AMD Launches Tonga Powered Radeon R9 285 Graphics Card - Performance On Par With Radeon R9 280X At $249 US

Final week, AMD held a "30 Years of Radeon Graphics and Gaming Celebration" result where the chip maker announced the latest Radeon R9 285 graphics bill of fare. Featuring the new and improved GCN architecture, the Radeon R9 285 launches today with several technology innovations such every bit Pall, DirectX 12 support and boasting performance to bulldoze gaming at 2K resolutions.
AMD Radeon R9 285 Graphics Card

AMD Launches Tonga Powered Radeon R9 285 Graphics Card At $249 US

The result revealed nigh of the details regarding the technical features of the card itself simply at that place were however some subconscious bits which take been found in the presentation slide. For starters, Tonga GPU isn't a consumer merely bill of fare just it has already been function of the FirePro family unit for a few weeks since AMD initially introduced the Tonga chip on their latest FirePro W7100 professional graphics card. While previously speculated every bit AMD'southward answer to NVIDIA'due south highly efficient GM107 architecture, Tonga GPU turns out to be the modest architecture evolution of Tahiti with the aforementioned great performance in gaming while featuring some of the new technological enhancements featured on the Hawaii cards such as TrueAudio, improved L2 enshroud, a reconfigured compute architecture. In general, the Tonga GPU improved the GCN architecture that was a part of Tahiti since the last ii and one-half years.

Getting right in to the technical aspects of the carte, the Radeon R9 285 will characteristic 28 Compute Units which mean nosotros are looking at a total of 1792 stream processors, 112 texture mapping units and 32 raster operation units. The Radeon R9 285 also comes with an interesting memory scheme, sticking with just 2 GB VRAM that operates forth a 256-chip motorbus interface rather than three GB VRAM (384-chip bus) on the Tahiti cards. AMD did learn a few things from NVIDIA over the Kepler generation that they tin limit the need for a higher retentiveness bus by reducing the load on the memory bandwidth. NVIDIA'due south Kepler generation of graphics cards were criticized for featuring a lower retention coach but they still featured good gaming performance up till 2K resolution. AMD has resolved this issue to some extent by introducing the Color Compression algorithm in their GCN architecture which offers 40% college retentiveness bandwidth efficiency which stores the colour data from the frame buffer in a lossless compressed format deliver more bandwidth output in gaming and performance oriented tasks then Tahiti based predecessors.

The clock speeds for the carte are maintained at 918 MHz cadre and 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective) clock for the retentiveness. This results in a 176 GB/s bandwidth compared to 240 GB/s bandwidth on the Tahiti Pro which is the directly Tahiti equivalent of the Tonga Pro fleck. Hither we tin see the divergence betwixt the compages of both cards as to how they handle memory bandwidth. Tahiti has more bandwidth simply Tonga is more than efficient in the manner it handles the little bandwidth it has hence eliminating the deviation. Another feature is the the updated instruction set which introduces 16-bit floating point and integer instructions that help in low power compute (GPU) and media processing. Multiple SIMD lanes can at present be used to procedure data while the improve compute task scheduling ways that the GCN cores are faster in terms of handling tasks offering meliorate overall compute performance which has been a big emphasis for AMD this term. An improved geometry processing engine is also featured in the new GCN cadre architecture which runs up to iv primitives per clock cycle and has two - 4 times the tessellation throughput as compared to previous generation. Tahiti was the first generation to put a large focus towards tessellation operation in DirectX 11 and Tonga continues to ameliorate it as seen in the graphs. AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Color Compression

On the software side of things, Tonga has a decent feature set and features support for DirectX xi.ii, DirectX 12, Drapery API, TrueAudio, XDMA Crossfire technology and H.264/AVCHD media transcoding for faster media processing at 4K to 720P.

As for the ability consumption, the FirePro W7100 has a wattage of 150W however being a Firepro variant, AMD had to tone downwardly the clock speeds. Tonga which is a performance oriented offer for the consumer market doesn't has to face those restrictions hence AMD has the Tonga Pro flake consuming a total wattage of 190W which is slightly lower than the Tahiti and a good 40W above what AMD advertises for the W7100 but it has higher clock speeds and back up for better PCB designs from custom AIC board makers. Hence, we are able to look at Dual 6-Pin standard for the Radeon R9 285 graphics menu. Do note that manufacturers may even opt for eight-Pin + half dozen-Pin configurations custom designs along with four GB VRAM models which volition be available at launch today.

Coming to the price, AMD has priced their Radeon R9 285 graphics card at $249 US. The Radeon R9 280 (Non-X) used to retail at this price once but AMD seems to accept forgotten near the bill of fare since it'due south non seen on their slides whatever more. However the reality is that AMD has a new pricing models for their cards in place. The Radeon R9 270X is downwards to $179 US for $199 US, the Radeon R9 280 sits at $229 The states from $249 US, the Radeon R9 285 will retail at $249 United states of america, the Radeon R9 280X which is listed every bit a $299 US part tin can be found well-nigh the $279 US cost point. The Radeon R9 290 retails for $399 US while the Radeon R9 290X sticks to its $549 introductory price. Information technology is believed that the Tonga XT "Radeon R9 285X" graphics card will non replace the Tahiti XT "Radeon R9 280X" simply will found its way in the $349 US range. My own personal thoughts are that the Radeon R9 280X volition soon see an official cost toned down to $279 US while the Radeon R9 285X makes its way in the $299 US league.

Moving on, we have a detailed assay of the Tonga compages along with some functioning numbers from PCEVA forums. Those of you who want official numbers have to wait a few more hours for the launch reviews. A full review can also exist found on gamestar.de.

AMD Tonga GPU GCN i.2 Architecture and Cake Diagram:

From the block diagram previously posted, we got to know that the Tonga GPU houses eight ACE (Asynchronous Compute Units) compared to simply 2 on Tahiti and each shader engine has its own geometry processor and a rasterizer unit which houses viii Compute Units per block. The Tonga Pro variant has two of these CUs disabled resulting in 1792 stream processors. The Multimedia accelerators block has been updated with the XDMA CrossFire engine and addition of TrueAudio DSPs which deliver the TrueAudio tech. Final we can see a large L2 cache, part of which is blacked out which points that this model doesn't feature the total core just it does have a larger cache compared to Tahiti which may tell why the carte is less resilient to bandwidth.

The Radeon R9 285X which is the Tonga XT variant features the full 32 CU die which includes 2048 stream processors, 32 ROPs and 128 TMUs. We don't have whatever specifics regarding the clock speeds, fifty-fifty the ones reported for the Radeon R9 285 are based off mill overclocked variants and then we tin't be so sure simply 918 MHz is what's being said the reference clock for Radeon R9 285 then nosotros tin expect something around 933 MHz+ for the Tonga XT variant. What's weird is that the Radeon R9 285X is allegedly featuring a 384-bit retentivity bus compared to 256-chip bus on its Pro variant and likewise includes a college VRAM updated from 2 GB to 3 GB.

The Radeon R9 285 is already considered a mid-tier lath from its looks and design but the Radeon R9 285X could be a decent update over Radeon R9 280X' Being similar to Tahiti in board pattern but the updated core with new architecture will leverage the performance and while the Tahiti XT variants have a TDP of 250W, we can see a sub 200W TDP for Tonga XT variants which arrive in September as reported by the source. The pricing for the Radeon R9 285 will fall in between $250 US while the Radeon R9 285X could retail at $300 US since Tahiti XT and Tahiti Pro based cards have already received major cost cuts during the concluding few months. Do note that the specifications for the Tonga Pro and the 32 CU full dice for Tonga XT are more or less confirmed. AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga GCN 1.2 AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Instruction Set AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Geometery Processing

AMD Radeon R9 285 Review Round-Up:

AMD Radeon R9 285 @ TechReport
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ PCPER
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Extremetech
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Bit-Tech
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Expreview
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Tomshardware
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Computerbase
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Hexus
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ HardOCP
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ TechpowerUp
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ HardwareBG
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Hardware Sky
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Guru3D
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ 4Gamer
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ Tweakers
AMD Radeon R9 285 @ PCWatch
AMD Radeon R9 285 west/ FX-8370E @ Hispazone

AMD Radeon R9 285 Firestrike Operation Numbers:

The 3DMark Firestrike Functioning numbers for the Radeon R9 285 were too revealed inside the Footnotes displayed at the end of the live issue. The performance numbers for 3DMark Firestrike for the Radeon R9 285 were noted as 7066 in Operation and 3513 in Farthermost compared to 5650 and 2774 marks respectively for the GeForce GTX 660. AMD Radeon R9 285 Firestrike Performance

AMD Never Settle Space Bundle Promotion:

Bated from all the announcements, AMD also introduced their latest Never Settle: Infinite Edition bundle which includes several AAA titles set in the space and some outside it. The main attractions of the bundle are Star Citizen, Infinite Run Iii, Alien Isolation and Habitat. AMD Never Settle Space

AMD Tonga Pro and Tonga XT Cake Diagram Comparisons:

AMD Radeon R9 285 Dice Comparison (Tonga Left vs Tahiti Right):

Paradigm courtesy of Computerbase.de!

AMD Radeon R9 285 "Tonga" Specification Sheet":

	AMD Radeon R7 260X	AMD Radeon R9 270	AMD Radeon R9 270X	AMD Radeon R9 280	AMD Radeon R9 280X	AMD Radeon R9 285	AMD Radeon R9 285X "Rumor"	AMD Radeon R9 290	AMD Radeon R9 290X	AMD Radeon R9 295X "Rumor"	AMD Radeon R9 295X2
GPU Core	Neptune XT	Curacao Pro	Curacao XT	Tahiti Pro	Tahiti XT	Tonga Pro	Tonga XT	Hawaii Pro	Hawaii XT	Hawaii XTX	Vesuvius
GPU Procedure	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
GPU Cores	896	1280	1280	1792	2048	1792	2048	2560	2816	2816	5632
Core Clock	1100 MHz	900 MHz	975 MHz	933 MHz	1000 MHz	918 MHz	TBA	947 MHz	thousand MHz	~1100 MHz	1018 MHz
VRAM	ii GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	two GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5?	4 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR5	8 GB GDDR5
Memory Clock	1625 MHz	1400 MHz	1400 MHz	1250 MHz	1500 MHz	1375 MHz	1500 MHz?	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	~1250 MHz	1250 MHz
Memory Bus	128-bit	256-bit	256-bit	384-chip	384-chip	256-scrap	384-chip?	512-bit	512-scrap	512-bit	512-bitx2
Retention Bandwidth	104.0 GB/s	179.2 GB/s	179.ii GB/s	224.4 GB/due south	288.0 GB/s	176.2 GB/s	288.0 GB/s?	320 GB/south	320 GB/southward	320 GB/s	320 GB/s x ii
TMUs / ROPs	56 / 16	eighty / 32	80 / 32	116 / 32	128 / 32	112 / 32	128 / 32	160 / 64	176 / 64	176 / 64	176 / 64 x 2
Price	$129	$179	$199	$229	$279	$249	$299	$399	$549	TBC	$1499