Polaris Refresh (RX 500 Series) Rumors

[Ajay]

550 is very nice to see. It's the cheapest way to addon HDMI 2.0 support. It also offers improved gaming over integrated graphics, for the casual low-medium settings esport player. It is the highlight of this launch. It's not meant to compete on price-to-performance with the vastly superior 560. Just pure low price, HDMI 2.0, and low wattage.

Very fair point considering the Ryzen chips have no onboard graphics. Makes the price of a Ryzen system that has no massive need for a gpu a lot more manageable whilst still having a brand new component with warranty

Great points. I imagine that AMD will sell Ryzen + Polaris to System builders at a nice discount. So Ryzen 5 + a 550 will be just what the doctor ordered until the desktop version of Raven Ridge comes along.

 

[KompuKare]

In the 10-11 years since buying ATI, AMD has never really used either their own or later GF's process for graphics until Polaris. And Polaris didn't show GF in a good light. Of course design also matters, but on the Nvidia side the GP107 (14nm on presumably Samsung process which is pretty similar to GF's*) also had worse performance in terms of clocks than the 16nm TSMC products.

So, if you have a worse process but are compelled to use it (back when AMD owned the fab and later due to WSA), what could you do? Well, surely the answer is something AMD has never done. If the process's max clocks or power/perf sweet spot is not as good, why not design wide and slow? GPUs are very parallel unlike CPUs and wide&slow or narrow&fast should be able to get a similar performance.

Obviously , at the cost of large dies so not suitable for something close to the limit like Fury. And either in the GF era where they often had to pay for not using enough wafers, or back when they owned the fab when larger volumes would have made a difference to their profitability, the actual cost of the larger dies would probably not have been that much. (And some of it might be offset with lower BOMs for VRMs and cooling.)

Just seems like a strategic blunder. Or even, look at Fury Nano. If they had taken that idea for Polaris and designed a 300mm² chip and ran it at the process's sweet spot. Or they could even already had that idea for Hawaii: A R9-290-Nano running at 0.9V and 700MHz might have sold well and got good reviews. Such a 300mm² Polaris chip could also be able to run fast and hot to compete with GTX1070 although obviously with far worse perf/watt.

*PCGH says that Polaris was made by Samsung too:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Radeo...65939/News/AMD-Polaris-14LPP-Samsung-1225917/

 

[mohit9206]

That's a rather ridiculous thing to say if you think about it:

1. The "460 with unlocked cores" is a new product and it's launching for $20 ($10?) less than the outgoing part. If the 1050Ti got a performance boost and price reduction, the internet would explode.
2. The "half of 560 [cores] disabled" is a new product and it's launching for $79, a mere $10 over the street price of the KEPLER-based GT 730! It's a pretty big deal.

550 is competing with GT740 Kepler in terms of price. 550 should be about 20% faster. 20% faster than a 3 yr old card?
You can even find 750ti for that price which obliterates the 550.

550 is very nice to see. It's the cheapest way to addon HDMI 2.0 support. It also offers improved gaming over integrated graphics, for the casual low-medium settings esport player. It is the highlight of this launch. It's not meant to compete on price-to-performance with the vastly superior 560. Just pure low price, HDMI 2.0, and low wattage.

What's the benefit of hdmi 2.0 for the average user who is going to buy this card? Also $80 is not low. An informed individual would buy 750ti for that price for esports.

 

[Crumpet]

550 is competing with GT740 Kepler in terms of price. 550 should be about 20% faster. 20% faster than a 3 yr old card?
You can even find 750ti for that price which obliterates the 550.



What's the benefit of hdmi 2.0 for the average user who is going to buy this card? Also $80 is not low. An informed individual would buy 750ti for that price for esports.

 

[crisium]

4K 60hz 4:4:4 is provided with HDMI 2.0. 750 Ti does not have this. There are deals on RX 460, and used GTX 950s that can compete with this price maybe, but this is the cheapest MSRP for HDMI 2.0. It will get its own deals eventually.

 

[Bouowmx]

My thinking of rationale of AMD Radeon RX 550 is cheapest dedicated GPU with 4K 60-Hz display outputs. But at 79 USD, it is dead on arrival. Of course, sale and rebates may lower price to an appropriate 50-60 USD.

 

[mohit9206]

4K 60hz 4:4:4 is provided with HDMI 2.0. 750 Ti does not have this. There are deals on RX 460, and used GTX 950s that can compete with this price maybe, but this is the cheapest MSRP for HDMI 2.0. It will get its own deals eventually.

A person with 4k tv or monitor supporting hdmi 2.0 can afford something like 1050Ti for $130. Why would he buy 550?

 

[DaveSimmons]

A person with 4k tv or monitor supporting hdmi 2.0 can afford something like 1050Ti for $130. Why would he buy 550?

4K TVs are $600 now.

But yes, if I buy a $3K LG OLED then I'm not going to worry about $80 vs $130 for a GPU.

 

[tajoh111]

I think the majority of you are overthinking this.

Ryzen 5 just released.

OEM companies will be releasing Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 prebuilts soon.

The average consumer is unlikely to purchase a prebuilt system with a brand new processor if it has an "old" graphics card in it, especially one with poor reviews.

But a prebuilt computer with a New processor and a "New" graphics card will seem like a good deal.

I think the problem is these cards don't show superiority of the rx 580. Most of these reviews just paint it on par compared to the gtx 1060.

And at equal price and performance Nvidia outsells the AMD everytime. With this launch, AMD has reset pricing to Nvidia levels and this is not a good thing. This card will be a tough sell to the general public.

Add in Nvidia superior game bundle + dramatically better power consumption and the rx 580 does not come out looking looking so hot considering they are the value brand in the market place and the gtx 1060 is an older card.

 

[crisium]

A person with 4k tv or monitor supporting hdmi 2.0 can afford something like 1050Ti for $130. Why would he buy 550?

Some users have 0 interest in gaming. Faster cards provide no value to this user. Some very casual gamers will also go for the cheapest.

Just like absolute performance has its place in the 1080 Ti and TXp, absolute lowest price for a minimum feature set has its place.

I agree that spending more on a 560 or 1050 Ti or 470 is better for a user that considers gaming important.

 

[Crumpet]

I think the problem is these cards don't show superiority of the rx 580. Most of these reviews just paint it on par compared to the gtx 1060.

And at equal price and performance Nvidia outsells the AMD everytime. With this launch, AMD has reset pricing to Nvidia levels and this is not a good thing. This card will be a tough sell to the general public.

Add in Nvidia superior game bundle + dramatically better power consumption and the rx 580 does not come out looking looking so hot considering they are the value brand in the market place and the gtx 1060 is an older card.

Yes... But what you're not taking into account is the average consumer for a pre-built system probably isn't going to know any of this.

Hell I have a friend who thinks of himself as a bit of a techy and he dropped over £2000 on an i7 7700k and an overclocked GTX1080 to game on a 22" 1080p 59hz monitor... (against my advice)

 

[Ajay]

A person with 4k tv or monitor supporting hdmi 2.0 can afford something like 1050Ti for $130. Why would he buy 550?

Yes, but imagine the typical guy walking into Best Buy to get a computer for occasional gaming (say, he already has a gaming console). It's more likely that said consumer knows what HDMI is as opposed to the fact that a 1050Ti trounces an RX550. The salesperson at BB will up-sell him if he says "Can I play Doom on it?". Now if you are an Enthusiast, then you won't go near BB anyway (or Walmart, etc.). If a person is an enthusiast with some $$s and a bit of tech savvy, then he/she will go to Maingear or Origin, etc., and possibly just "buy the best" and be happy.

@Crumpet nailed it in post #479.

 

[tamz_msc]

NVIDIA's low end is a confusing hodgepodge of cards with the same name but differing generations of architectures for the GPU core. The GT 730 has both Fermi and Kepler variants with the Fermi version limited to GDDR3 and is considerably weaker than the Kepler version. They also do not have HW decode/encode for modern codecs like HEVC and VP9.

 

[TeknoBug]

Hell I have a friend who thinks of himself as a bit of a techy and he dropped over £2000 on an i7 7700k and an overclocked GTX1080 to game on a 22" 1080p 59hz monitor... (against my advice)

haha that is awesome

 

[SpaceBeer]

I think the problem is these cards don't show superiority of the rx 580. Most of these reviews just paint it on par compared to the gtx 1060.

And at equal price and performance Nvidia outsells the AMD everytime. With this launch, AMD has reset pricing to Nvidia levels and this is not a good thing. This card will be a tough sell to the general public.

Add in Nvidia superior game bundle + dramatically better power consumption and the rx 580 does not come out looking looking so hot considering they are the value brand in the market place and the gtx 1060 is an older card.

It depends. For example, the only new (1 year old) AAA games I'm really interested in are Hitman, Deus Ex:MD, Dishonored 2 and Sniper Elite 4. So, 3 out of 4 games are "Radeon optimized" And in my case RX 560 is much better buy than 1050(Ti), and RX 570 4GB would be better choice than more expensive 1060 6GB. And just to mention that I really don't care about power consumption, mostly because it's cheap in my country, I play only ~10-20 hours/week, and I saved much more by replacing 5pcs 75W old light bulbs with 7W LED ones

 

[ConsoleLover]

If we take out the extremely Nvidia biased games like Anno and GTA 5(and I get it these are legit games, but they are now quite old as well) then the RX 580 wins over the 1060FE on average by 4-5fps. Custom 1060's with custom 580 its closer, in DX11 the 1060 still wins in most cases, but admittedly by a smaller margin that it used to, and the 580 wins in DX12 by a bigger margin.

I bought the 1060 in January because it was the better buy, it still is compared to the 480, but with the custom RX 580's coming OC out of the gate to 1425 and more, the 580 would be my choice if I was buying right now, though it is more expensive than the 480.

I can get a Sapphire 480 for 280 euros, while all of the 580's are 300 euros and more.

Man the USA is so great for buying hardware! Do not become like the EU with the ridiculously high taxes on everything. Yeah EU has decent welfare if you do not work, it sucks for those of us who do work and have to overpay for every single thing!

 

[lukart]

I'll be picking up a 580 soon, the extra power means nothing to me I just need to decide on which card to purchase I read many of the reviews and while some give the edge to 1060 there are just as many reviews that give the edge to the 580 in pure performance.

Looks like that, I'm trying to find one Red Devil in our distributors to try it out myself. Loved the 480, this one looks even better.

 

[nathanddrews]

Man the USA is so great for buying hardware! Do not become like the EU with the ridiculously high taxes on everything. Yeah EU has decent welfare if you do not work, it sucks for those of us who do work and have to overpay for every single thing!

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.

The penalty of being an economic beast is that sometimes we don't get certain hardware or services that other countries get because reasons. For example, AMD Bristol Ridge (A12-9800, etc.) is currently only available to OEMs in USA. I can't buy the APU or motherboards from any US-based e/retailers. I know of several Euro-based outlets that sell the hardware, but the shipping makes it outrageously expensive. Another example is stuff like Netflix, where other countries have access to significantly better/newer movies and TV shows than the US. VPN FTW.

I take solace in knowing that I could go to Microcenter to build a brand new "budget" gaming/workstation setup:

Ryzen 1400 + B350 mobo: $220
16GB DDR4-3000: $110
M.2 PCIe 256GB SSD: $140
RX 560: $100
Case+PSU: $50

$650 (including tax) for a brand new 4C/8T machine that's amazing for esports, streaming, CADD, and medium 1080p gaming, while also being perfect for HTPC tasks and very capable for casual content editing/creation. Obviously, you could build something cheaper with used/different parts, but I think that's pretty impressive...

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Medium power state for video decoding and light 3D: Very good.

This is beyond very good. This is excellent news. It fixes the one glaring problem of Polaris for HTPC use.

 

[IEC]

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

 

[dooon]

interesting...

LAZION's YouTube
AMD RX500 GPU Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QCTlcik1rE
(leak slides)

AMD RYZEN5/RX500 Q&A Session
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quK_0_gKrT4

 

[unseenmorbidity]

Did you guys think AMD was lying!? it says right there in the slide, 3rd gen finFET 14.

I don't trust AMD's marketing team as far as I can throw them, but they aren't going to straight up lie.

 

[ConsoleLover]

I mean considering most 480's who did manage to reach STABLE 1400MHz consumed up to 200W, this is a decent improvement to have custom AIB cards run at 1425 and 1445MHz out of the box and "only" consume around 190W. Only the Sapphire seems to be consuming over 200W.

 

[JDG1980]

What I'd like to know is if the WX series professional Polaris cards will get the 500 series firmware updates (e.g. intermediate RAM speeds for lower power consumption on UVD and multi-monitor) and if they will be updated to reflect the new "3rd gen" 14nm process. (Or maybe they already are? Perf/watt is definitely better than the consumer cards, but that could just be due to more restrained clock speeds.)

 

[Bouowmx]

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 ??