Mobile Polaris Discussion

So Vega is to launch in Q1 2017:

http://videocardz.com/63700/exclusive-first-details-about-amd-vega10-and-vega20

 

Vega 10 looks like it might be expensive, at least out of my 400EUR price range... Then again, 1070 isn't any cheaper as well...

 

Really want Vega 10 to perform above a 1080 with less price point. Haven't had an AMD/ATI build since 2004.

 

Considering the 'reported' specs (and right now, everything is up in the air until we get the actual Vega GPU for testing), it is possible it could actually perform well above 1080 (it would be rather underwhelming if it didn't - though, in DX12 it likely will)... however, how will this reflect on Nvidia's Volta architecture which is also slated for 2017?

Hmm... the only GPU in that specs assortment (as reported for Vega) from Nvidia is for servers though, so if this GPU ends up in consumer space... with a new architecture and matured 14nm manuf. process, I guess we will have to wait and see, unless AMD's strategy for Volta is a dual Vega.

Still no news from other OEM's using RX 470 in their laptops... sigh.

I don't think AMD can aim only to match 1080 considering the release is slated for early next year.
I think Vega needs to aim for much better performance than that - but Vega is supposedly a new architecture, is it not?

 

@woodzstack @tanzmeister

Any new info from Clevo regarding the RX 480 MXM card, now that we've seen what it looks like?

 

PCSPECIALIST is a Clevo reseller in UK if I'm not mistaken. When I sent them a query on August 26th (last month), they mentioned that they have no plans to integrate AMD dGPU's into their laptops.

I don't think they would have changed their minds in the interim, but then again, who knows.
If the US division integrates them, perhaps the UK division will too.
PC specialist seems to be the only Clevo reseller in UK that offers relatively acceptable prices.
There's also Scan.co.uk, but they can be a bit more expensive.

 

So finally a M5500M (980 in MXM 3.1) competitor! 150W is the same as stated for the M5500M too. Was hoping for 120 or 130W though...the question is which one costs more!

 

Make a guess.

 

If AMD and/or OEM's undervolt the 480 on both core and VRAM, and also bin it properly, then I think they can drop the TDP to 120W or less. The overall TDP will likely remain 'as advertised' on 150W, but that won't necessarily prevent the GPU from drawing less power if properly executed.

It is possible they will do only a partial undervolting to ensure a higher volume of operational chips (though, all new 480's seem to have been shipping with lower voltages out of the box)... but otherwise, undervolting might be left to the rest of us using Wattman (and I'm personally ok with that, but I wouldn't mind if AMD optimizes the GPU more in terms of power draw.

470 is already close to 480 performance-wise, and it looks as if it will have ample VRAM on notebooks as well.

On an educated guess basis and considering AMD history of pricing, it is possible that both 470 and 480 might cost less than Nvidia alternatives.
AMD may not have too much control over the prices on these products though as the OEM's could end up jacking up the prices (much like DELL - but if Clevo adopts RX 470 and RX 480, then they could end up being cheaper - on Clevo laptops, AMD dGPU's were always the cheaper option, even the high-end ones).

 

God, seems like eternity since the last time clevo made any AMD dGPU options

 

Might have something to do with the premise that its been YEARS since any OEM (other than the over-expensive Dell) made a laptop with AMD dGPU's.

 

Might have something to do with the fact that AMD haven't released any mobile GPUs since 7970M in 2012, everything so far has been rebrands of 7970M. (Or was there maybe one other card released since that wasn't a rebrand, but was a sh*tty performer.)

 

Although not from the UK, Obsidian PC is another european reseller with very competitive prices. @John@OBSIDIAN-PC is their contact over here

 

Only 3 GPUs weren't rebrands of the HD 7970m: the R9 m280x, R9 m390, and R9 m295x.

The RX 470 can now be paired with the plain ole 1080p display too. Guess the leaked configurator wasn't final. It's also called the RX 470, not RX m470.

 

Do we already know which brands, besides Dellienware, will be sporting the RX 480 in MXM flavor?

It would be tempting to get two of those in my P570WM.Though I dunno, if the cooling can catch up with CGN 2.0.

 

I wonder if LVDS is supported.

Pretty sure power consumption can be optimised too.

Lets see if these chips surface anywhere on the consumer market...

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The RX 480 MXM was designed for VR machines, correct? That may mean companies like Alienware, MSI, and more who have VR backpacks developed may be sporting such a GPU and possibly for other products.

 

At least one MXM RX480 sample will be tested in a MSI 16L1 within a few days. The vendor also said there are samples being tested in gaming laptops.

Unfortunately the official desktop VBIOS has no eDP support, which leads to some tricky VBIOS editing work.

 

Ah, are you wondering about LVDS because you need that support for your M15x? I'm thinking I'd probably need that for my M17xR3.

 

Indeed. Would be nice to have a final upgrade route for the last generation of decently made machines.

Any Alienware after the M17 x R3 is pretty awful

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Fantastic news! Well done AMD looks like LVDS is supported.

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I guess he meant that it's DP 1.3 is supported but not eDP. But who knows.

 

Less, by a decent margin, in most titles. The 1060 trades blows but is generally somewhat slower than a 980, and the 480 is generally 10% slower than a 1060 in most game benches I've seen, as has been posted here before. It won't be touching a 980, far less any superclocked ones.

 

10% slower in DX11 than 1060 is not bad at all and won't really be noticeable in gaming at 1080p or 2k (at 2k, the margin seems to go down a bit)... and that's not all games. In several games, they are equal.
Besides, this margin evaporates when DX12 and Vulkan are involved.

So long as we finally get 480 in a laptop, that would be great for me to finally upgrade.
Heck, I'd settle for 470 in mobile even.

 

I'll keep my eyes & ears open with regard to AMD MXM, I'm curious for an upgrade - wasn't going to upgrade this laptop anymore, but instead build a desktop, but a 'cheap high performance' card for this laptop would be pretty cool. M17xR4 was just as good as M17xR3 though, it was the A17 onwards where things started getting ever gradually more ropey.

 

It wont be cheap no matter what happens. Rx470 might be affordable but only if it become available...

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M17x R4 cannot send more than 68w to the CPU

 

Ah, in that case I probably do have one of the true last no compromise Alienwares then, not that I can flaunt the awesome power of my 2630QM CPU though! I have looked into getting a 2920XM for it, but they're still quite expensive, my GPU is the bottleneck anyway.

 

It's around 175 on ebay, that's literally nothing.

 

Exactly. The gulf between the 920xm and 2920xm is pretty epic from an ipc perspective and overclockability

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Yeah, some Prema magic hopefully can fix this!

 

Haha, in that case, you can buy one for me! ;-) But no, the cheapest I can find on ebay (I'm in the UK) is £155, and I'm not gonna spend more than £100 on a 2920XM - primarily because I don't need a faster CPU really (my GPU is the bottleneck), and secondly I'm running a high memory overclock at fairly tight timings and I'm concerned that the 2920XM won't be stable with my RAM at such high speeds, (I used Typhoon Burner to overclock the RAM by flashing it and I've never seen another M17xR3 owner with stable RAM at such a high speed, my understanding is that part of the CPU can influence that stability).

 

Unlikely if you are simply upping the multiplier.

Even so it may cause you to run at 1x multi slower max OC stable than stock ram speeds.

This is what I found. At stock cas 9 1333mhz ram speeds i could push my 920xm to x27 (3.73ghz) while running at cas 8 and it can only run x26 now.

Performance is unchanged though as a result. My conclusion is with xm chip it doesnt matter much as you can compensate with extra speed.

920xm goes for around 100 quid. 2920xm is so much faster and can clock to 4.5ghz without much trouble under air. At 700mhz faster than the best 920xms and clock for clock 15-20% faster.. 150 quid is bargain

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£150 is definitely a bargain when comparing against the price the CPU would have costed when new, and also a bargain for the performance really - but I'm just not interested in it unless it's about £100. I'm possibly willing to pump some more money into this laptop for a significantly better GPU, but not on the CPU side. I also have to weigh up that investment against putting that money towards a desktop - I'm really curious to have a 120Hz or 144Hz monitor and want to game at 120 or 144fps for competitive shooters like Titanfall & Titanfall 2, so upgrading my laptop means a delay to those desires. A fantastic deal on this rumoured AMD 480 MXM card if it's compatible could be tempting, but I have a feeling it will be expensive and compatibility is an unknown - to be honest I can see myself investing in a desktop instead if my laptop doesn't run Titanfall 2 very well. Having said that Titanfall 2 min spec machine can run it at avg 71fps with decent settings at 900p - min spec is GTX 660 at 900p, which happens to be the resolution & power of my laptop (well my GPU is just a smidgeon faster, not much). Link to Titanfall 2 sys requirements: http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ti...irements-and-graphics-settings-published.html

 

Following a couple of Chinese (a P157SM-A (eDP) and AW17 with 60Hz (LVDS) and 120Hz (eDP)). the first one is yet to test it, or at least to post any results, the second - no luck with either display. Wonder if someone was to test it in an old machine, without Enduro and directly wired display to DP display (*cough*8740w DC*cough* ). Still figuring out how to register on TaoBao and whether or not to pull the trigger (heavy reliance on the seller's honesty).

For anyone who doubts about whether or not bit depth has room in games: judge for yourself (well that's kinda relative, since I'm not sure how well your display would handle it, but there should be difference anyway)

 

Triturbo - can you share a link on those Chinese testers?

 

Sure thing - P157SM-A and AW 17. You can change the pages if you edit the link in the navigation bar, instead of "pn=3" (page 3), put "pn=4" (page 4), since clicking on the arrows would require registration.

 

Wonder if anybody can hook me up with a contact for a MXM sample...I have several machines I'd like to test in.

As for 2920XM....you should absolutely get one. 4.4Ghz 4 core with no added flex/voltage is pretty insane considering what the chip was set up for stock out of the factory from intel.

 

Wow, 4.4GHz in your M18xR1 without any added voltage - stunning! I'm still more interested in the 480 MXM though.

 

http://videocardz.com/63736/amd-launches-new-embedded-radeon-gpus
Another Full Polaris 10 GPU in MXM form factor.

 

Haha, I'm a hypocrite, just bought a 2920XM off ebay for £150, will be delivered this week! Should give me at least 50% more CPU performance if I can achieve 4Ghz with it, it's something to play with! Could be a gamble, but seller says he got 4.5Ghz effortlessly in his M17xR4, said he reckoned it would get to 4.8Ghz without issue, but he didn't want to push it - it is one of those naughty QS or other samples, so a bit of a gamble maybe.

EDIT: Just found out it's actually an OEM CPU, the listing was confusingly written, the seller has confirmed OEM - excellent, looking forward to getting it Thursday!

 

4Ghz should be fine.. Its anything above that which is trial and error.. Lol

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A stable & constant 4Ghz would be perfect, just received notification that it will delivered Thursday - excited! Thinking at 4Ghz it should be able to get 10,000 points in physics on 3DMark11 based on an extrapolation for what I'm getting currently at 2.6Ghz (1.5x the clock speed).

Just needs an AMD 480 MXM GPU in there now if it's gonna be compatible! haha

EDIT: Just found out it's actually an OEM CPU, the listing was confusingly written, the seller has confirmed OEM - excellent, looking forward to getting it Thursday!

 

Ok... here are some actual news about mobile polaris 10 and 11:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10710/amd-announces-embedded-radeon-e9260-e9550

From the article:
"We’ll start things off with the Embedded Radeon E9550, which is the new top-performance card in AMD’s embedded lineup. Based on AMD’s Polaris 10 GPU, this is essentially an embedded version of the consumer Radeon RX 480, offering the same number of SPs at roughly the same clockspeed.

The E9550 is offered in a single design, an MXM Type-B card that’s rated for 95W."

So, it would appear we will get a 480 performance in a MXM Type-B at 95W no less.
This is likely the result of binning.
It has higher power consumption than what 1060 for laptops is rated at (slightly under 970M if notebookcheck is to take into account), but, considering the voltages at which 1060 runs at, and if we can manipulate the voltages via Wattman on E9550, then it should be possible to reduce the power consumption.

I'm curious though, how does this reflect on RX 470 that's going into Alienware laptops?

 

They are some good specs for the E9550 in terms of being MXM Type B, and less than 100W, and the performance is impressive too! The article talks about the card being used in all-in-one solutions, whatever that means, I wonder if the E9550 will be for sale for consumers as a standalone GPU - like being able to buy it on ebay like you can with say 780M/980M, etc? That pic in the article, I got the impression that's not an actual pic of the card? I was gonna take a deeper look at the pic to work out if it's compatible with my heat sink, but not worth doing that if it's not an actual pic of the card.

 

Okay, so I just did a Time Spy run of my RX 480 through my Graphics Amp (I only have Win7 on my desktop). Results below and in comparison to the GTX 980. Unlike before, the GPU is connected to an external monitor. Same settings as before. +5 MHZ on core, -31mv on core, -80mv on VRAM.
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/507966/spy/507466
And here is a comparison between using the laptop monitor and external monitor: http://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/507966/spy/295690
I have no idea why the CPU score went up, but I'm going to blame Chrome, even though I made sure in the laptop screen runs to not have it running. Accounting driver improvements and using an external screen, the boost is not as big as I thought it would be.
Anyways, another thing I want to show is this from HWInfo.

Spoiler: HWInfo RX 480

(If the image doesn't show up, let me know.)
So the total GPU core power is about 120w; however, it seems the maximum amount of power that could have been used is 160w (there is a reason why I say could, and it mainly relies on looking at the max volts and amps), meaning the other 40w was from the VRAM and other chips on the board. 73.625w came form the slot while 87.375w came from the pin. Both are rated to deliver 75w, but the 6-pin can deliver more (I mean, so can the PCIe slot, but that's dangerous). This isn't stock voltage, so there may be improvements or higher quality binning made to the mobile chips in regards to power consumption. Just speculation.
Now, since the RX 480 has an MXM form factor, I wonder how power delivery will work, espcially in the case of the E9550.
Also, XConnect seems to work with proprietary eGPU set-ups as I accidentally disabled parts of explorer.exe. Maybe that explains the CPU score increase, but it is annoying to not use the search function or start menu.

 

I wonder if this GPU will be XDMA capable.....I would love to stuff 2 of these in my Alienwares!

Its up for sale fellas:
https://world.taobao.com/item/53850...main&spm=a1z10.5-c.w4002-3808616631.15.QnwHQ8

for 300$. Exact price of a RX 480 8GB desktop card. I see LVDS in the pinout config....will this work?

 

Holy Cow, that's a really great price for such a hardware!! The specs including clock speeds, core counts and TDP are identical to desktop version, so I wonder how could they manage to stuff it in such a form factor? They must have done a hell of a job in binning and sampling to tame such a power hungry beast. Also, those embedded solutions also offer identical specs, but are rated at 95W, so what are we missing in the picture?

I wish someone would buy it asap and test for our peace of mind

 

I'm seriously about to pull the trigger here...just wish I knew how to read/write Chinese so I get a solid idea of how to get it into the USA.

 

But regarding the pic of this chinese site, I didn't saw a CF-Connector.

If there's any chance, I would stuff two of those in my P570WM and be a happy guinea pig tester!