AMD will be announcing their latest Volcanic Islands based Hawaii GPU in Hawaii on 25th September after which the company plans to mass ship the card to retailers through its AIC partners. Although there are limited details of the Hawaii GPU but one thing is certain that it would be competing against NVIDIA's top tier GK110 core.
AMD To Commence Mass Shipping of Hawaii GPU in October
Digitimes sources close to the upstream supply chain have said that AMD would give the greenlight to its partners after announcing the Hawaii GPU in September after which manufacturer's including ASUS, MSI and Powercolor would be mass shipping the Hawaii GPU based products to retail channels and distributors. Hawaii chip itself would be made available to consumers by late October.
As AMD is set to announce its next-generation high-end GPU codenamed Hawaii, graphics card players including Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI) and PowerColor are expected to start mass shipping related products in October, according to sources from the upstream supply chain. Digitimes
The Hawaii GPU is expected to be available at a price under $600 US which would make it the direct competitor to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card. The main question is, what kind of performance would it boast? From a leaked benchmark, it was shown that the Hawaii GPU might end up faster than the GeForce GTX Titan in 3DMark 11. Ofcourse, these synthetic benchmarks do not represent actual gaming performance so that remains to be seen.
It should be pointed out that AMD is offering tons of optimizations for their graphic cards in next generation titles from EA and Square Enix. And we have already seen possible press boxes of the Hawaii GPU which might be bundled with a full retail copy of Battlefield 4. This means that if gaming performance is on target as AMD has been telling the press, then it would be clear win for Hawaii GPU in terms of price and performance.
In preparation of their next generation Radeon series launch, AMD has announced massive price cuts on their current Radeon HD 7000 series cards all the way from the top tier Radeon HD 7990 down to Radeon HD 7870. The Radeon HD 7990 witnessed the biggest price cut with AMD slashing its price down to $699 from $1000 US while the Radeon HD 7970 sells for around $299-$329 and Radeon HD 7950 for $269-$299. In addition to the price cuts, AMD recently also announced their Never Settle: Forever promotion offering users even more value and the ability to redeem the games they want themselves rather than letting AMD choose for them. All eyes are on the upcoming Hawaii GPU as to what level of performance it delivers against the NVIDIA's GK110 core.
