[VC]AMD Radeon R9 390X WCE Speculation Thread

[ShintaiDK]

I would guess 350 and below for Oland. Tonga will also be placed somewhere in the top and perhaps Cape Verde again for the middle.

 

[ocre]

Low end will for sure be 100% rebrands. There is no value in making such a low power low margin chip.

Oland will continue to reign in mobile. If I had to guess everything 335 and lower is oland.

Huh?

That is crazy. Of course there is value in improving the low end.

 

[Cloudfire777]

It makes extremely little sense to rebrand so many cards not to mention that if they were rebrands it would make it like the third time they rebadge cards.

Nah, its a new architecture

 

[monstercameron]

It makes extremely little sense to rebrand so many cards not to mention that if they were rebrands it would make it like the third time they rebadge cards.

Nah, its a new architecture

I'm in the amd camp and even I think this is a naive position to hold.

 

[Enigmoid]

Huh?

That is crazy. Of course there is value in improving the low end.

When I mean low end I mean cape verde level. Low end mobile not low end desktop.

Any time you launch a new die there are mask costs, design costs, validation costs that would likely rank (I am guessing) in the millions of dollars. Low end has very low margins and furthermore, low end mobile is so low performance that it doesn't do well on the desktop. Its more difficult to recoup costs on the low end unless your chip is extremely attractive.

These built in costs are why tonga was not attractively priced and neither was GM107/206 at launch.

 

[antihelten]

The only real reason for AMD to make new GPUs for the low end instead of rebrands, would be if they want to expand certain feature sets such as FreeSync to the low end.

 

[Subyman]

The only real reason for AMD to make new GPUs for the low end instead of rebrands, would be if they want to expand certain feature sets such as FreeSync to the low end.

Freesync is very beneficial to the low end where FPS is typically sub 60.

 

[Cloudfire777]

The only real reason for AMD to make new GPUs for the low end instead of rebrands, would be if they want to expand certain feature sets such as FreeSync to the low end.

Efficiency + Mobile
=
Win

R9 370 is at 110W. Versus R9 270X at 180W.
$100 that the 370 will be one of the mobile cards I listed

Everything in mobile is about efficiency. Reducing heat and power while increasing performance is the key to stay in the game.
Meaning scaling down the big boys from the 300 series is utter most important to have a fighting chance against Nvidia and GT 940M, 950M, 960M etc.

 

[antihelten]

Freesync is very beneficial to the low end where FPS is typically sub 60.

Absolutely, that's why I mentioned it as one of the only viable reasons to make a brand new GPU for the low end

 

[StinkyPinky]

Anyone got any idea on what the performance and cost of a 390 will be? Or a 380x? I'm thinking a 380x will be similar to a 290x, maybe a few percent faster? So 390 should be at least a third faster?

 

[antihelten]

Everything in mobile is about efficiency.

Not at the low end, there it's first and foremost about price, and secondly about added features which are easy to sell to your average consumer (whether or not this goes for something like FreeSync / G-Sync is debatable).

Also 960M and 950M are not low end. 940M, 930M and 920M are low end. Interestingly, the 930M and 940M are apparently a completely new Maxwell chip, I had never heard about before (GM108). Will be interesting to see what this chip brings to the table (especially compared to iGPUs).

 

[Cloudfire777]

"New Maxwell chip"
LOL. GM108 have been out for a year now. Try GT 840M

Secondly, one of the reasons why OEMs ditched M295X in the first place was because GTX 970M had it beat in price AND efficiency.
OEMs are AMDs customers. Not us. If the hardware can offer better battery life, better performance and they dont have to make a new cooling system to accomodate a hot chip, they most likely pick that GPU.
Big difference there

And "features" on a low end notebook? Seriously? The only thing Joe thinks about when he buy his $400 notebook is mostly if he can surf with it and battery life. Again, efficiency.
He doesnt give a rats behind about freesync. Probably doesnt even know what it is

 

[Enigmoid]

Secondly, one of the reasons why OEMs ditched M295X in the first place was because GTX 970M had it beat in price AND efficiency.
OEMs are AMDs customers. Not us.
Big difference there

970m is around 70W, M295X is ~125W. Not in the same segment. 125W mobile GPUs have never been popular, for the same reason the 680MX was really only seen in the imac.

M295X as seen in the imac has massive overheating problems. Not sure if all implementations would suffer but apple's stock solution, fine for the 780m and m290X, was inadequate.

While efficiency on mobile is important, on the low end it often takes a back seat to price, similar to how AMD rebranded the 6770m as the 7670m instead of using gcn and how Nvidia still sells fermi as the 820m.

 

[Cloudfire777]

970m is around 70W, M295X is ~125W. Not in the same segment. 125W mobile GPUs have never been popular, for the same reason the 680MX was really only seen in the imac.

M295X as seen in the imac has massive overheating problems. Not sure if all implementations would suffer but apple's stock solution, fine for the 780m and m290X, was inadequate.

While efficiency on mobile is important, on the low end it often takes a back seat to price, similar to how AMD rebranded the 6770m as the 7670m instead of using gcn and how Nvidia still sells fermi as the 820m.

How are they not in the same segment when price is the same and performance only differ by 20%? Yeah the 970M is that more efficient. Which is why I think Clevo and MSI which usually use AMD high ends, dropped it this time.
Dell offer both M295X and 970M in their Alienware 15. So it exist in notebooks too

Also 125W exist from Nvidia as well in mobile. Its called GTX 880M and was a complete mess with throttling and heat issues. Luckily for Nvidia they had 970M/980M to replace it. So I think OEMs learned their lesson and go for more efficienct ones.

Not disagree on the price point. Its important too. But at the same time, with notebooks getting slimmer and slimmer, cooling system getting worse for the thin ones, and battery forced to slim down as well, efficiency is also important. To get a cool notebook and good battery life.

But whatever, Im out of the mobile game since a month ago. Now desktops are my priority and I will build one with Titan X or 390X. Or two of them

 

[antihelten]

"New Maxwell chip"
LOL. GM108 have been out for a year now. Try GT 840M

Honestly didn't know that, guess I just don't care enough about low end mobile GPUs to keep up there.

And "features" on a low end notebook? Seriously? The only thing Joe thinks about when he buy his $400 notebook is mostly if he can surf with it and battery life. Again, efficiency.
He doesnt give a rats behind about freesync. Probably doesnt even know what it is

Battery life really isn't something your average Joe thinks about when buying a new laptop, he may very well care about it, but since it is practically never used as a selling point at the low end it won't really have any influence on his purchasing process. Your average Joe really only cares about all the bullet points the PR department can fit on to the spec sheet (which may or may not include FreeSync), irrelevant as they might be, since that is all he has to go on, and battery life is very rarely part of those bullet points.

Try going to bestbuys homepage and look at gaming laptops below $1000 (you could go lower, since we're talking low end here, but then they only have two models available). Out of the 11 models available, only one of them makes any mention of battery life on the product features overview (and ironically it's quite crappy at 4 hours and 35 minutes).

 

[Head1985]

http://videocardz.com/55146/amd-radeon-r9-390x-possible-specifications-and-performance-leaked
50-65% faster than 290x

 

[therealnickdanger]

http://videocardz.com/55146/amd-radeon-r9-390x-possible-specifications-and-performance-leaked
50-65% faster than 290x

Awesome.

 

[Vesku]

According to those slides AMD gets the 8GB HBM through "dual-link interposing" of Gen1 chips. Not sure where the site with the slides gets that they have moved straight to HBM Gen2, doesn't look like the 390X will have 1TB/s memory bandwidth. Hopefully they will reveal some detail, and any caveats, at launch and avoid mimicking Nvidia's 970 memory flub.

 

[96Firebird]

Ah, more estimates... I'm surprised they don't have any real data yet.

 

[DiogoDX]

http://videocardz.com/55146/amd-radeon-r9-390x-possible-specifications-and-performance-leaked
50-65% faster than 290x

The tipical misleading x-axis graph make this leak looks real.

 

[nvgpu]

HBM only has 1GB per stack, the fact that AMD has to use dual-link interposing and even mentions HBM2 not needing dual-link interposing in the slide means that this is not an optimal solution but Nvidia forced their hand.

 

[Techhog]

The tipical misleading x-axis graph make this leaks looks real.

Those slides do honestly seem a lot more believable. It's still VideoCardz, though. Not reliable. Take it with a jar of salt.

 

[nvgpu]

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...-soll-ueber-700-US-Dollar-kosten-2575802.html

$700 for 390X, guess AMD will not subsidize the expensive GPU, HBM memory, interposer & PCB and 300W water cooler.

 

[Head1985]

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...-soll-ueber-700-US-Dollar-kosten-2575802.html

$700 for 390X, guess AMD will not subsidize the expensive GPU, HBM memory, interposer & PCB and 300W water cooler.

700+ for 390x
700 for 390
No way AMD ever gain marker share if thats true.

 

[Vesku]

Those slides do honestly seem a lot more believable. It's still VideoCardz, though. Not reliable. Take it with a jar of salt.

The HBM Gen 1 "dual-link interposing" doesn't seem like something VideoCardz would come up with especially when they somehow interpreted the slides to mean Gen2 with 1TB/s bandwidth. Also seems right in line with the AMD-Nvidia rivalry for AMD to do a bit of a private pep rally right before Nvidia's public reveal of their flagship card.