[WCCF] AMD Radeon R9 390X Pictured

[sze5003]

Well for Fiji itself we know it could easily blow nV's high end out of the water with that die size. But the rest of the lineup? That sounds like good news! Taken with a grain of salt, of course.

And I'd agree the logical path of action is to wait until AMD releases their new lineup in three weeks, why buy now if you've waited this long.


I know if I were still gaming on my 6850 and hadn't upgraded to a 290 last november after 4 years, I'd wait a little more.

Yup I'm waiting as well to see the prices and decide what route I should go.

 

[nomas]

A bit of history:

"The R3xx chip was designed by ATI's west coast team (formerly ArtX Inc.), and the first product to use it was the Radeon 9700 PRO (internal ATI code name: R300; internal ArtX codename: Khan), launched in August 2002. The architecture of R300 was quite different from its predecessor, Radeon 8500 (R200), in nearly every way. The core of 9700 PRO was manufactured on a 150 nm chip fabrication process, similar to the Radeon 8500. However, refined design and manufacturing techniques enabled a doubling of transistor count and a significant clock speed gain."

Anyone remembers how the 1st Radeon 9700 Pro stacked up against Nvidia? I don't recall the %, but I do remember buying it over whatever Nvidia offered at the time.

 

[twjr]

ok, so I have a friend working at AMD for over 10 years, and I spoke to him today. I asked him if I should buy the 980ti or wait for the Fury.
He told me all the talk around the office today was about Nvidia being scared of the 300 series with the 980ti being priced so low. This is because AMD is about to destroy the Nvidia lineup in performance. It is going to be much, much better than the usual bump in perf. He mentioned it will be one of those times where you know it's a day one purchase. So he told me to wait, and I would not only NOT be disappointed, but I would be unbelievably surprised.

Now, you might say he wants me to buy AMD but seriously, is my ONE GPU purchase really that important to AMD that he would steer me wrong just so AMD gets a sell and we end our friendship???? No way.

So, of course this is only his opinion, but he is a gamer like me for many years, so I am pretty sure his opinion lines up with my expectations for a "wow" moment.

Take it as always with a grain of salt but there is no way I am buying a 980ti until the 390/390x Fury comes out.

Ask your friend for some specs.

Actually who is this friend of yours? Care to drop a name?

Anyone can drop the "I know a guy who knows a guy" chestnut but it doesn't confirm anything either way.

 

[jamesgalb]

Leaking info like this is probably something he doesn't appreciate? He's NDAed, and just talking to you is likely an offense he could be fired for.

If I were in your shoes with inside info like that, I'd pass on posting it - for the sake of my friend.

No one violated any NDA in that basic conversation... and I HIGHLY doubt his friend would be upset he passed on some 'just wait' hype to potential consumers...

At the end of the day, the poster is encouraging that people wait 2 weeks. No harm can come of that and its odd that people are against him for doing so.

You really shouldn't post this as there is no way for us to confirm what you are saying is true.

Why do we need to confirm this? Poster says an AMD employee suggests to 'wait and see' and 'you will be surprised', you need that confirmed?

 

[maddie]

ok, so I have a friend working at AMD for over 10 years, and I spoke to him today. I asked him if I should buy the 980ti or wait for the Fury.
He told me all the talk around the office today was about Nvidia being scared of the 300 series with the 980ti being priced so low. This is because AMD is about to destroy the Nvidia lineup in performance. It is going to be much, much better than the usual bump in perf. He mentioned it will be one of those times where you know it's a day one purchase. So he told me to wait, and I would not only NOT be disappointed, but I would be unbelievably surprised.

Now, you might say he wants me to buy AMD but seriously, is my ONE GPU purchase really that important to AMD that he would steer me wrong just so AMD gets a sell and we end our friendship???? No way.

So, of course this is only his opinion, but he is a gamer like me for many years, so I am pretty sure his opinion lines up with my expectations for a "wow" moment.

Take it as always with a grain of salt but there is no way I am buying a 980ti until the 390/390x Fury comes out.

If you are not misleading us, and I'm NOT saying you are, this ties in with some calcs I did in some earlier posts, using some reasonable assumptions.

I got Fiji might be = 2 Hawaii in shaders. GCN scales very well so Fiji = 295X2 and no Xfire problems.

AMD gains no extra sales by having people wait. If they fail to deliver then people will just get 980Ti.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Why do we need to confirm this? Poster says an AMD employee suggests to 'wait and see' and 'you will be surprised', you need that confirmed?

We'll be surprised one way or another. :sneaky:

 

[Vesku]

How will a 4GB limit impact their FirePro cards? They stated they wanted to increase their market share in the professional graphics marker this year and a big chip like Fiji would be great for that. Are they just going to make a bigger interposer and use more stacks?

Not sure their HBM designs are part of that since I haven't heard anything regarding ECC support. There are probably some HPC purposes though where having lots of compute attached to very fast low latency RAM is useful even if the total GB capacity is modest. Similar to Nvidia selling the Professional version of Titan X as something for deep learning projects.

 

[maddie]

You really shouldn't post this as there is no way for us to confirm what you are saying is true.

This is sarcasm, right?

 

[maddie]

Not sure their HBM designs are part of that since I haven't heard anything regarding ECC support. There are probably some HPC purposes though where having lots of compute attached to very fast low latency RAM is useful even if the total GB capacity is modest. Similar to Nvidia selling the Professional version of Titan X as something for deep learning projects.

Isn't that a fairly small market?

 

[Silverforce11]

I'm sure its not a crime (NDA breaking) to say "it's fast" or "it's a lot better than people thought" etc..

This was in March, from Bit & Chips.it:
"One last thing to note concerns the recent rumor appeared on the web, regarding the performance offered by the 390X. It seems that the performance of the 390X are much higher than those presented so far, and that what we have seen until now is, if not false, far from reality."

http://www.bitsandchips.it/9-hardwa...onte-ma-amd-aspetta-che-i-driver-siano-maturi

The Fury name is a recent thing because the talk back then was always Fiji = 390X.

 

[takiat]

Leaking info like this is probably something he doesn't appreciate? He's NDAed, and just talking to you is likely an offense he could be fired for.

If I were in your shoes with inside info like that, I'd pass on posting it - for the sake of my friend.

Considering I didn't disclose his name, or department, I'm pretty sure they won't fire thousands of people to make sure they GET him.

 

[Ajay]

Haha apparently you are! J/K I'm just poking fun.. Not sure where you are getting that equation from though but a 4 layer stack of HBM1 memory is 8 gigabits. That's 1 Gigabyte. Four stacks of that and we have 4 Gigabytes.

I should put my reading glasses on sometimes.

1 stack has 4DRAM chips and each chip is 2Gb, so 8Gb total for a stack which is 1GB. That's what it's assumed to be.

Thanks. That's too bad, because a lot of sites are going to pound on this if Fiji costs more than the 980Ti - even if Fiji actually performs better. I'm sure Nvidia already had a counter marketing attack ready to go. AMD is doing a pretty good jobs teasing about Fiji, so maybe AMD marketing is finally stepping up now that Lisa Su is CEO.

 

[96Firebird]

Same takiat from Slickdeals? Why haven't you posted about this "friend" over there, instead making a new account on a different forum to announce it?

 

[takiat]

You really shouldn't post this as there is no way for us to confirm what you are saying is true.

So I told everyone not only was this only MY opinion, it was only HIS opinion as well. At least it's not fabricated or paid for like most websites who pump whichever brand.
I was simply passing on some "insider" info I got from a good friend, so people on the fence would have the information I do. It's called information sharing, which is all we have been doing for months waiting on these new cards. It's not like I can verify the things you post. But until you are proven a blatant liar, I will continue to respect what you post as just "more" information sharing.
I know I am new posting here but I have been reading these forums forever and came across information that might help someone here, so I signed up for an account and passed that information on.

 

[Glo.]

Cut.

In you theory that Fiji can be bigger surprise than we think might be something...

Vice President of AMD said that they are building the fastest GPU in the world.

Which means that it can be faster than Titan X or... R9 295X2.

 

[sze5003]

So I told everyone not only was this only MY opinion, it was only HIS opinion as well. At least it's not fabricated or paid for like most websites who pump whichever brand.
I was simply passing on some "insider" info I got from a good friend, so people on the fence would have the information I do. It's called information sharing, which is all we have been doing for months waiting on these new cards. It's not like I can verify the things you post. But until you are proven a blatant liar, I will continue to respect what you post as just "more" information sharing.
I know I am new posting here but I have been reading these forums forever and came across information that might help someone here, so I signed up for an account and passed that information on.

What's the harm in waiting? Most of us have good gpu's already so its not like we gave to buy something now. I don't see why people are getting upset over this shared information. Sure it could be a lie or made up but we will find out eventually.

 

[takiat]

Same takiat from Slickdeals? Why haven't you posted about this "friend" over there, instead making a new account on a different forum to announce it?

Yes, one in the same. Been over there for 15 years I think. To answer your question I was at work reading this forum when he called me, and this forum has so much good information from so many intelligent posters, I wanted to give back a little to say thanks for the posters that take a complex thing like a gpu and simplify it for a layman such as myself.
I have learned so much from here and consider myself a much better parts buyer just from things learned here.

 

[swilli89]

A bit of history:

"The R3xx chip was designed by ATI's west coast team (formerly ArtX Inc.), and the first product to use it was the Radeon 9700 PRO (internal ATI code name: R300; internal ArtX codename: Khan), launched in August 2002. The architecture of R300 was quite different from its predecessor, Radeon 8500 (R200), in nearly every way. The core of 9700 PRO was manufactured on a 150 nm chip fabrication process, similar to the Radeon 8500. However, refined design and manufacturing techniques enabled a doubling of transistor count and a significant clock speed gain."

Anyone remembers how the 1st Radeon 9700 Pro stacked up against Nvidia? I don't recall the %, but I do remember buying it over whatever Nvidia offered at the time.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/970/8

It was an utter massacre. From ^ "For starters, the Radeon 9700 Pro holds a 30 - 70% advantage over the GeForce4 Ti 4600 depending on resolution."

ATI utterly and completely obliterated NVIDIA's Ti4600 with that release. The Radeon could up to twice as fast. On top of that, its AA quality was much higher and it had higher levels afforded to it.

Five months later NVIDIA finally released their response, the 5800 Ultra. It closed the gap by about half. http://www.anandtech.com/show/1062/3

Always fun to reminisce

 

[Runequest2]

So I told everyone not only was this only MY opinion, it was only HIS opinion as well. At least it's not fabricated or paid for like most websites who pump whichever brand.
I was simply passing on some "insider" info I got from a good friend, so people on the fence would have the information I do. It's called information sharing, which is all we have been doing for months waiting on these new cards. It's not like I can verify the things you post. But until you are proven a blatant liar, I will continue to respect what you post as just "more" information sharing.
I know I am new posting here but I have been reading these forums forever and came across information that might help someone here, so I signed up for an account and passed that information on.

To be fair we have no idea when a new member pops in to say something if they are paid to say it or not. In fact you saying you are not does not mean much anyway.

I would likely wait to see what AMD has up their sleeve before buying any card right now.

However, if I needed a card right now I would just buy the best card for my budget and not worry about what might appear in a month or so from some other company.

 

[takiat]

To be fair we have no idea when a new member pops in to say something if they are paid to say it or not. In fact you saying you are not does not mean much anyway.

I would likely wait to see what AMD has up their sleeve before buying any card right now.

However, if I needed a card right now I would just buy the best card for my budget and not worry about what might appear in a month or so from some other company.

Fair enough, I am new here so obviously take what I say with a grain of salt.
One member knows me though from over on slick deals for over 15 years. You can read any of my hundreds of posts over there to find out I'm not even in the pc industry. Just a hardcore gamer.

 

[Vesku]

Isn't that a fairly small market?

Yes for the Professional version of Maxwell and probably Fiji with HBM too. But apparently AMD also has a chip with 8GB GDDR5, so ECC is an option for that chip as well as 16GB professional versions. If that is an improvement on Hawaii especially in the perf/W department then that could lead to significant gains for AMD in the HPC market.

 

[Glo.]

In you theory that Fiji can be bigger surprise than we think might be something...

Vice President of AMD said that they are building the fastest GPU in the world.

Which means that it can be faster than Titan X or... R9 295X2.

Im quoting myself to say:

AMD just went completely bonkers with secrecy! I wish we would know ANYTHING right now. Not a single leak!

 

[maddie]

Fair enough, I am new here so obviously take what I say with a grain of salt.
One member knows me though from over on slick deals for over 15 years. You can read any of my hundreds of posts over there to find out I'm not even in the pc industry. Just a hardcore gamer.

Don't let anyone intimidate you. Many here post without any proof and there are fans here that like to prevent anyone saying something that does not agree with what they want.

 

[tential]

To be fair we have no idea when a new member pops in to say something if they are paid to say it or not. In fact you saying you are not does not mean much anyway.

I would likely wait to see what AMD has up their sleeve before buying any card right now.

However, if I needed a card right now I would just buy the best card for my budget and not worry about what might appear in a month or so from some other company.

Read up and see he is a member of slickdeals. You should be asking him to prove he's a 15 year member of slickdeals and see his work/posts over there to see if he is a reputable person or not....

 

[tential]

Don't let anyone intimidate you. Many here post without any proof and there are fans here that like to prevent anyone saying something that does not agree with what they want.

Somehow this unnamed source is less reputable than the thousands of unnamed sources Cloudfire has quoted in the last 20 minutes (jokes and exaggerations but you get the point).