AMD has reportedly created Polaris revisions that are 50% more efficient

[WYP]

AMD has reportedly created Polaris revisions that are 50% more efficient, reducing the TDPs of future Polaris products with increased clock speeds.



Read more on AMD's reported Polaris GPU refinements.

 

[Kushiro]

Wonder what this could do for the RX 480. Got a few of the reference versions for trifire but dont want take any risks applying a heavy OC.. The RX480 has just been a tad lackluster all in all. If it could get a nice jump in efficiency that would be awesome.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

An efficiency bump is all Polaris needs, IMO It would then be a phenomenal lineup.

 

[Kushiro]

At the moment, I am just happy that this is coming to notebooks. If anything I want to at least be able to get an AMD GPU for my notebook this time around. Obviously will upgrade as soon as next gen hits though

 

[Agost]

Soooo they ship them already undervolted? lol

Many people have reported 30+W decrease in power consumption by undervolting their RX 480 from 1.15V to 1.05V

 

[dwatterworth]

Agreed! This is exciting. Such a drastic efficiency gain with increased clocks is stellar!

 

[NeverBackDown]

Sucks for people who already own a Polaris gpu.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Sucks for people who already own a Polaris gpu.

I was thinking that as well. But I've heard folks say that Vega 11 will replace Polaris anyway. If it does, that would be even more annoying for Polaris adopters. I don't think it will happen though, especially now that it's reported that AMD have improved their yields enough to reduce voltage and TDP whilst increasing clock speeds, but it is a popular rumour nonetheless. Why bother replacing Polaris? If these new improvements become commonplace, Polaris is a crackin' range and will be for a while. We've even potentially seen a little bit of that with the XFX GTR review that JaysTwoCents released on his channel a few days back. High overclocks with very good power consumption and temperatures. The XFX cooler and PCB can't be so good that it trumps almost every other RX 480 by a long margin. It was potentially cherry-picked, but even that shows there is potential there for the Polaris range.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I was thinking that as well. But I've heard folks say that Vega 11 will replace Polaris anyway. If it does, that would be even more annoying for Polaris adopters. I don't think it will happen though, especially now that it's reported that AMD have improved their yields enough to reduce voltage and TDP whilst increasing clock speeds, but it is a popular rumour nonetheless. Why bother replacing Polaris? If these new improvements become commonplace, Polaris is a crackin' range and will be for a while. We've even potentially seen a little bit of that with the XFX GTR review that JaysTwoCents released on his channel a few days back. High overclocks with very good power consumption and temperatures. The XFX cooler and PCB can't be so good that it trumps almost every other RX 480 by a long margin. It was potentially cherry-picked, but even that shows there is potential there for the Polaris range.

It is annoying. And this isn't something that can be fixed be a BIOS flash either. I'm currently using a MSI RX480, so to me this irritates me a little bit. It's great to see them advancing but still it's only been 4 months and now all of a sudden things change drastically? It's resale value drops quite a bit when you consider this will be Polaris 10 V1 and all these newer binned chips are Polaris 10 V2.

I don't think his was cherry picked. I think it was V2 if anything. Even if it was cherry-picked, at those clocks and upping the volts the card would actually still increase in power draw, seeing as it didn't, you can confidently say it's V2.

Vega 11 is going to replace the 390/390x series. Vega 10 is aimed at the Fury line. Although there is a lot of room of overlap here, but I guess that depends on performance differences between the die size/area.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

It is annoying. And this isn't something that can be fixed be a BIOS flash either. I'm currently using a MSI RX480, so to me this irritates me a little bit. It's great to see them advancing but still it's only been 4 months and now all of a sudden things change drastically? It's resale value drops quite a bit when you consider this will be Polaris 10 V1 and all these newer binned chips are Polaris 10 V2.

I don't think his was cherry picked. I think it was V2 if anything. Even if it was cherry-picked, at those clocks and upping the volts the card would actually still increase in power draw, seeing as it didn't, you can confidently say it's V2.

Vega 11 is going to replace the 390/390x series. Vega 10 is aimed at the Fury line. Although there is a lot of room of overlap here, but I guess that depends on performance differences between the die size/area.

I would feel the same way. I was very, very impressed with the XFX 480, and to know that I don't have that would frustrate me. It's only a marginal difference, one that you probably wouldn't even notice that much, but it's there nonetheless and would niggle at me for a while until I eventually moved on.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Well it bothers me more than most i'd say because 1) my GPU can barely OC at all and 2) If I can't OC, i'd love the power draw improvements, but I don't get that either. So yeah. I guess just means i'm moving to Vega sooner than I thought!

 

[Thelosouvlakia]

We can't say that they did this on purpose for sure, all we can say is that the sales team might have rushed a the release because of the 10xx series... The engineers always need more time

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Well it bothers me more than most i'd say because 1) my GPU can barely OC at all and 2) If I can't OC, i'd love the power draw improvements, but I don't get that either. So yeah. I guess just means i'm moving to Vega sooner than I thought!

Yeah, I felt the AMD overclocking blues last year. My Fury couldn't hit 1050/520Mhz even with extra voltage. That means it's not capable of hitting the stock speeds of the same GPU (minus the memory; core still couldn't hit 1050Mhz game-stable even with memory at stock). I wasn't the only one with this card who experienced such miserable overclocking. Considering it's not exactly the most popular card, that's a pretty bad showing for an "overclockers dream".

 

[NeverBackDown]

I don't think it was more of being rushed, but over time from any GPU generation, yields improve and you eventually also get better "binned" chips from just a more mature process. Seeing as GF 14nm is based off Samsungs FinFET, it's probably them getting better at making it and is helping to create all these benefits. Just on a large scale that we haven't really seen before.

 

[AlienALX]

It's good to know that they are refining the tech. They worked mircales with Poodozer, Vishera really wasn't that bad and 15% from pretty much the same tech was awesome.

If the 480 goes 15% faster it'll be amazing.

 

[Kilbane]

Let's hope this can show a marked improvement. The Polaris lineup so far has been a bit disappointing.

Also, as previously stated, it's a shame for those who already own Polaris. Seems they could have done with waiting a few months and launching with a more competitive chip to start.

 

[NeverBackDown]

It's good to know that they are refining the tech. They worked mircales with Poodozer, Vishera really wasn't that bad and 15% from pretty much the same tech was awesome.

If the 480 goes 15% faster it'll be amazing.

I wouldn't get quite that hyped for that big if a jump. Probably 5-7% increase in FPS and then a large reduction in power draw. Could potentially go even further since they have more headroom now. OCing should finally be more fun