The AMD Radeon RX 480 Preview: Polaris Makes Its Mainstream Mark
by Ryan Smith on June 29, 2016 9:00 AM ESTFirst Thoughts
Bringing our first look at AMD’s new architecture to a close, it’s exciting to see the field shape up for the FinFET generation. After over four years since the last great node transition, we once again are making a very welcome jump to a new manufacturing process, bringing us AMD’s Polaris.
AMD learned a lot from the 28nm generation – and more often than not the hard way – and they have put those lessons to good use in Polaris. Polaris’s power efficiency has been greatly increased thanks to a combination of GlobalFoundries 14nm FinFET process and AMD’s own design choices, and as a result, compared to AMD’s last-generation parts, Polaris makes significant strides where it needs to. And this goes not just for energy efficiency, but overall performance/resource efficiency as well.
Because AMD is launching with a mainstream part first they don’t get to claim to be charting any new territory on absolute performance. But by being the first vendor to address the mainstream market with a FinFET-based GPU, AMD gets the honor of redefining the price, performance, and power expectations of this market. And the end result is better performance – sometimes remarkably so – for this high volume market.
Relative to last-generation mainstream cards like the GTX 960 or the Radeon R9 380, with the Radeon RX 480 we’re looking at performance gains anywhere between 45% and 70%, depending on the card, the games, and the memory configuration. As the mainstream market was last refreshed less than 18 months ago, the RX 480 generally isn’t enough to justify an upgrade. However if we extend the window out to cards 2+ years old to things like the Radeon R9 280 and GeForce GTX 760, then we have a generational update and then-some. AMD Pitcairn users (Radeon HD 7800, R9 270) should be especially pleased with the progress AMD has made from one mainstream GPU to the next.
Looking at the overall performance picture, averaged across all of our games, the RX 480 lands a couple of percent ahead of NVIDIA’s popular GTX 970, and similarly ahead of AMD’s own Radeon R9 390, which is consistent with our performance expectations based on AMD’s earlier hints. RX 480 can't touch GTX 1070, which is some 50% faster, but then it's 67% more expensive as well.
Given the 970/390 similarities, from a price perspective this means that 970/390 performance has come down by around $90 since these cards were launched, from $329 to $239 for the more powerful RX 480 8GB, or $199 when it comes to 4GB cards. In the case of the AMD card power consumption is also down immensely as well, in essence offering Hawaii-like performance at around half of the power. However against the GTX 970 power consumption is a bit more of a mixed bag – power consumption is closer than I would have expected under Crysis 3 – and this is something to further address in our full review.
Finally, when it comes to the two different memory capacities of the RX 480, for the moment I’m leaning strongly towards the 8GB card. Though the $40 price increase represents a 20% price premium, history has shown that when mainstream cards launch at multiple capacities, the smaller capacity cards tend to struggle far sooner than their larger counterparts. In that respect the 8GB RX 480 is far more likely to remain useful a couple of years down the road, making it a better long-term investment.
Wrapping things up then, today’s launch of the Radeon RX 480 puts AMD in a good position. They have the mainstream market to themselves, and RX 480 is a strong showing for their new Polaris architecture. AMD will have to fend off NVIDIA at some point, but for now they can sit back and enjoy another successful launch.
Meanwhile we’ll be back in a few days with our full review of the RX 480, so be sure to stay tuned.
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stereopticon - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
the gtx 970's price could easily be dropped to 240 to competesmilingcrow - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
In the UK the 970 is already cheaper than the RX 480 8GB if you shop around which is where it should be priced I think.The RX 480 only has one redeeming feature but that's an important one; PRICE.
ptmnc1 - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
Well, it *could*, I suppose. But the 970 is a 398mm² chip and the 480 is a 232mm² chip so AMD can make 1.7x as many from the same wafer even before accounting for yields. With similar memory systems there's no way for nVidia to win a price war at this performance level with its 28nm parts.DigitalFreak - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
AMD has no monies to fight a price war. Nvidia could drive them out of the market right now if they wanted to. They won't because of monopoly concerns.ptmnc1 - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
nVidia can't flog 970s below cost without various anti-dumping laws kicking in as well as the risk of having their company disassembled. Plus AMD would still be making a profit at that point.Yojimbo - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I'm pretty sure that NVIDIA wouldn't have to sell the 970 for below cost to use it to compete or even undercut the current MSRP of the RX 480. NVIDIA's profit margins are significantly higher than AMD's to begin with. If NVIDIA prices the GTX 970 at just below the price as the RX 480, they probably sell more of them than AMD sells of the RX 480s. A price of the 970 GPU to AIB partners which would allow them to sell their card for $180 should not be below cost. I really don't know how such accounting works, but I am guessing that most of the research, development, and validation costs have already been amortized. Production cost of the chip really is not that much, comparitively. Surely regulators must recognize a cost advantage of a long-run production of a product.fanofanand - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I'm not sure anti-dumping laws apply to obsolete (based on not being the latest) hardware. How else would a company be expected to clear out existing inventory prior to a product refresh?ptmnc1 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Yojimbo: The 970 has almost exactly the same memory system as the 4GB 480, the only differences in manufacturing costs are going to be the other parts of the board (e.g. VRMs) and the chip itself. The principal cost difference is going to be the chip, and when it's a 232mm² chip vs a 398mm² chip, the latter is going to cost a lot more to make even if yields on Samsung's 14LPP aren't as great as TSMC's 28nm: as long as they're not catastrophically worse (and there's no indication that's the case), there's just no way to build a 970 cheaper than a 4GB 480.On monopolies, you don't have to abuse one in order to attract a lot of undesirable attention from regulators.
fanoffanand: There's a difference between clearing existing obsolete inventory and deliberately manufacturing new inventory at a loss for the purpose of pushing a competitor out of business.
Yojimbo - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
The major cost of a chip is research, development, testing, and validation, not manufacturing costs. I assume these costs must be amortized over the life of the product. I am guessing that NVIDIA has already mostly done so, because they have sold a whole lot of chips already. You are worried about dumping, well how can the government come in and say NVIDIA is selling below cost when their research, development, testing, and validation costs logically apply over a run of 2 years, during which they already sold a high volume of chips?Regardless of whether it costs more or less for NVIDIA to make a 970 than AMD an RX 480 (I agree that the AMD RX 480 production costs should be lower), I feel confident in saying that NVIDIA doesn't need to sell at below cost to sell a 970 at a price below $200.
"On monopolies, you don't have to abuse one in order to attract a lot of undesirable attention from regulators."
Regulators don't just sit there and watch everything. NVIDIA would have to be sued for abuse of power, i.e., some company would need to be willing to spend money to oppose NVIDIA. If NVIDIA does not abuse its market position they shouldn't be too concerned with losing such a suit. If they don't plan on making any aquisitions in the GPU space then i think they don't need to worry about regulators. I'm mainly just repeating what I already said here, but you aren't saying what sort of "undesirable attention" you see NVIDIA getting or how it will affect them, so I'm not sure what else I can do.
fanofanand - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Nvidia isn't currently manufacturing new 970s.