AMD GPUs In 2016: Polaris Lights Up The Roadmap

[NightAntilli]

It has been confirmed by AMD that all Polaris GPUs will be 14nm only. No 16nm to speak of.

 

[alextheblue]

Short of the 256bit memory controller the HD 7970 and RR9 280X used the exact same core configuration (2048 SPUs, , 128 TMUs and 32 ROPs) as the R9 380X just like Tonga Pro was a HD 7950 with a smaller memory bus and the GCN 1.2 additions.

It is not the first time AMD has made subtle changes to a GPU and sent it out as a new model. The HD 3870 was a HD 2900 with slight enhancements and only came in a 256bit bus instead of the 512bit bus. Saved tons of power but didn't increase performance much.

"The GCN 1.2 additions" you say that like going from first gen GCN to third gen GCN was only a minor tweak that took an intern a couple weeks. I'll slander it for pricing being too high relative to it's position, certainly. But there's no previous GPU with the same chip unless you think just looking at # of SPUs means they're the same. The chip layout is not the same, the memory controllers are not the same, and the GCN cores are not the same. Granted the jump from 1.0 to 1.1 was not that big architecturally, and was mostly improvements to PowerTune and compute (new instructions, more queues). 1.2 (at least in Tonga) borrows the wider geometry front end from the big Hawaii chips (double what Tahiti possesses) and made other geometry efficiency improvements, as well as more instruction and compute enhancements over 1.1. They also baked in lossless delta compression and improved the scaler/UVD block. So again, 380X was not a chip produced previously or marketed under a different name, and thus is not a rebrand. Unlike its sibling, the 380.

 

[alextheblue]

Electricity is cheap only is some areas of the world. Some people pay dearly for it and as such it impacts them more than others.

And can we please lay to rest the notion that Tonga is the same thing as Tahiti? It's not. We've been over this many times. While many paper specs are the same ( shader count, texture units, and ROPs ), Tonga shares a lot with Hawai'i. It has 8 async compute engines compared to Tahiti's two, quad-shaders instead of dual-shaders, and bridgeless CFX over XDMA. It may be a small revision, but it's a revision nonetheless and is its own silicon. If you say Tonga is the exact same as Tahiti, then you should say Haswell is the exact same as Ivy Bridge.

Darn I missed your post RedJaron. You said it better than I could. I completely forgot about XDMA.

 

[Novuake]

My my my this is exciting! AMD aiming for the mobile market? They have been completely devoid of the discreet GPU mobile market for the longest time, running an AMD GPU never made sense as it ruined battery life, would be great seeing some more competition in the mobile market where discreet GPUs are concerned!

The die shrink after 4? years is also good to hear and the fact that AMD could remain competitive in the GPU market while competing with a obviously superior architecture is pretty impressive and bodes well for an incoming die shrink and major GCN overhaul!

Exciting times!

 

[Compuser10165]

Looks like AMD is trying to improve (and seems to have succeeded) lowering power consumption significantly (I have an R9 390, just for the record). Anyway this will be the lower end chip in AMD's lineup. Looking forward for the big guns. Maybe I will sell my R9 390 and if I will buy a 4K monitor in a year or so.