Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

Seanspeed · 22 Jun 2016 at 18:42

GizF1 said:
Been lurking for a while, I'm used to crazies on the autosport forum

Hey now.

kalniel said:
Liquid VR was ~~announced~~relaunched with Polaris way back. There are lots of ~~specific~~ technologies that will help VR, particularly the async stuff.

While much was made about AMD's asynchronous abilities and how that translates to VR, it's turned out to be quite trivial. Oculus SDK uses asynchronous timewarp, which is where this capability was supposed to be 'disasterous' for Nvidia hardware, but it's actually turned out just fine.

And as far as I know, there isn't really much hardware-specific advantages new to Polaris. I think much of the VR beneficial stuff is going to be software-related. But like Nvidia, none of these special features have yet to be implemented into anything yet as far as I know.

I'm guessing the VR angle for the 480 is mainly related to entry price, not necessarily extra special capabilities.

RedGoose · 22 Jun 2016 at 18:43

motiv said:
I keep hearing VR as a spec, how can this be so? Surely any card can drive a VR headset? It all depends on the graphics within the game.

There are certain standards which developers shoot for. The specific numbers we're talking about is a benchmark that steam has to test for "vr readiness."

Seanspeed · 22 Jun 2016 at 18:45

motiv said:
I keep hearing VR as a spec, how can this be so? Surely any card can drive a VR headset? It all depends on the graphics within the game.

Yea, for the most part.

But both Valve and especially Oculus have basically early on made it quite known that they recommend 970/290-level hardware for VR, not just for consumer benefit, but so that developers could keep that in mind as a minimum target. If you dont have that level hardware, there might still be the odd title that runs ok, but you're going to miss out on the large majority of content.

D1craig · 22 Jun 2016 at 18:51

AllBodies said:
It was actually quite bad when you look at real-world consumption.

The 1080 is only ~1.55x higher performance per watt than the 980. The 980 being the most efficient 28nm card, and the 1080 currently being the most efficient 16/14nm card.

1.55x for a supposed Arch change and process change is actually quite disappointing historically.

This isn't your ordinary normal die shrink though. This is a double shrink as far as we are lead to believe. They skipped one so it is extra disappointing

Seanspeed · 22 Jun 2016 at 18:53

D1craig said:
This isn't your ordinary normal die shrink though. This is a double shrink as far as we are lead to believe. They skipped one so it is extra disappointing

Well 14nm/16nm Finfet isn't necessarily a true jump from 20nm. It's a bit of misnomer, really.

Mauller · 22 Jun 2016 at 18:59

Seanspeed said:
Well 14nm/16nm Finfet isn't necessarily a true jump from 20nm. It's a bit of misnomer, really.

yeah, they may have ended up adapting 28nm with finfets if 14/16nm took any longer.

AllBodies · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:03

D1craig said:
This isn't your ordinary normal die shrink though. This is a double shrink as far as we are lead to believe. They skipped one so it is extra disappointing

Seanspeed said:
Well 14nm/16nm Finfet isn't necessarily a true jump from 20nm. It's a bit of misnomer, really.

Yeah I don't think either company was truly claiming it. It's really just 20nm enhanced with FinFets and some minor other improvements.

So at very very best you're looking at a 1.5 node jump from 28nm, but really it's just a 1 node jump.

The technical definition of a full node is when you can fit double the transistors in the same space. And so far we've seen less than 2x from Nvidia. Certainly not 4x (2 nodes).

Mr Latte · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:05

five8five said:
The 1060 is rumoured for July. BTW you didn't answer my question?

This threads not about the GTX1060 if you or others want to wait to see how it does compared to the RX480 certainly feel free to do so. I see no basis yet to expect a 1060 to beat an RX480 or if it is going to be priced similarly and worth waiting for instead.

GizF1 · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:17

Hot hardware preview http://hothardware.com/news/amd-radeon-rx-480-hands-on-preview-testing-underway

BluD · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:26

Lol look how many pages this thread has, has there ever been this much interest in a midrange card before?

Mauller · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:27

The pcb is not that much bigger in comparisson to the nano.

Hotlinked image.

Scougar · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:27

GizF1 said:
Hot hardware preview http://hothardware.com/news/amd-radeon-rx-480-hands-on-preview-testing-underway

Well that told us nothing new whatsoever

GizF1 · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:29

Scougar said:
Well that told us nothing new whatsoever

The Radeon logos on the top and side, however, feature a brand new font and the case bracket sports additional venting and accommodations for the updated display output configuration – which consists of a trio of DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI output.

Personally this excites me very much lol

Greebo · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:30

GAC said:
i thought they said something at computex about it having vr wizardry in it, have to rewatch that now when i get chance.

They mentioned about it being better at sending each picture to each eye, I'm sure of it.

Scougar · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:31

GizF1 said:
The Radeon logos on the top and side, however, feature a brand new font and the case bracket sports additional venting and accommodations for the updated display output configuration – which consists of a trio of DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI output.

Personally this excites me very much lol

We have had photo's of the card for days.... ???

Is it HDMI 2.0 ? A load of crud clickbait from that website.

Mauller · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:38

Looking at the 290x blower cooler, you can see why they changed the design and omitted the DVI ports. Far larger grills and more of them on the RX480 in comparison.

GizF1 · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:39

I'm more interested that they have begun testing a week early , either they are very thorough or there may be something in these rumors about the 24th.

Tweak town posted they were testing as well

Finners · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:39

Guys I'm trying to figure out the mounting hole spacing from the pictures we have, Can anyone find out the physical dimensions of a GDDR5 chip? I cant find it my google skills have betrayed me.

I think its the only thing I can take a reference from to have a best guess at the mounting hole spacing

DeadMan3000 · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:41

GizF1 said:
I'm more interested that they have begun testing a week early , either they are very thorough or there may be something in these rumors about the 24th.

Tweak town posted they were testing as well

To be honest. It's a long wait until the 29th with so many leaks going around. But we shall see.

Mauller · 22 Jun 2016 at 19:44

Finners said:
Guys I'm trying to figure out the mounting hole spacing from the pictures we have, Can anyone find out the physical dimensions of a GDDR5 chip? I cant find it my google skills have betrayed me.

I think its the only thing I can take a reference from to have a best guess at the mounting hole spacing

i think people have mentioned that the mounting holes are still in the same places as on previous parts. But with the positioning of the VRM,s you might not be able to fit current water blocks if that is what you are thinking.