XFX accidentally confirms AMD Radeon R9 390X is a rebrand

Scorpus

Posts: 2,159   +239
Staff member

xfx amd radeon r9 amd radeon gpu graphics card hawaii r9 390x

Graphics card manufacturer XFX has accidentally confirmed on their website that the upcoming AMD Radeon R9 390X is, in fact, a rebranded version of the R9 290X, which launched towards the end of 2013.

On their product page for the XFX Radeon R9 290X Double Dissipation Edition, towards the bottom of the page the company has posted a picture of a box that clearly shows R9 390X branding. The card itself comes with two large fans atop a cooler that includes seven heat pipes, plus the usual selection of display outputs: two DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort.

While specifications for the card aren't shown in the picture, the inclusion of 8 GB of GDDR5 memory indicates this card won't use AMD's upcoming Fiji GPU. Cards that do end up featuring a Fiji GPU will be limited to 4 GB of high-bandwidth (HBM) memory, as AMD has confirmed previously.

Other rumors have indicated that the R9 390X will be a slightly faster version of the R9 290X, while cards that feature AMD's new Fiji GPU will fall under "Radeon Fury" branding. The rest of the R9 300 series will reportedly be rebrands as well, which will disappoint AMD fans wanting to see a wide variety of new cards hit the market.

As for the Radeon Fury, all reports indicate that AMD will launch this next-generation flagship card at an E3 event on June 16th.

Permalink to story.

 
Hmm. AMD really gave it their all when their released GCN 1.0 back in 2011. They released GCN cards from the top dog 7970 down to the 7730. From there, GCN 1.1 only saw 3 single GPUs and GCN 1.2 just 1 GPU so far.
 
On the other hand, it's amazing how AMD can still be competitive with the same GPUs all these years.
 
Another sure sign that the PC gaming market has dramatically shrunk.

Sad but true.
 
Reading comprehension, the 390X isn't the top of the line card, the Fury will be.
 
I can forgive some rebranding of lower end/mainstream cards, but for a top of the line card, that's an entirely different thing.
That is not their top card, the cards labeled under the "Fury" name scheme.

It also is a bit misleading, one thing not being mentioned is (Well supposedly, I am assuming they are doing this based on what has been known) all these cards are going to be refreshed with updates like the Tonga GPU was. That brings about changes in the tessellation, efficiency, support, and more to all the chips which means they are all going to be bumped up with some nice improvement across the board. This is not the type of rebranding that went on with the HD 7XXX series to R9 2XX series before.

We will have to see how that all pans out of course, but based on what we have seen it should be a nice upgrade still. But the Fury card(s) are the new GPU's from AMD.
 
Hmm. AMD really gave it their all when their released GCN 1.0 back in 2011. They released GCN cards from the top dog 7970 down to the 7730. From there, GCN 1.1 only saw 3 single GPUs and GCN 1.2 just 1 GPU so far.
AMD can't afford to waste money on R&D for an entire new version of GCN when a new manufacturing process isn't available yet. They're obviously waiting for 16/14 nm to be ready, unlike Nvidia which got impatient and decided to repurpose Maxwell for 28 nm (but their R&D budget has less trouble accomodating that).
This is borderline fraud as far as I'm concerned. Pathetic.
How is this "fraud"? You think you're entitled to a new version of GCN whenever you see fit, and AMD is criminally liable for not giving it to you? That's what's pathetic.
It also is a bit misleading, one thing not being mentioned is (Well supposedly, I am assuming they are doing this based on what has been known) all these cards are going to be refreshed with updates like the Tonga GPU was. That brings about changes in the tessellation, efficiency, support, and more to all the chips which means they are all going to be bumped up with some nice improvement across the board. This is not the type of rebranding that went on with the HD 7XXX series to R9 2XX series before.
AMD already has a page for the OEM R9 300 series in their website, including some specs and features. While most cards were updated to GCN 1.1 at least, the 370 in particular is still listed as missing many newer features, suggesting it's still the GCN 1.0 Pitcairn/Curacao. It may not be the exact same silicon as Pitcairn, sure, but it's still missing features compred to GCN 1.1 cards.
 
The last few generations of cards have all been underwhelming to say the least, with shiny new boxes and names camouflaging tweaks to hardware that released years ago. Not saying some of these new cards don't kick butt, but lets be honest here.
Todays $650 GTX 980Ti has wonderful performance for the architecture its based on and performs great...until your playing at 4K. Here, it does 'ok', but new games (4-5 of them now) bring it to its knees (under 30FPS, and thats with some goodies turned off/down). You simply need two of them or you need to turn down settings. Even games where it hits 60FPS it will dip during stress moments, making the game list with less then desirable performance even longer.

And that's ok with a mostly recycled GPU. It's common in this business, no big deal. I don't care, you don't care. But 4K has shown the void, and its time for something new, something better. It's time to take a step forward, not sideways.

I understand that 4K is very demanding.
Nvidia and AMD are both releasing new GPU's in the next 18 months, and for the first time in 2-3 years, I'm actually excited to see what they will come up with.
 
Nvidia and AMD are both releasing new GPU's in the next 18 months, and for the first time in 2-3 years, I'm actually excited to see what they will come up with.

Yep, it's gonna be sweet! I think I'll take three!
e6d5a9f6978c5c228995d2e326b8b712.gif
 
This actually can't be a rebrand. The leaked specs includes one critical clue: the memory frequency.

Overclocking memory with Hawaii could barely get you to 6GHz, regardless of the memory being used. The fact that this thing is shipping with 8GB of 6GHz GDDR5 indicates at least a stepping change, minimum.

Matured process, new GPU stepping, 20% faster RAM, are all indicated. This thing should be 5-10% faster per GPU clock in higher resolutions and pull less power at a minimum. And AMD probably didn't stop there, since they could just drag & drop the GCN 1.2 library onto the old Hawaii layout and gain all the benefits in just a few hours of work (and this work would have been done over a year ago).
 
Still a stepping change and memory frequency bump is on the low end for changes that constitute a next generation card moniker, no less the average consumer top single GPU, wouldn't you think?

I'm very disappointed as my current card has served it's usefulness and would like something significant to upgrade to. Might have to wait another generation...
 
I can forgive some rebranding of lower end/mainstream cards, but for a top of the line card, that's an entirely different thing.
That is not their top card, the cards labeled under the "Fury" name scheme.

It also is a bit misleading, one thing not being mentioned is (Well supposedly, I am assuming they are doing this based on what has been known) all these cards are going to be refreshed with updates like the Tonga GPU was. That brings about changes in the tessellation, efficiency, support, and more to all the chips which means they are all going to be bumped up with some nice improvement across the board. This is not the type of rebranding that went on with the HD 7XXX series to R9 2XX series before.

We will have to see how that all pans out of course, but based on what we have seen it should be a nice upgrade still. But the Fury card(s) are the new GPU's from AMD.

Do you realize that saying only the Fury is the only top one is similar to saying that only NVIDIA's Titan is? How can't the R9 390X and GTX 980 Ti be top-tier cards simply by their name?
 
The last few generations of cards have all been underwhelming to say the least, with shiny new boxes and names camouflaging tweaks to hardware that released years ago. Not saying some of these new cards don't kick butt, but lets be honest here.
Todays $650 GTX 980Ti has wonderful performance for the architecture its based on and performs great...until your playing at 4K. Here, it does 'ok', but new games (4-5 of them now) bring it to its knees (under 30FPS, and thats with some goodies turned off/down). You simply need two of them or you need to turn down settings. Even games where it hits 60FPS it will dip during stress moments, making the game list with less then desirable performance even longer.

And that's ok with a mostly recycled GPU. It's common in this business, no big deal. I don't care, you don't care. But 4K has shown the void, and its time for something new, something better. It's time to take a step forward, not sideways.

I understand that 4K is very demanding.
Nvidia and AMD are both releasing new GPU's in the next 18 months, and for the first time in 2-3 years, I'm actually excited to see what they will come up with.
4K gaming is so niche that Nvidia and AMD would be foolish to try to design hardware for release in the next 18 months that can run games at 60 fps on a single GPU. It would require a massive increase in performance the likes of which I don't think we've ever seen before.
 
GCN is a good architecture and I've never had an issue with my Sapphire Radeon R9 290 TriX OC. There isn't a game I have ever had issues with.
 
With less than 30% market share and a continual decline, I wouldn't use the word "competitive"....more like compromising on price to gain/keep consumers. their strategy isn't sustainable and will lead to bankruptcy.
 
4K gaming is so niche that Nvidia and AMD would be foolish to try to design hardware for release in the next 18 months that can run games at 60 fps on a single GPU.
There are cards that can already run games at 60FPS now, and 4K is not niche.

would require a massive increase in performance the likes of which I don't think we've ever seen before.
Then you haven't been around long.
 
There are cards that can already run games at 60FPS now, and 4K is not niche.
Take a look at the Steam hardware survey, "primary display resolution" section. Currently, there are 0.06% of Steam users running a 3840x2160 monitor. This is compared to 34.54% for 1920x1080 and 1.11% for 2560x1440. To put that in perspective, there are over 18 times more people running 1440p, and over 575 times more people running 1080p, than people running 4K.
4K is absolutely, without the slightest ammount of doubt, a niche.
 
Do you realize that saying only the Fury is the only top one is similar to saying that only NVIDIA's Titan is? How can't the R9 390X and GTX 980 Ti be top-tier cards simply by their name?

According to a Korean site named hwbattle.com, we'll be looking at three variants of the Fiji chip above the R9 390X. You can find a few translated pages around the web on your own.
 
There are cards that can already run games at 60FPS now, and 4K is not niche.
Take a look at the Steam hardware survey, "primary display resolution" section. Currently, there are 0.06% of Steam users running a 3840x2160 monitor. This is compared to 34.54% for 1920x1080 and 1.11% for 2560x1440. To put that in perspective, there are over 18 times more people running 1440p, and over 575 times more people running 1080p, than people running 4K.
4K is absolutely, without the slightest ammount of doubt, a niche.
It's a chicken or the egg problem. Demand is going to be stifled *because* single GPUs currently cannot deliver at 4K. So you are right it is a niche but there has to be a GPU to service the niche before it un-niches!
 
Back