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AMD Announces Radeon RX 470, RX 460 Graphics Cards (gamespot.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via GameSpot: At E3 2016, AMD has announced the Radeon RX 470 and RX 460. They will join the RX 480 in the company's Polaris family. Both GPUs will be VR-capable, whereas the RX 480 is made for 1440p gaming. AMD says the RX 470 will focus on delivering a "refined, power-efficient HD gaming" experience, and that the RX 460 will offer a "cool and efficient solution for the ultimate e-sports gaming experience." The RX 480 will be priced starting at $200 for the 4GB variant, with the other two cards most likely priced lower. The company did also announce that the chips are extremely thin, offering a very low Z-height, and will fit into thin and light gaming notebooks. They support a wide variety of features that include DX12, HDR, HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.3/1.4, and H.265 encoding/decoding. AMD claims the RX 480 card outperforms $500 graphics cards in VR. The RX 470 and RX 460 have yet to have official release dates. However, the RX 480 is scheduled to launch on June 29. In April, AMD announced a plan to license the design of its top-of-the-line server processor to a newly formed Chinese company, creating a brand-new rival for Intel.

48 comments

  1. Great! by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

    New lower-power GPUs that can fit in thin laptops!

    Now I know which GPUs Apple won't use for their computers! Intel's integrated crap forever!

    1. Re:Great! by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      maybe apple will go amd zen + amd video.

      how thin can zen go?

    2. Re:Great! by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      Keep dreaming.

      Apple won' tbe putting any ventilation holes in their products any time soon - it spoils the design.

      Nope, you'll be stuck with crappy graphics and tinny-sounding speakers forever. All so you can have a glowing Apple logo on the back for other people to see.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:Great! by newcastlejon · · Score: 1

      Now I know which GPUs Apple won't use for their computers! Intel's integrated crap forever!

      Apple won' tbe putting any ventilation holes in their products any time soon - it spoils the design.

      Apple hides the ventilation slots in the screen hinge and have done since the G4 Powerbooks if not earlier. They also offer nvidia GPUs on the higher end models.

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
    4. Re:Great! by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Apple care more for aesthetics than function. I can't see them sacrificing some thinness for making there machines half decent.

    5. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe that is why the screen hinges on Macbooks often break. Apple sacrifices build quality for aesthetics.

    6. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would be a trade-off. Going AMD for their laptops would mean better GPU performance but inferior CPU performance and inferior power efficiency/battery life.

      Intel GPUs are actually becoming pretty good. Iris Pro Graphics P580 are more powerful than a Radeon R9 M370X and about on par with a Geforce GTX 765M.

  2. Low TDP? by SkunkPussy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The new nVidia GPUs have quite high TDP sadly... Will these new AMD ones go as low as the GTX 750 Ti? Those were great for fanless operation.

    --
    SURELY NOT!!!!!
    1. Re:Low TDP? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      Its 24nm FinFET so power should be quite low, in fact AMD has been talking up how its the lowest power mainstream gaming cards they have ever created.

      The problem both AMD and Nvidia are gonna have is that games have hit the wall and its getting harder and harder to push the graphics without hitting the 100 million price tag. Sure there is VR but it still is looking like its gonna be a small niche at best, just like 3D before it, and 1080P appears to be the standard everybody is sticking with which their cards from a generation or 2 back have no issues with. Hell even the middle of the road cards have plenty of power for 1080P, my R9 280 has no trouble giving me 60 FPS plus on my flight games even with the graphics cranked so high it looks like a scene from Red Tails.

      Its the same problem Intel and AMD are seeing on the CPU front, even the gamers have no reason to replace their FX-8s and i5s because games just haven't kept up and very VERY few can slam these monster chips we have enough that an upgrade would get you more than a few FPS which just doesn't make sense financially.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re:Low TDP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Drop the clocks possibly a bit and yeah you should have no problem running the 460 fanless I should think.

    3. Re:Low TDP? by Kjella · · Score: 1

      The new nVidia GPUs have quite high TDP sadly... Will these new AMD ones go as low as the GTX 750 Ti? Those were great for fanless operation.

      Some models will, but almost certainly not the RX480. I think the suggestion is roughly GTX950 performance for 50W, nVidia lists the power draw of a 750 Ti as 60W. Of course these are all marketing slides, not third party reviews but yeah the power savings from 28nm to 14nm are substantial.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    4. Re:Low TDP? by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      It seems possible as the chips AMD made were designed for power efficiency because they got absolutely trashed by Nvidia in the notebook market the last generation. Also the new Nvidia GPUs (GP104) are their performance segment and their mainstream (GP106) and budget (GP108) chips will probably have much lower TDP ratings.

    5. Re:Low TDP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you call same or less TDP than the previous generation while having widely more computational power than sure they are "high"

      Seriously. The 1070 has a 150 watt TDP, same as the 970 it's replacing.. Only it's faster than the top-end card from the previous generation, the 980ti, which has a tdp of 250 watts.

      It's not unreasonable to say that the 1000 cards use about half the power of the previous generation.

      Nvidia will probably soon put out a new GPU that fits in the 750ti price and thermal range, and it will probably be the fastest card that does not require an external power connector. (Much like the 750ti is now)

    6. Re:Low TDP? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      The problem both AMD and Nvidia are gonna have is that games have hit the wall and its getting harder and harder to push the graphics without hitting the 100 million price tag. Sure there is VR but it still is looking like its gonna be a small niche at best, just like 3D before it, and 1080P appears to be the standard everybody is sticking with which their cards from a generation or 2 back have no issues with.

      The driving force for this sort of hardware is very soon going to stop being graphics rendering and start being other sorts of parallel computations: simulation, computer vision, AI, etc.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    7. Re:Low TDP? by geek · · Score: 1

      Exactly this. I fully expected I would have to get a new card to run DOOM but my 970 and i5 run it on ultra with no lag whatsoever. I simply have no reason to upgrade. Though I am considering going to AMD if their open source drivers turn out to be good.

    8. Re:Low TDP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's 14nm FinFet.

    9. Re:Low TDP? by default+luser · · Score: 1

      Nvidia will probably soon put out a new GPU that fits in the 750ti price and thermal range, and it will probably be the fastest card that does not require an external power connector. (Much like the 750ti is now)

      It's already out. Better revisions of the GTX 950 have been able to get the power down to 75w. For that you get 40% higher performance than the GTX 750 Ti, and for just a five dollar premium over other GTX 950 cards!

      The Asus card review

      The Newegg page.

      The pictures on the Newegg site still show a power connector, but on the Asus product page it's clearly removed:

      https://www.asus.com/us/Graphi...

      And a recet review also confirms no power connector!

      So yeah, Nvidia pushed this out unofficially because they will be waiting a few months for GP107, and thye wanted to stop making GTX 750 Ti silicon.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

    10. Re:Low TDP? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Soon? apart from VR none of those items are really on the horizon for home users for this gen or probably several gens after it.

    11. Re:Low TDP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      maybe I am pointing out the obvious here, but at 75W that is a massive 25% higher power draw over the 60w 750ti. that really doesn;t make it a suitable replacement. so 25% more power consumption for only 40% performance increase, very marginal upgrade for someone looking for low TDP.

    12. Re:Low TDP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      75w is still enough to require a PSU upgrade from a 750 TI. and it is a relatively minor performance boost for such a hefty power usage jump.

    13. Re:Low TDP? by default+luser · · Score: 1

      Which is why it's a placeholder until GP107 arrives, like I said in my fucking post.

      What is it wih ACs, you allergic to reading?

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

  3. Linux support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How good is the linux support? Has AMD finally stepped up, or is this another "skip it unless you run Windows" card?

    1. Re:Linux support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      To this day, AMD still hasn't provided decent drivers for Windows users. I also doubt their Linux drivers can even compare to the Windows ones.

    2. Re:Linux support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well the current driver system will be mostly opensource for amd's drivers.
      you will just run-time swap out firmware & some driver code for what you want to do. Play video games? have it unload the foss part and load up the amd part. Your card now runs at about 90%~ or so of the windows version. Finish playing the game? The amd code gets swapped out for the foss linux radeon driver. Which is better at handling the compositing and desktop stuff..

    3. Re:Linux support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would argue neither has Nvidia or Intel for that matter. All these companies still seem to treat drivers as far less important than actual hardware even though the hardware doesn't do shit without the drivers.

  4. Re: "e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly!

    We should keep in mind that we don't want to tarnish the reputation of such great physical challenges as darts.. Target shooting.. Professional poker.. Chess.. All of which are considered cheese by at least some people.

    You are definately right.. The English language has a long history of having its words locked in stone with zero room for change or development.. Even if you do make a modification of the word to make the change clear!

    You convinced me!

  5. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    e-sports has drug testing like other athletic sports.

  6. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow they are calling trainers and hacks e-drugs now?

  7. Here we go by edittard · · Score: 1

    The company did also announce

    Wrong!

    The usage of "whereas" higher up is also garbage.

    --
    At the bottom of the /. main page it says 'Yesterday's News'. Well they got that right.
  8. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 1
    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  9. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

    Why not? Pro cycling has "motor doping" -- it's hard to get any more asinine than that!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  10. Re: "e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your opinion of his opinion has no affect on reality.

  11. interesting editorializing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In April, AMD announced a plan to license the design of its top-of-the-line server processor to a newly formed Chinese company, creating a brand-new rival for Intel.

    how, exactly, is someone making the same thing AMD is making now a "new rival for Intel"? when a new pitcher joins the Red Sox, he's not a "new rival" for the Yankees...

    in this case, the best scenario for consumers is that this partner can be a better AMD than AMD.

    1. Re:interesting editorializing... by Fwipp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I imagine that the Chinese company might receive preference in China - whether that's through tariffs or subsidies or just plain national pride, it might convince a lot of customers (government, business, or consumer) in China to buy it instead of Intel chips.

    2. Re:interesting editorializing... by sexconker · · Score: 1

      China and Russia don't trust kit coming out of a Western company.
      Further, the Chinese will be selling it for cheap.

  12. Re: "e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, for adderall and pot. Both help focus. There is prize money on the line.

  13. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    One man's 'asinine' is another man's 'thats cool, I might start watching.'

    They aren't done until the bikes have V8s!

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  14. Ummm.... What? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    The TDP/performance of the latest nVidia cards is nothing short of amazing. It is the best we've ever seen out of any company. They've been doing some serious optimization on the performance/watt front and it has payed off bigtime. Combine that with a smaller process and these are great.

    If you mean total power draw... Well ya. Here's thing the with all GPUs: They introduce the big parts first, and make the smaller parts based on them. The small GPUs are just big GPUs with a lot of the units cut off. So it makes sense to first introduce the big, high end, units where you can charge a lot per unit and make up some of your fixed costs in making the new architecture (which is billions). Then you spend your time doing the engineering to make the lower power parts.

    It has been this way forever pretty much. So ya, the 1080 and 1070 are high power. That's their segment. Wait for the 1060 or 1050 or 1040 which will probably be along some time later. Those will be the lower power units that do less, but use less.

    It would not make sense for nVidia to develop a whole new architecture and then make their first product using it a sub $100 card for small computers, it makes sense to make the first product a $600+ behemoth that they can get big margins on.

  15. Games hit the wall? by King_TJ · · Score: 1

    I don't think either company is going to have any problems selling their latest graphics card offerings, considering all the notebook computers that have under-powered graphics chipsets and all the Apple products that used older chipsets with mediocre performance.

    It may be true that games aren't taxing the latest card's capabilities right now -- but they're not in the same situation as CPUs, where even a budget priced processor has more power than people need for most of what they do. With graphics cards, anything with really good performance has come with a high price tag - pricing it out of the range of the mainstream user. The newer card technology is needed to push prices down, as much as anything else.

  16. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by gfxguy · · Score: 1

    But most sports are referred to as "games." Soccer games, Basketball games.... you going to the game tonight?

    I've recently started watching E-League, and my first instinct was that it's not really a "sport." After thinking about it for a while, it occurred to me that it's not just twitchy fingers - the hand-eye coordination and super fast reaction times are really impressive. That, and they train as a team, working out strategies for thousands of hours. E-League is doing Counter Strike... and unlike a football field or soccer pitch, the "fields", or maps, are infinitely more complex, and the game (sure, game) is completely different depending on which side you're playing.... that's like having to learn 14 really complex fields and come up with a handful of strategies for each of them.

    Sport? I wouldn't argue with you about it, I'm still not so sure, but it does take a lot of skill, hard work, and hours of practice with a team to be successful at it. When I play it, it's definitely a game - no argument there.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  17. Re:"e-sports"? LOL! Come on, don't use that term. by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

    The asinine part wasn't using a motor, the asinine part was calling it "doping" when it was a completely different form of cheating.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz