AMD, where are you?

Dan

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now that we have no idea of actoual real performance of RTX line... When is AMD going to come along with something
 
AMD is working on a brand new architecture to replace GCN.

It was originally planned for 2021, but AMD is putting a lot of muscle into it, so it might be ready sometime in 2020.
 
Yeah AMD is a complete non-factor in the GPU market nowadays. The Vega 64 is $100 MORE than the FASTER 1080 and the 56 is more than a 1070Ti. There really is no reason to buy an AMD card right now.
 
I’m really rooting for AMD to surprise us. I like competition. We need more of it.

AMD has an opportunity to support HDMI 2.1 VRR/FreeSync. NVIDIA noped out of it. The RX line could be a winner with a performance boost.

But honestly, with AMD dedicating most of their graphics resources to consoles, they don’t seem to be able to keep up in the PC market. If consumers embrace ray tracing, it could be trouble.
 
I’m really rooting for AMD to surprise us. I like competition. We need more of it.

AMD has an opportunity to support HDMI 2.1 VRR/FreeSync. NVIDIA noped out of it. The RX line could be a winner with a performance boost.

But honestly, with AMD dedicating most of their graphics resources to consoles, they don’t seem to be able to keep up in the PC market. If consumers embrace ray tracing, it could be trouble.

Raytracing is a compute heavy workload, I doubt AMD will beat out the Turing cards, but expect GCN to be better than pascal in DXR features.
 
Die shrunk Vega56 with higher clocks would be perfect for me at crimbo, can't see it happening sadly.
 
Right now Vega only costs more than it's nVidia counterpart because of, I am assuming mining influence, but it could also be scarcity due to HBM2 or something similar. I don't know either of those to be certain, just speculation, and I suspect the former much more likely than the latter. AMD's MSRP are in line with near-equivalent nVidia MSRPs: Vega64 MSRP is $500, for example, which is in line with a 1070Ti MSRP of $450.

That being said, I agree with Revenant_Knight - AMD doesn't necessarily have to beat nVidia at performance. In fact, I think it would be a mistake to try to compete on that front. A feature rich minor revision to Vega could go a long way. After all, it's not like Vega is a slow card.

I am seriously considering a Vega + Freesync solution soon - I want HDR, 100Hz+ and VRR with at least 1440. The monitors exist. Going with nVidia, to get those same wants is going to cost $1500+ more just for the monitor, let alone whatever I drop on the card regardless of any speed differential. A good AIB Vega 64 is almost enough to make me jump on it right now (apart from the fact that the 980 still works ok enough for me right now)
 
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If you have freesync monitor there is. Also there is the added bonus of not buying nvidia.

That's true about FreeSync but that would be the only reason... But at a $110 price premium it's not even that good of a reason. You can buy a 1080 for $110 less and have a little faster card. Even for FreeSync, that's almost not worth it.

Once Nvidia sells thru their 10XX stock, prices should even out again but until that happens, it's not easy to justify buying an AMD card, at least a Vega.
 
That's true about FreeSync but that would be the only reason... But at a $110 price premium it's not even that good of a reason. You can buy a 1080 for $110 less and have a little faster card. Even for FreeSync, that's almost not worth it.
With an amd card I only have to hit my freesync range. The 1080 isn't strong enough to keep a constant 60@4k. I don't have to worry about that with amd.
 
AMD won't have anything to compete in the high end for the foreseeable future. They're going to compete in the mid-range and upper mid-range only for the next several years. There is no champion card on the way (although people will purport there's some magical unicorn coming, just like they have been for the past three years). Nvidia owns the high end without exception and their prices will only be dictated by the amount people are will to pay.

Intel is really the only hope out there. However, I have a feeling they're going to attack the mid range to begin with.
 
I think some of this comes down to who is running nVidia and AMD. nVidia's Jensen Huang is a gamer while AMD's Lisa Su is not so gaming tech is probably less of a passion for her when compared to the CPU department.

Interesting fact: Jensen is Lisa's uncle.
 
I see that the Vega 8 as what it was about as to clean house of baseline as once DDR5 is reached it should have the same effects as GDDR4 to 5 did for memory bandwidth as the 2200g is impressive for it's ram limits of speed as we need to be at GDDR5 x 8000Mhz to really see a true Vega 8 with say only a chipset as 570x per say for AMD to keep rinsing the bar of baseline as to make a profit on the design and forget 56 and 64.
 
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I have a saying. "When AMD is quiet, good thing happen"

Yep! Imagine if this was Raja running RTG still, he would be rushing polaris refresh or vega refresh. I think Lisa came in and probably said, put that money in our next gen stuff, get to work, bust your ass, shut the fuck up and deliver! She probably brought the ryzen attitude to the RTG team. Raja ran it like a wild animal, lol. Now it seems there is discipline.

Now the same marketing seems to have taken over intel. Year and half from release, hype videos are already coming out from their side. ROFL.

I like the silence, that usually means they are busy working and will deliver when its ready!
 
I think some of this comes down to who is running nVidia and AMD. nVidia's Jensen Huang is a gamer while AMD's Lisa Su is not so gaming tech is probably less of a passion for her when compared to the CPU department.

Interesting fact: Jensen is Lisa's uncle.

Its not gamer thing. Its a tech thing. Lisa wasn't running RTG. Raja was running it. Now she is. I think its little immature to say lisa doens't care about gamers. She delivered with ryzen and only getting better. She put some grown ups in place at RTG and running the show there. Look at the culture shift, no tweets, no bullshit. They are quiet just like Nvidia is when they are working on new cards. I think their silence just means they are investing more time and effort in to the product instead of marketing. GPU is one of those things it markets itself. You don't need drum rolls like RTG was doing over hyping the thing.
 
Now we see Intel starting to thump their chest about a 2020 release. Ah the sweet, sweet disappointment that will be when they do finally ship something. Thank you Raja.

I am so glad AMD has quieted down. It was way too much hype, and it hurt way more than helped. AMD always has had decent products priced well, even when (or maybe especially when) they don't take the performance crown.
 
Now we see Intel starting to thump their chest about a 2020 release. Ah the sweet, sweet disappointment that will be when they do finally ship something. Thank you Raja.

Doesn't it seem like same RTG mentality shifting over to intel. Similar marketing? But people were like oh its not raja's fault. They are creating the same hype they tried with poor volta crap, lol.

it feels like RTG leadership has gone over to intel. Good Riddance.
 
They were very open about skipping 12nm and going straight to 7nm.

Yep! I think Lisa is very good at putting resources where it matters. I am sure if it was raja he would be releasing another refresh wasting resources. CPU side is doing better, get back to work on GPU and release a decent card when you can. No point doing refreshes when it is going to take more resources and not enough performance to justify the R&D that can go in to next gen.
 
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AMD won't have anything to compete in the high end for the foreseeable future. They're going to compete in the mid-range and upper mid-range only for the next several years. There is no champion card on the way (although people will purport there's some magical unicorn coming, just like they have been for the past three years). Nvidia owns the high end without exception and their prices will only be dictated by the amount people are will to pay.

Intel is really the only hope out there. However, I have a feeling they're going to attack the mid range to begin with.
Intel thought the same thing with CPU's

now AMD's stock is more than 10x the 1.84 it was 2 years ago and now they are making cash

2020 at the latest
 
Yep! I think Lisa is very good at putting resources where it matters. I am sure if it was raja he would be releasing another refresh wasting resources. CPU side is doing better, get back to work on GPU and release a decent card when you can. No point doing refreshes when it is going to take more resources and not enough performance to justify the R&D that can go in to next gen.

Just came across this today, as I’m also wondering wtf AMD is doing while Nvidia announces some potentially stupid powerful video cards.

https://wccftech.com/amd-gpu-rumors-12nm-polaris-30-7nm-navi-7nm-vega-20-radeon-rx-gaming/

It’s just rumors, but it looks like there’s a possibility AMD WILL release a 12 nm card, updating the Polaris line. They point out Polaris 20 was never announced beforehand or on any roadmaps. I certainly hope this is true, as I’m wanting to build a full AMD system in the next 6 months to a year, but I won’t gimp myself just to do it. Going a full two years without a single card that even comes anywhere close to competing with the top spot would just be an absolutely retarded move.
 
Just came across this today, as I’m also wondering wtf AMD is doing while Nvidia announces some potentially stupid powerful video cards.

https://wccftech.com/amd-gpu-rumors-12nm-polaris-30-7nm-navi-7nm-vega-20-radeon-rx-gaming/

It’s just rumors, but it looks like there’s a possibility AMD WILL release a 12 nm card, updating the Polaris line. They point out Polaris 20 was never announced beforehand or on any roadmaps. I certainly hope this is true, as I’m wanting to build a full AMD system in the next 6 months to a year, but I won’t gimp myself just to do it. Going a full two years without a single card that even comes anywhere close to competing with the top spot would just be an absolutely retarded move.

I honestly never understood why they didn't make a bigger polaris with more shader cores and leave HBM2 to professional cards. It would have made sense to give polaris more bandwidth with gddr5x. It would make sense for them to make it on 12nm, with better clocks and more shaders. It will be much cheaper to make. They should just pull vega and leave it up to pro cards if they come out with 12nm polaris. It would make sense if they come out with 12nm polaris though. It wouldn't anything unheard of. Honestly Navi with gddr6 as mainstream card is looking mighty juicy. If they can pull 1080ti peformance as rumored it might not be that bad.
 
AMD is working on a brand new architecture to replace GCN.

It was originally planned for 2021, but AMD is putting a lot of muscle into it, so it might be ready sometime in 2020.

Interesting, you've been spot on a lot of times in the past... I'll buy a card once they're out to support and replace my aging 380's (I don't use them anymore anyway but we need to support AMD otherwise those price gouging happen)
Keep the information coming in sir ;) is R&D done in GTA in Toronto ? Might need to ask to be part of the team going there next summer :)
 
I honestly never understood why they didn't make a bigger polaris with more shader cores and leave HBM2 to professional cards. It would have made sense to give polaris more bandwidth with gddr5x. It would make sense for them to make it on 12nm, with better clocks and more shaders. It will be much cheaper to make. They should just pull vega and leave it up to pro cards if they come out with 12nm polaris. It would make sense if they come out with 12nm polaris though. It wouldn't anything unheard of. Honestly Navi with gddr6 as mainstream card is looking mighty juicy. If they can pull 1080ti peformance as rumored it might not be that bad.

Yeah. With how far behind they’ve been lagging, I’ve always wondered why they haven’t gone the, “Fuck it. Slap two dies on a single card and call it a day.” approach, but maybe 12 nm would make something like that more feasible.
 
Yeah. With how far behind they’ve been lagging, I’ve always wondered why they haven’t gone the, “Fuck it. Slap two dies on a single card and call it a day.” approach, but maybe 12 nm would make something like that more feasible.

AMD have done that in the past with Radeon Pro Duo, RX 295X2, HD 8990 and HD 7990, it is just not really a seller, especially when AMD did it the last time with Radeon Pro Duo where it cost more than purchasing 2 Fury X.
 
Yeah. With how far behind they’ve been lagging, I’ve always wondered why they haven’t gone the, “Fuck it. Slap two dies on a single card and call it a day.” approach, but maybe 12 nm would make something like that more feasible.

Honestly with lagging multigpu support its not worth the effort. What I would have liked was more cores with the clock speeds higher than previous gen. I was confused why they didn't make polaris any bigger and not use gddr5x instead of pushing vega with hbm2. Navi would have been better fit for hbm2 since it would have been a few years before it came in to production. Navi is rumored to be gddr6 for mainstream which I think is the right move and then release a tru high end with hbm2.
 
I honestly never understood why they didn't make a bigger polaris with more shader cores and leave HBM2 to professional cards. It would have made sense to give polaris more bandwidth with gddr5x. It would make sense for them to make it on 12nm, with better clocks and more shaders. It will be much cheaper to make. They should just pull vega and leave it up to pro cards if they come out with 12nm polaris. It would make sense if they come out with 12nm polaris though. It wouldn't anything unheard of. Honestly Navi with gddr6 as mainstream card is looking mighty juicy. If they can pull 1080ti peformance as rumored it might not be that bad.
I've thought the exact same thing. Playing around with a fury, 580 and vega, I can't believe how well the 580 performs. Adding onto polaris must have some sort of drawbacks, otherwise they would have done it, you would think anyways.
 
I've thought the exact same thing. Playing around with a fury, 580 and vega, I can't believe how well the 580 performs. Adding onto polaris must have some sort of drawbacks, otherwise they would have done it, you would think anyways.

i am not sure. Raja was smoking a whole lot of crack. I think they tried to create a gap between the lines and didn't expect HBM2 shortage and high cost. I think he tried to hard and failed. Vega was more of a machine learning card I think. Too big of a die for gaming. I think polaris might have been already but the draw back was it was using gddr5, thats where shit went south. If they designed polaris for gddr5x it migh have done better at the higher end.
 
i am not sure. Raja was smoking a whole lot of crack. I think they tried to create a gap between the lines and didn't expect HBM2 shortage and high cost. I think he tried to hard and failed. Vega was more of a machine learning card I think. Too big of a die for gaming. I think polaris might have been already but the draw back was it was using gddr5, thats where shit went south. If they designed polaris for gddr5x it migh have done better at the higher end.
I would love to see how well the "590" (xbonex) gpu would perform. Or a huge polaris chip with hbm2. Wasn't Raja originally an engineer? They're usually a different "breed" of person, ime.
 
I would love to see how well the "590" (xbonex) gpu would perform. Or a huge polaris chip with hbm2. Wasn't Raja originally an engineer? They're usually a different "breed" of person, ime.

Yea. But I don't think he knew how to manage. That's why sometime if you are good at one thing doesn't mean you could manage a project better and about his love for Intel was well known as well. I think there was too much internal issues going on. Marketing was a mess, messaging was overdome and cheezy as hell. I think he tried doing too much in too short of time. I think he was under the impression he would be able to run rtg without any influence from upper management. He didn't like when that wasn't the case. I mean stories about him wanting to merge rtg with Intel and all that probably played a big role. Too much internal politics I think. And look what happened he went to Intel not too long after.
 
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Yea. But I don't think he knew how to manage. That's why sometime if you are good at one thing doesn't mean you could manage a project better and about his love for Intel was well known as well. I think there was too much internal issues going on. Marketing was a mess, messaging was overdome and cheezy as hell. I think he tried doing too much in too short of time. I think he was under the impression he would be able to run rtg without any influence from upper management. He didn't like when that wasn't the case. I mean stories about him wanting to merge rtg with Intel and all that probably played a big role. Too much internal politics I think. And look what happened he went to Intel not too long after.

I haven't followed the internal politics of AMD at all, but what if Raja really was just being held back, and Intel releases an absolutely revolutionary GPU? I know it probably won't happen, but it'd be kind of funny. Also, as long as Intel releases something vaguely competent, that's a plus in my book. We definitely need more competition in the GPU market.
 
I haven't followed the internal politics of AMD at all, but what if Raja really was just being held back, and Intel releases an absolutely revolutionary GPU? I know it probably won't happen, but it'd be kind of funny. Also, as long as Intel releases something vaguely competent, that's a plus in my book. We definitely need more competition in the GPU market.

I am am sure he was held back a little due to budget, but budget ain't everything. He had a good few years under his belt. I mean there must be a reason Lisa didn't want to give him full control. I mean sometimes you have to let go of other things and focus on whats infront of you. But I don't think Raja did that. I honestly am not sure how fast intel can catch up. Unless they are licensing some tech from AMD. Looks like Raja kinda built that bridge and Lisa is pretty smart about business decisions. I mean they have all the budget but timing might be an issue. Unless Raja was secretly working behind AMDs back and designing chip with intel lol! It wouldn't be wrong to think that work actually started on this before Raja came along. But Raja was on leave for a bit before Intel announced he was joining them. May be intel had all the necessary stuff and team planned when he left AMD.
 
AMD's problem for decades has been lack of sufficient R&D funds to really impact the market, consistently. I love Zen, but it's clearly designed to meet certain requirements and not others; it's clearly the runner-up attempting to become relevant again. Please set aside personal preferences, because I'd love AMD to be competitive in both CPUs and GPUs for years to come. However, they have been riding old architectures (GPU is still VLIW years after it became obvious it wasn't going to work and CPU was the same architecture despite the integer focus proving to be incorrect for a decade). AMD just doesn't have the money NVIDIA and Intel have drive GPU architecture forward. I wish I was wrong.

AMD will mimic and focus on markets they can get some value out of, but unless Zen is a massive (more than it already is) success in the enterprise market, they simply won't have the money to challenge NVIDIA or Intel in 2020 and beyond. Just my two cents.
 
AMD had multiple problems:
  • When they were on top they bled money partying like, well, you can fill in your own meme here.
  • Once staggering after all the partying, Intel used anti-competitive tactics to hold AMD back whilst coming back with a competing chip.
  • AMD purchased ATI thus turning a two-company war (AMD vs. Intel) into a three-company war (Intel vs. ATI/RTG vs. nVidia).
  • ATI/RTG allowed marketing and management to initiate the hype train; fanbois pushed the throttle of this train to 11.
  • ATI/RTG made cards with a Bill Of Materials (BOM) too high vs. the competition.
Any one of the above points would hurt a company. Having all of them? Thankfully, Lisa Su appears to be someone who is distinctly against bullshit and I anticipate that, like with the CPU division, she will bring about order to the GPU division for some sorely needed competition.
 
It all boils down to budget. AMD focused hard to bringing Eypc and Ryzen to market. It was really a last ditch effort to bring back parity on the CPU side of things. Their graphics division took the biggest hit in funding. Little funding means no products or delayed products. Vega could have benefited greatly with hand tuning circuits vs automated, there were resources AMD didn't spend. Hard to say what to expect from AMD next. Navi will come, but that's really a console sized gpu, aka mid range. If AMD can capture some of that server market, then reinvesting more into graphics makes sense. It's safe to say that Nvidia will enjoy the time at the top with little pressure from AMD in the graphics division.
 
I been seeing RX 580 8Gb non-ref selling for $229-239 with 3 free games as it is 2014-15 all over again for core gamers looking for value as $150 in games means the RX 580 cost you $90 to play those games on.
 
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