AMD is looking to bolster its Polaris lineup as the tech giant announced a new series GPUs under the name “Polaris 30”. From what we know so far, and given the fierce competition, AMD can very well turn the Polaris lineup from mid-range to high-end GPUs.
AMD’s original Polaris lineup was pretty good. It featured some really fast graphics cards that would hold their own for gaming purposes and the best part was that they were reasonably priced. However, their price to performance ratio attracted the attention of a lot of miners as well during the period of the ‘cryptocurrency boom’. Due to the large demand for GPUs in general during this period, the prices of GPUs doubled or even tripled at times, therefore, many people weren’t able to buy the Polaris GPUs.
However, now that the cryptocurrency hype has died down, prices are slowly coming back to normal. Although people can pick up GPUs for near retail prices now, it’s still not advisable as the next generation of graphics cards is coming very soon for both Nvidia and AMD. One of the newest additions to AMD’s lineup is the Polaris 30.
AMD is already using the 12nm processor chip for its other projects including Ryzen and Vega. Therefore, the Polaris would be no different as it too gets an upgrade from the 14nm process to the 12nm which should significantly improve performance and reduce power consumption. Although power is hardly an issue with today’s GPUs, the improved power consumption is certainly a plus point.
According to ChipHell, it’s estimated that the overall boost to performance would be somewhere around 20% for the Polaris 30 lineup, which is insane. This more than likely moves the Polaris GPU’s into the high-end range which would mean an that the prices will increase too. Therefore, AMD’s Polaris GPUs might lose that attraction they once had of being reasonably priced.
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However, AMD also has an upcoming architecture known as ‘Navi’ which is going to be aimed for the mid-range market. It’s likely that Navi could take over the role the original Polaris lineup had i.e. to provide decent GPUs in an affordable price range while the Polaris 30 range would move to the high-end status. Whatever the case, AMD really needs to step up after failing to live up to expectations with the Vega lineup.
Many don’t even consider AMD to be a rival to Nvidia now, however, provided it’s good, the Polaris 30 could turn the tide and bring AMD back in the race. More details for the Polaris 30 will come closer to its release date. The GPUs are rumored to hit stores by the end of 2018, so we don’t need to wait too long then.