AMD’s Vega & Ryzen “Capsaicin & Cream” Live Event

[magoo]

Have you ever tried on a good PC based VR headset in a decent title? It really does blow you away. The experience is transformative. I would agree with the criticism that a lot of th etitles that exist today are a little silly, and reminiscent of Wii games, but that isn't going to be the case forever. In this generation you need a pretty badass PC in order to render the 90fps required for a good VR experience, but we are still in the first generation.

As we all know, what costs a fortune one generation becomes more and more mainstream with every generation that passes. My Kepler Titan cost me $1000 in early 2013. Today it is blown away by a $160 RX470 and narrowly beaten by a $140 1050Ti in most titles. It won't be long before a low-mid end gaming PC will handle VR well. That, and as volumes grow and adoption becomes more and more mainstream, the price of decent headsets will fall. Just on Monday HTC announced a 0% financing option for the Vive for $66 per month for 12 months, making it easier to afford for most people.

Make no mistake, VR is coming. I don't think it will be long before it is the dominant form of PC gaming. As Kyle predicted in his video, 2017 will probably be the year that turns the mainstream gaming thought about VR from one of "oh, that's a cute, but expensive toy, I'll just focus on my real serious gaming" to "wow, VR really is the next big thing". While I am not 100% ready to jump in on VR myself yet, I believe him. Having tried the experience myself, as well as seeing my 73 year old mother-in-law gasp and chuckle with excitement when I put the headset on her, I can say with some confidence that I don't believe this is the next "3D TV" or "motion controller" type fad, that will die away. I truly believe VR will not only become big, but that in relative short order it will become the way MOST people play games.

Also consider this. One of the reasons HardOCP has had such staying power over the years is that it got into the PC Hardware and Gaming review site thing early on. Many have comne and gone since. If you wan't to be one of the leading voices on a subject, you have to get in early. You can't wait until something is already a mainstream success. Just look at all the Youtube streamers. There are lots of early ones doing it before anyone else was who are massive successes. There are very few later copycats doing as well at it.

Your argument is well thought out.
I am still not sold on this at all.
I firmly believe that VR will become a "thing". But, I see that "thing" squarely attached to the Playstation and the XBox and not so much the PC.

For VR to gather steam, it simply has to be associated with the cheaper consoles, as that is squarely where the big money resides. If that happens, as you point out, the technology will follow and become
not only powerful but less expensive.

PC gaming is still a niche crowd of hobbyists, somewhat larger than a few years ago, no doubt, but still a pretty small crowd. You'd have to convince that entire segment to jump full
tilt into VR to make a wrinkle financially, UNLESS the game developers and publishers decide that only VR is how one games.

Given that the current consoles and even mid-level PCs are too weak, we won't see a great deal of movement until we hit critical mass, which I still think is several years away.

Argue what you wish, but I really think the console has to drive this technology, as there just aren't that many PC gamers out there. If this does occur, we will benefit because our machines are
going to be beefier and more adaptable to better and more sophisticated accessories.

 

[FrgMstr]

I will give a bit of backstory. We formed a new company and have been shopping Inside VR since last November. AMD reached out and wanted to have a sit-down, unrelated to Inside VR, but it was time to have a discussion about our relationship. Raja and I very much addressed the elephant in the room and discussed where the relation had gone off the tracks and what we needed to do to address that. At that meeting I showed Raja a 5 minute "Inside VR sizzle reel" we had put together for Inside VR. (We went into preproduction a in Q4'16, and I was very happy with the production quality and the content.) Now while you may or may not agree with me about VR, I truly believe it is "the next big thing," and we have done fairly extensive coverage of that since August of last year in terms of GPU performance. AMD sees that same vision as well and has invested heavily in VR. Raja saw our vision for what Inside VR was try to accomplish, and that is simply to bring understanding, passion, and enthusiasm to the genre. Now while AMD may not currently have the best GPUs for accelerating that VR experience, it is not sitting on its hands in relation to that. I think Vega will bring competition back to that market segment, which is good for all of us.

What Raja asked of me at that meeting was very eye-opening. I am going to paraphrase here, but it went like this, "Kyle, I want to get a Ryzen system into your hands, I want you to test it in VR, and I want you to come on stage and discuss your findings....good or bad. I don't want to control your message, just tell us what you think about it." And that is exactly what happened. I could have said anything I wanted on that stage. AMD had no control over that. Ryzen is a good part, maybe not the best in the world, but surely competitive, and AMD has never propped it up as anything different. I think a lot of us will be very happy with it. Are 7700K owners going to rush out and flip systems? No. But there are a lot of us that have been waiting in the wings for AMD, and your moment is finally here.

Ryzen is the real deal. I think Vega is going to be the real deal as well, time will tell on that.

The bottom line is that AMD allowed one of its harshest critics to come on stage at a live event, and that should be telling. And surely yes, I had something to gain there with being able to announce Inside VR on a very large stage. Inside VR is going to evangelize the entire VR environment, but it is also going to be real journalism about VR. In the end, I saw it as an opportunity to advance real tech journalism. And in my heart, I am very happy with that. It is good for all of us. It is good to see AMD embrace that.

 

[StaticShoes]

The way I see it is that AMD is a big company. Not as big as Intel, but still a big company. In any big company there are going to be some shits, but also some good people. I think Kyle is reasonable, and not opposed to working with the good people in AMD, of which Raja Koduri appears to be one.

(Again, my standard disclaimer here is, I am drawing these conclusions on my own. I'm not privy to inside knowledge, I just post news)

Agree with you that it's smart of AMD to play nice with review sites that are willing to be fair and give feedback which can help manufacturers improve their products and dealings with customers. We've all seen what happens when companies flat out deny there are any problems with products or drivers, or when they lash out at review sites that are being honest. Let's hope we never see a repeat of the Nano fiasco.

I'm confident the [H] Ryzen reviews will be impartial. I pray Ryzen lives up to expectations.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

Have you ever tried on a good PC based VR headset in a decent title? It really does blow you away. The experience is transformative.

1) Yes I have.
2) Perhaps it blew you away and was a trans-formative experience for you. For me it was cool, but I was sick of wearing the thing on my head after an hour. The problem with VR in respect to video games is the same problem as 3d. It really really shines in certain types of games, unfortunately most games get little to no benefit from it. For example for something like Flight Sim for those with full pedal setups it would be an untouchable experience. For games like League of legends, Call of Duty, BF and pretty much all the major AAA highly popular games it offers nothing.

Back on topic though - Ryzen Looks amazing. Now with the leaked benchmarks I can finally get excited about owning an AMD chip again. Time to start saving my pennies.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Admittedly, that's a pretty lofty goal, now that NVIDIA has revealed that GTX 1080 Ti will be faster than Titan XP at stock clocks (and have priced it accordingly at $699 for the FE).
Hopefully, that means good news for us video card purchasers.

"Faster" depends on the operation. A lot of that "faster" comment comes from the subsystems they have speed up (like the memory) If a program needs more ROPs however, you still come out on the losing end. And we don't know what timing tricks NVIDIA/Micron had to play to speed things up. I wonder what the timing settings are for the faster memory? Will there be more latency?

All said and done though, that's a pretty big freaking deal for the 1080ti and it's pricing. NVIDIA is giving AMD recognition as having something interesting in the pipe that could threaten their market share.

 

[FrgMstr]

More importantly, you make up with Roy Taylor? Did he agree to unblock us from Twitter? Was his hand sweaty when you shook it?

Life is a funny thing. Roy and I do not see eye to eye on a lot of subjects, that is no secret. But one thing we do very much share is a passion and enthusiasm for VR. So we are simply at a point that we need to put the past behind us and focus on looking forward. It's odd to have that much bad history, but to sit down together, which we have, and go, "Hey, let's look at where we are going, not where we have been." It was a good moment. And quite frankly, it will make HardOCP better and our tech coverage better, so it is a win for Roy, a win for me, and most importantly, a win for our readers.

 

[SeymourGore]

Kyle and Roy, winning bigly

Yar, nothing reunites hardware geeks quite like exciting, emerging new technology.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

So you're saying it's time I give up my phenom II X4 955?

Probably! I have a stack of 1045t + mobos sitting here unused in retail boxes after being retired

 

[scojer]

Probably! I have a stack of 1045t + mobos sitting here unused in retail boxes after being retired

I'm surprised how long it's lasted me! Though now I'm getting into video editing and it is not the greatest in today's world. Once I upgrade though, it's getting put to work for my wife. It won't get to retire and it'll work until it's dead!

 

[painintheworld]

So you're saying it's time I give up my phenom II X4 955?

I'm still running a rig with an X4 965 (running at 3.9 since day one) since the 965 was released (damn, coming up on 8 years?!) and haven't had an AMD build since then. I am kind of looking forward to doing another one this month after all that time.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

I'm surprised how long it's lasted me! Though now I'm getting into video editing and it is not the greatest in today's world. Once I upgrade though, it's getting put to work for my wife. It won't get to retire and it'll work until it's dead!

I'm pretty certain my 386DX 20 is will working. (Minus the hard drive) you might have a while to go.

 

[GDI Lord]

Have you ever tried on a good PC based VR headset in a decent title?...The experience is transformative.

I tried VR back in about 1995 when I was 11 with Dark Forces using a joystick. It. Was. AMAAAZING!!! I haven't tried it since, and I would very much like to again. (This driving setup is spectacular: https://youtu.be/jVLPO6A5Hx0 - and I'm not even that much of a hardcore racing fan!)

Roomscale VR and XR? Why yes, I would like a personal Holodeck please!

 

[ClariorHincHonos]

No, you broke it for me but hey, common sense was not your strong suit, eh? Of course, I really do not give two shits after all what you think, I go there, here, Guru3d, Techpowerup, Overclock.net, and a few other sites and that will not change. Amazing how AMD is now doing good and suddenly, H is the go to place for good information on them from their forum goers? Last I checked, except for the site owner and a handful of folks here, H was nothing but a bash AMD site day after day.

Oh well, enjoy living in your bubble.

Given HardOCP existed well before reddit did, I'd say they've been a good source of info for far longer. And there is a dedicated AMD forum at H, in case you missed it. It's been there for a very, very long time. Two even, if you count CPU and Video Card.

 

[FrgMstr]

Now my question to you is, will it mainly focus on gaming or other amazing potential VR brings to other fields.

Gaming will be our focus out of the gate, but we will surely be looking to address the entire VR industry, which is actually growing amazingly fast right now.