Polaris Refresh (RX 500 Series) Rumors

[Samwell]

TechPowerUp author Ravenlord: https://www.techpowerup.com/232494/radeon-rx-540-surfaces-on-amd-website

AMD Radeon RX 540: 512 shaders, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 1219 MHz, 1248 GFLOPS, 4 GB 128-bit 6-GT/s 96-GB/s GDDR5

540 is better than 550 ??

Their naming schema with retail and oem models in different configurations is a total mess. 540 OEM about as fast as 550. 550OEM is a lot faster than 550 retail. Then you get the 530 and 520, which are rebrands of the 430/330/240/8570. Damn 4 rebrands in a row must be a new record even more than nvidias 730, but maybe Nvidia will hit back with their next rebrand of kepler in low end

 

[tamz_msc]

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but it seems that there really is a process improvement at play here. AdoredTV was able to undervolt his MSI Gaming X 580 to 1040mV @ 1395MHz boost clocks, down from the stock 1150mV. He was saving 30W-35W just from the undervolt, and even more using Radeon chill.

Those of you with a lot of RX480s (such as yours truly) know this means some pretty good efficiency gains are on the table if you're willing to go past the (rather large, apparently) safety margins put in place by manufacturers like MSI.

https://youtu.be/MQ9ro5pwfXY?t=610

He even got it to run at the reference boost clock of the RX 480 at 1266MHz with 850 mV.

 

[Panino Manino]

It's pretty great, but I would prefer a higher, direct consumption tax over the income tax structure that we have now, but that's a topic for another forum in a galaxy far, far away.

I'm from Brazil I'm I have to say that you are pretty wrong and would regret dearly for wishing this, just saying.

As I'm already here...
I don't understand, a year ago RX480 was launched with a huge controversy about power consumption. AMD spent resources, time and money to solve. A year later the same card is sold with a new bios undoing that work, for a tiny little bit more of clocks and consuming even more power.
Why AMD/RTG do this?
Why, when the user can easily undervolt, even using AMD's own "Chill" and achieve a same power consumption? Why these cards can't come with the "correct" voltages out of the box?
This is so strange...

 

[mohit9206]

Rx550 launches today, hope to see some reviews. My prediction its 20% faster than R7 250X (rebranded hd7770). Pretty lame as 250X is still being sold at $80. So it replaces a 3 yr old card but only a bit more performance. RX560 is the one to look out for.

 

[SpaceBeer]

RX 560 arrives in early May. And there might be RX 560 2 GB version also. Which is not cool

 

[tamz_msc]

Rx550 launches today, hope to see some reviews. My prediction its 20% faster than R7 250X (rebranded hd7770). Pretty lame as 250X is still being sold at $80. So it replaces a 3 yr old card but only a bit more performance. RX560 is the one to look out for.

Outright performance is not why people buy these cards. The biggest selling feature is going to be the support for h.265 encode/decode.

 

[SpaceBeer]

Pentium G4560 + RX 550 combo will cost $140-150 and beat any current A10-A12 APU in both CPU and GPU tasks. Poor APUs

 

[tamz_msc]

Pentium G4560 + RX 550 combo will cost $140-150 and beat any current A10-A12 APU in both CPU and GPU tasks. Poor APUs

There was only so much you could squeeze out from Bristol Ridge. Speaking of the A12, this is quite impressive.

 

[SpaceBeer]

720p, Doom and Vulkan - the best case scenario

I have bought A10-7850K 3 years ago, and I played 2012-2014 titles in 1080p (Sniper Elite 3, Deus EX:HR, Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, Dishonored, BioShock Infinite...). At that time 4 thread CPU and cheapest GDDR5 GPU combo was $50 more expensive than A10. So I went for APU.

There is no way this (or next) year APUs will be able to run Deus Ex:MD or Sniper Elite 4 in 1080p. Even RX 550 can't. Next generation APUs will have up to 11 CUs. But unless IGP can run on much higher clocks, and has eDRAM (or HBM chache), there is no point in making such large IGPs and wasting expensive die space. It will be useless for new AAA games, though great for indie and old ones. And HTPC systems. But even 6 or 8 CU IGP will be enough for those tasks. Plus, fast DDR4 is (and will be for some time) too expensive to be considered for budget PCs

So I'm happy there low end Polaris cards, especially RX 560. That one will for sure be enough for 2017. and some less demanding upcoming games

 

[mohit9206]

Outright performance is not why people buy these cards. The biggest selling feature is going to be the support for h.265 encode/decode.

Believe it or not,people in countries like Asia, South America,Africa etc do buy these cards for gaming. But neither AMD nor Nvidia can be bothered to provide a half decent card at that price.

Pentium G4560 + RX 550 combo will cost $140-150 and beat any current A10-A12 APU in both CPU and GPU tasks. Poor APUs

Pentium G4560+RX560 is WAY better and beats Xbox One and any Zen APU that amd will launch in future.For $20 more no one should choose RX550.

 

[raghu78]

Pentium G4560+RX560 is WAY better and beats Xbox One and any Zen APU that amd will launch in future.For $20 more no one should choose RX550.

Not so fast. 4C/8T Zen APU with HBM2 will absolutely thrash the above combination. If AMD can sell a Zen APU with even just 2 GB HBM2 as a High bandwidth cache for USD 200 it would be unbeatable for perf, perf/watt and perf/$ against a CPU + discrete GPU.

 

[SpaceBeer]

Even 512MB of HBM2 would be more than enough with HBCC. However, I doub't we'll see such APUs in next few years. Also, if they can't fit more than 11 CUs, it won't be faster than RX 560. Though it could be useful in laptops/ultrabooks and mini PCs


RX 550 review
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3190...hics-card-with-a-perplexing-price.html?page=2
And as I see, there is SFF model at launch
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125968&cm_re=rx_550-_-14-125-968-_-Product

 

[nathanddrews]

And as I see, there is SFF model at launch
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125968&cm_re=rx_550-_-14-125-968-_-Product

It's not low-profile. You had my hopes up.

TechPowerUp author Ravenlord: https://www.techpowerup.com/232494/radeon-rx-540-surfaces-on-amd-website
AMD Radeon RX 540: 512 shaders, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 1219 MHz, 1248 GFLOPS, 4 GB 128-bit 6-GT/s 96-GB/s GDDR5
540 is better than 550 ??

The RX 540 is currently only a mobile SKU, but it is confusing that it seems better than the desktop RX 550:
https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-540

FWIW, PCWorld review of RX 550 (tested with a water-cooled i7-5960X LOL):
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3190...et-graphics-card-with-a-perplexing-price.html

Summary is what we all expected, I think:

Pros:
Tremendous leap over integrated graphics and other low-budget GPUs
Excellent modern 4K+ multimedia and display support
FreeSync
Best DX12/Vulkan support at this price point
Lower power usage
Minimal heat

Cons:
Too expensive relative to the $99 RX 560
No low-profile launch models (this one really fscking irks me!)

 

[mohit9206]

So its useless for AAA games. Can't even hit 60fps at low settings.

 

[nathanddrews]

So its useless for AAA games. Can't even hit 60fps at low settings.

Useless? That's borderline trolling. For $79, you can get a significantly BETTER experience at 1200p than Xbone (900p) and PS4 (1080p) in RotTR (30fps with dips) and Division (30fps with dips). While also getting over 100fps in esports titles (most played games in the world).

Besides, if you pair it with a FreeSync display, that helps hide frame rate dips. Can't wait to see better reviews with frame times and other settings, etc.

 

[Glo.]

Pentium G4560+RX560 is WAY better and beats Xbox One and any Zen APU that amd will launch in future.For $20 more no one should choose RX550.

I would not be so sure about this, my friend...

 

[mohit9206]

Useless? That's borderline trolling. For $79, you can get a significantly BETTER experience at 1200p than Xbone (900p) and PS4 (1080p) in RotTR (30fps with dips) and Division (30fps with dips). While also getting over 100fps in esports titles (most played games in the world).

Besides, if you pair it with a FreeSync display, that helps hide frame rate dips. Can't wait to see better reviews with frame times and other settings, etc.

Ok maybe so but still way too overpriced for the performance. 560 is significantly better for $20 more.

I would not be so sure about this, my friend...

You mean Zen APU will be faster than RX560? Even if it is, its not targeted towards gamers so it doesn't matter how fast it is. APU are dead for desktop gaming market since a long time.

 

[Glo.]

You mean Zen APU will be faster than RX560? Even if it is, its not targeted towards gamers so it doesn't matter how fast it is. APU are dead for desktop gaming market since a long time.

That is only your opinion. We have to wait and see if that turns out as a reality.

 

[crisium]

Need some low profile 550s. And fanless models. This is only the first batch though, so I'm sure more will come in the months ahead. Still, disappointing not to see the baby cards. There are 1070s with smaller form factors than what the 550 has available right now!

Just a reminder, these are not gaming focused cards. It's the feature set and low price that makes this an interesting card. I know someone looking for ultra cheap HDMI 2.0 and H265. He doesn't play games, or when he does they are not even from this decade. This is what he is looking for (or the rumoured GTX 1030).

RX 560 at $100 will be the far better choice for entry level gaming. The 560 will easily beat Xbone performance, and should provide around vanilla PS4 performance (RX 560 has the FLOP advantage, but half the ROPs and less bandwidth, so we'll see). 14% more shaders and $10 less than the RX 460 MSRP, so it's progress. 550 and 560 definitely the highlights of this refresh generation. 580 seems to scale so poorly with clocks.

 

[mohit9206]

RX550 uk price £80 for 2GB and £90 for 4GB.
Amd using the 4gb model to bait unsuspecting customers into thinking they are getting amazing gaming card with 4gb ram for cheap.
And finally Asus cards with their laughable price of £100.
I remember when sub $100 graphics cards by amd used to be good. HD4670 launched for $80 and gave the previous gen $200 HD3850 a run for its money.

 

[nathanddrews]

560 is significantly better for $20 more.

Zero argument there!

What's most disappointing is that if/when we do get a low-profile version, it will probably be $89.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would not be so sure about this, my friend...

Seems like a pretty safe bet to me. At least for a couple of years, by which time more powerful low end gpus should be available. I mean we don't even have a launch date for the first gen Zen apus, and they certainly won't reach 560 level performance. It will probably take 2 or 3 generations, and hbm for sure, which I don't think has even been officially confirmed for anything but the monster server apus.

 

[SPBHM]

RX550 uk price £80 for 2GB and £90 for 4GB.
Amd using the 4gb model to bait unsuspecting customers into thinking they are getting amazing gaming card with 4gb ram for cheap.
And finally Asus cards with their laughable price of £100.
I remember when sub $100 graphics cards by amd used to be good. HD4670 launched for $80 and gave the previous gen $200 HD3850 a run for its money.

it's 4GB at the same speed, so it's actually a gain, some games can run with OK framerate on this level of GPU using more than 2GB of vram with higher texture settings and so on.

this is not like one of those "r7 240 4GB DDR3" kind of a deal at least
but yes looking back at the 4670... now that was a good cheap card.

 

[nathanddrews]

4GB can make a big difference in some games. Using the RX 460 2GB vs 4GB, Shadow of Mordor makes the difference between minimum frame times of 29fps and 39fps. Doom Vulkan: 31fps vs 64fps! A few other games get 10-20% gains in minimums and/or maximums. Also depends - like always - on texture settings and AA settings. Some games see only marginal benefits or possibly regression.

 

[nathanddrews]

Asus RX 550 4GB Review. It's an hour long, so I'll sum up:

Photoshop - a little faster than R7 250
Premiere - way faster than R7 250

Game Setting: AVG (Min-Max)
World of Tanks 1080p High: 60fps (41-82)
Overwatch 1080p 100%: 66fps (46-99)
GTAV 1080p Normal: 107fps (76-149)
GTAV 1080p High: 56fps (36-89)