AMD Polaris/Vega

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Okay someone want to clarify if this is likely scenario?

  • Budget under 200 = X480 4GB or possibly GTX 1060 basic card
  • Want to spend less than 250 = X480 8GB or GTX1060 for approx GTX 980 performance
  • Willing to stay under 300 = fastest/Advanced X480 cards closer to 980Ti performance
  • Want to spend over 300 = 1070 for better than 980TI performance
  • Willing to spend a bit more 400-500 = Fastest 1070 cards approaching closer to 1080 performance
  • Tempted to go bit further 500+ = Cheaper / Reduced 1080 cards
  • Extreme = 1080 or advanced 1080 cards

So avoiding lowest price cards it may depend on:
  • 1080p MAX detail @ 60Hz is your target = X480 and advanced cards
  • Higher framerates or 1440p is your target = fastest dvanced X480 or 1070 cards
  • Best performance level/resolution with varying detail = advanced 1070 or 1080 cards

* GTX 1060 cards could be @ X480 or X470 stock or slightly less around GTX 970 performances? Pressure will be on Nvidia at this pricepoint to deliver.
** Budget cards below this will be 960 performance and some with only PCI connection
** 1070 is overkill for 1080p @ 60 but entry for good 1440p gaming and those seeking more 120Hz gaming options

For me personally I only need 1080p 60Hz with max detail for the newest titles like BF1 but would like to have some extra power on tap for future titles to achieve the same. However the 1070 seems OTT in some regards for this yet it depends if the advanced 3rd party X480 cards warrant performance at a price still below the 1070, arrrrghhhhh!

Consumers may be tempted to go with 1070 costing a bit more. Either way I think this 200-300 price bracket they talk about as mainstream is going to be a really close battle. Spending 100 more gets you a really slick 1070 but if you dont need beyond 1080p gaming especially if a 60Hz player then its nice to have but not wasted/really needed?

The question now then is can the 1060 also be a 1080p 60Hz sweetspot card but it also for Nvidia has to perform enough under the 1070 not to warrant most buying the 1070.
 
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Going by my gut feeling, I'd say that the market is going to get split in half: Entry level and midrange goes to AMD, high end and enthusiast level goes to Nvidia - at least as far single card setups go. Depends on how well a 480 Crossfire setup performs compared to a GTX 1070 - in actual games, of course. And on whether or not Nvidia will adjust their prices due to competition.
Mr Latte
However the 1070 seems OTT in some regards for this yet it depends if the advanced 3rd party X480 cards warrant performance at a price still below the 1070, arrrrghhhhh!
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OTT now. In a year and a half, however?
 
Luminis
Going by my gut feeling, I'd say that the market is going to get split in half: Entry level and midrange goes to AMD, high end and enthusiast level goes to Nvidia - at least as far single card setups go. Depends on how well a 480 Crossfire setup performs compared to a GTX 1070 - in actual games, of course. And on whether or not Nvidia will adjust their prices due to competition.

OTT now. In a year and a half, however?
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That's definitely what AMD is going for... They know the vast majority of the market is in the lower end and plan to use that as a foundation for the eventual move to more powerful cards.

At this point I'm thinking 480 CF isn't going to be much better if any better simply because it seems so difficult for drivers and games to work well together in CF configs.

That said, I'm planning to upgrade in the next couple of months and at this point I'm seriously considering the 480... The low TDP and relatively high performance upgrade (for me) is a huge selling point. Combine that with the fact that I really can't fit large cards into my mini-itx machine and AMD comes out as a big winner for me.
 
Kent
At this point I'm thinking 480 CF isn't going to be much better if any better simply because it seems so difficult for drivers and games to work well together in CF configs.
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That's precisely why I'm not hopping onto the "RX480 CF > everything" bandwagon just yet :lol:
 
Xfire like SLI is indeed problematic.

Will it change much in the next year, mmmmmm?

Think it comes down to worth considering moreso if it works for a specific title that is important to the user. However really lets be honest this applies more to those perusing 120Hz or whatever or running very high resolutions still seeking to get higher frames. How annoying to have such and a new title come out, only to discover it requires patched/updated driver and waiting patiently.

Id wait or even go with a X480 now, sell it then get Vega or a 1080 later.
The price loss wouldn't be that great and a single card avoids all the issues.

21:9 seems a good option over multi screen these days and boy would these mid range cards not just be awesome on a 2560x1080 with only approx 20% (from what I seen) heavier frame hit over normal 16:9 1080p.

Here is more news and it seems the 980+ performance is about right for of course much less money.
Link

I do feel like I am swaying towards the X480, anyone else?
Why spend more on a 1070 if only using 1080p resolution? Likewise it is easy to see GTX980 reviews to get an idea of the general performance with perhaps some improvement inc DX12 titles.

Looking forward to see what cards from partners manage to achieve under the $300
Perhaps not quite stock 980TI performance but the $300 options, my hope is they could be 10fps faster on average over a standard X480 ?
 
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If we take the most idealistic numbers (OC to 1.5 GHz, Polaris CUs 10% more IPC than previous gen), we come to 6.9 (heh) real TFLOPS and 7.6 "effective TFLOPs" relative to the old architecture's performance... or about a TFLOP slower than the Fury X but about half a TFLOP better than the Fury.
 
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I'm assuming that the 480 will do fine with 1440p gaming at 60fps? I don't expect it to max out everything and I do not mind dropping a few settings.
 
Yes, it should be more than sufficient for 1440p 60fps gaming... the card it's likely to be most comparable to, benchmark-wise (390X) is capable of 1440P 60FPS gaming. Some titles might require settings to be pared back somewhat to maintain 60 FPS... but if this card sits between the Fury and Fury X when overclocked as hypothesised, this will be grealy mitigated.
 
Lain
Yes, it should be more than sufficient for 1440p 60fps gaming... the card it's likely to be most comparable to, benchmark-wise (390X) is capable of 1440P 60FPS gaming. Some titles might require settings to be pared back somewhat to maintain 60 FPS... but if this card sits between the Fury and Fury X when overclocked as hypothesised, this will be grealy mitigated.
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Sounds good to me. I'm pretty much riding on the fact that it performs so well.

I'm also guessing that custom non-reference boards will release after June 29th?
 
So all the latest rumours....
Here

So eager to see how this card performs from the AIB units with 1500Mhz but not long to wait.
It could really hit the GTX1070 hard as the prices/stock availability is really bad at present.
 
Look at that overclock 1,328% OC on the GPU core
Wow
XFX-RX-480-GPUZ.png
 
Mr Latte
So all the latest rumours....
Here

So eager to see how this card performs from the AIB units with 1500Mhz but not long to wait.
It could really hit the GTX1070 hard as the prices/stock availability is really bad at present.
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This card will surely sell even more than the 1070, as long as it performs as well as the rumors/leaks tell so far.
 
Techy
This card will surely sell even more than the 1070, as long as it performs as well as the rumors/leaks tell so far.
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I don't know about that, NVIDIA is much better at marketing at AMD. I really hope they do, though.
 
For me the card falls a bit short on DX11 while good on DX12 so I will await AIB options that are not restricted by the weak alu cooler on the reference cards. Just a couple of weeks or so and this looks best to this point.

 
So non-AMD-conducted benchmarks are in for two RX 480s in Xfire vs a GTX 1080, and...

AMD wasn't fudging it. Two RX 480s can compare favorably to a GTX 1080 in some instances... or at least a 1070 in most cases. No other games fare quite as well as Ashes of the Singularity, but that's presumably because Ashes is currently the only game to support SFR currently.

I think as more and more games start supporting SFR, dual RX 480s will look increasingly appealing.
 
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/06/and-the-cheapest-radeon-rx-480-in-australia-is-now-319/

AU $319 for the 4GB RX 480 in Australia, seems reasonably well priced. If they get the 8GB version around 380 dollars I'll consider it, my reason to upgrade would be to finally get a VR headset with this GPU I think I'd be covered but my CPU and mobo would have to be changed as well. In short I'd need a whole new computer :ouch:.

Edit: didn't notice there was an 8gb version available in Australia for AUD $379!
 
In Japan RX480 is predicted to be sold for 35k yen. Unfortunately it is too expensive compared to fire-saled GTX 970 (around 30k yen).
 
Lain
So non-AMD-conducted benchmarks are in for two RX 480s in Xfire vs a GTX 1080, and...

AMD wasn't fudging it. Two RX 480s can compare favorably to a GTX 1080 in some instances... or at least a 1070 in most cases. No other games fare quite as well as Ashes of the Singularity, but that's presumably because Ashes is currently the only game to support SFR currently.

I think as more and more games start supporting SFR, dual RX 480s will look increasingly appealing.
Click to expand...



The problem is like previous cards, plenty of games don't support it and while you can get even better framerates some games suffer with a jump in frames.

In the UK 2x RX480 8GB are about £440 (if avoiding price gouging and with Brexit putting extra £20 on each card)
However I have seen Zotac 1070 Amp Extreme for PRE-ORDER due July for £409. This 1070 will be as fast as a stock 1080 or not far off.

XF or SLI still has too many factors dependant on the developers including driver support arriving with new titles and its hard to recommend 2x slower cards to one faster one.
 
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The 480 is a very good card for budget builds. Since it delivers basically 970/390 level performance in games. The question is whether I'll net one to replace my 280X... I'm still hoping that the 1070 will lower in price. Demand is extremely high for GPUs at the moment, actually.


EDIT: In addition there's controversy going around concerning the 480 violating PCI-E power draw specifications.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616-9.html

It won't cause your motherboard to catch on fire. But it will be detrimental to components around it. Such as on-board audio.

An AMD rep from reddit already confirmed that it was an issue and is under investigation. Only time will tell whether this will be fixed, but it appears using an 8-pin connection will be best.

EDIT 2:

Here's the reddit thread with chock full of info
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4qfwd4/rx480_fails_pcie_specification/?st=iq2k5x9z&sh=287a8b1b
 
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Waiting for the custom 8GB ones to come, should be pretty quick. Wanted originally to go for a used 970, but people here seem to think they still can get nearly new retail price for used cards...
 
According to the JayzTwoCents Live stream.

The AMD rep was saying crap like "you're doing something wrong" to guys like tomshardwarelabs and trying to be innocent.
This just shows another issue these days with self testing.

Not hard for a company to go We didnt do any tests but it is with in spec and we will be the logo on the box.
 
Here is a proper explanation on the RX480 overclocking situation.
Basically the card is tuned to perform at its best "Power Target" out of the box and avoid throttling etc.

New AIB will be needed to get the most out of Polaris as the standard cooling and power limits the true potential.

Full details within the video...
 
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