AMD launches the Radeon R9 Fury range, four Fiji GPU proucts

[Biscuit]

I suspect when we see HBM trickled further down the stack will depend entirely on when HBM2 is ready to ship - not because of bandwidth, but because of capacity: HBM1 is limited to 1GB per stack. AMD are talking about 4GB of RAM for the R9 380; doing that on HBM1 means putting 4 memory controllers on the GPU die: that's a lot of silicon generating a completely unnecessary amount of bandwidth just to meet the 4GB capacity target. I doubt the economics on it add up at all.

The second gen HBM will have a minimum of 4GB per stack, and a single stack (requiring only a single controller on the GPU die) will provide roughly the same memory bandwidth as the R9 280X's 384 bit GDDR5 interface. That's the point where it starts looking realistic to trickle it down to the lower cards: a single controller and HBM stack means less GPU silicon and less overall memory cost, and also it'll require a simpler interposer. I'd expect to see a full range of GPUs housing between 1 and 4 stacks of HBM2 depending on market segment.

Thanks for that explanation, certainly made things clearer in my head

A 2GB cheaper variant would be very interesting if they could slot it into that price bracket. I presume there will be some die harvest chips that don't make the full 4096 shaders grade.

What would you call a scaled down Fury, a Tantrum? Perhaps "Strop"

'Indignation' has a certain ring to it when talking about AMD

[AGTDenton]

I don't think we'll see the R 300 series getting HBM across the range - that'd need some significant reworking of the silicon. For this generation we'll get HBM-bearing Fury cards and GDDR5 300-series cards.

A few websites have confirmed that it is just the Fury range with HBM memory.

This is nothing new when new memory is adopted. We saw the same thing during the transition to GDDR from DDR and GDDR3 - 5 only the top models got the new memory types.

I still think it's going to take until 4xx series to see something special, but look forward to the benchmarks and real world usability.

[DanceswithUnix]

'Indignation' has a certain ring to it when talking about AMD

lol. From my experience the other day, "Someone trying to install AMD Linux drivers". I didn't throw anything, didn't even swear much. That would make it a "Rather Irritated" perhaps

It did at least work in the end, after googling for and applying a patch file to make it compatible with the 4.0 kernel of my Fedora box, recompiling stuff, reconfiguring to use kdm instead of gdm, and generally a lot of faff that I just shouldn't have to be concerned with. Oh well, I knew buying a 285 was going to be a bit tricky in Linux.

[scaryjim]

I was just think that Tonga + a 384 bit memory bus respin might be as much work as adding HBM.

The rumour is that Tonga already has a 384bit memory bus, but AMD chose not to use it all when releasing the R9 285. So there isn't any work to do from that point of view.

[kalniel]

I was just think that Tonga + a 384 bit memory bus respin might be as much work as adding HBM.

I think the thought is the controller in Tonga is already 384 bus, so no respin needed.

[jigger]

The rumour is that Tonga already has a 384bit memory bus, but AMD chose not to use it all when releasing the R9 285. So there isn't any work to do from that point of view.

It's strange AMD didn't include it at this event if thats the case. Maybe they just dont have the production to launch.

[scaryjim]

It's strange AMD didn't include it at this event if thats the case. Maybe they just dont have the production to launch.

Or they might be waiting to see what Nvidia is going to do in the same market segment before they decide on the exact specifications of the card. I note that they haven't announced a 360X or 370X either, so they've left themselves room for a faster card in all three mid-range segments....

[jigger]

Just reading that Apple use a big version of Tonga is the 5K system. Maybe demand from Apple is high.

[kalniel]

Just reading that Apple use a big version of Tonga is the 5K system. Maybe demand from Apple is high.

Bigger, but not the full 384 bus one.

[PuremasterZ]

It's strange AMD didn't include it at this event if thats the case. Maybe they just dont have the production to launch.

Or they might be waiting to see what Nvidia is going to do in the same market segment before they decide on the exact specifications of the card. I note that they haven't announced a 360X or 370X either, so they've left themselves room for a faster card in all three mid-range segments....

Then lets not forget the R9 380X not being confirmed means that it could be released in the future

[jigger]

Did AMD give any details on the power use of the R9 Nano card?

[Jimbo75]

Did AMD give any details on the power use of the R9 Nano card?

Single 8-pin, 175W.

[Hicks12]

Presumably on the official launch dates, so tomorrow for the 300-series cards, 24th June for the Fury X, 14th July for the Fury. Currently unknown for the Nano (I note that AMD's slides call it just the R9 Nano, not the R9 Fury Nano...).

Won't surprise anyone to know that I'm most interested in the Nano from this lot: wonder how much they've cut it to get the TDP down. If they are using the same GloFo 28nm process that Carrizo uses, they could potentially keep quite a lot of the performance whilst lowering TDP significantly....

Well the Nano is said to have 2x power efficiency and has a TDP of 175w while a 290x has a TDP of 300w, simply looking at that we could estimate it is at least the 290x power with + 10% so a very big improvement if true, people made a huge thing about maxwell and claimed AMD is not able to do the same but in reality AMD has potentially done 1 better than Nvidia, always a funny comparing both AMD and Nvidia because their development timelines are out of sync so making a 'fair' comparison is always hard as its inbetween the others generation at launch.

Im impressed with the improvement but I am going to save my money and hold off (even though its extremely difficult) so I can grab the 400 series which will benefit massively from the new process node .

[scaryjim]

Well the Nano is said to have 2x power efficiency and has a TDP of 175w ...

I've noted that in one of the other threads kicking round (might have to create a round-up thread at some point!). According to AMD's performance figures for the Fury X and my calculations based on board powers for both it and Nano, the Nano might end up competing with Titan X...

[Hicks12]

would be awesome if its true, I always prefer AMD to get the 'win' due to the more recent Nvidia non consumer friendly moves in the market. Having a card that size with so much power at hand is really a nice achievement, for laptops this could be the beginning of realistic desktop grade performance in a nice form factor or having VR completely untethered but full graphics

[jigger]

I've noted that in one of the other threads kicking round (might have to create a round-up thread at some point!). According to AMD's performance figures for the Fury X and my calculations based on board powers for both it and Nano, the Nano might end up competing with Titan X...

Yeah looking at the FryCry results the Nano would be smack bang inline with the Titan X. Thats using my rough maths and the 2X performance per watt figure.

The R9 Nano looks like it could be a real gem.