AMD Teases Radeon RX 480: Launching June 29th For $199
by Ryan Smith on May 31, 2016 10:00 PM ESTAMD's Full Teaser Text
On June 01, 2016 at 10 a.m. China Standard Time (3 a.m. BST / 4 a.m. CEST) the Radeon Technologies Group will be announcing:
- Radeon™ RX 480 set to drive premium VR experiences into the hands of millions of consumers; priced from just $199
- First Polaris architecture-based graphics processor to deliver VR capability common in $500 GPUs; expected to accelerate the size of the VR-ready install-base and dramatically increase the pace of VR ecosystem growth
- RadeonTM RX 480 specifications including:
| AMD Radeon RX 480 | |
| TFLOPs (FMA) | >5 TFLOPs |
| Compute Units | 36 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 256GB/sec |
| Memory Clock | 8Gbps GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit |
| VRAM | 4GB/8GB |
| Typical Board Power | 150W |
| VR Premium | Yes |
| AMD FreeSync | Yes |
| DisplayPort | 1.3/1.4 HDR |
Set to formally launch on June 29th, the Radeon™ RX 480 will deliver the world’s most affordable solution for premium PC VR experiences, including a model that is both HTC™ Vive Ready and Oculus™ Rift™ certified and delivering VR capability common in $500 GPUs.
In a notable market survey, price was a leading barrier to adoption of VR. The $199 SEP for select Radeon™ RX Series GPUs is an integral part of AMD’s strategy to dramatically accelerate VR adoption and unleash the VR software ecosystem. AMD expects that its aggressive pricing will jumpstart the growth of the addressable market for PC VR and accelerate the rate at which VR headsets drop in price:
- More affordable VR-ready desktops and notebooks: AMD expects that affordable PC VR enabled by Polaris architecture-based graphics cards will drive a wide range of VR-ready desktops and notebooks, providing a catalyst for the expansion of the addressable market to an estimated 100 million consumers over the next 10 years.
- Making VR accessible to consumers in retail: Thus far, retail has not been a viable channel for VR sales as average system costs exceeding $999 have precluded VR-ready PCs from seeing substantial shelf space. The Radeon™ RX Series graphics cards will enable OEMs to build ideally priced VR-ready desktops and notebooks well suited for the retail PC market.
- Unleashing VR developers on a larger audience: Adoption of PC VR technologies by mainstream consumers is expected to spur further developer interest across the ecosystem, unleashing new VR applications in education, entertainment, and productivity as developers seek to capitalize on the growing popularity of the medium.
- Reducing the cost of entry to VR: AMD expects that affordable PC VR enabled by Polaris architecture-based graphics cards will dramatically accelerate the pace of the VR ecosystem, driving greater consumer adoption, further developer interest, and increased production of HMDs, ultimately resulting in a lower cost of entry as prices throughout the VR ecosystem decrease over time.
The Radeon™ RX Series launch represents the first salvo in AMD’s new “Water Drop” strategy aimed at releasing new graphics architectures in high volume segments first to support continued market share growth for Radeon™ GPUs. In May 2016, Mercury Research reported that AMD gained 3.2% market share in discrete GPUs in Q1 2016. The Radeon™ RX Series will address a substantial opportunity in PC gaming: more than 13.8 million PC gamers who spend $100-300 to upgrade their graphics cards, and 84% of competitive and AAA PC gamers. With Polaris architecture-based Radeon™ RX Series graphics cards, AMD intends to redefine the gaming experience in its class, introducing dramatically improved performance and efficiency, support for compelling VR experiences, and incredible features never before possible at these prices.
Supporting Quotes:
“VR is the most eagerly anticipated development in immersive computing ever, and is the realization of AMD’s Cinema 2.0 vision that predicted the convergence of cinematic visuals and interactivity back in 2008,” said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. “As we look to fully connect and immerse humanity through VR, cost remains the daylight between VR being the purview of the wealthy, and universal access for everyone. The Radeon™ RX Series is the disruptive technology that adds rocket fuel to the VR inflection point, turning it into a technology with transformational relevance to consumers.”
“The Radeon™ RX series efficiency is driven by major architectural improvements and the industry’s first 14nm FinFET process technology for discrete GPUs, and could mark an important inflection point in the growth of virtual reality,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy. “By lowering the cost of ownership and increasing the VR TAM, Radeon RX Series has the potential to propel VR-ready systems into retail in higher volumes, drive new levels of VR content investment, and even drive down the cost of VR headsets.”
“We congratulate AMD for bringing a premium VR ready GPU to market at a $199 price point,” said Dan O’Brien, vice president of virtual reality, HTC. “This shows how partners like AMD survey the entire VR ecosystem to bring an innovative Radeon RX Series product to power high end VR systems like the HTC Vive, to the broadest range of consumers.”
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eddman - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
"That is what I mean by owning the laptop market. Owning the rump of what's left of it."Umm, we still don't know anything about nvidia's upcoming mobile GPUs. You cannot be so sure when there is no comparison point. Nvidia will not just sit idle and lose market share.
"With Vulkan I was talking about the big AAA titles, which for at least the past 5 years have been console first. they then port the console build to the PC."
As was I. Again, there are only three main AAA game platforms, PS, xbox and windows, two of which use DX. Vulkan could become popular, but it doesn't mean that developers would abandon the currently known APIs.
Vulkan could take a hold on android and maybe iOS (if it manages to convince developers to abandon Metal) but all of this is irrelevant because AAA games are not released on mobile.
DX12 based on vulkan? You mean completely? Source.
There might be a shift to low-level APIs, but it doesn't mean DX12 will not be popular. It's a well known, powerful API.
"I have read and watched a fair bit about people who have, and have thus taken to the interwebs to bitch about it. MSFT says they'll fix it. I haven't seen any comment about patching DX9 to use more VRAM. Though I have also seen a read a lot about that too."
Did you know that with DX12, game developers can take full control of multi-GPU setups and no longer rely on GPU drivers? Maybe the current games have not been optimized well for said setups.
Just because MS haven't "patched" the old, obsolete DX9, doesn't mean they'd treat DX12 the same.
"What does it have to do with anything? It has everything to do with graphics cards, and the drivers and games that run on them. Not everyone has your use case, or habits."
Sure, but what does that have anything to do with AMD capturing the market?! Just because one old, dx9 game with tons of mods doesn't play well on windows 10, doesn't mean DX12 will fail. The market isn't decided by how skyrim plays.
"You're right, there is nothing stopping Nvidia, except a desire."
They are focusing on other areas because they already have a huge GPU market share. As soon as this share gets threatened, they will react. They will not just give up one of their main money making arms. Desire has nothing to do with it.
praxis22 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
"DX12 based on vulkan? You mean completely?" Completely, no. More as a catchup and because that's the way the industry/weather was moving.Source:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/177407-microsoft...
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/Microsoft-I...
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3mc...
I don't doubt DX12 will be popular, but I still say that AAA will be Vulkan first, eventually, (3 years from now, give or take)
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/an...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2013/0...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-gpu-tv-con...
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/02/16/vulkan-gr...
My point about DX9 is that DX12 is Windows10 (W10) only, and W10 is something MSFT needs the world to adopt. When even Paul Thurrot is shouting about MSFT's "indefensible" behaviour over forced W10 migrations then I think we can say that the adoption curve is behind schedule. The less W10 installs there are, the less demand there is for DX12 only games. For games and game engine companies, that matters. Which is why they're launching engines coded to Vulkan. Valve is also a lead cheerleader for Vulkan and the 600lb gorilla in the PC gaming space.
Again, the PS4 and Xbone are AMD at the core. There is no alternative as Nvidia were not interested, and AMD setup a company division to do the job. (Forbes article above) AMD built Mantle and gave it to the Kronos group, who sucked the best bits into Vulkan. in a few years Vulkan will be the standard that everyone writes to for "gaming" be that PC, mobile or console.
DX12 will not fail, not like Mantle did, but it doesn't have to, if W10 doesn't attract enough users the money and development will go elsewhere, and the PC business is in secular decline, NVidia is just as much a victim of that as MSFT. Unless you're in the commodity business of making things cheaper for the platform that remains, this is where AMD, as a business, appear to be headed, They make the Chips that power the consoles, and thus have some control over the low level drivers & dev kits. Sure Microsoft wants DX12 to succeed, but it wants it's console to do the same.
Again, I'm not an AMD fanboy, I just happen think that the evident business strategy is very clever, doubtless they were lucky too, but as a full stack vertical, they seem to be in a good place to prosper in the declining PC business environment.
VR is the erstwhile saviour of #PCMasterRace but if Google/Android provide a cheap working headset with real presence the need for the Rift/Vive goes away, and with it the need for the PC backend.
eddman - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
"Completely, no. More as a catchup and because that's the way the industry/weather was moving."So it is NOT based on vulkan at all. It was just perhaps inspired by mantle and is simply similar to mantle and vulkan, in the sense that all three are low-level APIs.
"I still say that AAA will be Vulkan first, eventually"
Using the words "might" and "could" won't hurt in that sentence. Right now, there are more available and upcoming DX12 games than vulkan.
"DX12 is Windows10 (W10) only, and W10 is something MSFT needs the world to adopt. When even Paul Thurrot is shouting about MSFT's "indefensible" behaviour over forced W10 migrations then I think we can say that the adoption curve is behind schedule. The less W10 installs there are, the less demand there is for DX12 only games. For games and game engine companies, that matters."
Just recently, windows 10 became the no. 1 OS on steam and is still climbing. Gamers are clearly adopting it fast. The overall, worldwide share of windows 10 is still low, but a huge lot of PC users never play games to begin with, so the steam numbers are a better indication.
I don't doubt that more upcoming games will adopt vulkan, but I don't think we'll see many vulkan only games, except for games made by id Software.
"Which is why they're launching engines coded to Vulkan."
You don't know that for sure. There could be many reasons. Maybe they just don't want to rely on one API alone.
"Valve is also a lead cheerleader for Vulkan and the 600lb gorilla in the PC gaming space."
Of course they are. They are desperately trying to make SteamOS happen. They have an agenda, not that it's a bad thing.
"Again, the PS4 and Xbone are AMD at the core. There is no alternative as Nvidia were not interested, and AMD setup a company division to do the job. (Forbes article above) AMD built Mantle and gave it to the Kronos group, who sucked the best bits into Vulkan."
I don't see why it matters if consoles use AMD chips or not. Their GPUs work just as good with DX12.
"in a few years Vulkan will be the standard that everyone writes to for "gaming" be that PC, mobile or console."
How come you never write "could" and "might"? You are so sure as if you went to the future and came back.
"if W10 doesn't attract enough users the money and development will go elsewhere, and the PC business is in secular decline"
Windows 10 is gaining among gamers, and is no. 1 on steam as I pointed out, and X1 is DX12 too.
"NVidia is just as much a victim of that as MSFT. Unless you're in the commodity business of making things cheaper for the platform that remains, this is where AMD, as a business, appear to be headed,"
NVidia still offers cheaper GPUs and will keep offering them. No change there. Gamers usually buy cards based on their price/performance, be it NVidia or AMD.
"They make the Chips that power the consoles, and thus have some control over the low level drivers & dev kits. Sure Microsoft wants DX12 to succeed, but it wants it's console to do the same."
Are you implying that AMD will cripple DX12 on xbox? MS would never allow that. Actually, MS themselves might be involved in writing the drivers. There is no way MS won't make DX12 run as fast as possible on their own console.
"Again, I'm not an AMD fanboy, I just happen think that the evident business strategy is very clever, doubtless they were lucky too, but as a full stack vertical, they seem to be in a good place to prosper in the declining PC business environment."
Never thought you were. The PC business still mainly relies on price/performance, not APIs. As long as NVidia keeps things competitive, they will keep selling.
"VR is the erstwhile saviour of #PCMasterRace but if Google/Android provide a cheap working headset with real presence the need for the Rift/Vive goes away, and with it the need for the PC backend. "
AAA games come out on consoles and PCs. As long as they keep their lead in performance over mobile, it'd stay that way, VR or no VR.
praxis22 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
'How come you never write "could" and "might"? You are so sure as if you went to the future and came back.'It's called a narrative argument, (look it up) as opposed to rebutting statements. Which stands in many cases as an opening gambit to a Staw Man or Reduction ad Absurdum.
"Are you implying that AMD will cripple DX12 on xbox?" No. Far from it, I think AMD have actually a vested interest in DX12 over and above Vulkan. They want as much support for their cards as possible, preferably support that doesn't require them to write the drivers. This is part of the whole push to Vulkan, offloading the driver support to the games writers, via the low level API.
I would argue that Price/Performance is only relevant at the low end. Nobody who buys an expensive card cares about that, they want speed and/or specs. Objectively by that measure my R9 390 is a lousy card due to the power requirements. My 850W PSU sounds like a hurricane when I have a game running, but I wanted the speed and VRAM, and I pay the electric bill, so.
I appreciate you disagree with what I say, but where is your argument?
praxis22 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
Ah, the curse of auto correct... Reductio Ad Absurdumeddman - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
FYI, I love AMD's push for fast but cheap cards. It'd be a win for consumers a.k.a me, but to think that this would suddenly tip the market share scale, would be wishful thinking.praxis22 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
Given the timescales involved with AAA games, (typically 3-5 years) I think "suddenly" is the wrong term. Like I said, give it three years.piiman - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
" since Direct X12 doesn't support dual cards"say what?
praxis22 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
With DX12 and Vulkan, there are two forms of Multi-Adapter support. Implicit & explicit. Implicit Multi-Adapter is when the OS does it for you, this mode is the one where the OS can use two different cards, AMD +Nvidia, Nvidia +Intel, etc. And games that write directly against DX12 can use the two cards as one device.Explicit Multi-Adpater is enabled at the application level, (by games) and requires that all cards are identical.
It is my understanding that DX12 on Windows 10 does not currently support Implicit Multi-Adapter, though MSFT have promised to fix that. All the DX12 games seen so far have been Explicit Multi-Adapter when they have supported multiple cards at all.
extide - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
It supports both. THIS VERY SITE has tested both configurations. You can do it yourself as well will software and hardware already on the market. Dude, while you may be an experienced economist, you don't really know much about the computer hardware/pc gaming world. I mean honestly, if the RX 480 competed with the 1070, AMD would be selling it for $299, not $199. It would STILL be an amazing deal and they would sell shitloads of them, plenty enough to gain marketshare even.