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

[Abwx]

Here comes the price cuts:

- Radeon R9 390X down to 299 Euro
- Radeon R9 390 down to 254 Euro
- Radeon R9 380X down to 179 Euro

www.computerbase.de/2016-06/radeon-r9-390-x-380-x-preissenkung
Chiphell.

There s two articles at Computebase.de about price cuts, here the one that you "forgot" to link :


http://www.computerbase.de/2016-06/...e-der-gtx-980-ti-gtx-980-und-gtx-970-purzeln/

970 as low as 250€....

 

[Yakk]

AMD played very well to keep the GPUs completely secret, and at this point, so close to official launch we still do not know everything for sure.

Yeah, looks like AMD kept it close and only discussed Polaris with trustworthy contracts news outlets to prevent most leaks.

They'll always leaks, but AMD seem to know how to manage them. Reminds me of Eyefinity.

 

[lukart]

Yeah, looks like AMD kept it close and only discussed Polaris with trustworthy contracts news outlets to prevent most leaks.

They'll always leaks, but AMD seem to know how to manage them. Reminds me of Eyefinity.

Yes, that was a really well kept secret only few knew, key engineers plus they would talk with codes 😀 would be funny to work like that

 

[MrTeal]

Basically if the specs Sweepr posted are correct, then the RX 460 should be about equal to a GTX 960, which seems like a fairly decent deal at $100

Yeah, using TPU's numbers from a few months ago the 270X and 960 were tied, with the new game mix they have the 960 ahead by a couple percentage points.
270X-class performance seems pretty likely; if correct the 270X would have 25% more shaders but the 460 would be clocked 24% higher, and the 270X would have almost twice the memory bandwidth but no colour compression.
Considering a 4GB 960 still goes for $170 after waiting 6 weeks for a rebate, a launch price of $100 would be a massive increase in perf/$.

 

[Head1985]

Specs really seem to be all over the place for RX 470, I've seen reports of 1536, 1792, 2048 and 2304 shaders for it.

Either way the benches AMD released, showed the 470 as 78% faster than a 270X in the 3 games tested, which would make it roughly equal to a 390 (a 390 is 77% faster than a 270X). If we go by the specs above and assume linear scaling (which of course are never really the case), then that would make the RX 480 35% faster than the RX 470 (unless bandwidth is a bottleneck*).

The 480 being 35% faster than the 470 would make it roughly equal to a 980 Ti. That level of performance would be well above the majority of other rumours out there, so I would take those specs with a grain of salt.

*If bandwidth is the main bottleneck, then 480 should be about the level of R9 Fury.

rx470 is 60-65% faster than 270x not 78%
Firestrike 63%
Ashes 64%
Overwath 59%
Hitman 114%

R9 390 is 75% faster than 270x so rx270 will be slower than r9 390.
It should be at 290 level here(64% faster than 270x)

If rx 480 will be 22% faster than rx 470 it will be at GTX980/fury performance level.

 

[MrTeal]

rx470 is 60-65% faster than 270x not 78%
Firestrike 63%
Ashes 64%
Overwath 59%
Hitman 114%

R9 390 is 75% faster than 270x so rx270 will be slower than r9 390.
It should be at 290 level here(64% faster than 270x)
If rx 480 will be 22% faster than rx 470 it will be at GTX980/fury performance level.

Are you just tossing out the Hitman number? It's ~60-65% faster in the first three games you listed, but 75% faster on average across all of them. Obviously we'll have to wait for real benchmarks on shipping clocks to get a good idea on a wide array of games, but the Hitman number shows a pretty marked improvement over a 270X in certain cases.

 

[Qwertilot]

That hitman number is something of an enormous outlier vs the other 3 so putting it in a straight arithmetic mean is basically nonsensical 🙂
(So is forming a plain average from those 4 results really.).

 

[mohit9206]

is r9 470 really is as powerful as 290 for $149 then it will be like probably the greatest $149 card ever. But i don't think it will be that powerful. I don't trust all those leaked benchmarks. My guess is r9 380x performance for $150 which is honestly good enough. 4gb vram should be more than enough for it.

 

[96Firebird]

380X can already be gotten for less than $180, I don't think $150 would be ground-breaking...

 

[MrTeal]

380X can already be gotten for less than $180, I don't think $150 would be ground-breaking...

Yeah, but the 290 is 33% faster than a 380x. If the 470@$150 is equal to a 290, then (133/150)/(100/180) means a 470 would have 60% better perf/$ than the outgoing sale price of a 380X. That's a massive jump, considering that new cards usually give close to even performance/$ numbers with the outgoing card prices.

 

[mohit9206]

380X can already be gotten for less than $180, I don't think $150 would be ground-breaking...

Yeah but 290 is only like 10% slower than 390 so i don't think AMD would like having 470 and 480 so close to each other in performance. So although its nice to be optimistic, its better not to expect too much. 380x performance for $150 is still better than $180. It's not groundbreaking but not every product has to be groundbreaking. Can't risk canabilizing 480 sales with 470.
1070 is not groundbreaking either but still received much praise in regards to performance per dollar.

 

[Killrose]

I dont think the low prices are aimed at current AMD owners as much as they are at nvidia owners who are looking to ugrade. AMD knows it has to steal customers away from nvidia and keep them once they cross over. They have to have more than just overall performance, they have to bait them with price. Especially the people who have been with nvidia for several cycles now.

 

[escrow4]

Has AMD updated the UVD decoder for HEVC 8/10 bit decoding plus support for VP9?

 

[ethebubbeth]

Has AMD updated the UVD decoder for HEVC 8/10 bit decoding plus support for VP9?

AMD slides indicate support for 4k HEVC encode/decode. I can't recall if they added support for VP9.

 

[sirmo]

Has AMD updated the UVD decoder for HEVC 8/10 bit decoding plus support for VP9?

We don't know, but Bristol Ridge has it so it would make sense that Polaris has it as well.

 

[Silverforce11]

That hitman number is something of an enormous outlier vs the other 3 so putting it in a straight arithmetic mean is basically nonsensical 🙂
(So is forming a plain average from those 4 results really.).

Discard Accelerator my friend. I told you guys they use Hitman as the demo because of so much overdraw in that game on current GPUs.

It's the perfect scenario for Polaris GCN to break that complex scene down to a simple one by discarding all the NPCs behind walls etc.

Robert Hallock told a youtuber in an interview, Polaris 10 was running Hitman 1440p at >60fps on ULTRA. This is faster than Fury X can because these cards get lower min FPS.

In games with high scene complexity and lots of overdraw, I am expecting Polaris to shoot ahead. Whereas games like Ashes of the Singularity, we're looking top down view, there's zero overdraw going on so there's no benefit for that new hardware feature.

 

[itsmydamnation]

Polaris could be the card for massive mod installed oblivion/skyrim 😎😀.

 

[sontin]

60FPS is much slower than a 290: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/hitman_2016_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html

The 290 would be 26% faster...

 

[Silverforce11]

60FPS is much slower than a 290: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/hitman_2016_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html

The 290 would be 26% faster...

1440p. >60 FPS.

390X averages 60 FPS per your Guru3D link.

You can find the Min/Avg here: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Hitman-Spiel-6333/Specials/DirectX-12-Benchmark-Test-1188758/

Not all games will benefit from the Discard Accelerator, games with low scene complexity, less overdraw, or games that have very aggressive and good culling steps etc.. but for some games, I imagine The Division, Watch Dogs 2, GTA V type games, it should be good.

 

[poofyhairguy]

is r9 470 really is as powerful as 290 for $149 then it will be like probably the greatest $149 card ever. But i don't think it will be that powerful. I don't trust all those leaked benchmarks. My guess is r9 380x performance for $150 which is honestly good enough. 4gb vram should be more than enough for it.

The gap between the 380x and the 290 isn't so huge if you consider the throttling reference model.

 

[garagisti]

AMD slides indicate support for 4k HEVC encode/decode. I can't recall if they added support for VP9.

Yep, 4K, 10 bit with HDR. However, i have nowhere seen playready certified logo. Apparently MS is to use that certification to allow streaming of 4k to PC, and even playback of 4k UHD on PC.

 

[el etro]

1440p. >60 FPS.

390X averages 60 FPS per your Guru3D link.

You can find the Min/Avg here: http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Hitman-Spiel-6333/Specials/DirectX-12-Benchmark-Test-1188758/

Not all games will benefit from the Discard Accelerator, games with low scene complexity, less overdraw, or games that have very aggressive and good culling steps etc.. but for some games, I imagine The Division, Watch Dogs 2, GTA V type games, it should be good.

The Hitman test was done late March, drivers from both camps were not too much optimized for the game at that point. Yet Polaris 10 managed to score 60FPS average on it. No way we will be getting less than 390x performance.

 

[3DVagabond]

That hitman number is something of an enormous outlier vs the other 3 so putting it in a straight arithmetic mean is basically nonsensical 🙂
(So is forming a plain average from those 4 results really.).

With such a low sample number it's hard to know what's an outlier. It could end up that in DX12 it could average much higher than 60%-65%. We don't know?

 

[grimpr]

Discard Accelerator my friend. I told you guys they use Hitman as the demo because of so much overdraw in that game on current GPUs.

It's the perfect scenario for Polaris GCN to break that complex scene down to a simple one by discarding all the NPCs behind walls etc.

Robert Hallock told a youtuber in an interview, Polaris 10 was running Hitman 1440p at >60fps on ULTRA. This is faster than Fury X can because these cards get lower min FPS.

In games with high scene complexity and lots of overdraw, I am expecting Polaris to shoot ahead. Whereas games like Ashes of the Singularity, we're looking top down view, there's zero overdraw going on so there's no benefit for that new hardware feature.

You're doing pretty good investigative tech journalism, i'm subscribed also on your tube channel...the Discard Accelerator is one of the most interesting things about Polaris, its AMDs final solution implemented in hardware to over tesselation "tricks" and other well known fancy mechanics that some closed black box devs are using....besides that it helps tremendously in performance per watt metrics since it lessens the load on the gpu on those complex scenes, very interesting stuff which demands further analysis on its workings, i guess this is the feature "Zlatan" mentioned in one of his posts that Polaris will be very very fast in certain situations.

 

[Maverick177]

Discard Accelerator my friend. I told you guys they use Hitman as the demo because of so much overdraw in that game on current GPUs.

It's the perfect scenario for Polaris GCN to break that complex scene down to a simple one by discarding all the NPCs behind walls etc.

Robert Hallock told a youtuber in an interview, Polaris 10 was running Hitman 1440p at >60fps on ULTRA. This is faster than Fury X can because these cards get lower min FPS.

In games with high scene complexity and lots of overdraw, I am expecting Polaris to shoot ahead. Whereas games like Ashes of the Singularity, we're looking top down view, there's zero overdraw going on so there's no benefit for that new hardware feature.

Link to that youtube video?