AMD Talks Radeon Rx 480, Zen Processors and 7th Gen APUs in Computex 2016 Live Stream

AMDs live stream from Computex 2016 has just ended, we did some live reporting from the event in this news bulletin I will share the highlights. AMD as expected revealed Radeon Polaris GPU updates in the form of the Radeon Rx 480. A graphics card that will perform just above 5 TFLOPS With it's 150 TDP it'll have 36 CUs (x 64 shader processors per CU = 2304 Shader processors). 

The card will be available in both 4GB and 8GB versions and has 256-bit GDRR5 memory at 256 GB/s (= 8 Gbps effective much like the GeForce GTX 1070). The card will run in the 1267 MHz range on it's boost clock.

The card will start at 199 USD for the 4GB model. 8GB models will also become available. The product did not get a launch date.

In the conference Zen (8cores/16threads) have been mentioned. Zen is sampling to tier 1 customers and in Q3 will be sampling to all customers and thus a launch is expected in Q4. Then the 7th Gen APUs based on four Excavator cores have been word of topic. Please browse through the conference below.

Live Stream Updates:

• LiveStream is now up and running, we'll report and update in bullets during the presentation.
• A series 7th generation APUs mentioned. Lisa Su takes the stage talks 2016 products.  Talks about Radeon Technology Group, DX12 Vulkan and yes Polaris is mentioned. 
• RTG Raja Koduri chief takes the stage. Talks about Radeon Technology Group.

• Talks about PC gaming and AMDs vision on it. He talks slowly towards Polaris of course. Talks a bit about VR (which is the trendy hip thing to talk about in relation to graphics cards of course). Raja immediately jumps to cost, indicating they will offer cost of their products should be acceptable.
• AMD states it wants to deliver high-perf, low cost low-power solution to democratize VR. Mentions one product, Radeon RX 480X, will sell at 199 USD. That is the 4 GB version of course, expect higher-end versions and 8GB version to hover in the 250 USD range.

• Raja holds Radeon RX 480 in the air. 

• It is rated as just over 5 TFLOPs perf, has 36 CUs (x 64 shader processors per CU = 2304 Shader processors). The card will be available in both 4GB and 8GB versions and has 256-bit GDRR5 memory at 256 GB/s (indicative for a 2,000 MHz clock = 8 Gbps effective). The card will have a 150 Watt TDP and DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 support.
• Raja takes stab at Nvidia with a 700 USD solution, and shows GTX 1080 against Rx 480 in (of course) Ashes of Singularity, claiming similar performance.  

• The and comparison against GTX 1080 was in fact two Rx 480 cards (less then 500 USD), thus they demoed 2-way Crossfire to compare to GTX 1080. If scaling is 2x then divide 63 FPS in half and that is one RX 480. So a GTX 1080 would do 59 FPS and a Radeon Rx 480 should do let's say 32 FPS. Raja leaves the stage. So the Rx 480 is the one Polaris card that we'll see end of June, there was no mention of the Rx 490 whatsoever.

• AMD talks 7th Gen AMD A-series APUs (Bristol Ridge). Talks streaming and support for HEVC / 4K Ultra HD. Topt to bottom support. 

• Also mentioned is A10, A12 and FX series APU processors of the 7th Generation. Gaming on these APUs is mentioned, covered is FreeSync, VSR etc. Offers support for low power DDR4 memory. A9 7th Gen is announced as well, for mobile.

• Microsoft is on stage, obviously really likes AMD and talks Windows 10.

• The AMD A-series APU will have four Excavator cores and eight GCN graphics cores. High throughput HEVC/H.265 support at low power playback. Supports 128-bit DDR3 and DDR4. Some 7th Gen APU based notebooks now get displayed, incl some convertible ones.

• Lisa Su takes over the conference, needs to talk about one more thing. ZEN (yah!). The Zen architecture 8-cores, 16 threads is now confirmed. Calls it the return for desktop performance.

• Shows Summit Ridge. Zen is a high performance CPU, that scales across multiple market segments like desktop, servers. They expect to sample to tier 1 customers in the next weeks.

• In Q3 more wide spread sampling. Thus a launch is imminent in Q4 for Desktop consumers (as expected).

• Above photo is the processor based on Zen architecture. Lisa Su has now closed the conference. So in short, announced is the 7th Gen APUs, en has been confirmed and previewed and obviously AMD's Radeon Rx 480 is announced. The last two products did not get a final release date mentioned.
• The conference and LiveStream have now closed.