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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