I'm going to entirely disagree with you here. You either draw the line in the sand or you don't. The 1030's were clearly labeled with DDR4, which is every bit as explanatory as "2048SP" to the average consumer. There is no blurring. Lets not defend one company by saying another did the bad thing better.
We know for sure it supports 5% higher clock speeds. 8400 MHz in the Sapphire Special Edition RX 580 is the example here. Could it go higher? Possibly.
AMD Radeon RX 590
The Radeon RX 590 is believed to offer a bigger jump in performance over RX 580 compared to RX 580/480 refresh. We are looking a 112 to 124% of RX 480 performance, while RX 580 was at most offering 102-109% of Polaris 10 performance.
The charts leaked through FFXV website indicate that NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 is in trouble. This is likely why the company confirmed that GDDR5X variants of this Pascal-based model will be available, as there is no trance of GTX/RTX 2060 cards coming to market yet.
I'm questioning whether or not this is real, and if it is what kind of thermal performance it will come with. I hope it's true though; it would go to show that Nvidia jumped to gun with ray tracing too soon given it's prices, thermal envelopes, and die sizes.
I wonder if part of the reason RX 590 exists is as part of the renegotiation's between GloFo and AMD following cancellation of 7nm. AMD and GloFo would have had multiple contracts covering multiple products and as part of the back and forth negotiations AMD may have said “let us move products x, y, & z to TSMC and we’ll buy another Polaris respin on your 12nm process.” That happens in business all the time. While RX 590 may not make much sense per se, it may be necessary in the broader picture of moving to TSMC.
This is all guessing on my part and assumes RX 590 is being made at GloFo. If it ends up being a TSMC product then forget what I said.
Yes/No. Yes, your right, Polaris 30 is an easy upgrade (assuming it actually is made at GloFo), just like Ryzen 2XXX was. Also no, Ryzen 2XXX was the second half of a one two punch right in Intel's gut. Ryzen was a new architecture, a much hoped for return to competition. Polaris 30 will just be a slight speed bump that really won't effect the landscape. As easy as moving to 12nm is, it's still not free. Their has to be a realistic business case for AMD to go through the effort.590 exists because it's a cheap process upgrade, requiring no new masks. It just like 2000 series Ryzen.
Yes/No. Yes, your right, Polaris 30 is an easy upgrade (assuming it actually is made at GloFo), just like Ryzen 2XXX was. Also no, Ryzen 2XXX was the second half of a one two punch right in Intel's gut. Ryzen was a new architecture, a much hoped for return to competition. Polaris 30 will just be a slight speed bump that really won't effect the landscape. As easy as moving to 12nm is, it's still not free. Their has to be a realistic business case for AMD to go through the effort.
Yes/No. Yes, your right, Polaris 30 is an easy upgrade (assuming it actually is made at GloFo), just like Ryzen 2XXX was. Also no, Ryzen 2XXX was the second half of a one two punch right in Intel's gut. Ryzen was a new architecture, a much hoped for return to competition. Polaris 30 will just be a slight speed bump that really won't effect the landscape. As easy as moving to 12nm is, it's still not free. Their has to be a realistic business case for AMD to go through the effort.
Which appears to be happening. I've read a few articles out there about a new gtx 1060 with GDDR5X memory that some suspect is a cut down GP104. Thrust and counter thrust. The war continues......Now- AMD can claim that win again- if nVidia does not release a competitive Turing, or cut a GP104 that is cut down to a lesser extent than GTX1060 GDDR5X.
Which appears to be happening. I've read a few articles out there about a new gtx 1060 with GDDR5X memory that some suspect is a cut down GP104. Thrust and counter thrust. The war continues...
GTX 1070 performance for $250 or GTFO.
Polaris tweaked could absolutely be capable of this, and I can't imagine the expenditure would be great.
1070 is too much to ask without bumping up the shader count.