Rumor: AMD R9 390X 'Captain Jack' In The Offing

Aside from a heap of price drops, it's been relatively quiet in the GPU world the past few weeks. Today that changes, though, as the rumor mill has pumped out a new, fresh, juicy bit of information.

Some of you may be familiar with the Chiphell forums. Often, users there will post benchmarks of unreleased products, and surprisingly enough, they often manage to be curiously accurate. Now, user Junmiu posted some performance information of a "Captain Jack" graphics card, and while we have no idea what card that is, we can guess.

The rumor is that "Captain Jack" is either the R9 380X or the R9 390X, although for all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter. One thing is certain – this card is from AMD. The "Captain Jack" codename falls (sort of) right in line with past names from the company, which include Hawaii, Tahiti, and even Vesuvius.

When we reached out to AMD, a company representative told us that he has never heard of "Captain Jack" in this context. While this means that it's possible that the codename isn't accurate, the representative did not say anything about the performance numbers, so there may be a hint of truth to this.

The listed performance sits at 65.6 FPS, which is an average performance number of a handful of games. All were run at a 2560 x 1440 resolution. This is notably faster than a GTX 980, which scored 56.6 FPS across the selection of games. Captain Jack still used a little more power than its green competitor, consuming 197 W vs the GTX 980's 185, but at that number it's actually still more efficient.

Why doesn't it matter whether it's the 380X or the 390X? Well, the performance numbers are very promising, and if there is any truth to them, AMD appears to be drastically improving the efficiency of its cards.

This is, of course, just a rumor, and AMD denied that Captain Jack exists, so we're taking all of this with a grain of salt.

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Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • MeteorsRaining
    I sincerely hope the second chart is accurate, AMD really needs to improve their efficiency, which from the chart appears to be getting better in the upcoming months!
    Reply
  • prit87
    The pirate Island would be a great competition for gtx 970 and 980.
    Reply
  • Lmah
    If this is the 390x I'm happy if it's the 380x that's amazing competition for nVidia.
    Reply
  • tomc100
    I am dying to finally upgrade my Radeon 7970 which I bought almost 3 years ago so hopefully the rumors are true. No doubt the introduction of this card will also lower the prices of all current gpus. Also, if the chart is true then Nvidia will release their 980 Ti version.
    Reply
  • kenny1007
    It’s weird that AMD is not saying it’s their product and bragging about it. I would like to see AMD come up from the hole there are in this days but this to me looks fake. I’ll believe it when I see it.
    Reply
  • TheMentalist
    I think these will be in competition with the GTX 1000 series, looking at the time it will be released. AMD really needs to step up, so far it looks good.
    Reply
  • rauelius
    This has to be priced right from the start. The reason I switched to AMD when I upgraded from an 8800GT to a Radeon 4870 was because the 4870 gave GTX260(and sometimes GTX280 i.e. GRID)-class performance, for a lot less money than what nVidia was providing. I believe the GTX260 was going for $400+ while the 4870 was $250 or $300. AMD has to do that again. Release "Captain Jack" as the R9-380x, release it for $330 or less and deflate any interest in nVidia's products. I don't know what they would do with all the 290 and 290X's in the wild, probably what nVidia did to the GTX780, GTX780Ti and Titan, discontinue and collapse the price.
    Reply
  • airborn824
    Based on the ROPs this is for sure the 380x/390 as the 390x has much more ROPs. I expect about a 32% increase on 390x over team Green with it being 20nm and HBM.
    Reply
  • clonazepam
    Ooh "980 Ti" just around the corner... =)
    Reply
  • piklar
    Agree with Clonazepam.. efficiency of "captain Jack" looks more like a beefier Nvidia card..
    Reply