AMD Radeon RX 480

[mulletman13]

Well, I bought the card over the weekend; and can do some testing if anybody needs it!

 

[Petri Krohn]

I guess the GCN 4th gen Polaris 10 chip is much like a die shrink of the GCN 3rd gen (GCN 1.2) Tonga chip used in the Radeon R9 380 and 380X. Something like a tick in Intel's Tick-Tock model.

How does GCN 4th gen differ from GCN 3rd gen? I found this text online:

The Polaris Architecture - 4th Generation GCN

From a high level, the Radeon RX 480 looks very similar to previous GCN-based chips. The block diagram above details what we already know: 36 Compute Units, 2304 stream processor, 1 GCP (Graphics Command Processor), 4 ACEs (Asynchronous Compute Engines) and 2 HWS (hardware schedulers). There are four geometry processors, one for each shader engine, 144 texture units and 32 ROPs / raster operators. If you have seen a diagram of the Radeon R9 290X Hawaii GPU, this is similar. The inclusion of a second hardware scheduler should help asynchronous compute capability and is made even more interesting by the fact that it apparently existed in secret on Hawaii as well.

New hardware usually supports old features and commands. Would it be possible to run a GCN 4th gen chip with drivers for the previous GCN generation?

Well, I bought the card over the weekend; and can do some testing if anybody needs it!

If I had the card I would spoof the device ID of a Tonga XT card: 0x6938 for R9 380X. The RX 480 has a 2304:144:32 configuration while R9 380X is 2048:128:32. I do not know if the mismatch would be a problem. The upcoming RX 470 with 2048 stream processors may be the closest match to the R9 380X.

 

[Fl0r!an]

New hardware usually supports old features and commands. Would it be possible to run a GCN 4th gen chip with drivers for the previous GCN generation?

That's not even unlikely, considering Fiji can run on Polaris drivers.
I'd expect power management issues on Hacks though.

 

[zepi]

New MacOS Sierra beta is supposedly shipping as well. People have found Polaris related stuff in it closed betas, so maybe it could come with RX480 compatible drivers?

Should I expect Sierra betas to run nicely in Hacks quickly? I see some people are already having some success.

I hope someone is working on verifying RX480 support as soon as Sierra is out. I've waited for ages for a little update from 7970.

 

[dronefriend]

Flor!an, do you know if the RX 480 was up and running on an nMP as an eGPU (as the Fury series) or did Rominator manage to get it working on a hack?

 

[asvnpr]

if anyone is interested I have a reference rx480 and I just installed el Capitan today. boots fine and artefacts are at a minimum (pictures and videos are the exception). Will try to install the sierra beta tomorrow and will update if there's any improvement. you can let me know if there's something you want me to test

 

[Max1194]

if anyone is interested I have a reference rx480 and I just installed el Capitan today. boots fine and artefacts are at a minimum (pictures and videos are the exception). Will try to install the sierra beta tomorrow and will update if there's any improvement. you can let me know if there's something you want me to test

Is the AMD Radeon rx 480 working without problems with El Capitan on your hackintosh? with SMBIOS have you set in Clover Configurator

 

[Fl0r!an]

Is the AMD Radeon rx 480 working without problems with El Capitan on your hackintosh? with SMBIOS have you set in Clover Configurator

El Capitan doesn't contain any Polaris drivers, I guess he's running the GPU in software rendering mode.

 

[Max1194]

El Capitan doesn't contain any Polaris drivers, I guess he's running the GPU in software rendering mode.

Ah ok. And there's no way to get it fully up and running in El Capitan?

I also read that Sierra might have the Polaris Drivers because of new Macs that could be launched with the new OS?

 

[Fl0r!an]

Have a look here for a roundup of Sierra drivers: http://tonymacx86.com/threads/macos-sierra-pb-need-testers-for-new-amd-radeon-drivers.197273/

In short: Drivers are there, but not stable yet. Very little has been tested though, might be possible to improve it.