AMD Radeon R9 390X Hawaii With 8 GB GDDR5 Spotted Along With Radeon R9 380 Tonga and R9 370 Pitcairn Rebrands

The latest AMD Radeon R300 family of graphics cards launches in a few weeks and we are looking at several cards being listed down on manufacturer sites. The Radeon R9 390X which was expected to be the flagship graphics chip, codenamed Fiji, turns out to be a Hawaii rebrand if the listing is correct and rumors that AMD’s Fiji based cards will ship with a different branding scheme, similar to NVIDIA’s Titan cards may just end up being true.

AMD Radeon R9 390, R9 380, R9 370 and R9 360 Series Rebrands Spotted

Since a couple days, several speculations have popped up after the OEM series were declared as rebrands officially be AMD on their site. Most users assumed that the rebrands in the Radeon R300 OEM lineup will suggest that the actual lineup will also be based on rebrands using older cores such as Hawaii, Tonga and Bonaire. The only card which is new in sight is AMD’s Fiji graphics card which is based on a 28nm process. Previous rumors suggest that this chip will feature a 300W TDP and a 2.5D interposer with 4 GB HBM video memory dedicated on chip. On AMD’s Financial Analyst Day, we broke out the news and revealed the first renders of the Fiji based flagship graphics card which is meant to use a water cooled design and a quite cool form factor which kind of looks cool when it comes to flagship offerings. The render has since been confirmed when Johan Andersson of DICE revealed the card which he has received by AMD from testing.

It is becoming more and more common that these high-end flagship cards get extra treatment from chip makers since they are the pride of the company. We can see similar stuff with NVIDIA who gave extra some extra treatment to the GeForce GTX Titan X with a black cooler design while the upcoming GeForce GTX 980 Ti will make use of the regular silver colored cooler. This reflects the enthusiast branding of products like the GM200 based Titan X and Fiji based AMD’s flagship card.

So how do we know the AMD based cards are rebrands? Speculation and listings on various databases does confirm that the majority (if not all) of cards from AMD will be rebrands based on some renowned cores such as Hawaii, Tonga, Pitcairn and Bonaire. Videocardz did reveal the same scenario a few weeks ago in their round up of the entire 300 series cards. The listings we found through ASUS’s forums reveals a few interesting cards which does confirm Videocardz findings and we will explain these in a moment. The cards revealed on ASUS forums include:

• ASUS R9390X-DC2-8GD5
• ASUS  STRIX-R9380-OC-2GD5
• ASUS  STRIX-R9370-OC-4GD5
• ASUS  STRIX-R7360X-DC2OC2-2GD5
• ASUS  R7360-2GD5

The first thing we get by looking at the top-end card of this listing reveals that it is Hawaii simply because Fiji can not feature 8 GB HBM memory. It is limited to just 4 GB on Gen1 implementation through single-link chip design. On the other hand, we know that Hawaii offered in the 300 series family will be a 8 GB card as it will be based on custom designs at launch. The second card which we believe is Tonga is also quite spot on with the leaks, we know that the Radeon R9 285 Tonga features just 2 GB VRAM across a 256-bit bus. It confirms why we see a sudden VRAM gap between the Radeon R9 370 which is the Pitcairn based card that does come in 4 GB VRAM models. There’s a possibility that AMD introduces the full Tonga XT chip with 2048 stream processors in the line with 4 GB VRAM as the Radeon R9 380X. Rest of the lineup includes the Bonaire XT and Bonaire Pro based Radeon R7 360X and Radeon R7 360 cards which feature just 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM.

Aside from this, there have also been listings of Radeon R9 390, Radeon R9 380, Radeon R9 370 series cards on HIS’s official website which can be seen in the images below. The launch is indeed scheduled in a few weeks so we can expect the AMD flagship going against NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce GTX Titan X which gets revealed in a couple of weeks at Computex 2015.

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AMD Radeon 300 Series GPU Family (Predicted):

GPU	Card	200 Series Counterpart	GCN Iteration	Mem.	GPU/Memory Frequency	Memory Bandwidth
FIJI XT	AMD Radeon	–	1.2	?	TBD	TBD
FIJI Pro	AMD Radeon	–	1.2	?	TBD	TBD
HAWAII XT	AMD Radeon R9 390X	Radeon R9 290X	1.1	8GB	1050/1500 MHz?	384 GB/s
HAWAII Pro	AMD Radeon R9 390	Radeon R9 290	1.1	8GB	1010/1500 MHz?	384 GB/s
TONGA XT	AMD Radeon R9 380X	Radeon R9 M295X	1.2	4GB/2GB	TBD	TBD
TONGA Pro	AMD Radeon R9 380	Radeon R9 285	1.2	4GB/2GB	970/1425 MHz	182 GB/s
Pitcairn XT	AMD Radeon R9 370	Radeon R9 270X	1.0	4GB/2GB	975/1400 MHz	179 GB/s
Bonaire XT	AMD Radeon R7 360X	AMD Radeon R7 260X	1.1	4GB/2GB	1050/1750 MHz	112 GB/s
Bonaire Pro	AMD Radeon R7 370	AMD Radeon R7 260	1.1	2 GN	1000/1750 MHz	112 GB/s

Witcher 3 Benchmarked, GTX Titan Does 30FPS At 1080P And Ultra Settings

The benchmarks have just arrived, showing that The Witcher 3 could quite possibly be the most demanding game we’ve ever seen thus far. I’ve heard your audible gasps and your shouts, how on earth would a GTX Titan only muster 30 FPS at 1920×1080 ? Before some of you start seizing in shock I have to quickly point out that I’m referring to the original GK110 based Kepler Titan not the Titan X. But even then a 30 FPS average is still unprecendently low for what was the fastest GPU in the world not long ago.

The game is so demanding in fact that not even a GTX Titan X can manage a 60 FPS average with GameWorks effects enabled at 1920×1080. It’s not all bad news however, because the game has the visual quality to show for it. In fact The Witcher 3 might just be the most beautiful Open World RPG there has ever been. Take a look at some of the published 4K screenshots and judge for yourself. Now before any further delay let’s get straight into the numbers and what they mean.

Initial Witcher 3 Benchmarks Arrive, Beautiful Visuals Come At A Steep Price

Let’s begin with 1920×1080 benchmarks running at the Ultra preset with GameWorks effects ( HBAO+ and HairWorks ) disabled. These results are courtesy of PCGamesHardware.de, so many thanks to the good folks over there. These tests were conducted with the latest drivers from both AMD and Nvidia, including Nvidia’s recently launched Game Ready drivers for The Witcher 3.

At 1920×1080 and with Ultra settings you will want at least an AMD Radeon R9 285 or an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 just for an average of 30 FPS. Which is often too slow and choppy for most PC gamers
If you want a more reasonable mid 40s framerate you will want to step up to an AMD Radeon R9 290 series card or an Nvidia GTX 970.
We’re fairly certain that if a couple of settings are turned down to high or medium, an average of 60 FPS will be attainable with $300 class GPUs like the 290 and the 970. While 45 FPS may be attainable on the $200 class cards like the 285 and the 960. So that’s the good news.

The not so good news however is that if you’re an owner of a GeForce GTX 700 series card you will need to turn the settings considerably down to attain playable framerates. Because unfortunately just as I had mentioned at the beginning of the article. A GeForce GTX Titan only manages an average of 30 FPS, which is really just one FPS ahead of the R9 285. In fact all Nvidia Kepler GPUs ( 600 series and 700 series ) show almost catastrophically poor performance. If you look at the GTX 660 for example, which is a card that competes with AMD’s R9 270, it’s nearly performing at half the rate of the slightly faster R9 270X with a 13.6 FPS average compared to the 24.2 FPS average of the 270X.

The GTX Titan and GTX 780 also perform quite poorly, falling behind their Radeon counterparts the 290X and 290 by nearly 50%.  We see this trend with older graphics cards from Nvidia’s GTX 500 series and AMD’s HD 6000 series as well. Which indicates that Nvidia’s Game Ready drivers are only optimized for Maxwell based GTX 900 series products. And will need some serious optimization work to bring the Kepler based 600 and 700 series products up to par.
On the Radeon side we actually see surprisingly strong performance for an Nvidia partnered title. The results are more inline with how the cards would normally stack up against the competition. With the R9 290 and 290X cards performing similarly to the factory overclocked GTX 970 from MSI. And the R9 285 performing similarly to the GTX 960.

So now let’s take a look at how the game performs with HairWorks enabled.
With game works off vs on we see an average difference in performance of about 22% on Nvidia 900 series Maxwell GPUs and 700/600 series Kepler GPUs. On AMD’s GCN 1.2 GPUs like Tonga, we see double that performance penalty. And on GCN 1.1 GPUs such as Hawaii we see nearly three times the penalty seen on the Nvidia GPUs. This in part thanks to the architectural improvements that AMD introduced with GCN 1.2, particularly in relation to tessellation.

Unfortunately CD Projekt Red stated that this Nvidia optimized visual effect cannot be optimized for AMD GPUs due to particulars related to the GameWorks program. This naturally caused a lot of controversy as a result, which we distilled in an article detailing the notoriety surrounding the GameWorks program since its inception and up till today. Which you should really check out if you haven’t already.

Before we move on, there’s just one more interesting little point that I’d like to quickly mention. In Bryan Burke’s response to the GameWorks backlash, he essentially blamed the tessellation performance of AMD GPUs for how poorly HairWorks and other GameWorks effects ,which relied heavily on tessellation, performed on Radeon cards. However a quick look at the R9 285’s tessellation performance reveals that the situation isn’t exactly as Burke made out it to be. Based on tessellation performance alone, an R9 285 should see a comparable performance hit to the GTX 960 when enabling HairWorks.

However that’s not the case, not even remotely. The R9 285 actually sees a performance penalty that’s twice as bad as that seen on the GTX 960. And because CD Projekt Red and AMD are not allowed to work towards identifying and addressing the real culprit behind this poor performance in the game code we’re back to square one.

So there you have it folks, Witcher is a GPU destroying monster. Hopefully we’ll see performance improvements with additional patches,  driver updates and most importantly DX12 support. Share your thoughts on the current situation in a comment below and stay tuned for our Witcher 3 review.

The Witcher 3 PC Ultra vs. PS4 plus Details Graphics Comparison

This is a detailed comparison of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on PC and PS4. The video covers most of the graphics settings, that can be adjusted in the graphics menu as well as a general PC versus PS4 comparison. PC is set to Ultra + NVIDIA settings. The PC version appears to be without the day-1 patch, which offers several graphical enhancements including foliage, shadows, ambient occlusion and water tessellation. The Nvidia HairWorks setting does add some noticeable improvements though.

Music:
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt OST – Merchants of Novigrad
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt OST – Hunt or Be Hunted
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt OST – The Field of Ard Skellig

Content:
00:00 – Riding a Horse Low vs. Ultra
01:12 – Anti-Aliasing
01:30 – Ambient Occlusion (Off SSAO HBAO)
01:55 – Bloom
02:15 – Foliage Visibility
02:36 – NVIDIA Hairworks
02:54 – Cutscene Low vs. Ultra
03:42 – Grass Density
04:18 – Light Shafts
04:37 – Shadow Quality
05:16 – Terrain Quality
05:34 – Texture Quality
05:55 – Water Quality

System Specs:
Intel Core i7-5820K 6x 3.3 GHz
16GB DDR4 Crucial Dual Channel 2133MHz (2x 8GB)
2x 4096 MB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 970
500GB SATA III Samsung 840 EVO SSD
2TB SATA III Western Digital Red WD20EFRX

We have provided some beautiful 4K screenshots of the PC version of the game as well as some 4K gameplay footage that showcases the beautiful graphics that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt can provide at Ultra High-Definition at it Ultra Settings.

While many have argued that the game has lost some of its visual flair since the 2013 reveal trailer, CD Projekt RED claims that they have not changed the textures, and that they have only toned down as sharpening filter that was causing eye  strain. The higher resolution can replicate the sharpening effect to some extend so it does indeed seem quite similar. Certain changes had been made of course to accommodate the console hardware, but the game turned out looking quite good indeed. We have also provided some amazing 4K Ultra settings footage of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which can be viewed here.

CD Projekt RED removed the “PS4 vs PC” comparison video, posted earlier by PCGamesHardware and went on to detail the differences between the two versions. They claimed that the PC build was not final and that the PS4 version dis not use the day-one patch which not only fixed the PS4 framerate issue but also implemented a few visual enhancements.

PlayStation Access has provided an in-depth look into many aspects of the game in a 46 minutes video which can be viewed here. It covers everything that fans have been asking for and provides answers to most questions without spoiling the experience.

A few gorgeous screenshots from the PS4 version have also been made available, and they reveal some quite beautiful vistas and the amazing lighting system.

The launch cinematic which was made available yesterday looks amazing. CD Projekt has also revealed the changelog for the day-1 patch which can be viewed here.  docm77, has also made available a video interview with CD Projekt’s visual artist, Jose Teixeira, in which he shares his thoughts on the downgrade subject.

The Witcher 3 is just three days away from release, and as we have previously covered, CD Projekt has already announced that pre-load options are already live, as well as the unlock times for The Witcher 3.

The Witcher 3 will release on May 19 2015 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. We will bring you any new information on The Witcher 3 as soon as it becomes available.

8GB AMD R9 300 Series Hawaii GPUs Leaked

The Hawaii GPUs will reportedly make a return in the 300 series. Featuring 8GB of memory as standard and increased core and memory clocks. The final name designated for 300 series based Hawaii cards hasn’t been confirmed yet. But Videocardz.com reports that there will be two Hawaii based cards in the 300 series.

One will feature an enhanced version of Hawaii Pro and the other will feature an enhanced version of Hawaii XT.
Currently Hawaii XT powers the R9 290X and Hawaii Pro powers the R9 290. Both updated versions of the GPU will feature increased memory and GPU  clock speeds compared to their R9 290 series predecessors. Both new iterations of the enhanced Hawaii GPU will feature memory speeds of 1500Mhz, a 250Mhz increase over the R9 290X and R9 290. The GPU clock speed for the new Hawaii XT is 1050Mhz, a 50Mhz improvement compared to the R9 290X. While the enhanced Hawaii Pro will feature a GPU clock speed of 1010Mhz, a 63Mhz improvement over the R9 290.

8GB R9 300 Series AMD Hawaii GPUs Leaked

The most interesting piece of information is that Videocardz claims both 300 series Hawaii based graphics cards will feature 8GB of memory as standard. That was not expected, especially since some rumors which were circulating around suggested the possibility that Fiji would debut with 4GB of memory as opposed to 8GB. However if Hawaii based GPUs will feature 8GB of memory as standard then it stands to reason that their higher-end, bigger brother Fiji would feature at least the same amount of memory and not less.

The other interesting piece of information which Videocardz revealed is that Fiji is a 300 series product. Which might seem obvious at first but actually isn’t. That’s because AMD rebranded Tonga , the R9 285, as the R9 380 for OEMs. Which means that if Hawaii, R9 290 series, debuts as the R9 390 series this would leave no room for Fiji in the nomenclature. So it remains to be seen how AMD will attempt to solve this dilemma.

GPU	Card	200 Series Counterpart	GCN Iteration	Mem.	GPU/Memory Frequency	Memory Bandwidth
FIJI	AMD Radeon R9 ?	–	1.2	8GB	1050/1000 MHz*	640 GB/s
FIJI	AMD Radeon R9 ?	–	1.2	8GB	1000/1000 MHz	640 GB/s
HAWAII	AMD Radeon R9 390X?	Radeon R9 290X	1.1	8GB	1050/1500 MHz	384 GB/s
HAWAII	AMD Radeon R9 390?	Radeon R9 290	1.1	8GB	1010/1500 MHz	384 GB/s
TONGA	AMD Radeon R9 380	Radeon R9 285	1.2	4GB/2GB	970/1425 MHz	182 GB/s

We covered five days ago a report which indicated that the new flagship Radeon based on the Fiji GPU with stacked HBM VRAM will launch on the 24th of June. While other 300 series cards will debut approximately a week prior.
AMD promised that gamers will be able to choose from “multiple” Fiji powered boards with different form factors and cooling. The image you see above is only of those multiple. It features water-cooling and a very small form factor, resembling that of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti cards and other mini-itx graphics cards.

WCCFTech	AMD Fiji Flagship	AMD Radeon R9 290X
GPU Code Name	Fiji XT	Hawaii XT
GPU Cores / Shaders	4096	2816
Memory	4GB/8GB Stacked HBM	4GB GDDR5
Memory  Frequency	1.25Ghz	5.0Ghz
Memory Interface	4096 Wide IO	512bit GDDR5
Total Memory Bandwidth	640GB/S	320GB/S
GPU  Clock Speed	1.05Ghz	1Ghz
Compute Performance	8.5TFLOP*	5.6TFLOP
Launch Price	?	$549

* Estimated from core count and clock speed.

GTA V Mod Enables Seamless Buildings Interiors Without Loading

Modder ‘TaazR’ has released a new mod for GTA V that opens up every interior in the game files with fully functional door.

The mod can be downloaded from here.

Below is a list of the buildings that are opened:

• LifeInvader offices
• Tequi-la-la
• Sandy Shores sheriff department
• Paleto Bay sheriff department
• Lazlow’s stadium
• Cluckin Bell factory
• Bahamas Mamas West nightclub (R* blocked it off, so you teleport in by standing at the front doors)
• Comedy club (you teleport in by standing at the front doors)
• The O’Neil farmhouse
• The “Humane Labs”
• FIB building bottom floors
• FIB building floor 49 (access through first elevator)
• FIB building burnt out floors 47 – 53 (access through second elevator)
• Hospital
• Epsilon storage room
• Lester’s sweatshop
• Jewellery store
• Building under construction beside jewellery store
• Lester’s house
• Franklin’s aunt’s house
• Janitor’s apartment
• Foundry
• Recycling plant
• Meat packing facility
• Simeon’s dealership
• Torture building
• Morgue (R* blocked it off, so you teleport in by standing at the front doors)
• Madrazo’s ranch (doors open, but R* put an invisible wall there :\ )
• Floyd’s house
• Devin Weston’s chop shop
• Omega’s lab
• Paleto Bay bank

In order to install this mod, players will have to make sure they have Alexander Blade’s ScriptHookV already installed. To install the mod you have to unzip, and copy/paste OpenInteriors.asi to the GTA V directory.

Rockstar talks about mods for GTA V:

We have always appreciated the creative efforts of the PC modding community and we still fondly remember the awesome zombie invasion mod and original GTA map mod for GTAIV PC among many other classics. To be clear, the modding policy in our license has not changed and is the same as for GTAIV. Recent updates to GTAV PC had an unintended effect of making unplayable certain single player modifications. This was not intentional, no one has been banned for using single player modifications, and you should not worry about being banned or being relegated to the cheater pool just for using single player PC mods. Our primary focus is on protecting GTA Online against modifications that could give players an unfair advantage, disrupt gameplay, or cause griefing. It also bears mentioning that because game mods are by definition unauthorized, they may be broken by technical updates, cause instability, or affect your game in other unforeseen ways.

We have recently covered Rockstar’s new EULA changes, and the banning of GTA V players who use mods, as well as the company’s statement that cosmetic mods are not a bannable offense. Rockstar also appears to be banning the use of single player mods in GTA V too. On a positive note however you can check out how good GTA V looks at 6K.

We will bring you any new information on GTA V, as soon as it becomes available.

Until Dawn is One Gorgeous PS4 Exclusive and It’s Coming Soon

When eight friends are trapped on a remote mountain retreat and things quickly turn sinister, they start to suspect they aren’t alone. Gripped by fear and with tensions in the group running high, players will be forced to make snap decisions that could mean life, or death, for everyone involved. Every choice we make will carve out our own unique story.

With performances from a Hollywood cast including Hayden Panettiere (Heroes, Nashville), the palyer’s actions alone will decide who survives Until Dawn. In an unpredictable and dynamically adaptive story, crafted in consultation with Until Dawn scriptwriters and indie horror authors Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, eight friends come together at a remote mountain getaway and embark upon a night of unexpected terror. Through the course of the night, anyone can live, anyone can die, and things aren’t always what they seem. Twists and turns will keep players guessing right to the end as we play each of the friends. The decisions the player makes on their behalf will determine who survives Until Dawn.

With innovative choice mechanics and the Butterfly-Effect Interface, players can clearly see the path of their story amid the thousands that are possible. Seemingly insignificant choices as well as huge moral dilemmas that will question your sense of fairness, good and evil, can have major unforeseen consequences.

Using the power of the superior rendering capability of the Killzone Shadowfall Engine, and the power of the PlayStation 4 together with proprietary major enhancements in lighting, camera, and animation systems, Until Dawn brings emotional and credible performances of a talented Hollywood cast to life in its realistically terrifying environments.

Given the disappointing delays of big Sony exclusives like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Ratchet & Clank, Until Dawn is one of the few titles we know that is still set for a 2015 release. Although there will be plenty of surprise announcements at E3 2015, so there might be some exclusives that could possibly release within the year. There have been rumors suggesting just that so  lets just wait and see. otherwise Sony will be in quite a disadvantage compared to Microsoft’s exclusive 2015 line-up.

Until Dawn has a rumored release date of June 24, 2015, which, so we should expect more details to be revealed at E3 2015. We will bring you any new information on Until Dawn as soon as it becomes available.