Tek Rumors 0009: AMD's R9-390 Coming in a Cheaper 4GiB Flavor | AMD Quietly Launches FX-6330 CPU in China | Intel Annouces "Skull Canyon" (Skylake based CPUs for NUCS) | Google Releases Pixel-C to the Masses

AMD has announced that AIB (Add in Board Partners) are going to release 4GIB flavors of the R9-390. To combat the GTX 970 at a cheaper price. with prices ranging from $299 and even cheaper. though I personal will speculate it will be at $269 the cheapest. simply because reductions like this, warrant a price between $20 to $50. So Far Sapphire, XFX, and Powercolor have made their cards already. mind you if you are looking for an upgrade, if you have a 290 or 290x. you're going to see a 10% improvement at the most. though most of the time you may see almost identical performance within a margin of error.

Here they are in all their glory.


If you've haven't seen lately, companies like MSI have for some reason tried their best to keep the walking zombie that is the FX platform alive. Now AMD is on the punch. they have quietly released the FX 6330 in China. which is meant to compete with Intels i3 Haswell CPUS. mind you this CPU is still based on Piledriver on the 32nm Manufacturing node. if you need a little cheap CPU for basic tasks and mild gaming this is your best bet.


Intel has announced "SKULL CANYON" for Intel Based NUCs. this is NOT a new architecture. it's based on Skylake. though it's strictly for NUCS and will come with IRIS PRO Graphics. it will launch somewhere around Q1, 2016. from a graphical standpoint the graphics on these IRIS PROs are somewhat above the GTX 750. and much faster than what AMD has to offer on Godavari (which is a refresh of Kaveri) Skull Canyon will be replacing Broadwell-U Based Processors. not much is known except these processors WILL ALL be Dual-Cores.


If you've been wanting an Android Alternative to Microsoft's Surface line, well you can finally purchase it now. Google has finally released it, and it's available to purchase on Google's Store. it will range from $499 to $599 and will come with a Tegra X1 Processor.


AMD SOURCES:

CPU
* http://wccftech.com/amd-fx-6330-black-edition-processor-silent-launch/
* http://techfrag.com/2015/12/14/amd-launches-new-fx-6330-processor-exclusively-asia-pacific/
* http://www.overclockersclub.com/news/39643/

GPU
* http://techreport.com/news/29427/amd-board-partners-begin-selling-4gb-radeon-r9-390s-in-china
* http://wccftech.com/amd-aibs-prepare-4-gb-radeon-r9-390/
* http://www.overclockersclub.com/news/39646/

INTEL SOURCES:
* http://www.tweaktown.com/news/48947/intel-teases-skull-canyon-most-powerful-nuc-yet/index.html
* http://techfrag.com/2015/12/14/skull-canyon-intels-most-powerful-nuc-yet-launches-in-q1-2016/
* http://wccftech.com/intel-skull-canyon-nuc-iris-pro-580-powerful-2016/

GOOGLE PIXEL C SOURCES:
* http://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_c_tablet_is_now_available_to_purchase_for_499-news-15405.php
* https://store.google.com/product/pixel_c

1 Like

The Shamless Self Bump of Champions.

2 Likes
  • Whoever designed that XFX box should be fired. So much wasted space.
  • The FX line is like beating a dead horse. Except the horse is so dead that's long since decayed into just a skeleton. That's another guaranteed year of Intel gaining market share, and they already have 80%. I mean at this rate VIA will be making CPUs that are as powerful as AMD's current offerings.
  • Skull Canyon should be fun for HTPC uses.
  • No microSD on the Pixel C? I don't use a whole lot of space for data, but even 64 GB would make me nervous. It's also the same price as the ASUS T300 Chi, which has arguably better specs.

32GiBS already makes me nervous. and I'm a heavy storage user.

though I've already come to the conclusion that Google is never going to add a MicroSD slot. or ANY SD slot for that matter.

R9-390 4GB is dont realy see the logic in that.
Nvidia GTX970´s will most likely get a price drop to arround $280,- to $300,-.
You can allready grab a R9-390 8GB for arround $310,- tot $320,-.
They should basicly just lower the price slightly of the 8GB cards.
I mean launching a whole new line of 4GB R9-390's does not make that much sense to me.
Unless they are going to sell them for realy cheap, arround $250,-.
But then it will hurt their recently released 380X.

It doesn't, but then again the 8GiB Frame buffer didn't make much sense either.

For most of us who have a 290 or 290X the 390 series in general makes no sense. Thought for people looking for an upgrade something like this would be great.

i agree, the 8GB vram does not add that much extra value to the card.
However, my point is, why would they launch a whole new line of cards?.
Because Nvidia "might" slightly lower the prices of the GTX970´s.
Well i can hardly believe that the top tier GTX970´s will drop way below the $300,- ish price mark,
so they could simply have shaved off $10,- of a R9-390 8GB.

I mean if you could buy a R9-390 4GB for arround $250,- it would be a monster deal.
But how are they going to justify that against their recently launched 380X?
I'm aware of the possibility that this "might" be an action from the board partners of AMD,
and not so much from AMD them selfs.

The price cuts were temporary sadly :/ right now 390s are selling for as low as $270 with a rebate. I'm guessing all the AIBs are just trying to rid of some 290s. give it a quick BIOS update, and a clockspeed bump, and boom R9-390.

That might be a possibility indeed.

though I've already come to the conclusion that Google is never going to add a MicroSD slot. or ANY SD slot for that matter.

This makes me sad, I won't buy mobile devices that do not have SD card support. My choices are slim because of this, Samsung seems to be the only company that cares.

Motorola has microSD. I wanna say ASUS does as well.

1 Like

I was referring strictly to Google's Android Products.

the first Nexus device that had a SD card is the very first one, the Galaxy Nexus. after that no other Nexus device had a Micro SD Card slot.

Pretty much the sole reason why I bought a Moto G rather than getting a Nexus through AT&T for free. I would much rather have too much space and not need it rather than too little and need it. After 3 years of only having 16 GB on an iPhone 5 I am completely set on never using tech where I can't expand the storage for quite a while.


I'm still thinking about the Skull Canyon stuff. The power of a GTX 750/Ti in something not much larger than a person's hand sounds really nice for HTPC and couch gaming uses. Dual core is a bit underwhelming, but I'm hoping that they have hyperthreading which should bring the processing power up to snuff. Or a straight quad-core like the J2900 and N3700 would be pretty nice.

I think with some added RAM it could be a somewhat durable machine.