WEBVTT

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look at how far we've come from the radon HD 3870 launched back in 2007 to

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the rx480 a ton has changed AMD is using a

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manufacturing process four nodes smaller

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the current King has double the PCI E bandwidth up to 16 times the video frame

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buffer size support for directx12 and Vulcan versus DX 10.1 and it actually

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costs less so let's take a look at AMD

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video card Innovation over the last 10 years and see how it is that we got

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here the master keys Pro keyboard lineup from Cooler Master is available in three

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sizes each in white or RGB flavors check

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them out at the link below we already had quite a few of the

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representatives we needed of AMD's top single GPU graphics card for each

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generation but there were a few code name XT cards missing from our Pokedex

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so this project began as so many seem to

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have lately with ebay.ca because Canadians don't get the

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good eBay for our test we went with a high-end modern test bench to avoid

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bottlenecks and we ran a mix of synthetic benchmarks and games both

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modern and kills me to think of things I played as a teenager as classic or retro

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but we've got some of that too first up is the radon HD

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3870 this was truly a dark time for the

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AMD Rebellion their previous generation Flagship 2900 XT with its groundbreaking

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but very expensive 512-bit memory bus

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had just gotten its butt soundly kicked by NVIDIA's G80 so it was time for

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strategy shift instead of building a

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huge complex GPU AMD built a smaller

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more efficient one relying on CrossFire technology to reach the high-end

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Enthusiast Market thanks to being built on a 55 versus 80 NM process the 3870

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managed to perform similarly while being

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much cheaper than its predecessor AMD looked to build on the

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success of that lower performance but lower risk strategy with the

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4870 code name rv770 XT was a

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substantially larger chip than the 3870

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at 256 mm squared but that extra

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performance and frame buffer sizes up to 2 gigs allowed AMD to command a higher

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price and that's still just over half

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the size of their last attempt at a big GPU the radon hd50 870 marked a return

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to confidence for AMD with over two

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billion transistors a move from their terascale to terascale 2 architecture

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bringing with it direct X11 support implementation of PCIe gen 2.1 and a

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process shrink from 55 nanomer to 40

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nanomer it was an ambitious project not

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to mention that this was the beginning of AMD's push for multi-display gaming

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techn technology that they called ifinity 5870 performed very well against

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NVIDIA's furnace of a gtx480 and still

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holds up well enough today that it might be worth modding your cooler if your fan

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dies the hd6970 built on this success

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again AMD officially dubbed its architecture ter scale 3 but due to

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tsmc's cancelled 32 NM node it was

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actually built on the same 40 NMM man manufacturing process so performance

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wasn't dramatically better with die size transistor count and notably power

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consumption all Rising substantially

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that last in particular was a trend that just couldn't continue indefinitely the

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hd7970 was another huge undertaking AMD

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went from 2.64 to over 4 billion transistors with a wide 384-bit memory

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interface they moved to the 28 nanometer manufacturing process they added support

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for PCI Express gen 3 to the amusement

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of enthusiasts who noted that AMD motherboard chipsets didn't and up until

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very recently still didn't have official support for it and introduced the world

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to the directx12 and Vulcan compatible

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gcn architecture that has been the Beating Heart of every AMD card and Apu

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since not to mention the current game

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consoles from all three of the big

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players its compelling performance and

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forward-looking feature set ended up saving AMD a lot of R&D money in

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subsequent years the 7970 was introduced

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as a top of the line card but would end up being recycled twice as the 7970 GHz

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Edition and 280X in lie of developing new gpus to

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compete with NVIDIA's stepdown 700 series cards the Radeon HD 290x that

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came next was a formal return in many

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ways to the uh home run swing strategy

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that had ultimately LED AMD down over half a decade prior it was huge slightly

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larger than the 2900 XT it rocked over 6

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billion transistors it had a 512-bit

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memory bus again and ran an upgraded

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version of gcn dubbed gcn second gen

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which all sounds great on paper but it was damn near impossible to manufacture

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at a reasonable cost it ran hotter than summer on the tropical island where they

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hosted the launch event and sounded like the jet that I flew there on its killer

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features mantle and true audio were

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absorbed or ignored and it took over a

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year of driver development to reach its full potential at which time AMD

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promptly relaunched it as 390x they called it Granada XT instead

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of Hawaii XT and claimed to have tweaked

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it but evidence for actual changes to the hardware beyond the availability of

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higher density memory chips that enabled it to ship with 8 gigs of vram and small

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process improvements at the chip Fab level to achieve slightly higher rated

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clock speeds has never materialized R9

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Fury X on the other hand was not a rebadge for sure this thing made Hawaii

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and Granada look like toys it introduced

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a new generation of gcn with a highquality video scaler and lossless

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Delta color compression it was the first GPU to use hbm or high bandwidth memory

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which is high performance 3D stacked Dam right next to the GPU for a marketed

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4,096-bit memory interface and boasted a completely ludicrous

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596 mm squ die with just shy of 9

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billion transistors I mean I don't blame

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them you got to do what you got to do to appease pcmr insatiable Lust For frame

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rates and the GPU industry had been stuck with 28 nanometer manufacturing

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for well over 3 years but when your Flagship graphics card needs a

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prepackaged water cooler it might be

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time to take your foot off the gas pedal

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which is exactly what they did just over

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4 years later AMD came full circle

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abandoning the Revolutionary new features of their previous Flagship in

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favor of something a little more practical if Fury X was a Ferrari then

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rx480 is an EcoBoost Mustang I mean sure

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it's not as fast but it consumes just over half as much power is available

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with to double the vram since unlike hbm

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gddr5 is available on the cheap doeses

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this with a die size that's less than half partially thanks to a shiny new 14

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nmet manufacturing process and oh did I

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mention it's less than a third of the

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price though with all that said I wouldn't count out AMD as a high-end

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competitor just yet they played it safe

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this generation by launching The Sweet Spot GPU you first but we've seen

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working high-end hardware and Vega is

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coming thanks for watching AMD gpus Through the Ages you can check out our

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previous episodes on Intel CPUs and water blocks which we'll have hopefully

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over there and you can leave a comment if you have suggestions for future

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