Sunday, May 29th 2016
Next-Gen Radeon "Polaris" Nomenclature Changed?
It looks like AMD is deviating from its top-level performance-grading, with its next-generation Radeon graphics cards. The company has maintained the Radeon R3 series for embedded low-power APUs, Radeon R5 for integrated graphics solutions of larger APUs; Radeon R7 for entry-thru-mainstream discrete GPUs (eg: R7 360, R7 370); and Radeon R9 for performance-thru-enthusiast segment (eg: R9 285, R9 290X). The new nomenclature could see it rely on the second set of model numbers (eg: 4#0) to denote market-positioning, if a popular rumor on tech bulletin boards such as Reddit holds true.
A Redditor posted an image of a next-gen AMD Radeon demo machine powered by a "Radeon RX 480." Either "X" could be a variable, or it could be series-wide, prefixing all SKUs in the 400 series. It could also be AMD marketing's way of somehow playing with the number 10 (X), to establish some kind of generational parity with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 10 series. The placard also depicts a new "Radeon" logo with a different, sharper typeface. The "RX 480" was apparently able to run "Doom" (2016) at 2560x1440 @ 144 Hz, with the OpenGL API.
Source:
Reddit
A Redditor posted an image of a next-gen AMD Radeon demo machine powered by a "Radeon RX 480." Either "X" could be a variable, or it could be series-wide, prefixing all SKUs in the 400 series. It could also be AMD marketing's way of somehow playing with the number 10 (X), to establish some kind of generational parity with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 10 series. The placard also depicts a new "Radeon" logo with a different, sharper typeface. The "RX 480" was apparently able to run "Doom" (2016) at 2560x1440 @ 144 Hz, with the OpenGL API.
72 Comments on Next-Gen Radeon "Polaris" Nomenclature Changed?
it means the gameplay was running under VULKAN instead of dx
RX 480
2560 SPs
unknown clock
R9 390
2560 SPs
1000 MHz
R9 390 got 57.4 fps so lets scale it:
1.0 GHz = 57.4 fps
1.1 GHz = 63.1 fps
1.2 GHz = 68.9 fps
1.3 GHz = 74.6 fps
1.4 GHz = 80.4 fps
1.5 GHz = 86.1 fps
1.6 GHz = 91.8 fps
1.7 GHz = 97.6 fps (beats GTX 1080)
I doubt it will be clocked higher than 1.5 GHz (1.1-1.2 GHz is the most realistic). Unless AMD made some massive improvements to OpenGL rendering, the RX 480 isn't likely to top GTX 1080.
Although there is an unknown card on par with the overclocked GTX1080, but with lower clocks lurking.
wccftech.com/amd-radeon-r9-480-polaris-10-july/
That said, a dual Polaris card is entirely plausible--just not coming soon.
Remember, Polaris is a <150w card. GTX 1070 is too... Going from the data in this thread, it looks like GTX 1070 should be faster than Polaris but only by 4% (predominantly because of DX11).
We knew AMD was heading in this direction but I didn't expect it this soon. It makes sense though because AMD wants to promote dual GPU graphics solutions so that the DX12/Vulkan games & market is ready for Navi.
A dual Polaris card would be the cheapest (~$500-600 MSRP probably), best card for VR so I think there's a market it for it now albeit a small one.
videocardz.com/60253/amd-radeon-r9-480-3dmark11-benchmarks
I think what C4 is what LIKELY WAS (they might rename it though) Polaris 10 - 480 and C7 is/was 480x.
I doubt C4 could be Polaris 11 (given it consumes MUCH less power and that they've officially demoed Polaris 11 vs 960 with capped 60fps)
And sure, if one enables the VK_NV_glsl_shader extension, one can load GLSL shaders into Vulkan. But that doesn't mean it needs to go through OpenGL. Because it doesn't.
Other than that, if one decides not to enable the VK_NV_glsl_shader extension, the only shaders Vulkan can load is SPIR-V, while SPIR-V can be compiled from anything. Heck, You could even use Visual F***ING Basic for shaders if You'd bother writing a VB -> SPIR-V compiler/translator. How does that make Vulkan depend on OpenGL? If a game uses a Vulkan renderer that is a wrapper on top of their OpenGL renderer, it doesn't mean Vulkan itself depends on OpenGL. What it does mean is "developers are lazy", no more, no less. Otherwise, by this same logic one could say "OpenGL uses Direct3D", since for many games, they don't bother writing a proper OpenGL rendered and instead just wrap their Direct3D renderer in OpenGL. *rolls eyes*
I don't know how well 3D Mark handles multiple cards. If it is relying on Crossfire (which the "CF" would imply), 3D Mark likely isn't optimized for D3D12/Vulkan multi-GPU support. Considering previous testing was done with Ashes of Singularity, my guess is no. That 3D Mark benchmark, therefore, is likely close to a worst-case-scenario (ye olde, driver-implemented Crossfire) for a dual Polaris. It does not reflect the future of the multi-GPU technology.
2 x Fury X = 58% improvement over single using D3D12 multi-GPU in Ashes of Singularity
2 x Polaris 10 C7 = 43% improvement over single using Crossfire in 3D Mark
15% may not sound like much but if it was linear and translated to a D3D12 multi-GPU version of 3D Mark, 2 x Polaris 10 C7 would have gotten 28,535 which lands just above GTX 1080.
That said, 3D Mark only has a D3D11 benchmark which NVIDIA has a home-field advantage. Too bad we don't have any numbers for D3D12 Polaris.
This logic is flawed for two reasons:
1) 3D Mark only does as high as D3D11. GeForce has a tremendous advantage in D3D11 so the graph is intrinsically biased towards NVIDIA from the start.
2) Multi-GPU (non-driver implementation) requires D3D12 or Vulkan. Ashes of the Singularity was used for multi-GPU benchmarking. The numbers quoted above are correct.
As far as I know, there are no D3D12 Crossfire benchmarks available to guage how multi-GPU does compared to Crossfire. Further, assuming any of this has any bearing comparing D3D11 to D3D12 between vendors is simply foolish.
3D Mark 11 is a worst-case scenario for Polaris (because GCN has never been great at DX11) and multi-GPU (because it relies on ye olde driver-implemented Crossfire/SLI). Put the two together in a D3D12, dual Polaris 10 situation and I think the card would run away from GTX 1080.
Let's focus on Ashes of the Singularity:
DX11 versus DX12 = 7% boost for GCN
wccftech.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-async-compute-detailed/
D3D12 Multi-GPU versus single = 58%
www.anandtech.com/show/9740/directx-12-geforce-plus-radeon-mgpu-preview
Combined D3D11 single-GPU -> D3D12 multi-GPU = 65%
18,060 points (3DMark 11 single-GPU) * 1.65 = 29,799 points (theoretical 3DMark 12 multi-GPU)
And remember, this is throwing out the GCN async compute advantage because GeForce is terrible at it. Add in async (because what true D3D12 test wouldn't use it?) and dual Polaris 10 easily tops 30k (31,786 to be exact). If we adjust GTX 1080s scores to D3D12 + async, it's score would fall to 26,983 points. I'm thinking:
RX 480 = C7 CF
R9 480 = C7
R7 470 = C4
All three are Polaris 10 because Polaris 11 is 67FF.
And yikes. Risky strategy to say the least.
Voodoo 5 5500 strikes again, and this time, to stay! :D