AMD Radeon Rx 200 series

The Rx 200 series is a family of GPUs developed by AMD. A "preview" was seen on September 25, 2013. These GPUs are manufactured on a 28 nm Gate-Last process through TSMC or Common Platform Alliance.

Release

The Rx 200 series was announced on September 25, 2013, at the AMD GPU14 Tech Day event.Non-disclosure agreements were lifted on October 15, except for the R9 290X, and pre-orders opened on October 3.

Architecture

This article is about all products under the AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series brand.

Radeon

Radeon /ˈreɪdiːɒn/ is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of Advanced Micro Devices. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006.

Radeon Graphics

Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line. Three different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished, the fixed-pipeline family and the unified shader model-families of TeraScale and Graphics Core Next. ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm, HyperMemory, HyperZ, XGP, Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire (for multi-GPU) or Hybrid Graphics. A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on certain models in the Radeon products line: Unified Video Decoder, Video Coding Engine and TrueAudio.

The brand was previously only known as "ATI Radeon" until August 2010, when it was renamed to increase AMD's brand awareness on a global scale. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding.

AMD Radeon Rx 300 series

AMD Radeon Rx 300 is brand for a series of graphics cards. All used GPUs have been developed by AMD, produced in 28nm and belong to the same microarchitecture family: Graphics Core Next (GCN).

Devices based on the Fiji architecture, which include the flagship AMD Radeon R9 Fury X along with the Radeon R9 Fury and Radeon R9 Nano, are the first GPUs to feature High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) technology which is faster and more power efficient than current GDDR5 memory. However, the Rx 300-numbered GPUs in the series are based on previous generation GPUs with revised power management and therefore only feature GDDR5 memory. The Radeon 300 series cards including the R9 390X were released on June 18, 2015. The flagship device, Fury X, was released on June 24, 2015.

Core architecture

There are chips implementing all three iterations of Graphics Core Next. The table below details which GCN-generation each chip belongs to.

Ancillary ASICs

An ancillary ASICs present on the chips as well, are being developed independtly of the core architecture and have their own version name schemes.

Advanced Micro Devices

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American worldwide semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, United States, that develops computer-processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While initially it manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, and embedded systems applications.

AMD is the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete graphics processor unit (GPU) market.

Company history

First twelve years

Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated on May 1, 1969, by Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor. Sanders, an electrical engineer who was the director of marketing at Fairchild, had like many Fairchild executives grown frustrated with the increasing lack of support, opportunity, and flexibility within that company, and decided to leave to start his own semiconductor company. The previous year Robert Noyce, who had invented the first practical integrated circuit or microchip in 1959 at Fairchild, had left Fairchild together with Gordon Moore and founded the semiconductor company Intel in July 1968.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V is an open world, action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on 17 September 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, on 18 November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on 14 April 2015 for Microsoft Windows. The game is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008's Grand Theft Auto IV. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas, based on Southern California, the single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The open world design lets players freely roam San Andreas's open countryside and fictional city of Los Santos, based on Los Angeles.

The game is played from either a first-person or third-person view and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. Players control the three lead protagonists throughout single-player and switch between them both during and outside of missions. The story is centred on the heist sequences, and many missions involve shooting and driving gameplay. A "wanted" system governs the aggression of law enforcement response to players who commit crimes. Grand Theft Auto Online, the online multiplayer mode, lets up to 30 players explore the open world and engage in cooperative or competitive game matches.