AMD Confirms Refreshed Radeon Product Stack for 2019

AlphaAtlas

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In an interview with The Street, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster more or less confirmed that they will refresh AMD's GPU lineup in 2019. More specifically, he said "we'll round out the Radeon roadmap," and claimed they will "refresh" GPUs across the roadmap, but he fell short of giving any specifics about the GPUs themselves, such as what architecture they'll use or what process they're fabricated on. He also mentioned that the CPU die Lisa Su showed off in 3rd generation Ryzen is indeed the same CPU die AMD uses in their 7nm Epyc server CPUs.

Check out the interview here.

"What we do over the course of the year is what we do every year. We'll round out the whole roadmap," Papermaster said about AMD's 2019 plans for its 7nm GPU lineup. "We're really excited to start on the high-end....you'll see the announcements over the course of the year as we round out our Radeon roadmap."
 
Yep nothing, really new in this interview either.
Unless you were counting the number of times he said, "um". I believe that was a record high.

AMD is really trying to keep the media attention going, but they if they don't continue to release new or different information, people will stop reading/watching.
 
With Radeon VII and Navi coming up to fill in the upper-mid to flagship tiers, it makes sense that a tweaked/massaged refresh will come along to fill in the low to mid tiers. I suspected as much, since 7nm yields will need to be full swing before the process can be applied to every GPU in AMDs portfolio.
 
He says they are starting at the high end and that they'll refresh the lineup throughout the year. No mention of Navi or anything that sounded like Navi to me. That's disappointing.
Navi will be Radeon branded.

I think this is going to be an interesting year for computer hardware.
 
At lot of rumors about AMD bringing a lot to see at Computex. An educated guess says that we won't get the info we want until then.
 
We'll round out our roadmap, square out our performance and... wait what? what do you mean RAMBUS?
 
Navi will be Radeon branded.

I think this is going to be an interesting year for computer hardware.

While many here won't care directly about navi much due to performance level at RTX2060 and tops RTX2070 at very affordable prices it will lift the pc gaming industry as a whole which pushes games.
and with new consoles around the corner I can expect us to see much more CPU usage in games too with zen2 being utilized in consoles too :)
 
I'm glad these guys are a lot smarter technically than they are with the language. You don't "round out a roadmap". You might complete a roadmap, or present one, or follow one to round out a product line. And he repeats it, as if that adds more info.

Sorry.. can't help it...
 
Navi will be Radeon branded.

I think this is going to be an interesting year for computer hardware.

What I meant was that he didn't say anything about a new or updated architecture or give any estimates to timelines. Sure they could release Navi-based radeons later this year, or maybe a smaller Vega2 with 8gb of hbm2. He reveals nothing.
 
Whatever they do, i hope they address the price creep. Its really annoying and frustrating the "midrange" is going to 350 USD now. Hopefully AMD doesn't follow Nvidia's lead.
As much as I want to fault AMD and nVidia on the price creep they are not the only people at play here. Fabs upped their costs for the new processes, memory pricing is going up, and R&D spending is at an all time high. Electronics are getting more expensive across the board to manufacture, and Tarrifs don’t help the process any either as it forced many manufacturers to completely revamp their supply lines or simply add 20% to the price tag. All that adds costs back to us.
 
The chiplet design will make AMD keep more money and allow them to use it for R&D and other projects to better compete.

Same 7nm as the server, now in desktop. So any silicon that isn't up to the server level quality, will get binned down to the consumer. If they do chiplet with the next PS and Xbox, then they'll save money there too from not losing an entire monolith chip if a flaw in silicon arises.
 
Hoping we get to see the Vega 56 and 64's built on the new 7nm process (perhaps with Radeon V or RX 680 and RX 690 monikers). Really hoping we don't see another updated Polaris chip, unless its rebranded to replace something lower on the new product stack (ie: RX 670).

I'd totally swap out my 1080 for a refreshed Vega 64-caliber GPU for the right price.
 
Hoping we get to see the Vega 56 and 64's built on the new 7nm process (perhaps with Radeon V or RX 680 and RX 690 monikers). Really hoping we don't see another updated Polaris chip, unless its rebranded to replace something lower on the new product stack (ie: RX 670).

I'd totally swap out my 1080 for a refreshed Vega 64-caliber GPU for the right price.
I think at this point with the 590 Polaris has to be done right?
 
He also mentioned that the CPU die Lisa Su showed off in 3rd generation Ryzen is indeed the same CPU die AMD uses in their 7nm Epyc server CPUs.

Thats the great thing about chiplets. Everything that differentiates a desktop CPU and a server CPU sits on the I/O chip, so you get parts commonality and greater volume to bin parts from.

Just replace the Ryzen I/O chip with an Epyc I/O chip and add a few more CPU core chips and now you have an EPYC.

These things tend to follow a normal distribution, with the highest binned parts we all love occupying the far right tail of the curve.

The bigger volume you have, the more parts fall into that highest bin, so it's great that they can share core volume between Epyc, Ryzen, Threadripper and even future consoles.

This is great for AMD.
 
Mark Papermaster...

That's a name I haven't seen/heard before.

Not sure if sarcastic, but he has been all over the tech hardware industry for years. IBM, Apple, Cisco, AMD...

He was also a part of a highly publicised and precedent-setting lawsuit over the validity of non-compete agreement so when he moved from IBM to Apple.
 
More details for radeon vii: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/283514-amd-radeon-vii-details-performance-projections

Looks like maybe pcie gen4 could help performance a bit? In certain workflows anyway.


I'd be surprised if that were the case. On my Pascal Titan X which should perform similarly, I can't even detect any performance impact when I switch between gen3 and gen2.

Heck, back in 2010 (I think?) I experimented by using an Expresscard to PCIe adapter running an external Radeon 7850 on my work laptop.

I saw only very small performance drops going from gen2 16x down to Gen 1 1x, 1/32nd of the PCIe bandwidth.

PCI Express bandwidth just doesn't seem all that important to performance. I don't know why we always insist on dedicating 16x lanes to our GPU's. They really don't seem to need it.

In fact if you look at the PCIe bandwidth chart in rivatuner during a gaming session, you'll see there is almost zero load. The only time it is loaded up at all is during load, when all the textures are transferred to VRAM, and even then it never seems to max it out.

I think the exception is if you run out of VRAM and it starts swapping textures out to main system RAM. I'd imagine your performance is going to go down the toilet no matter how fast your PCIe bus is if this happens though. That's never happened to me though, so I can't confirm. My GPU has 12GB of RAM, and even at 4k, I rarely use more than 4.5GB.
 
I'd be surprised if that were the case. On my Pascal Titan X which should perform similarly, I can't even detect any performance impact when I switch between gen3 and gen2.

Heck, back in 2010 (I think?) I experimented by using an Expresscard to PCIe adapter running an external Radeon 7850 on my work laptop.

I saw only very small performance drops going from gen2 16x down to Gen 1 1x, 1/32nd of the PCIe bandwidth.

PCI Express bandwidth just doesn't seem all that important to performance. I don't know why we always insist on dedicating 16x lanes to our GPU's. They really don't seem to need it.

In fact if you look at the PCIe bandwidth chart in rivatuner during a gaming session, you'll see there is almost zero load. The only time it is loaded up at all is during load, when all the textures are transferred to VRAM, and even then it never seems to max it out.

I think the exception is if you run out of VRAM and it starts swapping textures out to main system RAM. I'd imagine your performance is going to go down the toilet no matter how fast your PCIe bus is if this happens though. That's never happened to me though, so I can't confirm. My GPU has 12GB of RAM, and even at 4k, I rarely use more than 4.5GB.
Yeah, kyle tested it a while back, single, dual, and triple card, around 2012. There wasn't a huge difference, but there was a small bump. I'm not sure if he tested again since then, but I imagine it'd be about the same.
 
Don't like that at all. They already refreshed Polaris. And between VII, regular Vegas and RX line have most of the range cover until Navi.

Unless Navi is coming really late this year or not at all.
 
I would be more excited if we knew amd would have a high end card that supported full hdmi 2.1, without that... I kind of want a time machine device that let me snap my fingers and jump ahead to 2020.
 
Whatever they do, i hope they address the price creep. Its really annoying and frustrating the "midrange" is going to 350 USD now. Hopefully AMD doesn't follow Nvidia's lead.

No one will address this. They’re there to make money, they will sell at what the market will bear. There are no good guys or bad guys, only money, and the only thing that we can do as consumers is not buy it. That is the only way they will lower their price. They’re corporations, not charity groups.

As soon as Nvidia realized that people were willing to spend $1000 for a Titan, we were all screwed, and as long as they continue to sell out their inventory, this price inflation will continue.
 
I hope that's just a glitch in their grasp of the English language. i mean refreshing a refresh ? i don't think that's been done before in the GFX segment.
And IMO if you have to pull that off it have to be one almighty refresh, in which case i don't get why the did not say "we are going to renew the entire product lineup"
I am not really waiting for a RX 690, i was gunning for something stronger than that, the RX 590 price i can do even a little more if need be, but then they got to spice up that sucker to a degree it would be a all new card and not a refresh / refresh.

I cant believe i an preaching semantics here, a guy that on a regular basis murder the English language.
 
I'm in the market for a mid-range GPU this year. Right now, the 2060 is my best choice for my budget (under $400). I'm hoping AMD gives me some other options. Honestly, I'd rather hit closer to the $200 mark (which I could do, but it would not be an upgrade)
I have a 970 right now which works fine for the few games I play and the way I use my system. I'm going to replace my system this year - the 970 is staying with my old one and will get used by one of my kids. I would like to get decent performance at 1440 - 4K would be nice, but it's probably out of my budget.
 
I'm in the market for a mid-range GPU this year. Right now, the 2060 is my best choice for my budget (under $400). I'm hoping AMD gives me some other options. Honestly, I'd rather hit closer to the $200 mark (which I could do, but it would not be an upgrade)
I have a 970 right now which works fine for the few games I play and the way I use my system. I'm going to replace my system this year - the 970 is staying with my old one and will get used by one of my kids. I would like to get decent performance at 1440 - 4K would be nice, but it's probably out of my budget.
Vega 64 dropped price quite a bit too saw it at low 400$ 56 was below 400 not long ago.. i think that performs above 2060 (the 64 for sure i think)... Effing hell was going to post some links, shit seems to have gone back up in price, I guess everyone noticed AMDs price cut and inventory is being cleaned out quick,... Bunch of bull.
 
Vega 64 dropped price quite a bit too saw it at low 400$ 56 was below 400 not long ago.. i think that performs above 2060 (the 64 for sure i think)... Effing hell was going to post some links, shit seems to have gone back up in price, I guess everyone noticed AMDs price cut and inventory is being cleaned out quick,... Bunch of bull.
I did see some of these. I'm not pulling the trigger for a while - was initially aiming for May, but am going to wait on AMD's Ryzen new releases (and if Intel releases anything new/does price cuts). I might be waiting a longer. I might be waiting until September at this point (by which time, more rumors about even better stuff will be everywhere :) )
 
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