AMD has repeatedly emphasised that its next generation GPUs are going to provide unparalleled efficiency and performance, and now we get a rough idea of just how much they mean.
According to Benchlife, the upcoming R9 480 series graphics card will be using the “Ellesmere” GPU based on the Polaris 10 architecture. The article states that not only will it be fully capable of running DX12 titles at 1440p, it will have a TDP of around 100W. That’s a huge drop from the R9 380, which uses the Tonga GPU with a TDP of 190W.
Alongside Ellesmere, Benchlife has also mentioned the “Baffin” GPU based on the Polaris 11 architecture. Baffin will be used for the R9 470 series and will undercut Ellesmere’s TDP by half, coming in at just 50W. The article did not say what kind of performance it touts, but we expect that these cards will be primarily targeting the 1080p crowd.
This confirms that AMD is going to completely phase out 28nm GPUs in its performance line. Raja Koduri, Chief Architect Radeon Technologies Group has previously stated that AMD is focusing on using the new 14nm finFETs in as many product segments as possible and bringing more value to the consumers.
Source: Benchlife
Holy moly, the power improvement is big. If the 470 in particular really does have a 50w TDP, it could replace the 750 Ti as the low-power perfromance king.
Being able to slap it into any stock computer with a good 300w psu is a big deal. On the other hand, Nvidia may have something similar with the 1050 (or X50 or whatever they choose to call it) and if so, whichever one provides better price/performance (or absolute performance for some users) will win.
Power efficiency is a big focus for AMD this time around. They’ve been losing to NVIDIA in that regard for a few generations now, and they’re clearly not happy about that.
they lost in one generation, maxwell. And that was half a loss because they had been using hawaii since kepler. Kepler and hawaii weren’t far in power usage. Fiji is similar to stock 980ti in usage.
if r9 480x or r9 490 will be on par with GTX 980 ti for $300 and consumes 135w then im sold…Finally i can upgrade my GTX 660 Ti
the TDPs listed here are complete fabrications… 2560 SP Polaris will be around 160W in games with performance on par with Nano, but rocking 8GB of Vram.
Got a source for that?