The mysterious AMD event that we talked about last week, is taking place in Samoa right now. Ryan Shrout is there for few days to learn more about future Radeon products. One of the things he learned and was allowed to share was the actual Tonga bus width.
The speculation began many months ago, when Japanese website reported 384-bit interface, which allegedly confirmed by AMD. No other site has ever confirmed this again. It took more than a year for Raja Koduri to finally tell us the truth — Tonga has indeed 384-bit interface, only it was not used by any Radeon product.
AMD confirms 384-bit bus available on Tonga, just not enabled on any product, including 380X. Didn't find a perfect perf/$ slot.
— Ryan Shrout (@ryanshrout) December 4, 2015
Let me remind you that Tonga is direct Tahiti replacement (HD 7970/R9 280X). With today’s news we finally learn that Tonga almost identical specs as it’s predecessor. It is also worth noting that Tonga is also known as Amethyst or Antigua.
Now the question is, what else will we learn from AMD event..
| AMD Tahiti & Tonga comparison | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tahiti | Tonga | |
| Launch Date | December 2011 | September 2014 |
| Architecture | GCN 1.0 | GCN 1.2 |
| Fabrication Process | 28nm | 28nm |
| Transistors | 4.3 billion | 5.0 billion |
| Die Size (mm2) | 365 | 359 |
| Compute Units | 32 | 32 |
| Stream Cores | 2048 | 2048 |
| TMUs | 128 | 128 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 384-bit |
Source: PCPerspective
