AMD Radeon RX 470 Could Surprise with Pricing

[sergionography]

It would be nice if AMD would leg sweep nVidia at the mid-range, and put a check on NV prices. (4GB gtx 960 with 1024 cores and 128-bit vram isn't a $250 product!)

Well technically AMD has always offered competition in price/performance against Nvidia, but my main concern/hope is whether they can do it at a good margin of profit! For example last round AMD pretty much lost against nvidia in the mid-end segment because it was selling much bigger chips at the cost of smaller/cheaper nvidia chips like tonga(r9 380/380x) vs gtx 960. The tonga chip was a decent in size 366mm2 chip while the gtx 960 was a 226mm2 chip, yet they performed on par. Being that nvidia was on a less complex smaller chip their power consumption was less, and by default the circuit design not as complex in general making manufacturing a gtx960 far cheaper than a tonga solution

Same thing happened with gtx980 at around 400mm2 die size vs hawaii(r9 390x) at 440mm2, amd in this case is somewhat more competitive than tonga was because hawaii is a newer revision of gcn so with only 10% extra die space they competed, however the power consumption was far greater on amds side.

With all this being said I would also like to make a suggestion for reviews to focus a bit on this aspect of not only performance/watt and performance/dollar, but also performance/mm2 of die size. Because that in my opinion is a clear indication on who has the superior architecture or the better business model, and basically in other words who can achieve higher performance with better cost efficiency

 

[medi01]

A 750ti has a typical board power of 70w and does not need power supply input. The 470 will have 110w typical board power and will need at least a 6pin of power supply input.

AMD tends not to draw full 75W from PCI-e.
And OCing wasn't that much a trend back then, or was it?

So if it is 70w-ish card, I can see why they go with 6 pin connector.

 

[Divide Overflow]

Man screw this, when are the big boys coming????????

Vega. Early next year or towards the end of this one if you believe [Rumors].

 

[BoyGenius]

Why not? They support "kinda cross fire" with APUs GPU + discrete.

With APUs the GCN core count changes not the generations so they kind of work in CrossFire. Only if AMD itself support cross generation crossfire it will be possible else probably not.
Still you can sell your old GPU & get two new more power efficient cards. Doesn't that seem to be a good idea?

 

[Frick]

By then nVidia would already lunch 1080Ti card who will trash any AMD cards released then. Pathetic AMD.

Both Polaris and especially Vega are unknowns. Impossible to say for sure.

 

[medi01]

By then nVidia would already lunch 1080Ti card who will trash any AMD cards released then. Pathetic AMD.

Top tier card (490/Fury/FuryX 1080/1080Ti/TX) of this gen will trash any current gen low tier card of the competitor (1060/1050 and 460/470/480) .
How pathetic, GPU manufacturers, how pathetic.

A shame, really.

 

[ZoneDymo]

By then nVidia would already lunch 1080Ti card who will trash any AMD cards released then. Pathetic AMD.

Pathetic comment more like it...
Fanboyism at its finest.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Pathetic comment more like it...
Fanboyism at its finest.

You guys misinterpret what I was trying to say.
I wont bother to explain anyways. Let's leave it there.

 

[Frick]

You guys misinterpret what I was trying to say.
I wont bother to explain anyways. Let's leave it there.

I thought it was clear. You think 1080ti will crush everything and that AMD is pathetic. Both could well be true, but we just don't know until the time comes. Personally I think this gen will be a repeat of the last generation, but probably not quite as bad.

 

[Prima.Vera]

I thought it was clear. You think 1080ti will crush everything and that AMD is pathetic. Both could well be true, but we just don't know until the time comes. Personally I think this gen will be a repeat of the last generation, but probably not quite as bad.

Sorry, I meant something like is pathetic from AMD to release those cheap cards with last year performance, and nothing to compete with 1070 or 1080 until end of year or next year. Is pathetic since the nGreedia will keep milking those callous prices until AMD will challenge them with something. IF.

 

[Filip Georgievski]

They will compete trust me.
I have a buddy that works at one of our biggest computer retailers here, and he called me saying: Dude, i got 1080 from work for testing, come, we will have some fun.
10 mints in witcher maxed out on 1080p, and what we get??
Fan boys may or may not cry over this but the results were depresing.
Min FPS: 40s
Avg FPS: 60s
Max FPS: 80s
WTF??? We were like WHAAAAAAAAA???
For a 700€ card, dips to 40s on 1080p???
How are they advertising it to be 4K capable when it barely handles 1080p???
We did the testing with an i7 6700, asus rog board, 16GB ddr4 ram, and is not looking good for nvidia at these performance points.
A 970 that had 3.5GB on Witcher dips to like 35 at max settings at 1080p.

 

[Vayra86]

Sorry, I meant something like is pathetic from AMD to release those cheap cards with last year performance, and nothing to compete with 1070 or 1080 until end of year or next year. Is pathetic since the nGreedia will keep milking those callous prices until AMD will challenge them with something. IF.

But... they already let Nvidia cannibalize the high-mid range segment since 2013 so why would this be any different? Nvidia pulled that 970, remember? The last real card AMD had in there was the HD7970, 7950 and the 7870. After that they stopped being serious about that price segment and just kicked Hawaii down into it after its massive launch failure as a high end card with the stock blower @ 95 C, people bought a few only to sell them on... so they moved Tonga in, which didn't do enough of anything to make a difference anywhere. And then came Fury which didn't sell more than twenty units worldwide (I exaggerate, but u get the point). So currently, the segment that was in real dire need gets the treatment first. I mean they were still running low-mid range on fucking Pitcairn and the cards above that just will not sell against their less beefy but also less power hungry Nvidia counterparts. The irony: AMD makes a more expensive piece of hardware, and sells it for less.

Either way your explanation of the previous comment is exactly what I figured you meant The real issue is, AMD blew millions on lots of silicon and transistors, and they were aging on the shelves, so they had to keep them in the market longer and came up with that 3xx refresh after the 2xx refresh. Self fulfilling prophecy for this company. They had to sit it out until 16/14nm because that opens an actual opportunity to make steps to cheaper silicon without a complete architectural overhaul. I mean look at Pascal - it ain't magic. It's just Finfet and another Maxwell.

 

[Frick]

Sorry, I meant something like is pathetic from AMD to release those cheap cards with last year performance, and nothing to compete with 1070 or 1080 until end of year or next year. Is pathetic since the nGreedia will keep milking those callous prices until AMD will challenge them with something. IF.

Maybe AMD just thought Nvidia would make a midrange card as well. And if the 480 is what its supposed to be at the right price and if they can keep 'em stocked they will sell well.

 

[Prima.Vera]

But... they already let Nvidia cannibalize the high-mid range segment since 2013 so why would this be any different? Nvidia pulled that 970, remember? The last real card AMD had in there was the HD7970, 7950 and the 7870. After that they stopped being serious about that price segment and just kicked Hawaii down into it after its massive launch failure as a high end card with the stock blower @ 95 C, people bought a few only to sell them on... so they moved Tonga in, which didn't do enough of anything to make a difference anywhere. And then came Fury which didn't sell more than twenty units worldwide (I exaggerate, but u get the point). So currently, the segment that was in real dire need gets the treatment first. I mean they were still running low-mid range on fucking Pitcairn and the cards above that just will not sell against their less beefy but also less power hungry Nvidia counterparts. The irony: AMD makes a more expensive piece of hardware, and sells it for less.

Either way your explanation of the previous comment is exactly what I figured you meant The real issue is, AMD blew millions on lots of silicon and transistors, and they were aging on the shelves, so they had to keep them in the market longer and came up with that 3xx refresh after the 2xx refresh. Self fulfilling prophecy for this company. They had to sit it out until 16/14nm because that opens an actual opportunity to make steps to cheaper silicon without a complete architectural overhaul. I mean look at Pascal - it ain't magic. It's just Finfet and another Maxwell.

So they are keeping their next Fury for 1080Ti then....

 

[looncraz]

So they are keeping their next Fury for 1080Ti then....

Vega 10 is a supposedly monster chip - nearly double the size of the RX 480. It uses the Fury X floorplan - 4096SPs, HBM2 on interposer, with all of the improvements of Polaris and more, etc...

Seeing between 70% to 100% higher performance over the RX 480 would certainly not be surprising.

I think we could even see three cuts from the same die to maximize yields - or maybe there will be two Vega chips (kinda doubt that, though).

 

[TRWOV]

When is the 470 launching? I need one for my Steambox

 

[bug]

When is the 470 launching? I need one for my Steambox

I don't think anyone has a clue currently.

 

[xorbe]

When is the 470 launching? I need one for my Steambox

Get 4gb 480 and down-clock / down-volt ... usually kills the next card down in perf/watt.