Tuesday, September 25th 2018
Clues Gather Regarding Possible New AMD Polaris (Re)Revision Launch
Clues have been popping here and there regarding a possible new Polaris revision being launched by AMD in the (relatively) near future. Speculation first reared its head regarding a revised "Polaris 30" silicon, allegedly being built for TSMC's 12 nm process - not unlike AMD's 2000-series Ryzen CPUs. The company has been enamored with trying out and adapting new foundry processes for its products as soon as possible, now that they've found themselves fabless and not having to directly support the R&D costs necessary for process node development themselves.
Some publications are pointing towards a 15% performance improvement being achieved on the back of this process change for Polaris - which, if achieved only via a new process implementation, would require clock speed increases that are higher than that. AMD has already launched their revised Polaris 20 RX 500 series, which built upon their RX 400 series (and Polaris 10) by upping the clocks as well. A smaller node would likely be associated with higher yields and decreased costs per finished chip, which would allow AMD to further reduce pricing/stabilize pricing while introducing a new product generation to tide users over until Navi is finally ready.
Adding to all of this (and the included NaCl), a post via Phoronix has been posted which speaks of a new Polaris Device ID (0x6FDF) that's being added to the latest AMDGPU Linux kernel patch. The new device ID is being added under the "POLARIS 10" family, which includes the Polaris 20 revision. We'll see how this pans out, but if AMD are to in fact revise their Polaris architecture for the 12 nm node, some architectural changes likely wouldn't go wrong to extract maximum value out of that investment.
Sources:
ChipHell, via WCCFTech, Phoronix, Linux Patch
Some publications are pointing towards a 15% performance improvement being achieved on the back of this process change for Polaris - which, if achieved only via a new process implementation, would require clock speed increases that are higher than that. AMD has already launched their revised Polaris 20 RX 500 series, which built upon their RX 400 series (and Polaris 10) by upping the clocks as well. A smaller node would likely be associated with higher yields and decreased costs per finished chip, which would allow AMD to further reduce pricing/stabilize pricing while introducing a new product generation to tide users over until Navi is finally ready.
58 Comments on Clues Gather Regarding Possible New AMD Polaris (Re)Revision Launch
This comments just baffles me. :rolleyes:very well could be
Funny, they went from people forgetting they make CPUs to everyone thinking that's all they focus on in less than what, 2 years ?
Unless there is some heavy reengineering, I doubt AMD could get more than a 10% performance increase for Polaris-based GPUs. Hope they prove me wrong, though.
I don't know where people get this "15%" from. If they do it like you and base it on marketing numbers for nodes, then it's complete nonsense. 15% from a node refinement alone seems highly unusual, somewhere around 5% is more common.
It's highly unlikely that they will "squeeze on another chip or two of memory two as a result of the die shrink".
www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/RX_580_Nitro_Plus/35.html
So you could say that this new node would offer a 15% better performance in terms of heat, clocks and required voltage compared to the previous node, RX580.
So if it was possible to have the RX680 work at 1500Mhz with GDDR6 then it might be even faster then the 15% performance. It should be in my opinion towards the Vega 56 to be succesfull.
The Polaris was succesfull btw. It is the best card you can get for the money for Full HD gaming. Dont mind the miners buying every card up from AMD; and the online shops putting their margin on top of that.
If they re-spin and optimize the current Polaris, go with GDDR6 as a "pipe-cleaner" exercise, get what little extra's they can pull from just a process node shrink, even refined boost algorithms to push past 1500Mhz, all perhaps in a 175W envelope with a $230 price. A card like that has a lot going for it, while there's the geldings (570) versions, and that's where perhaps the best attack on 1080p would bolster the "entry-novice" as that would keep them pulling market share.
@Raevenlord Ryzen 2000 Series is being built on GF's 12 nm, not on TSMC's 12 nm.
Some publications are pointing towards a 15% performance improvement being achieved on the back of this process change for Polaris - which, if achieved only via a new process implementation, would require clock speed increases that are higher than that. AMD has already launched their revised Polaris 20 RX 500 series, which built upon their RX 400 series (and Polaris 10) by upping the clocks as well. A smaller node would likely be associated with higher yields and decreased costs per finished chip, which would allow AMD to further reduce pricing/stabilize pricing while introducing a new product generation to tide users over until Navi is finally ready.
If Polaris 30 is being built on TSMC's 12 nm then is not comparable to Polaris 10 or 20 which are built on GF's 14 nm instead. The metrics are not compatible between different foundries, we can't be sure if is a smaller node after all, so any performance uplift is uncertain.
It worked quite well with Zen (Infinity Fabric), it didn't work with HBM, which nVidai also had project to develop with, just in case and because they sit on heaps of money, (thank you very much for buying overpriced cards), but unlike AMD, had resources for alternative, conventional projectsTI is unlikely, but 1080 levels are realistic to expect.
Rtx is struggling in powerdraw against vega56 and 1080 in idle.
Just remember, AMD didn't go with gddr5x, they only had gddr5 and hbm 1/2.