Sweclockers... after correctly revealing 750 Ti before anyone else, after correctly writing about the lack of 28 nm this year, and confirming it, before anyone else and after nailing the delay of the ill-fated GTX Titan Z... are back.
This time, however, they are training their sights on AMD. A few days ago, Videocardz wrote that 750 Ti was going to be the primary card that the new Tonga architecture was initially targeting, and, much like 750 Ti, would merely be a showcase for a new architecture until the heavy artillery came along much later.
Well, Sweclockers are now saying that that may not be the whole truth(they are not dismissing a low-end card per se), only that AMD will try to replace the aging Tahiti architecture while they are at it.
That means the R9-280 and the R9-280X as it stands right now for their current GPU mix.
This means that unless Nvidia releases a mid-range Maxwell card or two soon, AMD is going to eat away at Nvidia's GTX 760 and GTX 770 sales, which is the budget to midrange segment most people are buying into.
As for the exact specificaitons, Sweclockers are not getting all the information just yet, so they refuse to speculate on too much. What they are willing to share, however, is that the new Tonga midrange card(s) have a memory bus of 256 bit, instead of Tahiti's 384. AMD are going to compensate for this using fast GDDR5 memory, maybe even up to 7 GHz or more.
What it does get interesting is that the Sweclockers article is a bit muddy on one particular topic. They are writing that the midrange Tonga card(s) appear to be a downscaled variant of Hawaii. This could mean that Tonga is merely a codeword for a new card launch and not an entirely new architecture.
Or it could also mean that the new architecture is simply an improved Hawaii. It could be GCN 1.2. Maybe it is GCN 2.0, after all. So far, Sweclockers are not releasing more information on this, but I'm sure they'll follow this one up.
Source
This time, however, they are training their sights on AMD. A few days ago, Videocardz wrote that 750 Ti was going to be the primary card that the new Tonga architecture was initially targeting, and, much like 750 Ti, would merely be a showcase for a new architecture until the heavy artillery came along much later.
Well, Sweclockers are now saying that that may not be the whole truth(they are not dismissing a low-end card per se), only that AMD will try to replace the aging Tahiti architecture while they are at it.
That means the R9-280 and the R9-280X as it stands right now for their current GPU mix.
This means that unless Nvidia releases a mid-range Maxwell card or two soon, AMD is going to eat away at Nvidia's GTX 760 and GTX 770 sales, which is the budget to midrange segment most people are buying into.
As for the exact specificaitons, Sweclockers are not getting all the information just yet, so they refuse to speculate on too much. What they are willing to share, however, is that the new Tonga midrange card(s) have a memory bus of 256 bit, instead of Tahiti's 384. AMD are going to compensate for this using fast GDDR5 memory, maybe even up to 7 GHz or more.
What it does get interesting is that the Sweclockers article is a bit muddy on one particular topic. They are writing that the midrange Tonga card(s) appear to be a downscaled variant of Hawaii. This could mean that Tonga is merely a codeword for a new card launch and not an entirely new architecture.
Or it could also mean that the new architecture is simply an improved Hawaii. It could be GCN 1.2. Maybe it is GCN 2.0, after all. So far, Sweclockers are not releasing more information on this, but I'm sure they'll follow this one up.
Source
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