Full RX 470 In Laptops? Alienware 15 and 17 Announced
A month ago we outlined the launch of the Radeon RX 470 and the Radeon RX 460 following a call with AMD. In that release we outlined the fact that we would be seeing fully fledged RX 460s being put into laptops and not relying on a cut down variant with the same name. But this shocker from Alienware has really stepped up their game. I’ll be lying if I said this didn’t take me by complete surprise and left me rubbing my eyes. Alienware pretty much said ‘meh’, we want Polaris 10, not its little brother. And Radeon delivered.
Enter the RX 470 for laptops. This isn’t the RX 470m where it’s like the R9 m290x that’s nothing like the R9 290x, but just like their competitor AMD has managed to get their desktop GPU to fully function in a gaming laptop.
Coming in at two sizes we’re looking the Alienware 15 and 17, both packing the RX 470 graphics card and featuring a host of upgrades over their previous model. They’ve slimmed down the chassis and beefed up the cooling. RGB LEDs? Check. Tobii Eye-Tracking? Check….wait a minute? Yes, but only on the 17” model. Alienware seems to be really showing some love to Radeon this time around, but then again it’s been a while since they’ve been able to put out a premium gaming laptop featuring Radeon graphics.
A lot of the other specifications remain to be seen until the configurator goes live, but we do know that both feature up to 3TB of storage space and full compatibility with the Graphics Amplifier external GPU case. This is a useful feature for some who wouldn’t mind adding in a beefier card when at home but still having a very capable graphics card on the go.
It certainly looks like Radeon is ready to compete in areas that it hasn’t in quite some time. Pricing isn’t available at the time of this post but Alienware should have these ready to be configured by September 30th this year.
Souce: Radeon.com
AMD Polaris GCN 4.0 GPU Lineup:
| Graphics Card Name | AMD Radeon RX 480 | AMD Radeon RX 470 | AMD Radeon RX 470D | AMD Radeon RX 460 1024 SPs | AMD Radeon RX 460 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graphics Core | Polaris 10 | Polaris 10 | Polaris 10 | Polaris 11 | Polaris 11 |
| Process Node | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET |
| Die Size | 232mm2 | 232mm2 | 232mm2 | 123mm2 | 123mm2 |
| Transistors | 5.7 Billion | 5.7 Billion | 5.7 Billion | 3.0 Billion | 3.0 Billion |
| Stream Processors | 2304 SPs | 2048 SPs | 1792 SPs | 1024 SPs | 896 SPs |
| Clock Frequency | 1266 MHz | 1206 MHz | 1206 MHz | 1200 MHz | 1200 MHz |
| Compute Performance | 5.8 TFLOPs | 4.9 TFLOPs | 4.3 TFLOPs | 2.56 TFLOPs | 2.2 TFLOPs |
| VRAM | 4/8 GB GDDR5 | 4 GB GDDR5 | 4 GB GDDR5 | 4 GB GDDR5 | 2/4 GB GDDR5 |
| Bus Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory Speed | 8 GHz | 6.6 GHz | 6.6 GHz | 7 GHz | 7 GHz |
| Memory Bandwidth | 256 GB/s | 211 GB/s | 211 GB/s | 112 GB/s | 112 GB/s |
| TDP | 150W | 120W | 110W | 75W | 75W |
| Launch Date | 29th June | 4th August | 20th October | TBD | 8th August |
| Launch Price | $199 US (4 GB) $239 US (8 GB) | $179 US (4 GB) | $149 US (4 GB) | TBD | $99 US (2 GB) $119 US (4 GB) |
| New Price | $199 US (4 GB) $239 US (8 GB) | $169 US (4 GB) | $149 US (4 GB) | TBD | $99 US (4 GB) $89 US (2 GB) |
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