http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/polaris-validation-failed-might-launch-in-october-now.html

Terrible news for us customers, Nvidia is closing in on 60% market share. Even though I haven't owned an AMD/ATI card is quite some time, I still recognize the need for a strong 2nd player in the marketplace. I hope this isn't true.

Breaking news, gtx 1080 price raised to 999$.

Seriously though, that sucks if true If AMD could get the heat and power consumption down i'd love to switch back. I find physx broken 90% of the time, the drivers unstable and the cards over priced on Nvidia's side.

That sucks...

Oof. Hopefully NVidia goes the route of keeping their prices as planned in hopes of pulling some customers from AMD, who don't want to wait. AMD customers are used to paying cheaper than NVidia's baseline prices so if NVidia increases prices, they'd just be pushing the possibility away of winning those new customers over.

Dang that sucks.

I wonder if this will have any implications for the PS4.5 since it was reportedly using a similar architecture from AMD.

@chaser324:

Great question, I would assume if the rumor turns out to be true, it will most certainly delay PS4 Neo.

Sure hope not.

I think AMD was targeting 14nm architecture (versus 16nm for Nvidia's Pascal). If it was viable at the moment, Polaris would've likely had higher performance for less power/heat usage.

I wonder if this will have any implications for the PS4.5 since it was reportedly using a similar architecture from AMD.

THE PS4 NEO IS NOT USING POLARIS!

It would cripple compatibility since Polaris is a new architecture. The Neo is likely just using a higher clocked version of the same GPU. Using Polaris would be like putting jam instead of peanut butter in the GPU socket.

lol really? I guess this is just bs click bait then?

http://vrworld.com/2016/05/11/amd-confirms-sony-playstation-neo-based-zen-polaris/

Well shit. Guess I was proven wrong lol, but still, the article's title has a "?" at the end.

It does mention that previous consoles did die shrinks with revisions, but it seems like too many variables if they want to do a die shrink AND increase the Neo's power....

Man, AMD just can't catch a break, can they?

@mcfart: It's impossible to say for sure without official word from Sony/AMD, but there have been rumors of PS4 Neo using an architecture based on Polaris for at least the past month or two.

Probably can't really compare the PS4 Neo to previous console revisions since with consoles like the PS3 and 360 the focus has been solely on reducing power consumption, heat, and cost and not also trying to increase processing power.

The specs provided via the leak would certainly suggest that the GPU is the lower end Polaris 10 which is meant to be the new 480 (the non X), the line replacement for the R9 390.

I swear I posted here.. either way this isn't super surprising. AMD has been struggling to be a relevant competitor for a while now. Both their CPUs and GPUs are increasingly lagging behind Intel and Nvidia. If you want a great new video card, the obvious choice is a Nvidia product. If you want the top of the line CPU to go along with it, then it's obviously going to be Intel. In neither situation does AMD even factor into the equation unless you're on a budget and you don't want top performance.

This sucks because it means that Nvidia can essentially get away with murder on the marketplace but it's become increasingly obvious that AMD either lacks the talent or manufacturing capabilities to create competing architecture on the same level.

So AMD has come out and debunked this rumor as false, at least according to this source, so things might not be so grim after all

Might be too late. Even if it is just a rumor, the PR damage has been done.

The PR damage was done a long time ago when Tom's Hardware and PC Magazine consistently sided with Nvidia in all of their results, which led to most gamers purchasing Nvidia (and Intel, for that matter) products over AMD/ATI, despite much greater cost, so that they could have that extra 1% of performance boost.

My suggestion to the OP is that if they are really concerned about market competition that they vote with their wallets, as simple concern over having a healthy market is not enough to ensure a healthy market. For my part, all of my PCs run AMD hardware and will continue to do so. We have far too many oligarchies/monopolies in the tech world these days...

@mcfart: I think putting peanut butter or jam in the GPU socket will both get you pretty much the same results.

@dukeking said:

Spending money on the weaker of the two gpu oligopoly companies also isn't enough to ensure a healthy market. An oligopoly is an oligopoly no matter where your money goes. If more people decide they want to buy Nvidia products than AMD products, then whatever. Supporting the underdog for the underdog's sake is a strategy only employed by fanboys with too much money lying around. That's not real competition. If you want to play your part as a consumer, you either buy something that you think will be good enough for you or you don't buy anything at all. In the world of market capitalism, sometimes not voting is more powerful than voting at all.

Oligopolies can be a shit-show, but they're probably the ultimate option in a high-cost industry like computer hardware. We've got oligopolies in car manufacturing, cell phones, and airplane manufacturing, but that's okay because these industries are extremely competitive. The gpu industry is also very competitive, which is why we should worry when something goes wrong at AMD. The onus to restore AMD to a better, more competitive state, however, should not be on the consumer. It's AMD's job to get AMD back on track, and if they fail and go out of business then in time some other company will challenge Nvidia's monopoly and arguably do a much better job at it.

To be fair AMD is actually continuously trying new things, the latest being Mantle shifting to an Open platform known as Vulkan. AMD being first to market with HBM memory. AMD making APU's to bring better gaming to the masses in the forms of consoles. While Nvidia is busy trying to get you to buy 144hz monitors, better twitch features, in-game screenshots in VR, and raising prices.

As a company AMD really seems to be trying to innovate in interesting ways, to make gaming more accessible, and less resource intensive. The fact of the matter is any GPU in the last 4 years is hugely powerful, but the Windows and DirectX has been a stranglehold for games. If Vulkan as an open platform takes off, with incorporation into Unity and UE4 it means we could finally be in an age where Windows gaming is no more since Vulkan is cross platform. Even Steam itself has admitted that Vulkan makes way more sense then the lock down that is Directx 12.

So a future where we have more powerful APU's, where you have on chip communication between cpu and gpu. Are running a really efficient open intermediary platform like Vulkan on a Linux box, Windows, Mac ,Chromebook or whatever platform you want? How is that not a great future where you can game on whatever platform you want at a lower cost? In tern making VR more accessible and affordable? And all of that could be attributed to nucleating at AMD.

@beaudacious: Vulkan runs on anything that can run the latest OpenGL. HBM is expensive and is being reserved for top of the line cards, while GDDR5x is starting to hit mainstream starting with Nvidia it seems.

Nvidia's new cards are also sporting FinFET and a lot of other similar power efficiency methods as AMD.

AMD so far has not shipped out the APUs that matter because they want to hold on to the discrete market, and they have been moving APUs in the console market instead.

Not saying that they aren't a valued market presence but does it really matter that AMD doesn't get recognition. AMDs biggest advantage is in the mid market product shelf; price/performance is where they lead, the performance crown was never their game.

Hey so even though I play on PC I have no idea what this validation actually is. Is it an internal test or is it done by external party?

I just switched to a Nvidia this year after having AMD for the longest time. I just wanted to try something else for a change.

Dude. Seriously. I love my Nvidia as much as the next guy, but we can't keep having this graphics cards monopoly. But I guess it might be too late at this point. I mean who's going to start a new GFX cards business? What incentive is there? I highly doubt Intel has any interest in doing that. Does IBM do any type of consumer grade work anymore? Last thing I can think of were the previous consoles.

It's all a shame.

You're correct, it's an internal test for stability and compatibility. Keep in mind these are just rumors that many say are false.

I've been an nvidia guy for a long time, but man monopolies are no good.

Don't like this news one bit

i dunno- i've been on a hd 6870 for years and that's proven to be an incredibly robust card. i hope amd continues to be a factor, because if they continue to deliver cards of a similar quality at good prices i'd have no problem opting for amd gpu over nvidia.

It looks like this rumor is false, which is great news.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-polaris-10-samples-work-at-1-27-ghz.html

@strife777: It could always come crashing down, either one of these companies could be the next 3dfx, and a new King shall rise.