AMD release RX 400 series Polaris info

AMD release RX 400 series Polaris info

| Source: AMD Radeon Technologies Group Author: Mark Campbell

AMD release RX 400 series Polaris info

We all know that AMD's Polaris GPUs are not designed for the high-end enthusiast market, they are designed for the average gamer, a person who cannot afford to spend £400 on a single GPU and wants to own a system that can provide some decent performance while not being a huge burden on their electric bill.

The VR age is starting, but right now VR is limited to only the top 1% of PCs, AMD is looking to change that and bring VR ready performance at affordable prices that even the average PC gamer can afford.

The below images come directly from AMD, who provided us with them in a press deck earlier today.

The low end of the GPU market makes up the majority of sales and AMD wants to create their first 14nm products for these users, whether they are using desktops or mobile PCs.

On mobile AMD wants to deliver console levels of performance while on desktop PC they want to provide VR ready performance at affordable prices and with the lowest levels of power consumption possible.

With Polaris AMD wants to tap into the mobile market and into the deliver great value for money for desktop PC gamers, securing themselves additional market share while delivering products that consumers want.

AMD has been designing two different Polaris chips, both of which are rather small die sizes and are designed to offer a lot of gaming performance. The first chip is Polaris 10, which has 36 compute units and offers more than 5 TFLOPS of compute performance, delivering a VR ready experience with a low power draw.

The second AMD chip is Polaris 11, a smaller design that offers more compute power than both of the current generation consoles.

AMD states that these GPUs offers 2.8X the performance per watt of their predecessors but over the past few weeks many of us have wondered how these numbers were calculated, now we know how thanks to the endnotes on AMD press deck.

The Polaris 11 number is taken from the respective scores from 3DMARK 11 and 3DMARK Firestrike, comparing a mobile system with an Intel i7-4600M CPU with either an R9 M280X or an RX 480M. The R9 M280X scored 5700 and 3500 with a total board power of 82W while the RX 480M system scored 7200 and 4070 with a board power of 35W.

The Polaris 10 number was calculated when the performance of two identical systems with either an R9 270X and RX 470 are compared. The R9 270W drew 180W of power while the RX 470 drew 110W.

Both GPUs were tested in Ashes of the Singularity and Hitman at high settings, where the R9 270X achieved 28.1FPS in Ashes and 27.6 in Hitman while the RX 470 achieved 46FPS in ashes and 60FPS in Hitman.

AMD's Polaris Lineup will be made up of 3 new desktop GPUs, the RX 480, the RX 470 and RX 460, with the RX 480 being designed for VR performance, the RX 470 for 1080p gaming and the RX 460 being designed to deliver console levels of GPU performance.

Above is some performance data for AMD's upcoming RX 480, with the GPU delivering VR ready levels of performance and 75% more performance than their R9 380 GPU when using Valve's SteamVR performance test.

Polaris is set to be a huge launch for AMD, targeting mainstream PC gamers and the mobile market. Hopefully, AMD can deliver on their performance promises, as if leaked performance is to be believed, AMD may be onto a winner.

You can join the discussion on AMD's Polaris Architecture on the OC3D Forums.

1 - AMD release RX 400 series Polaris info «Prev 1 Next»

Most Recent Comments