Techspot: AMD Polaris 10 performance will reportedly be on par with Radeon 390/390X

[Kuntantee]

Engaging in a debate with average laymen is always a mistake.

[Noctifer616]

Engaging in a debate with average laymen is always a mistake.

You know that and yet you did it. You know better but you still did it. Quite stupid.



Infracted for flaming.

[Gaidax]

Engaging in a debate with average laymen is always a mistake.

I am glad you admit you are not that smart, a fine trait of a fine man, your excellency.

[Kuntantee]

You know that and yet you did it. You know better but you still did it. Quite stupid.

Still miles less stupid than claiming 14nm GPU R&D is less expensive than it's production.

[Gaidax]

Still miles less stupid than claiming 14nm GPU R&D is less expensive than it's production.

Who claimed that exactly?

[Noctifer616]

Still miles less stupid than claiming 14nm GPU R&D is less expensive than it's production.

My claim was R&D of the entire 14nm process, not 14nm GPU. The R&D cost that Intel has invested into 14nm is far greater than what NVidia and AMD invested in 14/16nm GPU's. Building fabs and equipment is extremely expensive and the cost has increased over the years.

[Rixis]

Can you children please shut the fuck up.

If you can't behave like adults don't post.

[Artorius]

AMD and Nvidia don't even put that much R&D money into manufacturing. AMD used to do when they owned their fabs, nowadays this is GloFo's responsibility.

Both AMD and Nvidia are design companies, they don't manufacture their own chips. Process development comes from the companies who actually do manufacturing nowadays, like Intel, Samsung, GlobalFoundries, TSMC...

Intel and Samsung are hybrid companies, they do their designs and can manufacture them because they have their own fabs and their own manufacturing processes. AMD used to be one of those companies too.

Qualcomm, AMD, Nvidia, Apple, MediaTek, HiSilicon and many many others are design companies and they have to contract one (or more) of the manufacturing companies to manufacture their designs.

[draykorinee]

Lol.

You're stupid.

No you.

What even was that.

[Drunkenvalley]

I was, and still am tbh, fairly pissed off by the prices we're seeing in Norway... but some folks at DigitalImpuls, a relatively small chain for computer parts, were polite enough to show me their internal product page. They were making 122 NOK off the card, even while the sale price of the card at 2999 NOK is some good 20% over MSRP+VAT in Norway.

TL;DR - It sounds like a lot of suppliers are taking the cake and eating it too before vendors get the cards.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I was, and still am tbh, fairly pissed off by the prices we're seeing in Norway... but some folks at DigitalImpuls, a relatively small chain for computer parts, were polite enough to show me their internal product page. They were making 122 NOK off the card, even while the sale price of the card at 2999 NOK is some good 20% over MSRP+VAT in Norway.

TL;DR - It sounds like a lot of suppliers are taking the cake and eating it too before vendors get the cards.

They were making 13 euro off graphics card that they were selling for ~340? Yeah, that's not the vendor's fault for the high price, and not tax either.

[Drunkenvalley]

They were making 13 euro off graphics card that they were selling for ~340? Yeah, that's not the vendor's fault for the high price, and not tax either.

Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Kuntantee]

I was, and still am tbh, fairly pissed off by the prices we're seeing in Norway... but some folks at DigitalImpuls, a relatively small chain for computer parts, were polite enough to show me their internal product page. They were making 122 NOK off the card, even while the sale price of the card at 2999 NOK is some good 20% over MSRP+VAT in Norway.

TL;DR - It sounds like a lot of suppliers are taking the cake and eating it too before vendors get the cards.

That's the case here in Turkey as well. GTX 1080 is equal to a luxurious entry-level engineer salary (3K Lira) because of taxes and all the ripoff. Overwhelming majority of engineers do not get that much at entry positions. These prices are outrageous...

[justflayin]

Yeah this wasn't the smartest decision really. If the card was meant to be mid-ranged why on earth would you ever compare it with the flagship model of Nvidia? That
's only going to make people think that 480 must be it's competitor then, no matter that it was meant as crossfire and in a single game.

Exactly. And I hate to be 'that' guy, but Ashes has so so so many factors besides just GPU performance. I saw one test with a 480 and a haswell 6 core and then a 1070 with a 4770K...like pls guys.

[dadev]

They don't lower their yield, they just adjust for demand. For example, if AMD made 300 Polaris chips but only 100 of them are fully working. The other 200 are defective in some way, and engineers put the chips through testing to see which chips can be salvaged into RX 370's. Lets say about 150 of them, and the other 50 are thrown away cause they couldn't be saved. But AMD sells more RX 370's than 380's, so they may end up taking some perfectly working Polaris 10 chips and disabling them into a working RX 370.

Why not sell more 380's for a lower price? Cause AMD doesn't want to devalue the 380's for the customers benefits. Like I said, capitalism. Not all the chips from this wafer is a 100% working chip. Some have defects.

But isn't this exactly that? Artificially lowering yield?
Although exact numbers are usually a trade secret, the yield should hover at at least 90% for a product to be profitable. This means that AMD (or whoever) will burn through high end chips, for which the process is more expensive, only to sell about 20% of them? I'm no businessman (neither a process engineer) but that sounds all wrong to me. Is it really more profitable to do this?

Down-binning due to defects is no big secret and been a standard practice for 2 decades or so, that also means that some fully functional chips will be down-binned, but I really wouldn't expect their number to be more than a few percents of the total chips down-binned.

[Deleted]

But isn't this exactly that? Artificially lowering yield?
Although exact numbers are usually a trade secret, the yield should hover at at least 90% for a product to be profitable. This means that AMD (or whoever) will burn through high end chips, for which the process is more expensive, only to sell about 20% of them? I'm no businessman (neither a process engineer) but that sounds all wrong to me. Is it really more profitable to do this?

Down-binning due to defects is no big secret and been a standard practice for 2 decades or so, that also means that some fully functional chips will be down-binned, but I really wouldn't expect their number to be more than a few percents of the total chips down-binned.

if they need 90% to be profitable i don't know how they are still in business. I don't think they ever reach that high except after years of perfecting the process (on medium sized chips)

and then there is stuff like this http://electroiq.com/blog/2016/02/yi...nm-and-beyond/

[satimy]

The question for me now is a sapphire480 or wait for an aftermarket 1060

[Artorius]

The RX480 is selling for 432.53 USD here after conversion, hue.

[dadev]

if they need 90% to be profitable i don't know how they are still in business. I don't think they ever reach that high except after years of perfecting the process (on medium sized chips)

Yeah, I had Intel in mind who invest the most into new processes. And the number is for stabilized production. Some people told me (about 3 years ago) that, if the stable yield would drop below 90% Intel will stop investing in new process because it will not be worth it. It was 3 years ago, so policies might have changed, but looking at that graph of yours it doesn't look far from the truth for that time.
Anyway, looking at that graph extrapolation, for 14nm the cumulative yield is above 70%. So it's still nowhere near the initially implied 33%.

[Vash The Stampede]

The question for me now is a sapphire480 or wait for an aftermarket 1060

Current rumors suggest the 1060 is 3Gb at $250 and 6GB at $280. That's more than a RX 480. I would wait for more rumors to see what the 1060 is sitting at. It's suggested to be +15% faster than the RX 480 but by the time the 1060 reaches the market we may see RX 480's approaching that speed.

If you can afford to wait then wait. Amazon has them for $300+ with crazy low ratings of people complaining of high prices. NewEgg has the RX 480's priced exactly at MSRP, but out of stock. Doesn't look like AMD is doing it any better than Nvidia.