Polaris Refresh (RX 500 Series) Rumors

[CatMerc]

One has to wonder how much they managed to wring out of a respin to justify keeping Polaris 10 as x80 series. NVIDIA's response could be downright nasty with an opening like that.

 

[piesquared]

nm.

But i'm not seeing how a refreshed 1060 is going to compete with a refreshed RX 580 if the RX 580 has a considerable clock speed increase. From what i've been reading the 1060 is nearly tapped out.

 

[crisium]

What am I even reading?

Nvidia is changing 1060 spec to accommodate 8Gbps or 9Gbps. Up from 8Gbps only now that 9Gbps is actually available (was not last year).

That is not a rebrand. It is merely giving AIB partners a new option for higher end models.

Note that AMD spec also allows 470 and 480 to be in 8Gbps or 7Gbps. 470 with 8Gbps and 480 with 7Gbps. Opposite of what you normally see, but within spec.

 

[Mopetar]

One has to wonder how much they managed to wring out of a respin to justify keeping Polaris 10 as x80 series. NVIDIA's response could be downright nasty with an opening like that.

I don't think they got considerably much, at least in terms of IPC. If anything, I suspect it can hit higher clocks, but not necessarily efficiently as indicated by the inclusion of an 8-pin power connector instead of a 6-pin. One rumor/leak had some OC results at 1500 MHz, but it may be capable of more with good third party cooling.

The weird thing is how Vega fits into the line up. Is there a Vega 590 and a Vega Fury? If the eventual plan is for Vega to supplant Polaris across the board because the underlying tech is substantially better, we may just have another weird generation from AMD or just not see anything above 580 if they use Vega to denote generation and add extra stuff after that.

But i'm not seeing how a refreshed 1060 is going to compete with a refreshed RX 580 if the RX 580 has a considerable clock speed increase. From what i've been reading the 1060 is nearly tapped out.

They can always drop the price. NVidia never really did budge much with the 1060 pricing even when AMD cards were seeing some deep discounts with the 4GB 470 getting as low as $130. I suspect that NVidia may do just that, where the refreshed cards with faster memory take up the old $250 position and the older cards get discounted until stock runs out.

 

[caswow]

every freakin year the same discussions about rebrands...

 

[piesquared]

They can always drop the price. NVidia never really did budge much with the 1060 pricing even when AMD cards were seeing some deep discounts with the 4GB 470 getting as low as $130. I suspect that NVidia may do just that, where the refreshed cards with faster memory take up the old $250 position and the older cards get discounted until stock runs out.

So NV would introduce a rebrand with the same specs at a higher price? That wouldn't be that surprising i suppose considering. But as far as price dropping the 1060 to insert the 1060 at a higher price, AMD can just follow suit and lower the prices of the RX 4xx. It's already competitive so AMD could easily match NV's price drop. But a rebranded 1060 with 1Gps bandwidth increase won't be able to keep pace with a higher clocked RX 580. For example an RX 580 at 1060 clocks would be out of range for any GP106 chip. Not saying it will clock that high, but any decrease in clock delta and the RX 580 will pull away.

[edit]
meant GP106

 

[tential]

every freakin year the same discussions about rebrands...

AMD releases half a GPU stack at a time and rebrands the other portion (if necessary although I believe they ALWAYS should).
Not sure how people don't understand this and why they are whining about it. Literally feels like they are doing it just for the team aspect and not realizing this is just business as normal for vendors who cares....

 

[crisium]

Piesquared. You keep calling the 1060 rebranded. You keep being wrong.

 

[caswow]

this happens every generation almost every year...

 

[piesquared]

Piesquared. You keep calling the 1060 rebranded. You keep being wrong.

This seems to be a real sore spot for some reason. It must be something NV's marketing dept is desperate to avoid. Curious! Regardless, it is a 1060 rebrand, you are entitled to your own opinion though of course. But enough about the 1060 rebrand, these new Gigabyte Aorus cards are replacing the G1 Gaming cards:

https://videocardz.com/68099/exclusive-gigabyte-radeon-rx-500-series-unveiled

When Gigabyte told us that AORUS series are replacing G1 Gaming, they were serious. The first three cards are from AORUS series, with XTR 8G being the highest end. It’s a custom dual-fan WindForce solution with some RGB goodness.

 

[Mopetar]

But as far as price dropping the 1060 to insert the 1060 at a higher price, AMD can just follow suit and lower the prices of the RX 4xx. It's already competitive so AMD could easily match NV's price drop.

At some point dropping price isn't worth it. The additional sales you can get at the lower price won't offset the reduced revenue from the lower cost. NVidia has shown that they're not that interested in cutting prices and I suspect that they won't unless AMD has a substantially better product at a lower price, which probably won't happen because if AMD has a substantially better product, they'll just charge more for it.

 

[piesquared]

At some point dropping price isn't worth it. The additional sales you can get at the lower price won't offset the reduced revenue from the lower cost. NVidia has shown that they're not that interested in cutting prices and I suspect that they won't unless AMD has a substantially better product at a lower price, which probably won't happen because if AMD has a substantially better product, they'll just charge more for it.

Ok, well i was just responding to what you said would probably happen, that NV would lower prices on the 1060. I think though that NV will have no choice but to lower prices on the 1060 when they introduce the 1060 into the market. Though that is base on the assumption that RX 580 will have a notable increase in clock speed which i suspect it will.

 

[Mopetar]

Ok, well i was just responding to what you said would probably happen, that NV would lower prices on the 1060. I think though that NV will have no choice but to lower prices on the 1060 when they introduce the 1060 into the market. Though that is base on the assumption that RX 580 will have a notable increase in clock speed which i suspect it will.

I meant they probably keep the 1060 price the same, but the initial version with the slower memory speed gets a slight discount and eventually . I only see them dropping price if AMD releases a significantly improved 580 at $200, which I don't see them doing. If they have a monster card, they'll price at $250+. I'm guessing a 1060 with better memory clocks doesn't scale as well as a 480 with better core clocks, but if it keeps it close enough, NVidia probably doesn't drop prices.

 

[piesquared]

I meant they probably keep the 1060 price the same, but the initial version with the slower memory speed gets a slight discount and eventually . I only see them dropping price if AMD releases a significantly improved 580 at $200, which I don't see them doing. If they have a monster card, they'll price at $250+. I'm guessing a 1060 with better memory clocks doesn't scale as well as a 480 with better core clocks, but if it keeps it close enough, NVidia probably doesn't drop prices.

I guess that's where we differ then. I think an RX 580 with 200 MHz clock increase base clock (that's my guess) over an RX 480 would give it a healthy lead over a 1060 or a 1060, and i don't see how that wouldn't impact it's sales.

 

[crisium]

Like different memory speed 470s sharing the market (from 6.6Gbps to 8.0... or are there are 3 rebrands of 470s!), there will be various 1060s at different points. Optional 9Gbs variants will be priced the highest at equal or higher price than the RX 580 likely due to brand strength.

This seems to be a real sore spot for some reason. It must be something NV's marketing dept is desperate to avoid. Curious!

The only desperation is this spin. Ugh.

 

[piesquared]

Like different memory speed 470s sharing the market (from 6.6Gbps to 8.0... or are there are 3 rebrands of 470s!), there will be various 1060s at different points. Optional 9Gbs variants will be priced the highest at equal or higher price than the RX 580 likely due to brand strength.



The only desperation is this spin. Ugh.

Oh Gawd, enough about the 1060 rebrands already. So you think a 1GHz mhz bandwidth increase is going to compete against a 200MHz clock increase on the RX 580 for example? No way, they'll have to be priced lower than the RX 580. That's bad, they would have had a full year to plan for the 580.

 

[crisium]

So you think a 1GHz mhz bandwidth increase is going to compete against a 200MHz clock increase on the RX 580 for example?

No.

But I also don't think the 580 will be 1466MHz. Did you miss that post that dissected that 1450mhz screenshot as fake?

 

[piesquared]

No.

But I also don't think the 580 will be 1466MHz. Did you miss that post that dissected that 1450mhz screenshot as fake?

No i didn't miss it and i'm not basing it on any screenshot. But on the fact that RX 480 was AMD's very first 14nm product. In fact it was the very first 14nm LPP of any product.

 

[PhonakV30]

hard to believe that default clock is 1450Mhz.quite high.this can meant OC can go up to 1600Mhz ( at best scenario)

 

[tential]

At some point dropping price isn't worth it. The additional sales you can get at the lower price won't offset the reduced revenue from the lower cost. NVidia has shown that they're not that interested in cutting prices and I suspect that they won't unless AMD has a substantially better product at a lower price, which probably won't happen because if AMD has a substantially better product, they'll just charge more for it.

Trying to explain this concept is extremely hard.
Especially when it comes to the CPU side with Intel vs Ryzen.

 

[unseenmorbidity]

Nope, AMD has plenty of their own, especially when it comes to rebranding gpus. And actually, as far as the 1060 goes, something with the same name cannot, by definition, be a "rebrand". In fact it is quite the opposite. Giving better performance with the same "brand" while rebrands (both nVidia and AMD do it) are just the opposite, basically similar performance under a new name that implies a new product.

Actually, that is how AMD dropped to a historically low market share: offering rebrand after rebrand while nVidia was offering new, improved, more efficient products.

straw grasping taken to the next lvl...

 

[redzo]

AMD did this before with the 290/x vs 390/x. It's pretty obvious what to expect just by looking at their track record: http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-radeon-r9-390x-gaming-8g-oc-review,1.html

Performance should be easy to predict: just like a good factory OC custom rx480, but this time around out of the box.

 

[Mopetar]

Trying to explain this concept is extremely hard.
Especially when it comes to the CPU side with Intel vs Ryzen.

I'm not sure what it's hard. You can just illustrate with simple numbers.

Suppose at $200 you can sell 100 of something and make a $40 profit, or $4,000 profit. Further suppose that lowering the price by $25 will result in double the number of sales. Then you just calculate ($40 - $25) * 200 = $3,000 profit and realize that even though you can have more sales at a lower price, you don't make any additional money. You can even go in the opposite direction, and suppose that increasing cost by $50 would halve sales, but ($40 + $50) * 50 = $4,500 which means its more profitable to sell at a higher price even though you won't get as many sales.

It's not quite that easy in reality because you have a mix of fixed costs, per unit costs, and there's a lack of perfect information regarding expected sales, but it illustrates the overall concept rather nicely.

AMD did this before with the 290/x vs 390/x. It's pretty obvious what to expect just by looking at their track record: http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-radeon-r9-390x-gaming-8g-oc-review,1.html

Performance should be easy to predict: just like a good factory OC custom rx480, but this time around out of the box.

I think it might be a bit better. When the 290 came out, AMD had already been using the 28 nm process for over a year. With Polaris being the first 14 nm product, there's likely more room for them to improve.

 

[piesquared]

Just saw this at [H] via WCCFT, although it appears to be from a few days ago and most have probably seen it by now.

If these scores are accurate what can NV respond with? Are they forced to drop the 1070 price way down and rebrand the 1070 with 1GHz faster memory to fill the gap?

 

[IEC]

Even if those scores and clocks are legit, the 1070 is still a half tier to a tier above in performance.

It just means that if the RX 580 is really clocked above 1400MHz out of box and is capable of 1500MHz+ OCs, it will be nipping at the heels of the Fury/X in most games at 1440p/4K, and potentially surpassing it at 1080p. Now if it actually ends up being a little bit cheaper than the RX 480 (Lithuanian price leak example is ~5% cheaper) then it would be a solid offering.