Throughout the last couple of months AMD has been in the process of carefully and deliberately rolling out their latest generation of video cards. In a multi-staged process we have seen AMD engage in a what is best described as a drawn-out teaser and an early technical briefing, announcing their intention to roll out a new high-end video card this quarter, further teasing the public with pictures of the card, and then in the middle of all of that giving the technical press an in-depth briefing on AMD’s key next-generation memory technology, High Bandwidth Memory. While AMD did their best to make sure the details of the cards were kept under wraps – with varying results – AMD definitely wanted to make sure the world would know that their card was coming.

Catching up to the present, earlier this week AMD held their 2015 GPU product showcase, dubbed “The New Era of PC Gaming.” As the latest stage in AMD’s master plan, AMD held a public event in Los Angeles similar to their 2014 GPU product showcase in Hawaii, where the company announced their product lineup ahead of the full launch of the products in question. In the presentation we learned some (but not all) of the details surrounding AMD’s Radeon 300 series, including the numbered products from 360 to 390, and of course the company’s new high-end flagship video card, the Radeon R9 Fury X.

All told the showcase itself was something of a teaser itself – we got prices, but not complete specifications – but we also received confirmation of AMD’s rollout plans. The next stage, coinciding with today’s article, is the formal launch of the numbered members of the Radeon 300 series, which are product refreshes based on existing AMD GPUs, similar to what we saw with the 200 series in 2013. Meanwhile today is also the greater unveiling (but not the launch) of the Fury series, with AMD allowing us to share more details about the new card and its specifications. Following today’s announcements and launches, the Radeon R9 Fury X will be launching in just under a week from now, on June 24th, and then after that the R9 Fury (vanilla) will be launching on July 14th.

AMD R9 300 Series Specification Comparison
  AMD Radeon R9 Fury X AMD Radeon R9 Fury AMD Radeon R9 390X AMD Radeon R9 390
Stream Processors 4096 (Fewer) 2816 2560
Texture Units 256 (How much) 176 160
ROPs 64 (Depnds) 64 64
Boost Clock 1050MHz (On Yields) 1050MHz 1000MHz
Memory Clock 1Gbps HBM (Memory Too) 5Gbps GDDR5 5Gbps GDDR5
Memory Bus Width 4096-bit 4096-bit 512-bit 512-bit
VRAM 4GB 4GB 8GB 8GB
FP64 1/16 1/16 1/8 1/8
TrueAudio Y Y Y Y
Transistor Count N/A N/A 6.2B 6.2B
Typical Board Power 275W (High) 275W 275W
Manufacturing Process TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm
Architecture GCN 1.2 GCN 1.2 GCN 1.1 GCN 1.1
GPU Fiji Fiji Hawaii Hawaii
Launch Date 06/24/15 07/14/15 06/18/15 06/18/15
Launch Price $649 $549 $429 $329

Overall AMD is launching an almost top-to-bottom refresh of its product lineup overnight. Between now and July 14th the company and its partners will introduce cards from $109 to $649, and while there are a few gaps that AMD is almost certainly purposely leaving in place to give them something to announce later this year, overall we’re seeing more or less AMD’s entire hand for 2015 and early 2016 in one go.

As for the subjects at hand today, there are really two stories to talk about. The first is of course the Radeon R9 Fury series, the products that will house AMD’s newest flagship GPU, Fiji. While I won’t butter up Fiji from an architectural standpoint at this time, what Fiji does bring to the table are two very big changes for AMD. The first of these is of course high bandwidth memory, which not only gives AMD more VRAM bandwidth than ever before, but it outright changes how GPUs video cards are constructed. The second big change is that Fiji is just very big. At 596mm2 AMD went right to the reticle limit, putting AMD squarely into the big GPU race.

But before Fury comes the rest of the 300 series. We'll take a look at Fury in due time - while we've been briefed on the subject and have been authorized to discuss it, we want to hold back for when we have the hardware in hand - so our focus for today will be on what's launching today, and that's the Radeon 300 series.

Being released today are five new cards from AMD’s partners, which will form the backbone of the Radeon 300 series from $109 to $429. To our regular readers these parts will be familiar – and to some, perhaps more familiar than they’d like – while for AMD the 300 series represents their 3rd generation of retail 28nm products.

Radeon R7 360, R7 370, & R9 380
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  • piiman - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    " Having to find a place for that Radiator is deal breaker"
    LOL you put it in the same place your exhaust fan in the back of the case is NOW. Its not hard to find.
  • DCide - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    How can anyone be a fan of NVIDIA, but not AMD?

    If AMD fails in the GPU market, then NVIDIA will become just as complacent as Intel has in the CPU market. The NVIDIA you love will be no more.
  • Jumangi - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    Fanboys ignore things like logic and common sense.
  • Kutark - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    Ain't that the truth. I've been more nvidia biased the last 4 or 5 years mainly because they've just worked, and prior to that i had myriad annoyances with AMD cards (primarily driver related stuff, the hardware was always solid, but just annoying things here and there). That being said, im glad to see AMD has upped their game.
  • darkfalz - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link

    Disagree. NVIDIA is still competing against the NVIDIA card you already have. Nobody with a 980 is going to buy a 1080 or whatever they end up calling the next range if it's merely 10-20% faster. NVIDIA in their own charts frequently compare their latest high/midrange GPUs with their own of a few years ago that they know people are hanging on to, such as the venerable 8800 GT and more recently the GTX 680. I prefer NVIDIA's focus on interesting software features and power efficiency.
  • chizow - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link

    @darkfalz, exactly, people who keep repeating this AMD needs to survive for competition meme endlessly, while they are holding on to their 5850 and 6970 or whatever waiting for a worthwhile successor lol.
  • hero4hire - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    Ah, the competition is bad capitalist. Tell me again how Comcast needs to earn your repeat business through customer service and infrastructure improvements for growing demand. Thank god were seeing major revolutions in desktop cpu's and my 2500k is practically worthless from the innovations.
  • RSIlluminator - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link

    Finally a reasonable comment. Real competition is tons better for the consumer, and that's why most companies want to dominate their fields. At that point they can set the prices to whatever they want, and this happens in tech all the time.
  • Ubercake - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link

    True. Too many times AMD has promised us greatness and not delivered...

    For the sake of competition, I really hope Fiji is the game-changer.
  • The0ne - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    Look on the bright side, when you want to sell something you know who to go too. It's like religion, they'll believe anything.

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