“What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;”
AMD’s GCN architecture debuted almost two years ago in the Tahiti GPU. I’ve mentioned this before, but I paid $550 each for two Radeon HD 7970s to do my own CrossFire testing. And Tahiti lives on today, now at the heart of R9 280X selling for $300. The Pitcairn GPU followed a few months behind in March of 2012. That GPU gets reused today as well in the R9 270X. Bonaire is a much more recent development, emerging in March of this year as Radeon HD 7790 and again today as R7 260X. It’s the only card currently available with AMD’s TrueAudio technology, and it’s the only board in today’s round-up that employs a more sophisticated version of PowerTune able to switch voltage and clock rate very quickly for finer-tuned response to environmental variables.
Unfortunately, when you don’t have higher-performing products to talk about, your only option is to beat up the pricing to attract new buyers. That’s been going on for a while now, and it’s really the reason why R9- and R7-series cards don’t look like great deals compared to the boards they replace. The good news is that AMD’s story doesn’t end today. We still have R9 290 and 290X cards to look forward to, and those are based on new silicon.
There’s another positive in all of this for AMD: in the process of hacking away at its flagship’s price tag, the company pushed Tahiti into a price band Nvidia doesn’t service. True, R9 280X is slower than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. But the card is also about $30 cheaper. At $300, there’s a $50 premium over GeForce GTX 760, but that board doesn't handle QHD resolutions as well with detail settings cranked up. If I was building a PC to game on a 2560x1440 display and wanted to get in the door as inexpensively as possible without sacrificing graphics quality, the 280X would be my card. That value is why I’ll hand the Tahiti-based board our Smart Buy award. There’s certainly something to be said for revisiting a GPU when it's selling for $200 less than the last time you reviewed it.

I’m not as impressed with the other two cards. R9 270X is a slightly faster Radeon HD 7870 priced as much as $30 more than its predecessor. We know those 7870s won’t last much longer, but for the time being, who’s going to want the 270X at its introductory price? I’m sure Don will let everyone know in his monthly column when the good deals on prior-gen products run out. Until then, the R9 270X is a “meh”, even if it has no trouble blowing past Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660. I'll take a 7870, thank-you-very-much.
The same goes for R7 260X, except this time the pressure is external. AMD is introducing the 260X at the same price as existing 2 GB Radeon HD 7790 boards, which are a bit slower. However, right before launch, Nvidia announced a cut on its 2 GB GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost down to $150—a $10 premium. For that $10, you get card that's notably faster in a number of benchmarks. Although AMD now offers its TrueAudio technology on R7 260X, developers haven’t done enough with the feature to make it something we can test. Until then, Nvidia has the advantage for its card’s performance.
The R9 290 and 290X will feature TrueAudio, too. Will either of those cards have what it takes to do battle with GeForce GTX Titan or 780? Time will tell, and those are the boards we're most looking forward to.
- Tahiti, Pitcairn, And Bonaire Show Up For An Encore
- R9 280X: The Tahiti GPU’s Second (Or Third?) Lease On Life
- R9 270X: Pitcairn Gets A Little Boost
- R7 260X: TrueAudio’s First Outing On The Back Of Bonaire
- TrueAudio: Dedicated Resources For Sound Processing
- Display Technology
- Test Setup And Software
- Results: Arma III
- Results: Battlefield 3
- Results: BioShock Infinite
- Results: Crysis 3
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Results: Tomb Raider
- CAD: AutoCAD 2013 And Inventor 2013
- OpenGL: Maya 2013 And LightWave
- OpenCL: Bitmining, OpenCL, And RatGPU
- Power Consumption
- Clock Rate And Temperature
- Fan Speed And Noise
- Old GPUs Ride Again, But That’s Not A Bad Thing
I wrote one of the least flattering GTX 780 stories out there. I only identified a couple of situations where a Titan made any sense at all. And although the 760 *did* change the balance at $250, that card still didn't get an award. I liked the 770 for the simple fact that it delivered better-than-680 performance for close to $100 less.
The rest of AMD's new line-up is a lot like what exists already. Again, the 7870 is a better value than 270X. So what are you getting worked up over? The fact that I'm pointing out these aren't new GPUs? They're not.
Best to hold out till the reviews on the R9-290X I guess. But considering the specs I hope for at least 20% performance increases over a 7970.
The MSI R9 280X Gaming at $299 appears to outperform the GTX 770 at 1600P and is within margin of error at 1080P according to Techpowerup. Not a bad value at $100 less and still overclocks well:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_280X_Gaming/26.html
Best to hold out till the reviews on the R9-290X I guess. But considering the specs I hope for at least 20% performance increases over a 7970.
Are the days of (nearly) annual simultaneous full line GPU launches from $100-500 with a dual GPU chip to follow at $750-1000 really over?
I wrote one of the least flattering GTX 780 stories out there. I only identified a couple of situations where a Titan made any sense at all. And although the 760 *did* change the balance at $250, that card still didn't get an award. I liked the 770 for the simple fact that it delivered better-than-680 performance for close to $100 less.
The rest of AMD's new line-up is a lot like what exists already. Again, the 7870 is a better value than 270X. So what are you getting worked up over? The fact that I'm pointing out these aren't new GPUs? They're not.
That goes to you too Mr. NVIDIA
you won't want to. the 260 is more expensive, and you'll only get 1gb of it's memory in a xfire with a 7790. (in xfire/sli, the video memory is duplicated on both cards... not shared... so the total memory of the xfire/sli setup is equal to the smallest total mememory on each of the cards. so a 2gb + 1 gb gpu in xfire will have basically 1gb of vram for the xfire setup.
you won't want to. the 260 is more expensive, and you'll only get 1gb of it's memory in a xfire with a 7790. (in xfire/sli, the video memory is duplicated on both cards... not shared... so the total memory of the xfire/sli setup is equal to the smallest total mememory on each of the cards. so a 2gb + 1 gb gpu in xfire will have basically 1gb of vram for the xfire setup.
the true audio thing is still a mystery. We have to see if this thing really takes off or not. If this thing is at least has a just small success like physyx, I guess I wont mind shelling out just extra $10-20 for it.
the 7970/r9-280x is not competing in the 770's price bracket anymore. the 770 is 400 min... until that price comes down reviewing it against the 7970 would make as much sense as reviewing a 7950 against a gtx 650.
What retailer is doing this deal? I've been holding out to upgrade my 5850 for a while now and a pair of these would be a nice little (gigantic) upgrade
It feels like the price per pixel (in games at a given setting) has stayed the same for a while despite the increase in average display resolutions. Which would equate to gaming getting more and more expensive if you like to max the settings. I don't know if this is AMD/NVidia's fault or the game developers fault or both but it's kind of annoying.