New Polaris10 and Polaris11 Specifications
AMDs two upcoming GPUs based upon Polaris architecture might see a different configuration, at least that's what tpu claims according to industry sources. AMD would be planning a mainstream and performance-segment GPU which kind off confirms already what we discussed, a R9 470 and 480 was expected initially.
However, TPU writes that the performance-segment chip called "Ellesmere," would feature 32 compute units (CUs), and not the previously suggested 40. Per CU there are 64 shader processors, so that would indicate to be a drop from 2560 shader processors, towards 2048 shader processors. And that's a pretty significant difference.
It is also stated that this product would be able to perform at 5.5 TFLOP/sec for single-precision floating point performance, which is very close to Hawaii/Grenada aka the Radeon R9 390 series. Hawaii uses a lot of power though, a 250W TDP. The new chip would use 150W only, which is good news. it is drawing it's power from one single 8-pin power connector.
Memory wise it is suggested to get GDDR5 memory at 7 Gbps (effective). Obviously some features will be upgraded like support for HVEC/H.265 hardware encode/decode acceleration, DisplayPort 1.3, and HDMI 2.0a outputs.
The lower specced mainstream part called "Baffin" would only get 14 CU x 64 = 896 shader processors, which quite honestly seems to be a too low number and sounds more of an equivalent to the 360 series. This part has a peak single-precision floating-point performance rated at 2.5 TFLOP/s. The TDP is rated at just 50W, and it is expected to feature a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory.
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Helluva lot of people can't or won't always drop 100 dollars more. There are few places in PC technology where you can't always add a little more to get a better part. That 100 dollars would be already quite a lot more at that price range. It's not like between 900 and 1000 dollars.
Time was just right for the Maxwell lines of cards, and that's why 970 sold like hotcakes. In fact I was very close to buying one to replace my previous 560Ti. The generations between the 500 and 900 series didn't catch my attention at all. But is the same true for Pascal? Who knows.
Senior Member
Posts: 7975
Joined: 2014-09-27
Helluva lot of people can't or won't always drop 100 dollars more. There are few places in PC technology where you can't always add a little more to get a better part. That 100 dollars would be already quite a lot more at that price range. It's not like between 900 and 1000 dollars.
Time was just right for the Maxwell lines of cards, and that's why 970 sold like hotcakes. In fact I was very close to buying one to replace my previous 560Ti. The generations between the 500 and 900 series didn't catch my attention at all. But is the same true for Pascal? Who knows.
Still, it is in the relative price/performance. If they have a $280 part with 2560 shaders at around 1.3-1.5GHz, then they have a winner. Like, they will destroy NVIDIA in the mid/lower mid/high market.
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These are the mobiles.
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I dont know.. sometimes having the fastest ..in the long run wont pay. So stay in the middle.. make a killing.
Maybe.. maybe one day these guys wont play all their cards and at launch.. just blow everyone away..
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Joined: 2014-09-27
The problem is not the 500+ GPU, the problem for AMD is the $389 1070. The performance/price ratio between the 1070 and Polaris 10 is what will matter in the end. If you give an extra $100 but you get 50% more performance, then AMD has a problem.