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AMD Radeon 500 series to launch early April, Radeon Vega in May

dr_rus

Member
AMD Radeon RX 500 Series to launch in April

That said, on April 4th Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 570 will be available for sale. A week later, on April 11th AMD will unveil its Radeon RX 560 and Radeon RX 550 series. All cards, except RX 550, are most likely rebranded from Radeon RX 400 series.

AMD Radeon RX Vega will not be released in April, which somehow confirms our initial information, that Radeon 500 series are expected in May. So in other words, expect Radeon RX 500 rebrands in April and Vega a month or two later.

So Polaris rebrand as Radeon RX 500 series in about a month and Radeon RX Vega as 1070-1080-1080Ti competitor in May.
 
I would get it if they did it at the same time as they release Vega to at least seemingly create a full lineup like they did with the 300 series, but if the rebrands are nothing more than that it doesn't really make a lot of sense to launch them on their own. Hopefully there's more to it than just renaming.
 
Vega 'a month or two later' oh dear.

If Vega releases in June with likely limited supply, it's going to be another big failure in terms of gaining any marketshare, regardless of performance.
 

BHK3

Banned
Honestly whats the point of AMD if they aren't releasing something thats like the 1070/1080 but affordable?
 
Well, after the 1080ti, they better hurry up.

It would sell ever more if a combo is possible !

Take the ULTIMATE GAMER COMBO Ryzen 1800x + Fat Vega for 1000$
 

Maniac

Banned
Honestly whats the point of AMD if they aren't releasing something thats like the 1070/1080 but affordable?

Mindshare, increased revenue from cards that're a tad better despite being little more than rebadges; said increase in revenue, and the very act of releasing products, will lead to an up-spike in their shares... So on so forth. Lots of good reasons for them. Little to none for us nerds to give a shit nor buy them. Suppose it makes them look like they're competitive with the 1080ti?.. Or competitive-ish... Kind of? I mean not really but still.
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
Is there anything they can actually do to improve RX 580 from 480?

Are there shaders or cus they can unlock?

Is it just a slight clock boost?
 

Tareskog

Member
Sigh. I was really hoping AMD had a bag of magic sparkled graphics cards, ready to be thrown out around the same time as 1080ti hits the marked. Something competitive regarding price/performance, but it just feels like AMD keeps falling further behind on the GPU-marked. We need more competition god damn it. I have already made commitments to Nvidia with gsync monitor and a Shield Tv which I stream games to, but competition benefits the consumer nonetheless.
 
You know what, any half decent marketing department would have tried to stop buyers getting a 1080 Ti by making some announcement of Vega's ETA at the AMD press conference.

That they didn't do that - even just a 'Vega coming in May' - is the result of either pure marketing incompetence or something more worrying - AMD doesn't know when Vega is releasing themselves. Let's hope it's the former, as worrying as that is from such a big company.
 

Marlenus

Member
Is there anything they can actually do to improve RX 580 from 480?

Are there shaders or cus they can unlock?

Is it just a slight clock boost?

If it is like the old mid gen refreshes like the 9700pro to 9800pro, x800 to x850 then I would expect higher clocks at a similar power draw.

I have always thought the process for the 480 was pretty poor because it should really have been clocked > 1.3Ghz quite comfortably so there is room for improvement.
 

dr_rus

Member
Is there anything they can actually do to improve RX 580 from 480?

Are there shaders or cus they can unlock?

Is it just a slight clock boost?

Higher clocks, better thermals and power because of 14nm improvements during this year and - maybe - they've done a new chip revision which fixed some issues. But P10 is fully unlocked in RX480 already so there's no hidden CUs or anything.
 

Xyphie

Member
Is there anything they can actually do to improve RX 580 from 480?

Are there shaders or cus they can unlock?

Is it just a slight clock boost?

36 CUs is the full chip.

Nvidia just launched GTX 1060 with 9000 MHz GDDR5 so faster VRAM could be an option, IIRC Polaris 10 benefits quite nicely from RAM overclock.
 
Probably higher clocks, the RX 480 chip was already the full uncut chip. Maybe GloFlo got their 14nm working better?

Can't get any worse can it? Lol (1350-1390 average overclocks).

But yeah I heard this rumour before that the process has been improved to allow higher clocks but who knows, could be 10 Mhz.
 
If Vega can match or possibly be near the 1080 Ti and possibly at a cheaper price (maybe 500 vs the Ti's 700), then AMD is right back in the game.
 

V_Arnold

Member
Why do old cards need rebranding, are they trying to fool people?

Not really. I get the impression (rx470 user here) that the initial rollout was hindered by the bad manufacturing (i.e not enough good units, the need to introduce the rx470 in the first place, which is a failed 480, only 5-8% behind it, and in MANY cases, performing just as well, for cheaper).

They most likely do the rebranding on a more stable manufactoring environments, so even a few percent improvement+ general availability might be good.

For example, we are looking to get a replacement for a HD7850 this spring. 1070 is too expensive, we were looking at the rx470 again (not my Strix though, it sucks, maybe a Gigabyte or MSI variant), but if rx570 comes out, of course it should be superior, if ever so slightly :D
 

ethomaz

Banned
That was already expected after they removed Vega 11 from roadmaps... Polaris 10 is the card to place this market.

So the actual lineup...

RX 590 = Vega 10
RX 580 = Polaris 10
RX 570 = Polaris 10
RX 560 = Polaris 11
RX 550 = Polaris 11

I think we will two versions of Vega 10... full 12TFs and 8TFs... RX 590 and 585??? Or RX 595 and 590???
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
If Vega can match or possibly be near the 1080 Ti and possibly at a cheaper price (maybe 500 vs the Ti's 700), then AMD is right back in the game.

Given that it looks to be an updated fury in terms of shaders and cus I highly doubt they have anything to match the 1080ti.

I could see somewhere between 1080 and 1080ti though.
 
That was already expected after they removed Vega 11 from roadmaps... Polaris 10 is the card to place this market.

So the actual lineup...

RX 590 = Vega 10
RX 580 = Polaris 10
RX 570 = Polaris 11
RX 560 = Polaris 11

I think we will two versions of Vega 10... full 12TFs and 8TFs... RX 590 and 585??? Or RX 595 and 590???
So... You expect the 570 to be a huge downgrade from the 470?
 
Polaris could definitely benefit from a superior manufacturing process. The variance on the voltage needed for all the different 470/480's was crazy; some 1400MHz parts were drawing the same amount of power as other 1250MHz parts.
 

dr_rus

Member
That was already expected after they removed Vega 11 from roadmaps... Polaris 10 is the card to place this market.

So the actual lineup...

RX 590 = Vega 10
RX 580 = Polaris 10
RX 570 = Polaris 11
RX 560 = Polaris 11

I think we will two versions of Vega 10... full 12TFs and 8TFs... RX 590 and 585??? Or RX 595 and 590???

Wait, when did that happen? I assumed that it will launch after the top end Vega 10 but that it's still coming this year.

And Vega 10 is officially RX Vega now, not 590.
 

onQ123

Member
That was already expected after they removed Vega 11 from roadmaps... Polaris 10 is the card to place this market.

So the actual lineup...

RX 590 = Vega 10
RX 580 = Polaris 10
RX 570 = Polaris 11
RX 560 = Polaris 11

I think we will two versions of Vega 10... full 12TFs and 8TFs... RX 590 and 585??? Or RX 595 and 590???

RX 570 also = Polaris 10
 
These rebrands don't make any favor to AMD. When I my interest for PC was picking up it was very easy and straightforward to understand NVIDIA's naming scheme, whereas I always felt it was messy for AMD. Like, 290 similar to 390? What?

I really want to upgrade my RX480, hopefully Vega will deliver good price/performance at the high end.
 

Locuza

Member
"We" might not like rebrands but there is some simple marketing logic behind a "new" product line up.

That was already expected after they removed Vega 11 from roadmaps[...]
I ask you again, from where did you took this information?

Maybe add support for Rapid Packed Math
Packed Math is a hardware feature, Polaris doesn't have it.
Adding packed math would mean developing new gpu chips.
 

tuxfool

Banned
Packed Math is a hardware feature, Polaris doesn't have it.
Adding packed math would mean developing new gpu chips.

Polaris does handle packed 16bit formats. What it doesn't have is the flexibility for packed math on 8bit and lower size values.
 
D

Deleted member 465307

Unconfirmed Member
So...Polaris 10, 11, and 12 this April, followed by Vega 10 in May? I would think Vega is going to be the Fury successor (somewhere around 1080-1080 Ti performance?), while the rumored Vega 11 is what would ultimately become the 590. I wonder if they'll really leave the 1070 price/performance bracket open or if I'm misjudging what Vega will be.

Personally, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for how the 580 and 570 compare against the upcoming refreshed 1060. Hopefully buying one of those chips after the revisions come out will be a good time to jump in.
 

Locuza

Member
Polaris does handle packed 16bit formats. What it doesn't have is the flexibility for packed math on 8bit and lower size values.
It handles native FP16 formats but not packed.
Only with Vega two FP16 operations can be packed together in one go to increase the theoretical throughput by x2, before it only saved register space (can improve practical performance) and decreased energy consumption.
 
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