Tuesday, April 26th 2016
AMD Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" as Fast as GTX 980 Ti: Rumor
At a presser in Taiwan for its Radeon Pro Duo launch, AMD talked extensively about its upcoming "Polaris" and "Vega" family of GPUs. The company appears to be betting heavily on two SKUs it plans to launch this June, Polaris 10 and Polaris 11. Polaris 10 is an internal designation to Radeon R9 490(X), based on the 14 nm "Ellesmere" silicon. It may be the biggest chip AMD builds on the "Polaris" architecture, but it won't exactly be a "big chip," in that it doesn't succeed "Fiji." That honor is reserved for "Vega," which debuts in early-2017.
The "Ellesmere" silicon is more of AMD's competitor to NVIDIA's GP104. It is rumored that the R9 490(X), based on this silicon, will offer consumers performance rivaling the GeForce GTX 980 Ti (ergo faster than the Radeon R9 Fury X), at a USD $300-ish price point. "Ellesmere" will be a lean-machine, physically featuring up to 2,560 4th generation GCN stream processors (2,304 enabled on Polaris 10), a possible 256-bit GDDR5X memory interface, and a deep sub-200W typical board power rating.
Source:
GameDebate
The "Ellesmere" silicon is more of AMD's competitor to NVIDIA's GP104. It is rumored that the R9 490(X), based on this silicon, will offer consumers performance rivaling the GeForce GTX 980 Ti (ergo faster than the Radeon R9 Fury X), at a USD $300-ish price point. "Ellesmere" will be a lean-machine, physically featuring up to 2,560 4th generation GCN stream processors (2,304 enabled on Polaris 10), a possible 256-bit GDDR5X memory interface, and a deep sub-200W typical board power rating.
91 Comments on AMD Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" as Fast as GTX 980 Ti: Rumor
Sell more because the product is good and people can afford it.
Also not doing it because you are afraid the competition will do so as well becomes borderline price fixing.
FuryX is all but sold out locally (Memory Express has 7 locations across Western Canada, 3 cards in stock from all; Fury and Nano, same story). Dunno about other retailers.
-Fury X inventory is almost gone
-Fury inventory is almost gone
-390X inventory is almost gone
-390 inventory is almost gone
-they're confident there is going to be a massive supply/surplus of 490/490X cards on launch day.
If that is the case, AMD is in an excellent position to make a lot of money at the $300 price point. It just seems so unlikely which is why I'm skeptical of the $300 price.
They could also diverted Fiji towards Radeon Pro Duo for remaining sales. Targeting the Prosumer & VR market for the remaining stock on hand.
We also don't know where the performance really lies and how it will eventually compare to Nvidias offering in that segment.
One thing I'm very keen on is seeing the architecture and whether or not it'll return some semblance of overclocking to us. Fiji was hampered with the HBM on die and probable heat related core overclocking spillover (or memory/core speed ratio sweet spots). Without HBM on die to worry about, there could be a lot of leg room in the new card. That would be nice because if Polaris can pull a Maxwell overclocking feat, it could definitely put it right up there.
Also... given how Async loving (and DX12 in general) GCN is and how we've seen in some cases a 390X outperform a Fiji core in DX12, this new card could be a DX12 gaming legend. Very keen to see it.
But, if it disappoints, I'll try to remain unsurprised.
One more thing. We have only seen AMD demoing it's new cards. The biggest joke around the web for GPUs is the question "Where is Pascal?". Still, Nvidia is believed to be the first coming out with cards? Why? Because AMD waits for Nvidia to decide the price points for the next generation of cards. With empty pockets and while preparing for AM4 and Zen introduction, you don't start a price war with a company that has it's pockets full, except if you are suicidal.
Perhaps they improve the QUALITY of the shaders and not just the QUANTITY.
PC Master Race will argue in 3,2,1...
But i do not believe it will match GTX 980 Ti but more like 95% performance of GTX 980 or equal to R9 390.
You see, the PS4k is supposed to use a chip as this as the Polaris 10. So, if you can follow the huge 1 degree of seperation, it does relate to the story.
The story is just a rumor btw, so that sort of opens up the topic anyhow.
Chips at 14/16nm will be much smaller, thus much cheaper than they are at 28nm. And it seems we won't get a big performance boost to go along, thus saving should go mostly into costs/price.
On top of that, you were baiting with the 'PC Master Race' comment, and I don't like that. Hence the advice to find another place still stands.
I was under the impression that the PS4k will use Polaris architecture, so a 2300 sp PS4k should be similiar to that of a 2300 sp Polaris.
As soon as consoles reach 4k, I am sure it will be "5k, 8k, or GTFO" from the PC master race :p
I personally don't believe in $300 - if that were to happen then their offering is most likely uncompetitive even against their current lineup.