[WCCF] AMD Radeon R9 390X Pictured

[RussianSensation]

So? You can easily do the math (which I did in my post) and see the the ChipHell chart does not line up with actual reviews. ComputerBase.de gives the Titan X a 1% lead in 18 games @ 4k.

That's why we look at multiple sites. Doesn't sound like you spent the time reading various reviews because you wouldn't be discounting Sweclockers review if you did.

Sweclockers has 7% delta at 4K.
http://www.sweclockers.com/test/20523-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti/19#content

So does TechSpot.

"The GeForce GTX 980 Ti certainly delivers on the performance front. From the 20 games tested, we found it to be a mere 7% slower than the Titan X at 2560x1600 and 3840x2160."
http://www.techspot.com/review/1011-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti/page10.html

This idea that TPU and AT are some Hailed from God websites that are only right and no one else should count doesn't work. Not to mention neither AT nor TPU uses the most intense settings at 4K, Techspot and Sweclockers do. If anything, Techspot and Sweclockers reviews are more relevant when comparing most GPU limited scenarios since they run everything to the max - 4xMSAA at 4K. AT and TPU do not use 4xMSAA in a lot of 4K benchmarks. That puts less stress on the GPU which doesn't allow the Titan X's shaders to be utilized fully.

Granted, the 7% extra on the Titan X doesn't make it that much more playable at 4K but you completely discounted Sweclockers charts just because.

Sorry but that is disappointing, whether the card is 8" or 11.5". These top of the line cards are just for bragging rights, AFAIK they account for less than 5% of the total sold. Unless AMD releases a mainstream card which beats 980 every which way but loose, IMHO it's too little, too late.

As mentioned by others, there should be air cooled Fiji PRO and Fiji XT at some point. AMD will not have a line-up consisting of a $399 Hawaii rebrand and an $850 Fiji Fury card. Secondly, AMD will not be able to afford to throw out all those Fiji chips which don't yield 100%. Think about that for a second - when did AMD ever release such a line-up with such a major price disparity between mid-range and flagship cards and also never had a cut-down flagship card? That never happened.

If they decide to just release a minor clock bump of the existing Hawaii chip instead, then it'll be a long 18 months while Nvidia continues to eat into their market share and AMD becomes a joke in the enthusiast community.

So hold on, if we add 10% performance to each R9 290 and R9 290X, add HDMI 2.0, and these cards get double the VRAM to 8GB, then at $299 and $399 they are a gigantic fail against a $330 970 3.5GB and $499 GTX980 according to you? So you are saying you'd personally pay $100 more for a 980 and buy a 3.5GB slower card in the 970?

Sorry but if R9 390X has 8GB of VRAM and comes in at 97-99% on this chart, the 980 at $499 is irrelevant.

980 uses 165W of power in the lowest possible case.
R9 390X let's say would use 275W of power, or 110W more.

20 hours of gaming a week x 52 weeks in a year x 15 cents per kWh x 110W power delta = $17.16 per year
30 hours of gaming a week gives us $25.74 a year.

20 hours gaming / week = Number of years to break-even = $100 / $17.16 = 5.8 years.
30 hours gaming / week = 3.89 years to break even!

However, my analysis just compared TDPs on paper, but we know for 100% fact that's NOT how it works in the real world. When comparing total power usage of a gaming rig, TDPs are irrelevant in games.

Core i7 5960X and R9 290X vs. 980 we get:

36W difference in Bioshock

42W in Metro

33W in Tomb Raider

Ya so it's going to take 10+ years to just break-even on the electricity costs between a $499 980 and a $399 R9 290X card with a similar power usage as a 290X.

Looks like you need to bring a much stronger argument why a higher clocked 8GB GDDR5 $299 R9 390 and $399 390X are going to be the laughing stock of the gaming community......Also, why would anyone buy a slower 970 3.5GB card if there is a faster R9 390 8GB version?

 

[ocre]

RS,

have you seen the market share report?
Oh wait, you started that one.

You have been repeating this same stuff for ever now. Over and over.
AMD couldnt keep pace with a card that is 90-95% as fast as the 980 and selling for half its price.

You can post pages and pages preaching how great the chip is, just as you did about hawaii. But obviously, the market did not see it the way you do.

Does it really surprise you that there are people that dont have faith in a respun hawaii. Not everyone is negative because they dont like AMD, some of use just hate to see the situation and want so much better for the company. Some feel like its gonna be tough to come back already as it is. And respins, they sound terrible.

Things may turn around for them though. We dont know. It is just not easy to imagine......i want all these lame rumors to be totally false. But you saying how great a respun hawaii will be, that is gonna be tough to sell.

 

[Erenhardt]

RS,

have you seen the market share report?
Oh wait, you started that one.

You have been repeating this same stuff for ever now. Over and over.
AMD couldnt keep pace with a card that is 90-95% as fast as the 980 and selling for half its price.

You can post pages and pages preaching how great the chip is, just as you did about hawaii. But obviously, the market did not see it the way you do.

Does it really surprise you that there are people that dont have faith in a respun hawaii. Not everyone is negative because they dont like AMD, some of use just hate to see the situation and want so much better for the company. Some feel like its gonna be tough to come back already as it is. And respins, they sound terrible.

Things may turn around for them though. We dont know. It is just not easy to imagine......i want all these lame rumors to be totally false. But you saying how great a respun hawaii will be, that is gonna be tough to sell.

Anything "AMD" is going to be tough to sell to people dead set on nvidia no matter what.

People just want nvidia for the sake of having nvidia. Only a forum minority goes as far as looking for the excuses to try convince themselves their non-decision was right.

 

[arandomguy]

AMD and Nvidia's pricing viewpoint is highly skewed because of some insistance on taking a very narrow viewpoint by comparing the R9 290x soley against the GTX 980 using some narrow parameters. The R9 290x is not priced the way it is, and still suffering from low demand, because of how it compares against the GTX 980. 290x value faces simultaneous pressure from both the GTX 970 and GTX 980. In a hypothetical world with no GTX 970 than the 290x value/performance arguement over the GTX 980 becomes much more compelling. The problem is the GTX 970 exists to serve more as a value alternative and that the GTX 980 also exists to serve those who were willingly to pay the premiums for comparatively little extra. Maxwell's attractiveness is also more than simply power effieciency over Hawaii.

An important factor to consider, whether someone may personally agree with it or no, is that the public in general is accustomed to "last years" goods being discounted in the face of newer products, especially with technology. Older products being priced lower and aggressively in order to sell against newer products is not viewed the same as newer products being priced low and aggressively from the onset to compete against its fellow newer products.

This is where the execution in the two companies differed even though they both technically released new GPUs in roughly the same time frame. Nvidia's GM204 release was much more exciting to the public at large because they offered the distruptive GTX 970 along with the GTX 980. Meanwhile AMDs R9 285 basically did nothing to move the market forward, arguably because they neglected their core consumer base in favor of Apple if you want to believe that theory. Can you imagine the potential of how AMDs entire lineup would have been viewed different had Tonga launched as fully enabled part with 4GB, better binned, and at <$250. There would have been much more optimism and positive buzz.

Forget the competition for moment, a companies new products should offer more than their existing lineup. If AMD wants to generate the right kind of excitement they should be offering across their line more than what they do now.

 

[iiiankiii]

AMD and Nvidia's pricing viewpoint is highly skewed because of some insistance on taking a very narrow viewpoint by comparing the R9 290x soley against the GTX 980 using some narrow parameters. The R9 290x is not priced the way it is, and still suffering from low demand, because of how it compares against the GTX 980. 290x value faces simultaneous pressure from both the GTX 970 and GTX 980. In a hypothetical world with no GTX 970 than the 290x value/performance arguement over the GTX 980 becomes much more compelling. The problem is the GTX 970 exists to serve more as a value alternative and that the GTX 980 also exists to serve those who were willingly to pay the premiums for comparatively little extra. Maxwell's attractiveness is also more than simply power effieciency over Hawaii.

An important factor to consider, whether someone may personally agree with it or no, is that the public in general is accustomed to "last years" goods being discounted in the face of newer products, especially with technology. Older products being priced lower and aggressively in order to sell against newer products is not viewed the same as newer products being priced low and aggressively from the onset to compete against its fellow newer products.

This is where the execution in the two companies differed even though they both technically released new GPUs in roughly the same time frame. Nvidia's GM204 release was much more exciting to the public at large because they offered the distruptive GTX 970 along with the GTX 980. Meanwhile AMDs R9 285 basically did nothing to move the market forward, arguably because they neglected their core consumer base in favor of Apple if you want to believe that theory. Can you imagine the potential of how AMDs entire lineup would have been viewed different had Tonga launched as fully enabled part with 4GB, better binned, and at <$250. There would have been much more optimism and positive buzz.

Forget the competition for moment, a companies new products should offer more than their existing lineup. If AMD wants to generate the right kind of excitement they should be offering across their line more than what they do now.

I totally agree. AMD needs to step up their marketing game. People like new toys. They like rapid release cycle to keep things fresh and exciting. Granted, the gtx 970/980 hardly moved the performance metric forward. What it did was offer a new and fresh product for people get excited about. The GTX 970 was the big blow to AMD, not the GTX 980. The GTX 980 was and still continues to be a horribly priced product. I feel it was priced that way to push GTX 970 sales (90% of the performance at 65% of the price). Just like the Titan X is there to make the GTX 980 TI look good in comparison (TITAN X PERFORMANCE AT 65% of the price). That strategy is working very well for Nvidia.

I would like to see the following:
"Halo" FIJI XT 8GB WC ~ 110% of Titan X: $849
FIJI PRO 4GB ~ 105% of GTX 980 TI: $549
390X 8GB ~ 105% of GTX 980: $399
390 8GB ~ 110% of GTX 970: $299
380 4GB ~ 120% of GTX 960: $199

The 390 8GB and 380 4GB needs to convincingly beat the GTX 970 and GTX 960 respectively. Winning those price points ($199 & $299) would be huge for AMD. They need to try their best to dominate those price points because those are were AMD can push the most volume. That will help them improve market share and revenue.

 

[Cloudfire777]

There are no 8GB HBM cards coming out.

Would you guys please get that out of your heads? Current stacks are 1GB only from Hynix.

 

[sandorski]

There are no 8GB HBM cards coming out.

Would you guys please get that out of your heads? Current stacks are 1GB only from Hynix.

That does not mean that 8gb is not possible.

 

[RussianSensation]

You have been repeating this same stuff for ever now. Over and over.
AMD couldnt keep pace with a card that is 90-95% as fast as the 980 and selling for half its price.

That's because:

1) R9 290/290X were slower than 970/980
2) They didn't have a big VRAM advantage
3) Their image was completely shot for being hot and loud, no matter what AIBs brought out.

#3 is key.

If a gamer reads a review or hears that a card is a jet engine and is unbearable, they don't really care how fast it is. As I said, people buy $200 960 2GB over a 50% faster $240 R9 290?

AMD could have had $100 R9 290X and 750Ti would have outsold it, guaranteed. R9 200 image is totally shot.

Forget the competition for moment, a companies new products should offer more than their existing lineup. If AMD wants to generate the right kind of excitement they should be offering across their line more than what they do now.

Your post doesn't explain how GTX560 and GTX770 2-4GB became such amazing sellers considering they were re-badged GTX460 and 680 parts. I guess only NV can re-badge old products and sell like hot cakes cuz marketing?

Look, I get your point but when the average PC gamer is buying a $200 GTX960 2GB VRAM gimped card that gets destroyed by 50-60% by an after-market R9 290 4GB card, there is an image problem, not a product problem.

Think about the history of ATI/AMD/NV in the last 20 years. If ATI/NV ever released a product that was 50%+ faster and had double the VRAM for only $50-60 more, the competitor would lose soooooooo much market share. In the case of NV, they gained market share with much slower 750Ti that gets owned by 40%+ by an R9 270X and by R9 290 that has 0 competition from NV.

Most people buy what marketing tells them to buy. I haven't read many positive reviews on any R9 200 series, from any reputable US sites. Have you?

Even now that the dust has settled, some sites like TechReport keep writing nonsensical buyer's guides that frankly pathetic.

He compares R9 260X at $120 to a GTX750Ti at $130, but R9 270/270X are $125. Even if we ignore rebates, R9 270/270X can be had for $140-145, easily. For $10-15, that's 30-45% more performance over a 750TI. In the budget gaming sector, a gamer needs as much performance as possible. Only a totally clueless or biased website would recommend a card 30-45% slower for $130 over an R9 270/270X.

After that things go even more stupid.

In the mid-range, he recommends a 960, while ignoring the $150 R9 280 3GB and $240 R9 290. You can't be more clueless or biased if you tried! Do you know for how many months one could buy an R9 280 for $150, R9 290 for $250? Probably for 3-4 months these sales have been alive on Newegg. Yet sites like TR that create Buyer's Guides have R9 270X at $165, they pick like the most expensive R9 290 at $290 and R9 290X at $320.

Marketing money and corporate perks rules a lot of the opinion of North American sites. It's a shame really.
http://techreport.com/review/28198/the-tech-report-system-guide-may-2015-edition/5

The author of TechReport makes recommendations how perf/watt and power usage are more important than gaming performance. That is not a sign of an objective professional reviewer/review site. A professional review site weighs pros and cons and concludes accordingly.

If all you do is follow hardware news and study this for a living, you should be on top of your game. Unfortunately today, most North American sites lack the necessary skills and objectivity to provide unbiased content to their readers. When sites like TechReport have the most ludicrous prices as of May 2015 that are actually higher than what a New Zealand site can find in the US in November of 2014, you should be ashamed of your level of professionalism as a journalist/hardware reviewer living in the US.

The Best Graphics Cards For the Money: Nvidia vs. AMD at Every Price Point - November 12, 2014
http://www.techspot.com/guides/912-best-graphics-cards-2014/page7.html

Marketing rules and nV has more marketing influence and marketing ad dollars to determine the outcome of reviews. I've been following the GPU industry for a long time and I've never ever seen a card as crappy as the 960 at the $200 price point get recommended. It never happened. 285 is also junk so that's not the point really. The point is in the past, no professional reviewer would recommend a card 50% slower with HALF the VRAM to save $25 on electricity a year.

 

[Cloudfire777]

That does not mean that 8gb is not possible.

With 4096bit it does.

 

[Skurge]

With 4096bit it does.

That also doesn't mean it can't be 8mbit bus.

 

[Noctifer616]

With 4096bit it does.

You can still have 8GB and 4096bit if each stack has 2GB or memory and not 1GB. If that is the case though is a different story.

 

[sandorski]

You can still have 8GB and 4096bit if each stack has 2GB or memory and not 1GB. If that is the case though is a different story.

Each stack is limited to 1GB at the moment. HBM 2 brings 2GB stacks.

 

[Noctifer616]

Each stack is limited to 1GB at the moment. HBM 2 brings 2GB stacks.

Not according to the info from SK Hynix. HBM 1 can go up to 2GB per stack.

 

[Krteq]

Nope, H5VR8GESM4R-20C are still 1GB per stack (2Gb per DRAM die, 4 DRAM dies per stack ...aka 4Hi)

 

[Noctifer616]

Nope, H5VR8GESM4R-20C are still 1GB per stack (2Gb per DRAM die, 4 DRAM dies per stack ...aka 4Hi)

Yep. But gen 1 can go up to 8 stacks but we will probably see that later in the year.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Not according to the info from SK Hynix. HBM 1 can go up to 2GB per stack.

8 high stacks got cancelled long ago for HBM1.

Each stack is limited to 1GB at the moment. HBM 2 brings 2GB stacks.

HBM2 can go further than 2GB.

 

[Noctifer616]

8 high stacks got cancelled long ago.

They still advertise HBM1 to be able to go up to 8 stacks on their webpage, rather confusing.

 

[ShintaiDK]

They still advertise HBM1 to be able to go up to 8 stacks on their webpage, rather confusing.

This is also why the 4GB debate goes on now. It was simply too ambitious at the time.

HBM2 also got 2 high stacks added. Only selling 4 and 8GB was way too ambitious. Not to mention price and silly implementations. (16/32GB cards with 4 stacks instead of 8GB). And I wouldnt be surprised if the 8 high stack HBM2 dissapears as well before release. Reality and powerpoint collide.

 

[JDG1980]

So hold on, if we add 10% performance to each R9 290 and R9 290X, add HDMI 2.0, and these cards get double the VRAM to 8GB, then at $299 and $399 they are a gigantic fail against a $330 970 3.5GB and $499 GTX980 according to you?

If they are unmodified TSMC rebrands of the Hawaii chip, then yes, they are a failure no matter what the price. 8GB is not going to make any difference for 99% of gamers, nor is a minor clock bump. Both of these features are already found in AIB versions of the R9 290/X and they don't matter now. You can argue all you want that perf/watt doesn't matter, but the market disagrees. AMD can either get in line or get shut out, it's that simple.

 

[flopper]

If they are unmodified TSMC rebrands of the Hawaii chip, then yes, they are a failure no matter what the price. 8GB is not going to make any difference for 99% of gamers, nor is a minor clock bump. Both of these features are already found in AIB versions of the R9 290/X and they don't matter now. You can argue all you want that perf/watt doesn't matter, but the market disagrees. AMD can either get in line or get shut out, it's that simple.

perf/watt dosnt matter.
the 980ti is hot, draw loads of power, is noisy and trottles.
I still havent seen people complain about that funny enough.

8gb 390 is a great card, futureproof and that matter for a lot of people a 4gb 980 or a 8gb AMD 390 the win goes to AMD, simple as that.

 

[SirPauly]

Your post doesn't explain how GTX560 and GTX770 2-4GB became such amazing sellers considering they were re-badged GTX460 and 680 parts. I guess only NV can re-badge old products and sell like hot cakes cuz marketing?

They are refresh generations based on Fermi and Kepler -- a more apples-to-apples comparison, would be when nVidia introduced the higher-end Tesla derivatives -- they renamed G9X derivatives for lower-end sku's for that line-up.

 

[therealnickdanger]

If they are unmodified TSMC rebrands of the Hawaii chip, then yes, they are a failure no matter what the price. 8GB is not going to make any difference for 99% of gamers, nor is a minor clock bump. Both of these features are already found in AIB versions of the R9 290/X and they don't matter now. You can argue all you want that perf/watt doesn't matter, but the marketing disagrees. AMD can either get in line or get shut out, it's that simple.

There, fixed.

 

[tential]

RS,

have you seen the market share report?
Oh wait, you started that one.

You have been repeating this same stuff for ever now. Over and over.
AMD couldnt keep pace with a card that is 90-95% as fast as the 980 and selling for half its price.

You can post pages and pages preaching how great the chip is, just as you did about hawaii. But obviously, the market did not see it the way you do.

Does it really surprise you that there are people that dont have faith in a respun hawaii. Not everyone is negative because they dont like AMD, some of use just hate to see the situation and want so much better for the company. Some feel like its gonna be tough to come back already as it is. And respins, they sound terrible.

Things may turn around for them though. We dont know. It is just not easy to imagine......i want all these lame rumors to be totally false. But you saying how great a respun hawaii will be, that is gonna be tough to sell.

Just because a product has high marketshare does not mean it's a good product....
Seriously do we have to explain this again?

 

[LTC8K6]

perf/watt dosnt matter.
the 980ti is hot, draw loads of power, is noisy and trottles.
I still havent seen people complain about that funny enough.

Have you got a bridge for sale?

Cheap?

 

[Despoiler]

This is also why the 4GB debate goes on now. It was simply too ambitious at the time.

HBM2 also got 2 high stacks added. Only selling 4 and 8GB was way too ambitious. Not to mention price and silly implementations. (16/32GB cards with 4 stacks instead of 8GB). And I wouldnt be surprised if the 8 high stack HBM2 dissapears as well before release. Reality and powerpoint collide.

People are getting confused with vertical stack height ie 4 Hi and the total number of stacks. What I will call horizontal stacks. Yes HBM1 is limited to 4 vertical dram slices per horizontal stack, but I have seen nothing that says you are limited to 4 horizontal stacks. In fact Macri alluded to this in his interview with Arstechnica.

You're not limited in this world to any number of stacks, but from a capacity point of view, this generation-one HBM, each DRAM is a two-gigabit DRAM, so yeah, if you have four stacks you're limited to four gigabytes. You could build things with more stacks, you could build things with less stacks.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/informatio...hbm-why-amds-high-bandwidth-memory-matters/2/