From the earliest rumours, the signs pointed to a Polaris launch at Computex later this month. Computex was right around the rumoured launch dates for Polaris and fitted well as one of the largest tech events of the year. Interestingly though, AMD has not been listed as attending Computex, leading to speculation that Polaris will be launched at an entirely unrelated event.
Hosting their own launch event isn’t out of norm for major tech companies like AMD. For their HD5xxx Evergreen launch, AMD held the event on the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. More recently, Nvidia had their own Pascal launch event and AMD held their own Capsaicin event concurrently with GTC back in March. By holding their own separate event, AMD is free to draw more attention by using a unique venue and move the timetable around as needed.
Even though AMD won’t be at Computex, we can expect all of their AiB partners to be there, showing off their latest Polaris 10 and 11 based cards. With AMD away, this allows their AiB partners to take the stage without AMD stealing their thunder. After the stunning reveal of GTX 1080 and 1070, I’m sure the wheels at AMD are turning as they try to come up with their own counter. Either way, Polaris will be coming soon one way or another.
Update: We have now received word from AMD that this is not the case.
it is not
http://www.amd.com/en-us/who-we-are/corporate-information/events
FUD