[UPDATE] AMD Announces Polaris Architecture - 4th Generation GCN Arriving in Mid 2016

[shawno]

Loving how rtg is becoming more forward with their technology nowadays

I remember that before fury, everything was rumored and lots of misinformation was flying around the interwebs as they were holding their cards close.

A great change and excellent redirection of where amd needed to go.

2016 is going to be a very exciting year indeed

[Raytsou]

For Intel it actually comes very close. 

 

Ever run AIDA 64? It uses more than 95W at full tilt on a 4790K.

 

Further, there's room to manipulate the RAM configs for 2x8 1333 vs 4x4 3333 regardless of what AMD says without a live video of the testing rig showing absolutely everything. They can say the GPU is at stock clocks, but without software to verify it, it can't be trusted. At least when Nvidia does these demoes you get the full picture. Anandtech usually has to hand out Pinocchio awards to AMD when products actually launch.

In that case you can't verify anything. They could've been secretly using a GTX 580 in there. They could've been using a FX 9590 OC to 7GHZ. They could've completely lied about the numbers. You're just nitpicking here. Even if they show a video, there's no proof the computer is actually what they say it is, or that it is the one connected to the pc. 

[LAwLz]

I am so excited for Polaris. All the new color technologies they talked about before, the new video block that can do Main10 HEVC decoding and 60 fps 4K HEVC encoding, and the (hopefully) huge performance leap we will get from both the better architecture as well as the move to 16nm FinFet.

It will feel so good upgrading my 7850.

I will however wait for both reviews as well as Nvidia before making a purchase. We will probably see Nvidia make big leaps with their 1000 series as well.

[SurvivorNVL]

I am so excited for Polaris. All the new color technologies they talked about before, the new video block that can do Main10 HEVC decoding and 60 fps 4K HEVC encoding, and the (hopefully) huge performance leap we will get from both the better architecture as well as the move to 16nm FinFet.

It will feel so good upgrading my 7850.

I will however wait for both reviews as well as Nvidia before making a purchase. We will probably see Nvidia make big leaps with their 1000 series as well.

There is an nVidia press event tonight http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/01/03/ces-las-vegas-event/  and the Verge is covering it on the live-blog.  They traditionally don't announce Geforce stuff at CES, but may be surprising.  I am as well excited and hopeful for Polaris, but anything AMD can do, nVidia can definitely do with their resources.  I'm on the HDR train above all else.  Whoever can deliver HDR and variable-sync first - gets my purchase.

[patrickjp93]

In that case you can't verify anything. They could've been secretly using a GTX 580 in there. They could've been using a FX 9590 OC to 7GHZ. They could've completely lied about the numbers. You're just nitpicking here. Even if they show a video, there's no proof the computer is actually what they say it is, or that it is the one connected to the pc. 

 

There's proof if you can see the motherboard and BIOS and task manager. Give me those and show the game settings being loaded and we're good to go.

[Raytsou]

There's proof if you can see the motherboard and BIOS and task manager. Give me those and show the game settings being loaded and we're good to go.

So you are saying that every time AMD gives us performance numbers, it has to include an uncut video of the computer's BIOS, task manager, and game settings on both pc's? That would be quite a bit tedious and frankly, even makes every hardware review out there unreliable. It's AMD. The numbers will be biased some way or another. But I doubt they'll outright lie to us and secretly disable/lock features on a pc to skew the numbers.

[Dabombinable]

2016-the year of technological advances.

[ivan134]

So you are saying that every time AMD gives us performance numbers, it has to include an uncut video of the computer's BIOS, task manager, and game settings on both pc's? That would be quite a bit tedious and frankly, even makes every hardware review out there unreliable. It's AMD. The numbers will be biased some way or another. But I doubt they'll outright lie to us and secretly disable/lock features on a pc to skew the numbers.

I'm only going to slight disagree. They could, but we have independent reviewers anyway. Benchmarks from them are what matter at the end of the day. The accusations in this thread are pretty hilarious though.

[SuperCookie78]

so perfomance of a gtx 960(oem) with the tdp of a gtx 750 Ti(ish) i'm down can't wait for this to come out

[Guest]

It will feel so good upgrading my 7850.

 

I don't know how you do it, I have a non-X 290 and already want to upgrade to something more powerful. If I had the money I would.

[LAwLz]

I don't know how you do it, I have a non-X 290 and already want to upgrade to something more powerful. If I had the money I would.

Right now, the most demanding game I play is Hearthstone. So yeah, my need for high performance graphics cards is not very high.

[Guest]

Right now, the most demanding game I play is Hearthstone. So yeah, my need for high performance graphics cards is not very high.

I play that too, but modded skyrim as well, so...vram...not enough.

[Fetzie]

There's proof if you can see the motherboard and BIOS and task manager. Give me those and show the game settings being loaded and we're good to go.

 

How do you propose seeing a live feed of their BIOS while they are gaming? You can monitor your system at the BIOS level on some servers (Gigabyte's MD60-SCO C612 motherboard comes to mind), but they're hardly representative of a "consumer" motherboard (and are missing things like "overclocking" or "support for consumer CPUs" - it should support the enthusiast SKUs though).

[Raytsou]

I'm only going to slight disagree. They could, but we have independent reviewers anyway. Benchmarks from them are what matter at the end of the day. The accusations in this thread are pretty hilarious though.

THANK YOU. That's exactly what I'm saying. The numbers are most likely AMD biased in someway, but the some accusations here are outright ridiculous. 

[Fetzie]

Right now, the most demanding game I play is Hearthstone. So yeah, my need for high performance graphics cards is not very high.

 

Mmh, my 7950 is still holding up really well too. I can still play modern games at high settings at 1080p (even things like GTA5 for example). HD7xxx are still ridiculously good cards for their age, and apparently still getting performance increases from the new drivers too.

[Zah]

Can I just say:

 

DisplayPort 1.3 is on these cards it looks.  Which means higher framerates for 1440p and 4k, as well as hopefully 60FPS for 8k soon.

[patrickjp93]

So you are saying that every time AMD gives us performance numbers, it has to include an uncut video of the computer's BIOS, task manager, and game settings on both pc's? That would be quite a bit tedious and frankly, even makes every hardware review out there unreliable. It's AMD. The numbers will be biased some way or another. But I doubt they'll outright lie to us and secretly disable/lock features on a pc to skew the numbers.

 

If we're to take AMD at its word, yes, because AMD has consistently lied before.

 

They've done it before (Bulldozer v Sandy Bridge).

[patrickjp93]

How do you propose seeing a live feed of their BIOS while they are gaming? You can monitor your system at the BIOS level on some servers (Gigabyte's MD60-SCO C612 motherboard comes to mind), but they're hardly representative of a "consumer" motherboard (and are missing things like "overclocking" or "support for consumer CPUs" - it should support the enthusiast SKUs though).

 

You don't have to see the BIOS while gaming, just show it before boot up.

[Dabombinable]

If we're to take AMD at its word, yes, because AMD has consistently lied before.

 

They've done it before (Bulldozer v Sandy Bridge).

I still remember this random video with an i7 2700K flogging an FX 8150 at the same clock speed in Cinebench R11.5. Can't find it again BTW-and it was on Youtube.

[TopWargamer]

New architecture looks amazing. Can't wait to see the actual cards and the real world performance. Go team red!

[Speedbird]

Great. Now all AMD has to do is make a good competitor to ShadowPlay. Then I'm sold.

[NuclearPeace]

If we're to take AMD at its word, yes, because AMD has consistently lied before.

 

They've done it before (Bulldozer v Sandy Bridge).

 

 

This. Its kinda disturbing how quickly people let their guard down because its AMD. Surely people on here remember the Fury X vs Titan X graphs provided by AMD. The card is running at .8375v to... I know that the new node is supposed to be different than 28nm, but no 28nm GPU out there will even function on such a low voltage. Something's up.

 

Anyway, I am going to remain skeptic. AMD has a history of hyping up things for it only to be disappointing. I hope its competitive.

[Fetzie]

Great. Now all AMD has to do is make a good competitor to ShadowPlay. Then I'm sold.

What can the latest version of the game recording software in the gaming evolved application not do, that Shadowplay can?

[Notional]

​This is very impressive. I cannot wait for these FinFet GPU's to enter the market. I'm also very interested at what NVidia are doing, with HDR, Hardware schedulers, etc. AMD putting hardware scheduler on there is a big slap in the face of NVidia after all.

 

What seems to be most interesting, is that AMD GPUs are officially 14nm FF. We might(?) see some 16nm FF products, but it seems like Global Foundries and Samsung has taken full production of all AMD A/C/GPU's. This might be a huge advantage for AMD, especially in the APU department, as they can easily reuse their Polaris cores, made for the same node.

 

You don't have to see the BIOS while gaming, just show it before boot up.

 

Literally no one would ever live up to that. A healthy doses of scepticism is good, but this is just dumb. NVidia and Intel has done way worse in their days. Take it all with a grain of salt. That's it.

 

This. Its kinda disturbing how quickly people let their guard down because its AMD. Surely people on here remember the Fury X vs Titan X graphs provided by AMD. The card is running at .8375v to... I know that the new node is supposed to be different than 28nm, but no 28nm GPU out there will even function on such a low voltage. Something's up.

 

Anyway, I am going to remain skeptic. AMD has a history of hyping up things for it only to be disappointing. I hope its competitive.

 

Yeah we do. Then we saw some DX12 things too. AMD did some funny business by disabling AF, which is dumb, but nothing insane. Looks like the card is 14nm FF, and Samsungs node is specifically made to be low power. So having a lower voltage than Intel is no surprise (just look at Samsung NAND versus Intels). The real question is how much power this node can handle.

[patrickjp93]

​This is very impressive. I cannot wait for these FinFet GPU's to enter the market. I'm also very interested at what NVidia are doing, with HDR, Hardware schedulers, etc. AMD putting hardware scheduler on there is a big slap in the face of NVidia after all.

 

What seems to be most interesting, is that AMD GPUs are officially 14nm FF. We might(?) see some 16nm FF products, but it seems like Global Foundries and Samsung has taken full production of all AMD A/C/GPU's. This might be a huge advantage for AMD, especially in the APU department, as they can easily reuse their Polaris cores, made for the same node.

 

 

Literally no one would ever live up to that. A healthy doses of scepticism is good, but this is just dumb. NVidia and Intel has done way worse in their days. Take it all with a grain of salt. That's it.

 

 

Yeah we do. Then we saw some DX12 things too. AMD did some funny business by disabling AF, which is dumb, but nothing insane. Looks like the card is 14nm FF, and Samsungs node is specifically made to be low power. So having a lower voltage than Intel is no surprise (just look at Samsung NAND versus Intels). The real question is how much power this node can handle.

Intel's lived up to it twice, once with Nehalem and again with Sandy Bridge.

 

Intel's NAND is 22nm FinFET. It should come as a surprise to no one that Samsung's 20nm or 14nmFF is better at being low voltage. Samsung's node designs are for low-power SOCs, not an all-rounder like Intel's. It's not that impressive.