AMD 12nm Polaris 30 GPUs set to land in Radeon RX-600 graphics cards before year-end · Chronopin

AMD 12nm Polaris 30 GPUs set to land in Radeon RX-600 graphics cards before year-end · Chronopin

Leaks out of China claim AMD "could be prepping a 12nm Polaris 30 GPU to be launched before the end of 2018"; the leak was posted on the Chinese site ChipHell and is attributed to a rumour monger named as WJM47196^[1]
The part "would appear in a series of Radeon RX-600-branded graphics cards" (the headline on the page instead reads "Radeon RX-680 graphics cards", while the page title and body use RX-600)^[1]
Mid-range Navi-based cards are said to follow in the first quarter of 2019, with top-of-the-range HBM2 parts after them; Navi is "slated to succeed the Vega architecture", will use a 7nm process and be primarily aimed at next-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 5, "which is expected to be launched before the end of 2020"^[1]
The Polaris refresh plus mid-range-first Navi "will therefore leave AMD with three graphics card architectures for low-, mid-range and high-end", at a time when Vega is typically only in cards from GBP 450 upwards and 8GB Polaris cards "can be had for under GBP 300"; Nvidia's Turing-based GPUs "could make their debut next month"^[1]
The article hedges throughout that this is a rumour: the real performance boost "will likely come with HBM2 sporting Navi GPUs or a 7nm Vega 20 GPU with HBM2 aimed at gamers, if WJM47196 is correct"; posted by the V3 Newsdesk on 04 July 2018^[1]
The Polaris 30 part launched on 15 November 2018 as the Radeon RX 590, at an MSRP of $279; AMD shipped no reference design, and custom cards from XFX, PowerColor, Sapphire and Asus were available on day one^[2]

Notable features

Claimed specification: a 15 per cent performance boost over the current RX-500 series cards, "which were a minor refresh on 2016's RX-400s", manufactured on the 12-nanometre FinFET process^[1]
As launched, the RX 590 is another Polaris 10 revision built on GlobalFoundries' 12nm process, with no architectural changes and the same die size and transistor count; it is pin-compatible with Polaris 10, so partners reuse RX 580 board designs^[2]
Specifications: 2304 stream processors, 1469MHz base and 1545MHz boost clocks, 8GB of 8 Gbps GDDR5 and 225W typical board power, 75W over the original RX 480^[2]
AMD aimed it at the performance gap between the RX Vega 56 and the RX 580 8GB and at 1080p gamers on older cards such as the GTX 970 and R9 380, with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB as its main competition^[2]