Charts give an idea of the Pirate Islands capabilities

Nov 26, 2014 14:23 GMT  ·  By

At the moment, it's still not clear if the first graphics card based on AMD Pirate Islands GPU architecture will be the Radeon R9 390X or Radeon R9 380X. Given recent information, the former is more likely.

It may be that the previous rumor about an AMD Radeon R9 380X was just a typo of some sort, with R9 390X still being the card AMD is focusing on at the moment.

In any case, the newer report we have for you today deals with the R9 390X for certain, more specifically, the kind of performance we can expect from it.

Be advised that while Chiphell has proven to be a viable source of pre-release information in the past, the new rumors should still be taken with at least a modicum of reservation.

After all, AMD continues to withhold information about the Pirate Islands GPU series and doesn't seem keen on even hinting at the specs.

The alleged performance of Radeon R9 390X

Expected to be powered by a Hawaii XTX graphics processing unit (or something along those lines), the video board has shown up on two benchmark charts showing average performance in several gaming titles.

We have Alien Isolation, Assassins Creed: Unity, Metro Last Light Redux, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and a bunch of others.

A wide range of graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD were tested under them, with graphics settings including 2560 x 1440 resolution and IQ settings set to maximum detail. Drivers were 344.75 WHQL for NVIDIA cards and Catalyst 14.11.1 BETA for AMD cards.

On that note, the test platform relied on an Intel Core i7-4790 central processing unit running at 3.6 GHz.

If the numbers are right, we can expect a significant performance increase over NVIDIA Maxwell and the existing Radeon R9 290X boards.

The Radeon R9 390X has an average performance of 65.6 FPS in all titles, with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 hovering at a significantly lower 56.6 FPS.

No CrossFireX tests could be run, unfortunately, since only one sample board made it into their hands, but it can be assumed to be considerable.

And since the user nicknamed the card “Captain Jack,” we can look at it as confirmation that it's a Pirate Islands chip that we're expecting.

Some possible implications

The performance suggests either a much superior GPU architecture or a new driver that will help AMD gain a lead on NVIDIA. Or both. Since NVIDIA not overly long ago enacted a big leap in driver performance itself, it wouldn't be a huge stretch.

AMD Radeon R9 390X performance (5 Images)

Radeon R9 390X, or at least its cooler
Captain Jack against half the worldCaptain Jack against the other half of the world
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