[UPDATE]HIS Digital Leak Confirms AMD R-200 Series Graphic Cards – R9-290 Cards Based on Hawaii GPU

[UPDATE]HIS Digital Leak Confirms AMD R-200 Series Graphic Cards – R9-290 Cards Based on Hawaii GPU

Update - It looks like links that redirect to HIS Digital’s listing page are down since the leak. A few moments before the links were taken down, HIS revealed yet another card - 280X iPower IceQ X ².

The GPU is called -  ”R9 280X iPower IceQ X ² Boost Clock 3GB GDDR5 PCI-E DLDVI-I/HDMI/2xMini DP” and has a 3 GB GDDR5 memory running along a 384-bit interface and uses the iceQ X2 cooler just like the Radeon HD 7970. The R9-280X is said to feature a Hawaii LE GPU so its possible that Hawaii as a complete chip could end up with a higher memory buffer since the Tahiti LE chip offered 2 GB GDDR5 memory although the full Tahiti chip offers 3 GB memory and 384-bit bus on the HD 7970 and HD 7950 graphic cards. As mentioned, the links are down but Computerbase was fast enough to grab a screenshot which can be seen below.

A few moments ago, we detailed the possible codenames of AMD’s upcoming Volcanic Islands family of graphic cards which are going to be released in October 2013. It was only a matter of time before more credible details came along and looks like manufacturer HIS Digital has confirmed the AMD R-200 series.

HIS Digital Leak Confirms AMD R-200 Series Graphic Cards

AMD R-200 Series codenamed ‘Volcanic Islands’ is a mix of refreshed Southern Islands cards and a new Hawaii GPU based on the new architecture. It won’t be a surprise if AMD dropped a new GPU name on the refreshed cards like they did to their mobile Solar Series GPUs codenamed ‘Venus’. Nevertheless, the codenames seem to be accurate and the AMD R-200 series would replace the Radeon HD 7000 series graphic cards after a wait of two years. The ‘R’ denotes Radeon, ’2′ denoted the family, and the other two digits would denote the graphics positioning which in the case of Hawaii based GPU would be AMD R-290 and successor to the Pitcairn cards would be denoted by the AMD R-280 branding.

HIS Digital lists a total of 7 branding six GPU tiers which are listed below:

• AMD R-290 Hawaii (Tahiti’s Successor)
• AMD R-280 (Replacing HD 7800 Series)
• AMD R-270 (Replacing HD 7700 Series)
• AMD R-260 (Replacing HD 7600 Series)
• AMD R-250 (Replacing HD 7500 Series)
• AMD R-240 (Replacing HD 7400 Series)

There would be two products positioning in the AMD Radeon R-200 lineup, the R9-200 series would make use of the Hawaii, Tahiti, Pitcairn GPU while the R7-200 series would feature the Cape Verde and Bonaire GPUs which are entry level models. The complete lineup would look something like the following but don’t hold your bets on this since this chart is based off preliminary information from GPU-z:

GPU Codename	Radeon HD 7000 Series	GPU Codename	Radeon R-200 Series
Malta	Radeon HD 7990	Vesuvius/Tonga	R9-29*
Tahiti XT	Radeon HD 7970	Hawaii XT	R9-290X
Tahiti Pro	Radeon HD 7950	Hawaii Pro	R9-290
Pitcairn XT	Radeon HD 7870	Hawaii LE	R9-280X
Pitcairn Pro	Radeon HD 7850	Tahiti XT	R9-280
Bonaire	Radeon HD 7790	Tahiti Pro	R9-27*
Cape Verde	Radeon HD 7770 Radeon HD 7750	Pitcairn	R7-270X R7-270
Turks	Radeon HD 7670 Radeon HD 7570	Bonaire	R7-260X R7-250

The names are yet to be confirmed but it seems so as if the bulk of the mainstream cards would be based on older or revised versions of current Southern Islands chips. This would mean more cheaper Tahiti’s and Pitcairn’s could be on the road from AMD while the main flagship Hawaii would remain as the only new part competing against NVIDIA’s GK110 core. Only time would tell whether the Hawaii can erupt the greatness of NVIDIA’s Titan and GeForce GTX 780 GPUs and can their refreshed cards hold up against NVIDIA’s own refreshed GeForce 700 series cards in value.