AMD Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" Launched at $199

[SonicZap]

Sounds very nice if true. I hope those performance numbers are real and not just marketing speech.

The thing I'm mostly concerned about is the 150W TDP. It's not that high, but the far more powerful GTX 1070 also has the same TDP. If RX 480 has equal power draw to the GTX 1070, it'll mean that Nvidia's Pascal architechture is still much more power efficient than the next-gen GCN. Which'll likely mean that Vega vs high-end Pascal will be like Hawaii vs GK110 again (AMD having high power draw => heat issues and noisy coolers).

 

[mroofie]

AMD clearly has no employees telling their bosses "you've done goofed" when it is clearly the case. GTX970 level of performance, at a reasonable price - for the moment, but with the power draw of the GTX1070?

gtx 970 - 980 performance

Sounds very nice if true. I hope those performance numbers are real and not just marketing speech.

The thing I'm mostly concerned about is the 150W TDP. It's not that high, but the far more powerful GTX 1070 also has the same TDP. If RX 480 has equal power draw to the GTX 1070, it'll mean that Nvidia's Pascal architechture is still much more power efficient than the next-gen GCN. Which'll likely mean that Vega vs high-end Pascal will be like Hawaii vs GK110 again (AMD having high power draw => heat issues and noisy coolers).

Agreed

 

[G33k2Fr34k]

gtx 970 - 980 performance

More like GTX980 - Fury performance.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

In 3D Mark 11.

 

[Primey_]

More like GTX980 - Fury performance.

You're funny

 

[ensabrenoir]

Well done Amd... mow even if performance is about 10% less (standard hype tax) than what you claimed your still in a sweet spot....well played. that means the 1060 wll have its work cut out for it.

 

[HD64G]

AMD clearly has no employees telling their bosses "you've done goofed" when it is clearly the case. GTX970 level of performance, at a reasonable price - for the moment, but with the power draw of the GTX1070?

TDP isn't the power draw. Wait for the reviews first for both 1070 and RX480 to be sure.

 

[deu]

All that tells me is that it can't OC for s**t, which would gel well with the rumours that the 14nm process has massive leakage issues at higher speeds. OTOH, if RX 480 can deliver GTX 970 or better performance for $200, overclocking probably doesn't matter too much.

However, given AMD's record of blatantly lying about its cards' performance before their actual release, I won't be holding my breath.

Lucky for the world less than 1% OC their graphicscard, but you can always pick up a 1080 and get the full 5% if you into that wild lifestyle.

 

[Chaitanya]

230 seems like it or maybe 250

Edit : 230 it is

If its 230 for refrence design then may be another 20$ extra for after market designs. Still its a tempting card at that price. I had purchased 970 for half off(ebay) after that whole fiasco, I need to get a decent 1440p gpu after my recent monitor upgrade and looks like Rx480 might make a cut as I have never spent more than 275$ for gpu.

 

[MAXLD]

The thing I'm mostly concerned about is the 150W TDP. It's not that high, but the far more powerful GTX 1070 also has the same TDP. If RX 480 has equal power draw to the GTX 1070, it'll mean that Nvidia's Pascal architechture is still much more power efficient than the next-gen GCN. Which'll likely mean that Vega vs high-end Pascal will be like Hawaii vs GK110 again (AMD having high power draw => heat issues and noisy coolers).

Well, not necessarily.
RX 480 has (it seems) GDDR5 (non X), so it's not even collecting the lower power benefits of new memory (tiny bit from 5X or bigger from HBM).
R9 Nano (w/ HBM 1) had an improvement to around 175W already (and was still full 28nm), which made it perform usually slightly better than the normal Fury(with the full Fiji's 275W). I bet they learned a lot from this experiment/concept.
Vega will have brand new developed HBM2 and also 14nm. Will it have 150W like the 1070, or 180W like the 1080? We don't know, but I'm betting it won't be that far.

 

[Casecutter]

By that disruption they sure did shake up their own product line too, albiet the prev gen, which i guess is acceptable than disrupting nvidias current gen.

Their current products (AMD/RTG) in the channel/market appear to have dwindled down end April-early May. Prices for everything other than R7 370 have maintained or swung up slightly. AMD/RTG has little worry on that front. It's the 950-960-970's that just got sent to the discount table and from what I see Nvidia partners still have strong volume of all those in the channel.

Would anyone buy the 950 for $100-120; a 960 for $140-160; or a 970 for $220-240. moving forward! My one son was all hot to buy a friend EVGA 970 SC for $230 (he paid $330 -AR Sept '15 he got ripped). I said don't that's not going to look like any deal in 3 weeks. He's already said thanks for the advice... that form a 18 year old!

 

[Grings]

GDDR5 (non X) on a 256bit bus, cant see these scaling that well in crossfire

 

[Assimilator]

Why people think that 6PIN only means no overclocking capabilities?!

HD 6850 had 6PIN and was a phenomenal OCer, and so was HD 7850.
Going a bit over 6PIN power spec is not improbable.

Yeah, my comment was a bit harsh. I'd like to give AMD the benefit of the doubt and assume that their own internal testing shows that beyond 150W gives diminishing returns on this version of Polaris. That said, I'd rather have an 8-pin connector and that extra 75W of headroom to play with, and hopefully AIB manufacturers will oblige me.

 

[alwayssts]

I think there is certainly a similar cautious feeling in the air from the a certain section of us, while many others are more than appeased (and FWIW, I'm happy for the latter).

While it makes sense for AMD to target a chip at this price/perf, as nvidia currently does not have an answer for it, the larger picture is more opaque but certainly of grander importance in the grand scheme of products we'll see over the next year or two.

For the former group (myself included), it will be interesting to see how well these will clock within 150w (or more loosely will be allowed to clock via bios/power draw etc). One might assume they could clock to ~1500mhz+/- (given leakage graphs of 14nmLPE which have the first raise in relative power/clock around 1300mhz, where RX480 is stock clocked, and the next around 1500mhz), but that's anything but a sure thing given AMD's typical arch design. If that WERE the case though, it would be a very interesting product....not only because it could start getting close to typical compute of 1070, but also actually see realistic perf/playability gains in 1440p/VR/potentially even 4k in some cases. IOW, it could actually be a cost-efficient replacement for Nano/Fury...and that would be a big deal.

On the flip side of that is the inevitable 150-225w part, which truly is most exciting IOHO, I think. The one we can all imagine that carries GDDR5x, perhaps be 2560sp (and/or have a higher clock...1500-1800mhz?), and compete with 1070 on true performance. Again, while clocking is ANYTHING but a sure thing, as is realistic power consumption and/or cooling of a chip/card that may be much smaller than 1070/1080, THAT is the card that would truly be disruptive AF if it's still within the 'mainstream' or 'performance' pricing structure. It could do what 1070 is doing (replacing the last-gen high-end), perhaps be less performant but not tangibly (since neither are truly 4k cards), and have lower perf/w than GP104 but still <225w, all while potentially being priced lower.

It's all pretty much predicated on how the design will clock though, and how heat is dissipated, especially as we reach levels greater than ~1500-1600mhz. There's the potential there for similar clockspeeds to Pascal (given 14LPE scaled to around 1800mhz in the same way 16FF+ scales to ~2000-2100mhz, and 14LPP should be slightly better), which could simply mean AMD for all intents and purposes would have a great all-around 1440p/VR chip at low cost (even if high-power) without needlessly trying to push it into fringe 4k territory (as a single card, at least) as nvidia did with 1080 but rather leaving that for Vega/Greenland...

Hence we wait for news from the field on how great the potential of this chip truly is.

 

[Jism]

Image updated. Oh snap single 6-pin. GET HYPE.



There were no GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 reviews when NVIDIA launched them, either.

Why should the 6 pin be a problem. Did you know that the 8 pin only adds 2 times negative and not positive?

The 150W maximum output is'nt really true. Standard 12V wires are up to 12A a piece maximum usage, so 3 wires still gives you a 36A = 432W maximum power.

It's the VRM's that is supposed to convert this power to a voltage the GPU and memory needs. It will be the VRM proberly that's being the 'limit' first when you OC it.

A 200$ card offering 5Gflops of performance is a very very sweet deal.

 

[Absolution]

Added 8GB price. So $199 for 4GB and $229 for 8GB. Both very nice prices.

Is that a confirmed price or speculation?

 

[rhythmeister]

A worthy successor to the hd 7870 Tahiti! All these people fretting about fan noise and heat generated, all you have to do is clean the poor TIM from the GPU and heatsink the card was supplied with (isopropyl alcohol or analytical grade acetone are perfect on a cotton bud) and replace with something decent like an Artic Silver then use MSI Afterburner or the likes to control fan speed. I can't even hear said card whilst playing Doom

 

[medi01]

Is that a confirmed price or speculation?

Confirmed.

WSJ (partially paywalled)

The 150W maximum output is'nt really true. Standard 12V wires are up to 12A a piece maximum usage, so 3 wires still gives you a 36A = 432W maximum power.

Once again, 6 pin connection is DESIGNED to be 75w.
8 pin - 150w.

PCI-e can feed you another 75w.

One can try to pull more, but that would be against specification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Power

It states nothing about 12A, only voltage and total power.

 

[Jism]

It's a standard, not a permanent guideline. AMD cards where known for pulling alot of extra power from the PCI-express slot then just 75W alone. Therefore if you would OC your card, and exceed the 150W, there is still nothing wrong with that because your actual wires and connectors are able to deliver way more.

The PCI-express power from your PSU is not limited to either 75W or 150W, as advertised, but can deliver way more then that.

It comes down to the cards VRM which should convert all that power for the GPU and memory. To add more wires, would simply stabilize your power feed some little more, but would not restrict from going above 150W as advertised.

Molex and 12V PCI-express wire, are able to sustain over 12A on 12V, so this in theory would give you up to 432W of power without burning things up.

 

[medi01]

AMD cards where known for pulling alot of extra power from the PCI-express slot then just 75W alone.

Huh?
Citation needed.

Even 380 comes with 2 power connectors.

On 390x it's two 8 pins as well, which gives you 75w + 150w + 150w = 375w.

On 295x2 it was four (yep, 4) 8 pin connectors, which give you: 75w + 150w*4 = 675w.

`

What certain card/PSU CAN deliver is completely irrelevant, AMD can NOT be designing cards that break the specs.

 

[Jism]

I am really looking for the article for you, but i cant find it 1-2-3.

What it came down to was, oc'ers would have serious burning marks on their motherboard ATX power-connector, esp when going with AMD cards. It looked like AMD cards did'nt follow PCI-express specification 'up to 75w' but would exceed that easily causing to pull way more power from the motherboards PCI-express then allowed. This would leave burned ATX power connectors on the motherboard which took them a while to figure out what was going on.

I am saying is that the specification on AMD cards, sometimes seem to exceed way beyond when going for mad clocks. And a 6 pin wire, that is supposed to deliver up to 75W of power, is'nt limited to 75W alone. You have these power boosters that are feed straight into your PCI-express slot providing a more stable current. It works when oc'ing and for example your pci-express bus is shared among other devices as well.

I just dont understand why a 6 wire should be a problem, while most of these 6 pins are rated for 12A per yellow wire. It comes down to the VRM at the end. If that VRM is basicly garbage, and unsuitable to manage more power being pulled then the standard 75 / 75W combo, then it's a shitty design anyway.

 

[Casecutter]

A worthy successor to the hd 7870 Tahiti!

Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition = Pitcairn XT
Here was a limited
Radeon HD 7870 XT = Tahiti LE
7950/7970/280/280X = Tahiti Pro/XT

So are you pointing to the 7870 XT? I would see that easily a Polaris 11 kind of place.

 

[rhythmeister]

Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition = Pitcairn XT
Here was a limited
Radeon HD 7870 XT = Tahiti LE
7950/7970/280/280X = Tahiti Pro/XT

So are you pointing to the 7870 XT? I would see that easily a Polaris 11 kind of place.

Yar, the HD 7870 "XT" with the Tahiti core. What be the Polaris 11 card known as?

 

[Casecutter]

What be the Polaris 11 card known as?

I think there's Polaris 10 "LE" would be a RX470 4GB $150 and be the "end all" for 1080p a figure a 380X or slight bit better.

While Polaris 11 is the RE 460 will be the lowest discrete and/or C-F APU, while all the rest is in Apple pads, Laptops, and consoles (IDK).

 

[xorbe]

Once again, 6 pin connection is DESIGNED to be 75w.
8 pin - 150w.

The other poster is correct. The 8-pin connector simply adds 2 ground pins, which signals the other 6 can deliver 150W. The 6-pin connector is good for 75-150 watts with or without the 2 extra pins. It's what's coming from the psu that changes.