Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

AMD Confirms RX 480 At $199 USD, Other APU & Polaris Announcements

Take it with the usual grain of salt:
http://wccftech.com/amd-rx-490-dual-gpu/

Makes some sense though. If 480 is the full fat die and Vega is still far off, 490 can be dual Polaris. GDDR5X seems to be AWOL anyway.
[doublepost=1467977113][/doublepost]koyoot, it still exceeds the 150W limit, although now the PCIe power draw is almost within spec. Still, not quite there yet.
But this is a driver fix, they should make it a firmware update soon.
It still puzzles me though, how it got to this point. and how it gets to +150W with not so high clocks.

See Tom's:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-power-fix,4668.html
 
Last edited:
Fl0r!an said:
This didn't happen for ~4 years since they added initial support for HD 7xxx generation. This was the last generation which also had an official "Mac Edition".
Click to expand...

Whoops, guess I didn't look careful enough: Apple has also added a framebuffer for the "old" Tonga chip in Sierra: http://tonymacx86.com/threads/macos...amd-radeon-drivers.197273/page-3#post-1285764
Has already been proven to work, which would smooth the way for a "R9 380X Mac Edition". Not sure if MVC cares about a GPU in this class though, it doesn't do much better than any "Tahiti" GPU.

Btw, when looking closely at the dumped framebuffers, you'll also see something looking suspicously like reference "Baffin"... ;)

I'm not sure why Apple has become so "PCIe friendly" in Sierra, didn't happen for a long time...
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: LightBulbFun
Fl0r!an said:
Whoops, guess I didn't look careful enough: Apple has also added a framebuffer for the "old" Tonga chip in Sierra: http://tonymacx86.com/threads/macos...amd-radeon-drivers.197273/page-3#post-1285764
Has already been proven to work, which would smooth the way for a "R9 380X Mac Edition". Not sure if MVC cares about a GPU in this class though, it doesn't do much better than any "Tahiti" GPU.

Btw, when looking closely at the dumped framebuffers, you'll also see something looking suspicously like reference "Baffin"... ;)

I'm not sure why Apple has become so "PCIe friendly" in Sierra, didn't happen for a long time...
Click to expand...
h9826790 said:
Hopefully because the PCIe slots are coming back
Click to expand...
How about an external enclosure, where you can put 2-3 or 4 GPUs? And it has PCIe connectors!

MVC's discovery about External enclosure GPUs working plug n play, PCIe GPUs available. Much simpler solution from Apple point of view, than updating the external enclosures every year when new hardware comes out.
 
koyoot said:
How about an external enclosure, where you can put 2-3 or 4 GPUs? And it has PCIe connectors!

MVC's discovery about External enclosure GPUs working plug n play, PCIe GPUs available. Much simpler solution from Apple point of view, than updating the external enclosures every year when new hardware comes out.
Click to expand...

Too much overhead, not the same performance and you have two other wire to deal with (psu and TB).
 
or a display with a GPU inside, is seen the same way as PCI card?
like the one on the way as a solution to 5K displays on older week intel graphics
 
orph said:
or a display with a GPU inside, is seen the same way as PCI card?
like the one on the way as a solution to 5K displays on older week intel graphics
Click to expand...

But in this case, there is no need to add the frame buffer for the GPU, right?
[doublepost=1468242922][/doublepost]
koyoot said:
How about an external enclosure, where you can put 2-3 or 4 GPUs? And it has PCIe connectors!

MVC's discovery about External enclosure GPUs working plug n play, PCIe GPUs available. Much simpler solution from Apple point of view, than updating the external enclosures every year when new hardware comes out.
Click to expand...

Still better than no PCIe solution
 
orph said:
or a display with a GPU inside, is seen the same way as PCI card?
like the one on the way as a solution to 5K displays on older week intel graphics
Click to expand...
5K display with built in eGPU is absolutely pointless if this is your only offering, and it has to connect to computer that doesn't have 5K resolution support, and computers that have that resolution support. Secondly. TB3 allows for connecting 2 streams on one cable, so in fact you don't need DP1.3 or higher, you can run MST 5K display on single cable but 2 streams at the same time. It however locks possibility for using second stream for other purposes.

It is hard for me to imagine how that would work. The GPU built in Mac Pro that was supposed to drive external display with eGPU would be disabled, Much simpler would be just giving eGPU enclosure with PCie ports, to connect to displays that Apple offers(and it would not lock possibility to simply connect to lets say, updated Mac Pro).
 
i dont know much about the tech side, and looks like it might not happen too https://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/02/no-5k-thunderbolt-display-with-gpu-wwdc/
just saw the original article a the other week and it was the first thing that came to my head when i read the post.

cant see any one bringing out any more GPU's for macpros officially unless apple relay dose bring back the cmp and im not relay shore if they see it as worth there time these days. the imac's and nmp's can do video and 3D work and that might be all they want now.
 
They would need to make a new framebuffer personality for a hypothetical "eGPU 5K display", but it certainly wouldn't offer any DVI or HDMI ports.
Apples AMD drivers contain lots of custom framebuffers for their custom GPU solutions, and none of them is looking even slightly similar to stock PC cards. The newly added FBs are 100% matches of reference R9 380[X] and RX 480 (470 and 460 very likely to be contained, too). That's no coincidence.

So either they're planning a "PCIe comeback" in form of eGPU chassis or nnMP (I highly doubt both of that, doesn't sound like a "2016 Apple decision" to me) or... what? Might be more likely that they used those GPUs internally for any kind of development mule.
 
  • Like
Reactions: koyoot
[QUOTE="Fl0r!an, post: 23111388, member: 121013"...So either they're planning a "PCIe comeback" in form of eGPU chassis or nnMP (I highly doubt both of that, doesn't sound like a "2016 Apple decision" to me) or... what? Might be more likely that they used those GPUs internally for any kind of development mule.[/QUOTE]My vote is "for any kind of development mule."
 
good point, code may just be for internal testing.
they will be trying all the ATI gpu's at some point i gess
 
orph said:
good point, code may just be for internal testing.
they will be trying all the ATI gpu's at some point i gess
Click to expand...

Yes, but still, something changed.

I am sure they need to do a lot of test with different GPUs and then choose the M395X (for the iMac) as well, but they didn't add the standard frame buffer for those GPUs. Why suddenly make the new GPU PCIe friendly when testing?

It looks like that they need to test it at the standard PCIe card form. If yes, then why?
 
eGPUs. That changed. New device ID's are also linked to frame buffers for trash can Mac Pro.

So what you have left?
 
It seems even the 1060 will beat 480, at least according to some leaks. If gaming interest you of course. Even Ashes.
Still, we should wait for the real deal.
Not much has been said regarding DP for the new cards, all of them.
 
ManuelGomes said:
It seems even the 1060 will beat 480, at least according to some leaks. If gaming interest you of course. Even Ashes.
Still, we should wait for the real deal.
Not much has been said regarding DP for the new cards, all of them.
Click to expand...
I would wait for official reviews.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ActionableMango
ManuelGomes said:
It seems even the 1060 will beat 480, at least according to some leaks. If gaming interest you of course. Even Ashes.
Still, we should wait for the real deal.
Not much has been said regarding DP for the new cards, all of them.
Click to expand...

Highly doubt compute, Async or Vulkan performance will be as good as the best 480s but I'll be happy to see what happens.
 
Don't you think that the scores are very low compared to reviews, for RX 480? ;)
 
It could be but the truth is so far Pascal has proven it's worth with the bigger cards, I wouldn't dismiss right away that this 1060 can also be a great performer. NVidia had the time to tune it to beat 480, right?
[doublepost=1468347621][/doublepost]I must admit the 470 looks a well balanced card.
If that was the entry level GPU option for the nnMP, I wouldn't go any further I guess.
I'm curious as to the performance decrease relative to the 480, but if it isn't so much I can deal with it. Pump the core freq to fit the max TDP and up the mem clock to 8G and I'm in. Make it a GDDR5X Apple custom part off we go. But this is unlikely.
Everybody's very shy as to talk about DP performance or ratio, wonder why. Guess we're still in the gaming card scene.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back