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

[Qwertilot]

?!!!? I know people hated the FE tax but that's a much better way to deal with this than to produce something for reviews with a self evidently/purposefully dire cooler.

Always a mix up possible of course maybe (well they almost certainly were) they were hoping to hit a lower TDP, ordered the coolers and then couldn't change them in time.

TDP matters, because how on earth are they going to scale this up to chase the 1070/80 and beyond?

 

[Mercennarius]

I don't even know what to say to that - they deliberately made a crappy cooler just so it'd be easier to make something better? Are they *trying* to fail?

Could be that for what ever reason this cooler design allowed them to have a starting price of $199....which at this performance level is a huge selling point.

 

[selni]

Ok, just arrived. Is this a joke?

Is the card is actually slower than a Radeon R9 390 (non-X)?



Can't match a Radeon R9 390X even at 1080p, and barely faster than the slowest Hawaii (Radeon R9 290) at 4K.

It's about where expected at 1080p (between 390 and 390X), but yeah after that it gets ugly fast.

 

[Sweepr]

I don't see 2.8x better performance per watt either, can't even match 2-year old 28nm planar Maxwell.

 

[lupi]

So judging from the experts here, this card sucks because it isn't a 1080, doesn't do 4k with the best, and doesn't sip juice like an igpu.

Thank God none of that is a concern for the vast majority of pc gamers.

 

[krumme]

By pure guesswork?



And how did you come to that fictional conclusion? What we do know is Polaris is an outsourced design to a "cost effective" area in the world. its very heavily synthetized and its using the inferior 14LPP. In short, poor IC design, poor uarch and poor node.

I came to the fictional conclusion by reading Ryans arch description of Maxwell and looking at diesize for a starter. There is good explanation here.

For a poor design all over its pretty good they can sell a card of half price the 1070 with 63% like perf. My guess its about availability of wafer capacity and good desing and not because nv design or tsmc process sucks or whatever professionals is labelled in this forum.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

More and more I think about it, RX 480 isn't a fail, it's just 'ok' - and that's almost as bad.

The card itself won't be affected unless GTX 1060 launches soon. The average buyer isn't going to know about the failed expectations, they're going to see reviews mentioning it's good-but-not-great and they'll get a solid bang-for-your-buck card. The problem is what it means for Vega and the future of the industry. Unless AMD pulls a rabbit out of their hat, Vega isn't looking promising.

Honestly, this is making me worried for the future of the entire market. I was hoping RX 480 would be disruptive and bring AMD back into the running, and now it's only ok. And the other option is Nvidia and $50 increases for each tier every generation. :'(

 

[Zstream]

I wonder if people will learn _this time_ not to trust the hype and viral PR marketing. 2.8x perf/watt, ye right...

Please just shut up already! The card is the best performance per dollar out on the market.

 

[krumme]

Who knows, but using GloFo probably saved them a pile of cash if that take or pay agreement is still in effect.

Untill 2024.
The reality is to get the best of it.
Better get some leaking dies than paying a fine. Lol

 

[mohit9206]

Welp maybe the RX470 will be the real sleeper hit at $149?

 

[Sweepr]

Wow, 163W. Talk about a lot of hype and BS. 110W my rear end!

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/RX_480/images/power_average.png

15W idle as well.

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/RX_480/images/power_idle.png

Power consumption is a complete disaster! So much for all the LIES and HYPE!

What happened to the 110W power consumption that was parroted around here?

Funny that 100-110W under gaming loads was repeated as gospel truth here without a single piece of evidence. AMD clearly didn't put 150W in their marketing slide a month ago for no reason. Ok, I was not expecting Pascal perf/watt, but worse than Maxwell from a FinFET design with many architectural changes? What puzzles me is why 6-pin if it clearly needs more juice?

 

[gdansk]

I don't even know what to say to that - they deliberately made a crappy cooler just so it'd be easier to make something better? Are they *trying* to fail?

It's also a lower bill of materials.

 

[antihelten]

I don't even know what to say to that - they deliberately made a crappy cooler just so it'd be easier to make something better? Are they *trying* to fail?

To be honest it isn't necessarily a bad strategy, if the AIB version is the main version AMD is betting on (since it makes the AIB version look better by comparison), but if that was the case then we should be able to buy AIB versions right now instead of only reference models.

 

[Zstream]

The more I read the more I seem to want to go with a custom 1070. At the same time I don't want to spend $400+ unless I go ahead and spend more for a 1440p monitor and say what the heck why not.

Or at least I can wait some more until custom aib 480 versions are out but I need to give this card to my brother as his PC is being crippled right now without a GPU.

No offense but that's one of the dumbest statements I've heard. If you expected this $240 card to run at 1440p or greater, you either are misguided or severely wanting a Ferrari at Honda prices...

This card is meant for 1920*1080 and has the best price for performance in quite a few years. I'll be trading in my 280 for this card and will enjoy it for a long time.

 

[DownTheSky]

So judging from the experts here, this card sucks because it isn't a 1080, doesn't do 4k with the best, and doesn't sip juice like an igpu.

Thank God none of that is a concern for the vast majority of pc gamers.

No. The card sucks because it isn't any better than a 2 year old 28nm gtx 970.

 

[Riek]

What is this nonsense about watt. Who cares if its 120 or 150w in a desktop.
People buy for performance per cost.
Efficiency cost.
Comparing it to a 400 usd cards just shows it.
You can buy this card or a 960.
The problem is not desktop. Its mobile.

I believe, like many, that power efficiency matters alot when talking about the architecture/design of a card.

And polaris is (although there are outliers) pretty bad at it.
What does this mean? well scaling up such an architecture to compete with 1070/1080 and higher will be a huge problem without major design changes.

Assume linear power consumption to performance, amd will need 290W to match the 1080 with such an architecture. So yes it does matter when talking about the architecture that is polaris.

When talking about the 480 in its price bucket, it is simply the best value money can buy with the current advertised prices and during the time nvidia doesn't launch 1060 or floods the market with 980.

 

[mohit9206]

According to Anandtech, RX80 power consumption is 45% less than 390.Whatever happened to 2.5X per/watt improvement?

 

[coercitiv]

What puzzles me is why 6-pin if it clearly needs more juice?

This puzzles me too.

 

[sze5003]

No offense but that's one of the dumbest statements I've heard. If you expected this $240 card to run at 1440p or greater, you either are misguided or severely wanting a Ferrari at Honda prices...

This card is meant for 1920*1080 and has the best price for performance in quite a few years. I'll be trading in my 280 for this card and will enjoy it for a long time.

I never expected it to run ultra at 1440p. I expected greater than 40% increase from my 7970ghz. Some people upgrade at greater than 25% others at 50 or more. Not disappointed just mehh.

Price doesn't really matter for me if it gives the performance related to why I should upgrade.

 

[krumme]

Ok, just arrived. Is this a joke?
.

No. Its a joke linking to 1440 instead of 1080 where its exactly 390x perf. Its a 200 230 card right.
But what about reading the thread instead of just popping by with the usual.
And what about linking to the value charts.
Is this a joke?

 

[zinfamous]

Why does [H}'s one consumes less then a 970 while other cards are at 160 Watts? WTF

Reference cards are a mixed bag? Shocker. Buy AIB everyone.

Weren't they denied review cards? So I can only assume that those folks are pulling data from a test with different drivers and/or some other out-of-lab test compared to their normal scheme and compared to other sites that got official AMD review packages.

 

[antihelten]

According to Anandtech, RX80 power consumption is 45% less than 390.Whatever happened to 2.5X per/watt improvement?

It was quite clear that we were never actually going to get the 2.8x perf/W improvement since that was based on board power and not actual power usage. Even so it is a bit shocking that Polaris 10 is this bad.

Weren't they denied review cards? So I can only assume that those folks are pulling data from a test with different drivers and/or some other out-of-lab test compared to their normal scheme and compared to other sites that got official AMD review packages.

No they were never denied a 480 card, that was some idea invented by various posters to try and explain Kyle's saltiness.

 

[ShintaiDK]

According to Anandtech, RX80 power consumption is 45% less than 390.Whatever happened to 2.5X per/watt improvement?

It was a lie obvious. It was also clear to anyone that wasn't on the hype train.

 

[24601]

I never expected it to run ultra at 1440p. I expected greater than 40% increase from my 7970ghz. Some people upgrade at greater than 25% others at 50 or more. Not disappointed just mehh.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=38324716&highlight=#post38324716

You will never get better performance per dollar for the next 4-6 years (However long 14/16nm lasts for GPUs)

 

[Zstream]

I never expected it to run ultra at 1440p. I expected greater than 40% increase from my 7970ghz. Some people upgrade at greater than 25% others at 50 or more. Not disappointed just mehh.

Price doesn't really matter for me if it gives the performance related to why I should upgrade.

Why don't you upgrade based on price? If you had $450 to spend, the 480 would never have been in your market range.