AMD has yet to release the successor of the R9 200 series but the GPU chip manufacturer has already unveiled information as to what kind of features the company's future R9 400 series will possess.
According to sweclockers.com, AMD's R9 400 series of GPUs will be codenamed Arctic Islands and as the name suggests, they will deliver improved efficiency and performance compared to the company's soon-to-be released R9 300 series.
While there is no information on the hardware specifications of the chips that will be housed inside circuit boards, it has been found that the GPUs will be based on either the 20 nm lithographic process and if not that, then most certainly the 16 nm process or 14 nm FinFET.
It has not been confirmed which lithographic process AMD will be adopting for its upcoming R9 400 series, but if the chipmaker does decide to manufacture the GPUs on the 14 nm FinFETs, it will result in a large proportion of heat reduction and reduced power consumption across the board (more commonly known as TDP or thermal design power).
AMD's aggressive pricing strategy is one of the reasons why the company has been able to keep pace with its only adversary in the GPU market, NVIDIA, although there are significant amounts of improvement needed when driver issues are concerned. AMD has already capitalized on the news that NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970 owners were complaining of frame dips in games that were consuming video memory above 3.2 GB, prompting AMD to slash the company's flagship GPU's price. The R9 290X sells at $299 for the 4 GB video memory variant.
Codenames of the GPU series have been listed below.
- AMD Radeon 7000 Series: Southern Islands
- AMD R9 200 Series: Volcanic Islands
- AMD R9 300 Series: Pirate Islands
AMD's R9 300 series (Pirate Islands) is expected to be released during the second quarter of 2015.
