nVidia recently launched its RTX series (RTX 2080Ti, RTX 2080, RTX 2070) and everybody is now waiting for a response from AMD Radeon. Will it take the form of Polaris 30 or an updated 7nm Navi architecture? We don’t know much at this date, but let’s have a look on what the rumor mill says.
According to the guys at Chiphell forums AMD is launching the 12nm version of Polaris (going by the name Polaris 30) very soon. The new redesigned Polaris architecture should be more power efficient than current Polaris chips and they are just around the corner, maybe sometime next week. Of course, not seeing this anywhere else so far, except on roadmap leaks, we should take this claim with a grain of salt, as all rumors should be taken.
Even though the source is unofficial, most of what is mentioned does fit in the general plan of AMD and what we previously heard. AMD mentioned that they will be releasing a brand new product on each quarter of the year, making the launch of Polaris 30 more plausible to be seen in the weeks to come.
So what we know at this point?
AMD’s Polaris 30 will be based on the 12nm FinFET process, from which we can expect an increase of 10-15% in performance because of the manufacturing process and as well higher clocks speed. The 12nm manufacturing process is basically just an enhanced version of the 16nm process and not a really new redesigned process. A new node would be in the form of 7nm. AMD plans to roll its Vega 20 GPU based on the 7nm node, but we won’t see any of these GPU’s until the 12nm refresh lineup is launched. The 7nm Vega’s will not be available for the gaming market in the beginning but it is scheduled to be launched early next year.
So far the rumor seems to hold. We doubt we will see a big launch event and there is also the possibility that AMD will be refreshing the Polaris GPU’s quietly on the OEM side. It is quite unclear what the name of the new GPUs will have, maybe they will be named the RX600, which seems pretty logical, but it could just as easy be named whatever else they want. AMD has a history of renaming products in a completely unexpected way.
Where is the Polaris 30 on the official AMD’s roadmap?
Well nowhere, and there is a very simple explanation for it. The previous Polaris architecture was not present there either, until we saw a refresh in 2017. So the fact that Polaris 30 GPU series is not there does not mean that it does not exist and it actually gives more credibility to the rumor if we take into consideration the past actions of AMD. This Polaris refresh will allow AMD to strengthen its position in the budget gaming builds as well as in the mobility market by bringing to the table more power efficient and cheaper graphic cards.
Conclusion time then
We are expecting the Polaris 12nm Node to be slightly faster and cheaper than the already affordable RX500 series making it the perfect choice for budged gaming builds or new members into PC gaming. But will this be the answer to the RTX series from nVidia? Certainly not. The RTX series is way more powerful than any Polaris 20 at this moment and if we remember, Polaris was even slower than Pascal (nVidia’s previous architecure). The moderate increase in performance of about 15% in the refreshed Polaris 30 will not bring it even close to a 1080Ti. But time will tell, and we will patiently wait for a response from AMD Radeon, which we are sure it will come really soon.
Meanwhile take a look at some cool tech and gadgets that launched this quarter and some waiting to be launched, that we know for sure they are/will be available.
