Tag: Radeon

AMD introduces Carrizo SOCs

Posted on November 20, 2014 by - News

AMD's John ByrneIntel rival AMD said it has added two system on a chip (SoC) devices to its semiconductor roadmap.

The Carrizo and the Carrizo-L are being positioned as the firm’s answer to the mobile market.

The chips will support Microsoft DirectX 12, OpenCL 2.0, AMD’s Mantle and Freesync and support for Windows 10, when that emerges next year.

AMD senior VP John Byrne said his company is building on its existing intellectual property portfolio.

He said “our goal is to improve APU energy efficiency by a factor of 25 times by 2020”, and said the company would work with the latest industry standards.

The Carrizo microprocessor combines an X86 CPU core called Excavator with its next generation Radeon graphics in what AMD claims will be the world’s first heterogeneous system architecture compliant SoC.

The chips will ship in the first half of next year, Byrne said.

AMD bullies Nvidia with $399 Hawaii card

Posted on November 5, 2013 by - News, Products

radeon-r9-290A few weeks ago AMD introduced its Volcanic Islands products at an event in Hawaii. Most of the line-up were just rebrands, but the flagship R9 290X and R9 290 weren’t. 

The Hawaii cards are based on all new silicon, 6.2bn transistors crammed onto a 28nm die. AMD did not announce the prices at the event, but a couple of weeks later it launched the R9 290X at $549. The price was lower than expected and it forced Nvidia to slash the price of the GTX 780 by $150.

Just as Nvidia countered the R9 290X, AMD decided to make its life miserable once again. The Hawaii Pro version of the card, the R9 290, launched at $399 – making it $100 cheaper than the GTX 780, which went down from $649 to $499 last week.

There is, however, a slight problem for Nvidia. The R9 290 ends up significantly faster than the GTX 780 and in some cases it can even give the $999 GTX Titan a run for its money.
So, the new card is $100 cheaper than what Nvidia has to offer, yet it’s faster. There is one problem though, reviewers report the R9 290 can get very loud, but it seems like a small price to pay considering the price/performance ratio. In addition, it’s only a matter of time before AIB partners come up with non-reference designs, with custom coolers to keep the noise down.

Nvidia was already forced into two price cuts following AMD’s launch. First it slashed the prices of its sub-$199 products to compete with AMD’s rebranded R7-series. Then it slashed the prices of the GTX 780 and GTX 770, only to be undercut by AMD’s new $399 card. Most punters were expecting the R9 290 to end up at ~$449, but like we said last month, AMD had a couple of good reasons to launch it at $399 – and it did.

Nvidia simply doesn’t have much wiggle room left. Perhaps it’s feeling a bit like Guy Fawkes, and hoping bonfire night is merely a damp squib.

AMD shakes up high-end GPU market

Posted on October 24, 2013 by - News, Products

radeon-r9-290AMD has lifted the NDA veil off its new flagship Radeon card and the first reviews and products announcements are popping up on the interweb. The press loves the R9 290X. AMD went to great lengths to keep the launch price a secret until the last possible moment, which appears to have been a very good move.

Most observers were expecting the new card to launch with a $599 or even $699 price tag, but it ended up at $549. This sounds like a very good deal as it wipes the floor with Nvidia’s $649 GTX 780 and it can even take on Nvidia’s $999 Titan card in some tests. Clearly Nvidia will have to do something to counter AMD’s launch and it already has a new version of the GTX 780 in the works, but pricing will be a problem and the R9 290X will erode Nvidia’s margins on GK110 products.

As far as specs go, the R9 290X is the first card based on AMD’s new Hawaii GPU. It features GCN 2.0 architecture, 512-bit memory bus, 2,816 shaders and it’s the biggest GPU AMD has ever built. Reviews indicate that performance is not an issue, although the card tends to get hot and loud in AMD’s high performance “Uber” mode. The cooler is not that great, which leaves a lot of room for AIB partners to play around with custom designs.

Another question is the Pro version, or the R9 290. The NDA will reportedly be lifted in a week and there is still no word on the price. The XT-based R9 290X is shaping up to be quite a performer, but the Pro version will offer plenty of performance at a much more attractive price point. However, it is still unclear how AMD plans to price it. At $449 it would be a nice deal, but if AMD really chooses to stick it to Nvidia and sacrifice margin, it might end up at $399, which would be very disruptive.

Nvidia has already reduced the prices of its sub-$199 cards to counter AMD’s rebranded R7 and R9 series products. Now it remains to be seen how low it can go and it won’t be easy – Nvidia’s GK110 GPU has about a billion transistors more than AMD’s Hawaii, which makes it quite a bit more expensive to produce, yet it ends up slower in most versions.

See Also
AMD declares war on Nvidia

AMD Hawaii event has aggression written all over it

Posted on September 26, 2013 by - News, Products

radeon-r9-290Huge GPU launches are back. An AMD  webcast dragged on for more than two and a half hours and the ailing chip firm went to great lengths to explain a few new technologies, showcase games and of course talk GPUs. In fact, the event was so big that many complained the presentations were too long and too elaborate.

Let’s take a quick look at what AMD graphics boss Matt Skynner announced last night. As expected, AMD has a new naming scheme, mid range products now come with an R7 prefix, while the R9 prefix is reserved for high-end and performance boards.

The line-up starts with the R7 250, with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. AMD says the card scores 2,000 in the Firestrike benchmark and it’s priced at $89, so AMD calls it the king of sub-$100 gaming. The R7 260X comes with 2GB of memory and hits 3,700 in Firestrike.

The R9 series starts at $199, with the R9 270X with 2GB of RAM and a Firestrike score of 5,500. The R9 280X is priced at $299 and scores 6,800 in Firestrike. AMD says it was designed for 1440p gaming.

The flagship R7 290X boasts 4GB of RAM and a 512-bit memory bus, with bandwidth of over 300GB/s. AMD did not reveal its price or the exact specs and clocks of any of the cards. Rumours point at a $599 price tag, but rumours can be wrong. The general consensus is that the R7 290X should outpace Nvidia’s GTX 780, perhaps even the pricey Titan.

All in all the new generation looks very competitive, at least on paper. We’ll have to wait for some proper reviews before jumping to conclusions. The cards are expected to hit retail in the second half of October, but this isn’t official, either.

AMD also used the opportunity to talk up TrueAudio, a new spatial audio technology incorporated in some of the new cards. The tech press had a chance to see it, or hear it in action at the event and the first impression is very positive.

Then there were games, loads and loads of games. AMD scored an exclusive bundle deal with EA and it will sell a limited bundle edition of the R9 290X with Battlefield 4. AMD also promised to deliver even better even better Never Settle bundles, which could help the new cards gain a bit more traction.

But in our opinion, the biggest news wasn’t a new card or a new game – it was the fact that AMD chose to stage such an event at all. AMD and Nvidia are now talking about a renaissance in PC gaming and analysts seem to agree. Sales of gaming gear are bucking the industry trend and they are still growing. This year the sector will net $18 billion, but by 2016 the figure should hit $21 billion.

AMD and Nvidia believe consoles are no longer directly competing with PC gaming, not to mention smartphone and tablet gaming.

Hawaii illustrates AMD’s newfound love of GPUs

Posted on September 23, 2013 by - Opinions

AMD, SunnyvaleThe PC market has been in trouble for quite a while, but even before the most recent slump, there were a few telltale signs that many big players were getting ready for a slowdown. Lavish launch parties aren’t very high on the agenda and the 2008 crash only sped up the austere trend.

AMD is now taking a different route. After years of low-profile product launches, the company is holding a big bash in Hawaii, where it will launch its latest Hawaii GPU on Wednesday.

This is clearly a statement of intent – AMD wants to raise the bar in the GPU space yet again. Nvidia on the other hand is talking up Tegra, but it’s not doing nearly as much on the GPU front. AMD has a few highly successful promotions in the form of Never Settle bundles, while Nvidia talks Tegra, Tegra and more Tegra. Did we mention Tegra?

So what’s behind AMD’s recent change of heart? Well, it might be a knock-on effect of Rory Read’s hands-on approach to management, but we believe it represents a strategic shift in AMD’s thinking. Nvidia still has a firm grasp on the professional market, with its high-margin Quadro series. It is also beating AMD in notebook design wins – but notebook sales aren’t going very well and with each new generation of Intel Core chips and AMD APUs, integrated graphics are getting better, hence the low-end discrete GPU market is evaporating.

Tegra was Nvidia’s way to tap new markets and make up for lost ground in the GPU space. It was by no means a failure, but it hasn’t been a huge success either. Nvidia no longer wants to deal with console GPUs, hence it ceded that market to AMD.

To some extent, AMD and Nvidia are no longer vying for the same market. There’s never been so little overlap when it comes to the AMD – Nvidia duopoly. AMD does consoles, Nvidia does discrete mobile GPUs, AMD does APUs, Nvidia does Tegra and so on.

Nvidia will continue to do well in the workstation space, as workstations are still selling quite well and they’ve been largely unaffected by the PC slump. Sales of gaming hardware are projected to grow at a steady CAGR of about three percent for the foreseeable future, which means both AMD and Nvidia should have no trouble selling mainstream and high-end discrete graphics. However, the console wins and the lack of presence in other markets mean that AMD is left to pursue the core gamer market more actively.

This explains the Hawaii bash along with the huge bundles. As Nvidia tries to diversify, AMD will try to attack its core business and right now it is lot more aggressive than it was a year or two ago. Whether AMD’s back-to-basics strategy will work remains to be seen.

AMD slashes high-end CPU, GPU prices

Posted on August 21, 2013 by - News

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD has slashed the price of its flagship FX-9590 processor from a whopping £699 to just £299. That is the new channel price, reports KitGuru. To be honest, the FX-9590 was overpriced to begin with, so the cut comes as no surprise.

On the APU front, most prices are stable. Kaveri won’t hit the channel before February 2014 and AMD probably won’t mess around with Richland pricing over the next few months.

However, AMD is expected to launch new Volcanic Islands Radeons in late September and it appears it is already thinking about clearing inventory. The sweet-spot HD 7870 GHz edition is now available for as little as €149 on the continent, which appears to be a 10 percent price cut. The HD 7770 retail price also appears to be a bit lower than a few weeks ago.

The biggest drop, however, was reserved for the speedy HD 7970, which is now available for as little as €299 in European retail/e-tail. This appears to represent a 15 percent drop and it’s probably the result of Nvidia’s recent GTX 770 launch.

Club 3D dumps Nvidia for AMD

Posted on June 11, 2013 by - News, Products

club3d-logoDutch add-in-board partner Club 3D has ditched Nvidia and decided to become an AMD exclusive partner. The move doesn’t come as much of a surprise, since Club 3D was practically the only big AIB that did not launch Geforce 700 desktop boards last month.

The company confirmed that it is an AMD-only players in a press release late Monday. Acting CEO of Club 3D Judith Ma Tseng said Club 3D believes AMD is “uniquely positioned to deliver a complete solution concept” for its customers.

“We firmly believe that we can offer a better solution, if we proceed with AMD alone,” said Ma Tseng.

Unsurprisingly, AMD welcomed Club 3D’s turncoat antics.

“Their decision to join AMD as an exclusive hardware partner is a powerful acknowledgement of our leadership in the graphics space, and a tremendous contribution to the technical expertise in the AMD Radeon graphics ecosystem,” said Zvika Greenstein, Director of Desktop Product Management, AMD Graphics.

This isn’t the first time that an AIB has chosen to switch sides, or go exclusive. Back in 2010 XFX also ditched Nvidia and became an AMD exclusive partner. Gainward did the exact opposite, when it stopped selling Radeons to focus on Nvidia products.

However, it should be noted that all AIBs, especially smaller ones like Club 3D, are facing a lot of pressure. Sales of desktop PCs have been tumbling for years, while at the same time powerful integrated graphics are slowly killing off the high-volume, low-margin market for entry level discrete graphics.

AMD extends Never Settle bundle to select APUs

Posted on April 4, 2013 by - News, Products

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD’s Never Settle game bundles seem to have been quite successful in the past, so it’s hardly surprising that AMD has decided to extend the programme to select APUs. So far the Never Settle promotion was limited to discrete graphics cards.

According to a set of slides unearthed by German tech site hardwareluxx.de, AMD will start bundling Sim City with several APU SKUs later this month. Sim City is a rather interesting title for casual gamers and it doesn’t need discrete graphics to run properly, so it looks like a good choice. Sadly though, the Sim City launch has already been marred by a number of technical and DRM issues. However, everything will probably be sorted out before AMD’s new promotion takes off.

It appears that the programme will be limited to select A8 and A10 APUs. As AMD is expected to introduce a new series of desktop APUs based on the Richland core, it is safe to assume that the promotion will cover them, along with some Trinity chips.

In any case the buyers of eligible chips will get a free download code for Sim City, valued at $59.99. This sounds like more than a fair deal, as even the fastest AMD APUs tend to be quite cheap. A $59.99 gift as icing on the cake seems like a very clever way of adding even more value to these mid-range chips. Provided consumers like Sim City, of course.

Radeon bundle gambit pays off for AMD

Posted on February 27, 2013 by - Gossip, News, Products

amdhq1Earlier this month AMD went into damage control mode, after comments made by an exec in China were misinterpreted by tech hacks, or Google translate. The comments seemed to indicate that AMD’s next generation Radeons will not appear this year, while in fact AMD’s strategy this year will be to focus on HD 7000 sales, with HD 8000 products coming on line in late 2013. 

AMD rallies hacks in Radeon update

Posted on February 15, 2013 by - News

amdhq1AMD felt it necessary to get European and American journalists on the blower for a conference call today to clear up what it said were misconceptions about upcoming graphics cards, on the back of delay rumours.

Darren McPhee, director of graphics product marketing for AMD worldwide, told a conference call that there had been a lot of “misconception” and “confusion” about Sea Islands, which he said is a codename for notebook and desktop products this year, with the priority resting with the OEM notebook business side.

He asserted that there will be more Sea Islands products this year including in the Radeon 8000 series. Rumours had been flying around that AMD would be putting off more in that range until perhaps as late as next year.

In terms of performance, AMD said its cards are the fastest on the planet.

McPhee boasted that the 7000 series is still strong and that in the first half of this year, there will be additions to that product family as well.