During their 30 years of graphics celebration, today AMD announced a forthcoming addition to the Radeon R9 200 graphics card lineup. Launching on September 2nd will be the company’s new midrange enthusiast card, the Radeon R9 285.

The R9 285 will take up an interesting position in AMD’s lineup, being something of a refresh of a refresh that spans all the way back to Tahiti (Radeon 7970). Spec wise it ends up being extremely close on paper to the R9 280 (née 7950B) and it’s telling that the R9 280 is no longer being advertised by AMD as a current member of their R9 lineup. However with a newer GPU under the hood the R9 285 stands to eclipse the 280 in features, and with sufficient efficiency gains we hope to see it eclipse 280 in performance too.

AMD GPU Specification Comparison
  AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon R9 280X AMD Radeon R9 285 AMD Radeon R9 280
Stream Processors 2560 2048 1792 1792
Texture Units 160 128 112 112
ROPs 64 32 32 32
Core Clock 662MHz 850MHz ? 827MHz
Boost Clock 947MHz 1000MHz 918MHz 933MHz
Memory Clock 5GHz GDDR5 6GHz GDDR5 5.5GHz GDDR5 5GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width 512-bit 384-bit 256-bit 384-bit
VRAM 4GB 3GB 2GB 3GB
FP64 1/8 1/4 ? 1/4
TrueAudio Y N Y N
Typical Board Power 250W 250W 190W 250W
Manufacturing Process TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm? TSMC 28nm
Architecture GCN 1.1 GCN 1.0 GCN 1.1? GCN 1.0
GPU Hawaii Tahiti Tonga? Tahiti
Launch Date 11/05/13 10/11/13 09/02/14 03/04/14
Launch Price $399 $299 $249 $279

Looking at the raw specifications, the R9 285 is a 1792 stream processor Graphics Core Next product. Paired with these SPs are 112 texture units (in the standard 16:1 ratio), and on the backend of the rendering pipeline is 32 ROPs. As is unfortunately consistent for AMD, they are not disclosing the product’s base clockspeed, but they have published the boost clockspeed of 918MHz.

Meanwhile feeding R9 285’s GPU falls to the card’s 2GB of GDDR5. This is on a 256-bit bus, and is clocked at 5.5GHz for a total memory bandwidth of 176GB/sec.

The R9 285 will have a rated typical board power (AMD’s analogue for TDP) of 190W. Notably this is only 10W higher than the Pitcairn based R9 270X despite the 40% larger SP count, or alternatively is 60W lower than the Tahiti based R9 280. While we don’t have a ton of details on the GPU at this time, taking into consideration the R9 270X comparison in particular, it’s clear that AMD has done some work on efficiency to squeeze out more compared to the GCN 1.0 based Pitcairn and Tahiti parts that R9 285 is going to be placed between.

The GPU itself is based on a newer version of AMD’s architecture, at least GCN 1.1 based on the presence of TrueAudio support. AMD has not formally announced the underlying GPU at this time, but given the timing and the specifications we believe it’s based on the new Tonga GPU, which was first announced for the FirePro W7100 earlier this month. In any case we don’t have much in the way of details on Tonga at this time, though we expect AMD to flesh out those details ahead of R9 285’s September 2nd launch. The biggest question right now – besides whether this is a “full” Tonga configuration – is whether Tonga is based on GCN 1.1 or something newer.

Based on some prior AMD statements and information gleaned from AMD’s CodeXL tool, there is reason to suspect (but not confirm) that this is a newer generation design. AMD for their part has done something very similar in the past, launching GCN 1.1 back on the Radeon HD 7790, but essentially hiding access to and details of GCN 1.1’s feature set until the launch of the Hawaii based R9 290X later in the year. Whether AMD is doing this again remains to be seen, but it is something we have seen them do before and don’t doubt they could do again. Though whether they will confirm it is another matter, as the company does not like to publicly differentiate between GCN revisions, which is why even the GCN 1.1 name is unofficial.


Sapphire's Radeon R9 285 Dual-X

Working for the moment off of the assumption that R9 285 is Tonga based and that it’s a GCN 1.1 part, we expect that performance should be a wash with the R9 280 while the R9 285 has an advantage on features. GCN 1.1 does have some mild performance optimizations to it that will give the R9 285 an edge, though it remains to be seen what the impact will be of the narrower memory bus. The fact that the Tahiti based R9 280X remains in AMD’s lineup indicates that if nothing else, it won’t match the performance of a full Tahiti configuration. Otherwise when it comes to features, being GCN 1.1 based means that the R9 285 will bring with it support for True Audio, support for bridgeless CrossFire thanks to the XDMA engine, GCN 1.1’s superior boost mechanism, and full support for AMD’s upcoming FreeSync implementation of DisplayPort Adaptive Sync (GCN 1.0 GPUs are not fully adaptive).

As for AMD, this offers the chance to refresh some of their oldest GCN 1.0 products with a more capable GPU while also cutting costs. While we don’t have die size numbers for Tonga, it is reasonable to expect that it is smaller due to the narrower memory bus along with the die size optimizations that we saw go into Hawaii last year, which means it will be cheaper to manufacture than Tahiti. This also brings down board costs, again due to the narrower memory bus and the lower TDP allows for simpler power delivery circuitry.

AMD will be positioning the R9 285 to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 760, the company’s second-tier GK104 part. The GTX 760 performs roughly the same as the R9 280, so AMD need only not regress to maintain their competitiveness, though any performance lead they can squeeze out will be all for the better. The GTX 760 is frequently found at $239 – a hair under the R9 285’s launch price – so NVIDIA will hold a very slight edge on price assuming they don’t adjust prices further (the GTX 760 launched at $249 almost 14 months ago).

The R9 285 for its part will be launching at $249 on September 2nd. This will be a hard launch, and with AMD’s partners already posting product pages for their designs we suspect this will be a pure virtual (no reference card) launch. AMD also tells us that there will be both 2GB and 4GB cards; we’re going to have to see what the price premium is, as the suitability of 2GB enthusiast cards has been challenged by the presence of so much RAM on the current-generation consoles, which will have a knock-on effect on console-to-PC ports.

Though with the launch of the R9 285 and impending discontinuation of the R9 280, buyers looking at picking up an R9 285 in the near term will have to be on the looking for R9 280 on clearance sale. It’s already regularly found for $220 and lower, making it $30 cheaper than the R9 285 and possessing 3GB of VRAM to the R9 285’s 2GB. This will make the R9 280 a strong contender, at least until supplies run out.

Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison
AMD Price NVIDIA
Radeon R9 290 $400  
  $310 GeForce GTX 770
Radeon R9 280X $280  
Radeon R9 285 $250  
  $240 GeForce GTX 760
Radeon R9 280 $220  
Radeon R9 270X $180  
  $160 GeForce GTX 660

Finally, coinciding with the launch of the R9 285 will be a refresh of AMD’s Never Settle bundles. The details on this are still murky at this time, but AMD is launching what they call the Never Settle Space Edition bundle, which will see Alien Isolation and Star Citizen as part of a bundle for all R9 series cards. The lack of clarity is whether this replaces the existing Never Settle Forever bundle in this case, or if these games are being added to the Never Settle Forever lineup in some fashion. AMD has said that current Silver and Gold voucher holders will be able to get the Space Edition bundle with their vouchers, which lends credit to the idea that these are new games in the NSF program rather than a different program entirely.

Both Alien Isolation and Star Citizen are still-in-development games. Alien Isolation is a first person shooter and is expected in October of this year. Meanwhile the space sim Star Citizen does not yet have a release date, and as best as we can tell won’t actually be finished until late 2015 at the earliest. In which case the inclusion here is more about access to the ongoing beta, which is the first time we’ve seen beta access used as part of a bundle in this fashion.

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  • bwat47 - Sunday, August 24, 2014 - link

    I've yet to see an AMD card that can't consistently maintain its boost clocks.
  • chizow - Sunday, August 24, 2014 - link

    @bwat47 is that comment serious? Did you miss the 290/X launch debacles with Boost clock controversy and rumors of cherry-picked press samples?
  • JDG1980 - Sunday, August 24, 2014 - link

    To be fair, that was mostly due to the crappy stock cooler. Once we started seeing custom Hawaii designs, this problem went away.
  • extide - Monday, August 25, 2014 - link

    Exactly, that was a COOLING issue, and these cards will produce way less heat so that will be a non issue! Not even a valid comparison!
  • chizow - Monday, August 25, 2014 - link

    And on the other side of that argument, Hawaii was the first ASIC that rendered the stock reference blower designs incapable of maintaining stated clockspeeds. Sure 3rd party custom coolers eventually remedied the situation 2-3 months later, but the fact remains, these coolers were NEVER required in the past just to hit stock rated speeds. In fact, these coolers were generally reserved for either 1) significantly overclocked SKUs or 2) running significantly cooler at the same clockspeeds or both.
  • Alexvrb - Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - link

    If 290 was GCN 1.0 based and it produced that much heat, it would have had the same problem. That has nothing to do with GCN 1.1, nor boost/TBP/PowerTune flaws.
  • chizow - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link

    Sure it does, it was the first SKU and Arch where AMD used its ambiguous, unstated Base clocks and its overstated, best-case Boost clocks and Powertune 2.0. AMD also felt the pressure to outperform Nvidia's 780, so it overclocked its hot card to the tits to do so, only to find out the stock reference cooler was insufficient to run the GPU at those speeds. Same impetus is there for the 285, except the pressure will be to convincingly beat the 280, which from early leaks, doesn't seem to be the case.
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link

    7790 was the first chip with GCN 1.1 and PT 2.0. It works fine.

    You know what... it took me a while because you're not very obviously a troll but... you're a troll. Goodbye, sir troll, good trolling.
  • chizow - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link

    LMAO troll, good one. I've given numerous examples illustrating my point. And again, even if the 7790 works fine, that's still only 50%, which is still a worst track record than GCN 1.0 boost parts....proving my point to begin with. The 285 is less likely than the 280 of maintaining its Boost clockspeeds, because we know the 280 has no problems doing so.
  • HisDivineOrder - Sunday, August 24, 2014 - link

    They're setting an MSRP they can have some wiggle room with. They can release the cards, get a minor markup over the R9 280 equivalent with people who don't know better, and eventually do "a drop" from MSRP as people mostly expect to match up to pricing at or slightly below the current 280/X cards.

    This is also to give them wiggle room when nVidia takes its ancient 760 and adjusts it lower in the way they usually do. AMD has room to lower their pricing, too, without cutting into the bone.

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