We are now reaching the low-end segment of the R7 series, composed of the R7-250 (codename Oland XT) and the R7-240 (Oland Pro). Both GPUs are manufactured on the 28nm process and the cards support resolutions up to 2048x1536 on the DVI port and 4K on the HDMI.

The HIS R7 240 iCooler card has the same clocks as the stock AMD version, which means the GPU runs at 730MHz while reaching with Boost 780MHz. The R7 240 is available from AMD with two memory types: 1GB GDDR5 or 2GB DDR3 on a 128-bit bus; our sample has 2GB of DDR3 which is clocked at 900MHz. The GPU is built with 320 shader units, 20 TMUs and 8 ROPs.

The PowerTune function is now available on the full range so the GPU clock gets modified depending on power draw, heat and performance factors.

Mantle is a new API introduced with the latest seriers, which gives the game developers direct access to the GPUs by using the Graphics Core Next architecture. AMD has recently clarified that Mantle creates for PC a development platform which is similar to the one for the consoles, which already offer low-level APIs, close-to-metal programming, easier development and more. By creating a more console-like developer environment, Mantle improves time to market, reduces development costs and allows more efficient rendering and ultimately improves performance for gamers.

DirectX 11.2, which is coming with Windows 8.1 is compatible with the new series.

The main attraction of the latest DirectX seems to be Tiled Resources, which exposes AMD’s partially-resident textures via DirectX and we are also dealing with hardware-managed virtual memory for GPU.