This morning I was very tempted to get another GTX 970 to SLI but then I got thinking maybe I'll wait to see what comes early next year to tempt the moths to leave my wallet. One of the more interesting prospects is the AMD 390(X), but what do we really know about it? A short Google-fu session seems to reveal it'll have a 512bit memory bus*, be fabricated at 20nm*, be clocked at 1Ghz* and there's a watercooled version*. There's probably loads I've missed*. Mainly from here Please post below speculations and (hopefully soon) confirmed specs and lets drum up some excitement for it. *possibly
The water cooling concerns me a bit. Somewhat like the 5th gen i7s that don't ship with a heatsink because a factory heatsink will just melt into a puddle. The power consumption and heat generation will probably be off the charts. How long can they stay on this path? I guess maybe I am too concerned. I'd just like for this to be a serious answer to Nvidia's cards so that we have healthy competition.
I love to have water cooling as reference. Power consumption matters little to me. You know, people who pay 200$ more for bit power efficient GPU which saves them 15-20$ per year and then swap it for another one in 2 ~ 3 years. Considering what kind of GPUs are going to hit us due to 4k requirements in next few years... I will not think twice if 390(x) can deliver around double performance of HD7970. And that water cooling which we saw is supposedly only one of few designs which may end up being used.
Noise, yes, but I agree that power consumption is not too big a deal. You're literally talking £10 a year, or 20p a week. Unless, of course, it involved the buyer to purchase a new 1000w PSU just for single card, I'd not do that tho.
My Speculation is that the new GM200 Monster GPU is gonna blow it clean out of the water for performace while running cooler and using less power.
Suposedly theyll feature HBM (High Bandwith Memory) instead of GDDR5 which will be around 4.5x faster than GDDR5. you can google amd r9 390x HBM and read about it, looks pretty cool!
Nope, rumours point towards HBM memory, basically stacked memory in order to have a MUCH higher memory bus. Doing things this way means they will get 4096-bit bus! Yes you read that correctly, I shall write that again 4096-bit! Clocked at 1.25GHz meaning bandwidth of around 640GB/s!!!!! with 4096 stream processors, 256 Texture Units, 64 CU's, and 128 ROPs. This will be a total monster GPU. It will give Nvidia's full GM200 a run for its money, I still think the GM200 chip will out perform it though but not by much at all. Or it will be give or take depending on the game. The GM200 core will probably be released as the TITAN 2 and be priced stupidly high meaning Nvidia can then charge more for the GTX980Ti or GTX990 (dual GPU chip). I do like Nvidia, and their software and game enhancements are compelling but they are too closed off. Not supporting Mantle, locking people out of GSYNC, PhysX, CUDA, Gameworks etc. Whereas AMD support open technologies, making Mantle open, TressFX being allowed on any GPU, and OpenCL also being allowed on any GPU and also FREESYNC being capable of being used on any GPU. I would MUCH MUCH rather support a company that supports an open playing field than a company that supports a locked down closed mindset. Even if the GM200 chip outperforms the R9 390X by 10-15% I will still get an R9 390X to support AMD's open business model. Unless the GM200 outperforms it by 40%+ and costs not much more I wouldn't touch Nvidia right now. That is just my opinion though you and the rest are open to go with which ever company you think gives you the best for your money.
Everything based on those leaked benchmarks and rumors have the chips performing pretty close to each other. Personally, I expect they will be pretty close in performance and the Nvidia one will be more expensive.
