It seemed like just a short while ago that AMD was dropping bombs on the high-end 2xx series of the Radeon HD GPUs. Now we're at the point where news is surfacing that Advanced Micro Devices is already working on the 300 series of their high-end GPU line.
PC Gamer caught wind of a post on the AMD Facebook page where someone was asking about the company's plans for a new generation of graphics processing units. They were asking because they recently purchased a GTX 970 and decided to return it after the scandal broke about the GTX 970's VRAM issue. They were keen about salivating over the potential release of the 380X or 390X, a series successor to AMD's R9 280X and R9 290X, the two budget-priced high-end cards that helped give Nvidia a bit of a run for their money nearly two years ago.
Well, according to the Facebook post, AMD responded saying...
“Hey mate, we don't have an official date to share just yet but the second we know, we will definitely announce it on Facebook,"... "We're still putting the finishing touches on the 300 series to make sure they live up to expectation. Can't wait to reveal them though. We're pretty excited."
The “finishing touches”, eh? Well that sounds promising.
AMD managed to score a lot of positive gamer points with their R9 2xx line that came out given that on the low-end of the spectrum ,the R7 260 and R7 250 offered entry-level gamers something affordable and usable without breaking the bank. In fact, the R7 260X carried a moderate $139.99 price tag when it first dropped, making it ideal for gamers looking for sleek graphics on a budget. On the upper end of the spectrum there was the R9 280X and R9 290X, the former of which carried a $299.99 price point, which is pretty reasonable to be a high-end card.
AMD's R9 290X was actually capable of competing with Nvidia's highly respectable GTX Titan, which stood at the top of the food chain of GPUs for quite some time.
At this juncture, coming off the GTX 970 scandal and gaining quite a bit of support with the news that the 300 series is in tow gives AMD a huge leap of mind-share valuation in the market right now. Also, they couldn't have pulled this off at a better time, with GDC around the corner and a lot of new tech prepping to be showcased on new cards, they can go in for the kill this March and follow it up with a prime-time showing at this year's E3. One or two decent stage demos to give people a reason to pay attention, similar to Epic's Demon Knight showcase for the Unreal Engine 4, and they'll be looking at a lot of high-end stock throughout the summer leading up to the big holiday showdown.
WCCF Tech also notes that AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, mentioned that they plan to get their next series of cards underway in the second quarter of 2015. We'll see how well AMD can handle the pressure as they prep for the Fiji XT GPU set which has specs that can theoretically run up to nine times faster than GDDR5 memory.
