In a slide presented during a special press event in Australia, AMD showed more details about its Radeon RX 470. It will pack 32 compute units, which adds up to 2,048 Stream Processors, down from the 2,304 Stream Processors offered in the current RX 480 model. The card will also include 4GB of GDDR5 local memory, a 256-bit memory bus size, one 6-pin power connector, and support DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 HDR.
As we already know, AMD’s reference design has a core clock speed of 1,206MHz, 5TFLOPS of compute performance, and a thermal envelope of 100 watts. The memory clock will be lower than the RX 480 at 7HGz, cranking out a total bandwidth of 224GB per second.
Of course, the specs shown at the event are yanked from AMD’s reference design, and partners will naturally have the green light to customize the card and pack on 8GB of GDDR5 memory. The reference design shows that this model will feature the same blower type cooler currently provided on AMD’s Radeon RX 480 reference design, although partners will likely use their own custom solutions.
The smaller Polaris 11-based Radeon RX 460 card is aimed at eSports gaming, packing 14 compute units and 896 Stream Processors. There’s no additional power connector as seen with the larger RX 470 model, and it will come with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, a 128-bit memory bus, and support for DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 HDR.
Unlike its meatier siblings, the RX 460 card is super-compact, making it a great upgrade to small gaming desktops that are lugged around from one eSports event to another. Thus, it’s TDP is less than 75 watts, which explains why it doesn’t have an additional power connector. Unfortunately, the memory clock speed is unknown at the moment, but there’s a possibility that we could see 112GB per second of bandwidth.
AMD reiterated that both cards are based on 14nm FinFET process technology as well as its fourth-generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, the same micro-architecture AMD crammed into the processors currently in use by the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (albeit an older version).
In addition to flashing a few more details about its upcoming cards to the press, the company updated its GPU roadmap in a new slide. It really revealed nothing new save for describing 2017’s Vega GPU architecture as “a high-end architecture for high-end gamers.” Navi appears to target 2018 featuring “scalability” and “next-gen memory.”
AMD launched the Radeon RX 480 card on June 29 that’s based on the company’s Polaris 10 architecture. Out of the three, AMD promotes this card as an affordable solution for premium VR experiences for all consumers, costing $200 for the 4GB model and $250 for the 8GB model. We’ve seen some controversy surrounding this card since its release, but hopefully the new cards won’t have the same issue.
The Radeon RX 470 is expected to cost around $150 when it becomes available early next month. The release date for the smaller card is unknown for the moment, but it’s slated to arrive sometime during this half of 2016 costing a mere $100.
