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AMD today revealed its new fourth generation GCN architecture, dubbed Polaris, offering a substantial leap in power and efficiency. Comparing an unannounced GPU product against the Nvidia's GTX 950 running Star Wars Battlefront at medium settings at 1080p60, AMD says that its new architecture offers a 61 per cent reduction in power consumption, requiring 84W vs Nvidia's 140W.We could spend the rest of this article listing the caveats that should accompany this particular comparison, but the main takeaway is that 2016 is going to be hugely exciting for graphics technology - and that's mainly down to both AMD and Nvidia embracing a new form of chip fabrication technology.
Since 2011, both companies have used 28nm production - meaning that each transistor on the chip is one billionth of a metre long. While the process has been refined since then, it's fair to say that both companies had hit a brick wall in getting more out of the existing technology. This year, moving to a 16nm 'FinFET' process is finally possible - with the larger planar transistors of the old process giving way to the smaller '3D' transistors in the new production technology.
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