Discussion: Polaris, AMD's 4th Gen GCN Architecture

[littleleo]

Nvidia has 80% of the market share, I don't think there is anything that AMD can do to make a big move to get some of that share back. The problem with AMD is AMD, they are their own worst enemy. At one time it was about 50/50 between AMD & Nvidia. The reason it is 80/20 is because of the previous product launches, and the continuing history of bad drivers. I remember customers waiting 6 months for CF drivers for their top of the line model a couple of years ago. Right now Nvidia is siting pretty with their new 1070 & 1080 cards. If AMD 480 is deemed a big threat they will release a 1060 to keep from loosing much market share. If AMD comes out with something on Par or better then the 1080 they are ready with a 1080 Ti version. It's hard to imagine AMD has a chance to take much away from Nvidia these days. And AMD has no one to blame but themselves for being in this position.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Nvidia has 80% of the market share, I don't think there is anything that AMD can do to make a big move to get some of that share back. The problem with AMD is AMD, they are their own worst enemy. At one time it was about 50/50 between AMD & Nvidia. The reason it is 80/20 is because of the previous product launches, and the continuing history of bad drivers. I remember customers waiting 6 months for CF drivers for their top of the line model a couple of years ago. Right now Nvidia is siting pretty with their new 1070 & 1080 cards. If AMD 480 is deemed a big threat they will release a 1060 to keep from loosing much market share. If AMD comes out with something on Par or better then the 1080 they are ready with a 1080 Ti version. It's hard to imagine AMD has a chance to take much away from Nvidia these days. And AMD has no one to blame but themselves for being in this position.

Even as ATI they have always had a rocky product launch except for a few, and ATI is older than nVidia and probably more of a G{U pioneer than nVidia.

Not sure why they have had the issues. The 9700Pro and 9800XT were great. The ones after that were so-so. The HD 2900 was just not good, the only one I found decent was the 2900Pro 1GB since it was much cheaper and had 1GB of VRAM which was insane at the time, 512MB was high with 384MB being the more common amount. But the extra VRAM helped in a lot of newer games performance wise.

That said, one thing AMD could do is stop the hype and just give the info or dispel and of the rumors that do crop up. All it does is fuel a hype train with their more die hard fanboys and cause product launches to fall short of what people want even if the product is decent.

 

[TJ Hooker]

@Sakkura that would be nice, but at this point it's starting to seem unlikely that AMD is going to be competing with nvidia on perf/watt. If speculation on the 480's performance is right, i.e. that it performs around 970 or 980, that would put Polaris efficiency roughly the same as Maxwell. Which would be a little disappointing given that there's a two process node difference between them.

But obviously no one can say for certain until we see some reviews for the 480.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The 480 will not be as good as the 1070 and both are 150W GPUs. So yeah, it seems the 1070 is better perf/watt.

 

[Martell1977]

The sales have begun, Newegg sent me an email with a XFX R9 390X on sale for $319, regular price $429. Looks like they are trying to clear stock.

Also a EVGA 980ti for $449.99 or MSI 980ti for $409.99


The whole market is shifting.

 

[17seconds]

Well prices of existing cards are dropping precipitously right now for both manufacturers. Along with the official price reductions of all the Maxwell mid and upper range cards, you can find a GTX 970 on Newegg right now for $220. That's pretty much the same price as a custom RX 480 4GB card. The R9-390 is right at $250, the same price approximately as the 8GB RX 480.

Both of those cards are likely right about the same performance level as the 480. So Polaris already has competition two weeks prior to its release, and coming from both the red and green teams at that.

 

[littleleo]

The GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 are replacing the Titan, 980 Ti, 980, and the 970. Nvidia wants those SKUs cleared out so get ready here come the rebates and sales. And I bought my card last August, lol.

 

[Martell1977]

The GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 are replacing the Titan, 980 Ti, 980, and the 970. Nvidia wants those SKUs cleared out so get ready here come the rebates and sales. And I bought my card last August, lol.

I bought my 390 for $299 on a Black Friday sale, was a great price at the time. I'm happy enough with the performance that I can't complain. I knew the prices would drop, just didn't expect it to be this much, but having skipped a node, I guess this is par of the course.

 

[Math Geek]

you can always expect prices to drop. question is whether the new price makes the card worth it still considering new options. as 17seconds notes, the 480 will be priced close to the new price drops for it's competition. or at least what we are assuming is it's competition. similar prices and i'll go for the new tech just on principal alone. but that's just me. if they all do what i want for the same money that is and there is no clear "winner" performance wise

 

[littleleo]

Yep! There is always something better coming out and your latest and greatest buy is obsolete before you get the cellophane off, lol! I upgraded from a 560 Ti 448 core model. I only upgrade when I have to, and I wanted to play MWO so...

 

[Math Geek]

i put an r9-270 into an old pc over the holidays cause it was the best it could run on the native psu. then BAM 960 shows up, followed by the 950, followed by the ....... kids are already drooling thinking they getting a 480 to replace it. little do they know they getting a whole new build to update the ancient C2Q system they using now.

by the way anyone want to buy a C2Q system with an r9-270 ????

 

[Robert Cook]

i put an r9-270 into an old pc over the holidays cause it was the best it could run on the native psu. then BAM 960 shows up, followed by the 950, followed by the ....... kids are already drooling thinking they getting a 480 to replace it. little do they know they getting a whole new build to update the ancient C2Q system they using now.

by the way anyone want to buy a C2Q system with an r9-270 ????

what kind of Core two quad? and what kind of 270?

 

[Math Geek]

q6600 and a HiS ice-q 270 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161449 an old dell xps 420 to be exact, all stock except for the gpu i added.

currently running win 7, 10 and os x

 

[TehPenguin]

you can always expect prices to drop. question is whether the new price makes the card worth it still considering new options. as 17seconds notes, the 480 will be priced close to the new price drops for it's competition. or at least what we are assuming is it's competition. similar prices and i'll go for the new tech just on principal alone. but that's just me. if they all do what i want for the same money that is and there is no clear "winner" performance wise

I think that even with the dropping prices it'll be a hard sell. The old cards would have to drop so much that they actually offer a better perf/$, even if just ever so slightly. The 480 promises too much for $199 right now.

 

[cdrkf]

1080ti 10% faster than 1080 would be abysmal. I kinda get that the 980ti was a nuisance with how well it performed(vs 980)but 10%? Ugh. Makes me lose all hope.

Is Vega the hero we need?

I said "10% or so". I have no idea how much more it will be although rumors are showing the 1080Ti being at least 50% faster than a 980Ti which would mean about 20% better performance over a 1080 which is not too bad.

What AMD needs is a good process node and a good uArch that doesn't draw a lot of power.

The Fury was pretty efficient if compared to the 980Ti. Both were 250W GPUs. And we know Polaris is seeming to be more efficient so far, so I'd only expect Vega to be more efficient. Though Polaris isn't that efficient. If Nvidia releases the 1060 with the same performance as the RX480, it'll probably be about 30W less like the GTX 960 was. Then again that 30W is near negligible.

Actually Polaris looks to be massively efficient, possibly even more than Pascal, based on AMD's quoted numbers. The idea it wasn't that efficient was on the basis that it has power delivery for up to 150W (so everyone assumed it was a 150W card) and worked out from there.

AMD have stated quite clearly they expect the RX480 to draw around 100W when gaming.... that's 100W for GTX 980 and R9 Nano performance. That is efficient, no matter how you slice it. That is easily every bit as efficient as Pascal from what we've seen.

Edit: Here's the article with the info on power consumption:
http://wccftech.com/amd-rx-480-faster-than-nano-980/

Looking at it not quite as firm a source as I thought but still believable. So far all we know 100% is RX 480 has 1 x 6pin connector. That means it draws more than 75W, up to a maximum of 150W, so I can quite believe that rumour of an estimated 100W typical board power. That also holds up when you considder the leaks about the smaller Polaris 11 with 1024 shaders (so slightly less than half) using less than 40w under gaming load. If you scale it back up that tallies quite well.

It looks like Polaris is a much bigger efficiency gain than just a process shrink. I'd put money on it being superior to anything Maxwell based in perf/w. Without benchmarks it's hard to judge it vs Pascal but I'm guessing they are very close to each other. This looks to be a massive jump for AMD.

Edit 2: What is also very encouraging- this efficiency gain is using GDDR5 memory, so this is down to uArch and process improvements only. That suggests Vega will get an additional benefit from HBM2 as well.

 

[Sakkura]

@Sakkura that would be nice, but at this point it's starting to seem unlikely that AMD is going to be competing with nvidia on perf/watt. If speculation on the 480's performance is right, i.e. that it performs around 970 or 980, that would put Polaris efficiency roughly the same as Maxwell. Which would be a little disappointing given that there's a two process node difference between them.

But obviously no one can say for certain until we see some reviews for the 480.

From what we've seen so far, the RX 480 performs on par or a little better than the GTX 980 while using less than two thirds as much power. Ie. crushing Maxwell on power efficiency.

 

[renz496]

It remain to be seen if amd can be more power efficient than nvidia. But if they keep their architecture as it is probably it won't be easy.

 

[Sakkura]

We know they aren't keeping their architecture as is.

 

[TJ Hooker]

@Sakkura @Cdrkf
Ah, I hadn't seen those power consumption numbers, no idea it only consumed ~100W. AMD announced a 150W TDP so I assumed power would be close to that; it's a little surprising to me that actual power consumption would be so much lower.

Anyway, if that's the case, then kudos to AMD.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Any releases yet from partners what their AIBs may look like/cost? With this release theoretically less than 2 weeks out I thought we would see something already.....

 

[-Fran-]

Well, the only reliable partners that actually promote special cards from AMD are Asus and Sapphire, really. And Sapphire usually does Vapor-X and Dual-X versions, where Vapor-X is the top dog and then the Dual-X (or Triple-X? haha) usually coming in close second.

I don't remember MSI doing a special edition for AMD in recent years either.

In any case, the markup for them is in the low USD$50 from what I remember... My 7970Ghz Vapor-X was the same price as the regular one (Dual-X and blower types), but I bought it when they were going down in price.

I will be willing to pay 50 extra for a Vapor-X in all fairness.

Cheers!

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I strictly saw AMD say it was a 150W GPU at their live stream conference. If it was a 100W GPU, they would have said so there and made it a marketing point. Yeah, it's probably 100W when gaming with Vsync at ~70% load.

Just wait, the GTX 1060 will come out being more efficient with the same performance.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Well, the only reliable partners that actually promote special cards from AMD are Asus and Sapphire, really. And Sapphire usually does Vapor-X and Dual-X versions, where Vapor-X is the top dog and then the Dual-X (or Triple-X? haha) usually coming in close second.

I don't remember MSI doing a special edition for AMD in recent years either.

In any case, the markup for them is in the low USD$50 from what I remember... My 7970Ghz Vapor-X was the same price as the regular one (Dual-X and blower types), but I bought it when they were going down in price.

I will be willing to pay 50 extra for a Vapor-X in all fairness.

Cheers!

You forgot XFX as well, they are an AMD only GPU builder.

TBH I just want the 4gb reference one, I plan on using it for the rest of the year into early next year before I rebuild my whole system (with Zen if it doesn't suck). I want to sell my R9 280's now while they are still worth a little bit of money.

 

[Math Geek]

I strictly saw AMD say it was a 150W GPU at their live stream conference. If it was a 100W GPU, they would have said so there and made it a marketing point. Yeah, it's probably 100W when gaming with Vsync at ~70% load.

Just wait, the GTX 1060 will come out being more efficient with the same performance.

i'm pretty sure the 480 was 150w and the 470 was the one that was at 100w. the 460 was below 75w and had no extra power connections. that's what i recall anyway.

xfx, saphire and HiS (if they still make cards) are all amd exclusive. but everyone else has had top models in amd from what i have seen in the past. if they can actually oc decently, then of course custom 400 series cards will be a better buy like normal. seems only the new nvidia cards have handicapped overclocking to the point it is almost useless.

 

[Math Geek]

some more 480 xfire benchmarks http://videocardz.com/61154/amd-radeon-rx-480-crossfire-3dmark-performance

again shows xfire 480's beating a 1080 with 1.8x scaling in firestrike. man i sure hope this is true and 2 x $250 card will beat a $650-700 1080 one. also shows again a single card matching a 980/390x at higher resolutions. looks like it loses at 1080p but catches up as resolution rises.

and the reference card sure is a plain looking thing for the 480