AMD Radeon RX 500 GPUs are reportedly Polaris rebrand, coming in April

[Scorpus]

Earlier this week, AMD officially announced that their next-generation graphics cards would be branded as "Radeon RX Vega". At the time of the announcement, many were left confused as to the fate of the Radeon RX 500 series, which has been rumored for several months now.

Well according to the ever-accurate folks at VideoCardz, the Radeon RX 500 series still exists, it's just a rebrand of existing Polaris-based RX 400 cards with slightly improved performance. This rumor, partially sourced from Heise.de, suggests the Radeon RX 580 and RX 570 will launch on April 4th, followed by the RX 560 and RX 550 on April 11th.

The specifications for these cards won't surprise anyone familiar with AMD's current Polaris offerings. The RX 580 is essentially identical to the RX 480, except with a boost clock speed increase from 1266 to 1340 MHz, according to VideoCardz. This results in an extra 300 GLFOPS of FP32 performance, or a six percent performance improvement.

As you might have guessed, the RX 570 is reportedly an RX 470, except clocked at up to 1244 MHz instead of 1206 MHz. The RX 570 will also get slightly faster memory (7 GHz rather than 6.6 GHz). The RX 560 is expected to be an RX 460 with 1024 stream processors, although VideoCardz says that's "unconfirmed", plus a clock speed boost from 1200 to 1287 MHz.

Not much is known about the Radeon RX 550, which will be the cheapest and least powerful card in AMD's RX 500 line-up. VideoCardz suggests this graphics card will "most likely" be equipped with a new Polaris 12 low-end GPU and compete in the sub-$100 market.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68361-amd-radeon-rx-500-gpus-reportedly-polaris-rebrand.html

 

[Raoul Duke]

This sucks

 

[Evernessince]

This sucks

I don't think it sucks as much as you think. If they release the 500 series along with Vega, which is in about two months, it goes right along those rumors that we'd see a better binned RX 480. So the 500 series would consist of improved RX 460s, 470s, and 480s along with the new Vega chips on the top end and would release with Vega in about two months. Just my opinion on the most logical choice for AMD.

"Earlier this week, AMD officially announced that their next-generation graphics cards would be branded as "Radeon RX Vega""

This is a bit misleading. AMD announced that their new enthusiast class graphics cards will be called RX Vega.

 

[Lionvibez]

I'm waiting for Vega.

However if you could overclock that RX580 to 1.5Ghz on water sounds like a winner.

 

[ZackL04]

Wow, 500 series already? Has it really been a year since the 480 came out?

 

[hahahanoobs]

This sucks

I don't think it sucks as much as you think. If they release the 500 series along with Vega, which is in about two months, it goes right along those rumors that we'd see a better binned RX 480. So the 500 series would consist of improved RX 460s, 470s, and 480s along with the new Vega chips on the top end and would release with Vega in about two months. Just my opinion on the most logical choice for AMD.

"Earlier this week, AMD officially announced that their next-generation graphics cards would be branded as "Radeon RX Vega""

This is a bit misleading. AMD announced that their new enthusiast class graphics cards will be called RX Vega.

No, just no.
Vega won't be available until at least June.

 

[Lionvibez]

Wow, 500 series already? Has it really been a year since the 480 came out?

It looks to be a Higher clocked RX480 so not much has changed.

 

[Evernessince]

No, just no.
Vega won't be available until at least June.

AMD said 2nd quarter, which starts in April and ends in June. The two months quote I gave is within AMD's 2nd quarter estimate. So yes, def possible yes.

 

[hahahanoobs]

AMD said 2nd quarter, which starts in April and ends in June. The two months quote I gave is within AMD's 2nd quarter estimate. So yes, def possible yes.

No, AMD's own slide says 1H 2017 for enthusiast Vega, and for AMD that means June. You won't be able to buy it before Computex. The 500 series rebrands will be available in the next couple months.

https://tech4gamers.com/amd-vega-gpus-will-finally-arrive-in-2017/

 

[Puiu]

Wow, 500 series already? Has it really been a year since the 480 came out?

As far as I know Nvidia is also preparing a Pascal refresh (the GTX 2000 series) similar to the RX 500 series - higher clocks and other small improvements. They just haven't been talking much about it. I expect it to also launch sometime in late Q2 or early Q3 2017.

 

[ScubaRhys]

This is woeful, Nvidia must be laughing like pirates.

 

[Evernessince]

No, AMD's own slide says 1H 2017 for enthusiast Vega, and for AMD that means June. You won't be able to buy it before Computex. The 500 series rebrands will be available in the next couple months.

https://tech4gamers.com/amd-vega-gpus-will-finally-arrive-in-2017/

You are arguing semantics. 1H is 1st or second quarter. Like I said, June is the tail end of the 2nd quarter.

"The 500 series rebrands will be available in the next couple months."

Wow, and AMD's top end follows shortly after? Who would have thought.

 

[hahahanoobs]

You are arguing semantics. 1H is 1st or second quarter. Like I said, June is the tail end of the 2nd quarter.

"The 500 series rebrands will be available in the next couple months."

Wow, and AMD's top end follows shortly after? Who would have thought.

And before that you said:
"If they release the 500 series along with Vega..."

Seems to me you're arguing with yourself.

 

[Evernessince]

And before that you said:
"If they release the 500 series along with Vega..."

Seems to me you're arguing with yourself.

This coming from the guy who said 1H wasn't 1st or 2nd quarter. Once again though, semantics. You are arguing the difference of what I said "shortly after" with "along".

 

[Scorpus]

I've spoken to people at AMD, and the indication is that Vega won't be ready until Computex in late May.

The RX 500 series, according to this report, will launch roughly two months earlier

 

[Raoul Duke]

By the time AMD gets it together I will be running my first NVIDIA card, Sad, but true.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

By the time AMD gets it together I will be running my first NVIDIA card, Sad, but true.

And you'll probably never go back to AMD. Rather late than never.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

It looks like the age old adage of 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' is still totally unshakeable.

 

[Raoul Duke]

By the time AMD gets it together I will be running my first NVIDIA card, Sad, but true.

And you'll probably never go back to AMD. Rather late than never.

I like to support the underdog, but this (AMD stuff) has been going on so long now, they would have to pull a diamond out of their behind before I would even look their way again. Tired of paying for underwhelming cards and for me the GTX 1070, 1080 etc, series is just the nail in the AMD coffin for this consumer. Even reading on the ads the GTX 1080 Ti will be out causing a $100 reduction in 1080 prices. It just keeps looking better and better on this side of the street.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I've spoken to people at AMD, and the indication is that Vega won't be ready until Computex in late May.

The RX 500 series, according to this report, will launch roughly two months earlier

So does this mean that the 500 series is launching in 3-4 weeks? Because 2 months earlier than late May is Late March....

Early April is close though

 

[alabama man]

No one cares about amd's current graphics cards and what do they do? Call it something different and overclock it so it runs even hotter. Just use all the money you spend on making crap and make something that can compete with nvidia. The vega show (what ever it was called) only made me less exited, you had nothing to show so it will probably be a flop. And the host was horrid, he might do good work in his actual job but they should get someone else to be on stage.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I've spoken to people at AMD, and the indication is that Vega won't be ready until Computex in late May.

The RX 500 series, according to this report, will launch roughly two months earlier

So, this is the 300 series all over again, with the true flagship months out from the actual launch, and a bunch of rebrands filling the space in the meantime?

Jeez, cmon AMD. Nvidia is eating your lunch, and you are just sitting there. This is why you dont give your opponent half the market unopposed.

 

[Uncle Al]

I guess it says a lot about a company that can't come up with anything new than the product name and more pretty packaging .....

 

[Lionvibez]

No one cares about amd's current graphics cards and what do they do? Call it something different and overclock it so it runs even hotter. Just use all the money you spend on making crap and make something that can compete with nvidia. The vega show (what ever it was called) only made me less exited, you had nothing to show so it will probably be a flop. And the host was horrid, he might do good work in his actual job but they should get someone else to be on stage.

I guess you missed the part in the first 5 mins where he said this is not a product launch?

And there is plenty of people that care about AMD's card or else they would have zero market share.

"call is something different and overclock it so it runs even hotter"

Both NV and AMD are guilty of rebranding cards and upping the clocks so I'm not sure that your point is.

Just stick to buying NV cards and say the useless fanboy comments.

I guess it says a lot about a company that can't come up with anything new than the product name and more pretty packaging .....

This was not a product launch you are just as ridiculous as the guy I quoted above.

It say a lot of you when you don't understand this when it was commented on in the first 5 mins.

Ryzen is whats important right now, AMD launching a new card in the april to june time frame is nothing new its been like this for years.

 

[anselhelm]

I appreciate a lot of people will see "rebrand" and groan, but given that the Vega 10/11 cards are looking at a May/June unveiling/launch, I actually see this as a pragmatic approach from AMD when most of its resources are focussed on launching Ryzen CPUs successfully.

Though it'll be a re-use of the same chips (Polaris 10/11) from the RX 400 series, AMD has had about a year to improve yields and make tweaks to improve the chips. In some ways, this is just reminiscent of Intel's newly-adopted PAO (Process Architecture Optimisation) development model, where Broadwell was the new process (14nm), Skylake was the new architecture and the recently-launched Kaby Lake is the optimisation.

If we look at this through the same lens, AMD combined a new process (14nm) with a new architecture (Polaris 10/11), so now we're looking at the optimisation stage based on real-world experience with the silicon.

Don't get me wrong here: this isn't something amazing, but it will help to keep AMD from haemorrhaging GPU market-share whilst it prepares Vega to compete at the high-end with Nvidia once again.

What I'd really like to see is some news on Vega 11 now, the supposed match for the 1070, as this could well be the hearts and minds of gamers are won/lost, depending on price/performance.