AMD Polaris/Vega

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Nexus

Nexus

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First Polaris card revealed:
AMD's first Polaris-based graphics card is here: the Radeon RX 480. Rather than launch a high-end card to compete with the likes of Nvidia's GTX 1080 or 1070, AMD's RX 480 is pitched at the wider mainstream market, offering just over five teraflops of performance for a mere $199—about half the price of a GTX 1070. UK pricing is currently TBC, but it'll probably be about £160. The RX 480 will be available to buy on June 29.

Details on the Polaris architecture—which is based on AMD's forth generation GCN architecture and a new 14nm FinFET manufacturing process—were thin on the ground during the RX 480's reveal at Computex 2016 in Taiwan, but the company did divulge a few key specs. The RX 480 will feature 36 compute units (CUs)—that's eight more than the R9 380, and just shy of the 40 of the R9 390—along with some fast GDDR5 memory attached to a 256-bit memory bus for 256GB/s of bandwidth.

The RX 480 will come in both 4GB and 8GB configurations (the former being the £160/$200 model), and will support AMD FreeSync and HDR video via its DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 and HDMI 2.0b outputs. Best of all, it has an average power draw of just 150W, which should make it cooler and quieter than AMD's previous-generation graphics cards.

When it comes to the matter of performance, AMD isn't quite ready to give up exact numbers. Instead the company says the RX 480's "VR capability" compares to that of £400/$500 GPUs. Indeed, VR is a key part of AMD's pitch for card, with the company hoping to "jumpstart the growth of the addressable market for PC VR" and "accelerate the rate at which VR headsets drop in price" across both desktops and laptops.
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Source

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Reference RX 480

Zen sneak peek
 
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Assuming this is 80-90% of a 1070 performance for 1080p res gaming then it will be hard for me to justify spending extra for what I originally had been wanting going for a 1070. Alternatively it might just help keep 1070 prices a tad lower.

Exciting times ahead when comparisons begin to appear with all the new cards. :)
 
Watched the LTT video on this. Can't wait for more info to get out. If it's really at 80% then this will probably be the card I go with as well.
I noticed some people elsewhere hating a bit on AMD for not stepping up to take on Nvidia. In my opinion though, I am thrilled they decided to to bring in cheap cards built specifically for VR. Before this announcement, you where looking at a solid $1000 to get into VR. This helps drop the price to more manageable levels. At the very least, it makes just the headset the serious purchase, rather than both.
A few articles scoffed further at the notion that this will somehow drop the price of headsets, as AMD has claimed. And in the short term, they are right, but in the long run it could help create more demand and make VR more mainstream, which surely will help bring prices down.
 
Rallywagon
Watched the LTT video on this. Can't wait for more info to get out. If it's really at 80% then this will probably be the card I go with as well.
I noticed some people elsewhere hating a bit on AMD for not stepping up to take on Nvidia. In my opinion though, I am thrilled they decided to to bring in cheap cards built specifically for VR. Before this announcement, you where looking at a solid $1000 to get into VR. This helps drop the price to more manageable levels. At the very least, it makes just the headset the serious purchase, rather than both.
A few articles scoffed further at the notion that this will somehow drop the price of headsets, as AMD has claimed. And in the short term, they are right, but in the long run it could help create more demand and make VR more mainstream, which surely will help bring prices down.
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I mean realistically, they kind have stepped up to take on Nvidia.

Two RX 480's will give you 11 TFLOPS for $400, whereas the GTX 1080 only gives you 9 TFLOPS for $600. Sure, games might not always utilize multi-GPU configs to their fullest... but with DX12 and VR being the future, I think more games going forward will make better usage of multi-GPU than in the past. As long as a game utilizes at least 80% of both 480s, you're hypothetically getting GTX 1080-level performance for 2/3rd the cost. (Potential RAM bottlenecks from having only 4GB aside... two 8GB versions of the RX 480 will probably run 5/6th the price of a single 1080)
 
Lain
I mean realistically, they kind have stepped up to take on Nvidia.

Two RX 480's will give you 11 TFLOPS for $400, whereas the GTX 1080 only gives you 9 TFLOPS for $600. Sure, games might not always utilize multi-GPU configs to their fullest... but with DX12 and VR being the future, I think more games going forward will make better usage of multi-GPU than in the past. As long as a game utilizes at least 80% of both 480s, you're hypothetically getting GTX 1080-level performance for 2/3rd the cost. (Potential RAM bottlenecks from having only 4GB aside... two 8GB versions of the RX 480 will probably run 5/6th the price of a single 1080)
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I have no idea about GPUs and stuff, I've stopped gaming on PC around '98 so I haven't kept up to date at all. I have read though and I'm not sure how true this is, that multi GPUs setups usually don't extract all the potential performance from the cards. Since you mention VR and having two of these cards in Crossfire mode, Would VR perhaps an actual advantage for multi GPU setups? In VR mode could one card be made to render specifically just the left images and and the other the right one? Or would this would not make any difference at all?
 
VR applications have to support that kind of rendering, but the consensus is that doing multi-GPU where each GPU is responsible for rendering one eye does provide a performance advantage over traditional multi-GPU rendering techniques (Alternate frame/Split frame). Presumably most game devs will support this in the future.

Valve, for instance, argued that it's worth it for game developers to add support for this even if they don't think many gamers have this type of configuration... reason being is that during game development, single-card framerates might not be optimized which means it'll be problematic trying to test the game in VR due to the VR sickness that those low framerates will cause. Add support for multi-GPU per-eye rendering and you can just throw in another card to bring the framerates up to speed to make testing VR less painful while the game is still in development.
 
It's a hope that with DX12, it will become more popular... But Crossfire and SLI have been around for a long time, and barely a game uses those well. Generally one card does graphics, the other handles the physics. Thus one card gets taxed and the other gets some use. Most games, including VR, will likely still be optimized for just single cards I am thinking, as that will still be the more common setup. As for two 480's over one 1080, maybe. The 1080 still has the upper hand as far as memory, using the far faster GDDR5X, and a host of other features, (screenshot and multidisplay stuff to name a couple) that I don't imagine we will see on a $200 card.
I'm not trying to knock AMD mind you, just that there is a reason there is a price difference.
 
Surely the problem with VR and theory of two cards is restricted by motherboards with 16 / 8 slots. Not sure its just as easy as developers having 1 card per eye if the primary slot will offer more bandwidth?

Does anyone know or can share a good comparison video highlighting how many current/popular games make good use of CF or SLI. I am rather curious being budget limited and like the possibility of card soon and another in several months time if warranted. Stuck between this idea and maybe a high performing 1070 OC card.

For 1080p gaming the performance of one card should be good enough so what is the point of a 2nd unless someone is looking to support higher refresh on a specialised display, going beyond 1080p resolution or super-sampling the resolution on a 1080p display.
 
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Fat Tyre
I wonder what the price will be in Australia, $500 AUD?
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Seeing as how the 1080 is $1300 AMD may just price gouge as well.
Otherwise nVidia will be screwed if AMD keep the pricing in line with the US pricing.
 
$1300? Jeez, the AUD isn't that weak. How in the hell does NVidia justify over double to price?
 
Rallywagon
$1300? Jeez, the AUD isn't that weak. How in the hell does NVidia justify over double to price?
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Were are used to getting ripped off over here as well, they charge such an obsurd mark up because they can and people will just pay it!
 
Rallywagon
$1300? Jeez, the AUD isn't that weak. How in the hell does NVidia justify over double to price?
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Apparently canada pays $1000 and they are just a few thousand miles north, so it is not the exchange rate or shipping.
 
Is it only in the UK/US that's it's 600? Actually, a quick search shows it averages around $800 here too. So why does NVidia announce a $600 price if there is no intention on following through? I hope the same doesn't happen with the 480.
 
Grayfox
Apparently canada pays $1000 and they are just a few thousand miles north, so it is not the exchange rate or shipping.
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Equals about 773 USD or 1050 AUD.

At the same time the availability is really bad at the moment and most custom cards haven't been released yet. If you buy very early you often pay extra.
 
I really hope the RX490 has GTX1070 levels of performance at a AUD$400 price.
I am not going to pay $1200 for a GTX1080
 
Grayfox
I really hope the RX490 has GTX1070 levels of performance at a AUD$400 price.
I am not going to pay $1200 for a GTX1080
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Well, tradionally the 290 series has always traded blows with the x80 - Series cards. Generally they were always offering a better value because of the additional VRAM. But considering that nVidia now has packed so much performance, or rather shaved off so little performance off of the chip and provide 8GB of VRAM, I think it's going to be a tough sell for AMD.

Generally, and that's just my gut feeling, I feel like that AMD is focusing more and more on the mid-range market, where they're still able to compete very well with nVidia and usually even edge them out, especially if you take pricing into the equation.
I'm really hopeful for the RX480 however, a "VR-ready & capable card" for right around 200 - 250$ is going to mix up the market quite nicely, and especially considering that nVidia has absolutely nothing to counter the RX480 in that price segment. Obviously independent benchmarks will confirm whether or not AMD is actually delivering what they're claiming.

But if it turns out to be the case, then I have a feeling that nVidia will certainly still be the best option for the higher end segment, but AMD could finally claim their own niché for them, which would certainly help them to get back on their feet. The overall strategy of the marketing campaign certainly suggests that.
 
Not Polaris, but you can see how more games are using over 4GB's (or 3.5GB in the case of the GTX 970) of VRAM.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst apparently requires at least 6GB VRAM to run at max settings.
 
Assuming the 480 lives up to expectations in both price and performance I will buy one before the end of the summer. It's nearly perfect since I need a card under 10" long and under 180tdp (max).

Should it work out I'll definitely report back with results.
That said, if Nvidia hadn't increased the X70 size from the 9.5" of the 970 to the 10.5" of the 1070 I'd be going with a 1070 no doubt (though it would be a while since the gouging is real). lol.
 
Here we go.
Of course causing lots of debate and flaming.

Still need to wait for 29th for proper reviews/benchmarks on final hardware/drivers.

Info

 
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