R9 290X leading the way for AMD’s new videocards

AMD has introduced the R9 290X.  This card will be taking on Nvidia’s GTX Titan and GTX 780. The new videocard was launched in Hawaii, together with the R9 280X, the R9 270X, the R7 260X and the R7 250.

AMD R9 videocards

The R9 series will be AMD’s new high-end and enthusiast videocards. So far AMD hasn’t completely spilled the beans: they have only announced Firestrike-scores for the new videocards. The R9 290X is the exception, since AMD claims it will top 5Tflops of computing power, has over 300GB/s of memory bandwidth, and has 4GB GDDR5-memory.

The R9 290X can be pre-ordered on October third, for a price that is as of yet unknown, but speculation leads some to believe it will cost $599. A Firestrike-score is unknown, but leaked and unconfirmed benchmarks have shown it to be able to beat Nvidia’s GTX 780.

Beside the R9 290X, there will also be a R9 290, but AMD hasn’t disclosed any specifications whatsoever.  Next in line is the R9 280X which will have 3GB of vRAM, cost $299, and scores over 6800 points in Firestrike. The 280X is most likely a rebranded HD 7970GHz Edition. Like the R9 280X, the R9 270X will be a rebrand, of the HD 7950, with 2GB of vRAM, a Firestrike score of over 5500 points and a pricetag of $199.

AMD R7 videocards

The R7 260X is said to be a completely new videocard, sporting 2GB of ram, scoring 3700 points or more in Firestrike, whilst costing $139. The slowest card will be the R7 250, costing less then $89 it comes with 1GB of ram and should score a little over 2000 points in Firestrike.

TrueAudio

Although AMD Graphics is about making graphics cards, they have introduced a new feature called TrueAudio. This feature hardware accelerates the use of a programmable audio-engine made by GenAudio. This piece of tech basically enables the use of sound that can originate from any point in a 3D-space. Even when using 2-channel stereo-headphones, there could be the illusion of surround-sound. Thief will be one of the first games supporting TrueAudio.

The R9 290X, the R9 290, and the R7 260X will support this new feature. The R9 280X, R9 270X and R7 250 do not support this features, because they are rebranded Southern Island-GPUs.