12nm AMD Polaris Up and Coming Alright - Pretty Soon Already
So, it has been raining rumors about this for a while now, and I am 99.99% certain that it is a true thing. AMD is going to release a refresh for Polaris. The third iteration will be based on 12nm (previously 14nm). The first card released would be the Rx 570 refresh announced by next week already, followed by the RX 580 at 12nm a few weeks later.
PCOnline now as well mentions this, and they claim to have the info from videocard manufacturers. Polaris 30 (I'll just call it that for now) is manufactured at 12 nm and could be 10 to 15 percent faster compared to the current RX 570 and 580. The current generation is built on 14 nm FinFET LPP+. When AMD moves to a 12nm part, the clocks could indeed be bumped up a bit more, much like what Zen+ is doing for Ryzen 2000. It's not the first time that this rumor now has surfaced and for now, we do believe them to be true.
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Apple releases the Iphone again and again, and people buy them anyway.
Intel has done that for the past 7 years with Sandy Bridge and people always bought them.
AMD spent millions developing Polaris, why not use existing working designs on a new fab process?
The performance will go up, or if you want less power draw, you can undervolt and have a green RX500 series.
I didn't need a new GPU when the RX400 landed, the RX500 I couldn't get because of mining, I'll gladly buy a RX670 at MSRP.
Just because others have done something doesn't make it okay. We all do already know, for a fact, the reason for all this is AMD's lack of R&D money (in graphics) and the focus on console demands with what little they do have. That's why Koduri left AMD, because the AMD financial leadership told him to forget about developing new tech and just concentrate on relaunching the old one and hyping it. And so that's what we get.
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No, that's not why Koduri left.
AMD has been remarkably successful despite whatever opinions gamers may have.
the success of AMD can be partially measured by the headhunting of their competition, in this case Intel re-examining the GPU market.
and guess what else, the new technology has been developed.
AMD has been living at the cutting edge and decided to wait for the 7nm process, of which they're invested into with TSMC.
physics alone will make Polaris extremely compelling at the low end. physics and new architecture will make Navi extremely enticing at mid-market. we will have to wait another six months for the truly high-end AMD, but the performance of Navi will open many, many eyes especially at the price.
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Moment Polaris was done, brightest people went to work on Navi. Koduri was left with limited resources to make last GPU in GCN line (Vega), and he not only did not meet schedule. He apparently did not admit that new changes are not working. He was solely responsible for every single feature announced for Vega which is disabled even year after launch. He could have asked for few more months, it would not harm anything... quite contrary, those features had good ideas behind.
Koduri failed to deliver fully working Vega, wasted transistors, ... But hey, Good news, moment Vega was done, rest of team went to work on Navi too. And in meanwhile they had some help from Zen team for something "very very"... So, no AMD did not drop GPU business ... and division got quite more cash/talent than you think.
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Or Koduri left because Vega was a massive fail, not entirely hardware wise but because they didn't expect HBM2 price to go up and availability go down. It eats too much power even with HMB2, and a slight undervolt can make the card look so much better. But still, came years late and didn't beat 1080Ti.
They're not firing up the 16/14nm ovens again, its a 12nm product and we've seen the gains with Zen+.
Makes sense from a business perspective too because they'll be switching foundries for 7nm and still have a contract to honour at 12nm or else.
We only have inflated 500 series cards on the market. Yes, they're still inflated here and I bet the 600 series will be slightly inflated too on many places. I don't see anything wrong about AMD putting a fresh product out, even if the performance is only +10% from the previous.
Senior Member
Posts: 1440
Joined: 2013-06-04
Apple releases the Iphone again and again, and people buy them anyway.
Intel has done that for the past 7 years with Sandy Bridge and people always bought them.
AMD spent millions developing Polaris, why not use existing working designs on a new fab process?
The performance will go up, or if you want less power draw, you can undervolt and have a green RX500 series.
I didn't need a new GPU when the RX400 landed, the RX500 I couldn't get because of mining, I'll gladly buy a RX670 at MSRP.
GDDR5X is a bit more expensive compared to GDDR5. And GDDR6 needs a new controller, probably being developed for Navi. I don't know if they tested GDDR5X or if it would make sense.