AMD Polaris and Clevo Laptops

Just to toss things up a little, let's discuss about the possibility of AMD cards in Clevo laptops too!

Saw some news about these cards, thought that I should post here...

http://www.overclock3d.net/articles/gpu_displays/amd_r9_m400_series_appears_on_amd_website/1

 

Sorry to bring some disappointing news but these appear to be rebrands:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10322/amd-unveils-radeon-m400-series-for-notebooks

There is still room in the nomenclature for higher end cards which will probably be announced along with the rest of Polaris at Computex.

Edit: It just looks like there won't be low end polaris cards for awhile but no one is really interested in those

 

noooooo, not more rebrands.. AMD is horrible for that on their MXM cards.

 

Yeah, I heard about them being mostly rebadges too, kinda worrying eh

 

Well you have to have a chip to release that actually fits.

 

Polaris will have a high-end GPU (490M) for laptops by 2017, according to rumors, all other "new" amd GPUs this year will be rebrands (I'm very chocked...^^).

How can AMD get financially better with this kind of behaviour.. ?

So what Apple are going to do ? Again put a rebranded over-over-overclocked 7970M in their new macbook lineup ?

 

I kinda gave up AMD on mobile gpu market. There was a rumor that the up coming high-end AMD gpu is going to preform close to last - gen GTX 980m.

 

Even if they don't come out with the highest end cards, as long as they are competitively priced for the performance, then I would think any new cards would be welcome to have on the market. It's been a while since we've seen any AMD cards in laptops, so anything new is a step in the right direction I suppose.

 

I am hoping for some real competition this time; no more having only Nvidia or Intel as a choice

 

They're fine for the value. It would be nice for people to have options.

 

I sure hope the options are valid this time round; no point having AMD stuff when the other brands are way better in terms of price-performance e.t.c. right

 

It would be nice to have that option again.

 

IIRC, their models that had soldered components were usually pretty reasonable, if not good for the prices. I think their MXM cards were pretty fair on the pricing as well. I don't remember them being completely out of a reasonable price range the last time we had some models with their parts.

 

I don't see Clevo picking up the rebrands and the rumors are saying that GloFo churned out silicon that can't handle high clocks so AMD won't be able to reap the FinFET clockspeed rewards that nVidia did. AMD will have to really aggressively price their cards if they want to attract anyone except Apple and Dell other than the rebrands for junkbook manufacturers. I wouldn't be surprised to see an all nVidia lineup from Clevo.

 

I don't even know where people picked that up. AMD's own marketing pages say Polaris 11 is specifically targeting Mobile/Laptops. The slide image is literally a picture of the Lenovo Y700.

 

Polaris 11 is a low end GPU and at best Polaris 10 will be GTX 980 and I'm doubting even that based on the specs. Nvidia will walk all over 10. 11 may gain some traction with the low end but it all comes down to pricing. AMD has given up the fight for mobile performance crowns which begs the question of why Clevo should even bother with them at all. Polaris 11 would be good for solderbooks but I fail to see why Clevo would want to put 10 in anything when nVidia has the better offering that everyone who cares about VR or raw performance is going to want in their high end gaming laptop. If the rumors about GloFo producing chips that can't take advantage of the insane clocks FinFETs gave nVidia are true, they simply can't compete.

 

Based on real world performance I guess? Then again, even if they are not the absolute top on release, they are close to nGreedia, at lower price and tend to age better.

 

They're not even close to nVidia. They're not even trying to be close to nVidia. They have said so themselves. Their focus is mainstream and VR and VR only requires GTX 970 performance levels. Face it, until Vega, AMD can't match Pascal. And the chance of seeing Vega in a laptop seems about as likely as me waking up to a unicorn puking rainbows outside.

 

We will have to wait and see with the chips and how the perform and then what any followups are like.

 

Either would be a pleasant surprise though, right?

 

With the larger chips it has always been down to PCB size and power delivery constraints, if it can fit and the power curve matches a sweet spot then you never know.

We don't want another 480.

 

Lol I think the unicorn would be the better catch.

 

3 more days to Computex = time to see whatever we said here is true (including the unicorn...? )

 

*crossing fingers for a Unicorn*

 

Unicorns, that's so last year

 

Argh still no news on unicorns, erm I mean, the new Clevo machines...

But there's already news on AMD's new card! I wonder how will this affect us....

 

It's positioned in an interesting way for desktops, that does not mean much information wise for notebooks though.

 

Yeah, we still have to wait for the actual announcement of the actual laptop cards.

And unicorns.

 

We will see which of the two companies have really hit the sweet spot for performance vs power.

 

No more amd by Clevo and it is definitely the-end.

Gesendet von meinem SM-G935F mit Tapatalk

 

That's an interestingly final stance to take.

 

Why so? Even desktop RX 480 could fit in beefy gaming laptops that currently run 100 and more Watt GPUs. Announced mobile RX 480M based on Polaris 11 at 35W TDP has estimated TFLOPS around 970M while being also way cheaper.

But hey, Clevo can wait for better availability of Pascal (which now looks bad, yields problems?) while MSI, Acer, Asus, Dell/Alianware... will likely spawn mid tier gaming laptops with Polaris for much broader audience. (and I wouldn't mind Thunderbolt 3 eGPU as a viable option too).

 

The fact they're targeting 35W with the RX480M name on their Polaris 11 chip (rather than cutting down a Polaris 10 chip) sounds to me like they have no intention of competing in the high end mobile GPU market which is bad news. Most importantly (to me at least) is this allows Nvidia to maintain it's G-Sync licence/cost BS going on in the high-end market.

35W is what you see in super mobile ultrabook type implementations which typically carry 940M/930M type stuff. But it'll still be nowhere near the performance of equivalent Pascal parts. I think this is particularly bad news for competition because there is a HUGE number of chassis designs now honed around the 50-60W mark (960M/965M) which is extremely popular as the "entry" level gaming laptop as they've gotten pretty darn thin now (ie XPS 15, Asus g501 etc).

Currently the only benefit I can see with a 35W target, is coupled with a 35W 6700HQ (TDP-Down), this actually falls below the ~75W threshold for battery current draw. Basically, such a system could work at it's optimal power level plugged in or on battery without throttling the GPU. For those unaware, generally Li-Po/Li-Ion laptop batteries are setup so that the maximum amount of power that can be drawn without damaging them is around the 70-75W mark.

 

Depends on the number of cells and the thermal design of the battery as to what the peak draw will be.

 

How many laptops with like M395X are available on the market and interesting? That's 125W, where as full non OC RX480 seems to be up to 150W. There are laptops with desktop GTX 980 so you can put desktop RX 480 too. I see 81 W for GTX 970M and dropping that to 35W is a rather big feature. You can offer the same performance in smaller/lighter laptops or give more battery life. For 1080p mobile gaming that's IMHO a good option. I played Wither 3 on PC with R9 270 and I still don't find any needs for anything more expensive

Polaris fetish is TAM - total addressable market, and AMD wants as much market as possible. GTX 1080 and up competitors will be Vega, and that's a nice looking, profitable but very small market compared to mainstream

 

Well AMD waited far too long to refresh their GPU lineup, hence why there hasn't been any viable AMD gaming laptops. Most importantly, their tactic of increasing power input into their GPUs on desktop is not something that works in laptops which are TDP limited. You need to improve efficiency in order to get tangible performance benefits when TDP is limited. Hence why Maxwell GPUs dominated in laptops. The M395X performance per watt is absolutely woeful.

What I was pointing out is they've used their "top" model number on a 35W part. This would normally indicate that there's no "bigger" model coming. Similarly, there's no precedent set for a high power AMD MXM card (ie over 130W requiring an extra power socket). I highly doubt they'll come out with a "desktop" RX480 for mobile.

35W TDP is also something you wouldn't bother putting on an MXM card.

Totally irrelevant now with hybrid graphics. Useful battery life is largely dictated by idle characterics of the cpu/pch. Under load you'd probably find that even a larger gpu throttled back would perform similarly under battery conditions.

 

If only this was true/relevant for AMD laptop GPU's:

http://videocardz.com/61422/amd-radeon-rx-480-rumors-part-6

If running at stock 1266 clock at full load only uses 117w and is possible to be cooled with current laptop cooling solutions that would a great card for high end laptops!

Since the beginning AMD has said that they want to bring console performance to thin and light laptops. . . that's it. The new 480m would do exactly that. Polaris 11 chip putting out ~ 2Tflops ish just like current consoles. Of course for most people on this forum that kind of performance is already at the minimum of the dGPU for gaming laptops. But I actually do kind of look forward to it, it seems to be about current 965m performance. And that isn't bad for a thin, 13/14" laptop w/1080p and mostly used for youtube/web browsing/ office work - and now some light gaming like - DOTA,CS or those fun basic games and even some other ones at decent settings. Especially if its at a good price point.

In general it seems AMD is trying to increase the basic user graphics capability a few notches. For what reasons doesn't matter - foundry/architecture problems etc or whatever some pessimists may come up with - the point is many users will have access to graphic power at price points not available before. So we all win.