Is Kaby Lake-G More Polaris than Vega?

rgMekanic

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In an interesting article from PCPer today, recent tests and benchmarks for Intel's new Kaby Lake-G processors with Radeon Vega M Graphics show that the GPU may be more Polaris based than Vega. The first hint was that in AIDA64 the GPU in Kaby Lake-G is listed as "Polaris 22", while that could just be coincidence, the more salient point is in DXDIag the GPU does not support DirectX 12.1, and further testing in SiSoft Sandra shows similar FP32 performance between Kaby Lake-G and Polaris, hinting that the GPU in Kaby Lake-G does not support "rapid packed math"

Interesting stuff for sure. I honestly don't think that the GPU in the Kaby Lake-G is specifically Polaris based, but perhaps a yet unnamed Vega, perhaps the first implementation we are seeing of the upcoming 600 line of GPUs. While it may not have rapid packed math, the quote below outlines the reason for my assumption.

What Kaby Lake-G does have that leans toward Vega is support for HBM2 memory (which none of the Polaris cards have) and “high bandwidth memory cache controller and enhanced compute units with additional ROPs” according to the statement from Intel given to Tom’s Hardware.
 
Makes sense since Polaris is superior in design than Vega. I wouldn't be shocked if the 2200G and 2400G were also based on Polaris. From what I gather, Polaris uses tile based rendering, but not Vega. Vega is very much like the Fury X design, but actually slower clock for clock. It almost feels like AMD farted it out to just have a high end card to compete with Nvidia.
 
Makes sense since Polaris is superior in design than Vega. I wouldn't be shocked if the 2200G and 2400G were also based on Polaris. From what I gather, Polaris uses tile based rendering, but not Vega. Vega is very much like the Fury X design, but actually slower clock for clock. It almost feels like AMD farted it out to just have a high end card to compete with Nvidia.

lol wut?
 
Exactly what I was thinking. Maybe he has them mixed up?

Either way, hes right out there.
Nope, Vega seems to be based on the Fury cards and clock for clock its nearly equal. I think AdoredTV mentioned this, but I can't remember which video he showed this. But one of the big features of the Polaris cards is Tile Based Rendering, which finally caught up to what Nvidia has had since Maxwell. But why would Vega need Tile based rendering tech when it's going to always be with HBM2 memory? I do believe the Vega 56 and 64 are like the Pascal cards in that they're just die shrunk and overclocked Fury cards. Pascal is just die shrunk overclocked Maxwell cards.

If anything, the Polaris chip in the Kaby Lake-G is probably a tweaked Polaris to use HBM. Considering how little resources AMD has compared to Nvidia, it wouldn't shock me that AMD just reused Fuji architecture. Like Intel who dumped the P4 over going back to the PIII, maybe AMD is also dumping Fuji/Vega over Polaris. Yep the Pentium-M is just a tweaked Pentium-III and the CoreDuo is based on those as well. But Polaris is probably more robust than Fuji/Vega, so AMD could be stepping back to move forward in GPU design.

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Nope, Vega seems to be based on the Fury cards and clock for clock its nearly equal. I think AdoredTV mentioned this, but I can't remember which video he showed this. But one of the big features of the Polaris cards is Tile Based Rendering, which finally caught up to what Nvidia has had since Maxwell. But why would Vega need Tile based rendering tech when it's going to always be with HBM2 memory? I do believe the Vega 56 and 64 are like the Pascal cards in that they're just die shrunk and overclocked Fury cards. Pascal is just die shrunk overclocked Maxwell cards.

If anything, the Polaris chip in the Kaby Lake-G is probably a tweaked Polaris to use HBM. Considering how little resources AMD has compared to Nvidia, it wouldn't shock me that AMD just reused Fuji architecture. Like Intel who dumped the P4 over going back to the PIII, maybe AMD is also dumping Fuji/Vega over Polaris. Yep the Pentium-M is just a tweaked Pentium-III and the CoreDuo is based on those as well. But Polaris is probably more robust than Fuji/Vega, so AMD could be stepping back to move forward in GPU design.

View attachment 65617



Firstly, the AdoredTV video was with Vega FE way back in July 17, using very immature drivers. Secondly, Polaris doesn't have tile based rendering, I don't know where you keep getting this from. Can you please provide a link if you have one?

Draw-stream binning rasteriser (aka tile based rendering) was added to Vega. It wasn't enabled in early driver sets however.

OT, Vega M is clearly custom silicon, so not sure why it is a surprise that it doesn't behave exactly like Vega 56/64. That doesn't mean that it is Polaris however.
 
Vega at same TDP can do 50% over polaris.
Titan V is 30% over 1080TI at same tdp ~

Doesn't mean they fly off the shelves, their efficiency might be a lot better but die area is hilarious for both of them thus making them expensive.

Vega again seems very efficient in the apu's (2500u,2400g,2200G) which makes me wonder if it's a revised vega in them compared to 64.
AMD have proven that Vega is capable of fighting very closely with Pascal but this is however definitely not true for the V64,V56 which Vega is judged by.

we've seen seemingly dead end archs from AMD with 2900XT which ended up being one of the best archs amd have made which seemed hilarious to say at the launch of the 2900XT but sadly it doesn't make the Vega 64,56 any better other than it might be in the history of a good arch in it's early phase.
 
Vega == Polaris + HBCC + HBM2 MC + RPM + front end enhancements

Why the feature difference between Kaby G and Vega 64? A few possibilities
  • Intel didn't pay for those features
  • Intel didn't think the TDP/die tradeoff was worth including them
  • They are there but drivers don't allow them yet
  • Kaby G GPU design is actually older than Vega 64
  • AMD didn't want to share their special sauce
 
Nope, Vega seems to be based on the Fury cards and clock for clock its nearly equal. I think AdoredTV mentioned this, but I can't remember which video he showed this. But one of the big features of the Polaris cards is Tile Based Rendering, which finally caught up to what Nvidia has had since Maxwell. But why would Vega need Tile based rendering tech when it's going to always be with HBM2 memory? I do believe the Vega 56 and 64 are like the Pascal cards in that they're just die shrunk and overclocked Fury cards. Pascal is just die shrunk overclocked Maxwell cards.

If anything, the Polaris chip in the Kaby Lake-G is probably a tweaked Polaris to use HBM. Considering how little resources AMD has compared to Nvidia, it wouldn't shock me that AMD just reused Fuji architecture. Like Intel who dumped the P4 over going back to the PIII, maybe AMD is also dumping Fuji/Vega over Polaris. Yep the Pentium-M is just a tweaked Pentium-III and the CoreDuo is based on those as well. But Polaris is probably more robust than Fuji/Vega, so AMD could be stepping back to move forward in GPU design.

View attachment 65617


So does that mean we can call it Vegaris? I mean, it's only fair after AdoredTV started the whole Paxwell thing.
 
Firstly, the AdoredTV video was with Vega FE way back in July 17, using very immature drivers. Secondly, Polaris doesn't have tile based rendering, I don't know where you keep getting this from. Can you please provide a link if you have one?

AMD calls it "Primitive Discard Accelerator", which is basically Tile Rendering. Nvidia calls it Tile Caching, so it's not exactly a well advertised feature. Nobody knew Nvidia has it until someone tested it. But one things for sure is that AMD disabled it on Vega FE, and I think it stayed disabled all the way to Vega 56 64, which disappointed a lot of people. I'm not sure if this stayed disabled cause I don't remember hearing it was enabled.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3004-rx-vega-64-and-vega-56-power-specs-price

"We also asked AMD’s architects, including Mike Mantor, about whether DSBR was actually disabled in Vega: Frontier Edition or whether it was just a rumor. The architects loosely confirmed that tile-based rasterization was in fact disabled for Frontier Edition’s launch, which we think mostly aligns with statements about pushing the card out in time, and noted that DSBR will be enabled on both Vega FE and RX Vega on launch of RX Vega."
 
AMD calls it "Primitive Discard Accelerator", which is basically Tile Rendering. Nvidia calls it Tile Caching, so it's not exactly a well advertised feature. Nobody knew Nvidia has it until someone tested it. But one things for sure is that AMD disabled it on Vega FE, and I think it stayed disabled all the way to Vega 56 64, which disappointed a lot of people. I'm not sure if this stayed disabled cause I don't remember hearing it was enabled.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3004-rx-vega-64-and-vega-56-power-specs-price

"We also asked AMD’s architects, including Mike Mantor, about whether DSBR was actually disabled in Vega: Frontier Edition or whether it was just a rumor. The architects loosely confirmed that tile-based rasterization was in fact disabled for Frontier Edition’s launch, which we think mostly aligns with statements about pushing the card out in time, and noted that DSBR will be enabled on both Vega FE and RX Vega on launch of RX Vega."
Regarding the video in the first link, that's the same guy I linked to. If you read the last big thread, he basically agrees that tiled rendering is not happening, though there obviously is some sort of optimization going on.
 
Just another example of trying to shave off costs and make it more profitable. I wonder how much power draw has to do with what they include in the shipping product. Remember these aren't discrete gpus sucking down 200w.
 
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