AMD RX Vega on Track for Siggraph Launch

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Hopefully this is the writing on the wall that we will see no further delays in AMD's upcoming RX Vega GPU....this one for gaming.

We can't wait to announce our new Vega products, including RX at this year's #SIGGRAPH - make sure to follow us for more details.
 
I was really quite excited leading up to the RX Vega being released, until I saw benchmarks - now, I do know that they're quite preliminary but it seems it's just not competitive with the big green giant at this stage.
 
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

They don't REALLY need a Titan XP or 1080Ti killer, but they do need to be able to beat the regular 1080.
 
My bet on the flagship model:
- Trades blows with the GTX 1080 at 1440p and 4k. Consistently slightly behind at 1080p.
- Sucks down 15-20% more juice to get there.
- Limited initial supply plus miners equals difficulty acquiring one at close to MSRP until Black Fridayish.
 
I think the gamer versions (not the FE that was bench-marked) will perform a bit better with better drivers so probably GTX 1080 performance. AMD will know where it competes with Nvidia and hopefully will price it accordingly. When I say accordingly I mean undercutting them by a decent amount because Nvidia can drop prices if they wish, they have already made their cash on the 10 series cards.
 
The bigger real issue I see is Vega could be a monster at mining....and I doubt any of us normals will get our hands on one anytime in the near future.

With that in mind, I'll beat my dead horse and say an AMD card that competes near-level and price performance is always the better deal on the high end because the cost of GSync monitors is still outrageous.

A Vega card at 1080 performance and price is a cheaper total solution by a couple hundred bucks off the top.
 
I have only half way kept up on the latest news, but if the consensus is "it might be as powerful as a 1080" -- of course they would have to undercut nvidia by a lot to excuse being THAT late to the game, and consuming a ton of power.

But what are people expecting here -- you can buy a 1080 right now (in stock) for $519 (newegg) Unless this thing is $399 and in stock everywhere, I don't see what there is to get excited about.

With every GPU, even older ones, going to ass tons (yes that's an actual measurement) it's hard to get excited about a gaming card that probably won't be used by many for gaming until the next crypto bust.
 
That would be pretty sweet but isn't the HBM driving cost up on these?

1080 is my perf target for a new gpu so here's hoping.
 
Ultima99 said:
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

They don't REALLY need a Titan XP or 1080Ti killer, but they do need to be able to beat the regular 1080.
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Especially with a chip that much larger and power hungry
 
At this point I don't know why they even bother.

For one gaming performance is disappointing. 77% more cores than RX580, clocked higher and supposed uarch improvements, barely does 40-55% over it. It's also huge, coming at 484mm2 it is 54% larger than GP104 that it can't even beat properly. Couple that with expensive memory and complications with interposer and you got yourself a very expensive GPU with low supply, so if they price it competitively their margins will be pathetic and should it sell well it will be out of stock most of the time. I don't even wanna get started on power draw.

And finally, by the time gaming Vega is widely available, Nvidia will probably be 4-7 months away from unleashing Volta.

Unless they pull a rabbit out of a hat for gaming Vega (tho I sincerely doubt it), I can easily see this become a new 2900XT.
 
Ultima99 said:
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

They don't REALLY need a Titan XP or 1080Ti killer, but they do need to be able to beat the regular 1080.
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Personally i think they need something that CAN compete with the ti, if its only slightly faster than 1080 that's performance we've had for over a year already, and that would be the top end amd card, a year behind nvidia in performance. =/

This is reminding me of 2900xt all over again, big power hungry gpu that was just about on 8800gts levels when it came out but sucked up a lot more power.
 
I'm hoping 1080ish in power with an aggressive pricing model. I was using my friends 1080 @ 1440p and got addicted to its performance.

I'd prefer to stick with Vega because freesync but am willing to make the jump.

Either way, I'm going to wait until the [H] review.
 
Chris_B said:
Personally i think they need something that CAN compete with the ti, if its only slightly faster than 1080 that's performance we've had for over a year already, and that would be the top end amd card, a year behind nvidia in performance. =/

This is reminding me of 2900xt all over again, big power hungry gpu that was just about on 8800gts levels when it came out but sucked up a lot more power.
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Hey we got programmable AA out of the 2900xt! When AMD realized they had a hot turd on their hand we got their last ditch effort to supply something useful to us.

Maybe we will get a nice little something this time.
 
I just want something, anything new on the high end. I have 3x 144hz 1080p freesync screens and I'd like a more powerful single-GPU solution to drive them.
 
collegeboy69us said:
But what are people expecting here -- you can buy a 1080 right now (in stock) for $519 (newegg) Unless this thing is $399 and in stock everywhere, I don't see what there is to get excited about.
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This speculation about "hopefully getting one if the price is right, c'mon AMD!" is pure fantasyland. Nobody's getting near one.

- MSRP performance/dollar likely to be worse than NVIDIA.
- Feeding frenzy of fanboys, miners and ebay flippers will pay the gouge pricing for the small quantity that is produced at least initially.
- Likely very little OC headroom since it'll be maxed out from the factory just to keep up with 1080

If you're a mere enthusiast/gamer looking for a GPU upgrade, forget it.
 
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odditory said:
All this speculation about "Hopefully be getting one if the price is right, c'mon AMD!" is pure fantasyland. Nobody's getting near one.

MSRP price will be worse performance/dollar than NVIDIA.
Feeding frenzy of fanboys, miners and ebay flippers will pay the gouge pricing for the small quantity that is produced, so you won't be able to get one anwyay.
Little to no OC headroom - it'll be maxed out from the factory just to be able to trail a 1080/1080Ti by a less embarrassing margin.

If you're a mere enthusiast/gamer looking for a GPU upgrade, forget it.
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That sure is a lot of conjecture presented as fact.
 
speaking as a miner who planns on buying a few as soon as possible if ether stays up you wont be able to get one. Buy at launch and scalp it if you dont like it or you wont be able to pick up a card till ether dies.
 
Looking forward to it. I usually wait for the [H] review before buying anything, but if the price is good I'll be pre-ordering because of all the mining shens.
 
Cali3350 said:
That sure is a lot of conjecture presented as fact.
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Conjecture based on previous AMD patterns (Fiji launch), recent benchmarks of the FE, and AMD's delays and radio silence about Vega. But if you think I'm out of line on any point then spill and be specific.

No matter what you won't be able to get near a Vega card for MSRP.
 
Cali3350 said:
So conjecture then.



So more conjecture.
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Conjecture implies a guess.... this is more of a informed opinion.

GCN cards are far better at mining than gaming at their respective price level. There's zero reason to assume that MORE GCN cores wouldn't lead to at least some gain in mining power.

And I have a 6 month old used RX480 with a $350 bid going on eBay with 5 days left that points to high end GCN cards blowing by MSRP until the mining craze ends.
 
Imagine if the marketing guys used descriptive terms for the product? Like "Gaming Vega" and "Work Station Vega"?

RX? I get an rx from the pharmacy for hemorrhoids or that mysterious blister on my man-parts.

Just sayin'...
 
c3k said:
Imagine if the marketing guys used descriptive terms for the product? Like "Gaming Vega" and "Work Station Vega"?

RX? I get an rx from the pharmacy for hemorrhoids or that mysterious blister on my man-parts.

Just sayin'...
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The first thing that comes to mind when I hear RX is a red FD RX-7 , which was one of my favorite sports cars. Maybe you should try to limit yourself a bit from situations that can give you mysterious blisters.. :)
 
I wonder if a lot of the delay is getting some big game developers to do Vega optimizations.

Looking back at the Vega Architecture overview it looks like the main potential performance enhancers over Polaris/Fury X are:

Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer: Listening to Scott Wasson describe it, this happens at the last stage, and a lot of culling happens before that, so this might not be the big bonus many are expecting.

Primitive shaders: Up to double shader throughput in some circumstances. So some improvements some time, but this requires developer coding, it is not going to impact already written software.

So it seems like a minimal boost, unless there is some developer work on Vega optimizations in their big games.
 
Hmmmmm.. hopefully vega fe is not an indicator whatsoever... In thinking it's not .
 
Uvaman2 said:
Hmmmmm.. hopefully vega fe is not an indicator whatsoever... In thinking it's not .
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Lower IPC could be a design decision for higher clocks. It doesn't necessarily mean something wrong. I think Vega had more cache latency right?

The whole "features aren't working yet" argument is compelling to me, but I've seen the thought train of "just wait!" so many times in tech before...
 
Cali3350 said:
Lower IPC could be a design decision for higher clocks. It doesn't necessarily mean something wrong. I think Vega had more cache latency right?

The whole "features aren't working yet" argument is compelling to me, but I've seen the thought train of "just wait!" so many times in tech before...
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Finally, along with outlining their new packed math formats, AMD is also confirming, at a high level, that the Vega NCU is optimized for both higher clockspeeds and a higher IPC.
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/11002/the-amd-vega-gpu-architecture-teaser/2
 
I want to support AMD, I want to see them win. I approve of their overall user-friendly approach to open source, open tech in general etc... from FreeSync to Linux drivers and more, which is pretty much the antithesis of how Nvidia and Intel act, favoring expensive and proprietary stuff. However, I cannot justify buying something that is not high performing or reasonably priced. For instance, the AMD RX 500 / 400 series are great for mid+ grade and below, but up until recently they have nothing to really challenge the 1070 or higher, much like until Ryzen and Threadripper they had nothing to challenge Intel on the desktop.

I am worried for RX Vega, from waht I've seen thus far about Frontier Edition Vega. RX Vega may be faster with better drivers, but I hear it may lose half its VRAM. If this is the case, I can't see its point honestly after all this time. Nvidia capitalized on AMD's Fury/FuryX cards lack of VRAM one generation ago and encouraged developers and partners to use a shitload of VRAM, especially for 4K performance and similar. Its the reason there's a bloody "VRAM usage bar" in so many game option screens showing that enabling various things will "eat up" so much VRAM performance. Both AMD and NV have normalized 8GB RAM on "mid-high" cards like the RX 580 and 1070, but thanks to the 1080 Ti NV has normalized 12 (or rather, 11)GB on the high end. AMD needs to learn from history "But but but its 4GB of faster HBM look at it" wasn't good enough back then and it won't be now, especially in 4K resolution highly demanding titles. When it comes to raw performance, frankly if the RX Vega is "only" as good as the 1080 (or between 1070 and 1080) that would be a problem - its too little, too late ffor something that also has a higher power draw. The Vega FE benchmarks suggest this is not some "Titan XP / 1080 Ti" killer or it may not at this point even match those cards. So with that in mind all they can complete upon is price. So a higher power draw card that maybe is equal to a 1080, AMD will need to price it really really low and have a fuckload in stock to be worthwhile. Even at that it would be a disappointment after all this time.

They had one chance to make Vega worthwhile - something slightly below, equal, or better than the 1080Ti at a significantly lower price. If Vega was even slightly slower than the 1080Ti, had 12-16GB of VRAM (which would put AMD in the lead at least for a little while), and cost around $400-500 it would be a classic success. However, it doesn't seem any of this is happening. So unless it turns out that the Frontier benchmarks (with all its RAM) were really broken, I don't know the point of Vega after all this time. Pushing out something a year late, under-spec on the RAM, and not particularly high end competitive despite lots of enthusiasm for a high end part, is an issue. Thus, it must mean that AMD must either try to compete entirely on price - a difficult place to be when NV can simply drop the price of 1080 and 1080 Ti, or end up falling flat for general/gaming use. Now, is it possible that Vega could be an excellent mining card? Sure, that will basically - for a period of time - sell a ton of them. However, its already a problem for GPUs to be affordable and accessible during mining booms, so I don't think AMD wants pretty much miners to be their only customers.

I want Vega to be my next card, I want AMD to succeed and have a thriving competitive high end GPU again...but from what I've heard thus far, I'm very concerned that this is not the case.
 
I really hate that the explanation for the FE is either:

1) Major dud chip
2) Major dud drivers, maybe someday hopefully all the things will be optimized and amazing.

It is really not okay to launch products with shit drivers, fix them over 5 years and then claim you optimize your cards more than the competition.
 
Cali3350 said:
Hoping for 1080 performance at $425. I would consider it a good product at that area.

But I doubt AMD can get the price that low.
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I wouldn't because the 1080 has been as low as 400 bucks on sale before the mining craze, aid Volta is due out in a couple of months or so to boot.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I wouldn't because the 1080 has been as low as 400 bucks on sale before the mining craze, aid Volta is due out in a couple of months or so to boot.
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But its not out now. I dont buy the argument "Its a bad product because Nvidia will creme it in 4 months". That makes it a bad product in 4 months, not right now. People will buy GPU's in those 4 months.

Additionally, the 1080 is not $400 right now. The fact it has been in the past makes me wish I had gotten it in the past, but right now there $500.

Obviously, AMD is in a bit of trouble here. They wont get a year of competitive (and profitable) sales out of this.
 
Cali3350 said:
But its not out now. I dont buy the argument "Its a bad product because Nvidia will creme it in 4 months". That makes it a bad product in 4 months, not right now. People will buy GPU's in those 4 months.

Additionally, the 1080 is not $400 right now. The fact it has been in the past makes me wish I had gotten it in the past, but right now there $500.

Obviously, AMD is in a bit of trouble here. They wont get a year of competitive (and profitable) sales out of this.
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I think it is worse than that for AMD. NVidia at this point has made most of the easy money at this performance envelope, they can simply drop prices and choke off AMDs air supply if they decide to, and with a big die and HBM memory Vega will cost more than 1080 Ti to build.
 
Snowdog said:
I think it is worse than that for AMD. NVidia at this point has made most of the easy money at this performance envelope, they can simply drop prices and choke off AMDs air supply if they decide to, and with a big die and HBM memory Vega will cost more than 1080 Ti to build.
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AMD made a huge mistake with HBM2. Judging by the performance of these cards they are not able to realize HBM2 full potential. I don't see what HBM2 offers Vega that couldn't be done with GDDR5x for a lot less money. I also don't see Nvidia playing as nicely with AMD like Intel does and just crush them. I would like to support AMD but they have nothing to compel me to their camp. I have a 1080 and don't see needing a upgrade to when Volta TI comes out. AMD wont have anything to compete with that if they struggling to match a 1080 now. Miners are the only thing keeping AMD GPU afloat atm and hope they can fund some good R&D with that cash.
 
Snowdog said:
I think it is worse than that for AMD. NVidia at this point has made most of the easy money at this performance envelope, they can simply drop prices and choke off AMDs air supply if they decide to, and with a big die and HBM memory Vega will cost more than 1080 Ti to build.
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Exactly. Honestly I'm struggling to see any way forward for AMD with RX Vega.

There will be no miracle driver. Period. I know this because if fledging performance was squarely a software issue, you'd bet AMD would have produced at least one shining demo, some game or softweare that performs bizarrely well, and dropped that across the media. Oh wait, they did, last year with fucking Doom at GF 1080 levels. Roll on to now, and we're seeing identical performance still, and it launches next month...
 
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