AMD Unveils Its New GPU Polaris

[Night Hunter]

As expected, AMD announced its new GPU architecture for 2016 at the Consumer Electronics Show today, and it potentially marks a significant move for the company.

Polaris, as it's called, sees AMD moving from the 28nm technology both it and Nvidia have been using for years to 14nm FinFET GPUs. This will allow for the company's hardware to offer a "remarkable generational jump in power efficiency."

 

It says the new line of GPUs is built for "fluid frame rates in graphics, gaming, VR, and multimedia applications running on compelling small form-factor thin and light computer designs." It also promises "industry-leading performance-per-watt" and support for HDR monitors., HDMI 2.0a, DisplayPort 1.3, and 4K h.265 encoding and decoding.

 

The video above, which features various AMD employees talking up the advantages of Polaris, also briefly compares the power consumption of two comparable cards. Running Star Wars Battlefront at 1080p and Medium video settings, the Polaris card uses about 86 watts, whereas we see a stock GTX 950 using 153 watts. (The subsequent fine print pins the latter rig's power draw at 140 watts.)

 

Further details weren't shared, but AMD says the first Polaris-based cards should begin shipping in mid-2016.

 

Source http://www.gamespot.com/articles/amd-unveils-its-new-gpu-architecture-polaris/1100-6433503/