AMD Launches Radeon RX 580 with Reduced Number of Stream Processors
by Anton Shilov on October 15, 2018 6:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Polaris
- Radeon RX 500
- RX 580
AMD has quietly launched a Radeon RX 580 GPU with a reduced number of stream processors. The new product is called the Radeon RX 580 2048SP and, as the name suggests, it has 2048 stream processors, down from 2304 SPs on the original product. The Radeon RX 580 2048SP is currently available only in China and it is unclear whether the product will be sold in other countries as well.
The Radeon RX 580 2048SP is basically the Radeon RX 570, but with a slightly higher boost clock and a different name. Compute performance of the Radeon RX 580 2048SP is listed as 5.1 TFLOPS, which is around 18% lower when compared to the Radeon RX 580. Just like the RX 570, the RX 580 2048SP cards come equipped with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7 Gbps, down from 8 Gbps on the original RX 580. Given how close specs of the RX 580 2048SP and the RX 570 are, it is unclear why AMD decided to release this “new” product with the RX 580 name, if only to confuse customers.
| AMD Radeon RX 580 Specification Comparison | |||||
| AMD Radeon RX 580 | AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP | AMD Radeon RX 570 | |||
| Compute Units | 36 CUs 2304 SPs |
32 CUs 2048 SPs |
32 CUs 2048 SPs |
||
| Texture Units | 144 | 128 | |||
| ROPs | 32 | ||||
| Base Clock | 1257 MHz | 1168 MHz | 1168 MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1340 MHz | 1284 MHz | 1244 MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 8Gbps GDDR5 | 7Gbps GDDR5 | |||
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | ||||
| VRAM | 4 GB or 8 GB | ||||
| Transistor Count | 5.7 billion | ||||
| Typical Board Power | 185 W | 150 W | |||
| Manufacturing Process | GloFo 14nm | ||||
| Architecture | GCN 4 | ||||
| GPU | Polaris 10 | ||||
| Launch Date | 4/18/2017 | 10/15/2018 | 4/18/2017 | ||
| Launch Price | $199 - $229 | ? | $169 | ||
This is not the first time when AMD revises specs of its already launched products. Last year the company let partners to sell Radeon RX 560 products with 896 stream processors, down from 1024 SPs inside the original GPU. Back then the company explained that graphics processors with lowered specs enable its partners to sell more graphics cards and offer a better choice to their customers. At the time the Radeon RX 560D with 896 SPs was an entirely new product sitting above the Radeon RX550 - this time however the Radeon RX 580 2048 SPs is essentially the Radeon RX 570 with slightly higher boost clocks.
We have reached out to AMD for more information.
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Source: AMD China
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The_Assimilator - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
AMD has given up on the high-end consumer graphics segment. The only GPUs they're making now are for consoles, and PC gamers will get derivatives of those. Going forward, NVIDIA is going to be the only game in town if you want graphics fidelity.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
People said the same thing about bulldozer, then ryzen showed up.It takes years for a GPU to come to fruition, and people seriously underestimate how much raja put into vega at the expense of everything else.
Also, you really think AMD will put all this effort into making a new arch for consoles and NOT release a higher margin version to the PC world? Nvidia was making money hand over fist on the PC market compared to AMD's console offerings. And somehow you think this means no new high end chips? You do realize modern architectures are meant to expand in size, right?
sing_electric - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
I don't think Assimilator was using hyperbole - in interviews, Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, basically said that the company had limited resources and decided to focus on the CPU, while on the graphics side focus on their "semi-custom" business (consoles, etc.) which is high-volume but pretty low margin.They essentially told their RTG group that they had to have less in the way of engineering resources, which may/may not have been a big reason why former head Raja Koduri jumped ship to Intel. AMD's got more cash now, and could conceivably have put more resources into graphics development, but I'm not sure if they have or haven't.
So while not "giving up" officially - and remember, AMD's Radeon Pro line is well-regarded in the industry (and counts Apple, amongst others, as a customer), I think it is fair to say that AMD isn't focused with beating Nvidia in sheer performance at the top of the stack.
My bet is that their goal is to have cards that compete with the middle of Nvidia's line up (say, between the xx60 and xx70-level), while also having competitive offerings in ML and continuing to it's work on Pro.
That isn't to say they MIGHT NOT outperform this - in particular, I think they've got a shot in the next 18 months or so if Nvidia sticks with 14nm (as they are for the 20xx series) and AMD can launch products at 7nm. (By most accounts, the next chips we see out of AMD will also be the last that use GCN, and so it's possible they might find a way to have GCN's successor be competitive with Nvidia in a broader sense).
silverblue - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
Isn't Navi all about scalability? This would mean - to me, anyway - that AMD will have a single Navi GPU, and for higher-end applications, will use multiple, much like Ryzen having one or two CCXs. How that'll work in practice is anybody's guess. All AMD really need to do is go after the mainstream - if a single Navi produces 1080-like performance for upper-1060/lower-1070 price, I can't see NVIDIA competing with that in the short-term.The_Assimilator - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
I will crack a rib laughing if this POS is the rumoured "RX 590" 12nm die-shrink that has had Team Red fanboys frothing at the mouth for months.haukionkannel - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
If it would be, then this would have a significant reduction in the power usage and that would allow higher speed... So no... this is different "product".sing_electric - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
Were you confused by that announcement, too? Because the 580 is essentially just a binned, higher-specced 480, the chip behind it is 2 years old. Why go through a shrink?The only thing I can think of is they've got semi-custom orders (like a console, though its obviously not the PS4 or XBox One, since those are both built into the APU, and I think are at 16nm) that will continue to pour in for an extended period of time, meaning they'll be making the chips for a very long time.
Possibly related, when GloFo announced they weren't going to do 7nm, AMD didn't get good revised terms on their wafer agreement, and AMD needs to milk out every thing they can for 14/12nm chips.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - link
That's some high level product branding BS. I really want to support AMD so that Intel and NVIDIA have at least one credible competitor in the CPU and GPU spaces, but practices like this certainly make me hesitant.