At the time of writing AMD had still some issues with their stream.
That doesn’t change the fact that we know almost everything about their GPU thanks to Softpedia. The Hawaii GPU will be available in two variants, XT and PRO. The Radeon R9 290X is equipped with Hawaii XT which has 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TMUs and 44 ROPs. AMD clearly suggests that their new flagship is aiming at GTX 780. Of course it won’t be that hard to get it to TITAN performance, especially since it has 300W TDP (to be confirmed). In fact some sites even claim that you will get TITAN performance for 2/3 of its price. Is that really true? Well for that you will have to wait for proper reviews!
AMD Radeon R9 290X will support new technology TrueAudio, a truly programmable audio technology for game developers. The R9 290X will arrive with BF4 in a special bundle.
AMD also shown first picture of the R9 290 non-X. Apparently it looks just the same as 290X. It’s almost obvious we are looking at another Hawaii-based graphics card.
The asking price is $600, the card will be available in mid October.
AMD Radeon R9 290X Specifications:
- 11 CUs (compute units)
- 44 SMIDs (11 per CU)
- 2,816 stream processors
- 176 TMUs (Texture Mapping Units)
- 44 ROPs (Raster Operating Units)
- 4GB GDDR5 VRAM (6GB models will come later) — according to Softpedia
- 5+1+1 phase design (5 Phase Core and 1 Phase memory)
- 2 x DVI ports
- 1 x HDMI
- 1 x DisplayPort
- 8-Pin plus 6-Pin power connectors (300W TDP)
TO BE CONFIRMED:
Clock speeds, TDP and die size.
Some pictures from PCPerspective:
| AMD Radeon R9 290X | AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Codename | Hawaii XT | Tahiti XT | Kepler GK110 | Kepler GK110 |
| GPU Process | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| GPU Config | 2816 : 176 : 44 | 2048 : 128 : 32 | 2304 : 192 : 48 | 2688 : 224 : 48 |
| Video Memory | 4GB GDDR5* | 3GB GDDR5 | 3GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus | 512-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit |
| Bandwidth | 300+ GB/s | 288 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 288 GB/s |
| PCB VRM Phase | 5+1+1 | 5+1 | 6+2 | 6+2 |
| Power Configuration | 8+6 Pin | 8+6 Pin | 8+6 Pin | 8+6 Pin |
| TDP | 300 W* | 250 W | 250 W | 250 W |
| Launch Price | $599 | $549 | $649 | $999 |
* Softpedia says that R9 290X will be available in two variants: 4GB and 6GB
** The same sites claims that R9 290X will consume up to 300W, which is more than we’ve thought (260W)
Sources: Softpedia, PCPerspective
