Polaris was a very interesting product from AMD, initially comprising of the Radeon 400
series. On the face of it, it should have been dull:
a new lineup without high-end parts, that offered performance and power consumption
similar to products we had already seen. But AMD did everything right with it, turning
it into a surprisingly interesting product. But for reasons beyond AMD’s control, it
failed to achieve the mainstream success it perhaps should have obtained.
I will talk about it in this video with the power of hindsight. But first, we need to
go back a decade.
Back, back, back.
To AMD’s 4000 series! Which isn’t Polaris… but its name is similar.
In 2008, Nvidia launched the Geforce 280, the fastest single card in the world. It would
have cost you $650. AMD didn’t have a graphics card that was as powerful.
But they didn’t have to.
Instead, they launched their Radeon 4800 series. For $300, you could get the 4870- a card that
was 94% the speed of the 280, but more importantly, cost less than half the price. A single card
was already overkill for most games- and if you wanted more then you could always buy
2 of them for less than the cost of one Geforce 280. It was kind of a no-brainer.
And for $200 was the Radeon 4850. With this card, AMD finally had an answer to the Geforce
8800 and 9800, which had gone unchallenged for years.
With these cards, AMD were highly competitive and it resulted in an incredible price-war
that allowed gamers at the time to get a high-spec PC very cheaply. I got a 4850 3 months after
launch for £115.
Most of us probably only care about price and performance (And brand name). But the
size and efficiency of the graphics cards can tell you a lot about the state of the
company. AMD’s success with their Radeon 4800 series was because it was only half the
size of Nvidia’s 200 series, allowing for AMD to sell them cheaper and making them consume
a hellolalot less power.
But since then, things haven’t been so positive for AMD. Nvidia’s 600 series marked the
first time their card was smaller than the AMD card it competed against. Oh dear. The
geforce 680 wasn’t just more powerful than AMD’s 7970- but also smaller and more efficient.
After that, AMD resorted to making bigger and bigger chips in order to compete. They
released the 290X next and it was large, hot and power-hungry. Worse than Nvidia’s cards
at the time. The slightly cut-down 290 got an amusing review
over on Anandtech. It was almost as fast as the 290X, but cheaper. It was a bargain. And
yet, despite being faster and cheaper than anything it competed against (Which are the
2 most important things), it was SO loud that they actually recommended against buying it.
Hilariously everybody complained about this and they had to update their review being
all like ‘oh okay we’re sorry, WE think it’s unacceptable, but it seems you guys
don’t mind’. You don’t get that every day.
Things only got worse for AMD, as Nvidia launched the Geforce 900 series. Not only were these
faster, but smaller than AMD’s and MUCH more efficient. All AMD could do was to launch
the 390X, which was just the 290X again but with a few tweaks. It was beginning to show
its age, and Nvidia were undisputedly ahead in every way.
For a while, both companies focused on the ultra-high-end. Nvidia won here as well, and
then even began launching their next-gen series, starting with their super-expensive and super-fast
Geforce 1070 and 1080 cards. What could AMD do? They decided not to compete head-on, and
instead resorted to the strategy they had done all those years earlier with the Radeon
4800 series. The new cards were codenamed Polaris. They were designed to be small, affordable
graphics cards that would be slower than Nvidia’s best, but would be the better choice for most
people simply by being better value for money. After all, not everybody gets a Geforce 1080.
Most people don’t have a graphics card at all, in fact. But the sweetspot in the gaming
market was in the mid-range, at around $200. Make a good card for that price and there
will be a market for it! Especially if it’s faster than any $200 card before it.
And that’s what they hoped to do with Polaris, the fastest of which would be called the Radeon
480. But did it manage it, as the 4800 series had done 8 years earlier?
It started well for Polaris. I think it was WONDERFULLY marketed.
In a presentation months before its launch, they touted how efficient it would be: which
was needed, since this had been AMD’s weakest point for quite a while. They also made a
big deal about how affordable Polaris would be. They had the confidence to compare 2 of
them to a Geforce 1080, claiming that it would be faster and cheaper. Sounds very much like
the Radeon 4800 series all over again, doesn’t it. And hey, even if it wasn’t the fastest
graphics card, it would still be VR ready. That’s what people cared about at the time.
It was a performance level previously out of their reach of many and if it was fast
enough for that then it would be FAST ENOUGH for most people.
But the name of the card was important: ending the name with an ‘80’, which was always
AMD’s mid-range series, KIND OF implied that there might be a faster ‘90’ out
later. This was never said. But it made the launch acceptable. By leaving space for a
‘90’ series as they had done in the previous 2 generations, it didn’t sound as though
AMD had given up the high-end. But at the same time, we were excited for this new, cheaper
card: it sounded like a product that everybody could find a use for! Imagine how great the
490 would eventually be when that was announced! So, how good was Polaris? On release, it was
available for under $200, and performed similarly to the much more expensive high-end cards
from previous generations while consuming a lot less power than older AMD cards. It
was a great card, at a very cleverly chosen price. But it still wasn’t as good as the
Radeon 4800 series had been back in 2008. For a start, while the Radeon 4870 was within
striking distance of the fastest card available at the time, the Geforce 280, the Radeon 480
was only 60% the speed of the fastest Geforce 1080. That’s not close enough to pass as
an alternative, or even as a high-end card. Nvidia had moved the goalposts too far for
that. And while 60% of the speed for a third of
the price is still impressive, the $200 4850 back in 2008 would have gotten you 75% the
speed of the Geforce 280. So, while Polaris gives you a lot for $200, it’s not the best
$200 card ever. But it still had the power to run new games
at 1080p with most settings set to maximum! Unfortunately, this was another thing to have
changed: 1080p was no longer the golden standard. Nvidia cards were aiming higher. The Geforce
1070 could power 1440p gaming and the 1080 was flirting with 4K!
AMD initially marketed the Radeon 480 as a 1440p-capable card. I think that’s a bit
cheeky but I see why they did it. It would be over a year before their high-end Vega
cards would launch and they needed something for gamers who wanted to dabble with higher
resolutions. And yeah, Polaris could do it if you didn’t mind dropping graphics settings
a bit. It takes years to develop a new graphics card.
When AMD started on something like Polaris, they didn’t know what the world would be
like by the time it was released! Luckily for them, the Radeon 480 proved to be JUST
ABOUT powerful enough for everything it needed to do. 1440p, VR, a rival to the Geforce 970…
if Polaris had been any slower, then I think it would have been a disappointment. On the
other hand, any faster would have been a welcome bonus, and would have aided it in the many
battles that lay ahead… While it wasn’t a competitor for Nvidia’s
1000 series (which cost a lot more anyway), it did a lot better against the older Geforce
900 series, which were still being sold as mid-range cards.
I would say that Polaris’s speed was somewhere between the Geforce 970 and 980, and consumed
roughly the same amount of power. I think people were hoping that the 480 would have
been faster than it was. But AMD never lied. The clues to its performance were there in
the pre-release presentations. Of course, they showed it in the best light possible
against Nvidia’s latest and greatest- but anybody with an interest in graphics cards
would have been able to deduce what I’ve written here from those first ‘benchmarks’.
Performing similarly to the Geforce 970 and 980 was a bit disappointing since those cards
were out a year earlier… but not anywhere close to $200!
We’ve covered price and performance- 2 factors that Polaris is competitive in. But I think
Polaris’s main goal was to improve the efficiency of AMD’s graphics cards. Let’s see how
it performs! FIRST BATTLE: The Radeon 480 VS AMD’s older
cards. The 480 is as fast, while being much smaller and consuming a lot less power. Well
done Polaris, you win this battle hands down! SECOND BATTLE: Radeon 480 VS the Geforce 980.
The 480 is almost as fast, while being much smaller, but consuming the same amount of
power. Hmm, this seems like more of a draw. And in the grand scale of things, to ONLY
draw despite being much smaller is disappointing. The Geforce 980 is based on the older, inferior
28 nm node- that’s why it’s larger. Polaris on the other hand uses a newer, smaller 14
nm node process. It could be this that is why Polaris is so small and efficient. But
it does mean that it Nvidia switches to something smaller, they’d improve as well.
Which happens to be the case with the third battle: the Radeon 480 VS the new Geforce
1070, which is on a smaller, newer 16 nm node. This results in a loss for AMD. Nvidia’s
1070 is considerably faster and consumes roughly the same amount of power… making it more
efficient. Although this is bad news for AMD, at least
Polaris will never be compared to the Geforce 1070, which is more expensive. It WILL be
bad if Nvidia makes a cheaper card based on this new tech. Something like a Geforce 1060,
perhaps.
The next month, Nvidia released the Geforce 1060, which was as powerful as the 980 before
it, but now on a smaller node, its size was now TINY. At 200mm², it was even smaller
than Polaris. I think the Geforce 1060 was better than the Radeon 480. It was faster
and more efficient. Polaris was still good! As long as it was priced a bit lower (which
it was) then it was an equally attractive product. I don’t know if that is what AMD
wanted from Polaris, mind- I think they’d have been happier if it could compete at the
same pricepoint. But hey. Here is how the 2 cards compared in benchmarks.
While a lot of hype was made for the Radeon 480, I was more impressed by the slightly
slower, slightly cheaper 470 that came out soon after! It was the same card with the
same efficient architecture. And although not VR-ready, it was still ALMOST fast enough.
You could probably wing it. And it cost just $179. Nvidia soon launched the 1060 3 GB to
compete. It had less RAM, but performed better to the Radeon 470 in most games. And cost
a bit more as well. The 470 and 480 were both based on the same
Polaris design. But there was an even smaller one created that became the even cheaper $119
Radeon 460. This was a LOT slower than the 470. I don’t think that any of us could
have predicted how low AMD was going with this card. But it was still able to game at
1080p and was good enough for key esports titles.
Sadly, it’s as though Nvidia knew EXACTLY what AMD was doing and they even had a Geforce
1050 lineup that was, once again, a bit faster and a bit more power-efficient than the Radeon
460. How convenient for Nvidia, having cards that seemed almost perfectly designed to compete
with AMD’s Polaris! Let’s show all of these cards and order
them from slowest to fastest… The Geforce 1050 matches the Radeon 460. The
1050 TI is better, but the Radeon 470 is better again, by a long way, and costs only slightly
more! What a bargain. In these games it nicely matches the older Geforce 970. The 1060 3GB
is better still, the Radeon 480 above that, then the 1060 6 GB, then the 980, and finally
the Geforce 1080 miles above everything else. So all in all, you’d expect the Radeon 400
and Geforce 1000 series to be relatively tied in popularity. All cards serve a purpose,
if priced accordingly to performance. Let’s take a look at how many were bought.
There’s no easy, reliable way to do this, so I’ll just have to go off the latest Steam
Hardware survey. And these were my findings.
This blows my mind. It’s depressing, it really is. For Polaris, which was released
first, at an aggressive price, to have such a small marketshare compared to the Geforce
1050 and 1060 series… there are no words for it. You can argue whatever you like, but
the evidence is undeniable: the Geforce 1000 series won the mid-range battle. By a landslide.
Why? I can only assume a lot of it is brand loyalty. Although I see the products to be
relatively balanced, it appears that most people, or at least companies, go with Nvidia
regardless. They’re good products, they really are. But it’s just sad to see AMD’s
Polaris struggling to get anywhere in the market. If anything, we have AMD to thank
for Nvidia’s huge success: had it not been for Polaris, we most likely would not have
seen the Geforce 1050 or 1060 series out so soon and at such low prices. It’s perhaps
because of AMD that so many buyers have obtained such good cards at such low prices. It’s
just that most of them weren’t bought from AMD.
But let’s try and find some other reasons for this. Because there are a few things I
can think of.
For starters- and this could be the big reason- depending on where you lived, AMD’s polaris
cards might have been more expensive than the competing Geforce cards. I’m afraid
I don’t have much information on this. Being in England, at the time I didn’t think about
what it cost in America, or India, or Malaysia. IF Polaris was priced more expensively, then
I agree, people should have bought the Nvidia cards instead. It’s a very price-sensitive
product.
But then, in other places it could have been the Nvidia cards that were more expensive.
So yeah, price variations could have been a factor. Let’s move onto the second reason.
Polaris had the potential to be remarkably efficient, if set to the correct voltage and
frequencies. And I think somewhere along the way, this was lost.
I partly blame AMD, who generously overvolt their cards to ensure they’re stable. This
also makes them run hotter, and in some instances, slower. Adoredtv did a video where he undervolted
his Radeon 480, keeping it just as fast while saving 15 watts. Not a bad saving.
I also partly blame third party sellers. The faster the card, the more they can sell it
for. So what do they do? They overclock Polaris, add extra power connections to fuel it and
a large fan to keep it all cool. This makes the card big, hot and power-hungry, all for
a slither more performance. This was particularly bad with the Radeon 460. This card was perfect
as a low-power gaming solution that didn’t require extra cables. So why add extra power
cables to it? And why would it need crossfire? I wonder if all this overclocking was done
to close the gap in performance between Polaris and the rival Geforce cards. But I just think
it makes Polaris look even worse when it consumes so much more heat and power in an effort to
match Nvidia cards for performance. I really do wish that they had just gone with Polarises
sweet spot of price, performance and efficiency… even if it had been a bit slower and cheaper
than Nvidia’s products.
Oh, and a third possible reason would be the drivers and software. I don’t think AMD’s
were particularly bad, but since the initial launch of Polaris they have rolled out several
large improvements to the bundled software. These added features and generally made it
a lot better than they had been previously. As a Youtuber, I couldn’t use AMD for a
while because they didn’t have an answer to Shadowplay. That all changed with Relive,
launched at the very end of 2016.
And I don’t know what happened with laptops. The Radeon 460 had a low enough power consumption
to be perfectly suited for cheaper portable gaming systems… and yet I never saw them!
There were plenty of laptops with Geforce 1050’s and 60’s in them.
Also, after the initial hype, VR didn’t take off. Had it become the next big thing,
I’m sure many people would have bought the cheapest ‘VR ready’ card they could have-
which would most likely have been Polaris. But as it was, those who did upgrade likely
weren’t doing so for VR, and so maybe getting a card with the Geforce brand was more important
than obtaining the lowest priced VR-ready system.
AMD later launched the Radeon 500 lineup, which were just rebranded and revised Polarises
with 10 dollars knocked off the asking price. The 570 and 580 were a bit faster than the
470 and 480, but consumed more power. Which I personally saw as being a step in the wrong
direction, but it closed the gap in performance between them and the Geforce 1060 series.
And some games started coming out that were optimised for technology that AMD was particularly
good at, and in those games, Polaris finally pulled ahead of competing Nvidia cards!
And then the mining craze started. Using graphics cards to mine bitcoin became very profitable
and AMD’s cards turned out to be better suited to the task than Nvidia’s. Suddenly,
those $200 graphics cards were being sold for 2 or even 3 times higher than that! Not
for gaming, but for mining. Now I’ve heard people twist this into a bad thing for AMD,
claiming that they didn’t receive the extra profit from these sales, or how it would reduce
the number of AMD cards being used for gaming, so developers would focus less on making their
games work well for them. But I disagree. I think mining was great for
AMD! As far as I’m concerned, AMD could sell every last polaris card that they made.
If they’re not doing well from that then they’re doing something very wrong. Since
then, the mining craze has died down a bit now and prices have returned more or less
to normal. No doubt lots of old, worn-out mining cards
are now flooding the market and when they eventually fail, AMD will get the blame and
get a reputation for selling dodgy cards even though it was the mining that was to blame.
I’ll accept that as a down-side to the whole mining thing.
So: Polaris. Affordable, powerful… and hardly anybody is using them for gaming any more.
What’s next for AMD’s mid-range graphics card range?
There are lots of rumours going around at the moment. There may be yet another rebrand
of Polaris coming out. There’s a chance there’s another important chapter left in
Polaris’s story… but I’m happy to move onto my conclusion about it for now.
Polaris has been a valueable asset in AMD’s Graphics card lineup. And I think it’s been
a success. In part thanks to the mining boom, AMD made money from Polaris. A lot of money.
And I hope they’re putting it to good use! It takes years to develop and to release a
new graphics card, so it could be a while before we get the cards made with all that
extra money. For now, the next new design to be released will be NAVI, which rumour
has it will replace Polaris, giving us faster cards for less money than ever before!
…at which point everybody will rush out and get a Geforce 2060 instead.
Here’s a short video I made BEFORE Polaris came out, where I speculated about it, Vega…
and Ryzen. It’s interesting to look back at it with hindsight.