Of course that isn't the whole story for mining, it comes down to how much you can mine per watt. The mining software doesn't do a very good job using all the resources of Fiji (often mines very close to Hawaii) but people still buy Nano Furys for mining because the MH/Watt is lower than with Hawaii. If Polaris is "good enough" people with lots of capital who are doing mining as a serious business endeavour will buy them up to use in large mining farms, while smaller miner might instead jump on the 290s and 390s gamers are selling to get money for an upgrade. That might be the best case scenario for gamers who want a 480 for gaming and who plan to sell an old AMD card to buy that 480.
You hit the nail on the head.
If we take a 390 OC 1100 at 280W ~ 30MH/sec x 4 = 1120W (very risky to run on a single 1000W PSU). Cost $280 x 4 = $1120
vs.
RX 480 x 6 = $200 x 6 = $1200 USD (a bit more $), but if each uses 150W, that's only 900W. It's a lot more easier to run 6x RX 480s on a single 1000W unit than max overclocked 390s on the same unit.
Why does this matter? Because if RX 480 mines just 20MH/sec, that means it'll be easier to put together 6x RX480 + 1000W PSU rigs than 4x R9 390 @ 30MH/sec on the same 1000W unit. With undervolting, the 480 should pull ahead even more.
As a card marketed to the mass market, TRG better have built up inventory quantities!
:thumbsup: Let's hope so because they have given themselves almost a month from the announcement date.
Anyway Polaris mining speed is unknown but given the relatively poor performance of the 380/X and the same bus speeds I'm not expecting more than 22-23Mh per card without a serious core bump.
That being said if with a major core bump they hash over 25Mh @ 150W while undervolted I'll be one of those guys lining up to buy 20 at launch (if I can get my hands on that many).
If these cards end up good for ether mining and the price of ether holds you'll find it very difficult to get your hands on one regardless of availability
It doesn't even need to hit 25Mh/sec @ 150W to make sense.
Think about it 6x 20MH/sec @ 900W vs. 4x 30MH/sec @ 1000-1100W. Right there alone RX 480 sounds like a win. Of course it could go either way because we might see R9 390 cards on sale for ~ $200. Then the choice is less clear.
Anyway, as I said earlier, if AMD truly intends to target the
quarterly 8-10M mainstream/performance dGPU market segment with P10, the demand from miners should be a drop in the bucket for them. They better have 1M cards ready for launch by June 29th.