AMD announces Radeon R9 285: Specs, Price and Release date

[Hogg]

Graphics process AMD celebrated its thirtieth anniversary yesterday, and the company decided to inaugurate a new graphics processor chip that would offer the kind of power that hardcore gamers desire. To this end, AMD introduced the new Radeon R9 285 GPU that offers excellent specs for a more affordable price.

 

The Radeon R9 285 graphics processor, built from 28nm GPU architecture, features 1,792 stream processors, 3.92 teraflops (or TFLOPS) of compute performance, 112 texture units, 32 ROPs, 128 Z/Stencil, 256-bit memory, 2GBs of DDR5 memory, two 6-pin power connectors, 190 watts of typical board power, DirectX 12 and Mantle support, utilizes the PCI-Express (or PCI-E) 3.0 standard, and has a memory speed of 5.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) with a clocked engine speed of 918Mhz. While the current R9 285 graphics processor comes with 2GBs of memory, AMD says that it looks to produce a 4GB DDR5 memory model at some point in the near future.

 

As far as how AMD’s new Radeon R9 285 stacks up against AMD’s other graphics processors, the R9 285 matches the R9 280 in terms of stream processors, but offers smaller memory bandwidth and a slower clocked speed than any graphics processor AMD currently offers. You also sacrifice the DDR5 memory, seeing that AMD’s first Radeon R9 285 out of the gate will only have 2GB – not even the 3GB or 4GB of DDR5 memory that would help the new processor compete with AMD’s older products.

 

AMD’s newest graphics chip sits between the 2GB R9 270/R9 270X graphics chip ($179, $199) and the 3GB R9 280X ($399) graphics chip, so it’ll provide a budget-friendly option for those looking for a gaming-intensive graphics card that won’t sacrifice a stellar, mind-blowing on-screen experience for a shocking price tag.

 

The new Radeon R9 285 graphics processor will ship on September 2, and to encourage sales for its newest GPU, AMD is offering a “Never Settle: Space Edition†bundle that includes the games “Alien Invasion†and access to the development process for the “Star Citizen†game along with a ship gaming toy.