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Zion Halcyon
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2007
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- 2,108
Reposting this (I was the original author) from reddit. It was a thought that occurred to me as I stupidly took a thread here off topic, and then used the ensuing vacation Kyle was nice enough to give me to do some digging on AMD, Raja, Arctic Islands conversion to Polaris and Vega, and put it all together - I apologize for the obscene length.
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Forgive the editorial format of this as I just want to get these thoughts out in light of Polaris launching, the competition with NVidia, the reviews coming in, and frankly, my thoughts on where AMD is going from here.
I'll do you all a favor and get the TL|DR portion out of the way first:
I think we will not see real, head to head competition with Nvidia until Navi, because I believe that is going to be the first real graphics chip that is 100% innovated by Raja Koduri. And AMD is holding down the fort with Polaris and Vega as best they can until then.
Now, on to the meat:
Since before Polaris launched, there has been a significant debate of what is going on behind the scenes. HardOCP, among other things, did correctly predict in an article that "AMD has a problem on its hands, as both these products have come up significantly short of where these were supposed to land. But that is OK for AMD, it will simply send Chris Hook out to fall on the sword and tell a story of that was the plan all along....to produce brand new parts much slower than its last high end GPUs. In the simplest terms AMD has created a product that runs hotter and slower than its competition's new architecture by a potentially significant margin. " (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_journey_in_futility/#.V7KGD4WcFaQ)
Editorializing aside (and ignoring other claims in the article that aren't pertinent to this thread), Polaris runs about the same as an AMD 390, and while it is actually a VERY nice card for the price that has HUGE gains in Vulkan, it still isn't very competitive compared to NVidia, actually borderline fails to live up to the VR Ready claims marketing put forward in terms of quality based on tests with actual games and simulations, and generally has been a nice card for the price, if underwhelming.
It would be easy for some to write off AMD for that, but there is a historical reason for this, and for that, we need to go back to pre Raja, and realize Polaris and the upcoming Vega are actually rebranded Arctic Islands chips already in the pipeline when Raja joined in 2013.
Prior, under Hector Ruiz's mishandling of AMD, he shut down both processor and GPU R&D which led to a severe lack of innovation and a string of AMD failures that are not easily recovered from, and given the turnaround time for a new GPU to be designed to sold, even the upcoming Vega was likely partially already in the pipeline when Raja came on board, meaning when he and Lisa Su started up their R&D when they took over the respective parts of the company, there likely was a limited amount they could do.
Staying on point with the video cards, Greenland (now Vega) will likely be the last "Hector Ruiz" era card and will have some engineering tweaks done, as this was always intended to be the "flagship" of this generation of cards (albeit underperforming ones compared to their NVidia brethren).
Hence, there is a reason they priced these cards to sell and marketed them how they did (genius really) - they need to make their way through and keep capital coming in.
And really, for the price, while they may not be world beaters, they are great little card for the current PC standard - 60FPS at 1080p with all the bells and whistles.
I guess my overall point is this - don't be surprised if Vega disappoints compared to NVidia's offerings - in fact I am almost counting on it. But also understand one doesn't dig out of a Hector Ruiz-sized hole overnight, or even in 2-3 years.
AMD has better leadership, and even if they have to put lipstick on a pig for a couple of generations, they are SMART, and pricing aggressively to do it so that the baseline budget gamer should more than feel they are getting their money's worth.
It's not because of the cards, but because of the leadership that AMD is rallying in the stock market, and even if they have to work with some hindering engineering from the lean years of AMD, they are selling it and working it out.
Which means, tune out all the people who say "AMD can't afford to keep playing cheap or they will go under." - They are grabbing market share and know what they are doing, even if they have one arm and both legs tied behind their back at the moment to do it.
But if you are looking for a chip to finally trade blows with NVidia (and let's not kid ourselves - NVidia will have Volta at the ready when Vega is in full swing), don't look to Greenland/Vega, barring some real technical wizardry or frankly, AMD hitting the engineering lotto given the era it came from.
Nope, keep your eyes peeled for Navi - which was not a part of the old "Arctic Islands" architecture, and will be the very first card Raja himself is responsible for from start to finish.
Maybe Zen turns it around on the processor side, but when it comes to graphics - all eyes on Navi, and it might not be fair to judge them a minute sooner before that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forgive the editorial format of this as I just want to get these thoughts out in light of Polaris launching, the competition with NVidia, the reviews coming in, and frankly, my thoughts on where AMD is going from here.
I'll do you all a favor and get the TL|DR portion out of the way first:
I think we will not see real, head to head competition with Nvidia until Navi, because I believe that is going to be the first real graphics chip that is 100% innovated by Raja Koduri. And AMD is holding down the fort with Polaris and Vega as best they can until then.
Now, on to the meat:
Since before Polaris launched, there has been a significant debate of what is going on behind the scenes. HardOCP, among other things, did correctly predict in an article that "AMD has a problem on its hands, as both these products have come up significantly short of where these were supposed to land. But that is OK for AMD, it will simply send Chris Hook out to fall on the sword and tell a story of that was the plan all along....to produce brand new parts much slower than its last high end GPUs. In the simplest terms AMD has created a product that runs hotter and slower than its competition's new architecture by a potentially significant margin. " (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_journey_in_futility/#.V7KGD4WcFaQ)
Editorializing aside (and ignoring other claims in the article that aren't pertinent to this thread), Polaris runs about the same as an AMD 390, and while it is actually a VERY nice card for the price that has HUGE gains in Vulkan, it still isn't very competitive compared to NVidia, actually borderline fails to live up to the VR Ready claims marketing put forward in terms of quality based on tests with actual games and simulations, and generally has been a nice card for the price, if underwhelming.
It would be easy for some to write off AMD for that, but there is a historical reason for this, and for that, we need to go back to pre Raja, and realize Polaris and the upcoming Vega are actually rebranded Arctic Islands chips already in the pipeline when Raja joined in 2013.
Prior, under Hector Ruiz's mishandling of AMD, he shut down both processor and GPU R&D which led to a severe lack of innovation and a string of AMD failures that are not easily recovered from, and given the turnaround time for a new GPU to be designed to sold, even the upcoming Vega was likely partially already in the pipeline when Raja came on board, meaning when he and Lisa Su started up their R&D when they took over the respective parts of the company, there likely was a limited amount they could do.
Staying on point with the video cards, Greenland (now Vega) will likely be the last "Hector Ruiz" era card and will have some engineering tweaks done, as this was always intended to be the "flagship" of this generation of cards (albeit underperforming ones compared to their NVidia brethren).
Hence, there is a reason they priced these cards to sell and marketed them how they did (genius really) - they need to make their way through and keep capital coming in.
And really, for the price, while they may not be world beaters, they are great little card for the current PC standard - 60FPS at 1080p with all the bells and whistles.
I guess my overall point is this - don't be surprised if Vega disappoints compared to NVidia's offerings - in fact I am almost counting on it. But also understand one doesn't dig out of a Hector Ruiz-sized hole overnight, or even in 2-3 years.
AMD has better leadership, and even if they have to put lipstick on a pig for a couple of generations, they are SMART, and pricing aggressively to do it so that the baseline budget gamer should more than feel they are getting their money's worth.
It's not because of the cards, but because of the leadership that AMD is rallying in the stock market, and even if they have to work with some hindering engineering from the lean years of AMD, they are selling it and working it out.
Which means, tune out all the people who say "AMD can't afford to keep playing cheap or they will go under." - They are grabbing market share and know what they are doing, even if they have one arm and both legs tied behind their back at the moment to do it.
But if you are looking for a chip to finally trade blows with NVidia (and let's not kid ourselves - NVidia will have Volta at the ready when Vega is in full swing), don't look to Greenland/Vega, barring some real technical wizardry or frankly, AMD hitting the engineering lotto given the era it came from.
Nope, keep your eyes peeled for Navi - which was not a part of the old "Arctic Islands" architecture, and will be the very first card Raja himself is responsible for from start to finish.
Maybe Zen turns it around on the processor side, but when it comes to graphics - all eyes on Navi, and it might not be fair to judge them a minute sooner before that.
