AMD Polaris GPU: detailed slides leaked

[watercooled]

Finally, Nvidia are doing all the same stuff, so "power vs Nvidia" is pretty meaningless until we see what Pascal can do.

Not everyone thinks of that though. Many will see some potentially positive information regarding their less-favorite company and just avoid it. But yeah that's what I meant in my last post about uarch vs process node.

[TMarchev]

I dont like it "_ NICE NINCE NICE!!

[kalniel]

Where it gets interesting is where they use the transistor density to add more transistors to the design. But then we don't know how much the silicon is going to cost per square mm, so we expect AMD will be able to make a range that is twice as fast as the current range, but we don't know how expensive they will be and that is kind of key. If I can get the performance of Fury for £150, I'm in.

In this generation.. likewise. BUT we are a minority market these days, so I think price will be largely the same as usual as they won't be selling as many.

[scaryjim]

... We need Scary Jim to make another performance prediction.

Not until we get more details, frankly

If we could find a decent source for 2.5x perf/watt I could have a stab - you'd be looking at Fury X performance at around 110W TDP. But as we know the perf/watt increase isn't linear: Nano managed, iirc, 85% of the performance at 64% of the power, which gave the 2x perf/watt increase they discussed then. If we're looking at 2.5x perf/watt at < 100W already, that could easily be 2x at 175W and 1.5x at 275W - i.e. very similar perf/watt gains to the jump from 290X -> Fury X/Nano.

Previously the perf/watt increase was relative to their own cards, so let's assume the 2.5x has a genuine source and it's given on the same basis. They're doing comparisons based on same performance at lower power, so that 2.5x is probably reflecting the same performance at 40% of the power draw of a current gen card (or equivalent). Of course, we don't know if the 2.5x figure is based off the Hawaii/Tonga/Tahiti/etc. cards, or if it's based off Fury/Nano, so let's look at both.

So, let's ignore Fiji for a minute, and look at the GDDR5 GCN cards. There is no AMD card that's directly equivalent to a GTX 950, performance-wise: it sits in a gap between the 370 and 380. But theoretically an AMD card with that level of performance might have a TDP between those two cards, so let's assume we're looking at a current gen card with a TDP ~ 150W. A new gen card with the same performance but 2.5x perf/watt would have a TDP of around 60W. Looks pretty good so far, doesn't it

Now let's consider Fiji. Nano has a TDP of 175W: only a little bit more than our theoretical GTX 950 equivalent. If there's a 2.5x perf/watt increase over the Fiji generation, Nano would have a TDP of just 70W. That's low enough to be bus-powered. It'd push the TDP of our GTX 950 equivalent down considerably: maybe as low as 30W. And that's a figure I've seen bandied around a few places as making sense if the AMD power draw figures on the slides are for a whole system. It just might be accurate. And that would be fricking incredible...


So, no actual performance predictions: we haven't seen any specs or TDPs yet. But my headline prediction for Polaris - we could get Nano performance on a bus-powered card.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not until we get more details, frankly

If we could find a decent source for 2.5x perf/watt I could have a stab - you'd be looking at Fury X performance at around 110W TDP. But as we know the perf/watt increase isn't linear: Nano managed, iirc, 85% of the performance at 64% of the power, which gave the 2x perf/watt increase they discussed then. If we're looking at 2.5x perf/watt at < 100W already, that could easily be 2x at 175W and 1.5x at 275W - i.e. very similar perf/watt gains to the jump from 290X -> Fury X/Nano.

Previously the perf/watt increase was relative to their own cards, so let's assume the 2.5x has a genuine source and it's given on the same basis. They're doing comparisons based on same performance at lower power, so that 2.5x is probably reflecting the same performance at 40% of the power draw of a current gen card (or equivalent). Of course, we don't know if the 2.5x figure is based off the Hawaii/Tonga/Tahiti/etc. cards, or if it's based off Fury/Nano, so let's look at both.

So, let's ignore Fiji for a minute, and look at the GDDR5 GCN cards. There is no AMD card that's directly equivalent to a GTX 950, performance-wise: it sits in a gap between the 370 and 380. But theoretically an AMD card with that level of performance might have a TDP between those two cards, so let's assume we're looking at a current gen card with a TDP ~ 150W. A new gen card with the same performance but 2.5x perf/watt would have a TDP of around 60W. Looks pretty good so far, doesn't it

Now let's consider Fiji. Nano has a TDP of 175W: only a little bit more than our theoretical GTX 950 equivalent. If there's a 2.5x perf/watt increase over the Fiji generation, Nano would have a TDP of just 70W. That's low enough to be bus-powered. It'd push the TDP of our GTX 950 equivalent down considerably: maybe as low as 30W. And that's a figure I've seen bandied around a few places as making sense if the AMD power draw figures on the slides are for a whole system. It just might be accurate. And that would be fricking incredible...


So, no actual performance predictions: we haven't seen any specs or TDPs yet. But my headline prediction for Polaris - we could get Nano performance on a bus-powered card.

The R9 270 is similar in performance to a GTX950 AFAIK.

[jigger]

Thanks Jim. All I could muster was like a dream. So to put that in perspective we could be looking at cards that pull about half the power of a GTX970M laptop card with performance to soundly beat a GTX980 desktop.

A few more details.



HDR monitor support is a very welcome addition.

[scaryjim]

The R9 270 is similar in performance to a GTX950 AFAIK.

That'd be convenient, because it has a TDP of 150W

... to put that in perspective we could be looking at cards that pull about half the power of a GTX970M laptop card with performance to soundly beat a GTX980 desktop. ...

Well, I'm probably painting a much rosier picture than we'll get in reality.

If the 2.5x perf/watt is at the R9 270 performance level but based on Fiji tech, then that hypothetical Fiji-based R9 270 would only draw around 90W. I suspect we'd then see the perf/watt drop off as you increase the target TDP, in the same way the Fiji had 2x the perf/watt at 175W, but only 1.5x at 275W.

Even then you could (should?) be looking at Nano performance at around 90W - roughly the same TDP as a GTX970M (or a desktop GTX 950, incidentally....)

EDIT: just to quickly add that if the figures are right we're already looking at around 4x the perf/watt of the 290X - a good step towards the target 25x by 2020...

[jigger]

From the CES video they said the drivers haven't been optimised yet so you would expect we have fair amount of performance and power efficiency still to come.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It appears the Pascal based automotive board JHH showed off,seems to only have had Maxwell based GTX980M boards instead.

[DanceswithUnix]

It appears the Pascal based automotive board JHH showed off,seems to only have had Maxwell based GTX980M boards instead.

lol, no wood screws this time though at least

http://semiaccurate.com/2016/01/11/n...m-competition/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The other penny drops:

http://wccftech.com/amd-shows-enthusiast-polaris-ces/

Another larger Polaris chip was demonstrated to journalists!

[HalloweenJack]

http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-pol...ktops-laptops/

back to school starts (in the uk at least ) in week 22 (july) - which put polaris on track for a launch at computex

[jigger]

Hmm. Could this mean Zen based CPU's will also release around the same time.

[abaxas]

After 5 pages all I want to know is...

Will there be a card with 750ti perf at 40-50w. If so, they'll sell myllioons of them.

[jigger]

I think the lowest end of the discreet market will soon become all about how much performance can be had for 70Watt~ or what APU to buy.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

After 5 pages all I want to know is...

Will there be a card with 750ti perf at 40-50w. If so, they'll sell myllioons of them.

Its probably more like GTX950/GTX960 level performance but in a bus powered card.