AMD Radeon R9 390, R9 380, R9 370 and R9 360 Series Rebrands

Both Hilbert and Ryan at anandtech said that AMD has hinted as the high end not being 8GB.

I don't think it's 8GB. I think HBM is capable of 8 stacks @ 1GB each, but AMD's configuration doesn't allow it.

Which is also what ars said:

 

No they don't. I game fine with a single 980 on a 4k monitor.

And 2x 4GB doesn't stack in Crossfire. Unless you're counting on DX12 allowing for shared memory between them, good luck with spending 1500 dollars on that dream.

 

Not to mention the fact that it's going to have to be application supported by the developer. And I doubt many games are going to implement shared memory.

 

28nm needs to die already.

 

I'm no expert, so let me get this straight.... the 390x will not be a new "built from ground up with all new tech" card, it will just be a recycled 290x with a different HBM memory configuration?

 

No, what this likely means is that the actual new Fiji product STILL isn't ready, so AMD is proceeding with the "300 series" launch anyway with a bunch of rebrands, just to keep people interested.

 

If i got this right, the 390X will still have GDDR5 and 8GB of it.

It pains me to see AMD making this move, it seems they can't wake up from the nightmare they are in...By rebranding again cards from late 2011, they are still mixing 3 different rehashes of the GCN architecture which have slight differences between them, how are they supposed to normalize driver features if they keep doing this? Is it that expensive to "update" the older chips to include the new hardware features?

Anyway, it seems AMD is putting all their eggs in the new Fiji chip, so it must mean they are pretty confident about it.

 

No The 390X will have 4gb of HBM and it will be the only 3xx card that will have HBM. While the 390 is a re-branded version of an 8gb version of the 290X.

 

seems the 390x is a 290x rebrand. Rumor has it fiji with a name lite titan.

 

Hmm interesting.

 

You are talking about late 2011 which is HD7970 only. You may have in mind other GCN 1.0 cards like 7950/7870/7850. But none of those is in R9-3xx series.
All of those cards will have Freesync support and True Audio. And while r9-370 states in this rumor that it is pitcairn (7870/7850), it was already rumored that it should be trinidad which has 25% lower power consumption.

So, as you can see... rumors... false hope... reasonless despair.
If you think yourself smart, do not draw conclusions from unconfirmed information.
And only real confirmation is what stores will have for sale.

 

So ppl have waited so long for...rebrands?Dear Lord !

 

So all those "leaked" benchmarks were fake, no?

 

Original plan (basically the same for Nvidia and AMD):
28 nm --> 20 nm (2015) --> 14/16nm (2017?)

Revised plan:
28nm --> 14/16nm (2016?)

This really isn't AMD's fault, they were supposed to be 20 nm. Unlike Nvidia though, when things changed they didn't have the spondoolicks to quickly come up with a 28 nm redesign. Of course, you could always argue Nvidia always intended to release the 900 series as is, and that just circumstance payed off for them.

The bright side of the whole 20 nm issue is that we'll hopefully get the 14/16 nm GPU's sooner, since focus is on them and not 20 nm. If 20 nm was a success, there wouldn't be the rush to go 14/16 nm since the jump isn't that great.

So, they may be technical rebrands, but that doesn't mean they aren't better, they would at the very least, be a new stepping.

 

I think it was Joe Marci over at AMD that stated they where not limited to 4 stacks if I remember correctly?

 

Technically I think HBM1 is limited to 4 stacks. If anything there is no technical (asic logic) limitation for having 0.5GB instead of 0.25GB per slice as that is only local addressing issue. So it can be overcome, but it does not mean you can fit 0.5GB capacity in same area as 0.25GB which may cause issue with packaging standard as that include dimensions of entire memory chip.

 

Found the article. http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/05/the-tech-behind-hbm-why-amds-high-bandwidth-memory-matters/2/

 

I do not read those, as they do not even care to cite their sources. I prefer to read manufacturers notes, presentation, jedec stuff if available.
Anything else is just opinion same way as mine is that 4stacks for HBM1 are limit, but inner workings of memory chips allows for having different capacity per addressable 32 bit I/O transistor cluster.

Side note: What do you think AMD will name Fiji XT based card?

Spoiler

My sincere guess is Perseus

 

Yes, that is the point, even with two GPU's in less then a year, you will have a games that would strugle even with 2-way SLI/CFX for top model GPU's (980ti and 390x+ or whatever the name might be). DX12 gives advantage of 2 times 4GB VRAM, and no game requires more then 4GB at this time.

There is a lot of power left in 7xxx and 2xx GPU's, no wonder they decided to re-brand (again...), with some tweaks, they can preform better I guess, but, it would be nice to introduce all-level new products, considering power consumption and development aspects.

 

if this turns out to be true, that the 390x is in fact a re-brad of the 290x

my next stop is pascal