AMD presents the Radeon R9 290X – six billion transistors and over five teraflops

On Wednesday night, AMD introduced the newcomers to the Volcanic Islands family. It includes a whole lineup of graphics cards, from entry-level models all the way up to enthusiast-rated worsts. As usual, it is the most lavish model that steals the most attention.

AMD Radeon 200 Series “Volcanic Islands”

The flagship is called Radeon R9 290X and is based on the graphics processor Hawaii XT with 2,816 computing units, 512-bit memory bus and 4 GB GDDR5 memory. It involves over six billion transistors and a total memory bandwidth of more than 300 gigabytes per second.

The new graphics card will deliver over five teraflops and be able to produce more than four billion triangles per second. In other words, if these figures are reflected in reality, it is a model that is catching up and past the current performance king Geforce GTX Titan.

Enthusiast-rated Radeon R9 stands on three legs. The first is a new and expanded revision of the Graphics Core Next architecture, which among other things delivers support for DirectX 11.2. It’s also about the ability to play in 4K resolution and something as unexpected as integrated digital signal processors (DSP), called Trueaudio.

The audio bit is one of the key features. At the press conference, several partners of AMD demonstrated how the graphics card is used to produce more voices, effects and filters – but also provide more precise positioning with everything from lavish surround systems to stereo speakers and headphones.

Radeon R9 290X is launched together with a whole family of new graphics cards in the new series. AMD does not mention any launch dates or prices, but the graphics card will be pre-available in a special edition together with Battlefield 4 from October 3, which indicates that deliveries will begin later that month.