AMD Polaris Thread: Radeon RX 480, RX 470 & RX 460 launching June 29th

[ZGR]

The hype is completely overwhelming. I'm trying to talk myself out of selling my R9 290 Tri-X in a few days... It's been such a cool, quiet, and fast card. I will miss it. I am hoping the RX 480 will OC nearly as well as the 7870 did. I am expecting that an OC'd RX 480 will be about as fast or faster than a heavily OC'd GTX 980 or a Fury Nano.

There will most likely be some 8+6 pin RX 480's out there day 1; throwing perf/watt out the window for some solid FPS gains. I'm gonna be on my Intel iGPU until the reviews are well out, and some excellent aftermarket coolers are available. If RX 480 is about the same performance as an R9 390X, I will be counting on GTX 1070 prices to fall to $399 or at the mythical $379 MSRP.

Waiting a couple months may yield something better. Will there be a GDDR5X variant of the RX 480? Or should I keep the R9 290 and see if I can get another one for a suspiciously low price? I do not see 4GB of VRAM as a limitation yet, but its time is running out.

If the RX 480 does indeed clock very high, there will hopefully be some very overbuilt AIB's ready to cool it down. My R9 290 at max overclock does need an aggressive fan curve to keep its temps below 80C; but it consumes absurd amounts of power. It will be interesting what AMD will set the max temperature to be.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

You have now resorted to using the most useless engineering metric of all time to discredit P10 -- perf/mm2.

487mm2 GTX275 vs. 282mm2 HD4890 -- you bought the 275
520mm2 GTX570 vs. 389mm2 HD6950/6970 -- you bought the 570
561mm2 GTX780 vs. 438mm2 R9 290/290X -- you bought the 780

To summarize, every new generation, you pick the most favourable metric in which NV leads and hype it up to the moon but looking at the past history of your GPU ownership, you clearly couldn't care less about perf/watt or perf/mm2.

If you are going to use the perf/mm2 metric and expect to be taken seriously, then you'd trash all over the mid-range Pascal GP104 as one overpriced turd and tell everyone to not buy it. Why aren't you telling everyone how a $599-699 GTX1080 is a $249 GTX560Ti line? All of a sudden your perf/mm2 metric doesn't sound so good when 95% of PC gamers cannot afford this product. Instead you manipulate this metric to imply how much faster the full GP104 is, while 100% ignoring:

I remember trying to discuss performance per mm2 back in the Evergreen and Northern Islands days, but not as a metric to make a purchasing dicision but as a metric of what engineering feats each side accomplished and would they could do if they scaled up or down. I distinctly remember tviceman telling me "who cares" [face_laugh] Now he's using it as an argument himself to prop up one side and downplay the other. Coincidentally, AMD video cards were also leading the performance per watt category back then too, and now he's all gung ho about that.

But it's honestly really silly to even discuss perf/mm2 when we don't know

1. The actual, verified performance
2. Exactly what improvements and other features they added to the die

And one last thing, AMD's perf/mm2 is far more favorable under DX12, which looks to have a bigger part in the future of games than DX11 did.

 

[R0H1T]

The hype is completely overwhelming. I'm trying to talk myself out of selling my R9 290 Tri-X in a few days... It's been such a cool, quiet, and fast card. I will miss it. I am hoping the RX 480 will OC nearly as well as the 7870 did. I am expecting that an OC'd RX 480 will be about as fast or faster than a heavily OC'd GTX 980 or a Fury Nano.

There will most likely be some 8+6 pin RX 480's out there day 1; throwing perf/watt out the window for some solid FPS gains. I'm gonna be on my Intel iGPU until the reviews are well out, and some excellent aftermarket coolers are available. If RX 480 is about the same performance as an R9 390X, I will be counting on GTX 1070 prices to fall to $399 or at the mythical $379 MSRP.

Waiting a couple months may yield something better. Will there be a GDDR5X variant of the RX 480? Or should I keep the R9 290 and see if I can get another one for a suspiciously low price? I do not see 4GB of VRAM as a limitation yet, but its time is running out.

If the RX 480 does indeed clock very high, there will hopefully be some very overbuilt AIB's ready to cool it down. My R9 290 at max overclock does need an aggressive fan curve to keep its temps below 80C; but it consumes absurd amounts of power. It will be interesting what AMD will set the max temperature to be.

Two ways to look at it, you want to get in early & snag a 480, if you are going for AMD & not the 1070, before the miners entice resellers & retailers to redo a 290/x launch.
If you are waiting for a GDDR5x version, there's a chance that Apple will have first dibs on such a part & till the time their demand subsides you'll not be getting that particular GPU, the time may never come though if Vega launches before the end of 2016.

 

[ZGR]

Two ways to look at it, you want to get in early & snag a 480, if you are going for AMD & not the 1070, before the miners entice resellers & retailers to redo a 290/x launch.
If you are waiting for a GDDR5x version, there's a chance that Apple will have first dibs on such a part & till the time their demand subsides you'll not be getting that particular GPU, the time may never come though if Vega launches before the end of 2016.

Very good points. I forgot I had to wait far longer than I expected for the R9 290 to drop in price during the mining craze. Waiting several months for a GDDR5X version of the RX 480 with Vega right around the corner would seem foolish as well. I guess the best decision is to buy right on release. So long Hawaii!

 

[littleg]

Rumored 1266MHz performance +18-26% (1266->1500-1600) is nearby FuryX/980Ti = 1070 stock performance. Should the $200-240 RX 480s overclock like this (the reference PCB in that picture looks solid)... well.. a single 8GB RX480 is potentially able to make the 1070 redundant, or force a price cut. Yes, you can also overclock the 1070 and land near the 1080, but $240-250 to >$400, yeah, not exactly a tempting value proposition.

For a card that is in an entirely different market segment, to pack this kind of punch, well, makes sense for AMD to be so quiet about it. Expect AMD to gain tons of marketshare everywhere outside the US where hardware isn't as cheap, $200-240 for this kind of performance is insane. Hello 4850/70, we meet again.

Yeah, if this is even close to being accurate then there's only going to be one recommendation for 1080 60Hz gaming. Could be a real game changer, especially if the OC features are the 'push this button and done' style.

 

[kagui]

At first i was going to make a big post in favor of the 480 but .

On the end of the day i cant pay $600 or $400 for a gpu, so if they give me more performance on my budget i will buy it, so if they give me ultra @ 60hz i will buy it

 

[3DVagabond]

perf/mm is important if you care about absolute performance. It helps gauge how big pascal and vega would do. To me, that is pretty important because I know there is limit to how big a die size can be from a technical/business standpoint. You can only jam so many cores into a die.

Yes, I will grab a RX480 to hold me over until big pascal/vega. The RX480 is an excellently positioned card. But, discussing perf/mm isn't a knock on the RX480. It's a knock on AMD and its ability to compete at the HIGHEST level. In that regards, discussing the perf/mm of these small die helps us guesstimate how well the bigger die will perform. That's all.

Vega is supposed to be a new uarch. So, it'll have it's own perf/mm² independent of Polaris.

Edit: Noticed several other posters already pointed this out.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Vega is supposed to be a new uarch. So, it'll have it's own perf/mm² independent of Polaris.

Edit: Noticed several other posters already pointed this out.

Source? I always thought Vega was simply GCN4.0 (like Polaris) but with HBM2?

 

[kapulek]

Source? I always thought Vega was simply GCN4.0 (like Polaris) but with HBM2?

I think Polaris is more like GCN 2.0 (tech wise) with Vega being 2.1.

 

[kraatus77]

Source? I always thought Vega was simply GCN4.0 (like Polaris) but with HBM2?

vega, polaris are major updates to gcn arch. and not just the chip names. there was an article about naming of these on at 5-6 months ago. will try to find when i'm home.

 

[Noctifer616]

I think Polaris is more like GCN 2.0 (tech wise) with Vega being 2.1.

Where do those rumors come from? The roadmap has probably Vega at a higher performance per watt due to HBM2 being more power efficient than GDDR5.

Vega 10 and 11 are simply bigger versions of Polaris that also come with HBM2 or GDDRX5.

It's very unlikely there are architecture differences between Polaris and Vega, doesn't make sense.

 

[Silverforce11]

The hype is completely overwhelming. I'm trying to talk myself out of selling my R9 290 Tri-X in a few days... It's been such a cool, quiet, and fast card.

Already sold mine! I got ~$225 USD equivalent for it which makes me a happy camper.

The way I see it, at the least, it'll match a 290X but with 8gb vram and much less power usage. Anything beyond that to me, is a bonus and if it's really good I may even go 2x RX 480 CF.

 

[Tapoer]

I think Polaris is more like GCN 2.0 (tech wise) with Vega being 2.1.

AMD officially calls:
GCN (1) in Tahiti, Pitcairn, etc
GCN 2 in Hawaii and Bonaire
GCN 3 in Tonga and Fiji
GCN 4 in Polaris

GCN 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc are tech journalists invention, it will be better to only use the official terms.

 

[Adul]

Where do those rumors come from? The roadmap has probably Vega at a higher performance per watt due to HBM2 being more power efficient than GDDR5.

Vega 10 and 11 are simply bigger versions of Polaris that also come with HBM2 or GDDRX5.

It's very unlikely there are architecture differences between Polaris and Vega, doesn't make sense.

maybe from this quote. I went and read the mention interview, but I am not seeing if there is a difference in architecture. just families.

Ruth Cotter
Yes. So it's a call about where you want to show most momentum in the market and the timing you associate with that. So if you see our new GPU roadmap that we rolled out in March, we have this Polaris family. And then that is followed-on by another family in 2017, which is actually a very tight cadence in terms of how you would normally launch products into the market. There might be a longer timeframe associated between new architectures. So we're very excited about the follow-on family.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/397...al-technology-media-telecom-conference?page=7


One thing to consider is if you look at their roadmap, Vega is shown to be a higher Performance per watt than even Polaris. So it is likely that Vega is a newer architecture.

 

[itsmydamnation]

it was also confirmed that vega is a new IP level (9.0)

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/91592-amd-greenland-vega-10-said-4096-stream-processors/

 

[Adul]

it was also confirmed that vega is a new IP level (9.0)

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/91592-amd-greenland-vega-10-said-4096-stream-processors/

I did see IP v9 mention, wasnt sure what that meant.

 

[Shakabutt]

Would a jump from a R9 280 to a 480 make sense guys ? I keep searching for reasons to upgrade, but thruth be that....i can't seem to find a game to be unplayable on my card.

I game at 1080p, but mostly overwatch and dota 2, sometimes some new releases like Witcher 3, Doom, but even those proved pretty smooth on my card with some tweaks.

But i got that upgrade itch

 

[sirmo]

Would a jump from a R9 280 to a 480 make sense guys ? I keep searching for reasons to upgrade, but thruth be that....i can't seem to find a game to be unplayable on my card.

I game at 1080p, but mostly overwatch and dota 2, sometimes some new releases like Witcher 3, Doom, but even those proved pretty smooth on my card with some tweaks.

But i got that upgrade itch

I think it will be a noticeable upgrade over R9 280. But if you're happy with the current performance then nothing wrong in milking what you already got some more.

 

[kraatus77]

Would a jump from a R9 280 to a 480 make sense guys ? I keep searching for reasons to upgrade, but thruth be that....i can't seem to find a game to be unplayable on my card.

I game at 1080p, but mostly overwatch and dota 2, sometimes some new releases like Witcher 3, Doom, but even those proved pretty smooth on my card with some tweaks.

But i got that upgrade itch

it will be at least 50% faster, probably more upto 2x in newer games. with better features and lower tdp. it does worth to update.

 

[torlen11cc]

Do you think there will be big differences between AMD reference RX480 and RX480 AIB cards?
I read that the stock cooler of 480 is much better than previous cards, so we paid 20$~50$ more for nothing.

 

[Coalscraper]

...No, not buying that. Here in Canada at least, slower used NV cards often sell for more than used/new faster AMD cards.

GTX1070 debuted at $619.99 CAD, or $484 USD before tax and $547 USD after tax. Customers cross-shopping a used 980Ti will consider new prices of GTX1070. A max overclocked 980Ti and 1070 OC are pretty close in performance. A used 980Ti will still cost considerably more than a new RX 480. I also don't think the types of customers who purchase GTX980Ti would care for RX480 even if it was 85% as fast since they don't cross-shop that level of cards. There was also a statistic by NV themselves that most of the $500+ GPU buyers are brand sticky -- i.e., they only buy NV regardless of what AMD has. That means even if there was an RX480X/485 card with 100% of the performance of the 980Ti for $299, used 980TI cards could still sell for $350. Many NV customers will not buy an AMD card period and there are a lot more of those types of sticky customers than AMD has. For that reason NV cards tend to have higher resale value even if objectively they are much worse than AMD's new/used cards at that time.

nVidia just lowered the prices for new gtx980ti, 980 and 970 so that used cards can't be sold properly. 980ti is available on newegg for 460$. Pretty much an effect of the 480...

 

[Coalscraper]

For some reason I always enjoy reading your posts.

Me too. I also like to read his posts.

 

[sze5003]

Do you think there will be big differences between AMD reference RX480 and RX480 AIB cards?
I read that the stock cooler of 480 is much better than previous cards, so we paid 20$~50$ more for nothing.

The AIB cards should have a nicer PCB and usually the coolers are better too. Several to choose from but not at launch day.

 

[guskline]

:thumbsup:Just posted my 2 Sapphire Tri-X R9 290s for sale in the For Sale forum.

 

[sirmo]

The AIB cards should have a nicer PCB and usually the coolers are better too. Several to choose from but not at launch day.

Dunno about the nicer PCB, on NVidia side yes, but AMD's reference PCBs are a step above Nvidia's.