Sapphire announces full fat Polaris 11

[FishTea]

 

Quote

Sapphire figured out that selling partially disabled Polaris 11 chips is not exactly the best marketing decision. Especially when most RX460 cards on the market are already unlockable to full 1024 Stream Processor version without much problem.

As a result, Sapphire is now offering fully unlocked Radeon RX 460. This version has Polaris 11 GPU with all 16 Compute Units enabled. So rather than wait for Radeon 500 series and Polaris refresh, you can now actually buy the full chip.

I’m not exactly sure why RX 460 did not get the full chip in the first place, but it’s good to know that we finally have this option, but unfortunately.. this card is only listed on Chinese Sapphire’s website, so it may be an exclusive product for Chinese market, just as Radeon RX 470D.

Finally, the new NITRO has 4GB GDDR5 memory on board and 1250 MHz core clock.

 

 

 

 

sauce: http://videocardz.com/65594/sapphire-announces-radeon-rx-460-with-1024-stream-processors

Edited January 17, 2017 by zeraine00
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[Aereldor]

Are there any benchmarks available?

[XenosTech]

Just now, Aereldor said:

Are there any benchmarks available?

would probably have to look for benchmarks for the ones that were unlocked before this release.

[Wolther]

I don't get why it's beneficial to lock any computer component in the first place? 

[Trixanity]

The reason for not officially releasing the full Polaris 11 chip for desktop is that the laptop market needed it more. Apple placed a large order on those. Apple gets what Apple wants.

[sof006]

2 minutes ago, Wolther said:

I don't get why it's beneficial to lock any computer component in the first place? 

Sometimes its to save on cost and other times it would be because the chip that for example was meant to be a RX 480 didn't turn out so well so they locked off some parts of the chip and turned it into a RX 460 or 470. Instead of just throwing it in the bin and starting again. 

[Vode]

3 minutes ago, sof006 said:

Sometimes its to save on cost and other times it would be because the chip that for example was meant to be a RX 480 didn't turn out so well so they locked off some parts of the chip and turned it into a RX 460 or 470. Instead of just throwing it in the bin and starting again. 

Not quite... RX 460 is a different die (Polaris 11) than the RX 480 and 470 (Polaris 10).

 

[Princess Luna]

4 minutes ago, sof006 said:

Sometimes its to save on cost and other times it would be because the chip that for example was meant to be a RX 480 didn't turn out so well so they locked off some parts of the chip and turned it into a RX 460 or 470. Instead of just throwing it in the bin and starting again. 

Doing this kind of thing is common, even on CPU market who doesn't recall AMD and its 3 core processors that were nothing more than 4 cores processors with a defective core that instead going to trash bin end up on market, it is all about marketing hehe.

[Megah3rtz]

I wonder if they'll run into problems with AMD or not. 

[TheRandomness]

Why not call it the RX 465?

[captain cactus]

This will look like a case of 1060 3/6GB where the same naming scheme still has a very important difference between the two different cards.

Didn't AMD themselves indirectly say they'd have a Polaris refresh coming with the RX-xx5 series with a slide showing their new naming scheme? I fully expected an RX465 to be the full P11 chip. 

 

Yeah here it is:

 

We've had the first revision in October (hence why RX480/RX470 now pull a whole lot less power compared to the earlier cards), so the next one would be the xx5 revision, which should also bring less power consumption and better yields (thus allowing AMD to have full P11 GPUs). I wonder if AMD knows what Sapphire is doing here and even approves of it, it could create a whole lot of confusion when the RX465 hits and it's essentially this specific RX460.

2 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Why not call it the RX 465?

Because this isn't an official AMD product. It's just Sapphire going "well these P11 chips are actually not defective, lets leave all the cores unlocked and sell them as full P11 GPUs".

[captain cactus]

14 minutes ago, Vode said:

Not quite... RX 460 is a different die (Polaris 11) than the RX 480 and 470 (Polaris 10).

 

It's the right idea though. An RX470 is an RX480 with bad cores so they lock them off and sell it as an RX470. It still makes money compared to throwing an entire chip in the trashcan.

[Sauron]

22 minutes ago, Wolther said:

I don't get why it's beneficial to lock any computer component in the first place? 

To more effectively partition the market. While the chip is the same, if they introduce a card that has the full chip and one that has it partially cut off they can sell it to two different demographics. If you can't afford the full model, you can still buy something close instead of having to go all the way down to a lower tier chip. If you can buy the full chip (at a slightly inflated price to make up for the lower margins on the locked chip) then you can have the whole thing.

 

On top of that it's not usually guaranteed that all chips will function properly when fully unlocked - there are some requirements they must meet before they are sold as "full". For example, since this applies to cpus as well, consider i5s and i7s. i5s are just "locked" i7s - they are made in the same wafers with the same schematics. However, while some lucky i5s could work as an i7, the majority would be unstable or straight up not work if all the features were enabled.

[sof006]

21 minutes ago, Vode said:

Not quite... RX 460 is a different die (Polaris 11) than the RX 480 and 470 (Polaris 10).

 

Its just an example, not saying that would be the exact case in the situation of going from a RX 480 to 460.

[Misanthrope]

Why does AMD insists on losing? What can be gained for loosing to the 1050? This should be the only Polaris 11 available.

[The Benjamins]

7 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Why does AMD insists on losing? What can be gained for loosing to the 1050? This should be the only Polaris 11 available.

but what if yields were not good enough at the time so they either had to push back release or sell a cut down chip.

[Misanthrope]

15 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

but what if yields were not good enough at the time so they either had to push back release or sell a cut down chip.

That doesn't works: they released before the 1050. It means they could have waited at the very least until after and still be relatively ok.

[kelvinhall05]

1 hour ago, Wolther said:

I don't get why it's beneficial to lock any computer component in the first place? 

Because then people can buy the cheap unlocked Celeron or Pentium, then overclock it and get i3 or i5 performance without paying for an i3 or i5.

[The Benjamins]

9 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

That doesn't works: they released before the 1050. It means they could have waited at the very least until after and still be relatively ok.

but people could argue that AMD would not sell as much if they did due to brand loyalty. they could of felt that it was needed to release before Nvidia.

[captain cactus]

6 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

That doesn't works: they released before the 1050. It means they could have waited at the very least until after and still be relatively ok.

Where's the logic in that? AMD released the RX460 because it would lose them money throwing away bad P11 GPUs with just 1-2 defective compute units. They had the P11 GPUs ready long before nVidia had their 1050(Ti)s ready, so they sold the RX460 as a cut-down P11 chip waiting for yields to improve at which point they'd be selling full P11 GPUs, which is what Sapphire is doing now. Also remember that AMD has a 2nd Polaris revision planned, hence the RX-xx5 naming scheme and there's little reason to believe the RX465 won't be the full fat P11 GPU.

[Misanthrope]

12 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

but people could argue that AMD would not sell as much if they did due to brand loyalty. they could of felt that it was needed to release before Nvidia.

They could, but I could argue right back that they won't win market share and brand loyalty by constantly settling for second place.

[Misanthrope]

10 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Where's the logic in that? AMD released the RX460 because it would lose them money throwing away bad P11 GPUs with just 1-2 defective compute units. They had the P11 GPUs ready long before nVidia had their 1050(Ti)s ready, so they sold the RX460 as a cut-down P11 chip waiting for yields to improve at which point they'd be selling full P11 GPUs, which is what Sapphire is doing now. Also remember that AMD has a 2nd Polaris revision planned, hence the RX-xx5 naming scheme and there's little reason to believe the RX465 won't be the full fat P11 GPU.

No no: you're assuming you have to begin mass production before you refine your manufacturing process. That's not entirely accurate: limited runs to figure out yields can be done before you mass produce.

[XenosTech]

13 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

No no: you're assuming you have to begin mass production before you refine your manufacturing process. That's not entirely accurate: limited runs to figure out yields can be done before you mass produce.

True but over time the process "matures" and gives better yields and more power efficient chips. Not defending AMD or anything but I do agree that they should have released the full 460 but I think apple had a license on it for a period of time so probably why desktops only had a cut down version.

[captain cactus]

4 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

True but over time the process "matures" and gives better yields and more power efficient chips. Not defending AMD or anything but I do agree that they should have released the full 460 but I think apple had a license on it for a period of time so probably why desktops only had a cut down version.

More likely it went over the 75W power restriction of the PCIe slot and AMD didn't want to put a 6-pin plug on their lower performance card.

[XenosTech]

4 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

More likely it went over the 75W power restriction of the PCIe slot and AMD didn't want to put a 6-pin plug on their lower performance card.

Highly unlikely otherwise apple wouldn't have snapped it up