cctaylor88 :
But but... RX 490? Vega...? I can't wait any longer. I am not in the market for a "budget" card! I understand many are but... damn this non-stop waiting game!
I also have few friends also questions the same thing. While new arch certainly a good news, but the lack of $300 class GPU from AMD seems quite disheartening for these people. And for good reason.
The GTX1070 will own and dictates these upper segment for quite a while from now on. Since by now AMD has made it very clear that Polaris are not meant to be priced as a high end parts. And I don't think the full chip for Apple would be significantly faster than the 480 either. Spec gaps between it, is just not so much. Suppose they also release it to PC, I don't think that performance level would be regarded as $300 by AMD's own standard at this point. Heck, judging by the spec alone, it might not even be higher than $250. So it would be pointless.
Since traditionally and more often than not, a $250 cards from AMD came from a cut down $300.
In retrospect, this might have few bad side effects. Since the majority of less informed people only care about who got the fastest stuff and they go from there. I mean, look at what nVidia did with GTX960.
Having the most of value on a product doesn't mean anything without proper publication. AMD needs to nail it properly for it to be succeed.