AMD Launches Radeon R7, R9 300 Series Graphics Cards

At the PCGamingShow at E3 in Los Angeles, AMD announced its new R7- and R9-300 series graphics cards. Among the new graphics cards launched are the R7 360, R7 370, R9 380, R9 390 and R9 390X. At this launch, AMD did not yet reveal any new details about the upcoming Radeon graphics card with HBM memory, although it did tease its smaller form factor at the beginning of the presentation.

The R7 360 (2 GB GDDR5) is the small form factor GPU (no pricing yet), but the R7 370 (up to 4 GB GDDR5) will cost $149 when purchased in bulk. The R9 380 (up to 4 GB GDDR5), which AMD said will drive 1440p gaming with FreeSync, will cost $199.

It's a big step up price-wise to the R9 390 (up to 8 GB GDDR5), which will run you $329, and the flagship R9 390X (up to 8 GB GDDR5) will be $429, featuring DX12 and GCN. You'll be able to purchase the R9 390X on Thursday. 

Fortunately, despite all the cards announced today being rebrands, they do support all of AMD's impressive new features. Among these you'll find Asynchronous Shaders, Framerate Target Control, VSR and DirectX 12.

Asynchronous Shaders is a different method of handling tasks in the GPU pipeline, where the scheduler can take multi-threaded workloads and merge them more seamlessly for a more effective use of the GPU's power. You can find more details here.

Framerate Target Control, which abbreviates to FRTC, is a feature that is useful for dealing with games that run at very high framerates. Rather than rendering a super-high framerate, but only displaying a handful of them, the GPU's clockspeeds are adjusted to deliver the performance that is necessary, and no more. This reduces power consumption, and therefore leads to a cooler and quieter gaming experience.

VSR, which is short for Virtual Super Resolution, is a feature similar to Nvidia's DSR, where the GPU will render a game at a resolution above that of the monitor, and scale it down with better anti-aliasing in order to deliver a higher-quality image on lower resolution displays.

AMD mentioned that its LiquidVR technology would be especially relevant in the current proliferation of VR technologies. For VR, it is of the utmost importance that images are delivered with high framerates, but more so low latency.

Update, 6/16/15, 2:35pm PT: Removed incorrect image.

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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.

  • ammaross
    Way to skip over the Fury and Fury X.... (wasn't mentioned in the article)
    Reply
  • ak47jar3d
    Fury x is $649? Water-cooled? Can match 980ti or out perform it? If those are true it will be my next card.
    Reply
  • scolaner
    Patience. It's coming in 3...2...
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    16066211 said:
    Fury x is $649? Water-cooled? Can match 980ti or out perform it? If those are true it will be my next card.

    Fury is $549 (air cooled) Fury X is $649 (water cooled) with no performance numbers yet. We have no idea how it is going to perform against anything until THG/Anand and the others get their hands on them. If they perform decently I am looking at Fury for my next GPU. If not I might just say screw it and jump to the green team for the first time in 10 years.
    Reply
  • junkeymonkey
    ''Fortunately, despite all the cards announced today being rebrands, they do support all of AMD's impressive new features. Among these you'll find Asynchronous Shaders, Framerate Target Control, VSR and DirectX 12. ''

    so with that my old card should support it as well with a firmware or driver update being there rebrands of the rebrands ???
    Reply
  • Larry Litmanen
    Let's see direct comparisons to nVidia. I hope for competition's sake AMD comes out WAYYY on top.
    Reply
  • ak47jar3d
    Fury is $549 (air cooled) Fury X is $649 (water cooled) with no performance numbers yet. We have no idea how it is going to perform against anything until THG/Anand and the others get their hands on them. If they perform decently I am looking at Fury for my next GPU. If not I might just say screw it and jump to the green team for the first time in 10 years.

    True. I am guessing it performs just as good as it is priced the same as 980ti. Either that or they plan on losing more market share to Nvidia .
    Reply
  • clonazepam
    ''Fortunately, despite all the cards announced today being rebrands, they do support all of AMD's impressive new features. Among these you'll find Asynchronous Shaders, Framerate Target Control, VSR and DirectX 12. ''

    so with that my old card should support it as well with a firmware or driver update being there rebrands of the rebrands ???

    +1 for the rebrand of a rebrand recognition. I really hope AMD pulls off something great. Honestly, it couldn't be better timing. Nvidia owners currently cant get stable operation while browsing the internet. It's a little more involved than that but its a great marketing headline.
    Reply
  • skit75
    They don't have to blow the green team out to have a successful rebranding launch. They only need to be competitive, at the right price point. I've been on the green team for the past 6 years and when I see things like the R9 380 attempting to claim the 1440p market, I hope there is weight to back up the marketing.

    Also, is $199.00 for the R9 380 the bulk price? The R7 370 $149.00 was a bulk price but the other pricing wasn't qualified.
    Reply
  • red77star
    AMD 390x from performance/price point of view is way better than over priced 980ti.
    Reply