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Advanced Micro Devices is reportedly working on a new graphics card based on its code-named “Tonga” graphics processing unit. The Radeon R9 380X will be powered by the fully-fledged GPU with all stream processors activated. Performance of the product will be similar to that of the Radeon R9 280X.
The AMD Radeon R9 380X will feature “Tonga” GPU with 2048 stream processors as well as 384-bit memory bus, reports Expreview. The graphics board will offer considerably higher performance than the Radeon R9 380, but will also consume more power. Thanks to the GCN 1.2 architecture, the new graphics adapter will significantly outperform the Radeon R9 280X, which is based on the outdated “Tahiti” graphics chip.
AMD reportedly decided not to offer Radeon R9 285X with unlocked “Tonga” chip last year because it considered its power consumption too high. Right now, the company needs a new product that would feel the gap between the Radeon R9 380 and the Radeon R9 390-series products.
AMD’s partners among graphics card makers have already received the unlocked “Tonga” graphics processor and are reportedly preparing adapters based on their own designs of printed circuit boards. One of such graphics cards developed by XFX has been pictured.
AMD did not comment on the news-story.
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KitGuru Says: While it is great to see AMD working on a new graphics card, it is completely unclear why the company did not introduce a product with “full” “Tonga” graphics processor unit earlier.
I totally agree that they should’ve introduced this earlier, and not used Pitcairn again in the 370 at all. With the 300 series, they should’ve gotten rid of anything that didn’t support Freesync, and use the entire 300 line to promote that feature.
Instead, they got bad press from the constant recycling of old tech like Pitcairn and made Freesync more confusing to market instead.
AMD also hyped all the optimization of GCN 1.1 and 1.2 only to then drop archaic 1.0 on us.
GCN 1.0 is confusing with FreeSync as it supports FreeSync, but not for gaming…it really needs to be retired, it’s 2012-technically 2011-tech.
KitGuru Says: While it is great
to see AMD working on a new graphics card, it is completely unclear why
the company did not introduce a product with “full” “Tonga” graphics
processor unit earlier.
See? That’s why you don’t get AMD card for review. Instead of using brain you make vague statements. It’s very clear that Tonga XT’s were all used in Apple iMac and that’s more profitable than consumer GPU. Now they have enough supply to make R9 380X so they are releasing it .
No, that doesn’t make any sense, sorry. They could have just manufactured more Tonga dies, as this situations was 100% predictable already 18 months ago. There was no reason to make anything else than Fiji and Tonga dies in the last 18 months.
Anton doesn’t review graphics cards for Kitguru, I do and I the relationship with AMD is now fine – we reviewed Fury X, Fury and the NANO. Perhaps you are missing all these reviews as you don’t actually read KitGuru regularly.
No, they couldn’t have made more.
I have a tiny manufakturing business so i have an idea about spending time and money on intelectual property and material resources.
The reality is, one must make the optimal amount of product with optimal amunt of work and time that is put in to it, and managing quality control, and buyers that are willing to put out money.
That is never that simple as you say – make more and make money.
If you make more and don’t have the desired demand for your product, you have frozen your cash, lost your agility, and in the end most definetly will give it away for a massive discount – translates in to loss. And then it won’t be that easy to sell the next generation, or even the next bach of a given product as expensive or even more (for objective reasons) as it was a few weeks ago.
That wasn’t really what I was trying to say.
AMD decided to make Curaçao (Pitcairn) dies for the 300 series refresh. Instead, they could have made Tonga dies.
AMD has waver agreements but both dies are the same process, so it’s no difference… they could make the choice. Pitcairn is slightly smaller, so they get a few more per waver, making them slightly cheaper per piece. Yields are very good on 28nm, so that’s not an issue anymore.
Slightly smaller? What are you talking about?
Pitacrin 212 mm squared vs Tonga 366 mm (one more than Tahiti). Where do you see a slight difference in size?
Sure, in my line of work it would be a slighter production cost increase than area increase, meaning that intelectual work takes the bigger part of the cost of producing an item. That doesn’t erase one of many hurdles, where to put the larger product stack when there aren’t any buyers?
This is Cpu/Gpu production we are talking about, the bigger the die, the higher is the cost increase, due to lower yealds and far more unusable chips and such.
Don’t mix what coul’d be, and can be done.
Ok just to add to this, the reason amd didnt sell tonga xt chips earlier may have had something to do with the fact that they had a contract with apple to make r9 m295x chips based on tonga xt. that could have been exlcusive for a set time, taking up all the inventory or as oscar says be down to yield issues (which would also tie into taking up inventory).
Yields are extremely good on 28nm for those sizes. They might even be better with Tonga because they could use cut-down versions for lower-end GPUs.
Tonga is actually 359mm. Probably around 23mm*14mm.
That gives you 152 dies per 12″ wafer. A 28nm wafer costs around 4000$ – 4500$, but we don’t know how much exactly AMD pays.
Anyway, so around 25-35$ at most per Tonga die. So if Pitcairn is below 20$ per die, it’s still not a huge difference.
Yeah, only 25-35$, only a few more to check if the die is ok due to higher complexity, only a few more than that due to now more common 4GB memory, just a few more when Asus and/or PowerColor puts it on a larger PCB, a larger cooler, a larger added added price Asus or other manufacturer puts on it, then the shipping, then the added price at Newegg, and i didn’t even take into account the other 999 steps.
Just don’t act as if you get how the price is made or the economics of delivering a finished product.
If one pea has grown bigger, most deffinetly the other peas in a pod will have grown too.
No, everything else is the exact same process. If they choose to take 4GB instead of 3GB or 2GB, then they make a higher end product for a higher price, but they don’t have to. AIB partner can do what they want, also has nothing to do if AMD chooses a Pitcairn or Tonga die.
The reasons why AMD chose Pitcairn instead of Tonga are simple.
Price is one of them, but it’s minor… they would have had costs of 10$-20$ extra and they decided to rather save that in favor of higher margins and/or lower prices.
The other and bigger one is that they once again failed to manage inventories. Likely this was already a 2014 issue, where they realized that they have way too many Pitcairn dies already. So they simply decided to keep the die for 300 series, because they had too much inventory to sell off until Fiji release.
Kit guru should write a full-fledge “Guide to GPUs” with a tech tree to go with it, so us techno-noobs can follow the development of all these different cores and names
Why did they not offer a full-Tonga till now; #1 there was way to much inventory of 280X and 290’s in the channel that this would compete with. #2 – Had supply Apple’s contract for R9 M295X, while not super huge AMD was just ordering to supply that demand first. The release for the 285 just so they didn’t have a volume of chip sitting in bins, that in their situation carryover doesn’t look good on the balance sheets. While this full-Tonga could have made life on the 970 not as easy, AMD couldn’t use it to “go to war” on the 970 price wise, Tonga is 9% smaller but nowhere near the volume of the gelding GM204. So there’s no way this full-Tonga could make any argument against high volume gelding, all while AMD had excess inventory of product wanting to be sold.
I don’t see these coming out in large volumes, I think it just here to take the place of 290’s and fill the chasm between 960/380-970/390.
As to the R7 370 “Entry” card needing FreeSync… What monitor would you propose is in such a price range that a R7 370 has the performance to run? I found perhaps two that is said to be releasing 24-inch AOC G2460PF, and Nixeus NX-VUE24A and both are 144Hz. Although don’t find either of them for sale yet, the indicated price was over $300. I don’t see a lowly entry card providing the punch to run 144Hz. So FreeSync (or G-Sync) at such a level is irrelevant even if some say their technology is pertinent.
No AIB partner does what it wants, if they could they’d have their own ISIC chips with their own foundries where to make them.
Yeah, have you seen a GTX 970 2GB to cut down cost? I sure haven’t. Even a cut down tonga with overclocked memory is gaining fast to that one, if 2GB are added you get massively higher minimum framerates.
So in all the chip with a full core and higher clocks would be wasted on 2GB, so again, no felxibility there.
AIB partners putting 2GB would make basically the same card more expensive and would make less or no money.
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LOL I’m sorry I was not being that serious. I love KitGuru and check sites regularly. Also Always have fun with Carl over at your FB page. Thank you for reply. 🙂
The story makes no sense at all, says that it will be as fast as 280X, then states that it will be faster lol.