AMD announces Polaris pricing - $199 for RX 480

[scaryjim]

An RX 480 + Zen could be a very tempting prospect. Imagine if this pricing is mimicked on the AMD cpu front?

nice idea, but I don't see any driver for this on the CPU side - we already have way more CPU power available than most people really need. The driver for pushing GPU prices down - according to AMD, at least - is to lower the entry point for an acceptable VR experience. The generally accepted base entry cost for VR at the minute (GTX970/R9 390) is the same as the top-end mainstream CPU from Intel (i7 6700). I'm pretty sure you can get good VR experiences from an i5 @ < £200. The CPU side isn't really such a barrier to VR adoption as the GPU side. If AMD can genuinely get VR-capable cards coming in at well under £200, that's quite a market shift.

EDIT:

... Couple that with fact I like to water cool my GPU (and overclock heck out of it) and a dual card system quickly gets too pricey.

If the RX 480 uses a single 6pin PCIe cable, what money on an RX 480 X2 down the line...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD changed the command processor with Polaris,so it will be interesting to see if Polaris under DX11 is less CPU limited than the previous GCN based cards. Nvidia did very good work with their DX11 drivers.

[kalniel]

If the RX 480 uses a single 6pin PCIe cable, what money on an RX 480 X2 down the line...

RX 495 Well they do have a lot of experience now at getting these dual chip cards out

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

XFire and SLI have issues with the newer more console optimised engines,so I am not sure whether a dual GPU card would make as much sense.

Better if AMD refines Polaris 10 a bit more with higher clockspeeds like they did with the HD4890.

[scaryjim]

RX 495 Well they do have a lot of experience now at getting these dual chip cards out

it's a strategy that worked for them in the past - mid-range chip first then unleash a dual-gpu card. And we know the top board power of the RX 480 but not the average or TDP - if it's actually a 100W card then a dual card could run with a single 8pin connector and potentially be competitive with the 1080. Food for thought

As to the naming - who knows? Perhaps RX is the top segment of a new alphabetic system (like nvidia's G/GT/GTX from a few years back). RX for the 480 and 490, perhaps RS for the 460 and 470, RE for the 450 and below (representing eXtreme, mainStream and Entry)?

[idris]

$199 = ~£137

Even with the US/UK 'conversion' - that's spectacular for 980 beating performance. Period.

[jimbouk]

$199 = ~£137

Even with the US/UK 'conversion' - that's spectacular for 980 beating performance. Period.

Plus tax...

[The Hand]

It comes in at around the £180 mark after tax and a little rounding up. Fingers crossed for the benchmarks being as good as we hope.

[shaithis]

it's a strategy that worked for them in the past - mid-range chip first then unleash a dual-gpu card. And we know the top board power of the RX 480 but not the average or TDP - if it's actually a 100W card then a dual card could run with a single 8pin connector and potentially be competitive with the 1080. Food for thought

Doom, The Division, ROTTR (DX12), Hitman (DX12), Quantum Break, Forza (and basically ANY UWP game), Batman: AK, Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Rainbow 6 Siege, Wolfenstein The Old Blood/New Order, Assassin's Creed Syndicate....

....all recent big releases where SLI/CFX is either completely broken or not worth the price/performance. Unless something changes soon, multi-GPU systems are going the way of the dodo

[jigger]

Plus tax...

Seems about £168 inc.

Lets hope it's not Nvidia dollars.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

it's a strategy that worked for them in the past - mid-range chip first then unleash a dual-gpu card. And we know the top board power of the RX 480 but not the average or TDP - if it's actually a 100W card then a dual card could run with a single 8pin connector and potentially be competitive with the 1080. Food for thought

As to the naming - who knows? Perhaps RX is the top segment of a new alphabetic system (like nvidia's G/GT/GTX from a few years back). RX for the 480 and 490, perhaps RS for the 460 and 470, RE for the 450 and below (representing eXtreme, mainStream and Entry)?

But it won't work as well now - the engines have limitations as they are console focussed.

If you look on the more enthusiast forums,people are starting to get annoyed with dual card solutions as it seems more and more variable in performance. You have more and more people going the way of single GPU solutions. Look at this AT article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9874/a...elayed-to-2016

AMD and Nvidia are pushing VR dual card solutions since they can use a single card for each eye.

If AMD uses a dual GPU RX480 solution against the GTX1080 or factory overclocked GTX1070,AMD would have to make sure they have profiles out at every launch and prior history is saying it won't happen,and I think it won't be a good strategy.

Nvidia will just say we might have lower FPS but we have better frametimes.

[Kanoe]

Doom, The Division, ROTTR (DX12), Hitman (DX12), Quantum Break, Forza (and basically ANY UWP game), Batman: AK, Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Rainbow 6 Siege, Wolfenstein The Old Blood/New Order, Assassin's Creed Syndicate....

....all recent big releases where SLI/CFX is either completely broken or not worth the price/performance. Unless something changes soon, multi-GPU systems are going the way of the dodo

I have to say CFX on The Division is actually working well for me now. After playing around with settings (and not using the AMD profile for it but AFR friendly instead) I'm seeing about an 80% gain over having CFX turned off. But I do feel that single GPU solutions are always going to have the edge cause I wanted this level of performance from day 1 not months later.

Having said that I'm still really interested to see how DX12 changes the multi GPU landscape cause there will be a lot less reliance on drivers to get the best out of multi GPU setups so it could just be a matter of staying patient and waiting for DX12 titles to arrive.

I was thinking this morning that I should re bench on 3d Mark to see how the old R9 295X2 compared to the 1080 and was pleasantly surprised to see it just about matching the OC numbers Hexus put up for 1080 in the FireStrike Ultra test.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Doom, The Division, ROTTR (DX12), Hitman (DX12), Quantum Break, Forza (and basically ANY UWP game), Batman: AK, Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Rainbow 6 Siege, Wolfenstein The Old Blood/New Order, Assassin's Creed Syndicate....

....all recent big releases where SLI/CFX is either completely broken or not worth the price/performance. Unless something changes soon, multi-GPU systems are going the way of the dodo

Yep,agreed. I think AMD might be better served seeing if they can tune Polaris 10 in an HD4890 kind of way. The 18CU design with 2304 shaders makes me wonder if the RX480 is a die salvaged part,to maximise volume(and maybe performance/watt).

I have to say CFX on The Division is actually working well for me now. After playing around with settings (and not using the AMD profile for it but AFR friendly instead) I'm seeing about an 80% gain over having CFX turned off. But I do feel that single GPU solutions are always going to have the edge cause I wanted this level of performance from day 1 not months later.

Having said that I'm still really interested to see how DX12 changes the multi GPU landscape cause there will be a lot less reliance on drivers to get the best out of multi GPU setups so it could just be a matter of staying patient and waiting for DX12 titles to arrive.

I was thinking this morning that I should re bench on 3d Mark to see how the old R9 295X2 compared to the 1080 and was pleasantly surprised to see it just about matching the OC numbers Hexus put up for 1080 in the FireStrike Ultra test.

Supposedly there are big changes to DX12 like explicit multi-adaptor which will help with multiple GPUs,but the thing is it means it will be more in the hands of devs to kind of optimise for this.

It means only some of the bigger devs will probably have the resources,and I can just see AMD or Nvidia sponsoring games and making sure they can screw up card support either way for their competitors.

[DanceswithUnix]

Having said that I'm still really interested to see how DX12 changes the multi GPU landscape cause there will be a lot less reliance on drivers to get the best out of multi GPU setups so it could just be a matter of staying patient and waiting for DX12 titles to arrive.

I would have thought that games having compute shaders might make a second card interesting to offload that and allow the main card to concentrate on graphics.

[jigger]

What sort of performance is the RX 480?

[kalniel]

What sort of performance is the RX 480?

Around gtx 970/980 level.

If AMD uses a dual GPU RX480 solution against the GTX1080 or factory overclocked GTX1070

You're a prophet


Source: http://videocardz.com/60780/amd-announces-radeon-rx-480