AMD's New Radeons Revisit Old Silicon, Enable Dormant Features

crookedvulture writes "The first reviews of AMD's Radeon R7 and R9 graphics cards have hit the web, revealing cards based on the same GPU technology used in the existing HD 7000 series. The R9 280X is basically a tweaked variant of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz priced at $300 instead of $400, while the R9 270X is a revised version of the Radeon HD 7870 for $200. Thanks largely to lower prices, the R9 models compare favorably to rival GeForce offerings, even if there's nothing exciting going on at the chip level. There's more intrigue with the Radeon R7 260X, which shares the same GPU silicon as the HD 7790 for only $140. Turns out that graphics chip has some secret functionality that's been exposed by the R7 260X, including advanced shaders, simplified multimonitor support, and a TrueAudio DSP block dedicated to audio processing. AMD's current drivers support the shaders and multimonitor mojo in the 7790 right now, and a future update promises to unlock the DSP. The R7 260X isn't nearly as appealing as the R9 cards, though. It's slower overall than not only GeForce 650 Ti Boost cards from Nvidia, but also AMD's own Radeon HD 7850 1GB. We're still waiting on the Radeon R9 290X, which will be the first graphics card based on AMD's next-gen Hawaii GPU." More reviews available from AnandTech, Hexus, Hot Hardware, and PC Perspective.

7790 gets no love

[Anonymous Coward]

The HD 7790 never seems to get any love in reviews -- it is always pointed out that its slower than such and such, or more expensive than such and such... missing the point entirely

The HD 7790 is only 85 watts. It is often compared against the GTX 650 Ti, which is 110 watts and is only marginally better than the 7790 in some benchmarks (the regular GTX 650 however, is actually very competitive in power consumption, but is notably slower in most benchmarks than the 7790)

Now we see this new R7 260X getting dumped on in the summary for essentially the same ignorant reasons. The R7 260X is supposed to use slightly less power than the 7790, but here it is being compared to cards that use 50%+ more power.. essentially cards in a completely different market segment.

Reviewers are fucking retards.