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Sunday, August 11, 2013

[Article] Upcoming AMD next generation graphics cards

The rumors point to an October release time frame for the next generation AMD graphics cards. Nobody knows what it will be called. It definitely won’t be HD8000 series because that name is already ruined by the underperforming mobile GPUs – rebrands of course. Some people say it will be called the HD9000 series, but some say AMD will come with a new naming scheme because there has already been a 9000 series (no HD prefix though) about 10 years ago. I remember getting my first high-end GPU – the Radeon 9700Pro, which died soon after the warranty expired. We’ll have to wait and see what AMD calls this new generation of cards, I hope it will be something that will be easy for the consumers to understand.

In the meantime, this won’t be a really big step up from the current generation. They will keep using the same 28nm process node, but since the manufacturing process had about 2 years to improve, we will still probably see higher clocks and/or better power efficiency. The performance will mainly be increased by increasing the number of stream processors. But as far as rumors say, the flagship card will only have like 2560 stream processors (25% more than HD7970) or less. The combination of increase in stream processors and clock speeds – core as well as memory – will decide how fast it will be in the end.

What matters to gamers in the end if how these cards will stack up against the competition. NVidia had much faster single GPU cards in the enthusiast segment, namely the GTX780 and Titan. If ATI will be able to match the performance of GTX780 but with a price tag of $500, I think that will be what we all gamers hope for. We all need that fastest single GPU graphics card to come at $500. $650 for the GTX780 is not ridiculous for the performance, but the Titan’s $1000 is. The GTX780 seems to overclock better than the Titan and in the end you get a faster card for $350 cheaper. You are paying that extra $350 for the extra 3GB memory. For a single display setup, you don’t need 6GB of Video RAM.

Anyways, I just hope ATI won’t shift the prices up. Plus, I hope they will bring some cool features that NVidia card owners are enjoying to the AMD card owners as well. For example, pixel clock overclocking is one. Then there is adaptive V-Sync. The upcoming Shadow Play technology seems brilliant too. On the other hand, AMD has a upper hand in the upcoming games (ahem, console ports) because  the next generation consoles are all based on AMD chips. Plus, their Never Settle Bundles are looking awesome.

What do you guys say? I already created a poll so let me know what you think.

2 comments:

  1. I hope they take a leaf out of Nvidia's book and solve the microstuttering at the hardware level instead of relying on drivers. That'll make those Crossfire setups worthwhile.

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    Replies
    1. i'm sure they are working on that. but things take time. they probably have it implemented in the generation after whatever that is coming this October.

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