After words regarding it starts to make their way into Internet, AMD today has officially unveiled its new GPU architecture called Polaris. The new architecture will become the basis of an upcoming range of new Radeon GPUs starting mid-2016.
Since we are around six months away before the actual GPUs are released into the market, it is not surprising that only a handful of information regarding Polaris was officially released by AMD. At this moment, the company is quite focused on getting the consumer to notice the power efficiency of Polaris-based 14nm FinFET GPUs.
In fact, the company claimed that it has managed to achieve a remarkable leap in terms of performance per watt with Polaris. Additionally, the Polaris architecture will feature 4th generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) and h.265 encode/decode at 4K resolution as well as support for HDMI 2.0a and Display Port 1.3.
Interestingly though, AMD has also specifically said that Polaris-based GPUs are meant for small form-factor thin and light computer designs. Based on that, it seems that these GPUs might not be those powerful high-end Radeon GPUs that you might be expecting although AMD claimed that they are designed to deliver “fluid frame rates” in gaming, graphics, virtual reality and multimedia applications on those computers.
Then again, it is still too early to give a verdict on Polaris without looking at the finalized products. Let’s see if the new architecture is able to provide AMD with much needed firepower for it to go against its competitors.
(Source: AMD)
