RX 490 Rumors: What do you think it will be?

[Wall Street]

So there have been various spotting of the RX 490 as a card that may be released before the end of the year.

What does everyone think that this card is? WCCFtech seemed to think that this is dual GPU Polaris 10.

Another theory that seems to have been debunked is that there could be some more execution units on Polaris 10. In this theory, RX 490 would be a 2560 shader Polaris 10 part.

An alternative is that this could be the early coming of Vega? It has been rumored to launch next year, but the rumored dates have been in a lot of flux.

My personal pet theory is that Polaris 10 can support GDDR5X after all and that RX 490 will be an RX 480 on an aftermarket PCB with GDDR5X memory and a slight overclock. I think that the RX 480 is supposed to benefit from memory overclock, which is why I believe this rumor despite the AMD quote that Polaris 10 doesn't support GDDR5X. Another reason I believe that this could be true is that Lisa Su said that Polaris will cover $100 to $300 parts, and there is enough room between the $239 RX 480 and $300 to release another Polaris 10 part, but not enough to release a dual-GPU Polaris 10.

I doubt that all of the references to the card are typos because a lot of lists seem to include this part number, but I guess that this is also possible?

I invite everyone to speculate like mad on what they this this card will be and when they think it will be released.

 

[Stuka87]

There are RX 480 cards that will be in the $280 range. While a P10 with fast memory could certainly be faster, it would not be a big enough jump to separate itself from the 480.

My thinking is that its Vega 10, which is the smaller Vega.

 

[Kenmitch]

I invite everyone to speculate like mad

Polaris 12 with GDDR5X clocked at 1400 on the core and 9000 on the memory.

 

[jhu]

I invite everyone to speculate like mad

Challenge accepted.

It will be almost as fast as a GTX 1080. The secret? It's actually a GTX 1080! But why is it slower? Because AMD has moles inside NVidia and has has been able to secure a supply of GTX 1080 chips, but they can't just use NVidia's drivers. No, that would be too obvious. They have to write their own and insert a NOP instruction every 20-50 instructions so they don't raise any suspicions.

 

[Yakk]

AMD has been taking up Multi-GPU, Microsoft will be releasing Multi-GPU code for DX12, finally AMD and Firaxis are promoting Explicit Multi-Adapter for Civ. VI.

So.... I say it'll be a Dual Polaris+ card.

The + because I believe AMD also has a little something extra up their sleeve...

I was all ready to go Nitro Sapphire, but DAMN I'm going Dual Polaris+ if that is what the 490 is!

 

[IEC]

Since when has a X90 card been a dual GPU card?

I'd be slightly more inclined to believe Vega 10 over dual Polaris.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

A 480 with gddr5x

 

[Silverforce11]

It's not Polaris. AMD's slides confirmed 490 will have greater than 256 bit bus.

Has to be the smaller Vega. There are 2 Vega chips, confirmed via AMD's recent OpenCL drivers.

 

[96Firebird]

Coming in 2017.

 

[railven]

Since when has a X90 card been a dual GPU card?

I'd be slightly more inclined to believe Vega 10 over dual Polaris.

I quickly think of HD 6990 and HD 7990.
EDIT: Heck, AMD already showed they have no issues changing what we already know, remember HD 6970 being a single GPU solution versus HD 5970 which was dual-GPU.

I don't get why AMD keeps changing their naming stack. I'm still confused on what will ultimately be the R(non-X) 400 series.



On the guesstimates, I see it being dual chip. AMD's own time lines don't put Vega out until 2017, and I doubt they'll want to leave NV unattended in the top pricing bracket for too long. They've pretty much used CFX 480's to demonstrate it's capabilities versus a single GTX 1080. They already planted the seed. And it's growing more and more. Because people are seeing "~$500 worth of GPUs versus $700 GPU and it's faster!"*

*assuming decent mGPU scaling/support.


I wouldn't e surprised if Vega launches as a whole new line, RX 500 series? NV will respond with GP102 as a GTX 1180 and using GP104+GDDR5X for the GTX 1170, etc, rinse repeat what we saw start of 28nm.

 

[Silverforce11]

Vega with HBM2 is 2017 per AMD's schedule.

We don't know if the smaller Vega will be HBM2 or not. :/

There's GP102 rumors with 384 bit bus and GDDR5X, versus GP100 with HBM2 afterall. Same generation but designed for different memory subsystems.

Polaris 11 = entry
Polaris 10 = mainstream
Vega 10 = mid-range
Vega 11 = high-end

Think about the prices and the gaps between those chips. I don't see the smaller Vega being HBM2, it would only drive up costs. But they do need a bigger bus and GDDR5X if they want a 350-400mm2 chip not to be bandwidth bottlenecked.

 

[EndlessWargasm]

Maybe all the 480 chips have been tier b parts. Binned to hit ~1300.

Maybe the 490 is a super clocked version, binned to hit ~1500.

Has chipworks released a real die shot yet?

 

[poofyhairguy]

I think it will be disappointing.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[dark zero]

Ok, the king of theorist is me... ok, no.

Going serious, I see this upcomming cards along the RX 490:
- RX 490 - Dual Polaris at 1300 - 1400 Mhz (optimized chips) - 12 GB GDDR5X or 8 GB HBM2 or 8 GB HBM1 (dual interposer)
- RX 485 - Polaris at 1350 Mhz (optimized chips) - 8 GB GDDR5X
- RX 475 - Polaris at 1300 Mhz (optimized chips) - 8 GB GDDR5 - This since the RX 470 is confirmed to go only at 4 GB GDDR5
- RX 465 - Polaris at 1600 Mhz (optimized chips) - 4 GB GDDR5 - This since the RX 460 is confirmed to go only at 2 GB GDDR5

 

[IllogicalGlory]

I think it will be disappointing.

Usually a safe bet with AMD products. :'(

What was the last AMD endeavor that lived up to the hype? It has to be Hawaii, right? Maybe DX12/Vulkan will pan out too.

 

[Silverforce11]

Usually a safe bet with AMD products. :'(

What was the last AMD endeavor that lived up to the hype? It has to be Hawaii, right? Maybe DX12/Vulkan will pan out too.

No, they screwed up Hawaii too by giving it a terrible cooler making Hawaii run at 94C and throttling down losing performance. Hot, loud, less performance, it's basically AMD shooting themselves. Custom 290/X for example, ran cool, quiet, used LESS power while running faster. Compare custom 290 $399 vs GTX 780 $649 for example, very close on perf, power etc. But it was too late, the stigma stuck.

The same Hawaii in 390/X, was better received, but came way too late.

So even if they had an actual great engineering result, they can still totally mess it up. lol

Edit: The same almost applies to RX 480. Overvolted on default, running slower due to throttling and using more power. If I can take 2 minutes to down-volt and run faster & use less power, that's a failing from AMD's part.

 

[crisium]

Polaris 10 is just too slow in general to warrant a dual card. 3870X2 was about as weak as you can get and have a dual card still kind of make sense (well, even then there was a 3850X2 by Sapphire, but I won't count that).

That is to say the 3870X2, when scaling well, cleanly beat Nvidia's best at the time: The 8800GTS G92 and 8800GTX/Ultra. That was a justification for buyers: when scaling you had the best, when not scaling, well, at least a single 3870 was only slightly behind the 8800GT.

When 480 crossfire scales well, it still barely beats a 1070, and is lucky to even trade blows with a 1080. When it doesn't scale at all, you are MILES away from a 1070 except in a single game, Doom. The 1070 is the 8800GT of this generation (not in price sadly).

490 being 480 crossfire would be a joke, to be honest. I could not recommend it over a single 1070 at all, not unless they went hyper aggressive $300-$330 or something.

 

[sm625]

Probably a dual GPU. Power consumption of 300 watts, beats a 150W 1070 by 5% on average, and costs $389. Amazing deal. Because in 2 years it will be 20% faster than a 1070. AMD is set to steal back tons of market share with products like that.

 

[guskline]

It will cost more than the RX 480!

 

[gamervivek]

C993

 

[Headfoot]

WCCFtech thinks everything AMD does is going to be a dual GPU at some point in the rumor cycle. Look up nearly any major AMD major release. They thought the "390" when we didn't know they'd call it Fury X was going to be 2 Tongas. Which it wasn't.

There are 2 Vega dies right? This is probably the smaller Vega die...

 

[crazzy.heartz]

It's either:

1. Simple dual 480x2 with 2*8pin connectors, 8GB

(Not sure AMD would want to spend RnD time/$$ to include GDDR5X or HBM or higher 384/512 bit bus on a limited run/requirement card to hold on till Vega arrives..

2. Small Vega with all its GCN 5 goodies.. Most likely with GDDR5/X

Or (Highly unlikely)

2 480 chips connected together like a dual-core processor which presents itself as one big GPU to the OS.. (read somewhere on Videocardz/wccftecj.com)

Now, THIS would b AWesome !!

 

[HiroThreading]

I highly doubt it'll be a dual GPU. If it is, then who on earth will buy it?

It will consume a good 100 watts more than than the GTX 1080 while trailing it in performance (CFX support in DX12 is basically non-existent). Margins will also be terrible because Nvidia can and will lower prices much further on the GTX 1070 because it's an efficient small-die chip.

If a dual-Polaris card were to debut at a price of around $500, or even $400, the Nvidia alternative is just far too appealing. If absolute performance is a must, then a consumer won't even think twice and will pay the extra $100-150 on a GTX 1080.

 

[Headfoot]

I'm personally not ruling out a dual gpu card on Polaris 10 ever existing. I just don't think the 490 is it. We might get an ambitious AIB partner to make a dual polaris 10 like they did on some of the other chips in the past

If they do a dual gpu card I dont see why they wouldn't continue their most current naming scheme of 295x2 with a 485x2

 

[Glo.]

C993

Would dual GPU have derived model?