This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of apply.

Ever since AMD debuted the R9 285 more than a year ago, there'due south been speculation almost whether or not the flake, codenamed Tonga, was a "full" implementation. Its die size and power consumption have always hinted that there might be more GPU horsepower under the hood, especially after AMD acknowledged that the scrap had an additional four compute units that weren't enabled on the original card. Now, "Fat Tonga" has supposedly been spotted in the wild, courtesy of Expreview in Japan and early shots of an XFX GPU.

R9-380X-Hypothetical

If accurate, information technology implies that AMD has one more refreshed function to launch. Currently, the R9 380 (1792 cores, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPS) is a $199 role with 2GB and 4GB of RAM, while the R9 390 is a 2560:160:64 GPU with 8GB of RAM and a $329 price tag. It's non hard to see where a refreshed R9 380X would fit. A 2048:128:32 configuration would combine the original Hd 7970 / R9 280X's GPU firepower with Tonga's bandwidth compression and slightly improved operation-per-watt. The major questions are how large the memory interface would be (AMD has only admitted to a 256-scrap interface on Tonga, but 384-bit has always been rumored) and how AMD would prepare the clock speeds. AMD could theoretically drop 6-8GB of RAM on the card if it wanted to offer a unique option, but since the price point is likely below $300, we're betting on a 4GB SKU.

Our hypothetical R9 380X should be moderately faster than the quondam R9 285 or current R9 380, but it'southward unlikely to break speed records or blow anyone's doors off. At $249, the most likely toll, the R9 380X would exist a bit faster than the GTX 960 and R9 380, which are generally evenly matched. It's still well beneath the ~$329 level of the R9 390 or GTX 970, however, and of course these prices can fluctuate depending on which sales and specials are running at diverse retailers.

One time the R9 380X launches (assuming that's what this is), AMD's 300 series is likely complete. A number of yous have asked if AMD will bring HBM lower in the production stack this year, just the reply to that is probably not. HBM and GDDR5 crave different retention controllers, and AMD would have to rework its fries to make that happen, without whatever guarantee of higher sales. With 14/16nm GPUs expected next year, the benefits of launching HBM1 parts now as opposed to waiting for HBM2 in a year or less are very small.

If AMD has held on to the 384-chip iv-6GB version of Tonga for this long, it'southward likely considering the company wanted i more ace upward its sleeve to respond with. Hopefully in 12 months nosotros'll be saying hello to GCN 2.0, as opposed to 1.iii.