News AMD Radeon RX 500 Series 'Polaris' GPUs Recycled Into Keychains

[Admin]

Retailer turns AMD's Polaris GPUs into keychains, while hardly practical, they at least look impressive.

AMD Radeon RX 500 Series 'Polaris' GPUs Recycled Into Keychains : Read more

 

[Eximo]

I have an old Athlon in a block of resin as a keychain, but that was just the bare die turned into a keychain sized object. What possessed them to leave the whole substrate and a board with memory chips.

 

[bit_user]

AMD's Polaris GPUs and Radeon RX 400 and RX 500-series graphics cards are morally outdated

LOL, good one!
: D

 

[bit_user]

I have an old Athlon in a block of resin as a keychain, but that was just the bare die turned into a keychain sized object. What possessed them to leave the whole substrate and a board with memory chips.

IMO, this would be nicer if they had either encased it in resin, or at least snapped a plastic case around it. Besides just keeping it nice, you don't really want sharp edges on your keychain that could snag on stuff.

 

[Friesiansam]

By now, AMD's Polaris GPUs and Radeon RX 400 and RX 500-series graphics cards are morally outdated

What have morals got to do with it?

 

[Makaveli]

lol you mean the rx580 I sold during the mining boom for $500 CAD I could have turned into a keychain... damn I missed out

 

[Eximo]

doesn't Intel Arc lose a bunch of performance without resizable bar which my CPU doesn't support? Also, would it work to use a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter for those cards since they draw less than the 150W total for the PCIe slot + 6-pin?

Arc does lose performance without resizable bar, but it depends a lot on the title and API. But it runs fine for the most part with any DX12, and the new DXVK based driver does a pretty good job converting everything to Vulkan for better performance with older titles. I had mine plugged into a 4th gen system for the last year or so. Admittedly I didn't play a whole lot of games with that system. I did put together an i3-12100 though, that can be done for under $250.

Dual Six-pin to 8-pin is okay. I wouldn't want to run a straight 6-pin to 8-pin adapter. If I knew the wire gauge was more substantial maybe.

 

[dalauder]

I was pretty happy with my RX 480, but then I saw an RTX 2080 Ti on sale for $247 and had to replace it. Personally, they're not that outdated. If you play on 1080p, they can still play anything except the newest and most demanding games on medium.

 

[domih]

I guess it depends on usage.

I'm running a Sapphire NITRO+ RX 590 8G on my TR2950X home workstation.

~$ sudo lspci -s 42:00.0
42:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590] (rev e1)

I feel fine

I don't play games. I'm not into graphics. My main activity is development, DBs, VMs, networking and cryptography (not crypto-mining!)

For this kind of usage, with a 4K monitor downsized to 2560x1440 (for my eyes...), as long as the card is <= ~$400 and as long as it's a Radeon (Linux user here), I'm OK.

 

[bit_user]

I don't play games. I'm not into graphics. My main activity is development, DBs, VMs, networking and cryptography (not crypto-mining!)

For this kind of usage, with a 4K monitor downsized to 2560x1440 (for my eyes...), as long as the card is <= ~$400 and as long as it's a Radeon (Linux user here), I'm OK.

You'd do fine with a RX 550, even.

These days, RX 6400 would be the one to get... though the lack of AV1 acceleration could be a little annoying. And then there's the fact that it has only 2 display outputs.

 

[bit_user]

What have morals got to do with it?

I took it as just a reflection of the level of disdain some people seem to exhibit towards older GPUs. I'm not sure if it was said in jest, but that's how I read it.

 

[Vanderlindemedia]

Polaris was a blessing. 60 FPS 1080 card for only 250$.

You coud'nt find a better card for that value. And additionally they where very strong in Compute, hence why they where so wanted in the mining scene.

Good OC'ers as well, but heavily memory bandwidth limited. You could push the 1366Mhz models easily to 1600+ Mhz. I had one that ran perfectly fine beyond 1633Mhz core. It burned 300W of power at it lol (you need a modified bios for that).

 

[Geef]

My old RX 580 was great for 1080p high graphics settings as long as I didn't have AA turned on. Too bad they didn't think to use them on low cost laptops.

 

[domih]

You'd do fine with a RX 550, even.

These days, RX 6400 would be the one to get... though the lack of AV1 acceleration could be a little annoying. And then there's the fact that it has only 2 display outputs.

Plus the PCIe Gen 4 x4 which becomes an issue on PCIe Gen 3 mobos. I prefer to go one or two levels above with the intent of using the card for ~ 10 years.

For graphics cards, I usually go with the yesteryear generation. I'm not even looking at the NVidia section with the crazy prices. I tend to buy graphics cards (as well as mobos and CPUs) at the local geek store (https://www.centralcomputer.com/) to preventively avoid online RMA's. Prices there are similar to NewEgg's. They do not have a gigantic selection. On the other hand, they stock the "good" products.

Otherwise, I go for used hardware on eBay when a good deal appears. One just needs to be patient when checking out what's on eBay. The workstation I'm using is built around a TR 2950X and ASRock X399 Taichi both bought used for close to half-price back in 2019. Unfortunately, the scalpers have significantly increased their presence on eBay. Thankfully, eBay provides the convenient sort on pricing.

 

[bit_user]

Plus the PCIe Gen 4 x4 which becomes an issue on PCIe Gen 3 mobos.

Well, if you're not using it for any intensive 3D tasks, then even PCIe 3.0 x4 is more than you really need. That's still 4 GB/s. To put that in perspective, an entire 4k image is less than 32 MB @ 32 bpp. You'd only need about 1.9 GB/s to transfer 4k @ 60 fps (32 bpp), like in case you use a software decoder.

Buy whatever you want, but let's just not confuse needs and wants.