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

[Stacc]

An article on WCCFTech got me thinking about Vega 11. It seems not much is known about this GPU but lets make some educated guesses. Vega 10 is going to be ~12 TFLOPS with a size of >500mm2. This makes it a GP102 competitor and consumes > 225 W.

If Apple is going to update the mac pro and keep roughly the same form factor, this GPU may be too big to fit. Remember that when the 2013 mac pro shipped hawaii had been released but apple still chose to use the smaller, cooler Tahiti instead of it.

The chip we as mac pro enthusiasts may be more interested in is Vega 11. There is a giant gap in die size between Polaris 10 (220 mm2) and Vega 10 (>500 mm2). Lets plop Vega 11 somewhere in there (say a Tahiti like 350mm2) and we are looking at something like a 8-9 TFLOP chip at 150-200W to compete with GP104. This sounds like the perfect chip for a mac pro. Throw two of these in there and you are looking at 16-18 TFLOPS of combined compute power.

Since the rumors have both Vega 10 and 11 landing in May, lets hope WWDC brings us some new desktop hardware.

 

[ManuelGomes]

Vega 11 is (supposed) to be a Polaris 10 replacement, as far as I can tell.
It could be a cut down, GDDR5X, version of Vega 10 that will eventually take the place of Polaris. Although there is also the "rumor" of Polaris 10 XT2.
Vega 10 does seem a bit overpowered for the nMP, unless it's heavily underclocked, which would defeat the point of being a good compute option.
I'm also curious on how they'll deal with the mem options for the 3 tiers. Will it be 2GB, 4GB and 8 GB? Or 4GB, 8GB and 16GB? A card with less than 4GB today is a no go.

 

[Stacc]

Vega 11 is (supposed) to be a Polaris 10 replacement, as far as I can tell.
It could be a cut down, GDDR5X, version of Vega 10 that will eventually take the place of Polaris. Although there is also the "rumor" of Polaris 10 XT2.
Vega 10 does seem a bit overpowered for the nMP, unless it's heavily underclocked, which would defeat the point of being a good compute option.

I don't know why they would replace Polaris 10 after less than a year. They need to fill the gaps in their lineup first. They need a GPU on 14nm that fits between Polaris 10's 5 TFLOPS and Vega 10's 12 TFLOPS.

Polaris 10 XT2 is probably nothing more than a respin of Polaris 10 on whatever process Vega is using.

 

[koyoot]

Vega 11 is (supposed) to be a Polaris 10 replacement, as far as I can tell.
It could be a cut down, GDDR5X, version of Vega 10 that will eventually take the place of Polaris. Although there is also the "rumor" of Polaris 10 XT2.
Vega 10 does seem a bit overpowered for the nMP, unless it's heavily underclocked, which would defeat the point of being a good compute option.
I'm also curious on how they'll deal with the mem options for the 3 tiers. Will it be 2GB, 4GB and 8 GB? Or 4GB, 8GB and 16GB? A card with less than 4GB today is a no go.

It is supposed to be a Polaris 10 replacement in server and workstation market. Not in consumer one.

 

[ManuelGomes]

Polaris was only intended for the (lower end) consumer market from the get go, a stop gap before Vega - in my opinion.
XT2 should be the RX4x5 versions, coming soon.
Between 5.8 and 12.5TFlops there's a huge gap to be filled, maybe that's the target.
I could see Vega 11 becoming WX ws cards though.
Still, Vega 10 also has consumer version(s).

 

[koyoot]

3072 GCN cores, with 1525 MHz core clock gives 9.37 TFLOPs of compute performance. So it fits between RX 480 and Vega 10.

 

[ManuelGomes]

Right, my point exactly.

 

[H2SO4]

I have a Sapphire non-OC version, which fits perfectly in my 3,1 slot 1.

Perfectly? Not a terrible squeeze?

 

[JoSch]

Perfectly? Not a terrible squeeze?

No squeeze

 

[ManuelGomes]

Sapphire released a 460 full fat, Polaris 11 with all 1024 cores enabled.
Bout time...

 

[H2SO4]

No squeeze

Odd that. Most of the others I’ve heard can't get it in.

 

[Caesar_091]

Odd that. Most of the others I’ve heard can't get it in.

Maybe there are differences about that between different cMP generations...

 

[koyoot]

Sapphire released a 460 full fat, Polaris 11 with all 1024 cores enabled.
Bout time...

I was waiting for it, to test. Thanks for information Manuel

 

[H2SO4]

Maybe there are differences about that between different cMP generations...

You may be right. OP has a 3,1.

 

[lowendlinux]

It's a long story but now I own the 5,1 MP that I used to use at work and heck it still has apple care so I might as well use it..

Anyway as soon as my mini 6pin to six pin and my two six pin to 8 pin get here I'm going to give my RX480 a shot in the MP. If it doesn't work I'll give it and most of the rest of the goods stuff to my kid and find some sort of nVidia card since I am throwing away all my FOSS creds

 

[ManuelGomes]

koyoot, let us know how it fares.

 

[Caesar_091]

You may be right. OP has a 3,1.

I should receive my RX 480 tomorrow... will post some update about that (on a 5,1 cMP).

 

[H2SO4]

I should receive my RX 480 tomorrow... will post some update about that (on a 5,1 cMP).

Nice. Your 5,1 will be identical to mine and I can only assume that the physical outer dimensions of the 470 and 480 are the same.

 

[Caesar_091]

I received it with one day in advance but I still have not any display port adapter to test it

Since I'll connect a Dell U2312HM via a DPtoDP cable and an Apple Cinema HD 23" Display via its own DVI cable trough a DVItoDP adapter. I was wondering if there are DVItoDP adapters that are not working good with these kind of setups.

Any idea?

 

[H2SO4]

I received it with one day in advance but I still have not any display port adapter to test it

Since I'll connect a Dell U2312HM via a DPtoDP cable and an Apple Cinema HD 23" Display via its own DVI cable trough a DVItoDP adapter. I was wondering if there are DVItoDP adapters that are not working good with these kind of setups.

Any idea?

I’ve had no problems with getting DVI to other input types unless you’re talking dual link and then it seems to be a crap shoot.

 

[ManuelGomes]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11028/powervr-8xe-plus-announced
Imagination is expanding the lineup. For iPhone that is.

And this:
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-pro-...urce=traqli&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=115
Making room for Vega?

 

[koyoot]

And this:
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-pro-...urce=traqli&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=115
Making room for Vega?

Fury X also on 308$ mark . Yes, they do clear the stock of the GPUs.

 

[koyoot]

koyoot, let us know how it fares.

Its available, unfortunately only in the Chinese market, I can order it, and ship to Poland, but it will cost me fortune.

On the other hand, Hexus.net did unlocked the GPU and did a review of it http://hexus.net/tech/features/systems/101575-unleashing-full-potential-radeon-rx-460/?page=3
Its GTX 1050 level.

 

[Caesar_091]

I've just installed a Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB (21260-00-20G) on my 5,1 cMP.

I followed online tutorial and now macOS 10.12.2 (16C67) show it correctly in the "About this Mac" windows but I'm having an issue (maybe not a real one or maybe a really big one): together with the RX 480 I've installed an old nVidia GeForce GT120 (boot screens matter). An Apple Cinema HD 23" display is connected to the nVidia card (DVI) and a Dell U2312HM is connected to the RX 480 (DP-DP cable). The system is now showing the nVidia card as the "primary graphic card" and I can't run anything OpenGL/OpenCL based at all. Even if I can see the AMD card from system profiler any app I'm trying (benchmarks and games) are giving me the possibility to switch the graphic card.

the only thing that is actually seeing it it GeekBench 4 (i got a 67391 score while running other apps, not a clean reboot).

Any idea/help?

 

[Daniel Reed]

I've just installed a Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB (21260-00-20G) on my 5,1 cMP... the only thing that is actually seeing it it GeekBench 4 (i got a 67391 score while running other apps, not a clean reboot).

Any idea/help?

Something in your setup is off; I'm getting at least 120K on GeekBench4 for a RX 480 8GB via eGPU on a nMP.

Try looking at these:
https://www.theitsage.com/install-radeon-rx-480-gpu-macos-sierra/
https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/18/hand...e-apple-2016-macbook-pro-thunderbolt-3-video/

You may also need to separately run the attached script to get all 36 compute units working.