AMD Rebrands, Launches R-series GPUs News Here Comes the R9 290 GPUs

AMD wasn’t quite ready to spill all the beans on its upcoming “Volcanic Islands” GPUs as we went to press, so by the time you read this some of these details may have changed. Don’t blame us—it’s the nature of the secretive beast that is the world of GPUs. Nothing is really “final” on a GPU until it ships to customers, so manufactures usually linked to talk about a certain product in broad strokes first, then eventually send some specs, then actually launch with pricing and specs confirmed. It’s known as a “paper launch” and that’s what AMD is doing with its newest series of GPUs. That said, here’s what we know so far.

THE R90 ‘HAWAII’ DEBUTS

First of all, AMD is ditching its HD 7xxx series monitor for good, and switching to something with more room to grow in the future. In its place AMD will be placing an “R” prefix along with a three-digit number that tells you where each card stacks up in its hierarchy. Though we don’t know the specific number of all the classes, we do know the following: the high-end cards will be called R9 290 and R9 290X, and that is confirmed by AMD. The company also confirmed that it will offer a midrange R7 and an entry-level R5 lineup, as well. The majority of these GPUs will be based on AMD’s current GCN silicon—still at 28nm since it says 29nm just isn’t quite ready yet—but rebadged and clocked higher.

There will be one new piece of silicon, however, and AMD is calling it Hawaii (the previous GPU was named Tahiti, for what it’s worth). As we stated above, it’ll be an all- new 28nm die that is bigger than Tahiti but not quite as big as NVidia’s GK110. We know it won’t be as big because AMD has said as much in an interview. AMD’s general manager of graphics said it’s about 30 percent smaller than GK110, and that the company believes it has the “best performance for the die size” for any enthusiast GPU. We expect AMD to keep its HD 7990 as the company has stated that its next batch of GPUs will not hit $999 because that’s too expensive to appeal to the average gamer.

The top-tier Hawaii GPU, the R9  290X, will likely retail for around $600, where it will on the GTX Titan at a much lower price point. That’s still a heck of a lot of coin, but if it can get within striking distance of the Titan for $400 less, AMD will have a winner on its hands. Coming in just below the R9 290X will be the regular R9 290, which will probably arrive at $450 and face off with the GTX 780. Both R9 GPUs will most likely utilize a 384-bit memory bus, and be clocked lower then 1GHz.

TRUEAUDIO AND EYEFINITY

AMD is also is highlighting two new technologies that it’s going to include with its new series of GPUs, and both should make for and overall better experience for AMD GPU owners. The first doesn’t have name (that was are aware of) but simplifies hooking up Eyefinity setups. In the past, you had to plug the third monitor (and fourth, if that’s how you roll) into a DisplayPort connector, no ifs, ands, or buts. AMD says that requirements has been eliminated, so you can plug them into any port on the card. The second big feature, and this is something AMD is going to really push hard with this generation of GPUs, is all-new programmable audio technology named TrueAudio. This is hardware built into the GPU that features a three core DSP baked into the graphics core, and optimized by game developers to give specific games an “audio signature,” according to AMD. It’s very similar to the TressFX technology from Tomb Raider, or how PhysX is implemented in certain NVidia games, in that it’s another tool in the chest for game developers to use to enhance the gaming experience. AMD says it will accomplish three goals, which include improving acoustic sound effects by offloading the sound processing from the CPU, and generating truly directional audio, even when using stereo headphones. AMD says its Trueaudio technology can also piggyback on whatever you are currently using, whether it’s USB or a discrete audio card. Though this new technology sounds great (pun intended), it’s something developers will have to develop for on a game-by-game basis using models AMD is providing, so its implementation in games won’t be automatic.