Sold R9 290, waiting for high end POLARIS (1440p gaming)

RyanRazer

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Dec 30, 2014
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In April, i'm going abroad to work for 4 months. It means i'll be away from my PC till start of August. As Polaris is rumoured to come out and there are rough estimations for this summer i decided to sell my R9 290. Prices already dropped due to refreshed 200->300 series although, it's pretty much the same GPU...
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I decided to sell it now as then it will be 2 generations old GPU and it'll be harder to sell. So i got 215€ for it while i bought it for 250€ half a year ago. Not such a bad deal, if you ask me.

My plan was to add another 200-250€ and buy a some Polaris in August for about 450€. For that price i expect to get some high end GPU. Not new fury range enthusiast GPU ofc but pretty high end...

My plan is not to play in 4K since i don't have 4K monitor but i will get a 1440p/144Hz one. So I'll play 1440p @60FPS and competitive FPS like BF5 at 1080p @120FPS.

Q1: Do you think i'll my plan is viable and i'll be able to get this kind of performance?

Q2: Do you think a high end GPU will even be released by August or we'll have to wait?

Q3: Will Polaris be high end, or do we have to wait vor vega?! :hmm:


I kinda hope they'll put 4gb of HMB on Polaris since i don't think you need more than 4GB anyway, unless you are rocking mods and/or 4K. I've seen comparisons 8gb vs 4gb variant of same card and even 2gb vs 4gb variant and performance was negligible. Plus, if you have so memory so fast, you don't need as much of it. After all it's just a storage for temp files running in and out.
Anyways, i hope i wont have to be waiting till nov/dec to get new graphics card :/
 
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Bacon1

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Feb 14, 2016
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Worst case the Polaris 10 will be slightly better performance than your 290, but much better heat/power usage and also will probably come in at $250-300.

Either way, if you don't need your machine for now you made a good bet.
 

MrTeal

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Dec 7, 2003
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You sold the 290 for a great price, so that helps. Right now it's a little uncertain what AMD's lineup is going to look like this summer when Polaris launches and if there will be any high end parts in the $500 range, or whether they'll come later. As Bacon1 said though, the new cards might end up in the 290X/390X performance area. Worst case if you're wanting a big upgrade is to buy a used 290 when you get back after Polaris hits for less than you sold it for, and ride out the half year until Vega launches.
 

RyanRazer

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Dec 30, 2014
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Worst case the Polaris 10 will be slightly better performance than your 290, but much better heat/power usage and also will probably come in at $250-300.

Either way, if you don't need your machine for now you made a good bet.

You sold the 290 for a great price, so that helps. Right now it's a little uncertain what AMD's lineup is going to look like this summer when Polaris launches and if there will be any high end parts in the $500 range, or whether they'll come later. As Bacon1 said though, the new cards might end up in the 290X/390X performance area. Worst case if you're wanting a big upgrade is to buy a used 290 when you get back after Polaris hits for less than you sold it for, and ride out the half year until Vega launches.

Hmm, if there is no Polaris worth upgrading to, i might go for R9 380 which retails for 220€ atm. By the time Polaris is out i hope that drops a few €s... I can wait half a year for vega with that...

Anyways, i hope that trend of AMD continues, that they first release high end cards and later on mid and low end ones.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. I just wish they came out with some more solid info.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
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No new high end until 2017 most likely. Fury will probably be top dog from AMD for a while...
 

exar333

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290 performance is available in mobiles...that might be a better option for you in the interim?
 
Feb 19, 2009
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We're getting mid-range chips mid-year, Pascal's GP104 and Polaris 10/11. I don't know how big GP104 is, but Polaris 10 is not a huge chip.

In theory it can likely get Fury performance at ~100W. So that's pretty good. Two of those would be a good 4K gaming setup with low power.
 

R0H1T

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Jan 12, 2013
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We might get a successor to R9 Fury(non X) with thermals & TDP closer to a certain GTX 960, anything over & above that (performance wise) will probably require GDDR5x & some more time.
 

Ancalagon44

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Feb 17, 2010
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I believe Vega 10 and Vega 11 will be the next iteration of higher end AMD GPUs. Both are slated to use HBM2, which points to them being high end.

Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 are rumoured to be something like 120mm² and 240mm² respectively, which means they would be low and mid range respectively.
 

R0H1T

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Jan 12, 2013
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I believe Vega 10 and Vega 11 will be the next iteration of higher end AMD GPUs. Both are slated to use HBM2, which points to them being high end.

Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 are rumoured to be something like 120mm² and 240mm² respectively, which means they would be low and mid range respectively.
If you're talking about my post then I should clarify that big Polaris should be very close to vanilla Fury, in terms of performance, with lots of OC headroom, just like the first batch of 7970, of course it wouldn't (& shouldn't) be priced in the same (market) segment of ~500$ D:
 

RyanRazer

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Dec 30, 2014
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If you're talking about my post then I should clarify that big Polaris should be very close to vanilla Fury, in terms of performance, with lots of OC headroom, just like the first batch of 7970, of course it wouldn't (& shouldn't) be priced in the same (market) segment of ~500$ D:

Woow, id be happy with fury class performance for 500€ :) it is enough for 1440p gaming...
Right now i see sapphire nitro fury for 580€. If polaris and vega weren't on the horizon I'd might even consider going for it... Maaybe

But since we didn't see major upgrade since 2013 (200 series) i really think this one is the one to go for. Lets just hope that the big polaris is a powerful one or that vega comes out before winter :/ (nov/dec)
 
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Ancalagon44

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Feb 17, 2010
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Don't bet money on what that site says.

Well the slide about Vega does come from AMD themselves. So I think it is fairly legit.

Vega 10 and 11 use HBM2, while Polaris uses GDDR5/X. Vega is only coming out in 2017, although probably early in 2017.

The bigger Polaris might come close to Fury's performance, depending on memory bandwidth. That is coming out this year.
 

RyanRazer

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Dec 30, 2014
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Well the slide about Vega does come from AMD themselves. So I think it is fairly legit.

Vega 10 and 11 use HBM2, while Polaris uses GDDR5/X. Vega is only coming out in 2017, although probably early in 2017.

The bigger Polaris might come close to Fury's performance, depending on memory bandwidth. That is coming out this year.

I think gpu is the bottleneck atm. Like i already said up there, i saw same rig with 4gb variant and 8gb variant of samegpu and there was usually literally no fps difference. Unless you use mods and 4k i think as for memory goes, we are fine. Especially if polaris get ddr5x which has double the speed.

I'm concerned about gpu performance. If that matches fury then I'm happy. But I'm afraid pol10 and 11 are for low end + laptops and medium class desktop computers respectively. We'll see.
 
Feb 19, 2009
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Polaris 11 is low-end, Polaris 10 is mid-range. This is clear already.

But Polaris 10 mid-range on next-gen node, should rival Fury on performance at ~100W, 2.5x perf/w.

That kind of performance class is an upgrade for many gamers.
 

Bacon1

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Feb 14, 2016
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Polaris 10 was running Hitman in DX12 @ 1440p 60fps @ ultra settings, which means its as fast as Fury X / 980 TI.