Monday, May 9th 2016
AMD to Launch First "Polaris" Graphics Cards by Late May
The first AMD Radeon graphics cards based on the company's "Polaris" architecture are slated for a late-May launch, according to Thai tech-site Zolkorn. The company is reportedly planning an elaborate launch event in Macau, China, days ahead of the 2016 Computex trade-show in Taipei. AMD has reportedly already sent invites to media outlets, although to a very limited number (in comparison to, say, NVIDIA's GTX 1080 event in Austin, US). The event could see a paper-launch of the first Radeon R9 400 series graphics cards based on the 14 nm "Ellesmere" and "Baffin" chips, with AIB-branded cards being exhibited at Computex, and market-availability following shortly after.
Source:
Zolkorn
107 Comments on AMD to Launch First "Polaris" Graphics Cards by Late May
390x/980 levels of performance are perfectly good for 1080p, which more than half the market is at or under, and quite good for 1440p. very little of the market is above that rez.
Mid range chips hitting flagship performance levels several years later is pretty common. Nvidia does it too. Considering polaris 10 is a mid range chip, they SHOULD be targeting the mainstream resolution. And if the general market wants lower TDP chips, then AMD should make them.
Not to mention, why on earth are you concerned with amd targeting TDP on a mainstream chip? You are the market for cards like Vega, not polaris.
Seriously, is actually having someone review a product no longer a requirement for someone else to decide whether it's good or bad?
Would there be any point in releasing Vega with HBM1?
But I don't see "same performance as last gen, but much lower power consumption" as a viable strategy today for AMD. They must up performance too, or they are toast on PC market. 480 > 390, 490 > 1070 would be enough.
I doubt the 490 is coming out soon but I guess we will find out next week.
Again, I'm just speculating here but I have my reasons. No, HBM1 is limited to 4GB Vram which is clearly not enough for the upcoming cards, wasn't even really good for the Fury X. I think HBM2 is available in enough quantities, but it's simply only needed on the fastest GPUs which aren't done yet (Vega). See the new GP100 Quadro card of Nvidia, which uses HBM2 memory (cost: 10.000$). Big 16nm chips are extremely expensive now, because they are simply hard to produce, that's why both companys are starting with smaller chips for the consumer market. The performance/semi highend section is very important for sales, afaik even more important than highend sales. So if AMD goes in that direction first, and then does highend cards, it's a viable strategy. As I see it, they are exactly doing that.
We aren't there yet. Maybe in 2017.
PS. Just go read up a Fury X review, for that matter. The "facts" you seek are included there.
PPS. I'm even so nice as to find one for you. "Facts":
www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review/5
Well, I guess AMD missed a nice opportunity AGAIN. With Polaris targeting, in theory, the market that is around $300, they would be playing ball alone. Now they are losing this opportunity and they are giving Nvidia the chance, not only to sell more 1070's, but also to have enough time to prepare 1060 for the market.
AMD Polaris Tech Day: NDA ends on June 29th | VideoCardz.com
Wonder if something is brewing, Kyle over @ HardOCP has posted a pretty scathing article today about AMD:
hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_journey_in_futility#.V0huzEwzqCg
People will say it's just becuase he wasn't invited by i wonder if at least most of what he says is true, guess we still have time to ponder either way.
I guess when you are going to offer cards one month latter than what most people believe, you don't call to the event someone that you think is closer to the competition. And of course we all know that AMD changed it's attitude toward the press from last year.
Anyway, the article reminds me many articles about politics. Authors supporting political party A, always find backstabbing behaviors between the top leaders of competing political party B. That's what he is doing in there.
Exciting times ahead either way.
I do agree with one part in his article. AMD wasn't expecting a 2GHz Maxwell. They where surprised. I think we all did, no matter what company we prefer, Nvidia and TSMC delivered more than anyone was expecting..
If people are happy to have similar performance they can get today but in a cheap but fast and efficient package then that's great too.
And i agree with that one part of his article too, with the apparently expensive FE (HardOCP berated them for that as well) selling out everywhere nVidia's more traditional high end market is covered and already happily gobbling up supply. But then as you rightfully pointed out, Nvidia won't be ignoring the mainstream market forever either.
Depending on how far those clocks can be pushed and the memory type used it could certainly beat the 1070.