Yet another Polaris card incoming: RX 540 for Notebooks

[WMGroomAK]

In addition to the new stack of Polaris Refresh cards that AMD has just released, they are also going to push out yet another Polaris Card for lower power consumption and targeting the mobile notebook market.   This new card is going to sit just below the RX 550 (thus it will be the RX 540).  

 

From the TechReport (http://techreport.com/news/31764/radeon-rx-540-offers-a-tiny-slice-of-polaris-power-to-notebooks):

Quote

Although we don't have an RX 550 on hand to test yet, AMD has provided us with quite a few official specs for the mystery GPU that powers both that card and the RX 540. In some ways, the 101 mm² RX 540 chip is exactly half of a full Polaris 11. It has half the stream processors and half of the texture units of its more powerful sibling, but it keeps the 128-bit memory interface and 16 ROPs of the beefier chip. The RX 550 is officially rated for a board power of 50W in its desktop form, so we can likely expect an even lower TDP for the mobile part.

 

As mobile GPUs go, the RX 540 is unlikely to be a performance monster, but it should at least add a shot of affordable graphics power to systems that would otherwise get by with nothing more than an integrated graphics processor. Nvidia's common GeForce 940MX comes to mind as a point of comparison for this segment. That chip offers significantly lower theoretical performance than the RX 540 does on paper: 861.7 GFLOPS, 27 Gtexels/s of peak texture fill rate, and about 9 Gpixels/s of peak pixel fill rate. AMD claims 1.2 TFLOPs, 39 Gtexels/s, and 19.5 Gpixels/s for the RX 540.

It is good to note that this is being targeted at lower power and lower end notebook market to provide something better than the onboard graphics on most mobile CPUs so I would expect this to be for something like a notebook used to stream Youtube or maybe play some less graphics intensive games on the go...  Definitely not going to be competing with the $3000 beasts of laptops with dual 1080 SLI.  Would anyone actually be interested in one of these in a notebook or a low power PC?  

 

Guru3D Site: http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/radeon-rx-540-surfaces-on-amd-website.html

AMD Site: https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-540

 

[Coaxialgamer]

101mm² for an 8CU gpu? 

 

[Droidbot]

1 minute ago, Coaxialgamer said:

101mm² for an 8CU gpu? 

 

laptop chips. when they solder to the board you want to use as little shit as possible

[Coaxialgamer]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

laptop chips. when they solder to the board you want to use as little shit as possible

I'm just surprised by the size. 

P11 is 123mm² and has twice the number of CU's. I wasn't expecting this to be half the size, but i was expecting quite a bit smaller tbh. 

[XR6]

I wonder if these RX 540's will be put into those Ryzen 3 laptops that will probably be like those APU powered AMD things that are on sale now. 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

13 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

I'm just surprised by the size. 

P11 is 123mm² and has twice the number of CU's. I wasn't expecting this to be half the size, but i was expecting quite a bit smaller tbh. 

The only thing that seems to have been reduced is the execution units, except the ROPs. Everything else around the GPU probably remained the same. The memory bus size for example is the same, indicating the same number of memory controllers.

 

I recall somewhere that this is a trend in modern processor design, where the control units are taking up more room than the execution units.

[Coaxialgamer]

8 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The only thing that seems to have been reduced is the execution units, except the ROPs. Everything else around the GPU probably remained the same. The memory bus size for example is the same, indicating the same number of memory controllers.

 

I recall somewhere that this is a trend in modern processor design, where the control units are taking up more room than the execution units.

That's true in modern cpus,where only about 10% of the die is actual execution units,  but not in gpus. 

Take this polaris 10 die layout for example 

 

The majority of the die is dedicated to the CU's. Btw, polaris  has 8 ROPS per shader engine ( p10 has 4, p11 has 2), so a single SE, 8 CU gpu should have 8 ROPS. 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, Coaxialgamer said:

That's true in modern cpus,where onky about 10% of the die is actual execution units,  but not in gpus. 

Take this polaris 10 die layout for example 

 

The majority of the die is dedicated to the CU's. Btw, polaris  has 8 ROPS per shader engine ( p10 has 4, p11 has 2), so a single SE, 8 CU gpu should have 8 ROPS. 

 

This is a block diagram, not a die shot. It's not necessarily to scale.

[Coaxialgamer]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

This is a block diagram, not a die shot. It's not necessarily to scale.

True. This is the actual die shot, with the CU's in the middle 

 

[Bouzoo]

So it should be on par with an... 950M? It's really disappointing AMD is not pushing their faster chips instead of this in laptops. If there is one place where AMD needs to step up their game even more so than in high discrete card end, it's in the laptop market. They haven't launched anything worth looking after 8870M at best. And what have we ended up with? Paying a premium of $350-400 to go from GTX 1060 to 1070 in laptops. Just for that upgrade. Ty NV.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, Coaxialgamer said:

True. This is the actual die shot, with the CU's in the middle 

 

Either way, the point is the RX 550 and RX 560 appear to have the same number of front-end elements to it. So pretend you take this, chop it in half vertically, take the right side, then delete half the CUs and compare the size.

 

From what I got with this die shot, the ratio is about 75%. Which is about the same as the ratio between the transistor count of the RX550 and RX560, though not quite the same as the die area at 80%. It's likely not all transistors are created equal or that there's more dead space.

[Coaxialgamer]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

Either way, the point is the RX 550 and RX 560 appear to have the same number of front-end elements to it. So pretend you take this, chop it in half vertically, take the right side, then delete half the CUs and compare the size.

 

From what I got with this die shot, the ratio is about 75%. Which is about the same as the ratio between the transistor count of the RX550 and RX560, though not quite the same as the die area at 80%. It's likely not all transistors are created equal or that there's more dead space.

my point was that there must be dead space in that chip.

[MoonSpot]

37 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

Would anyone actually be interested in one of these in a notebook or a low power PC? 

Anyone who has learned the hard way that buying premium laptops is for suckers should be.  Inexpensive laptops + beast tower at HQ is the way to do it.  When laptops cost more than respectable used cars, you've cross a few too many lines.

I'd want to see what the power draw for polaris-m is like since battery life is paramount.  That said I'd really like to see Zen/Polaris APUs before September/August school frenzy, don't know if that might be to soon for them to pull it off.

[WMGroomAK]

Just now, Coaxialgamer said:

my point was that there must be dead space in that chip.

 

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Either way, the point is the RX 550 and RX 560 appear to have the same number of front-end elements to it. So pretend you take this, chop it in half vertically, take the right side, then delete half the CUs and compare the size.

 

From what I got with this die shot, the ratio is about 75%. Which is about the same as the ratio between the transistor count of the RX550 and RX560, though not quite the same as the die area at 80%. It's likely not all transistors are created equal or that there's more dead space.

They could be looking at using some of what would be the worse off RX550 chips as mobile GPU chips... It seems like they have fairly similar specs between the 550 and 540. 

[Misanthrope]

Well about time it's been a while since I've been waiting for AMD to return to laptops, I honestly thought they were gonna hold up until Ryzen APUs but this is welcome...assuming it can compete with the 1050 laptops that is.

[Coaxialgamer]

Just now, WMGroomAK said:

 

They could be looking at using some of what would be the worse off RX550 chips as mobile GPU chips... It seems like they have fairly similar specs between the 550 and 540. 

the assumption is that both the 550 and 540 are based off a single "polaris 12" die, with the 540 being binned.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

my point was that there must be dead space in that chip.

Well sure. The die shot of the RX 480 you showed has that as well.

 

But I'm also saying just because you cut off half the execution units doesn't mean your die area shrinks by a half. Execution units are only half the story, more or less.

[Coaxialgamer]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Well about time it's been a while since I've been waiting for AMD to return to laptops, I honestly thought they were gonna hold up until Ryzen APUs but this is welcome...assuming it can compete with the 1050 laptops that is.

not a chance . this is a low-end chip . It should compete with the likes of intel HD 630 , iris , and GT-class gpus . A mobile rx560 variant would most likely be the competitor to the 1050 series for laptops.

[Coaxialgamer]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Well sure. The die shot of the RX 480 you showed has that as well.

 

But I'm also saying just because you cut off half the execution units doesn't mean your die area shrinks by a half. Execution units are only half the story, more or less.

of course , you're never going to get half the die size in this type of design , especially since things like the MC haven't been cut compared to p11 . But i was guessing it would be around 80mm² at most , given what we already talked about .

[Valentyn]

2 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

not a chance . this is a low-end chip . It should compete with the likes of intel HD 630 , iris , and GT-class gpus . A mobile rx560 variant would most likely be the competitor to the 1050 series for laptops.

Yeah the 550 and 540 are very very cut down.

The 560 though has more CUs, cores and texture units than the 460; so if you're looking at a Laptop that'll be the one to get.

The rest are just fillers until the APUs are out it seems.

 

Also worth noting Apple has been getting the "560" aka fully unlocked 460 for a year now from AMD.

 

[Coaxialgamer]

5 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

Yeah the 550 and 540 are very very cut down.

The 560 though has more CUs, cores and texture units than the 460; so if you're looking at a Laptop that'll be the one to get.

The rest are just fillers until the APUs are out it seems.

 

Also worth noting Apple has been getting the "560" aka fully unlocked 460 for a year now from AMD.

 

 

Which is actually quite interesting if you think about it . Everyone ( myself included ) was quick to discard the rx 460 for nvidia equivalents  when it released because it couldn't surpass the 950 , and even more so when the 1050 series launched .

But with more cores , higher clocks , and a lower MSRP , it might be worth revisiting the rx560 vs 950 vs 1050(ti ) debate in the near future .

It could finally become an attractive option.

[Valentyn]

3 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Whic is actually quite interesting if you think about it . Everyone ( myself included ) was quick to discard the rx 460 for nvidia equivalents  when it released because it couldn't surpass the 950 , and even more so when the 1050 series launched .

But with more cores , higher clocks , and a lower MSRP , it might be worth revisiting the rx560 vs 950 vs 1050(ti ) debate in the near future .

It could finally become an attractive option.

Oh certainly, especially with the 560 coming in with an MSRP of $99 as well.

 

$20 less than 460 for what is a proper "refresh" of the card.

 

They might make nice little cards for video editors, and workstations as well, especially if they don't need GPU crunching power, but just need acceleration and decent encoding and decoding.

 

[DragonTamer1]

If this could be put on a laptop and give decent performance for around $500 total system cost that would be stellar. The laptop I have now is from 2012 and scores a whopping 35 in cinebun and struggles to play YouTube videos at 720p (forget about 60FPS, wish YouTube had a way to turn that off). It does fine in Netflix but I would like something a bit faster that I could possibly play some games on (it's an adventure trying to find games that run on this).

[MoonSpot]

1 hour ago, DragonTamer1 said:

If this could be put on a laptop and give decent performance for around $500 total system cost that would be stellar. The laptop I have now is from 2012 and scores a whopping 35 in cinebun and struggles to play YouTube videos at 720p (forget about 60FPS, wish YouTube had a way to turn that off). It does fine in Netflix but I would like something a bit faster that I could possibly play some games on (it's an adventure trying to find games that run on this).

Similar boat with my laptop.  Youtube 1080@60p is a mess on my laptop, barely works in chrome; is murder in FireFox.  There's no shortage of malware that promises to enable youtube @ 30 FPS, so I'd have preferred youtube had found a way to make it an option.  A bit frustrating for me when a youtuber ups a 60fps feed just to see their head bobble once in a while and their mouth do that open/close thing.

Ah well, such is the way of things when your gear is only half broken.  As for a game, try to find a copy of ONI on PC and grab the anniversary edition(mods) should work on just about anything and is a fun romp.

[AlTech]

5 hours ago, Valentyn said:

Yeah the 550 and 540 are very very cut down.

The 560 though has more CUs, cores and texture units than the 460; so if you're looking at a Laptop that'll be the one to get.

The rest are just fillers until the APUs are out it seems.

 

Also worth noting Apple has been getting the "560" aka fully unlocked 460 for a year now from AMD.

 

No. Apple has been getting the Radeon Pro products. These products are not comparable to the Radeon RX lineup. 

 

The Radeon Pro products use AMD Radeon Pro Drivers and have differences.