Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

[Kaapstad]

http://www.techpowerup.com/223040/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-launched-at-usd-199












http://www.techpowerup.com/223043/amd-radeon-rx-480-clock-speeds-revealed-clocked-above-1-2-ghz












http://www.techpowerup.com/223382/amd-provides-sneak-peek-of-full-line-of-radeon-rx-series-gpus-at-e3

 

[Kaapstad]

first mid tier card will sell well. Even if nvidia come back with an answer intial step was a good one imo.

The GTX 1070 will be a big seller but I think the RX 480 will sell a lot more.

 

[Kaapstad]

Looks like Crossfire RX 480 will match or beat GTX1080 for ~£100 less? Additional issues with dual cards aside, this is tempting!

Can't wait for the benchmarks but I feel it might be too late for me as I have a Vive arriving mid June!

And no expensive SLI bridge to mess about with.

 

[Kaapstad]

http://www.techpowerup.com/223043/amd-radeon-rx-480-clock-speeds-revealed-clocked-above-1-2-ghz

 

[Kaapstad]

Excellent performance for this price point. Won't sate the enthusiasts but they were always aiming for the larger mainstream market here.

I like cards like the RX 480, it is not always about having the fastest if you are an enthusiast.

This card has some interesting things going for it like being on 14nm.

 

[Kaapstad]

New video from adoredtv....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ5wYVu-tM8

Something he missed -

There is nothing to stop AMD doing a dual card based on the RX 480 that uses less than 200 Watts. There is a big clue in the CF comparison to the GTX 1080.

The other thing that is interesting about the RX 480 is it uses quite low clockspeeds for 14nm meaning that we could see a higher performance version with much higher clocks drawing more watts.

 

[Kaapstad]

Yeah probably Greg, just found it ironic that the guy appeared a few weeks ago, basically trolled and stalked another forum member, then comes back begging for info lol, double standards much?

Anyhow, i was hoping to see some leaks by this weekend, guess not, whens the next show or event that AMD are attending? E3 is it? someone mentioned Hotchips also hopefully get more info then

Who cares about rumours or leaks, all that interests me is actual performance figures from a number of tech sites and user benches.

 

[Kaapstad]

Dont think anyone is blindly accepting anything. Just comparing/speculating on what little info there is so far.

Best thing to do about speculating is

1. Go down the pub

2. Drink 15 pints of Lager

3. Enjoy yourself

4. When you walk out the pub if you still want to speculate it will be just as accurate as when you walked in the pub.

 

[Kaapstad]

No point comparing CF RX 480s to a 1080 as the card needs to stand or fall in single GPU usage, something it does well for the price.

The other thing that will make the comparison pointless is after people have paid the early adapters tax for the 1080 FE the card will probably drop in price over the next couple of months.

 

[Kaapstad]

I would say that the massive response to AMD doing exactly that means it was a good move.

People will be thinking, well if crossfire 480 is more powerful than a 1080 that means one 480 is more than half the performance of a 1080 at 1/3 of the price may be more if £160 rumours turn out to be true.

Considering most people cannot afford a 1080 it was an easy way to put things into perspective.

Not really.

The RX 480 has to perform in single card mode as CF does not always work.

AOTS is a terrible bench to use to demonstrate anything in mGPU mode. The bench changes from month to month with updates. Even more importantly you get the same sort of scaling with RX 480 CF as you do when mixing cards like Fury X, TitanX, 980 Ti or Fury P, any two will give the same scaling.

 

[Kaapstad]

I wonder how many people debating in this thread will actually be getting a RX 480 !!!

 

[Kaapstad]

How many you buying Kaap? I'm prob going to buy 2 and trade them up at Vega time

I will probably get one to test out.

I suspect the Red Baron will also get one.

 

[Kaapstad]

I don't think it matters. The GPU is gonna sell by the boat load regardless.

In the name of science I might buy two and and an 8320e for a new build.
Not sure yet though.

It does matter as some of the people arguing in this thread are taking it far too seriously yet have no intention of even buying the card.

 

[Kaapstad]

I'm not sure that's it's entirely reasonable to limit threads like these to only people who intend to buy the card the thread is about.

The thread should not be limited in any way but some people do need to take a step back as they argue about things like their lives depended on it.

 

[Kaapstad]

TDP is not the same as power draw

Very true

The latest intel CPUs have a TDP of 140watts, in actual use some of them could be drawing over 300watts with overclocking.

Before anyone says overclocking is a different case, the CPUs come with unlocked multipliers as standard and are designed to be overclocked.

 

[Kaapstad]

90c

No way

This is a small chip with low power usage.

65C to 70C would be nearer the mark.

 

[Kaapstad]

Some things to point out, the guy who is somewhat insisting it's a 90ish W gpu has decided that from the last event the performance + efficiency listed on the bar graph meant 2x 480 had more performance and better POWER efficiency than the 1080. Power wasn't mentioned anywhere on that graph but the 98/51% efficiency (for whatever reason) was.

It's possible a single RX 480 uses 90W, or 120W or 150W, but I wouldn't use a graph that doesn't mention power at all to be referring to power efficiency. That youtube guy who came up with it decides efficiency means power and thus the 2x 480s must use less power than the 1080 while accounting for the increased performance.

He also decided that largely because this was only 90W, there must be a bigger faster core that is faster. Again there could be, there might not be, it doesn't make that presumption that efficiency meant AMD were saying it used less power/fps than the 1080 is most likely wrong.

A lot of people are also assuming their is a bigger gpu because of comparing shaders and assuming they can fit more into that die size, if AMD have changed the shader cores or the size of front end vs back end, I wouldn't bank on there being a bigger core either. There could well be a bigger core with more shaders that still uses less than 150W, but I think people are setting themselves up for a disappointment presuming the RX 480 is 90W and there is a 20-30% faster bigger version coming this month.

On a more positive note, I'll again say, if that leak is accurate in terms of performance and temps, it's perfectly possible that performance was thermally limited. A 20C delta from idle to load that it potentially shows is actually a very low delta, an indication that fan noise wouldn't likely be very high to maintain 90C and that significantly better cooling is more than possible. If it's cooler and quite, then it's quite possible that with lower temps it could perform much higher, ie at 90C and that performance level it's throttled throughout.

My guess is there is not a bigger GPU than the RX480 waiting to launch.

Normally if there are more than one GPU from the same chip they tend to get announced at the same time - 1070/80, 290X/P, 970/80, 7970/50 etc.

Even @70C I suspect that temps were effecting performance as the card is probably only designed to run at around 65C flat out.

 

[Kaapstad]

TI's don't tho. And we are missing the X's from both the 470 and 480 lines that are traditional with AMD.

The gaps there, it's just when they will fill it.

We are not missing the 'X' with the RX480 though.

As to Ti's they are salvaged lower performance Titan parts not the other way round.

 

[Kaapstad]

How many SKU's do you know of that only have one chip made out of them?

i suppose your of the mind that the 8Gb version will cost £90 more than the 4GB, to explain the RX 480 @ $200 and the missing $300 GPU.

Agreed there is nothing to stop AMD launching a cut down version of the RX 480 but I think it is wishful thinking by some people to think there is a bigger version out there.

The RX 480 is going to be a fantastic card for it's target market and AMD are going to sell shedloads. Having said that people have got to get away from the AMD vs NVidia thing and accept sometimes there is no direct competitor to a rival card.

If people want the RX 480 to compete with the 1070 the answer is simple, go CF RX 480 for the same money and a lot more performance. Plus you don't have to buy a special (rip off) SLI bridge to get them to run in CF.

 

[Kaapstad]

CrossFire doesn't work. and its more expensive than a 1070.

How do you explain the $300 price bracket?

You have already explained the $300 price bracket - 8gb RX480

I think CF will get a lot more attention from AMD with the Polaris cards as people are more likely to buy more than one 480 compared to NVidia users who will use just a single 10XX card.