We have 14nm Vega until the mid-2019 arrival of Navi on 7nm - How about a "Gigahertz Edition" redo?

That would be stupid for AMD to do, and completely nuke their whole "open" vision for OpenCL computing.
Why?
They are already explicitly bifurcating their gpu lines into graphics and compute with 7nm vega. And I am not suggesting they rip out opencl/hsa. Merely the block chain compute enhancements they added into the driver last year.

If they want to remain a consumer graphics supplier (rather than a block chain asic supplier), then they need to supply graphics to consumers. At a market competitive price.

How can they do this?
And still get high margin return from the crypto Bois?
 
Why?
They are already explicitly bifurcating their gpu lines into graphics and compute with 7nm vega. And I am not suggesting they rip out opencl/hsa. Merely the block chain compute enhancements they added into the driver last year.

If they want to remain a consumer graphics supplier (rather than a block chain asic supplier), then they need to supply graphics to consumers. At a market competitive price.

How can they do this?
And still get high margin return from the crypto Bois?


The only thing they enhanced was a bug fix in the older drivers for memory management for blockchain where the full 8gb wasn't being used properly.

By removing or hurting compute performance in drivers for GPU's that will also hurt gaming performance, as compute is being used more and more in games, typical games now are using 50% compute vs the traditional graphics shaders and this will get more as time goes on, next gen games coming out later this year are projected 75% and higher compute. You can't remove blockchain compute enhancements because those are the same things used in games to accelerate shaders. That is like telling nV to disable cuda in there graphics cards, then games that use cuda are screwed.
 
Sounds plausible, but is it actually true?

It may be, in which case they have only one lever to bring them back to relevance in the consumer graphics market: increasing supply of hbm2...
 
i am suspecting a 12nm refresh is incoming on a mix of hmb/gddr6. though we are kinda in a wait and see with nv's new arch coming sometime this year and amd is likely playing its cards close to vest
 
Sounds plausible, but is it actually true?

It may be, in which case they have only one lever to bring them back to relevance in the consumer graphics market: increasing supply of hbm2...


Yes its true , my AMD mining rig was slowly losing performance over time as the DAG file kept getting bigger (this only happens in ETH), finally once the block chain driver was released the performance went back to where it should be. Oddly enough there are still other quirks in the Blockchain driver that need to be fixed for over 3 cards but that is different bug and only appears on rare occasions.
 
Not sure how many of you are in denial but I'm sure not. I stuck with AMD for far too long and I honestly secretly hated my AMD cards and the issues. I finally came to my senses and spent the extra cash and gained a whole lotta performance.

AMD may not be dead but they are not going to be the graphics card company they might have been in the past, which, wasn't much. nVidia announced that they are now 10x bigger than AMD. I believe it.

AMD is literally going to have 1/5th to 1/3rd the power nVidia will have here in 2018 / 2019.

AMD cpu's? Looking great. I'm excited about maybe owning a Zen 2 Threadripper. But their graphics card? On par with ECS and Biostar in my books .... very meh.
 
Yes its true , my AMD mining rig was slowly losing performance over time as the DAG file kept getting bigger (this only happens in ETH), finally once the block chain driver was released the performance went back to where it should be. Oddly enough there are still other quirks in the Blockchain driver that need to be fixed for over 3 cards but that is different bug and only appears on rare occasions.
It doesn't seem impossible to me for Amd to separate crypto from gaming.

The question is more over whether it is worth doing:
How much does crypto price gouging damage their core gaming market?
How much are Amd losing by selling a $450 card to retailers who rake in the margin by reselling those cards for $900 to miners?
A lot, and;
A lot.

How many crossover gamer/miners are there as a percentage who'd be miffed at losing 20% crypto efficiency on their 'gaming' card?
How many miners would be furious at paying $900 for vegaFE versus $900 for a vega64.

Very few, and;
Virtually none.
 
It doesn't seem impossible to me for Amd to separate crypto from gaming.

The question is more over whether it is worth doing:
How much does crypto price gouging damage their core gaming market?
How much are Amd losing by selling a $450 card to retailers who rake in the margin by reselling those cards for $900 to miners?
A lot, and;
A lot.

How many crossover gamer/miners are there as a percentage who'd be miffed at losing 20% crypto efficiency on their 'gaming' card?
How many miners would be furious at paying $900 for vegaFE versus $900 for a vega64.

Very few, and;
Virtually none.

OpenCl is what people use to program in for AMD for mining. Ya can't reduce or remove OpenCL performance without affecting compute performance for games that use Vulkan\OpenGL or other programs that use OpenCL. nV would have more success with this because CUDA outside of game works isn't used much in gaming anymore. And then they kill their gameworks program lol. These types of things aren't options for them, because it will directly affect their primary market, gaming.

GPU Mining was created on what was available on hardware. First was done on CPU's but as GPU's became more general purpose, mining was able to be done on them. The "general" purpose nature of GPU's is what gives the ability. By removing that, it will hurt every single application that uses it and that's quite a bit.
 
I can only see AMD improving mining capability on their GPUs, and then producing more of them. That's the only solution that makes sense.

And if they produce enough, pricing will be in line for gamers.
 
I can only see AMD improving mining capability on their GPUs, and then producing more of them. That's the only solution that makes sense.

And if they produce enough, pricing will be in line for gamers.


Yep and the down fall of that is when mining crashes lol.
 
Yep and the down fall of that is when mining crashes lol.

It's a chance they'll have to take.

Of course, if AMD's GPUs are amenable to emerging compute applications such as AI, and they should be (or should be being developed to be), they'll have fallback markets to soften the potential blow of a mining crash. At worst they'd have to switch product lines and lower performance goals, but I'd bet that they'd be able to at least move product!
 
After the embarrassing Vega launch. I don't have high hopes for AMD's graphics cards.
 
For AMD, it is HBM2 that is putting the hurt on supply and price for Vega. Many are now going to use HBM2 in all sorts of designs - which looks like for consumers, AMD will be forced to go with DDR6 - as in what form factor and where is the question. Nvidia dominance in AI may start to wane as well:

https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/01/16/samsung-puts-crunch-emerging-hbm2-market/

My best guess is if AMD does have a Vega 12nm, it will use DDR6. Oh the power it will take, well maybe 12nm will offset that.

Also some may want to note, there is a way to get consumer gaming cards separated from the mining cards, kinda like the 1080 is not as desirable as the 1070's and that is with memory latency. Mining algorithms in general are rather sensitive to latency while gaming ones are less so or can be worked around. Not sure how much latency DDR 6 will have. Fiji with the 500mhz HBM performs like crap on a number of mining algorithms or more like meh, even with 512gb/s bandwidth, yet Vega with less bandwidth does much better with less bandwidth (reason I do believe is because the HBM2 is running much faster -> less latency -> much better mining performance).
 
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why are we still speculating about vega on 12nm, amd confirmed as cancelled in the january roadmap.

we have vega64 for another 15 months, how does amd make the best of this situation?
 
I would buy vega right now if they were not $1200. I have always been a huge AMD fan because i got a lot of compute power for a lot less then team green. Now days I can get a 1080 ti for $849 or a vega for $1199? 3 months ago Vega 64 was $579 and even then i bought geforce 1080s for $439-499. I wish i had bought at least one vega for my free sync monitor, oh well.
 
I would buy vega right now if they were not $1200. I have always been a huge AMD fan because i got a lot of compute power for a lot less then team green. Now days I can get a 1080 ti for $849 or a vega for $1199? 3 months ago Vega 64 was $579 and even then i bought geforce 1080s for $439-499. I wish i had bought at least one vega for my free sync monitor, oh well.
Yeah, unfortunately, AMD pulled some shady stuff with the Vega from the very beginning. In the beginning (some time last year, don't remember exactly when), the V56 and V64 were for sale at MSRP for maybe 1-2 days (someone correct me if wrong), with V56 being 399 and V64 being 499. Then, out of nowhere, the prices went up $100, and, to get the MSRP of 399 and 499, you had to buy some stupid-ass large bundle, that included too much shit, most of which I wouldn't need. And then the standalone cards disappeared, only to reappear at exorbitantly high prices.

I myself am really puzzled at wtf happened, starting to suspect some sorta large price-fixing deal or agreement between a large number of hardware manufacturers, like what the RAM manufacturers did a few years back. And, of course, now the graphics card prices have gone nucking futs.
 
I myself am really puzzled at wtf happened, starting to suspect some sorta large price-fixing deal or agreement between a large number of hardware manufacturers, like what the RAM manufacturers did a few years back. And, of course, now the graphics card prices have gone nucking futs.

You don't have to suspect anything- supply was initially lower than planned (which is what those prices were set for), and demand was far, far higher than expected.

The rest was explained in your economics class :).
 
I would buy vega right now if they were not $1200. I have always been a huge AMD fan because i got a lot of compute power for a lot less then team green. Now days I can get a 1080 ti for $849 or a vega for $1199? 3 months ago Vega 64 was $579 and even then i bought geforce 1080s for $439-499. I wish i had bought at least one vega for my free sync monitor, oh well.

I've got a Linux box that has a Freesync monitor with a GTX970 in it right now- I'd have taken an RX470+ if I could get one at otherwise typical market prices (i.e., below MSRP) to play around with.


[I'd buy all AMD tomorrow if they had the better product; I'm a 'right tool for the job' person, not an Intel/AMD/Nvidia person, but AMD's performance has made that hard to prove :D ]
 
nothing i have read in the month i've been considering this topic has dissuaded me that Vega [will] get a relaunch in Q2.

there is still no sign of any high-end consumer product before 7nm Navi in Q2 2019.
the problem vega has is supply, chiefly caused by HMB2 availability in quantity.
 
I am extremely concerned about AMD RTG, personally. The only thing that's keeping them going right now is the mining, and who knows how long that will last. I am hearing that Navi sucks and is Vega 2.0. I just don't think AMD RTG can remain in its current form until the next GPU after Navi. I just don't think it's possible. Vega really does remind me of the Matrox Parhelia. And we all know what happened to Matrox after that. The thing is, we're talking about this now, before Volta/Ampere/Turing has even come out. Things are only going to get worse for AMD. Just picture Vega lining up against the GTX 2060. Because that's pretty much where we're at.
 
Honestly performance means nothing since every single card being manufactured is instantly by a miner (yes gamers get some but miners clean out the inventory constantly). They really have no need to change anything at the moment. Typically companies make stop gap products when their is a need in the market, I don't see them doing anything other than the 56/64 this time unfortunately. And if they did, would you pay over $1000 for it at retail?
 
There is nothing wrong with Vega as a product, there is simply something wrong with its price.

That price is due to three things:
1. Limited supply / high price of HBM2
2. Miners creating massive demand
3. The result of #1 and #2 is Capitalism.

#1 Will eventually be solved. This will allow AIB vendors to do more that limited batch runs of 5k whenever they can source a shipment.
#2 Will be in the lap of the gods: Will Proof of Stake be pushed back to 2020? Will Bitcoin ROI crash hard? Will crypto be regulated into oblivion?
 
There is nothing wrong with Vega as a product

Well, high power usage for the performance given compared to competing products, disregarding price (which was too high at release) and availability (which has never been widespread).

At best, HBM supply could improve and AMD could have a more efficient spin to tamp down on power usage. Many users have had success undervolting Vega for various workloads, so there should definitely be some room for improvement here.

Unfortunately, it'll still be slower and more power hungry (and more expensive to produce) than Nvidia's GTX1080.
 
Nvidia have the same problems, with a shortage of GDDR5 and miner demand causing retail price to spike.

Yes, Vega uses more power, but assuming the supply of HBM2 eases there is no indication that it can't be sold profitably at a price competitive to what nVidia is charging for a 1080.
 
Nvidia have the same problems, with a shortage of GDDR5 and miner demand causing retail price to spike.

Yes, Vega uses more power, but assuming the supply of HBM2 eases there is no indication that it can't be sold profitably at a price competitive to what nVidia is charging for a 1080.

This depends on the interpretation of 'profitably'. AMD's margins for Vega products will always be thinner simply because the GPU does not perform for its cost to produce. AMD can/should/does! make money off of the ones they are able to produce of course given crypto mining demand, but if that were to dry up?

They'd have to cut margins to near zero, best case, to move product.
 
Sure they have thinner margins, no doubt.

But they aren't being forced to lower their price because of cut throat competition from nvidia in a tough market.

1080 still nominally costs £500 (if you are lucky enough to find one at that price), we aren't in the Hawaii days where you could pick up a 290X/390X for less than £300. Remember, this was a card with an expensive 512bit memory system on a giant chip, demanding an expensive PCB an power delivery system.

And yes, their best case is to produce, to move product, because the only way the price of HBM2 comes down is mass production.
 
That is nice, if you say so. I do not care if you owned 1000's of shares of stock and every card since the beginning of time, your posts still reek of bashing. I have a friend who has used Microsoft products for decades and yet he still cannot stand them and bashes them whenever he has a chance.

Yeah, I've never owned an nVidia card in my main system, and AMD deserves to be bashed right now.
 
There is nothing wrong with Vega as a product, there is simply something wrong with its price.

That price is due to three things:
1. Limited supply / high price of HBM2
2. Miners creating massive demand
3. The result of #1 and #2 is Capitalism.

#1 Will eventually be solved. This will allow AIB vendors to do more that limited batch runs of 5k whenever they can source a shipment.
#2 Will be in the lap of the gods: Will Proof of Stake be pushed back to 2020? Will Bitcoin ROI crash hard? Will crypto be regulated into oblivion?
If capitalism is the PROBLEM maybe communism is the solution. Money will be abolished under communism, so miners will be put out of business and the workers will own the factories so we all will have these cards for nothing. Yippeee!!
 
I have come to the conclusion, lots of people are unhappy in life! Find something else to do with your time. Life is a joke and it is even more of a joke as you get older. The problem is, you will end up on your death bed full of regrets! Screw the GPU's and the computer industry. You are only going to get the most performance as you currently have. Seriously, PC's are a waste of time if you are aiming for the ultimate performance.

Games good? *check*
Stays cool? *check*
Mines well? *check*
Reliable? *check*

What else do you guys want? PC industry is like politics, nothing changes for the benefit for the end user. We all are just going for the ride!
 
If capitalism is the PROBLEM maybe communism is the solution. Money will be abolished under communism, so miners will be put out of business and the workers will own the factories so we all will have these cards for nothing. Yippeee!!

ok, so we will have good graphics cards but we may starve and end up in a mass grave. got it.
 
The issue is not so much on what process the new videocard is on but are they fixing the insane lack of scalability with higher power.
Surely that is a question that can only be addressed by a new architecture?

Either an architecture of:
1. The uncore (possibly Navi with its infinity fabric innovation)
2. The core (certainly Navi+1 with its post-GCN shader arch)

Vega 64 X / Vega redux / Vega 12nm can never be anything more than a bridge product to keep them in the market until these new architecture solutions arrive.
And they do need a bridge product!
 
Surely that is a question that can only be addressed by a new architecture?

Either an architecture of:
1. The uncore (possibly Navi with its infinity fabric innovation)
2. The core (certainly Navi+1 with its post-GCN shader arch)

Vega 64 X / Vega redux / Vega 12nm can never be anything more than a bridge product to keep them in the market until these new architecture solutions arrive.
And they do need a bridge product!

The problem is that this is not an accident that is specific to Vega only it does perform on lower power but as soon you crank it up it makes you cry. So anything Vega is good up to a point and that point is not going to happen even if bitmart selling a dedicated ASIC for miners Vega is still not better then a GTX 1080 and that card is how old now? That leaves the question on how much money should it cost well that ship has sailed as well that leaves a professional version and those are not interesting at all for general consumers.

Talking about new AMD videocards has been disappointing since R9 290X. And that has to change but sadly that seems very unlikely.
The video I cued up above has an AMD rep with a chart talking about 7nm Vega Instinct that is going into sampling later this year. :(
Yeah it does look like there will be nothing interesting for the consumers space for a good while from AMD.
 
The problem is that this is not an accident that is specific to Vega only it does perform on lower power but as soon you crank it up it makes you cry. So anything Vega is good up to a point and that point is not going to happen even if bitmart selling a dedicated ASIC for miners Vega is still not better then a GTX 1080 and that card is how old now? That leaves the question on how much money should it cost well that ship has sailed as well that leaves a professional version and those are not interesting at all for general consumers.

Talking about new AMD videocards has been disappointing since R9 290X. And that has to change but sadly that seems very unlikely.

Yeah it does look like there will be nothing interesting for the consumers space for a good while from AMD.

My Vega 64 does just fine for me as it matches a GTX 1080. To be honest my RX 480 was fine for me until I decided to get an Oculus Rift. Even then it was mostly fine, but I knew I could get an even better experience if I upgraded to Vega 64. I use 1440p on my 4K TV when doing competitive gaming. I can enable Chill and everything else and my card is pretty bored. When playing single player games I run 4K settings just fine. The card does just fine for the $499 I paid for it at launch.

AMD Reddit keeps talking about the 500 series and new notebook GPUs. That's the most exciting new thing that I've seen over there. Well the new lower memory and cache Ryzen chips look exciting too, but not enough for me to replace my Ryzen 1700. :)
 
My Vega 64 does just fine for me as it matches a GTX 1080. To be honest my RX 480 was fine for me until I decided to get an Oculus Rift. Even then it was mostly fine, but I knew I could get an even better experience if I upgraded to Vega 64. I use 1440p on my 4K TV when doing competitive gaming. I can enable Chill and everything else and my card is pretty bored. When playing single player games I run 4K settings just fine. The card does just fine for the $499 I paid for it at launch.

AMD Reddit keeps talking about the 500 series and new notebook GPUs. That's the most exciting new thing that I've seen over there. Well the new lower memory and cache Ryzen chips look exciting too, but not enough for me to replace my Ryzen 1700. :)

I don't doubt it functions well but the problem lies between the price and the performance and the outlook AMD has. I recently checked how much I spend on my card back then and it was about as much as you did on yours and it is still doing well enough for me. What I am not looking forward to is when I have to buy a new card that will be way more expensive and likely to not last as long and with that in mind AMD comes up short.

Seems that there is about to be some news about the new 500 range http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-radeon-rx-500x-series-spotted-on-amd-website.html


The laptop scene somewhat escapes me, did buy the Lenovo but that is to replace my ageing Linux box ;)
 
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