AMD Rumoured To Be Working On A R9 280 For The Sub-$300 Market

The AMD R9 280X

According to rumours emerging from VR-Zone China AMD is working on an R9 280 to slot in between the $299 R9 280X and the $199 R9 270X. The R9 280 will be based on the code name “Tahiti Pro 2” GPU which is, to you and me, a HD 7950 rebrand. The GPU will have 1792 GCN cores, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs and a 384 bit wide GDDR5 memory interface which of course provide 3GB of memory just like the HD 7950 did. Clock speeds are still unknown but it seems likely to me that AMD will opt for the same speeds as the HD 7950 Boost Edition graphics card, not the speeds of the original HD 7950.

In case you cannot remember the first HD 7950 had an 800MHz core clock with a 5GHz effective memory clock. The HD 7950 Boost Edition came with an 850MHz base clock, 925MHz boost clock and an identical 5GHz effective memory clock. The R9 280 should in theory cost about $250~270 as it has to come to market lower than the R9 280X which has a $299 MSRP.

Of course, to anyone who knows anything about cryptocurrency mining, you will know just how popular the HD 7950 is. The HD 7950 is the card of choice as it offers the highest efficiency of scrypt hashing performance to power consumption of all AMD’s high-end GPUs. As a result expect the R9 280 to fly off the shelves at elevated prices if it does ever make it into fruition.

Image #1 courtesy of AMD, Image #2 courtesy of VR-Zone (Chinese)