News Leaked AMD Fiji Card Images Show Small Form Factor, Water Cooler Integration

Ryan Shrout, PCPer:

File this under "rumor" for sure, but a cool one none the less...

After yesterday's official tidbit of information surrounding AMD's upcoming flagship graphics card for enthusiasts and its use of HBM (high bandwidth memory), it appears we have another leak on our hands. The guys over at Chiphell have apparently acquired some stock footage of the new Fiji flagship card (whether or not it will be called the 390X has yet to be seen).

In that post from yesterday I noted that with an HBM design AMD could in theory build an add-in card that is of a different form factor than anything we have previously seen for a high end part. Based on the image above, if this turns out to be the high end Fiji offering, it appears the PCB will indeed be quite small as it no longer requires memory surrounding the GPU itself. You can also see that it will in fact be water cooled though it looks like it has barb inlets rather than a pre-attached cooler in this image.

If true, major props to AMD for managing to reduce the card size of their flagship so dramatically - this could very well make watercooled Radeon cards much more practical (let alone possible) in small cases.

 

[jeshikat]

I'm digging the single slot IO, now if only they could bring the power consumption down to 9xx levels but that will probably have to wait for a new process node.

 

[Phuncz]

This card seems very promising with its VRAM bunched up around the core. This in turn will prefer watercooling or proper custom cooling with efficient heatpipes. But it will mainly reduce board size and thus allow mITX builds easily. I hope they can also bring the VRM's closer to the GPU core itself so it is cooled with the same block, even for aftermarket air coolers. This would mean no more added heatsinks or fans but again a more efficient main cooling.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

It would be a lost opportunity if they didn't cool everything - VRM's included - with this, so I hope you're right. But I suspect that they have.

 

[rawr]

It's already noted that it might not be true, but I have heard that between this image and another one of the same model, some lengths and spacings were different... so obviously don't get too excited.

 

[QinX]

The image on WCCFTech might be real or fake, they don't say specifically. But the chiphell admits their image is just a mockup.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Yeah, I should have put quotes around "leaked" to emphasize that it's speculative (albeit informed). I'll be more diligent moving forward - but that's actually the headline copied-and-pasted from PCPer

 

[jeshikat]

Interesting

https://twitter.com/repi/status/601739457960763392

 

[Phuncz]

Yes it is, considering it seems to have no fan on the card at all. Frustrating that they keep teasing and not revealing.

 

[rawr]

Please let it be good let it be good...

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Please let it be good let it be good...

Ditto!

 

[4RTEX]

I think we all deep down wish AMD beats the shi* out of NV. That would be more interesting than another Titan Y

 

[QinX]

Single slot I/O: Check
under 17cm: If it's longer I'm going to be so mad!, no reason the have it that long, the amount of tracing that needs to be done is easily cut in half, PCIe traces, display traces, Power and some misc. no more 512-bit bus traces needed.

If it is small I am going to be making a block for it to fit H2O-Micro, just for giggles.

 

[jeshikat]

Doesn't look like it. It's blurry and in the far corner of the image but the dimensions seem to indicate ~226mm length

Man I love SketchUps match photo feature, great for stuff like this.

 

[rawr]

Also if we look at the other leaked render:

For reference the Sapphire (bottom card) is 171mm long. 390x looks like its a bit longer than 170mm

 

[Phuncz]

While it isn't ITX-short, it seems to still be mainstream-card-short. So it might clear the PSU in the Ncase, allowing for SFX-L without a problem. It seems to me to be a very good fit for many SFF cases, just not the ones with an external PSU or extremely small cases.

 

[Vittra]

So it looks like the 390x is a refresh (Grenada?) to the 290x (Hawaii), and the AMD "Fury" (Fiji) will be placed above it as the competitor to the Titan/980 Ti. It seems the 390x shouldn't be so easily discounted though, as there may have been some tweaks and GCN seems to scale well throughout the range, noted through drivers continuously improving performance.

Original tweaktown article about this was pulled, cached here

Doesn't seem to matter too much though, as NordicHardware already covered this "Powercolor 390x" in a youtube video:

PCB comparison:

http://i.imgur.com/ew5t3IE.png
http://i.imgur.com/YueiJWX.png

This is turning out to be interesting indeed.

 

[rawr]

AMD are toying with time here. Either they are putting a lot of faith in the hype for Fury, or something has gone wrong with Fiji, possibly due to the 980 ti.

 

[Phuncz]

I'll be getting another 290X when the storm hits, it will probably be the best bargain to get.

 

[QinX]

More news!
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-fury-exclusive-pics/

19CM long card, might revise my GPU block design in order to make it a possible fit for a future design.