AMD Polaris architecture – GCN 4.0

new boy · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:26

it means the 7850/7870 was about on par with a 6970 when it was released, and about the same price, there was no real improvement of performance/$ despite it being a die shrink. They then had another tier above that which was the 7950/7970.

Of course after a few months of driver improvements, the 7850 destroyed the 6970, and after the early adopter tax went, they were good value over the previous gen.

FoxEye · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:34

new boy said:
it means the 7850/7870 was about on par with a 6970 when it was released, and about the same price, there was no real improvement of performance/$ despite it being a die shrink. They then had another tier above that which was the 7950/7970.

Of course after a few months of driver improvements, the 7850 destroyed the 6970, and after the early adopter tax went, they were good value over the previous gen.

Ah OK. But the 7850 was a tier down from the 6970. The situation today is a little different.

Firstly, prices of the mid-range cards (280X, 285, 380) have remained constant for the last 4 years or so (~£200). The performance hasn't changed either. Is this all 28nm's fault or is it partly a strategic decision?

If AMD releases a 480 with the same price as the 380, and the same perf, it could be that we've simply reached a plateau in mid-range price/perf. A big "hint" that they want us to dig deeper into our wallets for more FPS.

If they release a 470 with the same price/perf as the 380, then maybe we could expect prices to drop after a while. But I wouldn't bet my house on it.

I'm concerned about the possibility of the former. A 480 to take the exact position of the 380, just at 1/2 the power and with new features (HDMI, dp, etc). Some people here would hail that as a huge AMD success, you just know it

new boy · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:40

*shrug

Its just a name. whether its called a 470 or 480 makes no difference, if they are charging the same money as a 380 costs for the same performance, its going to be disappointing.

EXxx · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:43

FoxEye said:
Question for the room...

If the new mainstream/mid-range card was £200, and the same performance as the current £200 card (380), but used only 50% of the power... would that be a success? Would people here approve of such a mid-range card?

You see, I'm wondering if both companies might choose to deliberately keep the same mid-range performance year on year, to "encourage" people to move up the price range, if they want more performance.

They could still legitimately say "our new mid-range cards are the best ever, better features, less power", even if they only performed about 5% better in terms of FPS.

probably depends on the usage of the GPU. If you're a miner or someone which uses gpu power 80/90% of the time, than a 50% in power drop is extremely good, even if the performance is the same.

now for me, average joe, I've never understood this power stuff. What i want is something that is FAST, i'm not interested in power requirements as I am not bound by them (1200W here). Thing is, Power Consumption is a great marketing tool and 970 proved that.
So for me, the only way they come with a card that has same performance but 50% power cons. and win something is if a do a CFX or SLI. Otherwise I'm not buying it.

FoxEye · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:47

EXxx said:
probably depends on the usage of the GPU. If you're a miner or someone which uses gpu power 80/90% of the time, than a 50% in power drop is extremely good, even if the performance is the same.

Mining isn't done on GPGPU any more, unelss you're not all that serious about it.

Custom ASICs are what people use for mining these days.

ICDP · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:50

FoxEye said:
So £200 becomes "HTPC class", and the new cheapest "gaming" card becomes £300+... Wouldn't people object to that?

Oh we all agree that we need a performance jump. Just that AMD (and nV) could say "If you want more performance, move up the price range and you'll get it."

I do understand where you are coming from here. £180-£200 had always been the price of the mainstream gaming GPUs. HD 5850 and GTX460 both fell in to this price range and both were roughly 3rd tier cards. Currently we have R9 380 and GTX960 within this price range and they are 5th tier GPUs.

HD 5850 < HD 5870 < HD 5870 2GB (3rd tier)
380 < 390 < 390X < Fury < Fury X (5th tier)

GTX460 < GTX470 < GTX480 (3rd tier)
GTX960 < GTX970 < GTX980 < 980Ti < Titan X (5th tier)

So the last load of years both AMD and Nvidia have added two extra tiers and have pushed mainstream down considerably in the price/performance ratio. Basically at the £200 price range I would expect a 30%-40% increase over R9 380 and GTX960 levels which would be slightly below 390X or 980 levels. Though at £300 expect ~ Fury X or 980Ti/Titan X performance so the price/performance will increase but it's not 2009 anymore unfortunately. PC desktop sales are dropping year on year and as a consequence you get less for your money.

maonayze · 21 Jan 2016 at 11:52

FoxEye said:
A 480 to take the exact position of the 380, just at 1/2 the power and with new features (HDMI, dp, etc). Some people here would hail that as a huge AMD success, you just know it

Performance/Watt and efficiency is what Nvidia users always fallback to when an equivalent card from AMD beats an Nvidia card on overall speed performance (Back in the day it used to be Nvidia who had the hottest and most power in-efficient cards - you know, back when Nvidia users didnt care about such things

).

So with Fiji, AMD have now started to reign in that heat and power and looks like they will be continuing that trend with Polaris. If they can then compete in the efficiency arena against Nvidia as well as performance then surely that would be a success for AMD. They couldn't do that with the 290/X series but can do it now...that's a positive result, surely. So why not hail it as successful?

FoxEye · 21 Jan 2016 at 12:08

maonayze said:
If they can then compete in the efficiency arena against [nVidia] as well as performance then surely that would be a success for AMD. They couldn't do that with the 290/X series but can do it now...that's a positive result, surely. So why not hail it as successful?

"As well as performance".

So, not what I was saying at all then

I would agree with you otherwise. Lowering power, and thus heat and noise, is very welcome.

Not significantly improving performance at the same time - very unwelcome

But anyway, ICDP is more optimistic here, and is predicting 30-40% gains in performance at the £200 mark as well as elsewhere.

I just can't bring myself to wear his opimistic shoes

Steampunk · 21 Jan 2016 at 12:10

EXxx said:
now for me, average joe, I've never understood this power stuff. What i want is something that is FAST, i'm not interested in power requirements as I am not bound by them (1200W here). Thing is, Power Consumption is a great marketing tool and 970 proved that.
So for me, the only way they come with a card that has same performance but 50% power cons. and win something is if a do a CFX or SLI. Otherwise I'm not buying it.

This was explained several times earlier in the thread, if you can find it amongst all the Nvidia trolling and general bickering. High power efficiency does not equal low power. Being efficient on your power budget means you can have more transistors, and gain more graphical power. You can have more graphical power (transistors) because you are more power efficient.

flopper · 21 Jan 2016 at 12:26

Have nothing to say and since this is about AMD

Polaris is brighter than ever for the future of HDR enabled screens and the displayport 1.3 144hz godness as who did create stars really wasnt it a nvidia fan?

I am gonna wear shades when I open my bundle of Polaris card and screen as they are so bright so fast so [really no real word for awesomeness]

drunkenmaster · 21 Jan 2016 at 12:32

Steampunk said:
This was explained several times earlier in the thread, if you can find it amongst all the Nvidia trolling and general bickering. High power efficiency does not equal low power. Being efficient on your power budget means you can have more transistors, and gain more graphical power. You can have more graphical power (transistors) because you are more power efficient.

It's funny because every single node drop to date, the fundamental reason we get more performance is the power efficiency that comes from the drop. Double transistor count without any power efficiency improvement would mean 5KW GPUs by now.

I really don't know why it's difficult for people to understand that a 250W gpu that is twice as power efficient as another 250W gpu is in most circumstances going to be close to twice as fast. Power efficiency is the very basis with which all performance improvements throughout computing history have come from.

ICDP · 21 Jan 2016 at 13:00

FoxEye said:
"As well as performance".

So, not what I was saying at all then I would agree with you otherwise. Lowering power, and thus heat and noise, is very welcome.

Not significantly improving performance at the same time - very unwelcome

But anyway, ICDP is more optimistic here, and is predicting 30-40% gains in performance at the £200 mark as well as elsewhere.

I just can't bring myself to wear his opimistic shoes

Lol, not optimistic but basing my numbers on past experiences on new nodes releases (not on new GPU released on same node) HD5870 was ~40% faster than HD4970. HD7970 was ~40% faster than HD6970 and the same performance delta tends to trickle down the lower tier comparisons.

We can also extrapolate that small Polaris is estimated to be around 125mm2 die size and it was demonstrated as a competitor to GTX950 (or by extension R9 370) with die sizes of around 220mm2. So guessing ~45% smaller die size for a similar performance.

Fury X die size is 596 so if we scale down with a similar percentage then a Polaris die at ~330mm2 would give equivalent or slightly better performance assuming identical architecture etc. Though with architecture improvements, clock increases (better thermals) and HBM2 then it is a reasonable assumption to expect 30% better performance. So if larger Polaris is ~330-350mm2 it will be measurably faster than Fury X (and 980Ti).

I know this is basic man maths but it seems logical to me. Feel free to correct my maths/assumptions.

Ian Evey · 21 Jan 2016 at 13:29

flopper said:
Have nothing to say and since this is about AMD

Polaris is brighter than ever for the future of HDR enabled screens and the displayport 1.3 144hz godness as who did create stars really wasnt it a nvidia fan?

I am gonna wear shades when I open my bundle of Polaris card and screen as they are so bright so fast so [really no real word for awesomeness]

They are not called shades, they are called blinkers in these threads.

maonayze · 21 Jan 2016 at 13:41

flopper said:
Have nothing to say and since this is about AMD

Polaris is brighter than ever for the future of HDR enabled screens and the displayport 1.3 144hz godness as who did create stars really wasnt it a nvidia fan?

I am gonna wear shades when I open my bundle of Polaris card and screen as they are so bright so fast so [really no real word for awesomeness]

What the hell is he on about now? :confused:

Screw loose that one!

humbug · 21 Jan 2016 at 14:32

FoxEye said:
Question for the room...

If the new mainstream/mid-range card was £200, and the same performance as the current £200 card (380), but used only 50% of the power... would that be a success? Would people here approve of such a mid-range card?

You see, I'm wondering if both companies might choose to deliberately keep the same mid-range performance year on year, to "encourage" people to move up the price range, if they want more performance.

They could still legitimately say "our new mid-range cards are the best ever, better features, less power", even if they only performed about 5% better in terms of FPS.

If we end up with another GTX 970 but at <100 watts for £250 its a massive fail.

Simon Belmont · 21 Jan 2016 at 14:38

humbug said:
If we end up with another GTX 970 but at <100 watts for £250 its a massive fail.

Why would nvidia do that? I know they like to milk, but that would be taking the *** for sure.

humbug · 21 Jan 2016 at 14:43

Simon Belmont said:
Why would nvidia do that? I know they like to milk, but that would be taking the *** for sure.

They have done it before, just as AMD have

The GTX 8800 turned into the GTX 9800, the GTX 480 into to 580, the 680 into the 770, although the GTX 970 is about as fast as the 780TI its not a huge step up from the 780.

Mtom · 21 Jan 2016 at 14:47

humbug said:
If we end up with another GTX 970 but at <100 watts for £250 its a massive fail.

Logical step would be that the power envelopes stay about the same (maybe bit less, top cards closer to 200w than to 300w), but the performance figures will grow in every segment.
If the 2x perf/w is true then a card on the same power envelope as an R9 380 (180w) should beat a Fury X/980ti.

Geeman1979 · 21 Jan 2016 at 14:47

flopper said:
Have nothing to say and since this is about AMD

Polaris is brighter than ever for the future of HDR enabled screens and the displayport 1.3 144hz godness as who did create stars really wasnt it a nvidia fan?

I am gonna wear shades when I open my bundle of Polaris card and screen as they are so bright so fast so [really no real word for awesomeness]

Those men in white coats will be coming for you.

humbug · 21 Jan 2016 at 14:49

Mtom said:
Logical step would be that the power envelopes stay about the same (maybe bit less, top cards closer to 200w than to 300w), but the performance figures will grow in every segment.
If the 2x perf/w is true then a card on the same power envelope as an R9 380 (180w) should beat a Fury X/980ti.

For £250 i'm expecting Titan-X performance @ 150 watts.