Mobile Polaris Discussion

Why? I don't think there are any laptops out there anymore without support for dual graphics cards anymore either from AMD or Nvidia. In fact, unless you stuff a server-grade CPU into your laptop, it doesn't actually make any sense to do that as you will have the iGPU on the CPU whether you want it or not. As long as it is handled properly, it's not hurting anyone. I do like having the option to manually select the GPU to be used (for the system as a whole, not just per program) which my current 5 year old laptop has, but newer models generally do not.

 

Tested the new driver with my first undervolt seetings, and both the core power consumption and graphics score went up (7w and about 600 points). However, my CPU and combined score went down, so I'm looking into that.
EDIT: Got the physics score back up to before, which isn't saying much. Core consumption also dropped by 3w from previous run.

Spoiler: My RX 480 Runs and Info

(This is my undervolt and temperature settings)

(Left one is newer driver; right one is older driver)

 

Rule #1 of the safe overcklocking is after you found lowest stable undervolting you should add back little voltage for best safety and stability.
By the way, your undervolting in combination with new driver might let you not to enable that "compatibility mode" at all. keep up.
P.S. Little Schedule always looks better for numbers than plain text

 

What is a Little Schedule? First time hearing about this.

 

Umm... There are plenty of machines that don't use Optimus or Enduro... Mine for example. They cause more trouble than they're worth. I don't see any point other than irritation in having them.

 

Interesting review of RX 480 in CF:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/7...sfire-beating-geforce-gtx-1080-4k/index7.html

Nothing spectacular at 1080 and 1440, but at 4K it really starts kicking ass, consistently outperforming 1080FE, which costs like $250-300 more. Scaling is at 100%, which is awesome. I really don't understand people complaining about this card, in particular after AMD more or less mitigated the launch issues. I really think it's a great time to be a PC gamer and I am tempted so much to switch to desktop camp, but my room is so tiny and I move so often that it doesn't make sense for me

On the other hand, I am becoming more and more disappointed that people have so short memory. In the Pascal section everyone is so excited about the upcoming 1060, while objectively I don't see any reasons for that. This card will cost 25% more than when 960 was launched. Moreover, there will be AGAIN the ripoff edition costing another 25% more for reference mid-range (!) card and I'm sure we will never be able to get the card at MSRP price for another 6-9 months. Moreover+, in the mobile seems like Ngreedia is going away from "M" naming scheme, but probably not providing equivalent to desktop counterparts' performance. I remember, a forum user has benched the notebook 1080 and it was slightly slower than desktop 1070, so it means that notebook 1070 will be at desktop 1060 performance at best, but costing more than a whole desktop system with 1080! I realize this is a result of no competition in mobile space, but the way this trend is going really upsets me, so my apologies for this cry of despair, I couldn't hold anymore

 

My guess is that, Vega would be dual polaris chip with HBM2 to compete with Pascal.

 

Why does it strike you as odd?

 

Weird, I didn't get a notification from the quote.
@Deks Given that I undervolted, I would have assumed that the wattage would have decreased, but it instead actually increased. I understand that volts aren't everything in determining wattage, but it still was odd to see that and a performance decrease.
Oh well, I'm on the newer driver now, so I'll test from there.

 

The wattage increase might have occurred due to the GPU being able to sustain it's boost clocks for long periods of time after the undervolt (this is where the original 4-5% performance increase from undervolting comes, because prior to that, if the GPU is affected by a large power draw, then it wouldn't be able to sustain it's boost clocks for long).

Anyway, I guess you can start testing things with the new driver, and if you want to increase performance of the GPU further, you can try increasing the clocks and voltage bit by bit until you hit about 140W of power consumption in total (as measured by GPU-Z at least).

 

wow, ASUS is gonna launch this beast soon
seems like ngreedia is gonna conquer the gaming laptop market
however, i still hope the RX480 will come to laptop without any compromise in performance
http://www.notebookcheck.com/Asus-ROG-G752VS-Erstes-Notebook-mit-GeForce-GTX-1070.168752.0.html

 

They pretty much own it for a couple of years now. I hope that this would change, but I don't see how. So far the only officially announced mobile part from AMD is Polaris 11 and I don't see it widespread. Maybe Apple is piling parts again.

 

So I'm currently overclocking my RX 480. I'll post the best results later, but 1 thing I found was that a +55 Mhz overclock on the core, stock voltage gave about the same performance as the undervolt I did.
EDIT: No overclock, just undervolt. Best benchmark. Core power consumption was mid 120s. Looking at the GPU-Z log, the core clock was over 1220 MHz for the most part.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11399217
Overclocking was not giving me any noticeable improvements (nor was the GPU holding its clocks as well).

 

Check this video, it might help you.

 

Forgot that I could modify the power limit, but I do wonder what the minimum acoustic limit does.
When my desktop gets its case, I'll be doing some more overclocking to see how far I can go. So far, the highest clock (not sustained, though) I got was 1365 MHz without touching the power limit.

 

No overclocking just yet (due to no case), but I did do some Heaven Benchmark runs with my undervolt settings. Clocks were running at max speed for most of the benchmarks (some very slight dips here and there, and some dips during some transitions known to cause dips).

Spoiler: Results

 

Really expected more. I would have thought it would smash my 780 Ti at 2560x1440, especially, I mean its a 3GB card. I also didn't realize I'm not on my golden 365.19 drivers... this is 368.20 that Microsoft installed when I reinstalled Windows 10...

Spoiler

I don't know what was up with the massive framerate drop, I noticed the core plummeted at one point on the 1080p run but the overall scores is what I was interested in. I also ran 1680x1050 but I stupidly clicked close instead of save and I'm being lazy...

I guess my 780 Ti is going to be sticking around a bit longer. Thanks for sharing!

 

I don't think it would make a huge difference, but could you run the benchmark at 2560x1600? I wasn't able to run it at 2560x1440 for some reason but 2560x1600 (blame Virtual Super Resolution, but when it works, it works).
But outside that, yeah, it still is odd that only in 3DMark benchmarks, AMD GPUs do really well, but outside that, they're closer to what's realistic.

 

Sure, I'm rolling back to 365.19 right now.

Can you post your 3dmark scores too? I'd like to compare those as well. I think 3dmark just needs a desperate update...

 

I'll get the FireStrike (all 3) runs as soon as it updates. Internet access where the desktop is located is spotty and slow, so it'll take some time.
I already ran one of 3DMark11 P.

 

19342 graphics? I'll run it as soon as this is done.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11399217
This is my 3DMark11 run.

 

Yeah you definitely stomp my 3dm11 score - http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/11399217/3dm11/11400117

For some reason I had a hell of a time getting 3dm11 to run though... I had to close RTSS which I've never had to do before. I think I might drop out of the W10 insider program lol.

Here's the 2560x1600 result btw

Spoiler

EDIT: Interesting... it seems DSR automatically kicked it back down to 2560x1440... Let me try it again.
EDIT2: Nope, even changing it in the actually settings menu when its running, it goes black, it shows 2560x1600 selected but when I click close and go back in, its 1440.

 

Here are the FireStrike results.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13099045? (Regular)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13099118? (Extreme)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/13099265? (Ultra)
I'm not too impressed, to be honest. Even my GTX 980 in the Graphics Amp can beat it.
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/8719883/fs/9250408 (Regular)
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9250467/fs/8623033 (Extreme)
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9250579/fs/8622998 (Ultra)
@Ethrem Eh, it's fine.

 

Well, according to your own benchmarks, RX 480 is actually faster than 980 you have put into the amp, so I think those are great results for a midrange card.

 

Actually, I think his point was that despite the Graphics Amplifier, the GTX 980 still holds a higher graphics score. The RX 480 certainly does not beat the GTX 980 in terms of graphics score output in those results.

 

Exactly what Kade Storm said. Aside from FireStrike, the more important scores (Combined and Graphics) favor the GTX 980 over the RX 480.
Sadly, I don't have my Graphics Amp with me, or I would be doing tests with the RX 480 in it and the GTX 980 in my desktop.

 

Regular - http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9250408/fs/8503340

Extreme - http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9250467/fs/8503318

Ultra - http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9250579/fs/8503290

You can definitely see your card pull ahead of my 780 Ti as the resolution goes up. It's not bad for AMD - everyone knows that performance tends to go up a lot as they optimize their drivers so eventually you'll be handily beating my 780 Ti which is no small feat if you take into account the monster die that GK110 is versus P10. Definitely wouldn't make sense for me to get a P10 card at this point but considering the 679 dollar price tag I paid for mine back in 2014 and the ridiculous power consumption of mine versus yours, AMD has pulled off a crazy efficiency achievement for the first time.

 

P10 is not so small, actually, especially considering tech process. It's middle sized. P11 is small indeed. But yeah, if you compare with big like 780 Ti...

 

The more games adopt DX12 and Vulkan, the more we'll see AMD enjoy some benefits. It'll take a while though.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Yeah that was my comparison. GK110 vs P10 lol. I mean my card has both 6 and 8 pin connectors...

 

My desktop finally has a case, so I'll be able to give temperatures of the RX 480 in a closed environment.
And I'll be doing some overclocking reports (I'm more than content with staying with my undervolt profile).

 

http://videocardz.com/62117/amd-confirms-radeon-rx-470-and-rx-460-specifications
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-rx-470-rx-460-reference-models/
Info on the RX 470 and RX 460.

 

The Vulkan update for Doom really helped the RX 480's performance, as expected.

And we can pretty much kiss our dreams of seeing Vega this year goodbye.

 

That is the same exact slide we saw months ago, so nothing new there .

 

AMD stated officially at the beginning of the year that their mobile polaris gpu's will become available before back to school season.

It's mid July... are there any news regarding mobile Polaris?
I've been trying to find some info, but google has been uncooperative.

 

I have been unable to find anything, which is very frustrating. My clevo contacts got nothing either

 

der8auer has got 1700Mhz out of an RX480 on LN2 with an unlocked bios, Volt modded & LN2 (no English version yet)


Is the forum running really slow for other people as well?

 

Not really. They have announced the 35W RX480M and made some claims about its performance, but there is no news about actual laptops that use it. At this point, they're almost certainly going for the tail end of the back-to-school season (i.e. end of August, beginning of September).

 

We're rebuilding the search index, you'll see some fluctuations in the performance while that is happening.

Charles

 

OT but whenever i see RX480 without a cooler, it reminds me of the strange shaped MXM cards Asus used to put in old laptops.

 

There was relatively recent video interview with Raja Koduri where he mentioned mobile GPUs schedule and specs are pretty much dictated by notebook manufacturers:



(relevant part starts at 16m:57s, for some reason embeds and links here ignore timestamps )

He told they had "locked schedule" on Polaris 11 (built basically to what notebook OEMs asked for), which was the first chip to be ready from Polaris family (before Polaris 10 / RX 480, which already launched).

So it feels like AMD is ready already for quite a while, but OEMs just sit on new notebook GPUs. Maybe they try first to sell out existing notebook inventory / wait for better sales timing (notebook sales are very cyclical).

BTW this would explain also notebook Pascals. From leaks it's obvious notebooks with Pascals already do exist, but there are no official announcements till OEMs don't feel the timing is right.

 

there an English version now seems he couldn't take the GPU below 0 deg C will be interesting to see what people can achieve on the card with an LN2 bios

 

DOOM: Vulkan vs OpenGL Benchmark - The tide turning in AMD's favour?

 

hope to see more games support DirectCompute & hopefully Vulkan to help get away from Microsoft

 

Turning to Vulkan might also enable greater support for Linux and other software that's usually used on Windows.
Problem is that majority of games and software (such as 3d Studio Max) are specifically written for Windows only.

So, once again, it is not AMD's fault, it's the OEM's fault.
This is getting absurd.
The OEM's are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to quality control and laptop hardware.
They hadn't changed the fundamentals of how laptops (or even desktops) are cooled in decades for one thing, then they cut corners when it comes to hardware (usually giving higher priority and leeway to Nvidia and their hardware as opposed to AMD) and end up charging us MORE money simply for 'mobility'.

I find that to be complete nonsense... apart from mobile hardware undergoing more binning and minor adjustments, it's still desktop hardware ADAPTED to work as mobile.
There should not be a price premium on this of any kind. These kinds of 'efficiency results' (if you want to call them that) are supposed to be something that should be addressed from the get go.

Plus, I find it ridiculous that OEM's delay hardware releases as it pleases them.
At this rate, AMD might lose out on some advantage if Pascal laptops are released at the same time as Polaris.
And as we know, the 480 can easily be placed into a notebook as is. With simple/proper undervolting and better binning for mobile, the GPU can easily operate on stock frequencies within a 110W envelope without cutting out any cores.

But if the OEM's get their way, they could end up dictating in which form high end Polaris will end up in mobile (even though a full gpu can be placed into a laptop).
The cooling might have to be reworked, but I find that a bonus as I think the cooling on most laptops is ancient and definitely needs to be reworked from the ground up.

 

The supposed "3D Vapor Chamber" from ASUS is an upgrade from what we have for a while now (TWO DECADES!!!). Better yet, since the model had both conventional and 3DVP versions, one can compare how the "new" technology (it exists for a while now in this particular design) fares against the current (noise, temps, response time). Sadly I can't find a review with the 3DVP, maybe it never got to

I'm beating the OEM drum for a while now and I'm getting worried as well.

Spoiler: My take on things

It is a much more complicated matter since there are also a couple of more things to consider - XConnect and Apple. Maybe AMD decided to save a buck and focus on re-using whatever they have that's readily available on the shelves near you and just provide the means to do so, hence XConnect. They are focusing on a wider market after all. So far I'm not very sure which is larger than a notebook with a powerful GPU, or a notebook with eGPU, but let's say that AMD made their math. Not to mention the attitude towards AMD products in general, so why creating niche products? So again re-usability makes more sense. As for Apple, that's also one of my theories that I'm thinking for a while now (2 years?) - the rumors about R9-M295X started as a new GPU for the supposed next GX series. Supposed since it never happened. There is no longer MSi GX series with AMD hardware as well. I think that AMD made a deal with Apple and sold whatever chips of R9-M295X they had to them. This essentially broke whatever agreement they had with MSi and most likely the reason for the GX absence. It had it's market and would've been even stronger seeing how the GT prices are going. Why the deal then? Well is it a surprise when you look around and see how (almost) everyone in the PC market responds on AMD parts, or AMD in general. They point, blame and laugh for whatever the reason and IF they consider AMD part it would because it is - better, cheaper, more reliable and maybe something else - i.e. the perfect product. And I must emphasize on consider. There are a handful of people that would still wait to see the other side's response and shop there. So it only makes more sense to find a much more stable market. That's part of the reason for the console chips as well, the other is because they are the only ones who can pull that kind of chip. There's also DELL though. They still have models with AMD parts, don't remember when exactly the Alienwares got the R9-M295X. Was there a delay since the announcement and the iMacs? Maybe @Game7a1 kept better track on the matter. The W7170M came a lot later though (1 year), that's for sure. Don't know how Clevo fits in the picture. Did AMD screwed a contract with them as well? Or did nGREEDIA made an offer that they couldn't refuse? ASUS doesn't entertain AMDs for a while now.
I'm not happy how things are spanning for mobile, but I can (try to) understand why.

TL;DR I don't see rumors for AMD models and that's rather worrying, but something that both parties (AMD and OEMs), as well as the end users might have contribution to.

I hope that the future is brighter than my calculations suggest, I still want a mobile MXM part. Maybe I'll get it in a FirePro form, what the R9-M295X turned out into - W7170M.

 

Maybe AMD is trying combine mid range mobile GPUs with X-CONNECT. Ultra thin notebooks with desktop like performance at an attractive price. I bet high end model of Apple rMBP 15 will equipped with Apple proprietary slot or TB3 based portable graphics enclosure that only comes in white to give a little future-proof PCs for a little more premium price-tag. I love too see Polaris/Vega GPUs with HBM on lappies

 

This is where Polaris 11 comes in and it was the only chip mentioned for mobile (or I missed something). The thing is that I want Polaris 10, and if you red my ramblings, I was trying to make sense why we most likely wont get it. My only hope for MXM Polaris 10 remains DELL's Precision.

 

As far as I know, Polaris 10 was also mentioned for high end gaming notebooks.