A representative of Advanced Micro Devices has confirmed that the development of its forthcoming product family based on a new breed of graphics processing units is on the finish line. While the novelties will not hit the market shortly, they will likely enter production in the coming weeks.

“We are still putting the finishing touches on the [Radeon R9 300] series to make sure they live up to expectation,” an unknown representative from AMD said in the company’s official Facebook account. “Cannot wait to reveal them though. We are pretty excited.”

Previously it was reported that the new flagship graphics solution from AMD is called Radeon R9 380X. The graphics card is expected to be based on the GCN 1.2 architecture, to feature 4096 stream processors, which, in case of the GCN 1.2 architecture, means 64 compute units and 256 texture units. The memory sub-system will rely on SK Hynix’s stacked high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips with 1024-bit input/output interface (compliant with the JESD235 standard) and up to 640GB/s of bandwidth (thanks to 4096-bit memory bus and 1.25GT/s transfer rate). The graphics boards will be equipped with 4GB of HBM memory.

It is expected that the Radeon R9 380X will provide over 50 per cent performance improvement compared to the Radeon R9 290X and will demonstrate particularly high results in ultra-high-definition resolutions thanks to massive memory bandwidth.

In addition to the high-end product, AMD is also working on a mainstream GPU code-named Trinidad, which is set to replace the AMD Radeon R9 270-series “Curacao” graphics processor that has been on the market for about three years now. The “Trinidad” graphics chip is expected to feature 1280 or more stream processors to deliver new levels of performance to the market segment.

Even though AMD has confirmed development of its new-generation graphics solutions for a number of times, the company also said that it would release them only in the second quarter of the year, which means from April to July.

“Going into the second quarter and the second half of the year with our new product launches, I think we feel very good about where we are positioned there,” said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD, during a conference call with investors and financial analysts. “Commercial will definitely be important, as well as improving our overall mix.”

If AMD plans to formally roll-out its new Radeon R9 380 and Radeon R9 380X graphics cards in April, then it should start production of cards in late February or early March.

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KitGuru Says: It is rather ironic that AMD is consistently fuelling the discussion about its next-generation Radeon graphics processors, but does not launch them because it needs to sell off existing graphics cards first. Quite naturally, discussions about the next-gen always slowdown interest towards current-generation among enthusiasts.

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