AMD R9 390X to be Launched at the 2015 Computex in Taipei: 4GB HBM to Cost Nearly US$1,000; Concept Behind HBM Explained

By Staff Writer

May 30, 2015 04:58 AM EDT

AMD is set launch the Radeon R9 390X in the next few weeks at the 2015 Computex in Taipei, and it was recently teased online.

A Twitter post from Johan Andersson, lead developer at the DICE Frotbite engine group, gave a sneak peek of what the AMD Radeon R9 390X is going to look like. The upcoming graphics card has a metallic design, aside from offering a greater bandwidth. It is also reported to take less space and power consumption.

A separate report indicates, however, that the Radaeon R9 390X flagship graphics card from AMD turns out to be a rebrand of its Hawaii card. The upcoming card is codenamed Fiji. It listed comparisons with other cards, and reasons why it is seen as a rebrand, specs-wise.

The Radeon R9 390X is going to launch with 4GB of HBM, while its GPU/Memory Frequency and Bandwidth are still unconfirmed as of the moment. It is also rumored to be priced at almost US$1,000.

HBM, or High Bandwidth Memory, was developed by AMD over the last seven years in order to solve bandwidth issues faced by graphics cards. GDDR5 takes up a lot of space and power, and speeding up the processing speed of it will increase the heat level as well as the communication between the logic chip and DRAM.

With the HBM, the DRAM can be placed right next to the GPU, which allows for a smaller unit to be constructed. 1GB HBM only takes up 35mm2 of space compared to 672mm2 on a GDDR5. An HBM graphics card will be more than 50% smaller than the average graphics card.

HBM also has 1024-bit wide memory bus with up to 500MHz (1Gbps). As for power consumption, it uses 1.3V and has over 35GB/sec of bandwidth per watt. This means the HBM and interposer provide many times more bandwidth than GDDR5, all while using over 50% less power.

"HBM rebalances DRAM vs. logic power consumption to protect future GPU performance growth," AMD said.

Rebrand or not, people's wait for the upcoming AMD Radeon R9 390X is worth it.

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