AMD Releases Radeon Sky Series of GPUs for Cloud Gaming Systems

Cloud gaming is a trend that has been quite slow to take-off as it has been fraught with technical difficulties, a lack of affordability and a huge dependence on the advancement of network infrastructure due to internet dependence. AMD is looking to ease some of these difficulties by developing a range of affordable (to business) and simple to use graphics cards dubbed the “sky series”.

AMD’s Sky Series graphics cards have been optimised for usage in cloud gaming servers and systems. Being server-orientated cards they feature passive cooling and have a wide range of performance with the Sky 500, Sky 700 and Sky 900 models all targeting different segments. High amounts of VRAM and PCI Express 3.0 give these cards more flexibility in being able to support cloud HD gaming.

AMD didn’t release much information about the cards other than what you can see in the included picture.

The Sky 900 is a dual GPU card featuring 3GB of RAM per GPU and 3584 stream processors and a memory bandwidth of 480 GB/s. The Sky 700 is a single GPU card featuring 6GB RAM for the GPU and 264 GB/s memory bandwidth with 1792 stream processors. The Sky 500 is the entry model with 1280 stream processors, 4GB of RAM and 154 GB/s of memory bandwidth. As far as I can tell the Sky 700 is based off the HD 7950 design, the Sky 900 is two HD 7950 designs in CrossFire and the Sky 500 is based off the normal HD 7870 GHz edition card design.

AMD’s David Cummings had this to say about the new Sky Series of GPUs:

“AMD intends to support the whole cloud: The home cloud and the public cloud, Cloud gaming requires HD gaming at 30 fps, outstanding compression, optimal density—meaning the best performance per watt and the most users per GPU—minimal latency, and enterprise-grade hardware.”

What do you think about AMD’s entrance into the cloud gaming market? Is it a good idea? Would you consider cloud gaming?

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