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Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

Rroff said:
They don't need to compete at every level - just need some well placed cards at the right price and performance point - from what we can see of the 480 it seems in a good place to hit but it can't do the damage AMD needs to do on its own despite what some people think.
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If AMD has really been in production of Polaris 11 since Feb or so, they have probably millions shipped to OEMs and literally sitting or being installed in laptops/desktops now to be ready to sell on the 29th. Nvidia really does seem like they jumped to market with some risk production seeing a chance to beat AMD to finfet and be first, but with extremely little volume. We'll see when volume picks up. If Nvidia jumped ahead on Gp104 then GP106 probably isn't as close as people think and considering where RX470 performance/watt is and die size of RX480, I wouldn't count on GP108 to be particularly competitive on performance/watt with RX470 or be able to beat the RX480 performance either.

Honestly if, and I'm not convinced of it, if small Vega came in August it would likely beat GP104 handily in performance and performance/watt with HBM2, and if it is available in decent volume in October it might only be 4-6 weeks after the GP104 is actually available in real volume. Again at the high end look at GP100 power with hbm2, if GP102 is smaller but uses gddr5x, it's going to struggle to be competitive with AMD using HBM2 on the high end.

Genuinely it looks like in competing products, GP106 vs Polaris 10, GP108 vs Polaris 11, small Vega vs GP104 and big Vega vs GP102, AMD will win each bracket.
 
Razor Time said:
Really they should be looking to compete at every level if they want to reclaw as much market share as possible. A gpu with a low TDP could easily be made into a dual gpu card and released giving AMD another revenue stream and an alternative on the market. Its either that or AMD waits X amount of months for a faster gpu to arrive and loose out on sales in that sector.

Maybe their top end range isn't far behind the 480 then fair enough, however if its 6+ months away then that's a long time not having an answer.
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I get your reasoning, however I think there are several pragmatic considerations that take away from the theory. The first is that I think trying to do a dual card at the same time would take away focus from their current mid-range targetting. Whilst it probably would be doable as you say, it's just one more thing to juggle from a technical point of view and it's especially more work for their driver writers and for games developers when AMD would probably rather any spare effort goes to DX12 where they have an advantage.

Secondly, it appears that Nvidia don't actually have that much stock for their new cards so if Nvidia are mostly selling pre-orders at the moment, AMD would be doing themselves no favours rushing stuff out to compete with ghosts.

Thirdly, and this is probably the biggest, they would be as much cannabilizing their own future sales as much as taking from Nvidia. If, as many suspect, Vega is going to be amazing, then AMD neither want to dent sales by releasing an inferior attempt at the high-end now, nor want to annoy their most enthusiastic customers by persuading them to buy a half-cocked solution that they'll regret when the real high-end stuff comes out later in the year.

I get your reasoning, but I think AMD are right in this.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Genuinely it looks like in competing products, GP106 vs Polaris 10, GP108 vs Polaris 11, small Vega vs GP104 and big Vega vs GP102, AMD will win each bracket.
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Maybe, but we really dont know nearly enough to say that this will 'genuinely' be the case. And for the time being, Polaris 10 will be looked at in comparison to GP104 by a decent enough segment of the market, despite price differences.
 
h4rm0ny said:
I get your reasoning, however I think there are several pragmatic considerations that take away from the theory. The first is that I think trying to do a dual card at the same time would take away focus from their current mid-range targetting. Whilst it probably would be doable as you say, it's just one more thing to juggle from a technical point of view and it's especially more work for their driver writers and for games developers when AMD would probably rather any spare effort goes to DX12 where they have an advantage.

Secondly, it appears that Nvidia don't actually have that much stock for their new cards so if Nvidia are mostly selling pre-orders at the moment, AMD would be doing themselves no favours rushing stuff out to compete with ghosts.

Thirdly, and this is probably the biggest, they would be as much cannabilizing their own future sales as much as taking from Nvidia. If, as many suspect, Vega is going to be amazing, then AMD neither want to dent sales by releasing an inferior attempt at the high-end now, nor want to annoy their most enthusiastic customers by persuading them to buy a half-cocked solution that they'll regret when the real high-end stuff comes out later in the year.

I get your reasoning, but I think AMD are right in this.
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Some valid points. I guess I am just casting my mind back to the 4870X2 which I owned and how popular that seemed at the time.

If AMD truly do have a gpu ready to release in October then all the better for it.


Tute said:
Would need to be more like £400 IMO.
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That would be good. Back in the day a dual gpu card was cheaper than buying two separate gpus, I would love to see those days return.
 
D.P. said:
The problem with AMD's strategy is is completely ignores the fact that they will still be competing with Nvidia for the mid and low-end segments. It would make sense if nvidia weren't releasing the the 1060 and 1050 for 6 months, AMD really would grab some market share, but since these mainstream cards are imminent form Nvidia all it means is AMD wont be competing in the high end and nvidia can enjoy a large market segment all to themselves.

Gibbo has pointed out that the 1080 is selling faster than the 970 which was the previous fastest selling card. That should send alarm bells ringing at AMD HQ.


I think AMD would want to have high end cards released around now but 1 or more things have conspired against them:
*) Limited R&D budgets means they simply could get the full product stack out on time, or are even having to provide a reduced product line up. I can imagine we get the 460-470-480 for the low end and Vega which takes on the 1080ti, but the 1070 and 108 will sit in a niche by themselves.
*) Global Foundries have technical issues for chip larger that 220mm^2, AMD have a 350mm chip that they just can't release due to yields.
*) AMD expected HBm2 to be ready much sooner than it is and didn't expect GDDR5X to be ready so soon. they have a mid-sized vega chip to use with HBM2 but can't release it until end of the year at the earliest.
*) They really do want people to go crossfire. Instead of doing all the R&D, and manufacturing of a 350mm^2 chip they rather sell you 2x480. AMd have released 2 official figures for the 480, 1 VR score with a single card which wasn't so exciting, and 1 Crossfire score with heavy marketing showing how it was aster and cheaper than a 1080. This relates to the first point - R&D budget constraints may come to play here.



Either way, Nvidia and AMD can have a price war of the 1060 vs 480 cards and NVidia can recoup plenty of profits form the higher margins 1070 and 1080 cards that sit without a competitor.
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The thing is, as we see from wccf Polaris just keeps getting faster, the 470 has gone up from 290 perf (Score 13000) to 290X (score 16000) with more refined drivers, this is the $150 card, the 1060 will match that, but $150, Nvidia? Pascal? i don't think so.

More over if the 470 is getting a performance jump of that magnitude, where does that put the 480, at $200? that 1070 is starting to look sheepish.

i just don't see where your argument makes any sense at all.
 
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Sargatanas2511 said:
Research and production costs will be quite a bit higher though. Plus the need for a better cooling solution.
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I dont know about 'quite a bit higher', but higher, I suppose. Though I would imagine that just the profit margin of selling two cards to one person would make up for extra costs.

Still, I would never recommend anybody go Crossfire/SLI unless they had very specific needs. Not only is the added performance *highly* variable(or again, nonexistent), but it almost always comes with shakier performance, so even if the framerates are higher, your performance might be less smooth. Along with the added costs, added heat and added frustration, I'd say that no matter how enticing the on-paper value is, it's not worth it.
 
humbug said:
The thing is, as we see from wccf Polaris just keeps getting faster, the 470 has gone up from 290 perf (Score 1300) to 290X (score 1600) with more refined drivers, this is the $150 card, the 1060 will match that, but $150, Nvidia? Pascal? i don't think so.

More over if the 470 is getting a performance jump of that magnitude, where does that put the 480, at $200? that 1070 is starting to look sheepish.

i just don't see where your argument makes any sense at all.
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I've said for a while, it's looking like the 232mm^2 AMD core is going to be significantly closer to the 314mm^2 core from Nvidia than their GP106 which is supposedly around the 200mm^2 mark, if so then there is nothing to believe GP106 will be competitive with RX480, in fact there isn't much to say it will be competitive with RX470 at the moment.
 
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