Shtof
Member
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-amd-rx-480-costs-199-gtx-970-r9-390-beating-performance
I guess this is nothing new since we knew it would use the Polaris Architecture. We can assume, however, that the aggressive pricing could be a result of Sony already ordering huge amounts of the GPU for Neo, letting AMD relax the price for the standalone GPU.
What I find interesting is that the RX480 matches the GTX980 in performance. The latter was the top tier GPU 1,5 years ago, and will be 2 years old by the time PSNeo is rumored to release. If Sony can sell the console for $399 and new game releases takes advantage of the extra power the possibility is high that quite a few of the 'hard core' gamers will upgrade.
Looking further down the line, if this trend continues we could see new consoles releasing every second year for rather low prices. When off-the-shelf hardware is used R&D costs for new consoles is reduced immensely. This is a far cry from the days of PS2 and PS3 where the custom hardware were huge investments.
It's also worth noting that - clock-speeds and resultant TFLOPs aside - the specs for RX 480 are point-for-point a match for the GPU in Sony's upcoming PlayStation Neo, all but confirming that the Sony mid-gen console refresh uses both Polaris technology and the new 14nm FinFET chip manufacturing process.
I guess this is nothing new since we knew it would use the Polaris Architecture. We can assume, however, that the aggressive pricing could be a result of Sony already ordering huge amounts of the GPU for Neo, letting AMD relax the price for the standalone GPU.
What I find interesting is that the RX480 matches the GTX980 in performance. The latter was the top tier GPU 1,5 years ago, and will be 2 years old by the time PSNeo is rumored to release. If Sony can sell the console for $399 and new game releases takes advantage of the extra power the possibility is high that quite a few of the 'hard core' gamers will upgrade.
Looking further down the line, if this trend continues we could see new consoles releasing every second year for rather low prices. When off-the-shelf hardware is used R&D costs for new consoles is reduced immensely. This is a far cry from the days of PS2 and PS3 where the custom hardware were huge investments.