14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the AMD Radeon R9 285 graphics card is still not available for sale, most of the information on it has already reached the web, and the company's OEMs have been introducing their custom versions since Saturday, August 23. PowerColor has just unveiled the TurboDuo in fact.
The TurboDuo moniker has been used before. It refers to the dual-fan cooler that PowerColor likes to slap onto most of its overclocked graphics cards, and a fair few that stick to reference specs.
In this case, the AMD Radeon R9 285 has definitely been tweaked. Not enough to leave people gaping in shock perhaps, but still more than the mere 10 MHz overclock exhibited by the Sapphire R9 285 ITX Compact.
More specifically, the PowerColor Radeon R9 285 TurboDuo drives the Tonga 28nm graphics processing unit at 945 MHz instead of 918 MHz.
Since we're on the subject, we may as well give a full rundown of the specifications, such as they are. The 28nm GPU has the same 1,792 Graphics CoreNext 1.1 stream processors (GCN 1.1 SPs), 112 texture mapping units (TMUs) and 32 raster operating units (ROPs).
The ROP count seems to be the only part of the Tonga GPU that hasn't been crippled. Here's hoping we won't have too long to wait for a full-power video card based on it (2,048 GCN SPs, 128 TMUs). But we digress.
The GPU has a 256-bit memory interface controlling the 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, whose clock of 5.5 GHz has been left untouched. It's not clear if PowerColor is preparing a 4 GB model or not, but we'll get the answer to that question as time passes.
Moving on, the video card has a pair of dual-link DVI connectors, one HDMI port, one DisplayPort, and a modern XDMA CrossFire interface. As for the cooler, it combines a dense aluminum fin stack with a pair of twin-impeller fans.
The PowerColor Radeon R9 285 will start shipping on September 2 worldwide, for the price of $249 (€188). That's right, the OEM is going to ship the custom-cooled, overclocked board at the same price as the normal card. Then again, retailers will probably inflate the prices in short order, as it usually happens upon a new product's launch.
So far, PowerColor seems to be the only AMD partner that hasn't released a stock-clocked version of the new video adapter. Given the way the price was left unchanged, this should give it a significant advantage among prospective buyers.
