This is AMD’s second year at the PC Gaming Show, and it’s definitely not their strongest showing—last year we had a massive reveal of three new cards, a few rebrands, a dual GPU PCB as well as enough details and prices to keep us interested. This year AMD barely announced two new cards—the RX 470 and RX 460, targeting “1080P” and “MOBA” gamers.
Just like last year we got the lovely AMD CEO Lisa Su coming onto stage to talk AMD. We got “the briefcase” this year as well, although unlike last year, what emerged from the box was a lot of hot air and very little substance for us PC gamers to actually grab onto.
Besides the already announced $199 (and above) RX 480 releasing on the 29th June , the new 14nm (not official Polaris 11) GPUs were trotted out by Lisa SU. Lisa described the RX 470 as an ideal 1080P 60FPS gaming card with 2.8X performance per watt over the previous generation, while the RX 460 was the ideal MOBA esports pixel pusher, using less than 75W. Going off the board design, there does not seem to be any 6 Pin connector(although there is space for one-AIB can add perhaps?), which means this reference RX 460 is getting all its power from the PCI-Express slot.
The miniscule cards, unlike the more fully formed RX 480, were quite barebones, as neither had what we would call “modern” cooling shrouds attached. Although Lisa did say that AIB partners will provide multiple versions of RX 470 , which tells me there wont be a “reference” cooling option, hence the absent cooling shroud on the RX 470. Specifications were glaringly absent, as well as price or release dates.
Of some interest to VR aficionados is a pretty sweet looking Alienware VR backpack with a RX 480 powered PC installed inside. The entire PC is in the backpack—we didn’t see it run anything or get a price, but it looked cool nonetheless. Besides once again showing Doom using Vulkan API running above 60FPS (no resolution, GPU used or settings mentioned), we also got a teaser of CroTeam’s Serious Sam in VR using dual AMD GPUs. Good to know that two AMD GPUs (supposed RX 480s) will be good enough for VR content.
As the finale, we got to see some Zen CPU tray batches like cup cakes coming out an oven, and then for some reason we saw Doom running on their 8 core 16 thread Zen, their new Summit Ridge CPU. I’m not sure what that was supposed to illicit, but if it was to prove that Zen is a gaming as well as performance CPU, it still offered very little substance to get at all excited about. All in all, a short showing from AMD, and I for one would have thought at least offer more than simply teasers of their products.
Last Updated: June 13, 2016
Ghost In The Rift
June 14, 2016 at 01:52
Damn, those cards reminds me of the old DDR3 days..0_o
Pariah
June 14, 2016 at 07:49
DDR3 was last year.
Those cards remind me of days before DDR was a thing. Riva TNT and 3DFX VooDoo cards.
Derrich Schleich
June 14, 2016 at 07:58
Or the Inno3D cards….
http://nvidiagraphicscards.com/images/geforce%206500.png
Pariah
June 14, 2016 at 08:04
No this just looks like an entry level card to show stuff on the monitor with. It’s not large. Like these:
http://hw-museum.cz/data/vga/pic/big/3dfx_Voodoo4_4500_AGP_rev._3900_F.jpg
http://img.tomshardware.com/us/1999/03/12/nvidia_rocks_the_boat_with_tnt2/tnt2.jpg
Derrich Schleich
June 14, 2016 at 09:08
AGP was before my pc time
Deceased
June 14, 2016 at 13:08
awwww yisss XD
Dem days!!! 😀
Played Far Cry ( original ) on one of these – took me a whole year to finish that game in “slide-show” mode :’D
Pariah
June 14, 2016 at 13:12
LEL. My first real after market card was a VooDoo 2 – had to be attached to your normal VGA card, couldn’t run on its own. Man. I played Dungeon Keeper 2 on that thing.
Ah the old days. Fond memories. And never would we have imagined that we’d be here with graphics as mind-blowing as they are.
Deceased
June 14, 2016 at 13:52
Fond memories indeed 😀
Also, yeah man, graphical fidelity these days would be seen as blasphemous devil-sorcery back in those day XD I mean, have you seen Overwatch in glorious 4K?! ( trololol )
Dane
June 14, 2016 at 10:47
I think you may be missing a point. AMD’s main business is not POS like nVidia is, and I don’t think they intended to advertise new tech to gamers like you expected them to. For them it was more of a global press conference that they didn’t need to hold. Just an update/reminder and publicity at a fair price. I’m content with how they contrasted the general “we are now THIS powerful” theme of E3 by just showing up and saying “Hey, how are you? Yeah we’re good too. See ya later.”
Marco
June 14, 2016 at 12:10
It was the distinct lack of anything of substance that perturbed me–I get the theme and tone they were going for as they couldn’t have the kind of show they had last year. However, changing your tone is different from simply teasing product lineups that will launch with the RX 480 in 2 weeks. Nothing of substance was given–no price, no release dates and ultra thin specs (yay sub 75W GPU). It was pure marketing fluff without anything for consumers to actually learn something tangible about their products.