look at how far we've come from the radon HD 3870 launched back in 2007 to
the rx480 a ton has changed AMD is using a
manufacturing process four nodes smaller
the current King has double the PCI E bandwidth up to 16 times the video frame
buffer size support for directx12 and Vulcan versus DX 10.1 and it actually
costs less so let's take a look at AMD
video card Innovation over the last 10 years and see how it is that we got
here the master keys Pro keyboard lineup from Cooler Master is available in three
sizes each in white or RGB flavors check
them out at the link below we already had quite a few of the
representatives we needed of AMD's top single GPU graphics card for each
generation but there were a few code name XT cards missing from our Pokedex
so this project began as so many seem to
have lately with ebay.ca because Canadians don't get the
good eBay for our test we went with a high-end modern test bench to avoid
bottlenecks and we ran a mix of synthetic benchmarks and games both
modern and kills me to think of things I played as a teenager as classic or retro
but we've got some of that too first up is the radon HD
3870 this was truly a dark time for the
AMD Rebellion their previous generation Flagship 2900 XT with its groundbreaking
but very expensive 512-bit memory bus
had just gotten its butt soundly kicked by NVIDIA's G80 so it was time for
strategy shift instead of building a
huge complex GPU AMD built a smaller
more efficient one relying on CrossFire technology to reach the high-end
Enthusiast Market thanks to being built on a 55 versus 80 NM process the 3870
managed to perform similarly while being
much cheaper than its predecessor AMD looked to build on the
success of that lower performance but lower risk strategy with the
4870 code name rv770 XT was a
substantially larger chip than the 3870
at 256 mm squared but that extra
performance and frame buffer sizes up to 2 gigs allowed AMD to command a higher
price and that's still just over half
the size of their last attempt at a big GPU the radon hd50 870 marked a return
to confidence for AMD with over two
billion transistors a move from their terascale to terascale 2 architecture
bringing with it direct X11 support implementation of PCIe gen 2.1 and a
process shrink from 55 nanomer to 40
nanomer it was an ambitious project not
to mention that this was the beginning of AMD's push for multi-display gaming
techn technology that they called ifinity 5870 performed very well against
NVIDIA's furnace of a gtx480 and still
holds up well enough today that it might be worth modding your cooler if your fan
dies the hd6970 built on this success
again AMD officially dubbed its architecture ter scale 3 but due to
tsmc's cancelled 32 NM node it was
actually built on the same 40 NMM man manufacturing process so performance
wasn't dramatically better with die size transistor count and notably power
consumption all Rising substantially
that last in particular was a trend that just couldn't continue indefinitely the
hd7970 was another huge undertaking AMD
went from 2.64 to over 4 billion transistors with a wide 384-bit memory
interface they moved to the 28 nanometer manufacturing process they added support
for PCI Express gen 3 to the amusement
of enthusiasts who noted that AMD motherboard chipsets didn't and up until
very recently still didn't have official support for it and introduced the world
to the directx12 and Vulcan compatible
gcn architecture that has been the Beating Heart of every AMD card and Apu
since not to mention the current game
consoles from all three of the big
players its compelling performance and
forward-looking feature set ended up saving AMD a lot of R&D money in
subsequent years the 7970 was introduced
as a top of the line card but would end up being recycled twice as the 7970 GHz
Edition and 280X in lie of developing new gpus to
compete with NVIDIA's stepdown 700 series cards the Radeon HD 290x that
came next was a formal return in many
ways to the uh home run swing strategy
that had ultimately LED AMD down over half a decade prior it was huge slightly
larger than the 2900 XT it rocked over 6
billion transistors it had a 512-bit
memory bus again and ran an upgraded
version of gcn dubbed gcn second gen
which all sounds great on paper but it was damn near impossible to manufacture
at a reasonable cost it ran hotter than summer on the tropical island where they
hosted the launch event and sounded like the jet that I flew there on its killer
features mantle and true audio were
absorbed or ignored and it took over a
year of driver development to reach its full potential at which time AMD
promptly relaunched it as 390x they called it Granada XT instead
of Hawaii XT and claimed to have tweaked
it but evidence for actual changes to the hardware beyond the availability of
higher density memory chips that enabled it to ship with 8 gigs of vram and small
process improvements at the chip Fab level to achieve slightly higher rated
clock speeds has never materialized R9
Fury X on the other hand was not a rebadge for sure this thing made Hawaii
and Granada look like toys it introduced
a new generation of gcn with a highquality video scaler and lossless
Delta color compression it was the first GPU to use hbm or high bandwidth memory
which is high performance 3D stacked Dam right next to the GPU for a marketed
4,096-bit memory interface and boasted a completely ludicrous
596 mm squ die with just shy of 9
billion transistors I mean I don't blame
them you got to do what you got to do to appease pcmr insatiable Lust For frame
rates and the GPU industry had been stuck with 28 nanometer manufacturing
for well over 3 years but when your Flagship graphics card needs a
prepackaged water cooler it might be
time to take your foot off the gas pedal
which is exactly what they did just over
4 years later AMD came full circle
abandoning the Revolutionary new features of their previous Flagship in
favor of something a little more practical if Fury X was a Ferrari then
rx480 is an EcoBoost Mustang I mean sure
it's not as fast but it consumes just over half as much power is available
with to double the vram since unlike hbm
gddr5 is available on the cheap doeses
this with a die size that's less than half partially thanks to a shiny new 14
nmet manufacturing process and oh did I
mention it's less than a third of the
price though with all that said I wouldn't count out AMD as a high-end
competitor just yet they played it safe
this generation by launching The Sweet Spot GPU you first but we've seen
working high-end hardware and Vega is
coming thanks for watching AMD gpus Through the Ages you can check out our
previous episodes on Intel CPUs and water blocks which we'll have hopefully
over there and you can leave a comment if you have suggestions for future
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