While Radeon Technologies Group was conceptualizing Polaris, they kept their ear to the ground and learned what their community wanted right now, but also what their community desired 2 years from now. Hook says this resulted in five key takeaways:
1: Prestige. “They wanted the prestige of a $700 graphics card, but they didn’t want to have to pay for it,” Hook begins.
2: VR that just works. “They wanted the ability to have a great VR experience today or two years from now without worrying about upgrading power supplies and digging into their PC. They wanted to buy a headset at some point and just have it work.”
3: Respect their investment. “They wanted us to pay respect to the dollars they were giving us and do things in the architecture or transistors or APIs or ASync Compute, that provided a measure of ‘futureproofness.’ They wanted to be reassured that even if they’re only spending $200 they’d feel secure in their investment for a couple years.”
4: More overclocking control. “We brainstormed what kind of voltage control could be given to them to create a better experience.
Interesting
5: Better drivers. “We feel we’ve made a great first step there, and we’re only going to be putting a heavier foot on the gas this year and next year to make those drivers better and better.”