AMD Polaris Architecture Goes Supernova With Embedded Radeon E9260 And E9550 GPUs

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AMD made quite a splash in the GPU market with its Polaris-based mainstream graphics cards. The most popular of the cards, the Radeon RX 480, can be had for as little as $250 in 8GB trim and AMD claims it offers excellent “Beyond HD Gaming and a Premium VR Experience”. Given our benchmark analysis of the GPU, AMD has definitely delivered.

After further extending the architecture to the workstation market with the Radeon Pro WX Series, AMD is now branching Polaris out into the embedded market with the Radeon E9260 and E9550. AMD sees these graphics cards being used in “power constrained” environments including casino gaming machines, digital whiteboards, medical imaging and transportation instrumentation (NVIDIA has found success in this market with Tegra).

AMD E9260 product image
Radeon Embedded E9260 PCIe

The Radeon E9260 is analogous to the Radeon RX 460, and shares many physical characteristics including the 14nm FinFET manufacturing process, 14 compute units, 896 stream processors, 2.5 TFLOPs of compute power, 4GB of GDDR5 using a 128-bit memory interface, and sub-50W TDP. The Radeon E9260 is available in heatsink or fansink configurations, and can be had in a traditional PCIe form-factor modular Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM). AMD rates the longevity of the card at five years.

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The Radeon E9550, on the other hand, is the embedded equivalent of the Radeon RX 480, exactly matching its specs across the board. That means you’ll find 36 compute units, 2304 stream processor, a base clock of 1120 MHz, 5.8 TFLOPs compute performance, 8GB of GDDR5 using a 256-bit memory interface running at 1750 MHz and sub-95W TDP. The Radeon E9550 is only available as a MXM module, and AMD gives the card a longevity rating of three years.

E9550MXM
Radeon Embedded E9550 MXM

Both GPUs are 4K capable, and the Radeon E9550 is capable of supporting up to six displays (the Radeon E9260 MXM can support up to 5 displays), which comes in handy in the digital signage market.

“Embedded designers want to take their systems to the next level and immerse the end-user in compelling experiences, leveraging 4K displays and high resolution media,” said Scott Aylor, AMD’s Corporate VP and GM for Enterprise Solutions. “The new AMD Embedded Radeon E9260 and E9550 GPUs offer compelling energy efficiency and performance for demanding graphics and parallel processing requirements, and are available in a range of graphics card configurations for seamless integration across various form factors.”

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The entry-level Radeon E9260 will be available next month, while the more powerful Radeon E9550 will bow before the close of 2016.