AMD: Speculation, Rumors, and Discussion (Archive)

[silent_guy]

I don't really get the hate for this Polaris10 card.

What hate?
I only see comments about AMD strategy to finally get it to market and hopefully not screwing things up for a change.
Polaris 10 will be a fine chip. The question is whether or not it will meet the high expectations after all the noise AMD has been making for the last 6 months.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

$300 just for a graphics card isn't for budget gamers.. Even $200 is pushing the budget gaming PC price to me.
I am not sure where along the way $700+ graphics cards have become acceptable even for enthusiasts.

Well when Nvidia pushes 1000 USD GPUs for enthusiasts and 650 USD GPUs for the performance range, it tends to inflate everything else below it. As long as consumers continue to buy it, Nvidia will continue to push the price up. They are in this to make money, nothing more. They certainly aren't in this to save money for consumers.

Regards,
SB

 

[silent_guy]

I am not sure where along the way $700+ graphics cards have become acceptable even for enthusiasts.

It's not exactly new. I fondly remember this new college grad colleague who bought 2 8800 GTX Ultra. That was $850 a piece 9 years ago? They weren't even that much faster than the regular thing...

 

[Rurouni]

I will definitely buy Polaris if it is $300 or bellow. 1070 is out of my budget. I was going to buy 380X, but decided to wait for Polaris. It looks like it is a wise move since the performance improvement looks to be massive and with probably a more complete feature. Earlier it was rumored to be in the x90 range, which would make Polaris too expensive. But if they place it and price it in x80 range then I would be a very happy person.

 

[kalelovil]

http://www.techpowerup.com/222988/powercolor-next-gen-lcs-liquid-cooling-solutions-pictured
PowerColor displaying their single and dual GPU liquid cooling solutions for future graphics cards.
Raises the possibility of a Polaris 10-based successor to their Devil 13 dual R9 390 card.

 

[SimBy]

http://www.techpowerup.com/222988/powercolor-next-gen-lcs-liquid-cooling-solutions-pictured
PowerColor displaying their single and dual GPU liquid cooling solutions for future graphics cards.
Raises the possibility of a Polaris 10-based successor to their Devil 13 dual R9 390 card.

Liquid cooled Polaris? I'm not saying its impossible it just sounds unlikely. Why? One explanation could be they pushed a +-130W Polaris up to or beyond 300W.

 

[Ext3h]

Liquid cooled Polaris? I'm not saying its impossible it just sounds unlikely. Why? One explanation could be they pushed a +-130W Polaris up to or beyond 300W.

The article shows a liquid cooler for a dual GPU card. So even if a single P10 is "only" 130W, that's already 260W for both. Add a little headroom for OC, and you have your 300W.

All that assuming that both GPUs are actually running at full clock this time, and not at a reduced clock as we got used to with several past models.

 

[CSI PC]

The article shows a liquid cooler for a dual GPU card. So even if a single P10 is "only" 130W, that's already 260W for both. Add a little headroom for OC, and you have your 300W.

All that assuming that both GPUs are actually running at full clock this time, and not at a reduced clock as we got used to with several past models.

I think they mention single and dual GPU.
The single seems to be for Polaris and the dual the ProDuo.

The first one in the series is a close-loop all-in-one solution for single-GPU cards...
dual-GPU graphics cards hinting at the possibility of a custom-design Radeon Pro Duo by PowerColor being under development

Cheers

 

[3dilettante]

Polaris, if it is ~230mm2, wouldn't match Hawaii's TDP(W)/mm2 until around 145 W.

Hot spot management might be a different game this time with a small die and new process, but in theory, there are coolers that can manage overall thermal density for a Polaris 10 being pushed to ~150W.

That might give a Polaris 10 X variant with a 6-pin connector,
The next step up would be an 8-pin, but I think power density numbers get pretty uncomfortable for air before approaching the upper range, and there might be questions as to whether it could take that level of power delivery.

 

[SimBy]

Supposedly leaked slide claims RX480 up to 5.5TF and 1x6pin. Which is same as R9 290X if I'm not mistaken.

 

[CSI PC]

Supposedly leaked slide claims RX480 up to 5.5TF and 1x6pin. Which is same as R9 290X if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah it is in the middle of 390 and 390x.
Still, too early to say whether that is a real leak or fake.
Cheers

 

[Razor1]

http://videocardz.com/60752/amd-radeon-rx-480-specifications-leaked

so much teasing......

The pixelation (grain) looks like its a screen from a video.....

 

[CSI PC]

Still not sure if that is real or fake.
If real it ruins that cheer rumour a little while back of the 5.5Tflops GPU being a mobile part, which a fair few of us thought was improbable.

But this is now two different sources mentioning 5.5 Tflops figure.
Cheers

 

[CarstenS]

Hm, that's a little less FLOPS than a 1.0-GHz-Hawaii, aka R9 290X. Hope AMD can pull off something similar as with HBM, of which forum users around the world spread the myth, it could hold more bytes per byte (WTF) than conventional memory.
At least, the slide seems to imply that RX480 can do it with half the power (at max) as well, it seems. Good. And it has DX12 w/Async Compute. Yay!

If true, this sounds like a sub-250-$ card.

 

[Razor1]

well if its real, up to 5.5 tflops, it puts it around the 390-390x, with front end changes, nano level performance.......

 

[CarstenS]

I am not entirely convinced the front end is what's holding AMD back.

 

[Razor1]

hmm what are ya thinking?

 

[jacozz]

hmm what are ya thinking?

What about the RX 480x?
Maybe a "One more thing" with 25xx shaders and Gddr5x?
Or, just wishful thinking

 

[AlNom]

256-bit GDDR5... so... <256GB/s ?

 

[CarstenS]

hmm what are ya thinking?

Dunno, tbh. But Tonga - albeit having less raw memory bandwidth than Tahitit admittedly - did not fare tooooooo much better than it's ancestor despite modernized (read: doubled) front-end ressources. I'm skeptical.

256-bit GDDR5... so... <256GB/s ?

There's actually 9 gbps GDDR5 from Micron IIRC. Albeit at a hefty 1.59 volts.