{"id":3593,"date":"2013-09-26T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nccomputertech.com\/?p=3593"},"modified":"2013-09-26T10:00:04","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T14:00:04","slug":"amd-unveils-hawaii-radeon-r7-r9-generation-of-gpus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2013\/09\/26\/amd-unveils-hawaii-radeon-r7-r9-generation-of-gpus\/","title":{"rendered":"AMD unveils 'Hawaii' Radeon R7, R9 generation of GPUs"},"content":{"rendered":"
AMD announced the\u00a0Radeon R7 and R9 series of \u201cHawaii\u201d graphics cards and cores on Wednesday, an attempt to storm the pinnacle of performance PC graphics.AMD broadcast what it called its \u201cGPU 14 Tech Day Event\u201d from Hawaii, where the company had offered to host reporters at its expense. PCWorld covered the event via webcast.
\nAMD\u2019s Hawaii chips are based on what the company calls its Graphics Core Next architecture, the second generation of which is contained within the Hawaii cores.\u00a0AMD launched the R9 and R7 series as a top-to-bottom approach: the R9 is for performance gamers, and the R7 series is aimed at the lower-budget customer.
\nMatt Skynner, general manager for the graphics business unit, told the audience that AMD\u2019s plan was \u201cto create unified Radeon gaming experience across all platforms,\u201d from mobile to to the cloud with the Radeon Sky gaming strategy.\u00a0Skynner highlighted the developers behind the Crysis and Tomb Raider series, and noted that AMD powers all three major game consoles.\u00a0The PC graphics hardware market is growing to $21 billion in 2017, according to Jon Peddie Research\u2014proof that gamers have the budget for high-end cards.<\/p>\n
\"AMD<\/a>AMD<\/small>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

AMD is able to let developers port games from one platform to another, with tools as well as an architecture that makes it easy to do so, Skynner said. \u201cAnd what\u2019s important is not that we\u2019re trying to drive the industry from a performance view, we\u2019re trying to put reality on the screen\u201d with innovations like TressFx, AMD\u2019s hair-modeling system, and depth of field and shadowing, plus its EyeFinity multi-monitor technology.
\n\u201dHow can you draw the user in more?\u201d Skynner said. \u201cAs these great games come out, they want more graphics cards. And we\u2019ve got to be ready for them.\u201d
\nAMD\u2019s archrival is Nvidia, which launched the current god of the gaming world, the GTX Titan, in February<\/a> for a whopping $999. That card, which contains 2,688 graphics cores, was followed by the slightly more affordable GTX 780<\/a>, with 2,304 cores for $649.
\nAMD will launch five chips: the $89 R7 250 (1GB of DRAM \/ 2,000+ scores in the 3DMark FireStrike benchmark), the $199 R7 260X (2GB \/ 3700+), the $199 R9 270X (2GB \/ 5500+), the $380 R9 280X (3GB \/ 6800+), and the R9 290X (4GB), which wasn\u2019t priced. (The R9 290X reportedly contains four independent tessellation units, close to 3,000 stream processors, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.)\u00a0An R9 290X bundle with the hit game Battlefield 4 will also be released for an undisclosed price.<\/p>\n

\"Maingear
The Maingear Shift<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maingear appeared on stage to announce the Maingear Shift, with cooling for up to three Radeon GPUs. It will be available in the coming weeks, executives said.<\/p>\n

The three pillars of \u201cHawaii\u201d<\/h2>\n

Raja Koduri, AMD\u2019s\u00a0corporate vice president of visual computing, said that there are three technology pillars for the R9 290 series; the GCN (Graphics Core Next) series, UltraHD (4K resolutions), and audio. The R9 290 series is the first to power DirectX 11.2 games, and offers a whopping 5 GFLOPS of compute power, Koduri said. AMD also designed for lower-power efficiency: this architecture is capable of scaling from 1-watt devices to 1-kilowatt workstations, he said.
\nThe compute capabilities is complemented by over 300Gbytes\/s of memory bandwidth, about 20 percent more than 2002\u2019s Radeon 9700. The memory is necessary to render high-resolution content: 100 layers of complex rendering at 4K resolutions, he said. The chip renders over 4 billion triangles per second. \u201cWe have done this because we see the trend of incredibly high-resolution games coming our way this holiday season and next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
AMD\u2019s Raja Koduri announced the new graphics cards in a presentation from Hawaii.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

AMD began putting in manual configuration options for its Eyefinity multi-monitor approach when it first introduced the technology. Now, AMD\u2019s technology will automatically configure 4K displays, and the company proposed a new standard to the VESA standards body\u00a0to auto-configure them, which were accepted, Koduri said.
\nAnd with the R9 series, AMD launched TrueAudio, which Koduri said is to audio what programmable shading technology did for graphics\u2014a differentiating feature that gave games like Crysis 3 a distinctive look and feel. \u201cI believe that True Audio technology will provide the same artistic freedom to audio artists at these gaming companies,\u201d he said.
\nTrueAudio will enable gamers to hear hundreds of audio channels in the game, as well as immersive, directional audio that pull directional data directly from the game, from multi-speaker configurations down to two-speaker headphone setups. TrueAudio will be supported on the R9 290 and 290x and one of the R7 chips, Koduri said.
\n\u201dTo bring professional-grade audio to the industry requires processor horsepower,\u201d GenAudio CEO\u00a0Jerry Mahabub said\u2014not the CPU, but offloading it to the GPU. GenAudio focuses on 3D audio, but other developers are working on reverberation and spatial modeling, both keys to helping create a \u201ctrue audio\u201d experience. (Aureal Semiconductor pioneered HRTF positional sound several years ago, using dummy heads; Mahabub said GenAudio\u2019s model is based on how the brain perceives sound, based on data collected from MRI scans.)
\nReverberations will be the next generation of audio in games like Thief, a developer from Eidos Montreal said.
\nvia PCWorld<\/a>
\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AMD announced the\u00a0Radeon R7 and R9 series of \u201cHawaii\u201d graphics cards and cores on Wednesday, an attempt to storm the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[61,466,879],"class_list":["post-3593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware","category-technology","tag-amd","tag-hawaii","tag-radeon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papNkV-VX","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8419,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2015\/06\/23\/this-week-in-computer-hardware-320-amds-week-of-fury\/","url_meta":{"origin":3593,"position":0},"title":"This Week in Computer Hardware 320: AMD’s Week of Fury","author":"NCCT","date":"June 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"AMD announces the Radeon R9 Fury, Radeon R9 Nano, and AMD Fury X 2. 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