AMD Info! HBM-equipped Radeon this quarter! Zen CPU architecture in 2016

[SubiyaCryolite]

 

 

Its finally happening, AMD will announce their new hardware during todays "Financial Analyst Day"

According to their CEO Lisa Su: 

"....The software / API investments and 2.5/3D packaging investments are technologies we’ve either seen come to market (Mantle) or will be released in the near-future (AMD’s upcoming Fiji GPU). Su has said that AMD will formally announce the HBM-equipped Radeon hardware today, as well as new features for VR and an “immersive platform” push."

AMD has also outlined its high level plans for 2015 and beyond, this information can be found by clicking on the 1st link.

Im really excited about this and have already sought out a few buyers for my GTX 970. Assuming TDPs are reasonable Id love to get my hands on a R9 390. The main reason I want to jump back to AMD is for Freesync (cheapo). All specs and benchmarks released so far are mere speculation but this is what we know. 

R9 370X	R9 380X	R9 390X
Chip Codename: Treasure Island. Video Ram: 2GB GDDR5. Memory Bus: 256-bit. Bandwidth: N/A TDP: N/A. ROPs: 48. Cores: 1536.Texture Units: 96.RRP: N/A.	Chip Codename: Fiji. Video Ram: 3GB HBM. Memory Bus: 384-bit. Bandwidth: N/A. TDP: N/A. ROPs: 72. Cores: 3072. Texture Units: 192. RRP: N/A.	Chip Codename: Bermuda XTX. Video Ram: 4GB HBM. Memory Bus: 512-bit. Bandwidth: N/A. TDP: (Most likely liquid cooled at reference, suggests high TDP). ROPs: 96. Cores: 4224. Texture Units: 264 .RRP: N/A.

 

How do you feel about AMD cards and the company in general? They seem to be going through difficult times right now. 

Source 1 :: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205078-amds-project-skybridge-the-armx86-hybrid-core-is-officially-dead

Source 2 :: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2421407/amd-radeon-3xx-series-megathread-links-faq.html

 

UPDATE 1:

"AMD’s kicking off today’s FAD with a quick overview of what they see as the company’s major growth opportunities: gaming, immersive platforms, and the datacenter."

 

This slide has several interesting tidbits. Under gaming AMD wants to leverage the following to get a competitive edge

 

• Performance/watt leadership (good luck with that)
• Unique VR features
• Leadership API performance (AMD cards benefit the most from DX12 so far)
• First to High Bandwidth Memory (Yay)

src :: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9230/amd-charts-future-growth-opportunities

Update 2:

Hot damn, more news. AMD has spilled the beans on its lates CPU architecture Zen.

"According to Mark Papermaster, Zen will address the Bulldozer family’s greatest flaw: low efficiency. Clock-for-clock, Bulldozer was slower than the Phenom II chips it was meant to replace, and the CPU designer made only modest improvements on this front over the past four years. In some cases, the improved efficiency that chips like Kaveri and Carrizo offered was partially offset by lower frequency targets that kept overall performance largely unchanged."

"Zen is supposed to finally change that. The new chip will supposedly improve IPC by a whopping 40% while adopting FinFETs (meaning it’s built on 14/16nm processes). Without clock speed targets, we can’t make an absolute comparison against current AMD chips, but the potential for improvements on this front has always been huge."

"Finally, AMD confirmed that its next-generation Radeon architecture will use High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. Papermaster discussed the evolution of GCN in general terms, implying that its upcoming card generation will be based on a tweaked version of the GCN standard that should deliver a 2x performance/watt improvement. Based on what we’ve heard about Fiji, the next-gen chip is based on the GCN 1.2 “Tonga” GPU, but with a greater number of cores and a huge amount of memory bandwidth. Presumably the power consumption improvements come with further tweaks to AMD’s 28nm GCN design, combined with the power improvements gained from using HBM itself.

Zen and K12 are both set to launch in 2016, with Fiji coming in the near future. More on these products as details become available."

source :: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205086-amd-details-zen-k12-cpu-cores-confirms-next-gen-memory-support

 

Update 3:

AMD CEO confirms that new HBM based cards will be out this quarter:

"Not mentioned in AMD’s GPU roadmap but now being mentioned by Dr. Su is confirmation that AMD will be launching new desktop GPUs this quarter. AMD is not saying much about these new products quite yet, though based on their description it does sound like we’re looking at high-performance products. These new products will support DirectX 12, though I will caution against confusing that with Feature Level 12_x support until we know more."

" AMD has also confirmed that these HBM-equipped GPUs will allow them to experiment with new form factors. By placing the memory on the same package as the GPU, AMD will be able to save space and produce smaller cards, which will allow them to produce designs other than the traditional large 10”+ cards that are typical of high-end video cards."

Source :: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9235/amd-to-launch-new-desktop-gpu-this-quarter-q215-

 

Update (Thanks to JEMC)

More news and rumors about Fiji.

What was only a rumor, although that seemed legit, has now been proven correct. A leaked driver has confirmed the rebranding of some R9 2XX series cards to the new 3XX series. The R9 285, 290 and 290X will come back

That's not surprising, and it's not even bad news as they could simply be rebranded as the R9 370, 380 and 380X.

The problem comes from the ASUS forums (although I still have to see a link that proves it), that has listed new cards, including:

• ASUS R9390X-DC2-8GD5
• ASUC-2GD5S  STRIX-R9380-O
• ASUS  STRIX-R9370-OC-4GD5
• ASUS  STRIX-R7360X-DC2OC2-2GD5
• ASUS  R7360-2GD5

If 390X is Fiji, and Fiji only has 4GB of HBM, how can they list an 8GB variant? Well, it could be that the 390X is Hawaii based like the 290X, not Fiji, and because of that, it will ship with 8GB of GDDR5. Meanehile, the Fiji cards with HBM will have a special name and will compete with TitanX.