The new card is rumoured to be named Radeon Fury X. HBM is a radical design change for GPUs and still might be, as i've written before, a game changer. It shifts the profit for the memory to the chip maker (in this case: AMD) and makes the card layout way easier. The card will be shorter and cheaper to produce. The water cooler is in any way consequent if you think about the problems in noise and heat with the 290s.
No one knows which leap forward AMD was able to make optimizing the 28nm process. In my opinion, the 300W TDP is realistic and easy to handle for the liquid cooling system. It will all depend on what the card can do in games and though it might not beat the Titan X, the real competitor will be the 980Ti. As (not bulletproofed) benchmarks from last year indicated, it'll be close to the Titan X and clearly outperforming the 980Ti. Computing power is important for us and us only. 98% of the buyers don't give a damn for it. So the cards success will mainly depend on its pricetag in comparison to the 980Ti.
DirectX 12 is another game changer and is going to mix up all the benchmark rankings. AMD buyers will be glad even their three year old card is compatible to DX 12, while users of a last year non-Maxwell NVidia can't use any of the new features (this also includes the GTX750 btw). So yes, new cards only have 12.0 and not 12.1 and no, that will not make a big difference at the salespoint.
But I share Jeremies concerns about the drivers, they do look really shitty. Bad experience in this field hurts and bad reputation gained needs a long way to cool off.
AMD was supposed to be dead in 1991 and flipped back in the game with the DX40. Same in '97 with the K6. Same in 1999 when they brought the Athlon. Next year Zen comes out and the GPUs get their die shrink. This will be huge leap forward or finally drain them down. In the latter case i don't give them 5 years.
No one knows which leap forward AMD was able to make optimizing the 28nm process. In my opinion, the 300W TDP is realistic and easy to handle for the liquid cooling system. It will all depend on what the card can do in games and though it might not beat the Titan X, the real competitor will be the 980Ti. As (not bulletproofed) benchmarks from last year indicated, it'll be close to the Titan X and clearly outperforming the 980Ti. Computing power is important for us and us only. 98% of the buyers don't give a damn for it. So the cards success will mainly depend on its pricetag in comparison to the 980Ti.
DirectX 12 is another game changer and is going to mix up all the benchmark rankings. AMD buyers will be glad even their three year old card is compatible to DX 12, while users of a last year non-Maxwell NVidia can't use any of the new features (this also includes the GTX750 btw). So yes, new cards only have 12.0 and not 12.1 and no, that will not make a big difference at the salespoint.
But I share Jeremies concerns about the drivers, they do look really shitty. Bad experience in this field hurts and bad reputation gained needs a long way to cool off.
AMD was supposed to be dead in 1991 and flipped back in the game with the DX40. Same in '97 with the K6. Same in 1999 when they brought the Athlon. Next year Zen comes out and the GPUs get their die shrink. This will be huge leap forward or finally drain them down. In the latter case i don't give them 5 years.