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AMD launches the Radeon HD 7790
If you've long been distraught that there isn't a modern card that sits between the GeForce GTX 650 Ti and the Radeon HD 7850 in both price and performance, then the Radeon HD 7790 is just the card for you. The rest of you can carry on, as there isn't much to see here.
Basically, it's a new GPU with 14 GCN CUs (as compared to 10 in Cape Verde and 20 in Pitcairn), and a 128-bit memory bus clocked higher than earlier Radeon HD 7000 series cards so as not to immediately hamstring the card for lack of memory bandwidth.
The interesting thing about it is that, while the 7790 is a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7770, it barely uses more power. That makes the new 7790 the most energy-efficient desktop video card yet. In a desktop, that's not a big deal, but it could make for a nifty part for laptops. I'd attribute the energy-efficiency gains to AMD having the chance to both go back and make little tweaks to the architecture here and there, and also launching it on a more mature and better understood process node.
Alas, all that AMD has new on the discrete GPU front this year is this card, perhaps a salvage part of it eventually, and a lower end chip to basically replace the Turks GPU in the Radeon HD 6670 and some mobile parts.
Comments
In other news, I just found this part of the launch marketing materials:
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/03/21/reinvigorating-the-midrange-amds-hd-7790/crossfire-stats/
Alternate caption: 1/4 of Radeon HD 7000 series CrossFire users are stupid.
That gave me a chuckle
Do you know if they're releasing a 2GB version? At £120 in the UK there doesn't seem much point in buying the 1GB version that's being listed seeing as you can get a 1GB 7850 for the same price, which is significantly faster going by the benches so far. The only use i can see it being worth that price is in a small form factor or HTPC when trying to keep power consumption down.
Edit - nevermind apparently AMD decided to replace the 1GB 7850 with this, only the 2GB 7850's are being made now. Once current stocks of the 1GB version are gone the slower 7790 will be the only £120 card.
A 2 GB version of a GDDR5 card with a 128-bit memory bus would mean they'd have to use the highest density GDDR5 chips on the market. I don't know if that would be expensive, but it might be.
Also, while the name is unfortunate, AMD really didn't have a good naming scheme available. For 2012, their lineup was basically:
Tahiti > Pitcairn > Cape Verde
For 2013, they mix in two new GPUs without eliminating any old, so we get:
Tahiti > Pitcairn > Bonaire > Cape Verde > Oland
If they make Bonaire and Oland 8000 series cards, then they'd give some people the impression that the new Radeon HD 7790 was the top of the line, which it most certainly isn't. It doesn't offer half the performance of a Radeon HD 7970. If they cram the new cards into the 7000 series, then they have to stick it between the 7770 and the 7850, and there aren't any good ways to do that.
While AMD could have planned ahead and made Cape Verde the 7600 series, that would give the wrong impression about its performance, as AMD's *600 series GPUs have traditionally been more budget-oriented.
Rebrand all of the 7000 series cards into the 8000 series and you get the same problems, except with the first digit 1 higher, in addition to people complaining about rebrands.
What I'm not sympathetic to is selling the new cards as 7000 series in channel and 8000 series in OEM. What happens when their next generation launches? Do they go straight to the over 9000 series?
nVidia jumped on the 300 series, so there is precedent - which were mostly OEM rebrands of low end 200 series dies. AMD has done it's share of rebranding, but I can't recall a time when they did it for an entire series like nVidia. I can't claim to care for it either though.