AMD Polaris architecture – GCN 4.0

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But if you have a £240 390 (or a 290), how impressed are you going to be with a £200 390X?

Maybe if there hadn't been a die shrink, you might forgive them...

I would because even on special offer the cheapest I have seen on OcUK is like £280 on special offer and the card is still around £300 at least at most retailers.

So,at least a £100 saving,less power draw,shorter card and probably better DX12 performance too and a massive upgrade over the R9 380X,let alone the GTX960 4GB I have in this rig,which is now £170(!).

The Polaris 10,AMD demoed, fitted in an Elite 110,which can barely support 8" long cards.

So,an R9 390X in a card closer in size to a Nano and certainly much smaller than the R9 390/390X,not far off performance to a Nano and probably lower power draw.

Yeah,count me in!

PS:

I have a SFF case,so I might be looking at things slightly differently from you,and OFC assuming its £200 which it might not be.

 

[FoxEye]

So performance isn't all that important because you're massively impressed by power consumption and reduced card footprint.

CAT, do you work for AMD? You are one of the most vocal pro-AMD posters here, and you never seem to find fault with anything they do...

 

[tavtavtav]

I never understand why smaller cards are considered by people to be a great benefit. Surely that's less cooling? and I'm sure the overwhelming majority of people don't sit there staring at their cards in the system , or even if they do,specifically prefer smaller cards.

I myself have a mini-itx rig, but even then I'd want a full card because my case supports it and the heatsink and fans can be bigger so quieter cooling.

At best it's a meh.

 

[FoxEye]

I never understand why smaller cards are considered by people to be a great benefit.

At best it's a meh.

I'm sure most of us don't give two hoots about size, as long as it fits

Power consumption is nice to see going down, but again most of us won't prioritise power over the metrics which really matter, those being : performance, and perf/$.

I'm also in the quiet camp, and shun loud cards. But as you said, small doesn't mean quiet, and the opposite can be true.

So I think for most people owning a 290 or 390, a £200 Polaris performing like a 390X is not at all exciting. At all.

 

[Freddie1980]

I'm sure most of us don't give two hoots about size, as long as it fits

Power consumption is nice to see going down, but again most of us won't prioritise power over the metrics which really matter, those being : performance, and perf/$.

I'm also in the quiet camp, and shun loud cards. But as you said, small doesn't mean quiet, and the opposite can be true.

So I think for most people owning a 290 or 390, a £200 Polaris performing like a 390X is not at all exciting. At all.

In terms of getting quieter cards it would help if AMD and Nvidia eased up on when manufacturers can start bringing out there own designs rather then having to stick with the stock cooler (as a compromise they could make all manufacturers use the same PCB initially that way they won't upset water block designer's).

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So performance isn't all that important because you're massively impressed by power consumption and reduced card footprint.

CAT, do you work for AMD? You are one of the most vocal pro-AMD posters here, and you never seem to find fault with anything they do...

What?? Do you work for Nvidia??

What a joke - so basically since you think something is rubbish,and if someone does not agree with them you are paid by AMD.

I like how you desparately are trying to attack people and discredit them.

I have seen it on US forums,and it is common tactic by the worst people like you.

Paid astroturfing is illegal under British law,and also sadly for you the person who owns Bit-tech,Hexus actually kind of knows me.

Hilarious - I had a GTX660 and a GTX960 which are all single PCI-E power cards,so I keep to a segment of cards.

Now,that is paid by AMD Astroturfing apparently.

I never understand why smaller cards are considered by people to be a great benefit. Surely that's less cooling? and I'm sure the overwhelming majority of people don't sit there staring at their cards in the system , or even if they do,specifically prefer smaller cards.

I myself have a mini-itx rig, but even then I'd want a full card because my case supports it and the heatsink and fans can be bigger so quieter cooling.

At best it's a meh.

It depends on the mini-ITX case - some of the shorter cards work for ones like the Q33.

The same goes with my one - a smaller and lower TDP card is useful. Its why I partially went GTX960 over R9 380.

One of them is the airflow is less impeded and secondly less heat produced means,less noise since the system fans work less harder.

I have a Cubitek Mini Cube,so I got a Gigabyte GTX960 and it hardly makes a noise,is short and runs cool.

The longer cards will actually block airflow for the bottom intake.

The Corsair fan on my H40 makes more noise.

I would love an Ncase M1. £200 is a bit much for me now!

 

[flopper]

It's more like 390 ballpark, actually.

And that's assuming max settings were used in the Polaris demo.

and the 390 beat the 980ti in hitman dx12,so what ya say m8?

 

[~>Dg<~]

and the 390 beat the 980ti in hitman dx12,so what ya say m8?

which is a amd game.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

which is a amd game.

Yup, doesn't beat it in ROTTR Dx12, nor do the Furys

 

[Ian Evey]

Said It before, amd always seem to dissapoint me with their new cards.

Nvidia always seem to increase the cost.

Might keep my 780 for another year.

 

[ICDP]

Yup, doesn't beat it in ROTTR Dx12, nor do the Furys

Latest 16.4.2 drivers give AMD cards a boost in DX12 with ROTTR. At 1440p they are giving lower average but better minimum FPS and to quote OC3D

"Nvidia's GTX 980Ti does have higher average framerates at 1440p, but with these new drivers AMD has higher minimum framerates, giving AMD's R9 Fury X a steadier gaming experience."

At 4K 980Ti and Fury X are pretty much equal. Well until you overclock your 980Ti that is

One thing that is reasonably consistent (so far) with AMD and DX12 is that it will give better performance over DX11. Pretty much the opposite for Maxwell which seems to take a performance hit in all DX12 titles.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Yup, doesn't beat it in ROTTR Dx12, nor do the Furys

Which for some reason does not use Async while it does on Xbone (wonder why that is ). There is no gains on either side from Dx12 to speak of so was pointless adding it in in the first place.

 

[Mtom]

Yup, doesn't beat it in ROTTR Dx12, nor do the Furys

Have to say that ROTTR is an NV game, and strangely the only one where DX12 is slower than DX11...and NV cards do well in it compared to AMD...coincidence...

 

[ICDP]

Which for some reason does not use Async while it does on Xbone (wonder why that is ). There is no gains on either side from Dx12 to speak of so was pointless adding it in in the first place.

Not true on the no gains part, OC3D tested DX12 games with latest 16.4.2 drivers and found gains in all DX12 games compared to running DX11.

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/...son_16_4_2_-_directx_12_performance_boosted/7

 

[TheRealDeal]

Not true on the no gains part, OC3D tested DX12 games with latest 16.4.2 drivers and found gains in all DX12 games compared to running DX11.

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/...son_16_4_2_-_directx_12_performance_boosted/7

I was talking about average fps in ROTTR only. I see they have made gains but compared to dx11 the averages are the same. The minimum gains are nice though.

 

[tavtavtav]

It depends on the mini-ITX case - some of the shorter cards work for ones like the Q33.

The same goes with my one - a smaller and lower TDP card is useful. Its why I partially went GTX960 over R9 380.

One of them is the airflow is less impeded and secondly less heat produced means,less noise since the system fans work less harder.

I have a Cubitek Mini Cube,so I got a Gigabyte GTX960 and it hardly makes a noise,is short and runs cool.

The longer cards will actually block airflow for the bottom intake.

The Corsair fan on my H40 makes more noise.

I would love an Ncase M1. £200 is a bit much for me now!

Yup, I will actually value the efficiency gains coming in the die shrink less power means less heat and noise. Especially since I would want a faster open cooled card.

I was more specifically thinking just physical size of the card and cooler. Though I hadn't considered air flow restrictions.

I was actually considering things for the majority of users since smaller seems to be mentioned a lot, but I guess some of those people will be referring to the chip and taking it to mean lower TDP.

I won't complain in that case, I'm watching over my shoulder constantly for thermal throttling

 

[Seanspeed]

I doubt it. The reason why the GTX970 did well(followed by the GTX960 and GTX750TI) is since it was priced well under £300. If you look at Steam,etc,the GTX970,GTX960 and GTX750TI massively out-number the GTX980 and GTX980TI.

So,that means the GTX1070 or GTX1060TI either has to be under £300,and be a big improvement over the GTX970 or R9 390.

Looking at how small the GP104 is,even though I can see it beating a GTX980TI,I am not certain how well the GTX1070 and GTX1060/GTX1060TI will pan out.

One of the better 970's still ended up costing £270+(I think they still do!). And you got Titan-equivalent performance for it. You're right that the price was a huge part of its appeal, but so was the amount of performance you got for it.

What's stopping Nvidia from doing that again? I find it pretty easy to believe that they can do a 1070 at 980Ti-level performance, so if they go aggressive with pricing again, and why wouldn't they when it worked out so well for the 970 in terms of gaining market share - then I think it wont be hard for them to offer 980Ti-like performance for ~£300. That's still a £50 premium over what the 970 cost. And I think a lot of people would be very happy with that. And would force AMD to cut costs of Fiji cards significantly(which I'm sure they're already planning to some degree), and also has the implication of Nvidia offering competitive pricing in the sub-£250 bracket with GP106.

I kinda think that unless AMD have some magic up their sleeves with Polaris, or are about to sweep the rug from Nvidia in the low/mid segments with insane pricing, the ball is really in Nvidia's court.

Which isn't a great thing. And I'm not an Nvidia hater. But I'd like to see AMD really put up something that puts on a notch on their belt in some significant segment.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

One of the better 970's still ended up costing £270+(I think they still do!). And you got Titan-equivalent performance for it. You're right that the price was a huge part of its appeal, but so was the amount of performance you got for it.

What's stopping Nvidia from doing that again? I find it pretty easy to believe that they can do a 1070 at 980Ti-level performance, so if they go aggressive with pricing again, and why wouldn't they when it worked out so well for the 970 in terms of gaining market share - then I think it wont be hard for them to offer 980Ti-like performance for ~£300. That's still a £50 premium over what the 970 cost. And I think a lot of people would be very happy with that. And would force AMD to cut costs of Fiji cards significantly(which I'm sure they're already planning to some degree), and also has the implication of Nvidia offering competitive pricing in the sub-£250 bracket with GP106.

I kinda think that unless AMD have some magic up their sleeves with Polaris, or are about to sweep the rug from Nvidia in the low/mid segments with insane pricing, the ball is really in Nvidia's court.

Which isn't a great thing. And I'm not an Nvidia hater. But I'd like to see AMD really put up something that puts on a notch on their belt in some significant segment.

It's more where the GTX1060/GTX1060TI falls - that is the chip which will be most likely well under £300 and the Maxwell chips were made on a old node. If that can have decent performance,it might take the wind out of Polaris 10,unless the GTX1070 has surprising pricing.
However it is between 35% to 40% larger than Polaris 10 if the leaked die sizes are accurate.

Both the GTX970 and GTX660TI used smaller GPUs than the R9 290 and HD7950. It would mean Nvidia giving up margins over AMD at that part of the market which would be even more aggressive than with Maxwell.

But at the same time,there is not much noise about the GP106 either - the leaks I posted in the other thread were taken from Drive PX2 systems. That would also mean for the next few months,Nvidia would have no new chips in the mainstream market unless that chip is being launched very soon after. The gtx660 and gtx960 were launched 3 to 6 months after the larger chip based cards.

Even on the Steam Hardware survey the combined sales of the GTX750TI and GTX960 were more than the GTX970. Then add all the massive amount of laptop based chips using the same GPUs too...!

I am just getting the impression Polaris might be more for AMD to get OEM traction in laptops and prebuilt desktops - it probably is not going to be the most exciting release.

I am getting vibes of maybe the HD3870 - ATI defended it's market share but Nvidia had four faster cards.

Interesting it also happened when ATI got thrashed by the first iteration of the 8800 series.

Also it appears Polaris was delayed to June so something has got ****ed up at AMD too - hope it's not GF having its typical yield problems. Samsung is doing OK with it.

WSA is a real Albatross around the neck of AMD.

 

[Seanspeed]

It's more where the GTX1060/GTX1060TI falls - that is the chip which will be most likely well under £300 and the Maxwell chips were made on a old node. If that can have decent performance,it might take the wind out of Polaris 10,unless the GTX1070 has surprising pricing.
However it is between 35% to 40% larger than Polaris 10 if the leaked die sizes are accurate.

Both the GTX970 and GTX660TI used smaller GPUs than the R9 290 and HD7950. It would mean Nvidia giving up margins over AMD at that part of the market which would be even more aggressive than with Maxwell.

But at the same time,there is not much noise about the GP106 either - the leaks I posted in the other thread were taken from Drive PX2 systems. That would also mean for the next few months,Nvidia would have no new chips in the mainstream market unless that chip is being launched very soon after. The gtx660 and gtx960 were launched 3 to 6 months after the larger chip based cards.

Even on the Steam Hardware survey the combined sales of the GTX750TI and GTX960 were more than the GTX970. Then add all the massive amount of laptop based chips using the same GPUs too...!

I am just getting the impression Polaris might be more for AMD to get OEM traction in laptops and prebuilt desktops - it probably is not going to be the most exciting release.

I am getting vibes of maybe the HD3870 - ATI defended it's market share but Nvidia had four faster cards.

Interesting it also happened when ATI got thrashed by the first iteration of the 8800 series.

Also it appears Polaris was delayed to June so something has got ****ed up at AMD too - hope it's not GF having its typical yield problems. Samsung is doing OK with it.

WSA is a real Albatross around the neck of AMD.

The fact that the 960 sold as well it did despite never being the best value in that segment shows how important performance leading cards help brand image, though. 960 rode the coattails of the 970 praise, despite never really being that great of a card at all(I certainly never recommended it to anyone).

Even if AMD are competitive in the £200 range, not having proper upper midrange/higher end cards could still hurt AMD in terms of what people choose.

And my point about the 1070 is that great pricing there(like they did with the 970) is that it puts AMD in an awkward situation. They would need to be very aggressive with Polaris 10 pricing in order to stop the price/performance gap between it and the 1070 being too big. For example, if the max Polaris 10 is 390X-performance at £250, but the 1070 is 980Ti-level at £300 - which do you think looks more attractive ultimately? In that situation, I would recommend somebody fork out the extra £50 every time.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The fact that the 960 sold as well it did despite never being the best value in that segment shows how important performance leading cards help brand image, though. 960 rode the coattails of the 970 praise, despite never really being that great of a card at all(I certainly never recommended it to anyone).

Even if AMD are competitive in the £200 range, not having proper upper midrange/higher end cards could still hurt AMD in terms of what people choose.

And my point about the 1070 is that great pricing there(like they did with the 970) is that it puts AMD in an awkward situation. They would need to be very aggressive with Polaris 10 pricing in order to stop the price/performance gap between it and the 1070 being too big. For example, if the max Polaris 10 is 390X-performance at £250, but the 1070 is 980Ti-level at £300 - which do you think looks more attractive ultimately? In that situation, I would recommend somebody fork out the extra £50 every time.

True,but what if Polaris 10 is £200 with R9 390X level performance,and the GTX1070 is £300 with GTX980TI level performance?? It could be that Nvidia goes super agressive and prices it at £250,but that would be a 35% to 40% larger chip still at that price. The GTX660TI which fought with the HD7950 had a 20% smaller chip and half the RAM modules,and the GTX970 which fought the R9 290 had a 10% smaller chip and half the RAM modules.

Even with Fermi,when Nvidia did use bigger chips,they had a special agreement with TSMC to pay for only functional dies,which cut costs.

Remember,even sites like TPU put the R9 390X at roughly GTX980 level performance.

People keep saying high end image is important - ATI being VFM with the HD3000 and HD4000 series still meant they kept reasonable marketshare. If you don't believe me,look at the chart over the last decade of shipped cards.

The HD3870 was beaten by the 8800GT,8800GTS 512MB,8800GTX and 8800 Ultra. The GTX280 was at least between 15% than a HD4870 which arrived weeks later and on top of this in games like Crysis the GTX280 was 30% faster! ATI was nowhere near the 20% of shipped marketshare AMD has now.

The main issue is that due to the botched R9 290 launch,AMD cards have been considered hot and power hungry which has put people off. The same happened with Fermi to a lesser degree.

This is why I think how the GTX1060/GTX1060TI performs is more important. It will have a 192 bit memory controller,which will cut costs against a Polaris 10.

Now,if that could hit better than GTX980 level performance(does not need to be GTX980TI level) against a Polaris 10,that would be a big problem for AMD.

You saw this with the GTX660TI which slightly edged out the HD7950.