Today AMD officially introduces new graphics card in R9 series lineup, the Radeon R9 285.
Tonga, Tahiti successor
R9 285 is based on Tonga PRO GPU, which is actually not the full chip. Card based on full fledged Tonga will launch later this month (R9 285X).
Tonga PRO has 1792 Stream Cores, 112 TMUs and 32 ROPs. Radeon R9 285 is clocked at 918 MHz with the memory at 1375 MHz. Memory configuration is what differentiates this card from its Tahiti predecessors. Tonga has in fact shorter bus (256b), but AMD developed more efficient algorithms like color compression, which actually increased memory bandwidth efficiency by 40%. The only question is, are gamers going to notice?
The other feature are new pre-scaler and upgraded display controllers. This should technically improve game-play experience at higher resolutions.
Tonga is also equipped with new 16-bit floating point integer instructions, which allow low power GPU computing and media processing. Tonga has improved compute task scheduling. These technologies are meant to increase power efficiency.
Tonga improved geometry processing (4 primitives per clock cycle), which dramatically increase tessellation rate in complex scenes.
Last but not least, those who often use graphics card power for media transcoding, will welcome what Tonga has to offer in 4k H254 processing.
AMD Radeon R9 285 specifications
| AMD Radeon R9 280 Series | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon R9 280 | Radeon R9 285 | Radeon R9 280X | Radeon R9 285X | |
| GPU Codename | Tahiti PRO | Tonga PRO | Tahiti XT | Tonga XT |
| Unified Cores | 1792 | 1792 | 2048 | 2048 |
| TMUs | 112 | 112 | 128 | 128 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Base Clock | 827 MHz | – | 850 MHz | – |
| Boost Clock | 933 MHz | 918 MHz | 1000 MHz | ? |
| Memory Clock | 1250 MHz | 1375 MHz | 1500 MHz | ? |
| Memory | 3GB GDDR5 | 2GB/4GB GDDR5 | 3GB GDDR5 | ? |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit | ? |
| Bandiwdth | 240 GB/s | 176 GB/s | 288 GB/s | ? |
| Connectors | 6-pin + 6-pin | 6-pin + 6-pin | 8-pin + 6-pin | 8-pin + 6-pin |
| TDP | 200W | 190W | 250W | ? |
| Launch Date | March 2014 | September 2014 | October 2013 | September 2014 |
| MSRP | $279 | $249 | $299 | $349? |
AMD Radeon R9 285 Press slides
These slides explain pretty well what new Never Settle: Space Edition is all about, so I won’t keep you waiting.
AMD Radeon R9 285 custom models
