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

So I just grabbed a RX 480 ROM from TechPowerUp to discover that Apple finally included a framebuffer personality which matches a standard PCI card perfectly! :eek:
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".

A matching framebuffer personality is often the only way to achieve 100% functionality, including multi-screen support, correct display name, 100% working ports and others. On older cards the generic "RadeonFramebuffer" is often working well, but on newer cards like Hawaii (with "beta" drivers) and Tonga there's often no other way than manually creating a framebuffer patch to enable all ports and get rid of some bugs.

I've posted some more technical details over @ netkas.org.
 
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Fl0r!an said:
So I just grabbed a RX 480 ROM from TechPowerUp to discover that Apple finally included a framebuffer personality which matches a standard PCI card perfectly! :eek:
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".

A matching framebuffer personality is often the only way to achieve 100% functionality, including multi-screen support, correct display name, 100% working ports and others. On older cards the generic "RadeonFramebuffer" is often working well, but on newer cards like Hawaii (with "beta" drivers) and Tonga there's often no other way than manually creating a framebuffer patch to enable all ports and get rid of some bugs.

I've posted some more technical details over @ netkas.org.
Click to expand...

So there's a possibility of ripping a future Apple EFI and loading it to the card.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
So there's a possibility of ripping a future Apple EFI and loading it to the card.
Click to expand...

Apple has been packing the GPU subsystem ROM into the ROM of the overall system. It is as simple general approach of a "copy and paste" (with relatively minor tweaking). If the graphics subsystem is fully integrated, it makes sense to integrate the ROM. What other system is this card going into? None. So why is the ROM "roaming around"? No good reason. [ Integrated into ROM doesn't completely obviate upgrades, it just makes it is a more holistics system upgrade that would need to be done. It eliminates cheap, knock-off 3rd party upgrades. It is highly unlikely Apple was ever a big fan of folks taking their sponsored ROMs and making money off of them cutting Apple out of the loop. ]
 
Fl0r!an said:
So I just grabbed a RX 480 ROM from TechPowerUp to discover that Apple finally included a framebuffer personality which matches a standard PCI card perfectly! :eek:
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".

A matching framebuffer personality is often the only way to achieve 100% functionality, including multi-screen support, correct display name, 100% working ports and others. On older cards the generic "RadeonFramebuffer" is often working well, but on newer cards like Hawaii (with "beta" drivers) and Tonga there's often no other way than manually creating a framebuffer patch to enable all ports and get rid of some bugs.

I've posted some more technical details over @ netkas.org.
Click to expand...
This can mean that user "No One" from "Mac Pro Rising" thread may know he/she was talking about. Very interesting, Fl0r!an, thank you.
 
throAU said:
I'll be waiting for Anandtech. ....
Click to expand...

We'll see, You may be waiting an extended period of time. Since the folks who own "Tom's Hardware" took over Anandtech the "grab the first day post embargo" reviews seem to appear on "tom's" before making it to Anandtech. This is a pretty big add-in ( and have probably had the card for a while) so decent chance they will do at least an "initial thoughts" piece.

.... oops. No need to guess. Yes, an "initial thoughts" piece.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10446/the-amd-radeon-rx-480-preview/7


The review branding between the two is "fast , breaking" ... Toms.
Long and in depth review "Anandtech".
 
deconstruct60 said:
We'll see, You may be waiting an extended period of time. Since the folks who own "Tom's Hardware" took over Anandtech the "grab the first day post embargo" reviews seem to appear on "tom's" before making it to Anandtech. This is a pretty big add-in ( and have probably had the card for a while) so decent chance they will do at least an "initial thoughts" piece.

.... oops. No need to guess. Yes, an "initial thoughts" piece.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10446/the-amd-radeon-rx-480-preview/7


The review branding between the two is "fast , breaking" ... Toms.
Long and in depth review "Anandtech".
Click to expand...

Anandtech did no productivity apps

But anyway right now the Nano or Titan X look like they will be going in my PC because the prices are tumbling while the retailers are overcharging for 1070/1080z.

For the cMP I think the 480 looks like a good deal because I don't want some Nvidia card that makes me do juggling tricks every time there's a system update. Cmon Sierra.
 
First GPU that came to life on 28 nm from AMD was... HD 7870. 110W power consumption. Currently RX 480 is 2 times faster and consumes almost 50% more power. I have to say, the release is pretty much disappointing.

It is funny that both Nvidia and AMD disappointed in some way with this release.
 
deconstruct60 said:
If the graphics subsystem is fully integrated, it makes sense to integrate the ROM. What other system is this card going into? None. So why is the ROM "roaming around"? No good reason.
Click to expand...

The Mac stills needs to carry a separate EFI display driver and a VBIOS somewhere, which can both easily be dumped, even if they're not located on a discrete chip. No way to install Windows when the whole subsystem is "100% Apple proprietary".
We won't see an UGA EFI again though, so even a "Polaris Apple EFI" won't run on the cMP.

MVC/netkas however should be able to apply their "Maxwell magic" to the Polaris ROM and use the mentioned framebuffer to create a "RX 480 Mac Edition" (given Apple will add the missing device ID to X4000.kext...). From my understanding their approach quite universal and should work with any UEFI compliant GPU.
Two of those in a cMP will humiliate the nMP in apps like FCPX.

Additionally (and that's what I'm interested in) it's a good sign that Polaris will receive decent OS X / Hackintosh support. If we solve the (Hackintosh specific) power management issues we'll finally get a great GPU supported by Apples stock drivers.
 
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Fl0r!an said:
So I just grabbed a RX 480 ROM from TechPowerUp to discover that Apple finally included a framebuffer personality which matches a standard PCI card perfectly! :eek:
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".

A matching framebuffer personality is often the only way to achieve 100% functionality, including multi-screen support, correct display name, 100% working ports and others. On older cards the generic "RadeonFramebuffer" is often working well, but on newer cards like Hawaii (with "beta" drivers) and Tonga there's often no other way than manually creating a framebuffer patch to enable all ports and get rid of some bugs.

I've posted some more technical details over @ netkas.org.
Click to expand...

Should we base on this and start a new rumour that Apple will go back to the tower design? :D
 
I should have mentioned that AMD9500Controller also contains a framebuffer with 6x DP, similar to what we know from MP6,1.

I don't think they added this FB for no reason though (or even more unlikely: to do us a favor :D). I'm pretty sure AMD delivers prototypes in every shape or form to Apple, they won't need to use the standard reference design in their engineering machines. AMD8000Controller (-> Hawaii / Grenada, Bonaire) didn't contain anything close to the reference design (or any other PCIE card), and neither did AMD9000 (-> Tonga, Fiji).

So they might have something in the works.
 
Fl0r!an, one thing is interesting for me: is there any indication that Fiji might be linked to MP framebuffer?
 
Fiji belongs to AMD9000Controller, which contains 7 framebuffers in total:
  • Exmoor & Labrador: 4x DP + 2x LVDS
  • OPM, Grayhound & Baladi: 6x DP
  • Basset: 2x LVDS, 2x DP
  • GrayhoundS: 1x HDMI
Exmoor and Labrador are the ones used by Tonga-based 5K iMacs, the remaining ones should be unused. Leaves 3 "nMP-ish" framebuffers for Tonga- and Fiji-based GPUs.
 
so will this card only work in osx10.12?
(im still on osx10.10.5 and happy)
 

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As predicted, it's a mixed bag.
AMD knew it wasn't all roses so they let it fly for a while.
Still good value of course, but the temps and clocks worry a bit.
The GDDR5 only issue has me thinking. Does the mem controller really support GDDR5X? I' starting to have doubts.
 
ManuelGomes said:
As predicted, it's a mixed bag.
AMD knew it wasn't all roses so they let it fly for a while.
Still good value of course, but the temps and clocks worry a bit.
The GDDR5 only issue has me thinking. Does the mem controller really support GDDR5X? I' starting to have doubts.
Click to expand...
AMD is cute. They said to Techpowerup, that they deliberately designed such ****** reference design so that AIB versions can look better.

That is pure marketing LOL.
 
ManuelGomes said:
As predicted, it's a mixed bag.
AMD knew it wasn't all roses so they let it fly for a while.
Still good value of course, but the temps and clocks worry a bit.
The GDDR5 only issue has me thinking. Does the mem controller really support GDDR5X? I' starting to have doubts.
Click to expand...

Given the midrange performance, GDDR5X would be overkill. Nvidia's GTX 1070 isn't held back by its GDDR5 and its much faster than the RX 480.

koyoot said:
AMD is cute. They said to Techpowerup, that they deliberately designed such ****** reference design so that AIB versions can look better.

That is pure marketing LOL.
Click to expand...

It seems to me they designed a reference cooler and PCB for a ~100 W card. Maybe once Polaris hit manufacturing they realized it wasn't going to hit their targets but shipped anyways. This would help explain the excessive power draw from the PCIe slot since it was too late to give it more than a 6-pin power supply.
 
Stacc said:
....
It seems to me they designed a reference cooler and PCB for a ~100 W card. Maybe once Polaris hit manufacturing they realized it wasn't going to hit their targets but shipped anyways.
Click to expand...

since AMD is also shipping ~100W card later a alternative is that just reusing parts and most of the design from those lower power boards. It isn't like AMD is sitting on top of a pile money burning a hole in their pocket.

It just seems highly doubtful that the target of those other were much lower than 100W. So they had 100-120W coolers to do anyway. AMD could have just put very low effort into overclocking reference designs. Just leave all of that the 3rd parties.
 
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