Reviews - AMD Radeon R9 280X, R9 270X and R7 260X

[scaryjim]

well, you could pre-order an R9 280X for around £250 ... or you could buy the practically equivalent ASUS 7970 DirectCU II TOP from Scan right now for £220.

Knocking $100 off the MSRP is all well and good, but it's a bit futile if the vast majority of etailers are already selling the older card for $100 less than MSRP anyway....

[scaryjim]

The GTX780 uses an even bigger chip though??

True, but the R9 280X draws around the same (if not more) power as a GTX780. So I don't see how AMD are going to make a chip that's bigger than Tahiti use less power?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

well, you could pre-order an R9 280X for around £250 ... or you could buy the practically equivalent ASUS 7970 DirectCU II TOP from Scan right now for £220.

Knocking $100 off the MSRP is all well and good, but it's a bit futile if the vast majority of etailers are already selling the older card for $100 less than MSRP anyway....

Well its always the case,this happens I suppose,and you can get a decent HD7970 for around £210. However,I did remember that card being cheaper a few days ago too!!:

[jigger]

Just found A MSI R9 280X Review here

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_280X_Gaming/

and it has crossfire !

All the cards use crossfire it's just done over the PCIE bus instead of the typical crossfire bridge.

Edit:

Although that MSI card might give better crossfire performance on a PCIE 2 motherboard. Nice spot.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

True, but the R9 280X draws around the same (if not more) power as a GTX780. So I don't see how AMD are going to make a chip that's bigger than Tahiti use less power?

These are the card power consumption figures:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/M...Gaming/24.html

If you look at the performance per watt measurements,the GTX680 is inferior to both the GTX780 and Geforce Titan. However,the latter two cards are just lower clocked,and have a die size around 87% larger in area. However clockspeeds instead of being 1006MHZ+ for the GTX680 are 863MHZ+ and 837MHZ+ which is around 14% to 16% lower.

Even if absolute power consumption is higher for the GK110,it is not in-line with how much bigger the GPU is TBH,and the size difference is massive.

TPU measures power consumption at the PCI-E slot and PCI-E power connectors.

The thing is the later AMD cards were more efficient and if you read the comments of Dave Baumann(AMD chap),he said on another forum the lessons learnt from Tahiti made it into the later GPUs like Pitcairn and Cape Verde. We also saw Bonaire doing quite well in this regard.

Hawaii is rumoured to have a 423MM2 die size. That is only around 16% larger than Tahiti.

But look at the clockspeeds. Both the R9 290 and R9 290X only go upto around 950MHZ to 1GHZ with maximum boost:

http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-r9-29...ons-confirmed/

The boost is temperature dependent meaning the upper levels are the best case scenario.

Base clockspeeds are meant to be around 800MHZ. That would be around 16% to 25% lower than the HD7970 and HD7970GE.

Another rumour is that the memory controller is based on Pitcairn and not Tahiti.

So a 16% increase in die area and a 16% to 25% decrease in base clockspeeds.

Its nearly 2 years later on the same node,after multiple designs. Tahiti was the largest 28NM chip until the GK110 was released 9 to 12 months later.

So,it would surprise me if Hawaii cannot beat Tahiti in performance per watt,or ends up being much worse in power consumption.

[jigger]

Where are all the salvage parts of Pitcairn and Tahiti going?? No new SKUs seem to use them!!

Hopefully we will see some manufactures make use of them. A pair of salvaged Bonaire XT chips with 2x4gb of memory and working True Audio could make a nice card.

[scaryjim]

All good points CAT, but I'm not going to get excited until a see a 290X review. I'm not saying it's impossible for them to produce a card that draws less power than a 780, just that I'm not holding my breath over it. The reviews seem to be fairly evenly split between those that found 280X drew more than a GTX780, and those that found it drew less - presumably that's going to be down to the specific load they used to test it. But if the 280X isn't consistently drawing less power than a GTX780, then it's going to take some phenomenal engineering for a faster card to consistently draw less power - and it'll raise a lot of questions about why they couldn't do that with the R9 280X...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

All good points CAT, but I'm not going to get excited until a see a 290X review. I'm not saying it's impossible for them to produce a card that draws less power than a 780, just that I'm not holding my breath over it. The reviews seem to be fairly evenly split between those that found 280X drew more than a GTX780, and those that found it drew less - presumably that's going to be down to the specific load they used to test it. But if the 280X isn't consistently drawing less power than a GTX780, then it's going to take some phenomenal engineering for a faster card to consistently draw less power - and it'll raise a lot of questions about why they couldn't do that with the R9 280X...

Its probably the same question as how the GK104 is worse in performance/watt than an 87% larger chip!

This is especially considering GK110 based cards use a 384 bit memory controller,a more complex PCB and far more RAM chips too!

OTH,look at the mobile versions of Pitcairn and the GK104. Power draw is far better than desktop cards,but clockspeeds are not massively lower. Its almost like as you approach 1GHZ,the power consumption starts rising quite highly for larger parts using the 28NM process.

I suspect that is the reason Tahiti launched at only 925MHZ,despite the fact people could get massively overclocks even with early examples was power consumption,especially with a 384 bit memory controller and a large amount of GDDR5.

The GK104 cards had a smaller die,and less complex PCBs and less VRAM,which is why they generally are a bit better overall with performance per watt.

Moreover,AMD and partners have boosted the clockspeeds since then,so any potential drops in power consumption with process node improvements,have been negated by the higher clockspeeds of the version 2 HD7970 cards.

[jigger]

The higher the clock speed the more heat you generate and that in turn increases the power consumption and starts a vicious circle.

Power use and heat output shouldn't be an issue as long as AMD don't go all GTX480 on us of course.

[KeyboardDemon]

I have mixed emotions on the news so far, first, the majority of the cards tested are based on improving older designs and only one of the cards was actually based on a new chip design and this card was also the one that least interested me due to the segment they are aiming it at. So I was pleased at the lower price points and performance seemed ok for the price but I wasn't excited about anything in the article, not disappointed either I guess, just not moved at all, to tell the truth.

With the R7 260X, and the two new R9 290 + 290X however I am still quite excited about the possibility of the GPU being able to bring something completely new to my gaming experience and not just with performance but I want to see a review in which TrueAudio and Mantle are fully explored and evaluated by the reviewer and then once that's been done I want to see what nVidia Maxwell has to offer.

The thing that I am excited about more is seeing something completely new in the GPU market as I don't feel the current HD7xxx or the GTX7xx range have really managed that.

[flufflogic]

Bit disappointed to see the R7 line needing power connectors, TBH; I was hoping they'd be natural choices for HTPCs and mid-tier gaming rigs.

[theanalyzer]

Is there really a 100usd price drop? On Anandtech, it says both the 7970 and R9 280X are for 299USD. Same at TechPowerUp.

[ChinesePate]

yes, but 7970 was 399 when it came to the market

[abychristy]

Hey great news If you have a 7970 you can crossfire it with a R9 280X because of the same Tahiti structure.

[davemaster000]

Seems like a quite good card series, but it's not a big leap between 79xx series and R9 280 or even none

[Jimbo75]

Looks like the 650 Ti boost "permanent" price cut didn't last very long - http://techreport.com/news/25544/new...mises-reversal