While much of the attention today has been focused on the R9 Nano and what that card will mean for AMD, another card was also quietly released. Dubbed the R9 370X, the “new” GPU features our old friend Pitcairn. Like much of AMD’s lineup, the card is a rebrand of the 7870 and R7 270/270X, utilizing Pitcairn XT. This gives the card 1280 shader processors, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, connected to either 2 or 4GB of GDDR5 over a 256bit bus.
The biggest question remaining about the card is what clocks it will have. The 7870 debuted at 1000mhz while the 270X bumped that up to 1050mhz. Given the limitations of GCN, we peak boost clocks will probably fall between 1100-1150mhz. While this does provide a chip to slot in between the R7 370 and the R9 380, the card is still limited to GCN 1.0, meaning newer features like FreeSync, color compression, TrueAudio and improved tessellation performance are missing.
Interestingly, the 370X is only launching in one market for now, China. This means you shouldn’t expect the card to arrive in other markets just yet. The first AiB partner pictured is the Sapphire Vapor-X model which is pretty much the same look as the Vapor-X 270X. With the launch of Nvidia’s GTX 950, AMD had only the R7 370 to do battle but fell behind in performance. The 370X should give AMD the crown back as long as the price is competitive.
Thank you TechPowerUp for providing us with this information
380 have FreeSync, color compression, TrueAudio and improved tessellation performance like 285.
The reality is that no one should buy anything below a 380. If you don’t have the money, save it up and don’t waste it on something else. And no, nvidia doesn’t have anything competitive in the mid-end. The 960 is expensive for its performance.