AMD Polaris 10 R9 480 Offers 390X Performance

With Polaris dropping in 3 weeks, there is no end to the rumours coming out about the performance of MAD’s latest GPUs. Last week, we found out that Polaris 10, the top end Polaris chip, would match the GTX 980Ti in performance. As mentioned earlier, AMD is planning to shake up the performance/dollar ratio for GPUs and the latest reports confirms this. According to the leakers, the R9 480 will offer R9 390X levels of performance.

Given that Polaris 10 was expected to match the GTX 980Ti, it isn’t too surprising that the 480 matches the 390X. Generally, the base and X variants are off by about 10% in performance. This would put the 480X at just under Fury levels, the 490 at Fury X and the 490X just surpassing the GTX 980Ti. Of course, this means that AMD is using Polaris 10 for the entire R9 480(X) and 490(X) lineups. Given the new process node, AMD probably has enough dud Polaris 10 chips to fill in the bottom 3 levels. Making use of imperfect dies is also a great strategy to maximize profit, something AMD sorely needs.

Given historical pricing levels, this means that AMD will be offering R9 390X levels of performance at half the cost. This would completely revolutionize the performance/dollar and bring about the generational leap AMD has been talking about. Given these reports, it looks like AMD dictate the pace of the new generation, forcing Nvidia to lower their prices as well and hitting. Either way, AMD should finally be able to gain some of that lost marketshare and shakeup the GPU market.