Polaris

Polaris is AMD’s first architecture based on the 14 nm FinFET-process. The chip is the 4th generation of the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture and, according to AMD, features the following improvements:

better geometry engine
better shader efficiency (up to 15 % per CU for the RX 480 and the R9 290)
LiquidVR API support with “Variable Resolution Rendering”
better RAM control and Delta Color Compression (DCC) with full 2/4/8:1 support
double the Level 2 Cache
Shader Instruction Prefetch and better buffering
better Async Compute
AMD TrueAudio Next (calculated per shader)
H.265 Main 10 Decode and 4K60 HEVC Encode
HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.3 HBR (5K60 with single cable)/1.4 HDR mit HDCP 2.2
HDR display support