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AMD Polaris architecture – GCN 4.0
- Thread starter Boomstick777
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Soldato
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I don't mind that so much as everyone has there own reasons for there purchase. Mine is all about getting the most power for my money. As the day's, months and year has went on my purchase is looking better and better. After selling the games my pcs+ 290 cost me £170. There is nothing on the market even now that can compete with this price/performance. So thanks Powercolor and AMD in this regard.
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Yeah such slow progress and pricing remains high. Worrying trend, i.e take that example Polaris card from AMD. What if it comes in priced at same level as GTX 950 offers same performance but lower power consumption, which yeah great performance per watt has improved, but not performance per price lol.
It might be sensible to sit the first round of die shrunk cards out until pricing settles. I think these cards are gonna be priced to the moon.
As I am not sensible no doubt I will buy as soon as they land
Think your the only one here who actually owns both, Kaap (titanx/furyx).
That's why many people value your opinion about both vendors.
Out of curiosity, do you have both setups in matching rigs? As in 2x5960x/x99 rigs for the 4xtitanx/4xfury x setups?
The TitanXs and FuryXs sit in identical 5960X based PCs about 80mm apart and get on very well with each other.
Soldato
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Yeah such slow progress and pricing remains high. Worrying trend, i.e take that example Polaris card from AMD. What if it comes in priced at same level as GTX 950 offers same performance but lower power consumption, which yeah great performance per watt has improved, but not performance per price lol.
It might be sensible to sit the first round of die shrunk cards out until pricing settles. I think these cards are gonna be priced to the moon.
As I am not sensible no doubt I will buy as soon as they land
Amd need to come out swinging so hopefully they come out with a big powerful chip to start off with which in turn will force Nv into doing the same.
Soldato
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As I am not sensible no doubt I will buy as soon as they land
Ye i will have no probs going with AMD either if they provide a card with much greater perf over a 980Ti.
Not sure what to expect this time, maybe they will surprise us.
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Yeah it's not just the performance I want to see improved though this time. Pricing needs a shakeup.
I would be happy with a 980 Ti level performance level card but would like to see it much lower power envelope and priced accordingly.
In the old days the new midrange cards would beat the old high end and be priced at midrange. Lately we've seen midrange pretenders card priced at high end, then after a year of milking we get the new high end but it's even higher priced than before.
Would be great if a 980 Ti level card was the new midrange and priced at midrange. I would grab from AMD or Nvidia. I have no preference of either AMD or Nvidia just want the better hardware for whatever amount of money I'm willing to spend. Next card will be that mid - high end level either EVGA or Sapphire. Plz don't price it though the roof
Looks like end of this year might be a good time to buy a laptop if any of this new stuff gets added. That's where power requirements and space saved actually makes all the difference. Imagine for once that you could get a 14" laptop that has decent GPU in it where the battery life is actually something that exists..
Soldato
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Anyone else got a weird feeling that the new Polaris gpu's will be a bit of a let down with regard to performance over current gen stuff but will be a lot less power intensive?
Wouldn't put it past AMD trying to sell them on the back of power saving and quoting the the power consumed to performance ratio, which will make their current cards look bad in comparison.
I'm not expecting anything faster than about 25-30% of Fiji but a lot less power intensive, I'd rather similar power consumption but a whole ton more performance, atleast 40% of current gen high end
Wouldn't put it past AMD trying to sell them on the back of power saving and quoting the the power consumed to performance ratio, which will make their current cards look bad in comparison.
I'm not expecting anything faster than about 25-30% of Fiji but a lot less power intensive, I'd rather similar power consumption but a whole ton more performance, atleast 40% of current gen high end
Soldato
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all of the major laptop sellers are now doing breakout boxes for desktop GPU's
I don't know about anyone else, but I find you can't really game "on the move" anyway with a gaming laptop and the time you get to actually play something you are near power sockets anyway, so spend £700 on a laptop and just take your desktop GPU with you, instead of spending £2k on a laptop that has worse performance than your desktop anyway
I'm not talking about high end gaming laptop - this tech could possibly give us mid range ultrabooks (13'3 - 14') with enough performance to play something decently. If you get 960M performance with HALF the size and HALF power consumption that's all you need. Right now the smallest laptop with GPU you can get is 15.6' and they're heavy and out of battery in 2 hours.
Also it could be a big thing for HTPC and small PCs/mediaboxes. Remember that less power = less heat = less cooling needed. If all those mid range monster cards could be fitted on a single slot and ran from a mini 200w psu you basically get small media box with mid/high end range gaming pc performance.
Soldato
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Anything with a non-APU GPUgets labelled as a "gaming" laptop and is rabidly expensive, a £300 laptop GPU is equivalent to a £100 desktop GPU... If you can just plug your desktop GPU in to your laptop then it completely relegates the idea of having the GPU inside the laptop for me... Not having the GPU inside the same enclosure actually does all those things as well, and being able to unplug the GPU gives you great battery life when you want it and great GPU power when you want it
Even the Alienware "VR ready" PC, the X51, is a small htpc type enclosure and if you choose one of the GPU upgrades that also comes in a breakout box.
Caporegime
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We know the low end Polaris chip is 120MM2 and something like Tonga is around 350MM2 to 360MM2 IIRC. Now,does anyone know how much denser Samsung/GF 14NM is when compared to TSMC 28NM??
Now an R9 270X uses an AMD Pitcairn chip and is around the same speed as a GTX950. It has 1280 shaders and is 212MM2 and runs at 1050MHZ.
Since the Polaris chip demoed was running at 850MHZ,which is around 20% lower,I wonder if it is a 1536 to 1792 shader chip with a 128 bit memory bus??
If it is running at around 1GHZ to 1.1GHZ in the final production version it probably is around GTX960/R9 380 level,except it might be bus powered.
I think the pricing on these will be interesting to see.
Edit!!
Why I am saying this is the card could be quite cheap to make.
R9 380 2GB cards have gone down as low as £120 to £130 and the 4GB versions as low as £150.
Tonga has 256 bit memory controller and is 350MM2 to 360MM2.
Even if 14NM GPUs cost more,I could see the low end Polaris card costing much less to make,even in a 4GB version(half the RAM chips),as the the chip is one third the size of Tonga and I expect cooling and PCB costs to be lower too.
If they end up pricing the 4GB version of the low end Polaris the same as a GTX950 2GB,even though it won't be the most exciting release in the world,it should do quite well in sales,and they should make more money than selling cards like the R9 380 2GB at that price too.
Now an R9 270X uses an AMD Pitcairn chip and is around the same speed as a GTX950. It has 1280 shaders and is 212MM2 and runs at 1050MHZ.
Since the Polaris chip demoed was running at 850MHZ,which is around 20% lower,I wonder if it is a 1536 to 1792 shader chip with a 128 bit memory bus??
If it is running at around 1GHZ to 1.1GHZ in the final production version it probably is around GTX960/R9 380 level,except it might be bus powered.
I think the pricing on these will be interesting to see.
Edit!!
Why I am saying this is the card could be quite cheap to make.
R9 380 2GB cards have gone down as low as £120 to £130 and the 4GB versions as low as £150.
Tonga has 256 bit memory controller and is 350MM2 to 360MM2.
Even if 14NM GPUs cost more,I could see the low end Polaris card costing much less to make,even in a 4GB version(half the RAM chips),as the the chip is one third the size of Tonga and I expect cooling and PCB costs to be lower too.
If they end up pricing the 4GB version of the low end Polaris the same as a GTX950 2GB,even though it won't be the most exciting release in the world,it should do quite well in sales,and they should make more money than selling cards like the R9 380 2GB at that price too.
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Soldato
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Samsung's 14nm is virtually identical to TSMC's 16nm (they are both 20nm with finfet), so it is around 2 times the density
don't forget that in that AMD slide it is being compared with an Nvidia 227mm2 GPU
don't forget that in that AMD slide it is being compared with an Nvidia 227mm2 GPU
Caporegime
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Yeah,but we need to consider what AMD is using to compete with that chip which is around 350MM2 to 360MM2,and with Maxwell,Nvidia had already gone through that step,as every SKU(at least for Maxwell V2) appears to have been more efficient to make than their Kepler equivalents.
If you go back to the HD4000 and HD5000 series,ATI/AMD made sure the production costs were efficient as part of the "small die strategy" which helped them compete quite well at the time.
Sadly,at this point in time its more a "reverse" small die strategy.
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Looks like AMD will be first to market, great news
I wouldn't get too excited, these are engineering samples, only 2 samples of one of the GPUs. As the link shows, FurX2 samples were also shipped in November, but no where to be seen yet.
Nvidia has Pascal samples shipped in the summer and are shipping Pascal based Drive PX2 to customer within a couple of months.
Plu I am nto at all convinced at the analysis in that link, one of the GPus was released in January 2015, 1 year ago - that certainly isn't a 14nm Polaris, more likely soemthign form the 300 series or a totallly unreleased GPU.
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I see damage control has arrived right on time
No need to panic, I'm sure NVIDIA will have access to HBM2 at some point.