Mobile Polaris Discussion

I actually contacted Dell Spare Parts on more than one occasion to try and track down this card, and they couldn't even find it in the system, or it was out of stock.

 

i'd give it a try if the card was easy to get though mobile polaris in an AW17 R1 would be good.

 

From what I see in the new Precision owner's lounge and add some guessed multiplication, it seems to be pretty popular choice. I wasn't able to find its part number and so far no one has disassembled their machine.

 

Seems to be tightly controlled....Dell doesn't have it, and none of the ebay resellers/parts dealers have it. I don't understand why this card is so elusive...

 

It's rather odd even if it is a popular option. Some kind of embargo? I remember the last MXM-II GPU (as in mid-range) was MSi HD4670. The only way to get it is if you returned a faulty one. That's it. MSi kept it VERY VERY well, so well that even years after the release (not really relevant nowadays), the only way to get it is to get a used one... if you ever come across one in first place! Either DELL made an exclusive deal, or something else is keeping this particular GPU from the market. After all there is no Clevo or MSi R9-M295X/M390X/M395X/whatever, so something really fishy is going on. I hope that Polaris would change that, or we are really screwed. What good is MXM if you can't find it... And for me it doesn't matter that there are nGreedia options, they are as good as nonexistent. They would either fail even faster than the wildly pointed at 7970m, or nGreedia would make sure to do so in no time with their drivers.

 

I don't know why Dell can't find/disclose the part number either...very odd.

 

I'm a little concerned for the mobile GPU Polaris.
Up until now, most sources seem to claim that Polaris 11 is aimed at mobile... but not a peep was made about Polaris 10 for the same purpose.

I wouldn't want to be 'stuck' with 970 level performance in a laptop when mobile Polaris could easily slide WAY past that for the top-end if a Polaris 10 derivative for laptops is made (essentially bringing 980TI or overclocked 980ti level of performance to laptops).

Then again, AMD was pretty tight lipped about Polaris for the most part... we still don't know anything conclusive, but I'm really hoping we get Polaris 10 and possibly Vega (after its released) mobile solutions.

 

So the HBM2 is reserved only for top end GPUs from both Team Red (Vega) and Green(Titan, Ti), I expected this. I think they should go for GDDR5X instead of the old GDDR5 for all the rest of the 970 level GPUs, I think the MXM is confirmed from nvidia, the GP106 leaks. AMD needs to get an MXM now else they lost the mobile market forever..

 

I think AMD might go the MXM route, and most certainly will use GDDR5 for their mobile solutions.
Also, if AMD by any chance decides to make high-end Polaris solutions (based on Polaris 10) ... I could see them possibly doing the same by releasing HBM2 top-end Vega as well (if they tune it similar to what they did to Fury Nano, it should be possible) - though this is mere speculation.

I'd be ok with GDDR5 top-end Polaris 10 for example that's better than stock 980ti - which I think AMD could easily deliver, and might just win over a large portion of laptop users as well (their graphics division improved with frequency of new driver releases when they set up the separate Radeon division)

 

MXM or not, is not up to AMD, but the ODM* (HP, DELL, Acer and etc). They decide how to implement the chip on their board and they make the order to the OEM* (who builds most of the machine (Quanta, Compal, Foxconn and etc)), BUT most of the GPUs are made by MSi (not all). As far as I can guess AMD is not in good relationship with MSi, maybe that's the reason behind the lack of MXM AMDs. They might make small order to Sapphire (who is doing their ES versions, that go to the OEMs/reviewers), but that's pretty much it.

*There are companies like MSi and ASUS who make their own stuff. Surprisingly Gigabyte doesn't make their laptops.

Things are not as black and white as listed above, but I hope you get the general idea.

TL;DR AMD is in no position to make MXMs.

 

Well, I found ONE:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-FirePRO...546868?hash=item25ba123af4:g:8YAAAOSwy5ZXDBt~

Not paying that ridiculous price to test a 2 year old card though....

 

Well, it's a Professional GPU, the equivalent nGreedia is even more, so... Also I think that they are abusing the fact that they are the only ones to sell it. Realistically the price should be ~$650 and this is rounded up, because again Professional GPU, the seller has to eat something, eBay taxes and etc.

As for the GPU itself, I think that it is MSi made. The ELPIDA memory is odd since Micron bought them, but I guess that's part of their differentiation - Micron for Business, Crucial for consumer, Lexar for flash memory (SD, thumb drives) and ELPIDA would be for graphics memory. Could be wrong and this could well be old stock, but I really doubt it, since Zentrica used ELPIDA as well for their R9-M295X.

The price - I wont pay it either, at least for now. Waiting to see how Polaris would turn out, as in would we see an MXM, but if my guess is right and this is indeed MSi made, chances are getting better Then comes other set of complications, like who is going to use it, as Clevo and MSi both passed on the previous/current gen, and current Alienwares are soldered and the only available AMD MXM is this, which is expensive for our (current) needs.

 

Hopefully we get something MXM Polaris form

 

We would, but if it comes from mobile workstations (7710, ZBook 17 G3, P70 are all MXM-B), given that HP and Lenovo join the club and release full blown chip and not like now (ZBook current top AMD offering is rebranded M6100, P70 doesn't has AMD option at all), the price would be similar or even more expensive. So let's hope that Clevo would get their $hit together and release a proper (for our needs) AMD MXM.

 

Amen to that!

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Radeon-...935910?hash=item25b9ea63e6:g:IQQAAOSwu1VW8LLF
Would this be more to your liking?

 

Its not a M395x. It is a listing error. It is actually a R9 M280X aka W6150M. There is no M395X/W7170M option in the Zbook G3 15 or 17 to be found anywhere on the configuration, only the W6150M

Come now, you wouldn't expect a top AMD card to come in MXM A now would you?

 

Seems like the first low to mid range mobile Polaris chips are coming very soon, at least reviews are coming within the coming days or a week. From the looks of it, we will be getting Polaris 11 based chips first (50W), but considering the Polaris 10 is allegedly 100-135W, then its mobile version shouldn't be that much of a problem. The biggest concern though is the performance... 50W chip (roughly desktop R7 470) will hardly, if at all, beat 980M...
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-r9-480-470-polaris-10-polaris-11/

 

But at 50W I can put it in my phone Kidding of course. I'm waiting for Polaris 10 as everyone else, but Polaris 11 is just as exciting to see how this boat, or rather space ship, floats.

Not to mention that the chip is a small one. A proper R9-M395X should (must) have a chip more in line with the one on the W7170M, that's the proper Tonga chip. Not that you can't put a large chip on MXM-A, it's just that the power delivery wont last long

 

That's perfectly fine for a mid range MXM card... 980M or slightly better at half the TDP is fantastic really, considering the 980M eats between 100-115W

 

Well, if it's based on the same chip demoed at CES, then it should be at around 970M performance. But that chip hardly consumed 40W, so I'm just guessing this one might, with all optimizations, be a better performer at around 980M levels. I agree that is a great achievement, I just hope they won't call it high-end card and will release mobile Polaris 10 asap.

 

Eh, it was late at night. I knew something was off (mainly the die), but I didn't bother to double check if it could be something else (even though HP did list one AMD GPU, that one being the W6150m you mentioned).

 

Well the plot thickens...Seller claimed it is indeed a R9 M395X, and will be sending me a GPU-Z screenshot....I'm super curious now.

 

Well either the image is wrong or he is lying.

Also about Polaris, I expect mobile Polaris 11 to launch along desktop cards in June, mobile Polaris 10 however might launch at a later date (not saying it will) if they decide to do some binning, but then again if the yields are great and they have been doing binning for a while they can release it day 1. There is also the possibility that they might wait for GDDR5X availability but unless GDDR5X becomes viably by mid Q3 it would be pointless and they are better of releasing GDDR5 cards as M490 lineup and then update the line with M495 cards when GDDR5X is available.

 

If we could get 980M SLI performance in a single 100W AMD card MXM, I would be so happy. That's all I really want.

 

Thats around GP104 performance with GDDR5x. Thats probably 200w.

 

I'm extra super curious now, since the W7170M shot was a proper one!

 

Yeah he had no idea what he was talking about. It was really a W5170M, not a R9 M395x. The quest for tonga mobile continues...

 

Well it's only W7170M, really. The Zentrica's R9-M295X doesn't count since it's towards embedded market and they claim minimum order of 10, even though it says "1 and more" on their site, and the ones that do require minimum order of 10, has, you guessed it - "10 and more". Whatever. The way I see it, we have better chances with Polaris. At least we saw a W7170M in the wild, ready to be bought IF you have the money and will power.

 

It was already proposed that Polaris 10 should be able to bring FuryX/980Ti level of performance at about 110W (considering that AMD was able to get 2.5x perf. per watt).
So, a 110W mobile Polaris 10 part is more than doable... probably at lower wattage if AMD does extra binning and optimizations for mobile.

I'd definitely go for that option in that case.

 

going by AMD's recent launches, its might be a paper launch in June. by the time we see these in laptops it'll be Dec 2016 or early 2017.

 

I doubt that.
It was stated by AMD some 3 months ago that Polaris cards will be released before back to school season (which is period between mind July and early September).

And if they want to be consistent with it, then I think that availability of desktops and laptops with Polaris gpu's will have to happen around June and early July.

 

I'm fairly confident that the laptops with next-gen Nvidia and AMD GPUs will come out together -- it would be pretty catastrophic for either one if they were stuck with the old 28nm stuff while the competition had a new architecture at a lower node size.

 

Catastrophic is being a bit dramatic. It has happened before and since 14nm is more mature than 16nm, there's a chance it will happen again.

 

I bet laptops will go on shelves alltogether being both AMD and Nvidia GPU-based. However not sure if high-end AMD GPUs are in that list. I expect to see Polaris 11 only while Polaris 10 mobile should come in 2-4.5 months.

 

Now that Apple went full Polaris this year who knows when we will see mobile Polaris 10, but 11 should still launch along desktops in June. (Will probably take another month for non-mainstream (usual hp, lenovo designs) laptops to hit the shelves.

 

Finally, some news on the AMD M400 series laptop cards!



Sadly, everything is a rebrand except for the highest end R9 M490 and R9 M480, and we still don't know the specs for these yet. Reportedly one or both of these cards will incorporate Polaris 11.

I believe Polaris 10 is the higher end desktop card, while Polaris 11 is the lower TDP card that was demo'd on a laptop at the Capsaicin press event. It should be used in the R9 M490 (possibly R9 M480 or Playstation "Neo" as well)

 

it'll be interesting to see which of these will make it into macbook pro

 

Wishful thinking says M480 and M480X = Polaris 11, M490 and M490X = Polaris 10.

 

Realistically more like M480 and M480X = Tonga, M490 and M490X = Polaris 11.

 

*groan*
It's now or never AMD. Really.

 

Shhhh, go away In all seriousness, I doubt that a lower tier GPU would have higher power requirements. Not that we haven't seen it before from another brand.

 

I was being a bit overly dramatic, but I don't think anything quite like this has happened before. There have been instances where one of them beat the other to a one-node die shrink and/or a new architecture, but I think this is first time that a two-node die shrink will be combined with an architecture update. It should be a much bigger change than usual.

 

Will this be the first product released from the fruits of the AMD Polaris? Speculated by the leaked specs to be similar to the R9 480:

Radeon R9 480 - This SKU is based on 14 nm "Ellesmere" (aka Polaris 10), rumored to be a ~130 Watt TDP card.

PlayStation 4K SoC Could Feature 2304 Stream processors based AMD Polaris GPU
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/pl...-stream-processors-based-amd-polaris-gpu.html

 

So what about the m485(x) and m495(x)?

 

Leave some room for rebrands LOL If they cover the entire top end (480, 485, 490 and 495 as well as the X variants), they'll end-up with more options than mid and low combined. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's unlikely to happen.

 

I think AMD should deprecate models with X because it makes a mess. On this arena I prefer Nvidia because last time I saw something somewhat messy was in times of 600 mobile series with 675M being like 50% weaker than 675MX... with healthy overclock. And 660M ~on par with 570M being way cooler and using shadowplay.

 

Actually AMD's naming scheme is way better than nVidias, at least on the desktop side. You can tell that the performance gap between the 390 and the 390X is much closer than 380X and 390, while on the nVidia side even the gimp 970 is much closer to 980 than a 980 is to 980Ti.

 

I generally look like the difference between dies/die name. Their nomenclature is ****.

 

Only those who know a decent amount or more about GPUs and the separate dies do that, regular buyers and even many employees of retailers don't have a clue.