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Review of the Radeon Pro 450 vs 460?
- Thread starter Westbrook0
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Probably 1-2 weeks when the notebooks begin to arrive. I don't believe anyone has review models of the 15" currently - at least Gruber and the common suspects do not.
It's $100 to upgrade right? The GPUs are sort of weak to begin with. It's a worthy upgrade for sure.
It's $100 to upgrade right? The GPUs are sort of weak to begin with. It's a worthy upgrade for sure.
You can have an idea of how these perform by looking at existing models:
Pro 450 ~= M370X (1st gen GCN)
Same in compute, Pro 450 has 10 GB/s more in memory bandwidth
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M370X.142763.0.html
Pro 460 ~= M385X (2nd gen GCN)
Close in compute, Pro 460 has 16 GB/s less in memory bandwidth
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M385X.154229.0.html
The new GPUs use 4th gen GCN though. The major bullet points of 4th gen over 1st/2nd gen are:
1. they handle geometries better than M370X/M385X, especially the Pro 450 over M370X.
2. they have 2nd gen delta color compression, so they can do more with less memory bandwidth.
Pro 450 ~= M370X (1st gen GCN)
Same in compute, Pro 450 has 10 GB/s more in memory bandwidth
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M370X.142763.0.html
Pro 460 ~= M385X (2nd gen GCN)
Close in compute, Pro 460 has 16 GB/s less in memory bandwidth
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R9-M385X.154229.0.html
The new GPUs use 4th gen GCN though. The major bullet points of 4th gen over 1st/2nd gen are:
1. they handle geometries better than M370X/M385X, especially the Pro 450 over M370X.
2. they have 2nd gen delta color compression, so they can do more with less memory bandwidth.
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Radeon Pro 460 is closer to M390 than M385X
The GPUs can run quieter in desktop environment. Only the fans of the MBP can not handle the thermal output of the GPUs. However 35W TDP is well within the power envelope for the laptop.
M385X is definitely closer. M390 runs at 1.96 TFlops peak and has twice the memory bandwidth over Pro 460, mate.
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Apparently yes. AMD claims all of them running below 35W, and these are all made on 14nm that improves performance per watt significantly over 28nm we had been on for 4 years. Whether it is "quieter" depends on the cooling design though. But if everything is assumed to be unchanged, you can expect Pro 460 blowing fans like M370X, but doing better.
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I know it's fluid until we actually get these cards benchmarked, but I am not liking the steady decline down their benchmark list that has happened since the announcement for the 450/455/460.
On that note, shouldn't a "Pro" 460 be a better card than the standard 460m? Not looking that way though...
It doesn't matter, that much, also Polaris architecture has that specific Delta Color Compression technology, which helps to save bandwidth, which Pitcairn, on which M390 is based does not have.
1024 GCN cores@910 MHz, is closer to 1024 GCN cores@958 MHz, than 896@1100 MHz.
I understand that, but it appears the card is less powerful than a normal 460m. "Pro" and "workstation" means gimped versions? I would think they'd squeeze more power out of it for people who need it.
DCC saves bandwidth only in a few specific circumstance (frame buffers, mainly), and is certainly not enough to pull the >2x gap with its proclaimed 35% gain in efficiency.
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But then you have to consider the RX 460 Notebook announced is just fitting the 75W desktop RX 460 in notebooks with an unknown power cap (but presumably lower). Here we have SKUs that specifically target a 35W cap, and the 460 is a fully unlocked chip with two extra CUs run at a lower clock frequency.
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Right, I do see its 35W compared with 75W. (Pro 460 and 460m). I'll be very interested to see how they compare. If it's nearly identical, that would be very impressive considering the power difference.
I would expect the 460 Mobile to be something at 55-65W, a special lower-power bin for notebooks. Given the known spec, it should be above Pro 460 too.
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By the way, workstation graphics differs not in spec, but in the graphics driver stack and the support. The software alone makes the card way worse in performance per dollar, if you consider these cards just for gaming purpose.
Whether or not Apple ships the Pro graphics driver in Bootcamp is unknown though.