AMD announces Polaris pricing - $199 for RX 480

[kalniel]

Maybe the demo was FPS capped to 60FPS?? It is an RTS after all.

That was my first thought, but odd that they report 62, and that they'd miss a chance to beat it comprehensively. Vsync is off, but that doesn't prevent a frame limiter.

According to the Fud link it was a i7 5930K used, so even less cause of a bottleneck, though I think they are taking that from the stardock site. It seems the heavy batch portion of the benchmark/setting (whatever that is) used up to 92% GPU on the AMD setup. I'm just looking through the purported bench runs now at Star dock and I'm not quite finding the ones AMD seem to be reporting.

[Corky34]

Then again this reddit discussion started by AMD_Robert seems to be saying the GTX1080 is botching the rendering "The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly"

I'll be so glad when tech sites can get their hands on a RX480 to settle things.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That was my first thought, but odd that they report 62, and that they'd miss a chance to beat it comprehensively. Vsync is off, but that doesn't prevent a frame limiter.

According to the Fud link it was a i7 5930K used, so even less cause of a bottleneck, though I think they are taking that from the stardock site. It seems the heavy batch portion of the benchmark/setting (whatever that is) used up to 92% GPU on the AMD setup. I'm just looking through the purported bench runs now at Star dock and I'm not quite finding the ones AMD seem to be reporting.

But realistically 58 and 62 FPS is within 5% of 60FPS,so either way I wouldn't be reading into PR bumpf that much.

Also,AMDMatt on OcUK has been looking through the database to find the exact runs - when he does I will post it here.

Then again this reddit discussion started by AMD_Robert seems to be saying the GTX1080 is botching the rendering "The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly"

I'll be so glad when tech sites can get their hands on a RX480 to settle things.

The elephant in the room:

Ashes uses procedural generation based on a randomized seed at launch. The benchmark does look slightly different every time it is run. But that, many have noted, does not fully explain the quality difference people noticed.

At present the GTX 1080 is incorrectly executing the terrain shaders responsible for populating the environment with the appropriate amount of snow. The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly. Snow is somewhat flat and boring in color compared to shiny rocks, which gives the illusion that less is being rendered, but this is an incorrect interpretation of how the terrain shaders are functioning in this title.

The content being rendered by the RX 480--the one with greater snow coverage in the side-by-side (the left in these images)--is the correct execution of the terrain shaders.

So, even with fudgy image quality on the GTX 1080 that could improve their performance a few percent, dual RX 480 still came out ahead.

As a parting note, I will mention we ran this test 10x prior to going on-stage to confirm the performance delta was accurate. Moving up to 1440p at the same settings maintains the same performance delta within +/-1%.

Wait,what the AMD cards do more work running AOTS??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OK,somebody on OcUK might have found the entry from the same system but at 2560X1440 using a single card:

http://www.ashesofthesingularity.com...d-22666a7149f5

Actually settings might not be the same as the OcUK thread - I checked them.

[kalniel]

Then again this reddit discussion started by AMD_Robert seems to be saying the GTX1080 is botching the rendering "The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly"

I'll be so glad when tech sites can get their hands on a RX480 to settle things.

That's a great link, thanks.

It clears up the utilisation thing - it's that 'performance scaling is 151% of a single card', ie XF/driver inefficiency so both GPUs are roughly 75% load (if averaged).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That's a great link, thanks.

It clears up the utilisation thing - it's that 'performance scaling is 151% of a single card', ie XF/driver inefficiency so both GPUs are roughly 75% load (if averaged).

So that means a single card does 40FPS which is confirmed by the link in the previous post I made.

Edit!!

AOTS might be using SFR not AFR too.

[jigger]

Why are the GPU's at 75% load?

Is this measuring the pair of cards pulling the same power as the GTX1080?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Interesting comments from one of the AMD technical marketing guys on Reddit regarding why they only really showed the mGPU comparison:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...y_controversy/

Why weren't any single card benchmarks released?

Because that is what we sample GPUs to reviewers for. Independent third-party analysis is an important estate in the hardware industry, and we don't want to take away from their opportunity to perform their duty by scooping them.

I don't know how to explain it another way. Posting sGPU numbers hurts their reviews and their traffic. mGPU sort of doesn't. That's it.

[kalniel]

Why are the GPU's at 75% load?

Is this measuring the pair of cards pulling the same power as the GTX1080?

Under lighter loading the overheads from the DX12 mGPU magic and lack of game optimisation for this new fangled mGPU mode are significant. This should improve when the tech matures. Under heavier load you see utilisation reach much closer to normal.

Interesting comments from one of the AMD technical marketing guys on Reddit regarding why they only really showed the mGPU comparison:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...y_controversy/

Yeah, on the outside this sounds nice of them. But of course they could just reduce the NDA if they wanted to let the tech sites have the glory of the single GPU benchmark reveal.

[Gimm91xy]

Power 150w.
when 2x it is 300w....hmm..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Under lighter loading the overheads from the DX12 mGPU magic and lack of game optimisation for this new fangled mGPU mode are significant. This should improve when the tech matures. Under heavier load you see utilisation reach much closer to normal.



Yeah, on the outside this sounds nice of them. But of course they could just reduce the NDA if they wanted to let the tech sites have the glory of the single GPU benchmark reveal.

Think AMD is just worried if Nvidia will probably screw up the launch.

[jigger]

I'm not sure why they would be worried. This chip looks very promising and it's not as if anything AMD can do has an effect on Nvidia performance.

[Hitesh9218]

Great !

[kalniel]

Looks like UK retailer pricing is coming in at around £230 for the 8gb model, so almost exact $=VAT/import adjusted £.

That's a tough sell against last gen products if performance is at the lower end of expectations - nvidia could be doing AMD a huge favour if they managed to cut inventories.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like UK retailer pricing is coming in at around £230 for the 8gb model, so almost exact $=VAT/import adjusted £.

That's a tough sell against last gen products if performance is at the lower end of expectations - nvidia could be doing AMD a huge favour if they managed to cut inventories.

It is what I feared:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-news/3...ml#post3657842

The cheapest GTX1070 is £365 which means a £130 premium for a GTX1070,so AMD AIBs have no incentive to price it too lowly,which is annoying.

TPU mentioned this tidbit of info in their GTX1070 review:

AMD's upcoming Polaris cards will be nowhere near the GTX 1070 in terms of performance. Rather, expect RX 480 to perform about 20-30% slower. But AMD's $199 pricing for the 480 could stir things up, so if you don't need a new card immediately, maybe wait a few weeks and see how things pan out, which would also allow you to see how the custom GTX 1070 designs by board partners turn out.

So that would be around R9 390X to Fury level performance.

If you look at the model which was leaked it was a Sapphire RX480 Nitro with shiney LED lights - the R9 390 Nitro is around £255 to £260.

Even adding a £20 premium still sadly makes it the fastest sub £300 card. GTX1070 pricing is really screwing things up now.

So around 10% lower price and around 10% to 20% better overall performance,so its an improvement in price/performance over a GTX1070(which at £365 is probably worse than an R9 390),but this generation is starting to look rather meh overall.

OTH,the Nitro models are some of the more expensive AMD AIB partner cards out there though,so hopefully the models from Powercolor,etc are nearer to £200.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is the Nitro model which was leaked:

http://videocardz.com/60992/sapphire...nitro-pictured

SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 480 NITRO 8GB

Thanks to our friends from HardwareBattle we get to see the first Radeon RX 480 with custom-designed cooler. The new Sapphire NITRO card features brand new silver cooler shroud, packed in dual-slot and dual-fan design. The side of the card features LED illuminated Sapphire logo. According to the source, the colors will change depending on the fan speed, GPU temperature or custom-profile configured by the user.

Most Radeon RX 480 cards that will be released on June 29th will be equipped with 8GB GDDR5 memory. 4GB models are also expected, but availability of such cards will depend on AIBs.

According to our information, some european stores already received their stock, and they are ready to sell Polaris 10-based graphics cards. In China a company called Dataland (Chinese PowerColor brand), was already selling places on reservation lists.

Meanwhile some reviewers already have their cards for tests, so we expect to see a lot of leaks in the coming days.

SAPPHIRE RX 480 Reference design

Additionally, the render of Sapphire’s own RX 480 reference design was also revealed. It appears that the front shroud will be painted in white, while the back will receive a fancy backplate. The Radeon side logo will be replaced by Sapphire’s.

So Sapphire is launching two RX480 cards - the reference one and the Nitro ones. It does seem the reference card is copying some of the Nvidia ones and having an illuminated logo.