not shipping product to OEMs/channel, which means AMD bleeding market share is their own decision as a consequence to clear inventory. Another way to think about it is the overall Discrete GPU market has fallen from 14-17 million to just 11.5-12.5 million! If it was NV gaining market share at the expense of AMD's sales, the overall discrete GPU market would still have hovered at 14-17 million. It isn't.

LQ5kb7Y.jpg


Also, the Titan X is $1000 so for the majority of the market it's a card that might as well not even exist. That's why AMD doesn't care to release info on its cards prematurely because it knows that the $400-500 GPU segment will probably sell 10-20X more. However, releasing information risks cannibalizing sales of existing 200 series.

As to your comment that AMD is horrible at marketing and they should have released slides about R9 300 series, chances are the same people who are easily swayed by marketing for their GPU purchase, are the types who would buy NV anyway, or they are the type who don't follow these tech sites closely. The rest of us have been reading about specs of R9 390X and even have seen AMD's leaked slides a long time ago. The average joe, well he wouldn't even know what HBM is and is happily buying a GTX960 2GB for $200 or GTX960 4GB for $240, while being proud of its awesome perf/watt. ;)
 
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DearLord

Junior Member
Mar 22, 2015
17
1
6
Exactly, AMD has been silent all along and that isn't a good indicator.

Personally, I'm not optimistic until they prove otherwise.

I completely agree with the above statement. The silence from AMD after Titan X is not very comforting.

No, absolutely not. That's called the Osborne Effect in business. Remember Nokia announcing that they are ditching Symbian in favour of Windows OS but it was still a long time away until they would even release the first Windows phone? The minute they did this, sales of all Symbian phones tanked as consumers knew Nokia would not support them in the future. The result was excess inventory of Symbian phones that had to be sold at highly reduced prices, which resulted in very little profits and even losses. Similar mistakes have been made by many firms such Sega when they killed Sega Saturn just 3 years in the US by prematurely announcing the Dreamcast, or Nintendo this month when they already announced the Nintendo NX for 2016! Goodbye Wii U sales.

These mistakes are made over and over in business and that's why they are taught at the top business schools in the world as case studies later on.

AMD reduced its inventory in the channel to clear all R9 200 series of cards as was reported by many sites. It's clear to anyone who follows the news that most of NV's market share gains came NOT from them taking away AMD's sales but from AMD simply stopping to ship new products in the channels for the last 2 quarters. Whether or not you agree with AMD's inventory reduction strategy is a point of discussion but it's obvious AMD needs to sell all of those old R9 200 cards before launching the new series.

If we look at NV's GPU sales, they are still at about 9-10 million, which is no change at all based on historical data or last 8 quarters (except that dip to 7). Had NV gained AMD's sales, their sales would have jumped to 12-13 million. That's not the case. It's obvious AMD is not shipping product to OEMs/channel, which means AMD bleeding market share is their own decision as a consequence to clear inventory. Another way to think about it is the overall Discrete GPU market has fallen from 14-17 million to just 11.5-12.5 million! If it was NV gaining market share at the expense of AMD's sales, the overall discrete GPU market would still have hovered at 14-17 million. It isn't.

However, releasing information risks cannibalizing sales of existing 200 series.

As to your comment that AMD is horrible at marketing and they should have released slides about R9 300 series, chances are the same people who are easily swayed by marketing for their GPU purchase, are the types who would buy NV anyway, or they are the type who don't follow these tech sites closely. The rest of us have been reading about specs of R9 390X and even have seen AMD's leaked slides a long time ago. The average joe, well he wouldn't even know what HBM is and is happily buying a GTX960 2GB for $200 or GTX960 4GB for $240, while being proud of its awesome perf/watt. ;)

One has to remember that most people building a pc probably fall somewhere in the middle: they're not knee deep into every spec tease or rumor, but they know enough about the market to have a decent grasp of what's going on. While it may not have been a good idea to release info on the entire 300 series, amd certainly could have done something similar to nvidia, that is, some sort of formal announcement of their flagship card. Maybe not at the same time as nvidia or at the hard launch of the titan x, but certainly by now they should have done more to stoke the fires a bit.
 

Cloudfire777

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2013
1,787
95
91
Titan X already uses nearly 250W of power on its own. At this point who cares if 1 card uses 250W of power and another 290-300W. It'll come down to features, noise levels, availability of AIB offerings, overclocking and price/performance. When an informed gamer is buying a card in the $600+ range, 50W of extra power usage is meaningless in a system that already uses 390-400W power.

Who said R9 390X will use 50W more power? It can just as much be anywhere from 100-200W more power. That affects sales greatly, it affects what sort of build people can use, it affects PSUs etc.
We have seen the recent slides from AMD. R9 390X is still using the same architecture as Hawaii. A new architecture isnt coming until 2016- Chances are pretty big that the 390X is a scaled up GCN GPU with HBM and a way to introduce the new VRAM.
That they use hybrid coolers in the reference model and not air cooling is also a huge tell that the TDP will be high. I tell you, this will affect their sales and people will compare.



You keep repeating this over and over. Ok, tell us what benefit would it give AMD to take an R9 290 that today sells for $250 and R9 290X that today sells for $290-300 and re-release the exact same chip for $249 and $299?

Unless you think AMD will sell R9 380 for $199 and R9 380X for $249, what exactly would they gain by re-branding R9 290/290X as R9 380/380X?
Its as simple as using the series 300 name and having to fill up the lineup. Nvidia does it all the time, rebrands mixed with new cards in a new series. That have never been exclusive to: New series = New GPUs.

VR-Zone (a very reliable site that doesnt post everything they come across like the rumor sites) have posted the exact names the rebrands will have, and they have a pirate theme to fit the "Pirate Islands". Pitcairn is there, Hawaii is there, Tonga is there.
Drivers have already shown R9 360 and R9 370 being rebrands.
Its good odds that it will go in this direction.

AMD needs to remove GCN inventory. The hardware channels have already complained due to a complete stop in sales and refuse to take in more. AMD is sitting with a huge pile of chips due to Maxwell beating them, what better way is it than to rebrand the chips and give them new names that fit the Pirate Islands?


Also, as others already pointed out, Pitcairn does not even support FreeSync and Huddy officially stated that all GPUs moving forward will support FreeSync. He also said that FreeSync support can't just be added on a PCB/via a display controller as it requires a redesign of the ASIC itself. So what you are saying is AMD will just redesign Pitcairn to fit a new display controller and UVD to support FreeSync and H.264 hardware decoding but make 0 other changes to the chip in terms of clock speeds due to improved 28nm node, and any other components such as geometry performance, colour compression, etc.?
Well Richard Huddy is still an AMD employee. He can lie his behind off if he means it benefit their company.
Freesync is nice, unfortunately I don`t know enough about it to agree or disagree with that statement.

The rebranded chips in the 300 series could still have a higher clock than the ones in the 200 series. Nvidia does that, give them a small boost, probably something AMD will do too.


Sales do not always indicate that the product is actually good. There are plenty of products that sell well but aren't worth the money. The point is 780Ti doubled 580's performance for $700 in about 3 years. Titan X doubles HD7970Ghz performance in a similar 3 year period but it costs $1000. If it was $700, it would be a lot more acceptable/reasonable. With your logic, should NV raise the next Titan's price to $1200-1300 because they can? They certainly could because Titan X seems to be selling even better than the original Titan based on what Computerbase reported.

The Titan X GPU itself is very good but the price is out to lunch. In a span of 4.5 years NV convinced some gamers that a flagship shouldn't cost $500-650 (280/480/580) but $1000. If you think think that's perfectly acceptable, that's fine. A lot of us view it as NV arrogance and a marketing money grab.
Who told you that you were the authority in what is being worth the money and what is not? I see people bashing threads after threads about their choice is always the right one. Its so stupid to read about.

That GTX Titan sold out and outpaced GTX 690 is a really good indication about a successful product. Especially when you consider the price premium at that time, which means good margins. Thats an indication. The idea that "Titan was a failure" is based on nothing.
Let people buy whatever they want. If they buy a $999 GPU, they obviously have the money for it. Let it be.
Nvidia charge what the market is willing to pay. AMD charge what they mean their target group is willing to pay. Its the reason why those two can co-exist. It really isnt so hard to understand.



No, absolutely not. That's called the Osborne Effect in business. Remember Nokia announcing that they are ditching Symbian in favour of Windows OS but it was still a long time away until they would even release the first Windows phone? The minute they did this, sales of all Symbian phones tanked as consumers knew Nokia would not support them in the future. The result was excess inventory of Symbian phones that had to be sold at highly reduced prices, which resulted in very little profits and even losses. Similar mistakes have been made by many firms such Sega when they killed Sega Saturn just 3 years in the US by prematurely announcing the Dreamcast, or Nintendo this month when they already announced the Nintendo NX for 2016! Goodbye Wii U sales.

These mistakes are made over and over in business and that's why they are taught at the top business schools in the world as case studies later on.

AMD reduced its inventory in the channel to clear all R9 200 series of cards as was reported by many sites. It's clear to anyone who follows the news that most of NV's market share gains came NOT from them taking away AMD's sales but from AMD simply stopping to ship new products in the channels for the last 2 quarters. Whether or not you agree with AMD's inventory reduction strategy is a point of discussion but it's obvious AMD needs to sell all of those old R9 200 cards before launching the new series.

If we look at NV's GPU sales, they are still at about 8-10 million, which is no change at all. Had NV gained AMD's sales, their sales would have jumped to 12-13 million. That's not the case. It's obvious AMD is not shipping product to OEMs/channel.

Also, the Titan X is $1000 so for the majority of the market it's a card that might as well not even exist. That's why AMD doesn't care to release its cards prematurely because it knows that the $400-500 GPU segment will probably sell 10-20X more.
Osbourne effect is misjudging and doing a bad pre launch. Neither you nor me know enough about business or AMD/Nvidia`s marketing tactics to know when or when not to go to the public about a product, but in my head a preview of R9 390X would have not affected the other cards in their channels which will end up as rebrands anyway, because AMD plan to only introduce one new chip, the high end. The mid and low range will go unaffected. They could have done lots of things. Made the rebrands available first, then introduce the 390X later to have "new" 300 cards anyway. But it seems they plan to introduce most at Computex in June at the same time, probably to delude the public and water out the rebrands and try to let the 390X do the talking.

Intel does previews and I can find no better timing than after Titan X to do a preview of 390X. Nvidia get 3 months alone without any competition, it basically mean Nvidia get to sell these without any competition and fill up the small target buyers that buy these high end GPUs. Most of the quantities are sold in the midrange anyway.

AMD would do slightly better off with rebrands than trying to sell 2012 cards with their original names anyway, but they will not regain any marketshare from Nvidia anyway with these cards. So this is AMD incapable of competing and they know it.

You don`t have to go further back than 1 month to see that Nvidia gained 4% and AMD lost 4%.

R9 390X is rumored $700+ due to HBM. It depends on performance how it will perform against Titan X in the market, but a 6GB GTX 980 Ti at $800 will be a heck lot worse for AMD. So it makes more sense to launch the 390X now than to wait for Nvidia to have the 980 Ti ready to counter it. Nvidia obviously would be in a lot of hurt PR wise if they launched a 980Ti 1 month after Titan X, with similar performance but a lot cheaper. So this would have been a win for AMD if they could have launched it now.

As to your comment that AMD is horrible at marketing and they should have released slides about R9 300 series, chances are the same people who are easily swayed by marketing for their GPU purchase, are the types who would buy NV anyway, or they are the type who don't follow these tech sites closely. The rest of us have been reading about specs of R9 390X and even have seen AMD's leaked slides a long time ago. The average joe, well he wouldn't even know what HBM is and is happily buying a GTX960 2GB for $200 or GTX960 4GB for $240, while being proud of its awesome perf/watt. ;)
Let me rewrite that to see it from a financial standpoint: Chances are that the people looking for GPU now, could have been swayed to wait and see what 390X are, instead of buying Titan X now and removing potential candidates that are in the market for a high end GPU.
 
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Rvenger

Elite Member <br> Super Moderator <br> Video Cards
Apr 6, 2004
6,283
5
81
Why not set the GPU exhaust at the front of the case or the top of the case and leave the rear for your CPU heatsink tower?



I already have an H100i that takes over the top. That's the whole issue I see with this going forward and I don't want to set the 295x2 as front intake. 500w of heat in my case will just be nuts. I guess it won't be as bad for the 390x but I rather have a reference card without the water cooler.

I really hope they make one or at least have the AIBs make immediate aftermarket solutions if I am an early adopter. I may not be this time around since the performance of the 295x2 is rather good.
 

Enigmoid

Platinum Member
Sep 27, 2012
2,907
31
91
You keep repeating this over and over. Ok, tell us what benefit would it give AMD to take an R9 290 that today sells for $250 and R9 290X that today sells for $290-300 and re-release the exact same chip for $249 and $299?

Really?

What do you think the whole R2xx series with the exception of the 285/290/290X is then?:whiste:
 

tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,348
642
121
I already have an H100i that takes over the top. That's the whole issue I see with this going forward and I don't want to set the 295x2 as front intake. 500w of heat in my case will just be nuts. I guess it won't be as bad for the 390x but I rather have a reference card without the water cooler.

I really hope they make one or at least have the AIBs make immediate aftermarket solutions if I am an early adopter. I may not be this time around since the performance of the 295x2 is rather good.

What case do you have where this is an issue?
I can't see this being an issue in my case.
 

Cloudfire777

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2013
1,787
95
91
Really?

What do you think the whole R2xx series with the exception of the 285/290/290X is then?:whiste:

Come on man. Both you and me should know R9 260X is a new architecture. It got TrueAudio!!
Reviewers and AMD call it a feature, but the experts on forums obviously know more