AMD Polaris Tech Day is Today

[Valentyn]

5 hours ago, GidonsClaw said:

So GCN 4 is like GCN 3 with little to no optimisation? Polaris... Just a modded old AMD uArch then... By your statements 

Pascal has little to no IPC gains over Maxwell. That's the issue for people, and is rarely even brought up until you look at why Pascal performs better than Maxwell. It wasn't due mainly to architectural changes from Maxwell, rather instead mostly due to higher clocks thanks to the die shrinks brought from 16nm FinFet.

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/45056646-clarence-spurr/4884330-pascal-new-king

The main issue is most likely because the majority of NVIDIA's budget went into Pascal for compute, and deep learning sectors instead; which makes significantly more money than the consumer market. Consumer Pascal has also had nearly all of its advanced features stripped out as they don't benefit consumers at all.

AMD's claims for Polaris is that their performance increases will come primarily from both generational performance improvements and taking advantage of the 14nm FinFet process. That's a lot more than simply taking advantage of a smaller and cooler process like NVIDIA has done, where they added very little to their consumer products except taking advantage of the process for much higher clock speeds, and lower power usage.

Will that deliver for AMD however? We won't know until the cards are out.

[Trixanity]

7 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Honestly even though I have been an ATi proponent for a while, I have serious reservations about this new "Won't compete in the high end" strategy. Or whatever they call this highly untimely delay.

 

Then of course I am asking some semblance of competence and coherence from the fucking AMD PR and Marketing teams: Like trying to pick fly shit out of pepper.

What you are saying makes no sense. AMD has never said anything of the sort. In fact, AMD is being smart for once instead of rushing in without a plan. 

 

If AMD was truly to neglect the enthusiast market, then they'd drop Vega right now. They won't. 

 

AMD is gunning for market share instead of targeting niches with no volume. The mainstream market is where the volume is and since GP106 isn't out yet, AMD aims to swoop in and claim the mobile market as well as the <$300 desktop market. 

3 hours ago, Pohernori said:

 

That's why the "GCN 3?" 

 

Where the fuck did gcn 3 come from.

There are no actual version names for GCN. All names you've heard are tech journalists coming up with their own naming scheme. Internally, it's referred to as generation and Polaris will be based on 4th generation, while Fiji was based on 3rd. 

[Thiback]

Anyway, seems that the new Polaris are VR capable.

[Notional]

7 hours ago, GidonsClaw said:

So GCN 4 is like GCN 3 with little to no optimisation? Polaris... Just a modded old AMD uArch then... By your statements 

 

Does this look like a modded arch for die shrink?

Most of the chips is completely new and this chart doesn't even feature things like their new primitive discard accelerator.

 

Pascal has very little changes to the hardware and this IPC (instructions per clock). AMD will get a huge boost in IPC due to new architecture as well as clock boost from die shrink.

[Krzych]

16 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I think a July launch will be devastating for them. They need Polaris out ASAP before they have to compete with GP106 in the midrange, they needed a reason to make people not want to jump on the GTX 1070.

Yea, the whole world is waiting to jump on 1070 day one... Especially if it is launching at $450, this is far from where Polaris aims. As far as we know, Polaris aims <300$ market the most, so those cards shouldn't affect themselves in any significant way. 

[Krzych]

Rumors say that NDA on Polaris cards ends 29th June.

[captain cactus]

Look at what AMD posted to their Facebook.

 

[Starelementpoke]

2 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Look at what AMD posted to their Facebook.

 

AMD, I have faith in you.

[Starelementpoke]

11 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Honestly even though I have been an ATi proponent for a while, I have serious reservations about this new "Won't compete in the high end" strategy. Or whatever they call this highly untimely delay.

 

Then of course I am asking some semblance of competence and coherence from the fucking AMD PR and Marketing teams: Like trying to pick fly shit out of pepper.

Their marketing might not be the best, but you gotta admit, this video´s pretty fucking sweet:

 

[Thiback]

14 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

Their marketing might not be the best, but you gotta admit, this video´s pretty fucking sweet:

 

MAAAAN I thought you were showing us a new video from AMD. I was disapointed.

[maxrosciano]

http://vrworld.com/2016/05/10/pascal-secrets-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080/

 

Pascal actually has a lower IPC than Maxwell, but the insanely higher clockspeed makes up for it.

 

[captain cactus]

18 minutes ago, maxrosciano said:

http://vrworld.com/2016/05/10/pascal-secrets-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080/

 

Pascal actually has a lower IPC than Maxwell, but the insanely higher clockspeed makes up for it.

 

Still Pascal was a pretty big disappointment.

This is exactly the reason why I want people with these 1080s on hand to do an apples-to-apples comparison with the 980Ti at the same clock speeds to really see how much got improved on the core architecture. Get a super beefy EVGA 980Ti that gets to like 1500MHz+ and then underclock a 1080 to the same frequency, then see the performance difference. Since day one I've suspected the bulk of the performance increase is just from the massive clockspeed increase over a 980Ti rather than IPC improvements, and this article basically confirms that. It's why we currently have all these Polaris rumors floating around that it's running at something like 1500MHz as AMD is going for massive IPC improvements and then keeping lower clockspeeds to keep the power consumption and heat output down. We'll have Polaris GPUs running at 1080-level clockspeeds anyway with board partners releasing custom PCBs like the Lightning cards from MSI so for those who don't give two damns about power consumption there's still an option.

 

@LinusTech @Slick I'd like to see a workshop-style video with this being done.

[Starelementpoke]

53 minutes ago, Thiback said:

MAAAAN I thought you were showing us a new video from AMD. I was disapointed.

Sorry about that, lol.

[Thiback]

8 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

This is exactly the reason why I want people with these 1080s on hand to do an apples-to-apples comparison with the 980Ti at the same clock speeds to really see how much got improved on the core architecture. Get a super beefy EVGA 980Ti that gets to like 1500MHz+ and then underclock a 1080 to the same frequency, then see the performance difference. Since day one I've suspected the bulk of the performance increase is just from the massive clockspeed increase over a 980Ti rather than IPC improvements, and this article basically confirms that. It's why we currently have all these Polaris rumors floating around that it's running at something like 1500MHz as AMD is going for massive IPC improvements and then keeping lower clockspeeds to keep the power consumption and heat output down. We'll have Polaris GPUs running at 1080-level clockspeeds anyway with board partners releasing custom PCBs like the Lightning cards from MSI so for those who don't give two damns about power consumption there's still an option.

 

@LinusTech @Slick I'd like to see a workshop-style video with this being done.

Just pray these cards don't get anywhere near a cutting disk or circular saw. My eyes have bleed enough already.

[Valentyn]

13 minutes ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

This is exactly the reason why I want people with these 1080s on hand to do an apples-to-apples comparison with the 980Ti at the same clock speeds to really see how much got improved on the core architecture. Get a super beefy EVGA 980Ti that gets to like 1500MHz+ and then underclock a 1080 to the same frequency, then see the performance difference. Since day one I've suspected the bulk of the performance increase is just from the massive clockspeed increase over a 980Ti rather than IPC improvements, and this article basically confirms that. It's why we currently have all these Polaris rumors floating around that it's running at something like 1500MHz as AMD is going for massive IPC improvements and then keeping lower clockspeeds to keep the power consumption and heat output down. We'll have Polaris GPUs running at 1080-level clockspeeds anyway with board partners releasing custom PCBs like the Lightning cards from MSI so for those who don't give two damns about power consumption there's still an option.

 

@LinusTech @Slick I'd like to see a workshop-style video with this being done.

 

It was actually done, albeit not 1-1 clocks but damn close.If you clock up a Titan X it ends up beating the 1080.
 

 

[Castdeath97]

3 hours ago, Starelementpoke said:

AMD, I have faith in you.

 

3 hours ago, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Look at what AMD posted to their Facebook.

 

Please kill 1366*768 panels

[BuckGup]

Hey if AMD releases a card on par with a 980 or 980ti but at $399 and the TDP is 150W-200W I am happy with that

[Deli]

1 hour ago, SamStrecker said:

Hey if AMD releases a card on par with a 980 or 980ti but at $399 and the TDP is 150W-200W I am happy with that

That will be similar to GTX1070.

[BuckGup]

11 minutes ago, Deli said:

That will be similar to GTX1070.

There you go competition 

[SteveGrabowski0]

25 minutes ago, SamStrecker said:

Hey if AMD releases a card on par with a 980 or 980ti but at $399 and the TDP is 150W-200W I am happy with that

On par with a 980 for $400? That would be horrible and would get crushed by the 1070 for $20 less.

[BuckGup]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

On par with a 980 for $400? That would be horrible and would get crushed by the 1070 for $20 less.

Don't get your hopes too high. Seeing the 1080 be 10% faster then a 980ti. It might perform better but I wouldn't say crush

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 minute ago, SamStrecker said:

Don't get your hopes too high. Seeing the 1080 be 10% faster then a 980ti. It might perform better but I wouldn't say crush

At stock the reference 1080 is roughly 25% faster than reference Titan X, which is a couple percent more than reference 980 Ti. You're not comparing apples to apples when you compare an overclocked aftermarket 980 Ti to a shit blower 1080.

[Krzych]

2 hours ago, SamStrecker said:

Hey if AMD releases a card on par with a 980 or 980ti but at $399 and the TDP is 150W-200W I am happy with that

If rumors are close to be true, they will release card at around non X Fury performance (stock to stock, new card should OC much better than Fury), on around 130W TDP and $300 price. This way you get promised 2-2.5x perf/watt increase (130W compared to 275W) and promised VR capable card at around $300, like anyone who pays $600+ for VR headset will use $300 GPU....

 

GTX 980 performance at 150-200W and $400 wouldn't be any good, this way you get small price/performance increase and almost none perf/watt increase since 980 already has 180W TDP. TDP is not power consumption, but this is closely related. They need to do better than this.

[Fetzie]

11 minutes ago, Krzych said:

If rumors are close to be true, they will release card at around non X Fury performance (stock to stock, new card should OC much better than Fury), on around 130W TDP and $300 price. This way you get promised 2-2.5x perf/watt increase (130W compared to 275W) and promised VR capable card at around $300, like anyone who pays $600+ for VR headset will use $300 GPU....

It certainly makes it easier to afford that 600 dollar headset if you only have to spend 300 on the graphics card.

 

Something like this:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($233.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($24.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI MSI Z170-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($114.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($88.30 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($47.49 @ OutletPC)
Case: BitFenix Merc Alpha (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($47.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($69.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)  ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Other: Polaris 10 GPU ($300.00)
Other: VR headset ($600.00)
Total: $1671.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-28 16:28 EDT-0400

 

is about 1600 dollars, all in (including a VR headset and a Windows licence). Last gen, you'd have had to spend that much on the computer ALONE. I mean, that's a 900 dollar fully VR capable PC.

[xAcid9]

10 minutes ago, Fetzie said:

It certainly makes it easier to afford that 600 dollar headset if you only have to spend 300 on the graphics card.

A guy in my local forum tested ProjectCars with HTC Vive and only able to use Mixed of Med-Low setting @1080p with MSAA to achieve min 90fps with a GTX1080.. i can't imagine playing pCars VR with much lower setting on weaker cards.