AMD positions the Radeon R9 290X against the Geforce GTX 780

In mid-October, AMD will release the first graphics cards in the new Radeon 200 series. One of these is the flagship Radeon R9 290X, which with six billion transistors and over five teraflops computing power may very well compete against the current performance king Geforce GTX Titan.

Exactly what is hidden behind the code name Hawaii XT is so far shrouded in obscurity, not least because AMD did not talk about any technical specifications at the announcement on Wednesday. What is known so far is that the graphics processor is based on an extended variant of the architecture Graphics Core Next and is manufactured with 28 nanometer technology, after which it is open to speculation.

According to data published by Techpowerup, among others, the Hawaii XT contains a total of 2,816 stream processors, a substantial increase from 2,048 computing units in the Tahiti XT. Sixteen memory capsules on the circuit board also indicate a 512-bit memory bus, but now there is talk of an asymmetric configuration of 384-bits.

At the presentation, AMD revealed that the graphics card contains 4 GB of video memory with a total bandwidth of over 300 gigabytes per second. With a 384-bit memory bus, this would mean that the memory frequency amounts to approximately 6.4 GHz. Should AMD instead choose a 512-bit memory bus, it is around 4.7 GHz. In comparison, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition (384-bit, 6.0 GHz) has a memory bandwidth of 288 GB / s.

The same source states that AMD will position the new graphics card against the Geforce GTX 780 with a recommended retail price of 599 dollars. This corresponds to approximately SEK 4,800 including VAT, a couple of hundred kronor lower than what the cheapest Geforce GTX 780 costs at Swedish dealers.