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AMD Polaris architecture – GCN 4.0

Caporegime
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what are you saying? :)

AMD's marketing are monumentally incompetent, but it doesn't look good when their new mid range card is only managing 60 FPS on medium details.

I predicted in another thread that the mid-range cards would *not* have a 50% improvement in performance, or anywhere close. I believe they will be an exercise in increasing profit margins. Reduced cost to manufacture, and potential performance boost left in reserve for a future generation (on the same node).

I think this time they'll just give us 20-25% more performance, whilst making big savings on per-chip cost, etc.

e: and pushing energy saving as a big thing as well. Which in fairness is good if it means more cool, quiet cards.
 
Associate
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AMD's marketing are monumentally incompetent, but it doesn't look good when their new mid range card is only managing 60 FPS on medium details.

Who says it can only manage 60fps?

It's most likely locked on both cards to show a balanced comparison.

Either way i'm looking forward to these and if they are out in April I will snap one up (Anything is better than my current card)

Edit: Seems someone else just said exactly the same thing i did!

Why would they choose medium settings in that case?

It doesn't add up. My guess is that medium settings are the highest they can use without dropping below 60 FPS.

What settings do the console versions run at on BF?

It could be they are showing it in comparison to consoles performance to demonstrate how well it runs, they were saying in previous slides about console performance in thin laptops.

Of course you could also be 100% correct, the only fact is neither of us will know until we get to see them in action and they're reviewed.
 
Last edited:
Associate
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Has to be possible for both cards to hit same framerates, maybe the 950 can't do it. Not saying that it will be a good card, but you're assuming it's bad based on an efficiency demo not a performance demo.
 
Soldato
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AMD's marketing are monumentally incompetent, but it doesn't look good when their new mid range card is only managing 60 FPS on medium details.

I predicted in another thread that the mid-range cards would *not* have a 50% improvement in performance, or anywhere close. I believe they will be an exercise in increasing profit margins. Reduced cost to manufacture, and potential performance boost left in reserve for a future generation (on the same node).

I think this time they'll just give us 20-25% more performance, whilst making big savings on per-chip cost, etc.

e: and pushing energy saving as a big thing as well. Which in fairness is good if it means more cool, quiet cards.

Has to be possible for both cards to hit same framerates, maybe the 950 can't do it. Not saying that it will be a good card, but you're assuming it's bad based on an efficiency demo not a performance demo.

Agree with this and it is early sample.

People are also missing the fact that i stated above.

That Polaris sample only running at 850mhz at 0.8V against the stock 950 for same performance. And we also have no idea how many cores it has in comparison.
 
Associate
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Why would they choose medium settings in that case?

It doesn't add up. My guess is that medium settings are the highest they can use without dropping below 60 FPS.

the fps is locked to 60, that doesnt mean the gpu only reach 60, you actualy do not know what's the max fps it gets, what it shows you is the wattage at 60fps.
the whole point is not to show the performance difference between that GPU and the 950, why would they put ultra setting?
for exemple, if the 950 struggle to reach 60 fps, might be a clue for nvidia to the minimun perf to expect from the gpu.
 

bru

bru

Soldato
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Well I must say I'm impressed.

The slides are nice and talk is cheap, as we know from both sides before. but to actually have a GPU up and running, and show it to the press so early, now finally we can say the 28nm era is soon to be over.

Ok now back down to earth a little, yes it was a baby version, the Anardtech article says maybe the size of cape verde ( R7 250X an 95w TDP part) or GK107 ( GT 640 an 75w TDP part) but to actually show it running is really cool. Nice to see that their internal numbers were actually slightly more favourable to the opposition, but its probably within the margin of error anyway.

Does this mean that over the next year it will be the red team telling us how important power usage is, just like it has been this year for the green team?

Only time will tell.

Now come on NVidia show us you Pascal's.....oooh errrr.
 
Caporegime
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@ FoxEye, its a low level card, comparing it to a mid level card from Nvidia does not place it as a mid level card.

They are simply comparing it with a comparable performance card and the difference in power consumption.

Which look impressive if you think about it.

88 Watt Full system draw for Polaris and 150 Watts for the 950, again this is full system, it includes an i7.

Now when you think about that you can see its actually pretty good, lets say the full system without the GPU's pull about 60 Watts, that leaves about 30 Watts for Polaris and 90 Watts for the 950, that's 3x the PPW vs the 950, that's impressive.
 
Associate
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@ FoxEye, its a low level card, comparing it to a mid level card from Nvidia does not place it as a mid level card.

They are simply comparing it with a comparable performance card and the difference in power consumption.

Which look impressive if you think about it.

88 Watt Full system draw for Polaris and 150 Watts for the 950, again this is full system, it includes an i7.

Now when you think about that you can see its actually pretty good, lets say the full system without the GPU's pull about 60 Watts, that leaves about 30 Watts for Polaris and 90 Watts for the 950, that's 3x the PPW vs the 950, that's impressive.

Call me out on this by all means, but if the entire system is 90 Watts, could it be a possibility that the top tier cards would only need a 400 Watt PSU if the mid range are already this low?
 
Caporegime
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Call me out on this by all means, but if the entire system is 90 Watts, could it be a possibility that the top tier cards would only need a 400 Watt PSU if the mid range are already this low?

Well, with this info we can speculate a 980TI / Fury-X level Polaris GPU would pull no more than 150 Watts, probably somewhat less than that.

So an i7 based system with such a GPU would not worry a good brand 400 Watt PSU, maybe not even the fastest of what ever they may be.
 
Associate
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Well, with this info we can speculate a 980TI / Fury-X level Polaris GPU would pull no more than 150 Watts, probably somewhat less than that.

So an i7 based system with such a GPU would not worry a good brand 400 Watt PSU, maybe not even the fastest of what ever they may be.

Well if the the AMD system they are saying is pulling 84Watts including both CPU and GPU even if we tagged on 200watts extra for a top tier card it would still be well under 300 watts.

How much overhead should you ideally have with a PSU?
 
Caporegime
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ARC-L1, Stanton System
Well if the the AMD system they are saying is pulling 84Watts including both CPU and GPU even if we tagged on 200watts extra for a top tier card it would still be well under 300 watts.

How much overhead should you ideally have with a PSU?

I'm no expert on that but in my mind 15% overhead means the PSU is comfortable.
If my system peaks at 550 i would want at least 600 Watts minimum.

Ideally i'm more happy with one that has way more than enough, so its never working anything like hard.

Even with my overclocks, 3 HDD, an SSD, 2x 200mm Fans, a water pump, Rad fan and 4 RAM sticks i doubt i'm pulling 400 Watts.

My PSU has an ECO switch on it, the fan only spins up when it gets hot enough, the dust filter under the PSU is always clean.
 
Soldato
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London
As much as the forum warrioring would be unbearable, I hope we have a really close fight between AMD and Nvidia this time around. I Hope they both bring us some ridiculously good products.

Time to dust off the old savings account and kick her back into action.
 
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