[PConline Chat] AMD, 50 years old this year, currently has two "children", one is Ryzen and the other is Radeon. We have talked about the classic CPUs launched by AMD before, so we should be fair. Next, we officially switch to the topic of graphics cards and talk about the unforgettable graphics cards that AMD has launched after acquiring ATI.
GPU
1. The myth of killing the opponent overnight: Radeon HD4850
After acquiring ATI, AMD is still cleaning up the mess left by ATI. At this time, Radeon has almost no power to fight back against NVIDIA. However, the small core strategy of the HD3000 series later made AMD taste the sweetness. HD3870 and HD3850 have smaller core areas, so the GPU cost is also lower, allowing graphics cards to set a lower price.
HD4850
Finally HD3000 is still very successful in the market. AMD continues to use the small core strategy in the HD4000 series. The first thing the editor wants to talk about is the HD4850 card with the RV770 core. At that time, the first launch of HD4850 was only 1,599 yuan, and the actual transaction price was even lower. The N card 9800GTX with similar performance generally cost 2,799. Once it was released, many offline computer cities changed the price of graphics cards overnight, which made the high price of the competitor 9800GTX almost halved overnight. This extremely lethal pricing caught NVIDIA off guard, so much so that it quickly launched the 9800GTX+ not long after.
9800GTX+
Compared with 9800GTX, HD4850 has a smaller core area, only 256 square millimeters. The 9800GTX is 324 square millimeters, which has a considerable advantage in cost. The HD4850 also has lower power consumption and is more powerful in high resolution gaming, which can be said to have many advantages. Therefore, the high performance and super high cost performance make the HD4850 a favorite in the market, and many places even sold to the point where one card was hard to come by. It is enough to show how popular HD4850 was at that time. AMD turned the tide with the core strength of RV770, and the A-card independent graphics market share returned to 40% again, proving that the small core strategy is very successful.
Classic reasons: price butcher in the graphics card world, dessert card. The first graphics card that reaches 1TFlop floating point is also a milestone breakthrough in the history of graphics cards. Once released, it caught the opponent off guard and even cut the price of competitors in half. HD4850 means who else has such a graphics card? (In fact, the HD4830, the 4850 brother RV770 LE core, was also very popular at the time, but it was not as dazzling as the big brother 4850.)
2. The first graphics card with a core frequency of more than 1G: Radeon HD4890
HD4890
AMD has made many firsts in history, such as the first CPU with a core frequency of more than 1G, the first to introduce a memory controller on the CPU, and the first to use GDDR4 video memory and GDDR5 video memory. The first graphics card with a core frequency of more than 1G is the HD4890. The HD4890 does not use the RV770 core on the HD4870, nor is it the so-called remake, but the new RV790XT core. In terms of specifications, the HD4890 has an amazing 850MHz default frequency, uses GDDR5 video memory, a frequency of 3800MHz, and maintains 800 stream processors. The HD4890 has been redesigned on the chip, with significant enhancements in both circuit optimization and power supply. This also greatly enhanced the overclocking capability of the HD4890. In the end, the HD4890 became the first graphics card that can overclock to 1GHz, so it became an important milestone in the history of graphics cards.
At that time, the strongest A card was HD4870, but HD4870 could only reach the level of NVIDIA GTX260 in terms of performance. There are four complete products of GTX260+ GTX275 GTX280 GTX285 on the GTX260. It can be said that the gap between flagship and flagship is still quite large. The arrival of HD4890 has further narrowed the gap with NVIDIA, and its overall performance is already similar to that of GTX275. In addition, due to the powerful overclocking capability of HD4890, sapphire also launched its own strongest and top non-public version - HD4890 Atomic Energy (Atomic) for this graphics card. Friends who are a little familiar with A card should know that the strongest non-public sapphire is neither poison nor the current ultra-platinum limited edition, but the atomic energy series. If Platinum Hacker represents ASUS , Lightning represents MSI, and KINGPIN represents EVGA, then only atomic energy can represent sapphire, which represents the top R&D strength of sapphire.The extremely powerful design also makes the HD4890 atomic energy a super-top non-public graphics card that can easily exceed 1GHz.
HD4890 Atomic energy (Atomic)
Classic reason: 's first graphics card with a core frequency of over 1G in history greatly improves the competitiveness of A card in the high-end field.
3. Return to the throne of the card king: Radeon HD5870
Half a year after the release of RV790, AMD released the new generation of HD5000 series graphics cards. The flagship product HD5870 was introduced as soon as it was launched. Thanks to the improvement of new processes and architecture, the HD5870 has almost doubled its specifications compared to the previous generation HD4870. stream processor has skyrocketed to 1,600, with a single-precision floating point reaching an astonishing 2.72T, with 32 grating units, 80 texture units, and a video memory frequency has also hit a new high of 4800MHz. Such a huge specification improvement has also brought about a surge in performance. In actual testing, the performance of HD5870 is even close to the dual-core HD4870X2 and GTX295, which is much higher than the NVIDIA single-core flagship GTX285. What's even more terrifying is that the second flagship HD5850 can also knock the GTX285 down. In terms of power consumption and heating, the HD5800 series, which adopts a new 40-nanometer process, also performed very well. It can be said that after many years, AMD has regained the throne of the single-core card king.
In addition, the HD5800 series also brings a lot of new technologies and new features. For example, Eyefinity technology can support single card and six screens. The first support for DX11 has brought new features such as surface segmentation, texture compression, and computing shaders. It is also worth mentioning that the new appearance design of HD5870 is also eye-catching. The classic red and black color scheme and the metal back panel design are still good. In terms of workmanship and materials, the HD5870 has to be admired. It is hard to believe that AMD uses such a luxurious configuration as digital power supply in the public version (the subsequent AMD flagship cards still use this very luxurious configuration). The strong core capabilities have also been recognized by AIB manufacturers. They have launched a number of top non-public products for 5870, such as the Asus Platinum Hacker, which was used on A-card single core for the first time.
Classic Reason: HD5870 has once again made AMD the position of single-core card king, and the competitiveness of A-cards has been greatly improved. It is the most successful top single-core card in the history of AMD graphics cards. It can be said that the emergence of HD5870 has once again seen the reappearance of ATI's glorious era. In addition, this is also the first graphics card to support DX11, which is of great significance.
4. How lonely it is to be invincible: Radeon HD5970
If you want to talk about which AMD card king has been in power for the longest, it is the dual-core flagship HD5970. This graphics card occupied a single card king for a year and a half, setting the highest reign of the card king at that time. A year and a half later, AMD's own dual-core HD6990 appeared before it abdicated from the position of Card King. Until now, AMD still has no card that has been used as a flagship for more than HD5970. It was obvious that the HD5970 was invincible at the time. This graphics card is naturally twice as large as the single core 5870 in basic specifications, with as many as 3200 on the stream processor, 64 grating units and 160 texture units. This scale was at the level of a monster at that time. Only in terms of core frequency, the HD5970 is lower than the HD5870. What's amazing is that the HD5970 does not have too much premium in price, but is only 1,300 yuan more expensive than the 5870 starter. For such a performance card, the cost performance is relatively high. In terms of performance, it is obvious that the HD5970 instantly defeats any graphics card at that time.
This is not over yet. At that time, it was the only one who could defeat HD5970. Why did you say that? Because in addition to the public version at that time, AIB manufacturers also released three amazing non-public versions. They are the HD5970 poison from Sapphire, the HD5970 God of War from Asus, and the HD5970 gun version of Xunjing. These three graphics cards have a consistent frequency of 850/4800MHz, which is one level higher than the default 725 core frequency. In terms of performance, it also surpasses the public HD5970, so it is said that only it can defeat itself. In short, HD5970 was invincible at that time and was so lonely.
5970 Luxury materials
Classic reasons: The strongest single card at that time, no one. Its competitors did not come up with a card that could match it until it abdicated, and it still maintained the record of AMD graphics card flagship for the longest time.
5, Future-oriented graphics card: Radeon HD7970
On December 12, 2011, AMD officially released the HD7000 series, the first release of the single-core flagship HD7970. The HD7000 series adopts a brand new architecture, which is the GCN architecture we are familiar with. It completely abandoned the VLIW architecture that AMD has used for many years and changed to a gaming and high-performance computing architecture. In this regard, it is more similar to NVIDIA's Fermi architecture, and it is more like an all-round architecture. How powerful was the HD7970 at that time? Let’s first look at the specifications: a brand new 28nm process, a new GCN architecture, 2048 stream processors, 32 grating units, and a frequency of 925/5500MHz. 3.79T single-precision floating point, 384BIT bit width, 4.3 billion transistors. As can be seen, the HD7970 has further expanded its scale compared to the previous generation. In the first test, the HD7970 was 40% ahead of the HD6970 in performance. In the field of general computing, the new architecture is that the HD7970 can lead by several times 6970, which is really powerful.
MSI R7970 Lightning graphics card
At this point, we will talk about why HD7970 is also called a magic card. We know that according to AMD, the zen architecture was already developed around 2012. Therefore, at this time, AMD's R&D funds should be used more on zen, so on the graphics card, AMD, which does not have enough money, can only choose to continue to tap the potential of GCN. This is one of the reasons why GCN has been used for many years. Therefore, HD7970 and its vest card R9 280X have not been abandoned by the official until now.
Here, the editor will also reveal the truth about "N card negative optimization, A card fighting the future" online.
Because AMD has not changed the architecture, HD7970 and R9 280X can still receive AMD's driver support and optimization. Coupled with the characteristics of the GCN architecture itself, allows HD7970 to be fully utilized in new games. This is why the performance gap between the GTX680 of the same generation of competitors is gradually widening. This is not because many netizens said that Lao Huang has negatively optimized the old card, but because HD7970 has been optimized and the performance is getting stronger and stronger. The fact is that the performance of GTX680 has also improved, but there is no obvious of its competitors. In addition, even the performance of HD7970 and R9 280X is not outdated. Some relatively new large-scale games can still run smoothly with appropriate picture quality. Therefore, this is the saying that A card fights the future, GCN architecture fights the future. The GCN architecture is also due to AMD not replacing the new architecture for a long time, and constantly repairing and refining it to have such a long combat effectiveness. Interestingly, AMD released a brand new RDNA architecture at the Taipei Computer Exhibition at the end of May, which is a completely new architecture that is completely different from GCN. But Su Ma said at the press conference: We like GCN, and you can still see GCN in high-performance computing in the future. It seems that GCN can really "fight the future".
The appearance of the public version 7970 is very classic
Classic reason: is called the "War Future" magic card, with powerful performance and is not out of date today. The most successful and brilliant graphics card in the GCN architecture.
6, the first public version card that uses water cooling: Radeon R9 295X2
In 2013, the second-generation GCN flagship core Hawaii was unable to get the throne of the single-core card emperor. Fortunately, AMD still has a chance at the single-core card emperor. In 2014, AMD and NVIDIA both previewed their own dual-core flagships, but what NVIDIA did not expect was that AMD's dual-core solution actually adopted a water-cooling solution. Therefore, AMD's dual-core card is directly full of specifications, consisting of two Hawaiian cores, with a total of 5,632 stream processors and a bit width of 1,024Bit. In addition, due to water cooling, the core frequency of the R9 295X2 is even slightly higher than the single-core R9 290X. AMD's launch directly brought NVIDIA's dual-core card GTX TITAN Z back and re-trained, delaying it for three months before it was launched. But even so, the performance of the GTX TITAN Z ultimately did not beat the R9 295X2. Another thing to say is that the R9 295X2 is also very handsome in shape. AMD has adopted a white and black design for the first time, and the fan on the graphics card will emit a red light. The Radeon logo light is added to the top for the first time. The A-fried fans finally have their own unique moment.
Classic reason: 's ashes-level performance at that time defeated GTX TITAN Z and took the throne of single Kaka King. The appearance and materials are all top-notch designs, and the finest products in the AMD public version card.
Conclusion: ATI has become history, but AMD's Radeon is still continuing!
Radeon logo changes after AMD gave up the ATI brand
Looking back, after taking over ATI, AMD has indeed produced many very classic graphics cards. In particular, the two graphics cards, HD4850 and HD5870, represent AMD's extremely successful products in the market and in the high-end field respectively.
But in recent years, due to various reasons, A card is obviously unable to do anything, and the gap with its competitors is getting bigger and bigger. Fortunately, the new RDNA architecture graphics card released this year has fought a good battle, but it still puts some pressure on competitors. However, there are some problems with new A-cards. First of all, AMD product deployment progress is still relatively slow. So far, only two or three RDNA graphics cards have been launched, and the competitor's Turing series has already had a complete product line early. Another is that there is still a gap between the performance and energy consumption ratio and the competitors, especially in the high-end field. AMD cannot yet come up with a flagship product that is strong enough to make people shine.
Therefore, next year is a very important year for AMD. This year marks the 50th anniversary of AMD's establishment, but I believe many people don't know that the Radeon brand, which is the narrow A-card, will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary. If AMD can launch graphics cards that can compete with or even completely defeat opponents on the 20th anniversary of the Radeon brand, then the editor believes that the Radeon brand still has the opportunity to usher in a new peak again! It is rumored that AMD is indeed preparing a Navi 21 core code-named NVIDIA Killer, let's wait and see!
