This week marks E3, but most of the news coming out of the video game trade show is about console gaming. However, PC gaming is still strong, and according to AMD, it's about to get even better with the graphics cards the company plans on introducing soon.
Today, AMD held a separate event from E3, something they called a "fireside chat," to talk about their latest products before tonight's PC Gaming Show news conference. The company unveiled its latest graphics cards - The Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Fury and R9 Nano - as well as a pre-built PC called Project Quantum.
The Radeon R9 Fury cards are the newest and most high-end GPUs that AMD has offered to date, with the company calling the technology "the most advanced and innovative GPU ever created for the enthusiast market" (i.e., hardcore PC gamers). The company designed these cards for high-end gaming, such as playing games in 4K resolution and virtual reality gaming (for example, on the Oculus Rift, which requires a very high-powered GPU). However, the cards are relatively small (a little over 7 inches long) and should fit into smaller PC cases, something that will make many PC gamers happy.
The difference between the two cards is that the Fury has air cooling and the Fury X has liquid cooling. The Fury X is also the most powerful of the two cards and has a new technology called HBM, or High Bandwidth Memory, that lowers power consumption and increases performance.
AMD didn't go into great detail about the R9 Nano, but mentioned that it's a higher-performance 6-inch card that doesn't use a lot of power. This means it's probably not as powerful as the Fury cards, but still packs a punch.
All of AMD's cards will work with Microsoft's Windows 10 and DirectX 12. The R9 Fury hits retail shelves later this month, on June 24th and will cost around $650. Expect the other cards to arrive around on June 18 (this week) and cost anywhere from about $100 to $400.
AMD also unveiled their own compact pre-built gaming PC designed for 4K gaming called Project Quantum. AMD hopes that it will find partners to work with the company on the project so that it hits the market soon. With gamers wanting to play more often in their living rooms and on their TVs, we're likely to see more systems like this soon (and we also can't count out the Steam Machine, which arrives in stores later this year).
Photo Credit: AMD
