AMD will replace R9 280 Tahiti Pro GPU with economical Tonga in August

AMD would be planning to replace the Tahiti Pro GPU of the Radeon R9 280 with a frugal new GPU codenamed Tonga. The new version of the card will have 2GB gddr5 instead of 3GB gddr5 memory.

The Tonga GPU has been rumored for some time, but sources have whispered to VR-Zone that the video chip should appear in August. This will not be used for a new chip, but will replace the Tahiti Pro GPU of the Radeon R9 280. The only detail that the site reports is that the gpu with 2GB gddr5 is combined, where that was 3GB with the Tahiti Pro.

Videocardz adds other details about specifications. Tonga would have 32 compute units and therefore 2048 cores and the chip would communicate with the memory via a 256-bit wide bus. The Tahiti Pro has a 384bit memory interface. Despite this, Tonga is said to be faster and more fuel efficient than the Tahiti Pro, but not more powerful than Tahiti XT. Both GPUs are produced at 28nm, but Tonga might be the first GPU manufactured at Global Foundries.