AMD Lists The Radeon RX 490 Flagship – Polaris based Dual GPU Graphics Card For 4K Ready Gaming

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, patrickjp93 said:

300n is still linear. You should say the scaling is not 1:1

From what I've read, the power to frequency scaling is exponential and that was a few days ago. I can't find the source though for some reason. Looked through every news site I frequent but the article hasn't turned up. Am I wrong in saying it's exponential?

1 hour ago, Devin92 said:

1. 1060 performance is yet to be benchmarked. So we dont know.

2. 1080 beat 2x480 in CF and only 60W increase from 480's 165W will give 1080ish performance? Doubt it. I still think its gonna be 250-300. Again we will see.

3. the titan P part I do have a ‘?’ after 500W, thats only a wild guess. My point in my first post is, polaris architecture DO consume waay more power than passcal and this hurts their overclocking headroom as well as higher end card heat output more. As a result polaris is not a very successful architecture. This is all I want to establish with my original post.

1. the specs have been released, the performance targets has been released. The TDP is known as well. The 1060 will have disappointing performance for the power consumption by your reasoning.

2. By your logic, the R9 Fury Nano is made of fairy dust. It has 100W lower TDP than the R9 390X but performs better (GCN2 vs GCN3 though). It's an AMD architecture so it doesn't run on the glorious Pascal architecture that's made of unicorn farts. I'll repeat: the power to performance doesn't scale like that. You don't need to double the power to double the performance. It's all about the chip design. A bigger chip will use more power (same architecture) but not double the power to achieve much better performance. I've yet to see a modern gpu that does require double the power like that.

3. Yes, I've mentioned that somewhere else. The Nvidia GPUs are leaner but they sacrifice some things to get there. I'll not bother to argue what paradigm is better. The biggest problem is that AMD doesn't seem to be able to achieve the performance their GPUs should have if we go by the tflops measurement where AMD has generally dominated. Maybe current workloads just don't like AMD's approach although it does seem like DX12/Vulkan likes AMD's architectures very much. 

[DocSwag]

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

No chance in hell it's just a dual polaris card unless they've run into catastrophic issues with Vega. 

Everyone single generation of AMD/ATI cards since I don't even know when has had a flagship dual GPU card which was the two flagship single GPUs of that generation put onto one card. Why wouldn't they do it now? The 490 would be meant to temporarily give some competition to the 400-500 dollar market until vega comes.

[Misanthrope]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

Everyone single generation of AMD/ATI cards since I don't even know when has had a flagship dual GPU card which was the two flagship single GPUs of that generation put onto one card. Why wouldn't they do it now? The 490 would be meant to temporarily give some competition to the 400-500 dollar market until vega comes.

Not in replacement of a single gpu high end solution though it's always after the single big chip is out.

[byalexandr]

10 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Really?

All throughout 2015 and most of 2016 AMD had better offerings at nearly every single tier but the enthusiasts cards which was the 980ti untouched. AMD made not much progress in overall sales and market shares. It's unfair that they're not doing any better but what you're saying here it's been inaccurate for many many years.

They dominate the budget performance market with their cards, maybe not with people's wallets. Which is a shame, people are so dumb sometimes.

[Trixanity]

5 minutes ago, byalexandr said:

They dominate the budget performance market with their cards, maybe not with people's wallets. Which is a shame, people are so dumb sometimes.

People buy recognized brands and people buy what other people buy.

 

That makes Nvidia successful no matter what they do. They could probably send their customers a complimentary bag of dog poop with their purchase and people would still buy Nvidia cards. Admittedly, there are probably some people who'd relish the idea of a complimentary bag of dog poop but if we exclude those then my point still stands.

[LAwLz]

21 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

People buy recognized brands and people buy what other people buy.

 

That makes Nvidia successful no matter what they do. They could probably send their customers a complimentary bag of dog poop with their purchase and people would still buy Nvidia cards. Admittedly, there are probably some people who'd relish the idea of a complimentary bag of dog poop but if we exclude those then my point still stands.

Dial back your fanboyism a little bit please. Nvidia and AMD are very competitive in terms of price:performance at almost all tiers.

Nvidia aren't successful just because they have a recognizable brand. They make good products.

 

I will most likely buy the GTX 1060 when that is released. Do you think I will be buying it because of the Nvidia logo, or because it seems like it will offer better price:performance as well as feature set, compared to AMD's counterpart (assuming the performance and prices are the same as the fairly modest goals Nvidia have officially announced)?

[byalexandr]

28 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

People buy recognized brands and people buy what other people buy.

 

That makes Nvidia successful no matter what they do. They could probably send their customers a complimentary bag of dog poop with their purchase and people would still buy Nvidia cards. Admittedly, there are probably some people who'd relish the idea of a complimentary bag of dog poop but if we exclude those then my point still stands.

'brainwashing'

[Dabombinable]

Ok...does this mean that they have no SKU better than the 480? Because if so.....fuck. I was hoping to get a 490 as a replacement for my GTX 970 as the 480 was a disappointment (AKA-it performs about as well). The 490 means that I might as well go with SLI as the games that support it are also the ones that I'd need SLI for.

[Doobeedoo]

490 being Dual GPU then kind of makes sense, naming wise. Reason also being Vega using HBM2 and I'm sure not just being one chip in lineup. Also, should replace Fury lineup so different name should be.

[SteveGrabowski0]

AMD is going down in flames if this is the best they can do. All that DX12 advantage they hype up is gone if their $450 card is dual Polaris 10 considering no DX12 game other than Ashes gains anything whatsoever from having multiple gpus. The company is done for if the best they can do in 2016 at 14 nm is match what Nvidia had in September 2014 with cut down GP104 at 28 nm.

[Humbug]

13 hours ago, -BirdiE- said:

As much as I'd love to think they're just waiting... I'm worried the issue is deeper than that.

If it takes them 165w (or whatever it is) with Polaris just to get 970 performance, what would it need to draw to compete with something like the 1080?

According to Raja Koduri (lead architect) there are limits to Polaris because it was originally supposed to be only for laptops. i.e. Polaris 11. Only subsequently they decided to scale up to a desktop part (Polaris 10). Probably Polaris 10 is operating outside the optimal efficiency window for the Polaris architecture in order to perform well enough for a desktop $200 part.

 

 

According to AMD's own slides Vega is surprisingly a lot more efficient than Polaris at perf / watt.

 

[-BirdiE-]

23 minutes ago, Humbug said:

According to Raja Koduri (lead architect) there are limits to Polaris because it was originally supposed to be only for laptops. i.e. Polaris 11. Only subsequently they decided to scale up to a desktop part (Polaris 10). Probably Polaris 10 is operating outside the optimal efficiency window for the Polaris architecture in order to perform well enough for a desktop $200 part.

 

 

According to AMD's own slides Vega is surprisingly a lot more efficient than Polaris at perf / watt.

 

VERY interesting.

[Duskie]

I'm thinking vega will be branded 'RAGE' and 'RAGE X'

[SteveGrabowski0]

56 minutes ago, Humbug said:

According to Raja Koduri (lead architect) there are limits to Polaris because it was originally supposed to be only for laptops. i.e. Polaris 11. Only subsequently they decided to scale up to a desktop part (Polaris 10). Probably Polaris 10 is operating outside the optimal efficiency window for the Polaris architecture in order to perform well enough for a desktop $200 part.

So AMD's original plan was to keep producing expensive big die Hawaii and Fiji chips for 2016 and sell them as rebrands to compete with Nvidia's 1000 series? I don't buy that, this sounds like a lie to cover up how disappointing Polaris 10 is.

[RexinOridle]

Multi GPU sucks

[Humbug]

52 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

So AMD's original plan was to keep producing expensive big die Hawaii and Fiji chips for 2016 and sell them as rebrands to compete with Nvidia's 1000 series? I don't buy that, this sounds like a lie to cover up how disappointing Polaris 10 is.

polaris 10 was never supposed to be high end or fury X tier. That much is crystal clear from the resources it has and the die size.

 

as to whether AMD also planned rebrands or dual GPUs to fill the void until vega I have no idea.

[Anjew]

Good to hear news about the 490, but I wasn't expecting it to be dual gpu

[Humbug]

8 minutes ago, Anjew said:

Good to hear news about the 490, but I wasn't expecting it to be dual gpu

very doubtful it's dual gpu IMO.

AMD knows that with the current state of SLI / crossfire support in games that it's not a viable solution for gamers. You can see that in how they marketed the pro duo. If it's dual gpu Nobody would choose that over a gtx 1070

 

[Delicieuxz]

AMD have listed the RX 490 as being 4K-ready, where 4K is qualifies as being DOTA 2 and League of Legends - two of the very least demanding games to be played. This means that the RX 490 will not be 4K-capable for modern AAA games, just as the RX 480 is not capable of 1440p for modern AAA games.

 

Btw, AMD lists the RX 480 as being a 1440p card, with the same qualification that it performs 1440p in DOTA 2 and LOL. But the reality is that the RX 480 can't even run all AAA games at 1080p and get 60 FPS.

 

With this latest round of GPU releases, AMD has proven themselves to be incompetent, and disrespectful of the gaming market. They planned to fleece gamers with an iteration of the same performance of GPU hardware as they regurgitated over and over for the past 5 years. I like their tech, but AMD is out to lunch, and is the cause of stagnation in gaming technology, and not a champion of it. The are only chasing leftovers from Nvidia, and I doubt they have the sense to properly estimate what performance targets they should be reaching in order to be a leader and an equal player.

 

AMD screwed up. The price drop per performance with the RX 480 would, or should have happened inevitably regardless of AMD's lineup, because that's what happens every year or every other year in PC hardware. It's what has happened every year since PCs existed, and it's what will continue to happen for every year going forward. So, I don't give AMD big marks for dropping the price-performance mark in the current market.

 

Remember that Vega is already signed off on. So, it's unlikely that it will rival the GTX 1080, either, since its design was completed before AMD knew that their lineup was only competing against GPUs releases from 2 years ago.

 

I can't stand AMD's disingenuous marketing with this generation of their GPUs, calling the RX 480 HD gaming that will last 3 - 4 years, when it already won't do 1080p gaming at 60 FPS in all AAA games since a year or so ago. I also can't stand that AMD admittedly didn't try to make a powerful GPU because they counted on graphics cards phasing out. What did they think about PC gaming then? They obviously thought that the future of PC gaming wasn't going to include graphically-intense and ultra-immersive AAA games. And I find that extremely disservicing of PC gamers, and an attitude that explains why AMD was milking the market for the past 4 years without producing new impressive GPU hardware.

 

AMD weren't doing their job, and were thinking they would milk the PC gamers as GPU cards fizzed out. They were dishonest with us, and had no vision gaming, but were willing to take money for overpriced products from people who did.

[Anjew]

2 minutes ago, Humbug said:

very doubtful it's dual gpu IMO.

AMD knows that with the current state of SLI / crossfire support in games that it's not a viable solution for gamers. You can see that in how they marketed the pro duo. If it's dual gpu Nobody would choose that over a gtx 1070

 

I completely agree with you about the SLI/ Crossfire support.  But I'm pretty sure AMD didn't target the pro duo to gamers.  Hopefully this is a really shitty rumor.

[Briggsy]

22 minutes ago, Anjew said:

I completely agree with you about the SLI/ Crossfire support.  But I'm pretty sure AMD didn't target the pro duo to gamers.  Hopefully this is a really shitty rumor.

Agreed. Making a dual graphic card out of anything but a top end chip is asinine, and in this case it would be an admission from AMD that Vega is still 8-12 months away, and that Polaris is all they got for the foreseeable future. That's a terrible position to be in, if it were true.

[Dabombinable]

Thinking over it again-if the 490 really is just dual 480, then fuck AMD's Radeon division. Just adding another GPU to a card to get better performance is the same thing that 3DFX did, and where did that get them? Bankrupt and bought out.

[Khvarrioiren]

I'm very doubtful that it'd be a dual GPU card. They might have kept something up their sleeve for reasons unknown, but a dual Polaris card just seems absolutely idiotic.

[Trixanity]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Dial back your fanboyism a little bit please. Nvidia and AMD are very competitive in terms of price:performance at almost all tiers.

Nvidia aren't successful just because they have a recognizable brand. They make good products.

 

I will most likely buy the GTX 1060 when that is released. Do you think I will be buying it because of the Nvidia logo, or because it seems like it will offer better price:performance as well as feature set, compared to AMD's counterpart (assuming the performance and prices are the same as the fairly modest goals Nvidia have officially announced)?

No fanboyism here. It's the truth. Some companies have established themselves so well it becomes pretty much impossible to de-throne them. You are a bit daft if you don't recognize this.

 

No where did I mention AMD and nowhere did I say Nvidia made bad products. Again, a bit daft.

 

We have a bunch of companies who will get business almost no matter what. That list includes Nvidia, Intel, Apple and Samsung. There are others - many others - but those are definitely the big four in the business.

 

And you may not be the 99% but don't act like the 99% doesn't exist. You are surrounded by them in your daily life (I'd assume). For example would your mother (or the average non-tech savvy) go buy a OnePlus device or a Xiaomi device on her own without any counsel? Or would she pick the Apple or Samsung device that is recognized and well known with a good reputation? Hmm?

 

Although on second thought, even tech savvy users buy products on brand alone, so that stirs things up, doesn't it? We can see them in this forum actually. It's a bit horrifying actually.

 

PS.

When I said a complimentary bag of dog poop that did not refer to the product, that's why it's complimentary. It has no relation to the product. Just a heads up.

[zMeul]

3 hours ago, Humbug said:

very doubtful it's dual gpu IMO.

AMD knows that with the current state of SLI / crossfire support in games that it's not a viable solution for gamers. You can see that in how they marketed the pro duo. If it's dual gpu Nobody would choose that over a gtx 1070

it's quite possible it will be a dual-GPU and aimed specifically at the same market Radeon Pro Duo was - not gaming

but AMD is screwing themselves with this card, the engineering alone that went into it

 

out of curiosity, how many went into a store and bough a Pro Duo?! I'd suspect not that many - because that card doesn't really makes sense

and neither a dual Polaris10 card