AMD Polaris Thread: Radeon RX 480, RX 470 & RX 460 launching June 29th

[24601]

In DX12 games Nvidia has no advantage over GCN cards. And from the benchmark results so far, the 480 performs great in all the newer games. I don't see the 1060 out performing the 480, and costing more and having less VRAM just means it lost on all fronts.

Games where you will actually need DX12 would require more CPU grunt than what those theoretical buyers would have as well.

That's the thing about requirements, you either meet them or you don't.

 

[krumme]

Why did you not expect it?

They did this for every single card they have released since the start of this trend with R9 290/x.

Its not like the 480x had a bios switch for turbo mode... but perhaps they removed it and kept it on at default ? Lol. Looks like it.

I just dont understand they continue to go for the last 5% perf when it hits the barrier. But hey they seem to load tons of this reference crap coolers as usual on the market even if 2 weeks could be different. Tens of thousands of blowers to reach q2 goal.

Damn shortsighted management imho. Could just as easily wait for august. But perhaps its just about movin gf capacity. Could look like it and would make sense on a strategic perspective. Nobody else on this world wants gf process so a gfx is a nice place to start. Lol.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Better performance for less money than the NVidia equivalent (1060) is not a clear win?

Not when you are trying to convince large numbers of people to switch brands. We'll just have to see how all this plays out but I don't see the 480 being the marketshare monster AMD needed.

 

[24601]

Its not like the 480x had a bios switch for turbo mode... but perhaps they removed it and kept it on at default ? Lol. Looks like it.

I just dont understand they continue to go for the last 5% perf when it hits the barrier. But hey they seem to load tons of this reference crap coolers as usual on the market even if 2 weeks could be different. Tens of thousands of blowers to reach q2 goal.

Damn shortsighted management imho. Could just as easily wait for august. But perhaps its just about movin gf capacity. Could look like it an would make sense on a strategic perspective. Nobody else on this world wants gf process so a gfx is a nice place to start. Lol.

They're obviously in pure margins mode trying to survive. Going for lower performance for lower power is a luxury you only have when you are massive destroying your opponent in IC design (Like Nvidia has been doing since Maxwell).

 

[Mercennarius]

Games where you will actually need DX12 would require more CPU grunt than what those theoretical buyers would have as well.

That's the thing about requirements, you either meet them or you don't.

That's a blanket statement with no evidence to support it. Bottom line is that currently AMDs cards are out performing the NVidia equivalents in DX12 titles and the 480 seems to be even more efficient than the 390 in DX12.

 

[IEC]

Fell short of the (overhyped) expectations, but this thing (especially $199 4GB) will still sell like hotcakes.

Performance per dollar at $200 is presently unrivaled. We'll have to see if GTX 1060 will bring equivalent or better performance per dollar. Somehow I doubt it, considering shareholders would be miffed if nVidia accepted AMD's low margins on product. Absolute performance on the 1060 may be higher, however.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Transistor counts:
GTX1070 - 7.2 billion
RX480 - 5.7 billion

The 1070 draws what 20 watts more (entire system) in gaming? This is a big fail for AMD even if you don't care about power this says to me that their big die GPUs are going to be thermal and hence performance limited compare to Nvidia.

 

[Mercennarius]

Not when you are trying to convince large numbers of people to switch brands. We'll just have to see how all this plays out but I don't see the 480 being the marketshare monster AMD needed.

If an uninformed person walked into their local electronics store the main thing they are sold on are VRAM and price. $199 for 4GB, $239 for 8GB will sell like hot cakes in the stores.

 

[MrTeal]

I don't care about perf/watt itself but in how it ties into the flagship card(s) down the line. That's because AMD/NV are both limited by the die size and upper end power usage. If NV wins in perf/watt by 50%+, it means AMD will need a much larger die to keep up. This time NV already tapped out a 610mm2 GP100, which means AMD won't have any die size advantage to play with. Even if GP102 has a 450mm2 die, AMD is going to need to make up A LOT of ground in perf/watt to have any chance to be as fast as Big Pascal. I am not counting on it.

Not necessarily. The power/mm² isn't some hard and fast number where you can't pull out more power. GPU's are really even in their heat generation and not prone to hotspotting, and silicon is a good thermal conductor anyway. AMD could easily make a 600mm² die that pulls 350W while GP100 pulls 250W. You might just want to slap the Fury X cooler onto it, but temps will be fine if you do.
The bigger problem at the upper end is that AMD is still behind in perf/mm². Going off TPU's and saying that GP104 is 180% of the performance of a 480, GP104 vs P10 gives nVidia a 33% performance/mm² advantage. AMD would need a 600mm² die there to match a 450mm² GP102 if the ratios hold, which would be pretty terrible for their bottom line.

 

[krumme]

They're obviously in pure margins mode trying to survive. Going for lower performance for lower power is a luxury you only have when you are massive destroying your opponent in IC design (Like Nvidia has been doing since Maxwell).

Mubadala is crisis bank for amd and gf. Amd are in no way in margins mode. I think they are in revenue mode revenue to hide current cost and protect future investment ....for gf !. I think its pretty tough now with falling oil prices giving hard compettition for the investments.
Imho i guess mubadala try to sell gf and save face. The few cost to amd is helping do that. I actually think making gpu at gf is a brilliant idea. The consoles will have to go there so better get some experience.

 

[Mercennarius]

Also, as newer improved drivers come out I fully expect the 480 performance to improve relative to older AMD cards. in 3-6 months I would not be surprised to see the 480 at or above the 390X in virtually all benchmarks/games.

 

[moonbogg]

Well crap. I was hoping for more. The card offers performance that has been available for 5 years. Who the hell is this thing for? It competes with a 390 which is an OC'd 290 which is as old as Christ's sandals. 14nm Jesus Sandals from AMD this round.
I was pissed off at the low performance of the 1070/1080 compared to last gen, and I know this is not targeting those markets, but this performance is ridiculous. I have a feeling the 1060 is going to smash the piss out of the mid range market and make this Polaris look like a useless piece of pre obsoleted crap.
If this is an indication of what this new generation will look like, then holy crap you can forget about every paying a decent price for a high end GPU again.
Big Pascal will go unanswered, completely. And it will cost...it will be like buying a small car or something. Nvidia will start their own finance company and start offering loans.

 

[krumme]

If an uninformed person walked into their local electronics store the main thing they are sold on are VRAM and price. $199 for 4GB, $239 for 8GB will sell like hot cakes in the stores.

And why shouldnt they? Lol.

 

[Udgnim]

other than FO4 performance being noticeably better with the 480, it seems to be pretty close to Hawaii level performance

based off of guru3d OC #s, 480 seems to respond pretty well to overclocking though

1267 > 1375 GPU OC, ~8.5%
8000 > 9000 VRAM OC, 12.5%

7.8% increase in Warhammer
8.7% in Far Cry Primal
10.5% in Hitman
9.1% in Tomb Raider

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r9_rx_480_8gb_review,35.html

we'll see what kind of OC models AIBs will release with the 480

 

[tonyfreak215]

Also, as newer improved drivers come out I fully expect the 480 performance to improve relative to older AMD cards. in 3-6 months I would not be surprised to see the 480 at or above the 390X in virtually all benchmarks/games.

That's one of the main reasons I'm not picking up a used 390. I'm hoping that we'll see some more improvements over time.

 

[tonyfreak215]

other than FO4 performance being noticeably better with the 480, it seems to be pretty close to Hawaii level performance

based off of guru3d OC #s, 480 seems to respond pretty well to overclocking though

1267 > 1375 GPU OC, ~8.5%
8000 > 9000 VRAM OC, 12.5%

7.8% increase in Warhammer
8.7% in Far Cry Primal
10.5% in Hitman
9.1% in Tomb Raider

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r9_rx_480_8gb_review,35.html

Andandtech was able to get a 5% over clock with a 5% improvement. If that 1:1 keeps up, an OCed 480 will be fantastic.

 

[krumme]

Well crap. I was hoping for more. The card offers performance that has been available for 5 years. Who the hell is this thing for? It competes with a 390 which is an OC'd 290 which is as old as Christ's sandals. 14nm Jesus Sandals from AMD this round.
I was pissed off at the low performance of the 1070/1080 compared to last gen, and I know this is not targeting those markets, but this performance is ridiculous. I have a feeling the 1060 is going to smash the piss out of the mid range market and make this Polaris look like a useless piece of pre obsoleted crap.
If this is an indication of what this new generation will look like, then holy crap you can forget about every paying a decent price for a high end GPU again.
Big Pascal will go unanswered, completely. And it will cost...it will be like buying a small car or something. Nvidia will start their own finance company and start offering loans.

Perhaps you have too high hopes for new generations ? It looks to me this way. I mean i think 1080 1070 and 480 is all fast lol.

As an advice you might want to lower your 1060 non ti expectations a bit already now.

Or perhaps you are saving for the big sandals?

 

[Sweepr]

Oh common guys we all know once the rx480 gets overclocked it will reach gtx1070 performance and even edge it on newer games...����

Lesson learned. Never trust clickbait websites like WCCFTech and VideoCardz before proper reviews roll out.

It would need circa 2000 MHz to match a stock Geforce GTX 1070.

So on average across a spread of 20-25 games or so, and reviews by several different sites, the 14nm RX480 roughly = 28nm GTX 970 in both performance and power consumption and has a +50db +2000rpm blower fan that "hums under load" and is "rather loud", "has an annoying pitch" and is "grindy and obtrusive"? UK pricing seems to be at parity with GTX 970 too, so "perf-per-$ king" isn't there either, at least not in all regions.

TPU : "Quoting from the AMD reviewer's guide "A lot of work has gone into reducing noise levels for the Radeon™ RX 480. Sorry, but no, gaming noise levels are bad. The reference card is noisier than every single card released in recent times, and it runs at well above 80°C too. We confirmed the temperature and noise levels with other reviewers, so it's not only our sample."

TechReport : "We're not fans of blower-style coolers for the most part, and the RX 480's isn't doing anything to change our minds. While the card runs at or below our 40-dBA-ish noise floor at idle, its load noise level climbs to 51 dBA—just short of the triple-fan cooler on our Gigabyte Windforce GTX 980. Despite all the sound and fury, the RX 480's load temperatures reached 83° C under load, too."

Note to self : Stop reading brain-rotting pre-release hype predictions and add Videocardz and WCCFTech troll sites to hosts file...

Agreed. The cooler situation is a complete disaster, a bit of a shame that AMD releases something that bad after all the negative press some of their previous cards got for this reason. Hello reference Radeon R9 290/290X.

BTW thanks for the links! Will update the OP with all reviews in a second.

It's still the GPU to get for 250$ and below at least until gp106 drops out and is competitive enough.
But from a technical perspective the perf/W is poor relatively to Nvidia. It's sad to see such a big gap between GP104 and polaris 10 perf/W.
This might be crucial for losing out many potential OEM and mid-range notebook sales when competing with Nvidia's counterparts.

And the worst part is, Polaris is still nowhere to be found in notebooks. All the talk about several months advantage to market didn't turn out to be true. The competition was first at FinFET GPUs, while cut down GP104 (notebooks) & GP106 are also knocking the door, and Geforce GTX 1060 could be released as soon as July 14.

People should understand to not trust stupid hype by click-bait videos/articles and like the ones that were presented by AdoredTV or Wccftech.
Let's see how well AIB cards to with respect to overclocking.

Hopefully it won't take too long till we see some custom AIB design reviews. Regarding overclocking headroom, was there any mainstream VGA worse than reference Radeon RX 480? Only 5% performance gains according to TPU:

This means OCed Geforce GTX 970 will have no problem beating it in a lot of titles (when it's not VRAM limited). Even Geforce GTX 1080/1070 FE, heavily criticized by some users here, gains 12.8-13.4% from OC (I'd still opt for custom after checking some long term gaming session tests).

www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/30.html
www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1070/27.html

 

[24601]

Well crap. I was hoping for more. The card offers performance that has been available for 5 years. Who the hell is this thing for? It competes with a 390 which is an OC'd 290 which is as old as Christ's sandals. 14nm Jesus Sandals from AMD this round.
I was pissed off at the low performance of the 1070/1080 compared to last gen, and I know this is not targeting those markets, but this performance is ridiculous. I have a feeling the 1060 is going to smash the piss out of the mid range market and make this Polaris look like a useless piece of pre obsoleted crap.
If this is an indication of what this new generation will look like, then holy crap you can forget about every paying a decent price for a high end GPU again.
Big Pascal will go unanswered, completely. And it will cost...it will be like buying a small car or something. Nvidia will start their own finance company and start offering loans.

14/16nm GPU generation sure seems like the last generation before Nvidia hits Intel level monopoly levels that Intel hit when Core 2 Duo came out.

I would expect to be paying per transistor (Like how Intel has been pricing since Core 2 Quad came out) from here on out if AMD doesn't magic up something to come back from irrelevance that they will become after this generation.

 

[crisium]

Not necessarily. The power/mm² isn't some hard and fast number where you can't pull out more power. GPU's are really even in their heat generation and not prone to hotspotting, and silicon is a good thermal conductor anyway. AMD could easily make a 600mm² die that pulls 350W while GP100 pulls 250W. You might just want to slap the Fury X cooler onto it, but temps will be fine if you do.
The bigger problem at the upper end is that AMD is still behind in perf/mm². Going off TPU's and saying that GP104 is 180% of the performance of a 480, GP104 vs P10 gives nVidia a 33% performance/mm² advantage. AMD would need a 600mm² die there to match a 450mm² GP102 if the ratios hold, which would be pretty terrible for their bottom line.

Yup. Even if ratios improve some (likely with more space in general and HBM2), Nvidia looks to easily have a large ppmm2 advantage. As I said earlier, even if AMD makes a behemoth card edging out GP102, there's still room to go with Pascal (GP100 size equivalent but with only single precision). AMD simply cannot have the performance crown as things stand now unless Nvidia allows them to have it.

 

[Mercennarius]

from here on out if AMD doesn't magic up something to come back from irrelevance that they will become after this generation.

Since when is being the best bang for the buck not relevant?

 

[rainy]

I'm curious how much 14nm of Samsung/GlobalFoundries affects power consumption of RX 480?
Wouldn't it be better for AMD if they could stick with 16nm of TSMC?

Btw, looks like undervolting decreases power consumption quite nicely, like it already happened in the past with their CPU/GPU.

 

[Tumaras]

Brutal, I owned a 390 and wouldn't even want to game with that at 1080p. It wasn't awful, but I had to crank settings down to get consistent 40+ fps without dips even at 1080. And with the 480 looking close to that or even but slower, ouch.

People that were comparing the 480 to the 1070 look awfully silly right now, as expected. Yes it's cheaper...but that's grasping at straws. The 1070 uses only 150w so the power discussion is kind moot, and it's worlds faster than the 480.

You would literally have to x-fire 2 480s to catch a 1070, and that's with the plethora of driver headaches and at that point higher power and slightly higher cost than a 1070. I'd hope this puts the 480 to 1070 comparisons to bed. The only thing they have in common is that they were both released in the same month.

 

[sze5003]

Well crap. I was hoping for more. The card offers performance that has been available for 5 years. Who the hell is this thing for? It competes with a 390 which is an OC'd 290 which is as old as Christ's sandals. 14nm Jesus Sandals from AMD this round.
I was pissed off at the low performance of the 1070/1080 compared to last gen, and I know this is not targeting those markets, but this performance is ridiculous. I have a feeling the 1060 is going to smash the piss out of the mid range market and make this Polaris look like a useless piece of pre obsoleted crap.
If this is an indication of what this new generation will look like, then holy crap you can forget about every paying a decent price for a high end GPU again.
Big Pascal will go unanswered, completely. And it will cost...it will be like buying a small car or something. Nvidia will start their own finance company and start offering loans.

Yea I feel the same but you know what my card is old and needs replaced so I'm going to get one anyway when AIB models come out.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Since when is being the best bang for the buck not relevant?

It is of course. But at the risk of beating a dead horse AMD needed a clear win to sway the Nvidia loyalists and there are many. Right now the 480 is the best card for the money very easily but for how long? Let's say the 1060 is 90% perf/dollar 120% perf/watt (could be much higher) that is easily enough to keep the faithful who are running 960's or slower to stay with Nvidia.