AMD is officially going to present their next generation Hawaii GPU in Hawaii on 25th September at the AMD GPU ’14 Tech Day event. We have a few details regarding the new Hawaii GPU thanks to Forbes recent chat with AMD's Matt Skynner (AMD’s Corporate Vice President and General manager) but the key specifications remain unknown.
Possible Specifications of AMD R9-290X Hawaii GPU Detailed
3DCenter has done a detailed analysis regarding the specifications of the upcoming Hawaii GPU which is possibly branded as the AMD R9-290X GPU (atleast that's what the recent leak by HIS hinted at). We know that the GPU would be officially codenamed 'Hawaii', its based on the 28nm process though the main architecture would be a complete overhaul compared to the current GCN architecture in Southern Islands (GCN 1.0/ GCN 1.1) cards. The architecture is being called as GCN 2.0 by many and we suspect that might be it, the die size of the Hawaii GPU is said to be around 30% smaller than NVIDIA's GK110 which is featured on several Quadro and Tesla cards and the GeForce GTX Titan, GeForce GTX 780 GPUs.
But it's time to do a detailed analysis to see whether the AMD R9-290X Hawaii GPU would be able to stand up against the mighty GK110 core? Early performance reports show that it would end up faster than the GeForce Titan which is the absolute best GK110 card you can get at the moment for a price of $1000 US while its little brother GeForce GTX 780 which is not far behind the Titan itself can be bought for $649 US. AMD has already mentioned that they are not aiming to price their Hawaii GPU in the Ultra High-End Enthusiast range such as their Radeon HD 7990 or their rival's NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan / GeForce GTX 690 which launched at $999 though the Radeon HD 7990 got a price drop to $799 recently. If true, we will be looking at a price range of around $599 for the top tier Hawaii GPU (XT Variant) while the Pro variant would retail for $449-$499 US.
3DCenter has built up two assumptions regarding the Hawaii GPU, in the first case scenario the Hawaii GPU would end up with 44 Compute Units which would amount to 2816 stream processors , 176 TMUs, 32-48 ROPs while in the second scenario which seems much more possible, the Hawaii GPU would feature 40 Compute Units which would amount to 2560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 32-48 ROPs. The second scenario seems more realistic based on the data acquired over the past few months but its never bad to have more. In either case, the Hawaii GPU would feature a 384-bit memory buffer with possibly 3-6 GB of memory. The memory would feature a clock speed of 3500 MHz while the core would be clocked a little lower than the 1 GHz mark. You can check out detailed specifications in the chart below:
| AMD Hawaii GPU(Assumption no.1) | AMD Hawaii GPU(Assumption no.2) | AMD Radeon HD 7970 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 | |
| GPU Codename | Hawaii XT | Hawaii XT | Tahiti XT | GK110 | GK110 |
| GPU Process | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| Stream Processors | 2816 SPs | 2560 SPs | 2048 SPs | 2688 Cores | 2304 Cores |
| TMUS | 176 | 160 | 128 | 192 | 224 |
| ROPS | 32-48 | 32-48 | 32 | 48 | 48 |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit |
| VRAM | 3-6 GB | 3-6 GB | 3 GB | 6 GB | 3 GB |
| Core Clock | 950 MHz | 950 MHz | 925 MHz | 837 MHz | 863 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 975 MHz | 975 MHz | N/A | 876 MHz | 902 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 7 GHz | 7 GHz | 5.5 GHz | 6 GHz | 6 GHz |
| Launch Price | $599-$649 | $599-$649 | $549 | $999 | $649 |
You might notice that AMD hasn't released their previously showcased Ruby tech demo although it was announced a while back. Ruby is a key icon for the AMD Radeon graphics department and AMD want's to mark her return in style. For this purpose, AMD would be showcasing a live technical demonstration of their nextgen Ruby powered by CryEngine 3 during the Hawaii GPU announcement. Ofcourse, the card would be running the demo which is a similar approach to what NVIDIA has been doing over the recent years showcasing their GeForce products capabilities with Epic games Unreal Engine.
Do note that the final specifications may be different since this is just a technical analysis of an upcoming product. We will be keeping a look out for more reliable and credible information regarding the AMD Volcanic Islands GPU family and the Hawaii chip.
