AMD Radeon R9 390X Performance Numbers Surface

It is rumored that AMD is working hard on releasing the next high-end graphics cards, tagged as Radeon R9 390X (or 380X). Asian website Chiphell now has posted a couple of benchmarks in their forums 'showing' these graphics cards in terms of performance.

We think the result tagged as "Captain Jack" could be the Radeon R9 390X (we think) and not 380X, though that remains to be a VERY wild guess. Performance wise it is looking pretty good TBH, however the results should be taken with a HUGE massive grain of salt as there is no validity whatsoever of these results being the true thing let alone indicating what card it precisely is.

So look above, at Chiphell a user posted two charts, the first (upper) chart shows average performance from several gaming titles such as Assassins Creed: Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Alien Isolation and Metro Last Light Redux. it is a horribel way of normalizing a chart, but hey at the very least it is indicative of something. As you can see, the games were tested across a wide range of graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD at 2560×1440 resolution with IQ settings set to maximum. The test setup includes a Intel Core i7-4790 clocked at 3.60 GHz and the drivers used were 344.75 WHQL for NVIDIA cards and Catalyst 14.11.1 BETA for AMD cards.

The second chart as shown above shows relative load (stress) power consumption, at just undfer 200 Watts. Anyway, we post it as we see them, make of this whatever you want.

AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows®

Article Number: RN-WIN-CAT14.11.2B

​AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows® - Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4!

This release enables peak driver performance optimization for AMD Radeon™ graphics users in Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4.

The AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.1 Beta Driver can be downloaded from the following links:

        AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows® 7 and Windows 8.1 64-bit
        AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver for Windows® 7 and Windows 8.1 32-bit

NOTE! This Catalyst Driver is provided "AS IS", and under the terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement provided with it.

Package Contents
The AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver contains the following:

    AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver version 14.301-141117a-177808E

Installing The AMD Catalyst Software Driver
For detailed instructions on how to correctly uninstall or install the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, please refer to the following support resources:

    How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst™ Drivers From A Windows® Based System
    How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers For A Windows® Based System

AMD Product Compatibility
The AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Series    AMD Radeon™ R5 230 Series
AMD Radeon™ R9 280 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 8000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R9 270 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 260 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 250 Series    ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 240 Series   


AMD All-In-One Desktop Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ HD 7600A Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6600A Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 7450A Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6350A Series


AMD Embedded Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ E8860    AMD Radeon™ E6460
AMD Radeon™ E6760   


AMD APU Product Family Compatibility      ​
Desktop    Mobile
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R7 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 8000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R6 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R5 Graphics    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000G Series
A-Series AMD Radeon™ R3 Graphics   
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000D Series   
AMD Radeon™ HD 7000D Series   
AMD Radeon™ HD 6000D Series   



AMD Mobility Radeon™ Family Compatibility
AMD Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features.
AMD Mobility Product Family Compatibility      ​
AMD Radeon™ R9 M200 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 7000M Series
AMD Radeon™ R7 M200 Series    AMD Radeon™ HD 6000M Series
AMD Radeon™ R5 M200 Series    ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
AMD Radeon™ HD 8000M Series   



Compatible Operating Systems

The latest version of the AMD Catalyst™ Software Suite, AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Beta Driver is designed to support the following Microsoft Windows platforms:

        Windows 8.1 (32 & 64-bit version)
        Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit version with SP1 or higher)

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.2 Windows® Beta Driver Performance Improvements

    Dragon Age: Inquisition performance optimizations
    - Up to 5% performance increase over Catalyst™ 14.11.1 beta in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.
    - Optimized AMD CrossFire™ profile
    Far Cry 4 performance optimizations
    - Up to 50% performance increase over Catalyst™ 14.11.1 beta in single GPU scenarios with Anti-Aliasing enabled.

Important Notes

    The AMD CrossFire™ profile for Far Cry 4 is currently disabled in this driver while AMD works with Ubisoft to investigate an issue where AMD CrossFire™ configurations are not performing as intended. An update is expected on this issue in the near future through an updated game patch or an AMD driver posting.

Resolved Issues

    [409235]: Small chance of intermittent screen tearing or corruption in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare on high settings 4K resolution in AMD CrossFire™ mode.
    [408892]: World of Warcraft can sometimes exhibit corruption when using CMAA in AMD CrossFire™ configurations.
    [407431]: Minecraft sometimes produces corruption when changing video settings in windowed mode.
    [407338]: XDMA Quad CrossFire™ configurations in portrait Eyefinity modes sometimes display tearing or stuttering.

Known Issues

    [408723]: System can sometimes hang when upgrading to Catalyst™ 14.11.2 from Catalyst™14.7 in AMD CrossFire™ configurations. As a workaround please completely uninstall previous Catalyst™ software versions before installing Catalyst™14.11.2 beta.
    [409518]: Slight performance drops in FIFA 2015 on AMD CrossFire™ configurations.
    [409502]: Occasional flickering sometimes observed while playing FIFA 2015 in AMD Dual Graphics configurations.
    [409638]: Slight Battlefield 4 performance drop on AMD Radeon™ R9 290X in AMD CrossFire™ configuration.
    [409628]: AMD Radeon™ R9 285 intermittently hangs in Hitman Absolution on new game start.
    [408484]: AMD Radeon™ R9 285 can sometimes exhibit flickering in Assassins Creed Unity.
    [409613]: Assassins Creed Unity can sometimes experience frame stutter on some AMD CrossFire™ configurations.
    [408706]: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare intermittent black screen when loading game in Quad AMD Crossfire™ configurations.
    [409600]: Civilization: Beyond Earth mantle users in AMD CrossFire™ configurations may sometimes experience an issue where they cannot change their game resolution. As a work around please use "Enable MGPU=1" in the games configuration .ini file.

AMD is currently working with BioWare to resolve the following issues:

    Flickering is sometimes observed in Dragon Age: Inquisition on a limited number of surfaces in AMD CrossFire™ configurations.

AMD is currently working with Ubisoft to resolve the following issues:

    Uneven hair corruption sometimes observed in Assassins Creed Unity when applying "ultra" game settings.
    Flickering occasionally observed between windows on walls in Assassins Creed Unity.
    Windows/Doors intermittently flash with black textures in Assassins Creed Unity.
    Assassins Creed Unity occasionally exits to desktop when "ultra" game settings are applied.

AMD Carrizo APU Massive Leak – 40W TDP, Excavator Cores, 512 SP and Assorted Benchmarks

Note: Notice very carefully, the tiny but incredibly self-satisfied tag in the corner labeled ‘Rumor’. The sources behind this leak are given and are probably authentic, not to mention very difficult to fake; however this news has not been confirmed either by official or unofficial channels.

The motherload of leaks concerning Carrizo APU has just occurred. The test results of an Engineering Sample of the chip have leaked online and we now know everything from hardware details to assorted benchmarks, including GFX Bench and Sisoft Sandra. Do keep in mind however, that this is an engineering sample so, alot of things can change between here and the consumer version of Carrizo.

Massive leak reveals AMD ‘Gardenia’ Carrizo specs: 2MB L2 Cache, 4 Cores clocked at 2.6Ghz with 512 Stream Processors

I received the original leak (SiSoft Benchmark Database) courtesy of CHW.net, and from there on I did some rather successful (if I say so myself) Googling to net me the entirety of this leak. The first thing that you will notice is the interesting nomenclature employed by AMD before Carrizo, namely Gardenia. These suffixes usually denote the target market of a specific product in AMD’s lineup so Gardenia most likely denotes either an embedded or a workstation application. The second thing I noticed, and thanked the gods for, were two identifying IDs that I could use to track the APU in other sites as well. This was the device ID ‘2M1801C1Y4381_26/18/08/04_9874′ and the codename ‘Carrizo 9874′.

While the former yielded no results and led me back to the starting place the latter hit the jackpot and led me straight to GFXBench results of the chip in question. Lets start with the GPU side first. The new iteration of Carrizo is supposed to feature next generation GCN cores, although it is not known which specific architecture AMD chooses alongside this. A viable option would be the Pirates Island Architecture. The benchmarks show Gardenia Carrizo acing the T-Rex tests (OpenGL ES 2.0) but having some serious difficulty in Manhattan tests (OpenGL ES 3.0).

GFXBench Results of Carrizo 9874

The graphics portion of the Carrizo APU dubbed “Carrizo 9874″ will feature 512 stream processors which appears to be the sweet spot between CPU and GPU ratio on an APU. This is the same number that was featured in Kaveir. The SPs will be split into 8 CUs and clocked at 626Mhz. They will be coupled with DDR3 Memory Clocked at 1.6GHz effective and a bus width of 128 bits. The APU has a fill rate of 8.5GTexel/s. As far as benchmarks go, the APU’s performance in GFXBench’s Manhattan benchmark is not very good at around 9.8/13.5 frames per second. However, in T-Rex, both onscreen and offscreen, it scores pretty impressive numbers (46.6/71.7 frames per second). Once again, I would remind you guys that specifications such as memory configurations can change.Interestingly, the numbers over at the compute side are pretty skewed. The clock speed that was used is not the maximum listed 2.6Ghz boost, but 600Mhz less. TDP mentioned is approximately 40W but this should increase to ~50W once you enter full load on CPU and GPU ( 2.6Ghz and all SPs firing). The general arithmetic of the core is 24.2 GFlops, which is pretty decent for an APU, I remember my old Core 2 Duo used to score around 10 GFlops. The only thing that really bugs me is the memory support of DDR3, which was also revealed in a leak published by us just a few weeks ago.

Slow memory bottlenecks the crap out of an efficient architecture such as an APU, and I sincerely hope that AMD decides to ditch the slow memory and proceed to a higher end configuration such as HBM or DDR4 at the very least. Oh and incase anyone is wondering, the fact that the benchmark shows ‘Normal Desktop’ means nothing. Mobile Chips are usually tested at desktops early in their cycle. In all probability and in accordance with all the leaks so far, the first APU we are going to be seeing is Carrizo-L; the mobile version of the chip. At any rate, we will know more about the Carrizo APU as we get ever closer to its leaked launch date (December).

AMD Radeon 390 and 390X Specs and Benchmarks ?

Interesting news, over at the ranking system of SiSoft Sandra new entries have been spotted of what seem to be GPUs that we don't know of. And the specs are pretty appealing. Let's call the two entries the Radeon R9 390 and 390X for now (complete speculation of course). But the 390X entry would be a GPU with 4096 Shader Processors running / 64  Compute Units at 1GHz with 4GB of graphics memory running at 1.25GHz (= 5Gbps).

The 1 GHz would be a boost speed meaning the dynamic clock could hover in-between say 900 MHZ and that 1 GHz. The second entry shows a GPU which we will call the Radeon R9 390 at 3520 Shader Processors. These obviously and very likely are engineering samples of some kind and whether or not these are TBA consumer desktop SKUs is unknown.

But fact is, these entries are there, meaning there is a Hawaii architecture based SKU in the works with 4096 and one with 3520 Shader processors running in the 1 GHz marker. The memory might seem to be clocked a little low, but we don't know the memory bus interface, heck if that is 512-bit it would be a chuck-load of band-with. But that again would be speculation.

Here are the two Sandra Sisoft links showing the info:

• Result ID AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (4096SP 64C 1GHz, 4GB 1.25GHz 4096-bit) (OpenCL)
• Result ID Hawaii (3520SP 44C 1ГГц, 3Гб) (OpenCL)

How valid these results are, we don't know. We do know that they are in the SiSoft database somehow. Thanks go out to Rich_Guy in our forums for spotting this one.

AMD Catalyst 14.11.1 BETA (14.301.0.0 November 5)

> Download <

have at it boys

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 14.11.1 Windows® Beta Driver

Performance Improvements

• Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare performance optimizations
• Assassin's Creed® Unity performance optimizations

Known Issues

• [408930]: Occasional stuttering in Assassin's Creed® Unity in CrossFire mode under specific game settings
• [409235]: Small chance of intermittent screen tearing or corruption in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare on high settings 4K resolution in AMD CrossFire™ mode
• [408706]: Quad CrossFire AMD Radeon™ R9 295X2 may sometimes black screen when loading a game in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare
• [409199]: AMD Radeon™ R9 280X/280 may experience a crash when playing Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare and a video at the same time. If you experience this issue a work around is turning off the video while playing the game.
• [409177]: CrossFire users may experience intermittent flickering in Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare menus. As a work around if this issue is seen restarting the game may cause the issue to disappear.

Build Info:
DriverVer=11/05/2014, 14.301.0.0000
Catalyst: 14.11.1
CCC: 2014.1105.2160.39482
D3D: 9.14.10.01061
OGL: 6.14.10.13092
OCL 1.2: 10.0.1573.4
Mantle: 9.1.10.0045
Mantle API: 98304