[Videocardz Rumor] AMD to launch new flagship Radeon graphics card this Summer

[DarkKnightDude]

http://videocardz.com/50472/amd-launch-new-flagship-radeon-graphics-card-summer

Exclusive: New AMD Radeon R9 flagship this summer
I recently had a very interesting conversation with one of the add-in-board partners of AMD. They told me that Radeon R9 290X will soon be replaced with a new graphics card. Graphics card that would take the performance crown back from GTX 780 TI.

If you remember Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, then you probably know where this is heading. There are basically two options, yet another Hawaii variant, or brand new GPU. It’s worth noting that there are some traces of a new GPU called Iceland. Could it be the new high performance heart of new flagship?

We have our own theories about this card. It’s not even a year since R9 290X was announced, so it’s highly unlikely we are expecting R9 300 series this soon. The easiest, and probably the most logical approach, would be to launch R9 295X (note the missing 2). Although the new naming nomenclature is not among our favorites, it has some room for adaptation and AMD can always add an extra ’5′ if needed. Of course this happened already, AMD launched first 2×5 graphics cards few months ago, including 235, 255, 265, 275M and the latest addition R9 295X2. That said, it is possible AMD will simply launch R9 295X, instead of whole new series (R9 390X).

Volcanic Islands Refresh to utilize High-Bandwidth-Memory (HBM)
Just when I was preparing my post, a very interesting slides were posted at OC3D. Despite the fact that these slides are few months old, I don’t remember seeing them posted anywhere yet.

AMD’s Volcanic Islands Refresh will allegedly utilize first generation of HBM, and what exactly is HBM? High Bandwidth Memory is a new approach in die stacking, improving the bandwidth of memory chips, and dramatically reducing power consumption at the same time.

Let’s skip the details, which you can find in the source, and focus on basic specs. There are few variants of HBM memory (2Hi, 4Hi and 8Hi). The first variant to launch soon is 4Hi, which has a bandwidth of 128 GBps and four layers of DRAMs. Each module has 1GB of memory, so if you had 4 of them, then your bandwidth would be 512 GB/s.

AMD 2014-2016 GPU roadmap
The poster also revealed the whole roadmap of future AMD GPUs. We have absolutely no way of verifying this, but we can confirm that these codenames actually do exist.

As you can see, the Island GPU is on this list as well. This GPU was leaked few weeks ago. It is probably the first processor to introduce Volcanic Islands 2.0 architecture, but is this also the first GPU to feature High Bandwidth Memory? We will know in few months.

Volcanic Islands will be replaced with Pirate Islands somewhere in the second half of next year. What’s important here, Pirate Islands will be the first 20nm series. This basically means we are more than a year from now till 20nm node arrives from AMD. The 20nm process will not be our guest for long, AMD will quickly move forward to 14nm process with Pirate Islands Refresh.

28nm TSMC 1H 2014 : Hawaii, VI 1.0
28nm GlobalFoundries 2H 2014 : Iceland and Tonga, VI 2.0
28nm GlobalFoundries 1H 2015 : Maui, VI 2.0
20nm GlobalFoundries 2H 2015 : Fiji and Treasure, PI 1.0
20nm GlobalFoundries 1H 2016 : Bermuda, PI 1.0
14nm GlobalFoundries 2H 2016 : Mid-GPU and Low-GPU, PI 2.0
14nm GlobalFoundries 1H 2017 : High-GPU, PI 2.0

Take with a grain of salt, but is this plausible? Never even heard of this HBM till now. Link has more pictures.

 

[RussianSensation]

Exclusive VC Rumor: New AMD Radeon R9 flagship this summer

"AMD’s Volcanic Islands Refresh will allegedly utilize first generation of HBM, and what exactly is HBM? High Bandwidth Memory is a new approach in die stacking, improving the bandwidth of memory chips, and dramatically reducing power consumption at the same time.

Let’s skip the details, which you can find in the source, and focus on basic specs. There are few variants of HBM memory (2Hi, 4Hi and 8Hi). The first variant to launch soon is 4Hi, which has a bandwidth of 128 GBps and four layers of DRAMs. Each module has 1GB of memory, so if you had 4 of them, then your bandwidth would be 512 GB/s.

Volcanic Islands will be replaced with Pirate Islands somewhere in the second half of next year. What’s important here, Pirate Islands will be the first 20nm series. This basically means we are more than a year from now till 20nm node arrives from AMD. The 20nm process will not be our guest for long, AMD will quickly move forward to 14nm process with Pirate Islands Refresh."


AMD 2014-2016 Rumored Roadmap

28nm TSMC 1H 2014 : Hawaii, VI 1.0
28nm GlobalFoundries 2H 2014 : Iceland and Tonga, VI 2.0
28nm GlobalFoundries 1H 2015 : Maui, VI 2.0
20nm GlobalFoundries 2H 2015 : Fiji and Treasure, PI 1.0
20nm GlobalFoundries 1H 2016 : Bermuda, PI 1.0
14nm GlobalFoundries 2H 2016 : Mid-GPU and Low-GPU, PI 2.0
14nm GlobalFoundries 1H 2017 : High-GPU, PI 2.0

...Looks like 20nm will be short-lived if these rumors are to be believed.

Source

 

[RussianSensation]

Nice find! We posted the same thread at the exact same time.

 

[tviceman]

Sounds amazingly aggressive, like almost too good to be true. Hawaii came out less than six months ago, I highly doubt they will be replacing that chip so quickly.

 

[Silverforce11]

20nm is short lived if they are launching it in late next year, I mean what's the point? People will know its going to be obsolete by 14/16nm stuff coming not long after since 20nm for dGPU is just so delayed. The gap will probably be less than 1 year. I wouldn't pay top $$ for 20nm stuff.

 

[parvadomus]

Sounds amazingly aggressive, like almost too good to be true. Hawaii came out less than six months ago, I highly doubt they will be replacing that chip so quickly.

I think its possible. IF Maxwell efficiency is cause of the big L2 cache (thanks to it, its able to save power from less memory access) then AMD can achieve the same results by getting a lower power memory (HBM). That plus efficiency enhancements to arch will do for 28nm. I think its an easy route to continue with this process.

 

[Wild Thing]

Sounds amazingly aggressive, like almost too good to be true. Hawaii came out less than six months ago, I highly doubt they will be replacing that chip so quickly.

Well ATi was quick to jump from X800XT to X850XT and also X1900XT to X1950XT when market competition was fierce,there's no real reason why they couldn't pull it off again.
After the sudden arrival of 295x2 (against all expectations) I would think nothing is beyond them at this point.

 

[dn7309]

man, I just bought a 290x.

 

[Leadbox]

So, maybe a test run for HBM memory? Slap it on Hawaii see how goes and tweak it for 20nm. There was also that talk of Hawaii having 3072 SPs, so maybe a fully enabled chip?

 

[toyota]

So, maybe a test run for HBM memory? Slap it on Hawaii see how goes and tweak it for 20nm. There was also that talk of Hawaii having 3072 SPs, so maybe a fully enabled chip?

290x is already fully enabled

 

[Leadbox]

290x is already fully enabled

There was a die shot photo going that suggested 48CU for Hawaii, cant be too hard to imagine that there might be some redundancy built-in to it

 

[f1sherman]

290x is already fully enabled

There was a die shot photo going that suggested 48CU for Hawaii, cant be too hard to imagine that there might be some redundancy built-in to it

 

[3DVagabond]

20nm is short lived if they are launching it in late next year, I mean what's the point? People will know its going to be obsolete by 14/16nm stuff coming not long after since 20nm for dGPU is just so delayed. The gap will probably be less than 1 year. I wouldn't pay top $$ for 20nm stuff.

If they need it to compete. they will. AMD can't afford to be behind nVidia performance wise, or even appear to be. Look at when the 770 came out. It was simply a rebadged 680, but people felt they were buying older tech with the 7970GHz and even at $100 less would opt for the 770.

If nVidia releases the GM104 and it's faster than Hawaii they're at a big disadvantage. This HBM design could turn the tables.

 

[witeken]

20nm in Q4 2015? That's about half a year before Intel introduces 10nm with next-gen successor of Tri-Gate (a new material will replace silicon, probably germanium). With the advantage of 2 important technologies and 2 nodes ahead, Intel's IGPs might eat into the performance territory of dGPUs all the way up to the high-end, if they launch Gen10 with GT5 Cannonlake. And closer in time, 14nm Broadwell could disrupt the midrange market if it competes for a year against 28nm.

 

[Kenmitch]

Interesting if true....Time will tell.

 

[caswow]

20nm in Q4 2015? That's about half a year before Intel introduces 10nm with next-gen successor of Tri-Gate (a new material will replace silicon, probably germanium). With the advantage of 2 important technologies and 2 nodes ahead, Intel's IGPs might eat into the performance territory of dGPUs all the way up to the high-end, if they launch Gen10 with GT5 Cannonlake. And closer in time, 14nm Broadwell could disrupt the midrange market if it competes for a year against 28nm.

if it will be affordable maybe. iris is too pricey.

 

[Ed1]

I doubt you see anything until at least a yr, you definitely need die shrink for this to happen and first i would imagine a APU with it as that helps them (higher memory BW ) .
3d memory is coming ,seems next easy way to get increased BW w/o speed raise .

month or two there were many memory releasing this tech , so it will be here Nvidia, Intel , AMD etc will probably all use it if BW is needed .

 

[3DVagabond]

I doubt you see anything until at least a yr, you definitely need die shrink for this to happen and first i would imagine a APU with it as that helps them (higher memory BW ) .
3d memory is coming ,seems next easy way to get increased BW w/o speed raise .

month or two there were many memory releasing this tech , so it will be here Nvidia, Intel , AMD etc will probably all use it if BW is needed .

I'm sure they all will use it. The question is, Who will use it first? It's not just BW either. It's efficiency, as well.

 

[toughtrasher]

man, I just bought a 290x.

Same here bro, same here..

Now I kinda want to sell the 290x & just save up for this one.

 

[3DVagabond]

Same here bro, same here..

Now I kinda want to sell the 290x & just save up for this one.

It says this summer. That more than likely translates to back to school. Assuming there's any truth to it at all, it's still a ways off.

 

[NostaSeronx]

So, my Kaveri having more transistors than listed doesn't get news or talked about here. While this does...

It says this summer. That more than likely translates to back to school. Assuming there's any truth to it at all, it's still a ways off.

I made the time frame over here; http://www.overclock.net/t/1488641/next-r9-r7-graphics-to-use-hbm

-- Roadmap fixed and removal of codenames(since they always change) --
28nm TSMC Q4 2013 : High-end GPU, VI 1.0
28nm GlobalFoundries Q4 2014 : Mid-end GPU and Low-end GPU, VI 2.0
28nm GlobalFoundries Q2 2015 : High-end GPU, VI 2.0
20nm GlobalFoundries Q4 2015 : Mid-end GPU and Low-end GPU, PI 1.0
20nm GlobalFoundries Q2 2016 : High-end GPU, PI 1.0
14nm GlobalFoundries Q4 2016 : Mid-GPU and Low-GPU, PI 2.0
14nm GlobalFoundries Q2 2017 : High-GPU, PI 2.0

If you haven't noticed the pattern it is a Tick-Tock cycle.

 

[UaVaj]

295x sound about right
or
290x GHz+ be fine too.

chances are it will be nothing more than a 290x that is overclocked with an aio water cooling slap on.

 

[3DVagabond]

295x sound about right
or
290x GHz+ be fine too.

chances are it will be nothing more than a 290x that is overclocked with an aio water cooling slap on.

Why wait so long to release it then? They could do that today.

 

[n0x1ous]

chances are it will be nothing more than a 290x that is overclocked with an aio water cooling slap on.

Maybe they are going to design a reference air cooler that isnt terrible?

 

[3DVagabond]

Maybe they are going to design a reference air cooler that isnt terrible?

Maybe for a new chip they will (hopefully). As far as Hawaii goes, that ship has sailed. It is what it is. We already have aftermarket air coolers that fill the role.