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

[3DVagabond]

I'm having an extremely hard time believing AMD is introducing its first finfet GPU as a 230mm2 cut down sku, especially in the face of getting cobblered in performance and low balling themselves with a $199-219 price. It takes an awful lot of faith to believe yields are that bad on a 230mm2 chip and/or a cash strapped, profit starved company cares that little about maximizing its ASP to lead with a cut down small die. I believe it about as much as I believe AMD when they said they couldn't find a price point to release a 384-bit Tonga.

Yeah. Right. Logic has to prevail at some point so I'm going with RX 480 being the top P10 sku insofar as core count is concerned. If AMD truly is leading a 230mm2 cut down die, then their suit wearing idiocracy continues to reign supreme.

I've never seen anyone complain about a price being too good before. As they say, "Live long enough and you can see anything."

 

[iiiankiii]

as someone who doesn't follow AMD, the numbers in their products are just ridiculously confusing and hard to follow. I have no idea which AMD card is faster etc. They should.

Also, The Polaris is being relesead in 3 weeks and yet they wont release any real benchmarks. That's either bad marketing or they know the card is a flop once again.

Did you know that prior to the launch of the GTX1080/1070, cards were available the same day they release reviews for them? Shocking, I know.

 

[f2bnp]

Man, I really hope they release the full Polaris 10 chip. I just don't feel like buying the cutdown version, unless of course we get lucky and it unlocks .

Honestly though, at 200-250$, if these cards perform real close to the 980 and are pulling ~120W, that's a pretty sweet deal right there. I am hoping that there's a lot of OC headroom, 1.2GHz does sound somewhat low, I'd be a happy man if I could bump that up to 1.45GHz - 1.5GHz. It would be amazing value if this were to happen.

 

[selni]

AMD has X to denote full chip. nVidia "had" ti which used to. Then they started using ti on cut chips too. Whose is more confusing?

Nvidia's usage of Ti dates back a very long time and I'd be careful trying to attribute any particular meaning to it - eg GeForce 3 ti 200 was slower than a GeForce 3. It's just one of the random suffixes they tack onto names occasionally - maybe it did mean fully enabled for a generation or two, but that's not been the case in general.

 

[William Gaatjes]

AMD's 7% marketshare gain is due to r9 380

http://www.custompcreview.com/news/amd-news/amds-marketing-strategy-polaris-brilliant-heres/29367/

That got me thinking.
I would be surprised if polaris possesses GMI links for a multi die on interposer chip. I think that will be for vega and up. Maybe vega will not be a huge die chip but multiple dies on an interposer with hbm2. So for the performance crown that can be interesting.

No it is right here :

The second line : Designed for incredible form factors. Apple and game consoles in mind here.
Polaris is designed with being power efficient and cost effective to produce while still having a lot of processing power. Very smart. And for pc users that do not want or can spend a lot of money an interesting upgrade.
I do wonder how much availability there will be on june 29. I think it will be enough. Because consoles have APU's so there is no need for discrete graphic chips there. That leaves only Apple. Since new apple macbook products with polaris GPU's seem to be sold by the end of this year, Apple already has a share of polaris chips(Most likely P11 because of power consumption) and Imacs(P10, i doubt it. I think will be P11 as well). But these are the most expensive macbook models it seems, so i doubt millions will be sold right away. That leaves more P10 gfx cards for the pc users. ()

 

[3DVagabond]

Nvidia's usage of Ti dates back a very long time and I'd be careful trying to attribute any particular meaning to it - eg GeForce 3 ti 200 was slower than a GeForce 3. It's just one of the random suffixes they tack onto names occasionally - maybe it did mean fully enabled for a generation or two, but that's not been the case in general.

So I ask again, Who's more confusing?

 

[tviceman]

I've never seen anyone complain about a price being too good before. As they say, "Live long enough and you can see anything."

The LOLz is as strong as the mythical "384-bit Tonga but Apple rumor excuses." Where did I say I didn't like AMD's price? A completely expected post from you. Way to live up to your rep. :thumbsup:

The excuses and theories are rolling nonstop and no one with sense of mind is putting on the breaks.

Infraction issued for personal attack.

-Rvenger

 

[tviceman]

230mm2 is really not that small of a chip for 14nm. Remember the smaller we go the worse the yield gets. I don't remember where I saw it but I remember seeing a slide presentation about it. A die could have a small defect on a 28nm gate and work fine, while that same defect is big enough to make a gate not function on a smaller node.

Therefore our perception of the die size needs to shrink with the node shrink.

You do realize that AMD is going to have two bigger dies out in about 6-7 months, right? You do realize Nvidia has a bigger die out right now? 230mm2 is not at all big and unless something is going very wrong, it should be yielding very good.

 

[Sweepr]

The LOLz is as strong as the mythical "384-bit Tonga but Apple rumor excuses." Where did I say I didn't like AMD's price? A completely expected post from you. Way to live up to your rep. :thumbsup:

The excuses and theories are rolling nonstop and no one with sense of mind is putting on the breaks.

I don't get it either. To me it sounds like some people are disappointed with the rumoured performance of the announced version of Polaris 10, despite the agressive pricing.

 

[3DVagabond]

The LOLz is as strong as the mythical "384-bit Tonga but Apple rumor excuses." Where did I say I didn't like AMD's price? A completely expected post from you. Way to live up to your rep. :thumbsup:

The excuses and theories are rolling nonstop and no one with sense of mind is putting on the breaks.

What excuse might that be? Oh, and what's my rep?

I don't get it either. To me it sounds like some people are disappointed with the rumoured performance of the announced version of Polaris 10, despite the agressive pricing.

Well, since he was responding to me, where did I show any disappointment?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I don't get it either. To me it sounds like some people are disappointed with the rumoured performance of the announced version of Polaris 10, despite the agressive pricing.

What I see on this forum is people who are for the most part not buyers in the mainstream market complaining. This gpu is not for them.

The smart ones see an incredible value that will vastly increase the lowest common denominator in pc gaming performance. Gtx980/390x performance at $199-229 is going to no only improve the VR market, but also make the viable pc gaming market itself much bigger.

All those people playing old games/moba games on onboard graphics now have a cheap way to get their pc running the latest triple a titles and could even step up to vr if they desire.

Polaris 10 is a boon to pc gaming in general so everyone should just stop with the veiled personal attacks and thread crapping and just wait for reviews. More game studios will cater to pc gamers if the market for the games grows in size enough to rival consoles.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Gtx980/390x performance at $199-229 is going to no only improve the VR market, but also make the viable pc gaming market itself much bigger.

Both VR and PC gaming market would increase just as fast. Polaris 10 is just another evolutionary part in that chain. It is by no means special in that regard.

 

[amenx]

Still confused as to what may go up against the 1070. Full Polaris chip or cut down Vega?

 

[zlejedi]

I always laugh when I see someone mentioning 100$ difference on gpu being huge factor for VR when you need 600-800$ helmet for it.

 

[96Firebird]

Man people are eating that "increase VR market" line right up, good job AMD marketing on that one. :thumbsup:

 

[iiiankiii]

Man, I really hope they release the full Polaris 10 chip. I just don't feel like buying the cutdown version, unless of course we get lucky and it unlocks .

Honestly though, at 200-250$, if these cards perform real close to the 980 and are pulling ~120W, that's a pretty sweet deal right there. I am hoping that there's a lot of OC headroom, 1.2GHz does sound somewhat low, I'd be a happy man if I could bump that up to 1.45GHz - 1.5GHz. It would be amazing value if this were to happen.

yeah, that would be pretty good. An RX480 @ 390X speed with the ability to overclock by 15% would put it within reaching distance of the GTX1070. I feel that AMD has learnt its lesson from clocking their card beyond its efficiency range.

For most of the 28nm GCN cards, it was around 900mhz. Based on what AMD has been saying about FinFet allowing for higher and more efficient clocks, I think ~1600mhz is the upper limits. That marks an increase of roughly ~450mhz from the (~1150mhz) 28nm cards. If AMD clocks Polaris at 1266mhz, that leaves around 26% of clockspeed untapped. If it scales as well as previous GCN cards, that would make it one badass card. A true winner at $199.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Still confused as to what may go up against the 1070. Full Polaris chip or cut down Vega?

Vega.

 

[Erenhardt]

I always laugh when I see someone mentioning 100$ difference on gpu being huge factor for VR when you need 600-800$ helmet for it.

K! Can I get $100 cut on each VR headset sold? Contact me in PM to get my bank account number.

If I remember correctly, the pre-order was $300-350 for oculus rift.

Now, if every part of VR got a $100 cut, you could assemble a VR rig for less than $1000.

 

[sze5003]

Vega.

Vega is suppose to be more powerful right? But if it's not released until October /November or 2017 then it's not really competing against the 1070. I'm just confused I guess. Seems like amd's competition was 2 480 cards vs 1070.

 

[Sonikku]

K! Can I get $100 cut on each VR headset sold? Contact me in PM to get my bank account number.

If I remember correctly, the pre-order was $300-350 for oculus rift.

Now, if every part of VR got a $100 cut, you could assemble a VR rig for less than $1000.

It's hard to even find an Oculus rift headset these days. They sell out everywhere almost instantly.

 

[maddie]

Still confused as to what may go up against the 1070. Full Polaris chip or cut down Vega?

Full Polaris, if it exists should hit from below and small Vega should smother from above.

A cheaper solution matching or almost from below, and a slightly more expensive Vega racing away from above. Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

edit:
A GP104 die sized Vega with the inherent memory controller savings in die space will allow close to a 4096SP GPU. You only need 2 stacks of 4GB HBM2 for this so the interposer size drops by close to half of the one in Fiji. A total of 4 components versus 6 for Fiji to assemble the unit. I see a big saving in costs relative to Fiji and if Nano sold for $500, what might we expect? The 1070 and 1080 are going to get squeezed with this.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Vega is suppose to be more powerful right? But if it's not released until October /November or 2017 then it's not really competing against the 1070. I'm just confused I guess. Seems like amd's competition was 2 480 cards vs 1070.

More powerful than Polaris? Yes.

 

[Mopetar]

Full Polaris, if it exists should hit from below and small Vega should smother from above.

A cheaper solution matching or almost from below, and a slightly more expensive Vega racing away from above. Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Even if that's true it's not going to matter that much. Nvidia has a much stronger brand and can flex more marketing muscle if necessary. AMD is going to be able to regain share, and I think it makes more sense for them not to but heads with NV at the high-end when each can soak up their own market segments. If the 8 GB 480 comes in at below $250 for third party chips with good coolers, I think it will do extremely well.

Also, I still don't think we'll see P10 be branded as a 490. Sure adding an additional X to what would then be RX 480X is a bit ridiculous, but no one calls the cards by their full names. It'll just be a 480X, just like there was a 380X. No one bothers to call it an R9 380X.

 

[Piroko]

1. Apple doesn't sell that many computers with discrete GPU's. The math does not in anyway add up unless yields are in the toilet and this 230mm2 chip is Fermi 1.0 broken.

I believe Apple is #5 on world wide PC shipments with ~7.5% volume share and has probably the highest percentage of bundled discrete cards of all of the top 10 vendors.

2. Apple never got a 384-bit Tonga chip.

Isn't that part of the cost assessment of Apple more than AMD? If Apple prefers a bin that only needs eight BGA memory packages over one that needs twelve BGA packages and cut down Tonga is the best fit, then why wouldn't you as a company sell this cut down bin to Apple?

 

[sze5003]

Even if that's true it's not going to matter that much. Nvidia has a much stronger brand and can flex more marketing muscle if necessary. AMD is going to be able to regain share, and I think it makes more sense for them not to but heads with NV at the high-end when each can soak up their own market segments. If the 8 GB 480 comes in at below $250 for third party chips with good coolers, I think it will do extremely well.

Also, I still don't think we'll see P10 be branded as a 490. Sure adding an additional X to what would then be RX 480X is a bit ridiculous, but no one calls the cards by their full names. It'll just be a 480X, just like there was a 380X. No one bothers to call it an R9 380X.

Yea $250 for a 8gb 480 seems like a very good way for them to sell. If this is the case I will get one myself. But I'm guessing close to $300 is where it would land. Still though, $400 for a gtx 1070 or $100 less for the 480 will only matter if performance benches of each card make it worth that much to someone.