AMD, where art thou?

The main problem isn't a new modular standard, it's no modular standard. It's seems like Pascal chips are moving towards being all soldered.

 

Really DataShell. Is this confirmed? The silence on Pascal doesn't help but I hope this is not confirmed!

 

Pascal is one thing... but does this apply to Arctic Islands?
Seriously... why are people raving on Nvidia so much when AMD was the one who worked on and introduced HBM (second generation of which Pascal is due to use), and was also stated that Arctic Islands will be a completely new architecture, pretty much achieving the same thing like Pascal and also using HBM2 exclusively (actually, I think that on AMD's side, GDDR5X was not even mentioned as being used).

 

summer 2016 is like next life. Too much time

 

Pascal hasn't been confirmed soldered.
Bet you anything Pascal will have MXM options still available for enthusiast machines with both sporting GDDR5X for the first gen.
Perhaps the refresh will get HBM2 if they can manage to integrate it. If so it'll likely gain performance from its power saving and TDP headroom on mobile devices rather than the increase in bandwidth.

Still, we're also heard rumors about Pascal being a PITA to keep cool - that could pose a real problem. All of this is pure speculation (at least from me) , but it would explain the lack of info available.

 

Yeah, I know it hasn't been confirmed soldered. I too suspect that there will be MXM stuff available at the top end for the next few years, not least because a certain manufacturer has promised MXM upgrades to one of its laptops for the next two generations. The point is though, that modularity is being slowly snuffed out, to the point where it's likely that Pascal will have only it's top end GPU be upgradable. It might well be gone by the time we hit Volta.

 

I wonder if AMD beats Nvidia to release first....
http://www.hwbattle.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=news&wr_id=15345




Related mysterious tweet from AMD`s Raja in late November

 

Your first link opens suspicious tab with OK button and Chinese letters. Is it safe?

 

Maybe they can finally fix the extreme performance disparity between nVidia and AMD in Linux finally... AMD certainly doesn't seem interested in doing it.

 

Isn't AMD considered to be a good guy in Linux community with their open source drivers (if I'm not mistaken) and such? Kinda sound ironic...

 

Here's a great example... AMD-optimized game no less.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=dirt-showdown-linux&num=3

Here's the nail in the coffin

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=steamos-22-gpus&num=1

 

Why even bother talking about AMD at this point? We haven't seen a new MXM card since 2013, and the "E8950 MXM" will be embedded systems only, not to be released to consumer laptops as per an AMD rep I spoke to.

 

I won't complain - AMD optimized (Gaming Evolved if I remember it right) titles always ran great on my 240m (as great as it could handle that is). Can say the same for nVidia...

 

When you have a Fermi GTX 460 beating a Fury you've got a problem.

 

So their response to 980M is an embedded chip? Makes sense...

Who uses SteamOS? And if they do, why??!?!? How is this better than using Ubuntu? And for gaming, how is this better than just using Windows?

Just wondering why AMD should care about SteamOS.

 

Well, we have known for a while now that AMD's Linux performance was adequate for what it needed to do, but it also lost heavily to Nvidia gpu's every time.
It's lack of optimization on their part... though, if I'm not mistaken, AMD did advertise for a job opening that would deal with their Linux drivers... that was several months ago.

As for mobile solutions from AMD... I wouldn't expect anything until 2016.

 

SteamOS is based on Debian 8 so it still counts as Linux. As a matter of fact if you go into settings and enable desktop mode, its a full-fledged Debian 8 Jessie install once you add the repos for it.

 

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-hbm-apu-spotted/
APU news, but it does sound interesting.

 

No. They're not responding, and I honestly can't fathom how you could even begin to interpret it as such. It's been said and explained over and over again: AMD will not make moves in the high-end mobile GPU market until they've made a significant comeback on the desktop side. No one likes it, but it's the smartest and best course of action for them to dedicate their R&D resources to. Don't draw comparisons where comparisons don't exist. It's literally like saying 'Bluboo's response to the Samsung Galaxy S7 is the X550?! LOL'. We likely won't see anything exciting on the mobile front for AMD until sometime after Zen launches, either late 2016 or Q1/Q2 of 2017. I don't like it either, but Nvidia doesn't exactly play nice.

 

If you all want to argue about SteamOS, take it to another thread please. Removed all the bickering posts.

 

Here's something more about Polaris (which according to this article seems to be oriented towards laptops) :
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/04/amd-polaris/

It does mention improved memory use, however, nothing that indicates HBM (at least, not yet).
In regards to 4K, there's only mention about being friendly for HEVC video, though not 4K gaming.

I wouldn't mind seeing a GPU with Polaris architecture (which would likely be 2.5 times more energy efficient than Fiji/Fury line) that was made in a same way Fury Nano was (with HBM2 this time around though) and performance that would likely surpass Nano at 100W nicely.

 

More info on AMD Polaris:
http://wccftech.com/amd-polaris/

Very interesting.
Low/mid range parts seem to be slated to be released in 2 months, and high-end parts during summer if I'm not mistaken.

Also, it seems the showcased demo was with an early engineering part... so we could see more improvements in efficiency and performance.

 

I'm actually interested in MXM high end cards from AMD this year. I feel like they'll finally come back into the mobile market.

 

Great, but it means nothing to us mobile users if it never makes it to a MXM card. AMD hasn't given us something new since 2013 in the MXM form factor.

 

And yet, the first link about Polaris on top of this page... this one: http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/04/amd-polaris/

seems to indicate that Polaris is built for mobile gaming.
Also, the second (upper link) says this:
" This new graphics card is going to be the smallest in the family with major focus on mobile platforms and power efficiency. "

So, what exactly are you complaining about?
Lack of mention of MXM is nothing. How many times did articles of Nvidia's new architectures mention MXM?
Very few to none.

 

Someone has to make and use this MXM module. Other than DELL I don't anyone else currently to do so.

 

Indeed.
Though, historically, AMD wasn't really that good in the mid-range sector of mobile gaming when it came to GPU's (apart from 4xxx and 5xxx era?).

Since then, AMD was apparently mostly focusing on high-end segments... there was little to no mention of mid-range gpu options, and if there were... there was maybe 1 mid-range gpu they released... which might have been the reason why it wasn't taken up?
High-end solutions ranging up to 7xxx series seem to have been mostly taken up by various manufacturers... though their successor wasn't (which incidentally has the same TDP as 980M, and yet no one wanted to take it up).

We might see a shift this time around where AMD has a broad range of solutions

 

If AMD makes good chips in an acceptable power envelope, then I'm sure CLEVO will once again have them as official options for the higher end MXM laptops.

 

If all this Polaris (the heck happened to Arctic Islands?) talk is legit, then they'd be downright stupid not to have some cards in the low to mid range in the mobile sector.

 

Do we have reasons to think that 'all this Polaris talk' isn't legit?
2 separate sources now claim that low to mid-range Polaris is slated for release 2 months from now... with high end solutions coming later.

We also had indications of AMD's Arctic Islands (aka Polaris?) releasing around these time frames, albeit it was generally thought that this was for desktops... so with Polaris specifically being stated to be mobile (and featuring pretty much everything Arctic Islands were initially said to), indicates that we should (theoretically) have mid-range mobile solutions in 2 or 3 months time (and possibly ahead of Pascal?).

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but AMD doesn't have too much control over which OEM's take up their products.
In this area, they seem to be in pretty much the same boat like they are with their APU's...
If this is the case, it might complicate matters... but considering that AMD actually focused on power efficiency and performance this time around, I think we stand a good chance of OEM's adopting these mid-range mobile solutions (at least Carrizo on the APU side saw some mild increase in uptakes in USA... but the uptake seems to have been biggest here in EU).

 

AMD have been talking to some sites about it at CES so I'd say it's pretty legit. I also wonder what happened to Arctic Islands too. Perhaps it's just a name change. I'm hoping it's more than that though.

 

Isn't Polaris a new name for the architecture? Same as Graphics Core Next, now being called Polaris. Thus Arctic Islands is the name of new GPUs lineup within this architecture.

http://videocardz.com/58021/amds-polaris-to-succeed-graphics-core-next-architecture