Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

[SimBy]

Main purpose is to serve a market that by this point is tiny compared with the 40million or so discrete GPU's sold each year?

Its also a bit worrying that AMD are saying this is a product to serve thay market for the next 3-4 years. I would have hoped for advances in the next 2 years, not the next 4.

Or that, you know, unlike some Nvidia GPUs, wont fall off the performance cliff after one year. Hawaii will be 3 years old soon and its still a VERY competitive GPU.

 

[fs123]

Or that, you know, unlike some Nvidia GPUs, wont fall off the performance cliff after one year. Hawaii will be 3 years old soon and its still a VERY competitive GPU.

All thanks to common GCN architecture. If Navi continues with GCN then we can expect driver optimisation for older cards to carry on for the foreseeable future even if AMD stops focusing on old gen gpu's.

 

[chroniclard]

Or that, you know, unlike some Nvidia GPUs, wont fall off the performance cliff after one year. Hawaii will be 3 years old soon and its still a VERY competitive GPU.

Free tinfoil hat included with all guff.

 

[Ferrari100]

Free tinfoil hat included with all guff.

Guff?

He has a point, the 290x is almost competing with a 980ti in some new DX12 titles.
That speaks for itself about how well Hawaii has aged.

 

[bru]

Guff?

He has a point, the 290x is almost competing with a 980ti in some new DX12 titles.
That speaks for itself about how well Hawaii has aged.

Yup Hawaii has aged well, but I believe it was the other half of the post that chroniclard was referring too, as I'm sure you know all too well

 

[SimBy]

Yup Hawaii has aged well, but I believe it was the other half of the post that chroniclard was referring too, as I'm sure you know all too well

You are probably right, I was not concise enough. What I meant to say is it didn't fall off the performance cliff like its direct competition that cost twice as much and goes by the name 780Ti.

 

[Lokken86]

They will. It just likely wont be Polaris. I think most people expect Vega to come early 2017, so it's not far enough away to do a whole new line, calling everything 580/590 and whatnot. If there's only one Vega GPU, it will probably take the 490/490X range. If there's two Vega GPU's, I'd guess that the smaller will take the 490/490x naming, while the bigger flagship will get its own moniker ala Fury/Titan.

There won't be just 2 Polaris cards. 480 looks like a low power variant. There will be an 8pin card.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There won't be just 2 Polaris cards. 480 looks like a low power variant. There will be an 8pin card.

I suspect there might be.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Main purpose is to serve a market that by this point is tiny compared with the 40million or so discrete GPU's sold each year?

Its also a bit worrying that AMD are saying this is a product to serve thay market for the next 3-4 years. I would have hoped for advances in the next 2 years, not the next 4.

This isn't what they said, they said it would provide good performance for several years. Look at AMDs current cards compared to Nvidia, they are forward thinking architectures that go from strength to strength as devs implement those features supported. If you bought something 3-4 years ago from AMD for any price range it is positively destroying anything you could buy from Nvidia that long ago.

Not forcing your customers to upgrade for reasonable performance doesn't mean you can't provide an option.

 

[D.P.]

This isn't what they said, they said it would provide good performance for several years. Look at AMDs current cards compared to Nvidia, they are forward thinking architectures that go from strength to strength as devs implement those features supported. If you bought something 3-4 years ago from AMD for any price range it is positively destroying anything you could buy from Nvidia that long ago.

Not forcing your customers to upgrade for reasonable performance doesn't mean you can't provide an option.

Or the reality of the situation is AMD release terrible launch drivers and spent the next years improving them.

Also if you think that AMD's architecture is so great because it's "forward thinking" does that mean Polaris is going to be a failure and backwards because by most accounts it is much more similar to Maxwell in design.

 

[humbug]

Or the reality of the situation is AMD release terrible launch drivers and spent the next years improving them.

Also if you think that AMD's architecture is so great because it's "forward thinking" does that mean Polaris is going to be a failure and backwards because by most accounts it is much more similar to Maxwell in design.

In what way is it like Maxwells design?

 

[Ferrari100]

In what way is it like Maxwells design?

+1
Polaris is totally an evolution of previous GCN architectures.

If anything the competition need to borrow ideas from AMD in order to get improved DX12 performance

 

[SiDeards73]

So basically another week until we potentially get anymore info then? Ho hum

 

[humbug]

So basically another week until we potentially get anymore info then? Ho hum

Don't get your hopes up, its due for launch on the 29'th.

If they wanted to say more than they did at Computex surely they would have there.

 

[Jono8]

Don't get your hopes up, its due for launch on the 29'th.

If they wanted to say more than they did at Computex surely they would have there.

Indeed.

This is especially true if they are releasing anything faster than the RX480 - ie something near/around 1070 performance as it would surely be prudent to release some info about that before the 1070 comes out on Friday to steal some sales from Nvidia.

 

[old gamer]

23 days and counting

 

[SiDeards73]

Don't get your hopes up, its due for launch on the 29'th.

If they wanted to say more than they did at Computex surely they would have there.

Isn't there something on the 13th AMD are at? Then the 20th and also Hotchips also the NDA ends at the end of the month, I still expect to see atleast something before NDA ends

 

[D.P.]

In what way is it like Maxwells design?

The transistor budget has supposedly been spent on improving geometry throughput, command processor, tessellation, cache and scheduling in order to remove front-end bottle neck and help feed the compute shaders more effectively. The theoretical compute performance is not increased but the real-world gaming performance should be greatly increasing efficiency closer to Maxwell, especially in Dx11

 

[humbug]

The transistor budget has supposedly been spent on improving geometry throughput, command processor, tessellation, cache and scheduling in order to remove front-end bottle neck and help feed the compute shaders more effectively. The theoretical compute performance is not increased but the real-world gaming performance should be greatly increasing efficiency closer to Maxwell, especially in Dx11

I know this, Doesn't mean its anything like Maxwell. it just means they improved what was weaker compared with Maxwell, GCN are stronger in other areas so you add those improvements to GCN and what you have is an Improved GCN, not Maxwell.

 

[beany_bot]

Indeed.

This is especially true if they are releasing anything faster than the RX480 - ie something near/around 1070 performance as it would surely be prudent to release some info about that before the 1070 comes out on Friday to steal some sales from Nvidia.

I don't think they would loose sales to the 1070 by not announcing a 490 before the 1070 launch.

Let's be honest. Mostly fanboys will rush out and buy a 1070 at launch gouging price. If somebody is truly considered in their purchase and wants to see what is available from AMD then they will wait anyway.

A bit different for the 1080 as it is the fastest card and AMD aren't going to release anything that fast for some time. But for the 1070 they aren't going to steal fan boy sales anyway so no point trying.