The Radeon 300 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. All of the GPUs of the series are produced in 28 nm format and use the Graphics Core Next (GCN) micro-architecture.
The series includes the Fiji and Tonga GPU dies based on AMD's GCN 3 or "Volcanic Islands" architecture, which had originally been introduced with the Tonga based (though cut-down) R9 285 slightly earlier. Some of the cards in the series include the Fiji based flagship AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, cut-down Radeon R9 Fury and small form factor Radeon R9 Nano,[9] which are the first GPUs to feature High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) technology, which AMD co-developed in partnership with SK Hynix. HBM is faster and more power efficient than GDDR5 memory, though also more expensive.[10] However, the remaining GPUs in the series outside the Tonga based R9 380 and R9 380X are based on previous generation GPUs with revised power management, and therefore only feature GDDR5 memory (something Tonga does as well). The Radeon 300 series cards including the R9 390X were released on June 18, 2015. The flagship device, the Radeon R9 Fury X, was released on June 24, 2015, with the dual-GPU variant, the Radeon Pro Duo, being released on April 26, 2016.[11]
Micro-architecture and instruction set
The R9 380/X along with the R9 Fury & Nano series were AMD's first cards (after the earlier R9 285) to use the third iteration of their GCN instruction set and micro-architecture. The other cards in the series feature first and second gen iterations of GCN. The table below details which GCN-generation each chip belongs to.
A new feature to the lineup allows users to reduce power consumption by not rendering unnecessary frames. It is user configurable.
LiquidVR support
LiquidVR is a technology that improves the smoothness of virtual reality. The aim is to reduce latency between hardware so that the hardware can keep up with the user's head movement, eliminating the motion sickness. A particular focus is on dual GPU setups where each GPU now renders for one eye individually of the display.
Virtual super resolution support
Originally introduced with the previous generation R9 285 and R9 290 series graphics cards, this feature allows users to run games with higher image quality by rendering frames at above native resolution. Each frame is then downsampled to native resolution. This process is an alternative to supersampling which is not supported by all games. Virtual super resolution is similar to Dynamic Super Resolution, a feature available on competing nVidia graphics cards, but trades flexibility for increased performance.[13]
OpenCL (API)
OpenCL accelerates many scientific Software Packages against CPU up to factor 10 or 100 and more.
Open CL 1.0 to 1.2 are supported for all chips with Terascale and GCN Architecture. OpenCL 2.0 is supported with GCN 2nd Gen. and higher. [14] For OpenCL 2.1 and 2.2 only Driver Updates are necessary with OpenCL 2.0 conformant Cards.
Vulkan (API)
API Vulkan 1.0 is supported for all GCN architecture cards. Vulkan 1.2 requires GCN 2nd gen or higher with the Adrenalin 20.1 and Linux Mesa 20.0 drivers and newer.
^ abcdefBoost values (if available) are stated below the base value in italic.
^ abTexture fillrate is calculated as the number of Texture Mapping Units multiplied by the base (or boost) core clock speed.
^ abPixel fillrate is calculated as the number of Render Output Units multiplied by the base (or boost) core clock speed.
^ abPrecision performance is calculated from the base (or boost) core clock speed based on a FMA operation. Double precision performance of Hawaii cards is 1/8 of single precision performance, for the other it is 1/16 of single precision performance.
^The R9 380 utilizes loss-less color compression which can increase effective memory performance (relative to GCN 1st gen and 2nd gen cards) in certain situations.[citation needed]
1.2+ (on Linux: 1.1+ (no Image support on clover, with by rustiCL) with Mesa 3D, 1.2+ on GCN 1.Gen)
2.0+ (Adrenalin driver on Win7+) (on Linux ROCM, Linux Mesa 3D 1.2+ (no Image support in clover, but in rustiCL with Mesa 3D, 2.0+ and 3.0 with AMD drivers or AMD ROCm), 5th gen: 2.2 win 10+ and Linux RocM 5.0+
2.2+ and 3.0 windows 8.1+ and Linux ROCM 5.0+ (Mesa 3D rustiCL 1.2+ and 3.0 (2.1+ and 2.2+ wip))[37][38][39]
^The Radeon 100 Series has programmable pixel shaders, but do not fully comply with DirectX 8 or Pixel Shader 1.0. See article on R100's pixel shaders.
^R300, R400 and R500 based cards do not fully comply with OpenGL 2+ as the hardware does not support all types of non-power of two (NPOT) textures.
^OpenGL 4+ compliance requires supporting FP64 shaders and these are emulated on some TeraScale chips using 32-bit hardware.
^ abcThe UVD and VCE were replaced by the Video Core Next (VCN) ASIC in the Raven Ridge APU implementation of Vega.
^Video processing for video frame rate interpolation technique. In Windows it works as a DirectShow filter in your player. In Linux, there is no support on the part of drivers and / or community.
^ abTo play protected video content, it also requires card, operating system, driver, and application support. A compatible HDCP display is also needed for this. HDCP is mandatory for the output of certain audio formats, placing additional constraints on the multimedia setup.
^More displays may be supported with native DisplayPort connections, or splitting the maximum resolution between multiple monitors with active converters.
^ abDRM (Direct Rendering Manager) is a component of the Linux kernel. AMDgpu is the Linux kernel module. Support in this table refers to the most current version.
AMD Catalyst is being developed for Microsoft Windows and Linux. As of July 2014, other operating systems are not officially supported. This may be different for the AMD FirePro brand, which is based on identical hardware but features OpenGL-certified graphics device drivers.
AMD Catalyst supports all features advertised for the Radeon brand.
Free and open-source graphics device driver radeon
The free and open-source drivers are primarily developed on and for Linux, but have been ported to other operating systems as well. Each driver is composed out of five parts:
a special and distinct 2D graphics device driver for X.Org Server, which is finally about to be replaced by Glamor
The free and open-source radeon kernel driver supports most of the features implemented into the Radeon line of GPUs.[5]
The radeon kernel driver is notreverse engineered, but based on documentation released by AMD.[46] This driver still requires proprietary microcode to operate DRM functions and some GPUs may fail to launch the X server if not available.
Free and open-source graphics device driver amdgpu
This new kernel driver is directly supported and developed by AMD. It is available on various Linux distributions, and has been ported to some other operating systems as well. Only GCN GPUs are supported.[5]
Proprietary graphics device driver AMDGPU-PRO
This new driver by AMD was still undergoing development in 2018, but could be used on a few supported Linux distributions already (AMD officially supports Ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS).[47] The driver has been experimentally ported to ArchLinux[48] and other distributions. AMDGPU-PRO is set to replace the previous AMD Catalyst driver and is based on the free and open source amdgpu kernel driver. Pre-GCN GPUs are not supported.
^"AMD Radeon HD 6900 (AMD Cayman) series graphics cards". HWlab. hw-lab.com. 19 December 2010. Archived from the original on 23 August 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2022. New VLIW4 architecture of stream processors allowed to save area of each SIMD by 10%, while performing the same compared to previous VLIW5 architecture
