AMD Radeon What you need to know about the ‘Red Brigade’

Summary of information about AMD Radeon

Radeon is a brand specializing in graphics, RAM and SSD that was founded by ATi in 2000. If only in terms of graphics, Radeon is the successor GPU line to the legendary Rage line that once made a splash with ATi. wind in the market. However, after losing business, ATi was forced to sell itself to AMD in 2006 for 5.4 billion USD.

After the acquisition, AMD restructured the Radeon brand, in August 2010 from ATI Radeon to AMD Radeon. Then, on September 11, 2015, AMD’s graphics segment was separated into Radeon Technologies Group. The current manager is Mr. Raja Koduri.

List of cards belonging to the AMD Radeon series

As the title says, I will only mention the Radeon card lines launched after this brand was acquired by AMD in 2006. And also part of the previous lines that spawned many sub-versions, causing confusion for users. At the same time, I will divide it into 3 periods, corresponding to 3 architectures: TeraScale, GCN and RDNA. And to save time and avoid rambling, I will only mention the launch time along with new features (if any) of each line. Finally, I only mentioned the specifications of commercially sold card lines, not counting OEM card lines.

TeraScale Architecture

Developed by ATI Technologies/AMD, it is the second unified shader microarchitecture model after Xenos. TeraScale replaced the old fixed pipeline microarchitecture and competed directly with Nvidia’s first unified shader microarchitecture called Tesla.

HD 2000 series

Launch date: June 28, 2007

Architecture: Radeon R600

Process: 80nm and 65nm

New feature: CrossFireX

Competition: Geforce 8 series

HD 2000 series technical specifications

HD 3000 series

Launch date: October 2007

Architecture: Radeon R600

Process: 65nm and 55nm

New feature:

Supports DirectX 10.0 and 10.1

Supports PCI Express 2.0 protocol

OpenGL 3.3 support

HD 3000 series technical specifications

HD 4000 series

Launch date: June 16, 2008

Architecture: TeraScale 1

Process: 55nm and 40nm

New feature:

New memory controller cluster. Supports VRAM GDDR5

SIP block UVD 2.0-2.2

The PLX PEX8647 chip appears on X2 codes

Supports OpenCL 1.1, DirectX 10.1

HD 4000 series technical specifications

HD 5000 series

AMD held a press event at the USS Hornet Museum on September 10, 2009 and announced the ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and specifications of the Radeon HD 5800 series variants. Demand was overwhelming so much so that more than two months after launch, many online retailers are still having difficulty keeping the 5800 and 5900 in stock.

Launch date: September 10, 2009

Architecture: TeraScale 2

Process: 40nm

New features:

Supports 2 CRT monitors on 1 card

AMD Eyefinity launched

Supports DirectX 11.3, OpenGL 4.5 and OpenCL 1.2

HD 5000 series technical specifications

HD 6000 series

This is the first series AMD completely removed the word ATi from the Radeon brand.

Launch date: October 22, 2010

Architecture: TeraScale 2 and TeraScale 3

Process: 40nm

New features: Mainly about the TeraScale 3 architecture

HD 6000 series technical specifications

Here, we end the era of TeraScale architecture.

GCN architectural period

HD 7000 series

Launch date: January 9, 2012

Architecture: Graphics Core Next (GCN) generation 1. There is 1 code that uses GCN generation 2 (HD 7790)

Process: 28nm

New features:

New GCN architecture

Supports PCI Express 3.0 protocol

Supports Vulkan 1.0 API

Video Coding Engine support

HD 7000 series technical specifications

I will skip the HD 8000-series because that line is just a rename version of the HD 7000 series and is only sold through OEM.

Emerging thanks to “coin”: R7/R9 200 series

At this time, bitcoin began to gain some attention and AMD cards with outstanding mining performance quickly became scarce. This is also the first time gamers have witnessed a stir in the market of coins in general and bitcoin in particular with the price of cards being increased by 164% compared to the suggested retail price and always out of stock around Q3/2013 to Q1/2014.

Launch date: October 8, 2013

Architecture: Graphics Core Next (GCN) generation 2. 1 code uses GCN generation 3 (R9 285)

Process: 28nm

New features:

AMD TrueAudio

Crossfire support with all previous card generations

DirectX 12 support

Technical specifications R7/R9 200 series

R7/R9 300 series

Launch date: June 16, 2015

Architecture: Graphics Core Next (GCN) generation 1 and 2. Fury series uses GCN generation 3

Process: 28nm

New features:

Frame limiter. Helps avoid wasting rendering performance at too high a number of fps, leading to overheating of the card.

Virtual super resolution support allows images to be rendered at a higher resolution and then downsampled, giving smooth images without the need for anti-aliasing.

Liquid VR support

VRAM HBM first appeared (on R9 Fury X)

R7/R9 300-series specifications

Card line drawing up to 162W via PCIe slot: RX 400 series

The Polaris chips on the RX 400-series cards are manufactured on the 14 nm FinFET process, developed by Samsung Electronics and licensed to GlobalFoundries. The Polaris 30 chip is manufactured on the 12 nm FinFET process, developed by Samsung and GlobalFoundries.

Some reviewers have discovered that the AMD Radeon RX 480 violates PCI Express power consumption specifications, which only allow a maximum of 75 watts to be drawn from the motherboard’s PCI Express slot. Tom’s Hardware’s Chris Angelini found that during stress testing, the card could draw an average of 90 watts from the slot and 86 watts while gaming. The highest power draw can be up to 162 watts.

TechPowerUp corroborated these results, and found that the card also draws 166 watts from the 6-pin power supply, which also only supplies 75W.

PC Perspective’s Ryan Shrout also discovered that the card he used for testing drew 80-84 watts from the motherboard and dropped the voltage in other PCIe slots to 11.5 volts on the Asus ROG Rampage V Extreme motherboard.

AMD has released a driver that reprograms the voltage regulation module to draw less power from the motherboard. While this does aggravate the overdraw condition on the 6-pin power supply, it is less of a concern because these connectors have a safety margin well above the on-paper rating of 75W. Of course this also reduces the performance of the card. In many later versions, the power supply was changed to an 8-pin type to ensure there was no short circuit.

Launch date: June 29, 2016

Architecture: Graphics Core Next (GCN) generation 4, codename Polaris

Process: 14nm

New features:

New screen controller

4th generation GCN architecture

Can decode HEVC at 4K 60FPS with 10-bit color channel

Supports DolbyVision and HDR10

RX 400-series specifications

The next generation of “national” cards: RX 500 series

Fundamentally, the GPUs on the RX 500-series cards are manufactured on the same process and architecture as the RX 400 cards, but thanks to improvements in the manufacturing process, the new chips can push clock speeds up higher with the same power source.

However, that is not the reason why this card line became “national”, the reason is somewhat familiar “coin” and AMD’s slow response. Specifically, at the time of launch, AMD’s cards had terrible mining performance, but now there are specialized bitcoin miners on the market and the performance of mining speed/power consumption of they go far beyond graphics cards.

But that doesn’t make the coin less hot, the market witnessed the birth of a series of alt coins that miners call trash coins. People will rush to mine new coins, convert them to bitcoin and find another newly released junk coin to mine. Many Vietnamese “miners” hit the jackpot when they bought houses and cars, creating a local fever.

Because the card fever is only local in Vietnam and China, AMD responded very superficially and was slow in increasing production and launching specialized cards for mining. And so when they launched a series of new mining cards, the bitcoin bubble collapsed and “strong” cards were sold all over the street. This means that the price of new cards must also be reduced. Around 2018-2019 is a paradise for gamers when both old and new cards have dirt cheap prices.

Launch date: April 18, 2017

Architecture: Graphics Core Next (GCN) generation 4

Process: 14nm and 12nm

New features:

Supports DisplayPort 1.4 HBR, HDMI 2.0b output standards

Supports HDR 10 color standard

RX 500-series specifications

Come and leave silently: RX Vega series

Yes, these are the same GPUs integrated into many of AMD’s APUs on the market around 2019-2021. However, you may not know, there is a line of discrete cards called RX Vega that includes 4 card models, but no one cares because the RX 500-series is too cheap and the RX Vega is expensive + hot + consumes a lot more power. No one was interested in buying an RX Vega and this card line quietly withdrew from the market.

Launch date: August 14, 2017

Architecture: Graphics Core Next (GCN) generation 5

Process: 14nm and 7nm

New features:

New VRAM standard: HBM2

New generation CU

DirectX 12.1 support

RX Vega series specifications

This is the end of the era of GCN architecture.

RDNA architecture period

The world’s first 7nm GPU card line: RX 5000 series

After many years of being behind rival Nvidia, AMD finally rose up when it announced the world’s first line of cards with 7nm GPU – RX 5000. The prefix “50” is speculated to mean AMD celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2019. And with the miniaturization of transistors, AMD’s cards are no longer hot and power hungry – two things often associated with AMD’s name throughout its development history.

Launch date: July 7, 2019

Architecture: Radeon DNA (RDNA) generation 1

Process: TSMC 7nm FinFET

New features:

New VRAM standard: GDDR6

New generation CU, helps improve IPC compared to the old generation

New architecture: RDNA.

Supports PCI Express 4.0 x16 protocol

RX 5000 series specifications

Outpace the competition: RX 6000 series

Under the leadership of Dr. Lisa Su, AMD has done the unthinkable: launched a line of cards that consume less power than rival Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series of cards and led the way in technology that Nvidia had to “copy”. Not to mention, the RX 6000’s computing performance is generally better. Unfortunately, Nvidia is still strong thanks to two factors: Ray Tracing and DLSS. However, this gap can be bridged through software and driver development, which AMD is still completing every day.

Launch date: October 28, 2020

Architecture: RDNA 2

Process: 7nm

New features:

Performance doubled compared to the previous generation

Rage Mode: Automatically OC with just 1 click

Infinity Cache, SAM

Supports API DX12 Ultimate, Ray Tracing,

Supports Super Resolution technology (similar to Nvidia’s DLSS)

Pulse boost to over 2000 MHz.

Epilogue

So I have gone through the history of the AMD Radeon graphics card brand. Hopefully the above article has given you a look at the development history of one of the two largest graphics card manufacturers in the world and how AMD graphics cards have developed over the past 12 years. Most importantly, the thing that AMD cards have always been accused of being hot and consuming electricity has disappeared since the RX 6000 generation, please take note.