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AMD Radeon Rx 200

series

The AMD Radeon R5/R7/R9 200 series is


a family of GPUs developed by AMD.
These GPUs are manufactured on a 28 nm
Gate-Last process through TSMC or
Common Platform Alliance.[10]
AMD Radeon R5/R7/R9 200 Series

Release date October 8, 2013


Codename Southern Islands
Sea Islands
Volcanic Islands
Architecture TeraScale 2
GCN 1st gen
GCN 2nd gen
GCN 3rd gen

Cards
Entry-level Radeon R5 210
Radeon R5 220
Radeon R5 230
Radeon R5 235

Mid-range Radeon R5 235X


Radeon R7 240
Radeon R7 250
Radeon R7 250X
Radeon R7 260
Radeon R7 260X
Radeon R7 265
High-end Radeon R9 270
Radeon R9 270X
Radeon R9 280
Radeon R9 280X
Radeon R9 285

Enthusiast Radeon R9 290


Radeon R9 290X
Radeon R9 295X2

API support
Direct3D Direct3D 12.0 (feature
level 12_0) (GCN
version) [1]
Shader Model 6.0
OpenCL OpenCL 2.0 (GCN
version) [2]
OpenGL OpenGL 4.5 [3] [4] [5] [6]
Vulkan Vulkan 1.1 (GCN only)
[7] [8] [9]

SPIR-V

History
Predecessor Radeon HD 7000 series
Radeon HD 8000 series
Successor Radeon R5/R7/R9 300
series
Release
The Rx 200 series was announced on
September 25, 2013, at the AMD GPU14
Tech Day event.[11] Non-disclosure
agreements were lifted on October 15,
except for the R9 290X, and pre-orders
opened on October 3.[12]

Architecture
This article is about all products under the
AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series brand.

A GPU implementing Graphics Core


Next 3 (Volcanic Islands) is found on the
R9 285 (Tonga Pro) branded products.
A GPU implementing Graphics Core
Next 2 (Sea Islands) is found on R7 260
(Bonaire), R7 260X (Bonaire XTX), R9
290 (Hawaii Pro), R9 290X (Hawaii XT),
and R9 295X2 (Vesuvius) branded
products.
A GPU implementing Graphics Core
Next 1 (Southern Islands) is found on R9
270, 270X, 280, 280X, R7 240, 250, 250X,
265, and R5 240 branded products.
A GPU implementing TeraScale 2
(VLIW5) (Northern Islands or Evergreen)
is found on R5 235X and "below"
branded products.
OpenGL 4.x compliance requires
supporting FP64 shaders. These are
implemented by emulation on some
TeraScale (microarchitecture) GPUs.

Multi-monitor support

The AMD Eyefinity-branded on-die display


controllers were introduced in September
2009 in the Radeon HD 5000 Series and
have been present in all products since.[13]

AMD TrueAudio

AMD TrueAudio was introduced with the


AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series, but can only
be found on the dies of GCN 2/3 products.
Video acceleration

AMD's SIP core for video acceleration,


Unified Video Decoder and Video Coding
Engine, are found on all GPUs and
supported by AMD Catalyst and by the free
and open-source graphics device driver.

Use in cryptocurrency mining

During 2014 the Radeon R9 200 series


GPUs offered a very competitive price for
usage in cryptocurrency mining. This led
to limited supply and huge price increases
of up to 164% over the MSRP in Q4 of
2013 and Q1 of 2014.[14][15] Since Q2 of
2014 availability of AMD GPUs as well as
pricing has, in most cases, returned to
normal.

CrossFire Compatibility

Because many of the products in the range


are rebadged versions of Radeon HD
products, they remain compatible with the
original versions when used in CrossFire
mode. For example, the Radeon HD 7770
and Radeon R7 250X both use the 'Cape
Verde XT' chip so have identical
specifications and will work in CrossFire
mode. This provides a useful upgrade
option for anyone who owns an existing
Radeon HD card and has a CrossFire
compatible motherboard.

Virtual super resolution


support

Starting with the driver release candidate


version v14.501-141112a-177751E,
officially named as Catalyst Omega, AMD's
driver release introduced VSR on the 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.[16][17]

Desktop models
Radeon R9 295X2

The Radeon R9 295X2 was released on


April 21, 2014. It is a dual GPU card. Press
samples were shipped in a metal case. It
is the first reference card to utilize a
closed looped liquid cooler.[18][19] At 11.5
teraflops of computing power, the R9
295X2 was the most powerful dual-gpu
consumer-oriented card in the world, until
it was succeeded by the Radeon Pro Duo
on April 26, 2016, which is essentially a
combination of two (2) R9 Fury X (Fiji XT)
GPUs on a single card.[18] The R9 295x2
has essentially two R9 290x (Hawaii XT)
GPUs each with 4GB GDDR5 VRAM. [18]

Radeon R9 290X
A R9 290X by Sapphire

The Radeon R9 290X, codename "Hawaii


XT", was released on October 24, 2013 and
features 2816 Stream Processors, 176
TMUs, 64 ROPs, 512-bit wide buses, 44
CUs (compute units) and 8 ACE units. The
R9 290X had a launch price of $549.

Radeon R9 290

The Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X were


announced on September 25, 2013.[20][21]
The R9 290 is based on AMD's Hawaii Pro
chip and R9 290X on Hawaii XT. R9 290
and R9 290X will support AMD TrueAudio,
Mantle, Direct3D 11.2, and bridge-free
Crossfire technology using XDMA. A
limited "Battlefield 4 Edition" pre-order
bundle of R9 290X that includes Battlefield
4 was available on October 3, 2013, with
reported quantity being 8,000. The R9 290
had a launch price of $399.

Radeon R9 285

The Radeon R9 285 was announced on


August 23, 2014 at AMD's 30 years of
graphics celebration and released
September 2, 2014. It was the first card to
feature AMD's GCN 3 microarchitecture, in
the form of a Tonga-series GPU.
Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 280X was announced on


September 25, 2013. With a launch price
of $299, it is based on the Tahiti XTL chip,
being a slightly upgraded, rebranded
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition.

Radeon R9 280

Radeon R9 280 was announced on March


4, 2014. With a launch MSRP set at $279,
it is based on a rebranded Radeon HD
7950 with an increased clock speed, from
725 MHz to 975 MHz.[22]
Radeon R9 270X

Radeon R9 270X was announced on


September 25, 2013. With a launch price
of $199, it is based on the Curaçao XT
chip, which was formerly called
Pitcairn.[23] It is speculated to be faster
than a Radeon HD 7870 GHz edition.
Radeon R9 270 has a launch price of $179.

Radeon R7 260X

Radeon R7 260X was announced on


September 25, 2013. With a launch price
of $139, it is based on the Bonaire XTX
chip, a faster iteration of Bonaire XT that
the Radeon HD 7790 is based on. It will
have 2 GB of GDDR5 memory as standard
and will also feature TrueAudio, on-chip
audio DSP based on Tensilica HiFi EP
architecture. The stock card features a
boost clock of 1100 MHz. It has 2 Gbs of
GDDR5 memory with a 6.5 GHz memory
clock over a 128-bit Interface. The 260X
will draw around 115 W in typical
use.[24][25]

Radeon R7 250

Radeon R7 250 was announced on


September 25, 2013. It has a launch price
of $89.[24] The card is based on the Oland
core with 384 GCN cores. In February 10,
2014, AMD announced the R7 250X which
is based on the Cape Verde GPU with 640
GCN cores and an MSRP of $99.[26]

Chipset table
Desktop models
Model Architecture Trans
Launch
(Codename) (Fab)

Radeon
R5 210 [27] Unknown
(Cedar)

Radeon
R5 220 [27]
Unknown
(Caicos
Pro)

Radeon
Terascale 2
R5 230 [28]
April 3, 2014 [29] (40 nm)
(Caicos
Pro)
Radeon
Unknown
R5 235 [27]
(Caicos XT)

Radeon
R5 235X [27] Unknown
(Caicos XT)
Radeon
R5 240 [27] November 1, 2013 [32]
(Oland)

Radeon
R7 240 [33] August 8, 2013
(Oland Pro)

Radeon
R7 250 [33] August 8, 2013
(Oland XT) GCN 1 st gen
(28 nm)
Radeon
R7 250E [34]
December 21, 2013
(Cape Verde
Pro)

Radeon
R7 250X [33]
February 10, 2014
(Cape Verde
XT)
Radeon
R7 260 [33] December 17, 2013
(Bonaire)
GCN 2 nd gen
Radeon
(28 nm)
R7 260X [33]
August 8, 2013
(Bonaire
XTX)

Radeon
R7 265 [33]
February 13, 2014
(Pitcairn
Pro)

Radeon
R9 270 [35]
November 13, 2013
(Pitcairn
XT)

Radeon
GCN 1 st gen
R9 270X) [35]
August 8, 2013 (28 nm)
(Pitcairn
XT)

Radeon
R9 280 [35] March 4, 2014
(Tahiti Pro)

Radeon
R9 280X [35]
August 8, 2013
(Tahiti
XTL)[36]

Radeon
GCN 3 rd gen
R9 285 [35] September 2, 2014
(28 nm)
(Tonga Pro)
Radeon
R9 290 [35] November 5, 2013
(Hawaii
Pro)

Radeon GCN 2 nd gen


October 24, 2013
R9 290X [35] (28 nm)
November 6, 2014 [43]
(Hawaii XT)
Radeon
R9
April 8, 2014
295X2 [35][44]
(Vesuvius)

Model Architecture Trans


Launch
(Codename) (Fab)
a. Boost values (if available) are stated
below the base value in italic.
b. Texture fillrate is calculated as the
number of Texture Mapping Units
multiplied by the base (or boost) core clock
speed.
c. Pixel fillrate is calculated as the number
of Render Output Units multiplied by the
base (or boost) core clock speed.
d. Precision performance is calculated
from the base (or boost) core clock speed
based on a FMA operation.
e. Unified Shaders : Texture Mapping Units :
Render Output Units
f. The R9 285 utilizes loss-less colour
compression which can increase effective
memory performance (relative to GCN 1st
gen and 2nd gen cards) in certain
situations.[37][39]
g. Base clock of R9 290 and R9 290X will
maintain at 947 MHz and 1000 MHz before
reaching 95 °C, respectively.[41]

Mobile models
Core
Model Architecture
Launch
(Codename) (Fab) Config [e]

Radeon
R5 M230 2014 320:20:8:5
(Jet Pro)
Radeon
June
R5 M255 320:20:8:5
2014
(Jet Pro)

Radeon
June
R7 M260 384:24:8:6
2014
(Topaz)

Radeon
June
R7 M260X 384:24:8:6
2014
(Opal)

Radeon GCN 1 st gen


May (28 nm)
R7 M265
(Opal XT) 2014 384:24:8:6

Radeon
May
R9 M265X 640:40:16:10
2014
(Venus Pro)
Radeon
May
R9 M270X 640:40:16:10
2014
(Venus XT)

Radeon
R9 M275X May
640:40:16:10
(Venus 2014
XTX)

Radeon
February GCN 2 nd gen
R9 M280X 896:56:16:14
2015 (28 nm)
(Saturn XT)

Radeon
R9 M290X May GCN 1 st gen
2014 (28 nm) 1280:80:32:20
(Neptune
XT)

Radeon
R9 M295X GCN 3 rd gen
2014 2048:128:32:32
(Amethyst (28 nm)
XT)

a. Boost values (if available) are stated


below the base value in italic.
b. Texture fillrate is calculated as the
number of Texture Mapping Units
multiplied by the base (or boost) core clock
speed.
c. Pixel fillrate is calculated as the number
of Render Output Units multiplied by the
base (or boost) core clock speed.
d. Precision performance is calculated
from the base (or boost) core clock speed
based on a FMA operation.
e. Unified Shaders : Texture Mapping Units :
Render Output Units

Radeon Feature Matrix


The following table shows features of
Radeon-branded GPU microarchitectures.

[  ] [ view ·talk ·edit ]


R100 R200 R300 R400

Aug Sep May


Released Apr 2000
2001 2002 2004

AMD support

Instruction set

Not publicly known


Microarchitecture

Fixed Programmable pixel &


Type
pipeline [a] vertex pipelines

9.0 9.0b
Direct3D 7.0 8.1 11 11
(9_2) (9_2)

Shader model N/A 1.4 2.0+ 2.0b


OpenGL 1.3 2.0[b]

Vulkan

OpenCL N/A

HSA

Power saving ?

Video decoder
N/A
ASIC

Video encoding
ASIC

TrueAudio

FreeSync

HDCP [e]
PlayReady [e]

Max. displays[f] 1–2

Max. resolution

/drm/radeon [g]

/drm/amdgpu [g]

a. 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.
b. These series do not fully comply with
OpenGL 2+ as the hardware does not
support all types of non power of two
(NPOT) textures.
c. OpenGL 4+ compliance requires
supporting FP64 shaders and these are
emulated on some TeraScale chips using
32-bit hardware.
d. The UVD and VCE were replaced by the
Video Core Next (VCN) ASIC in the Raven
Ridge APU implementation of Vega.
e. To 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.
f. More displays may be supported with
native DisplayPort connections, or splitting
the maximum resolution between multiple
monitors with active converters.
g. DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) is a
component of the Linux kernel. Support in
this table refers to the most current
version.

Graphics device drivers


AMD's proprietary graphics
device driver "Catalyst"
AMD Catalyst is being developed for
Microsoft Windows and Linux. As of July
2014, other operating system 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 of course 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 Linux and for Linux,
but have been ported to other operating
systems as well. Each driver is composed
out of five parts:

1. Linux kernel component DRM


2. Linux kernel component KMS driver:
basically the device driver for the display
controller
3. user-space component libDRM
4. user-space component in Mesa 3D;
5. a special and distinct 2D graphics
device driver for X.Org Server, which if
finally about to be replaced by Glamor

The free and open-source "Radeon"


graphics driver supports most of the
features implemented into the Radeon line
of GPUs.[6] Unlike the nouveau project for
Nvidia graphics cards, the open-source
"Radeon" drivers are not reverse
engineered, but based on documentation
released by AMD.[48]

See also
AMD FirePro
AMD FireMV
AMD FireStream
List of AMD graphics processing units

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External links
TechPowerUp! GPU Database
AMD Radeon R9 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R7 Series Graphics

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