AMD Next Generation Graphics Codenamed Caribbean Islands
Long time friend and fellow PC hardware lover Fuad over at Fudzilla believes that AMD Next-Gen Graphics will be called Caribbean Islands. His sources say the new GPUs will be ready to launch in the summer of 2015 if all goes as planned. We expect to learn more about AMD’s roadmap during their February 2015 investor relations conference call that is scheduled. AMD’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster, recently claimed that 2015 will see a ‘refresh’ which AMD will discuss more ‘later in 2015.’ We translated that to meaning that there will be a refresh of the existing GCN ‘Hawaii’ architecture with higher clock speeds thanks to process refinements and then we’ll see the new so-called Carribean Islands GPUs being introduced at the high-end of the market.
“Graphics remains one of our pillars of strength and focus at AMD and it has been historical leapfrog game of who has the leadership, but between us and our lead competitor here. So youre not surprised, my answer, we are not taking the foot off the gas. So youll see continued very, very strong graphics, well have a refresh that youll see, that well talk about later in 2015 that we are excited about.
And the key is really expanding the focus in the markets to drive up the ASP, so youll see, and youve already seen in 2014 youll see continued growth in professional workstations from AMD. And its not – its the discrete graphics and its also the key software enablement that we put in place that you have to have to help feel that growth. So weve deepened our partnership with customers in the space and this will be one of our key levers of growth.
The others that youll see is continued strength in gaming. So with both enablement that we have with Mantle that we put out there for game developers that provides accelerations of game tiles on our hardware and of course working with Microsoft on DX12 which will be rolling out in 2015.” – Mark Papermaster.
We can’t wait to see what 2015 has in store for discrete graphics by both AMD and NVIDIA. AMD did very well with the GCN Hawaii microarchitecture and maybe they can get another win with the next-gen GPU.We can’t wait to see what manufacturing process node AMD goes with for Caribbean Islands!
In other news, AMD Radeon R9 and R7 users got a number of new features along with performance improvements and bug fixes this week with the release of the AMD Catalyst Omega drivers. AMD also has been dropping the prices on many high-end graphics cards. For example the XFX Radeon R9 295X2 8GB video card that was launched at $1,039.99 earlier this year is now available for $759.99 after a $30 rebate. When the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 first launched the street price was $1300-$1500 depending on the brand! You also get a copy of Civilization: Beyond Earth (performance review) along with an AMD Radeon Rewords Gold voucher for three free game titles. That price tag is still higher than what many are willing to spend on a graphics card, but it goes to show that AMD is trying their best to stay competitive against NVIDIA.
