AMD Radeon Live Blog - AMD Presents: The New Era of PC Gaming
by Ryan Smith & Brandon Chester on June 16, 2015 12:00 PM EST12:05PM EDT - AMD is talking about the rise of e-sports gaming
12:06PM EDT - Display resolutions are rapidly increasing. 4K monitors have dropped from $3000 to $400-600
12:06PM EDT - Smooth frame rates have become another area of focus, in addition to simply having a high frame rate
12:07PM EDT - Virtual reality is also an area that AMD sees as rapidly expanding
12:07PM EDT - VR requires exceptionally high frame rates and low latency
12:08PM EDT - Okay, after some WiFi problems we';re here
12:08PM EDT - Now on stage: Devin Nekechuk to introduce the Radeon 300 series
12:09PM EDT - AMD is starting off by talking about the R7 and R9 300 series cards.
12:09PM EDT - First up, R7 360
12:11PM EDT - AMD is discussing VSR. Not exclusive to the 300 series though.
12:13PM EDT - First card is the R7 360, the base of the line.
12:13PM EDT - R7 370 is next. $149 and up to 4GB of VRAM. Not clear if those two go together, as they said "up to"
12:14PM EDT - Now moving onto cards for more intensive games, and for gaming at higher resolutions
12:15PM EDT - Next is the R9 380. AMD claims it can power 1440p. Starts at $199, up to 4GB VRAM.
12:15PM EDT - R9 390 and 390X start at $329 and $429. Both have 8GB of GDDR5. Meant for 4K gaming
12:17PM EDT - Now talking about DX12
12:17PM EDT - DX12 launching with Win10, July 29th is not far away
12:18PM EDT - AMD now inviting up some game developers and a Microsoft developer
12:19PM EDT - Developers seeing significant CPU usage reductions with DX12
12:21PM EDT - Now talking to the developer from Lionhead about DX12 in the Fable series
12:22PM EDT - Asynchronous shaders to execute shading concurrently with other rendering are an important feature
12:23PM EDT - Windows 10 beta of Fable Legends coming in the near future.
12:24PM EDT - Now on display: Stardock/Oxide's Ashes of the Singularity
12:24PM EDT - Now talking about RTS games
12:25PM EDT - Oxide is going to be one of the first companies to really use DX12. They're looking to push a lot of draw calls
12:25PM EDT - RTS games have traditionally had to swap to 2D sprites when characters are too far away. Not required with DX12.
12:26PM EDT - CPU power freed up by using DX12 can be put into making more complex AI
12:27PM EDT - Alpha this Thursday
12:27PM EDT - Now moving onto VR. AMD's Richard Huddy is back on stage
12:29PM EDT - Anuj Gosalia of Oculus is talking
12:30PM EDT - AMD is going to be banking hard on VR for this generation. From a business standpoint it requires lot of GPU power, and from a tech standpoint they have what should be a good solution
12:31PM EDT - Low latency is the big focus in VR
12:31PM EDT - Now discussing how Oculus is using AMD's LiqudVR tech, which was first announced back at GDC in March
12:32PM EDT - Oculus has been working with AMD to use their LiquidVR tech
12:32PM EDT - Direct hardware access for low latency, multi-GPU per-eye rendering, async shading/warping, etc
12:32PM EDT - Oculus has shipped 150K dev kits (wow)
12:33PM EDT - Oculus has shipped 150,000 dev kits so far
12:33PM EDT - And of course, the final consumer Rift ships in Q1 of next year
12:35PM EDT - For AMD GPUs, Oculus is recommending R9 290/390 and higher
12:35PM EDT - Recommended GPU spec for Oculus is the R9 290 or faster
12:35PM EDT - This is consistent with their earlier developer target recommendation of R9 290
12:36PM EDT - Now speaking, CCP on EVE: Valkyrie
12:36PM EDT - They've been one of the darling early VR demos, and will be shipping on PC and PS4 (Morpheus)
12:37PM EDT - Game will be released alongside the Rift, so Q1 2016 (it)
12:38PM EDT - Huddy now has the stage to himself again
12:38PM EDT - Discussing how VR is being used for non-gaming applications
12:38PM EDT - Now on stage, Katrina Craigwell from GE
12:39PM EDT - GE is using VR for brain imaging visualization
12:41PM EDT - And that's a wrap on GE
12:42PM EDT - Okay, time for the high-end GPU announcement
12:42PM EDT - (If you haven't already seen the leaks, well, then you'll probably be the only person surprised by this)
12:42PM EDT - Now on stage, Chris Hook of AMD. Director of marketing
12:43PM EDT - Leading into a discussion about small form factor PCs
12:44PM EDT - Presenting Project Quantum
12:44PM EDT - A custom SFF case
12:45PM EDT - Contains 2 of AMD's new Fiji GPUs
12:45PM EDT - Processors on the bottom, cooling on the top
12:45PM EDT - Now rolling a promo video
12:47PM EDT - Begun, the Closed Loop Liquid Cooler wars have
12:47PM EDT - The company has clearly taken what they've learned from R9 295X2
12:47PM EDT - Which, though $1500 was a successful product for a dual-GPU card and a solid design
12:48PM EDT - Now on stage, AMD's CEO, Dr. Lisa Su
12:48PM EDT - "Most complex and highest performance GPU we have ever built"
12:49PM EDT - There will be multiple products with Fiji
12:49PM EDT - AMD Radeon R9 Fury X
12:50PM EDT - 1.5x perf per watt of R9 290X
12:50PM EDT - R9 Fury (vanilla) will be air-cooled
12:50PM EDT - Cards will be in stores "very shortly"
12:51PM EDT - AMD Radeon R9 Nano
12:51PM EDT - Fiji in a a 6" card, half the power of 290X
12:51PM EDT - (Sounds like it's significantly cut down from full Fiji)
12:51PM EDT - Nano will be available later this summer
12:52PM EDT - Finally, a dual-GPU card that's in the Quantum, but hasn't been named or shown
12:52PM EDT - Now on stage, Joe Marci, Raja Koduri, and Chris Hook again
12:53PM EDT - Raja is now explaining the human element behind designing Fiji
12:55PM EDT - Focus on 4K and HBM
12:55PM EDT - Specs
12:55PM EDT - 4069 stream processors, 8.9B transistors
12:55PM EDT - 4096 SPs, even
12:55PM EDT - 8.6 TFLOPs, 1050MHz core clock
12:56PM EDT - Also did some work on power management/efficiency, though now going in-depth at this time
12:56PM EDT - Raja is giving special credit to the board design team
12:57PM EDT - Joe now talking a bit more on HBM
12:58PM EDT - AMD has over the last several years been on the cutting edge of memory tech. 2015 and Fiji is no different
12:58PM EDT - HBM gets AMD more memory bandwidth, but also cuts down on memory power, giving them more power headroom for the GPU itself
12:59PM EDT - AMD will be putting HBM in more devices in the future (where costs make sense, of course)
01:00PM EDT - Raja has never been so excited in the last 20 years
01:01PM EDT - Laying the path for the future
01:01PM EDT - They see higher quality VR systems as requiring much, much more GPU performance
01:02PM EDT - The Holodeck concept and Eyefinity seems to have given way to VR and the holodeck on your head
01:03PM EDT - Joe is talking a bit about overclocking headroom. AMD says it should be a good overclocker
01:03PM EDT - Fury X goes on sale on the 24th
01:03PM EDT - $649
01:03PM EDT - Fury (vanilla) for $549 on July 14th
01:04PM EDT - Nano in the summer, dual-GPU card in the fall
01:04PM EDT - So the fight is set: Fury X needs to meet or beat NVIDIA's GTX 980 Ti. AMD is aiming to best NVIDIA's top Maxwell GPU
01:05PM EDT - To close things out, Huddy is back on stage
01:05PM EDT - Will be showing the PC version of Star Wars: Battlefront
01:06PM EDT - DICE's Lead Producer (whose name I couldn't type out fast enough) is now on stage
01:07PM EDT - Frostbite engine game, so they already have all the tech Johan Andersson has been working on
01:07PM EDT - Discussing the production of the game
01:09PM EDT - Rolling PC footage
01:10PM EDT - A very short clip indeed
01:11PM EDT - AMD will have it playable at SDCC next month
01:12PM EDT - Recap time
01:13PM EDT - That's a wrap
01:14PM EDT - Thanks for joining us, everyone
272 Comments
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Manch - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Dude, save your breath. Chizow=NVIDIA troll. He treats his own and everyone elses speculation as fact as long as it suits him. He can't be honest about the merit of a product. Fanboys are impossible to have a conversation with.chizow - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
@Manch let's gauge your AMD troll meter. AMD 300 series = rebrand or not? :)Manch - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Most will be respins/rebrands. HBM is simply un-affordable at the mid-range and lower end cards. So if the cards all move down a notch on the performance list and are priced accordingly, I'm fine with it. One thing they need to do is make them all GCN 1.2 or whatever the latest is. If not they don't need to be in the 300 series. The exception to that would be the budget cards. You shouldnt however have a budget card that has lets say true audio and offer GCN 1.2, then the next card up the chain offer a 15% perf bump but then lack true audio and only be GCN 1.1. That's just confusing to customers and will piss them off when they realized their new shiny card doesnt supt the latest features. NVIDIA can do the same thing. If they respun/rebadged a 980 into a 1070 or whatever their next series will be I would be OK with that as long as its price goes down with it's level in the series tier. Then I'd pick one up and SLI it with my 980. As far as cooling goes, AMD can't bust out with some BS cooler that doesnt work. They need to take a cue from NVIDIA and put a really good ref cooler on the card. Third Party vendors have put excellent coolers on the 290 series cards and they run nice and cool, dissipating the heat very well, no throttling and even allowing for a bit of overclock. For the new Fury cards with the HBM, I think they should release an top end air cooled version as well as teh AIO WC. For air cooling if they dont do it themselves, they should have a release partner that has one available. AMD needs customers to stay, and they want customers to come back. Doing this will give customers options. Plus it will show customers that the card isn't show inherently inefficient that they have to resort to AIO WC only just to get it to stay competitive.loguerto - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Actually at this price point GCN cards are very good products, i have a hawaii card and i'm throwing all i can on it, and it never disappointed me.chizow - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
@Manch: So you do agree that there is significant market confusion that results from AMD's rebrand strategy? So why do you think I am just trolling when coming to these same conclusions and bringing them to light when AMD's biggest fanboys/supporters are busy sweeping them under the rug? Certainly from your own very well formulated and thought out concerns, a less educated/informed consumer should be able to benefit from that same level of understanding and knowledge?Voicing your concerns as you did are what give you better products, not apologizing/defending and being a homer for the team you root for. If you bothered to go back and look you would see I was VERY critical of what Nvidia did with the Kepler GK104 and GK110 launches (leading to Titan) and beyond that I am very vocal about issues I run into when using their products, but the difference is, I'm actually CRITICAL about them and not busy sweeping them under the rug, because I *KNOW* Nvidia listens and will fix them if the issues are brought to light. Just food for thought. :)
Manch - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
I've now seen there line up, though I'm waiting on benchmarks. I don't see how they're going to charge 100$ more for a respin/rebadge. I was hoping the 390X would be released at current 290X 8GB prices. Usually every generation a rebadge moves down a notch not take up the same spot on the line up or go up in price. It would need to have significant improvement which I just don't see. I guess only the Fury cards are GCN 1.2 That at least eliminates confusion being that is at the top end only. I haven't read up on what the difference is though. I'm not terribly concerned with 8GB frame buffers either. Most games right now don't take advantage of 4GB @ 4k resolutions. There are exceptions SoM for example uses about 5GB I think. If they are actually paying attention to how the memory is being used and their compression algorithms are that much better than the previous gen then it shouldn't be an issue. I however will not be buying any cards from either NVIDIA or AMD. I only buy every other gen at the min. I already have two 290X 8GB and a 980. I'm good for right now.Not everything you say is bunk. The fact that you think NVIDA can do no wrong and how you say things makes you come of as a troll. You're making a lot of assumptions before benchmarks or anything else is released. Some conjecture is easy enough to do as it will not take a huge leap of faith to guess how the 390's will perform but no one has solid benchmarks on fury yet, whether it will overclock, throttle, or if it gives off a rose like smell when its cooking along. As far as you being critical of NVIDIA? that may be the case in a few instances but you absolutely flame AMD for anything and everything. Your last statement about you KNOW Nvidia will listen is kinda funny. They like every other company will *listen* if there is enough outcry and it can expect to hurt sales. Good example is locking out overclocking on the mobile GPU's or AMDs crossfire issues. It took them a whole other chip to "fix" that which is why I've ever cross fired or SLI'd anything up until now. I hope the Fury X and diet Fury or whatever its called do relly well. I want them to put price pressure on Nvidia for once so I can get a second 980 for cheap.
As far as you being a troll, yeah I think you're trolling. If you were more even handed with your criticism, then it would give greater weight to your arguments. As it stands now, people largely treat your comments as trolling as do I.
D. Lister - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
"The software engineers were working on Mantle"If they spent their valuable time working on their drivers, both AMD and their customers would have been better off.
chizow - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Yep, even that would've been a more worthwhile endeavour, I just don't see why people think these decisions are made in a vacuum without any repercussions on other parts of the business. AMD's downfall is just a domino effect of multiple bad decisions, beginning with the over-valued acquisition of ATI.chizow - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Gigaplex, of course it did, because AMD leadership green lighted and pink slipped either/or. Its really simple, someone in their graphics division OK'd spending money on Mantle instead of allocating those funds into saving R&D jobs, and now we see the ramifications. Mantle is dead, years wasted, money wasted funding EA/DICE's development of Mantle and implementing it in-game. 1 new ASIC since 2013 and a bunch of rebrands, instead of a new set of ASICs to complement Fiji.loguerto - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
wasting resources on Mantle? ok you asked for it ..(•_•) .. <-----------------Nvidia
∫\ \___( •_•) <---------------------chizow
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