Vega Rumors

TheLAWNoob said:
I wouldn't say their engineering didn't screw up. 2 years after launching the Fury and they managed to ship a card that has less memory bandwidth than its predecessor while using HBM2.
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HBM2 didn't meet its design targets and that seems to be Hynix's issue. AMD gambled that 2 stacks would be enough (and maybe it isn't the bottleneck on Vega anyways). From an assembly perspective it has to much, much cheaper to attach 3 parts to a smaller interposer in Vega than the 5 pieces and huge interposer Fiji required.

Supposedly the Fiji interposer "die" was over the reticle limit for the fab process it was on which gets expensive in a hurry. If Vega is under that then they made the right choice there

Almost certainly all the shortfalls of the performance are architectural though I could believe HBM2 contributed to Vega being so late (and really that's the bigger issue)
 
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NKD said:
I think something major went wrong with vega. The way they have features still disabled and the way they are singing songs to miners shows that they failed to make vega relevant to gamers.
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Going off comments their engineers made on drivers, some core parts are temporarily disabled. What temporarily means is unknown, but Vega still does some things rather well. It's just the graphics that seem a bit soft and not unreasonable for drivers to correct that. Just consider the open source Linux drivers being a third faster than AMDs proprietary ones. The data center and certain pro products (SSG) seem to be going over well. The Inventec racks are still going forward so someone is buying.

NKD said:
This will be devastating to AMDs core group. They pretty much lied about initial price and tried to spin it that demand is high because let’s be real people would have assumed it’s becuase of miners lol. I really think they should have just taken less profits to boost this image a little since Ryzen and threadrippers seem to be doing great. I really think Raja is running rtg to the ground. May be he secretly wants to be sold to Intel? Anyone? Lol
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AMD would have anticipated RTG underperforming a bit when they allocated more resources towards Zen. As I mentioned above Vegas may still be doing something rather well. Case in point SSGs or possibly whatever design the oil and gas industry settled on that originally spawned the SSG idea. Customers with massive datasets to process, which may be what Inventec is targeting. That could still consume a lot of inventory if AMD is already pushing fabs to the limit with Ryzen.

AMD would have some justification for a price increase. The BoM isn't that high, so making them "unsellable" wouldn't be logical. Logically they are assuming they can and will sell well at a higher price.

razor1 said:
Probably not Raja's position to set prices. That would be AMD CEO, CFO I would think. If Vega 56 is 499.99 now, its a dead card, that price is the same price as a 1080, the 1080 murders it and still has less power consumption. Not even worth talking about Vega 64 at that point it will be in the 1080ti price range, and that is even a worse match up lol.
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That may not be a valid comparison as gaming performance hasn't been dictating prices with the mining boom. Optimized Vega likely outperforms 1080 in mining performance and efficiency. Same applies for pro and compute workloads. Markets where HBCC could be a godsend and suck up supply that is already constrained by fab capacity. Gaming performance matters little if higher margin markets are pricing out gamers.
 
ecmaster76 said:
HBM2 didn't meet its design targets and that seems to be Hynix's issue.
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That may explain Samsung producing all the HBM2 that gets used. No idea on the exact specifications there as the process and cell design could be vastly different. We've seen overclocks up around 1100MHz, well beyond the 945MHz stock, and no guarantee that's even the limit. It may be an Infinity fabric issue as it has its own independent clock that isn't exposed as far as I'm aware. Not a defect as much as no known way to tweak it or understanding how it works. Just that it's clocked high enough to provide full memory bandwidth between the cores and memory and as low as possible to conserve energy.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
Going off comments their engineers made on drivers, some core parts are temporarily disabled. What temporarily means is unknown, but Vega still does some things rather well. It's just the graphics that seem a bit soft and not unreasonable for drivers to correct that. Just consider the open source Linux drivers being a third faster than AMDs proprietary ones. The data center and certain pro products (SSG) seem to be going over well. The Inventec racks are still going forward so someone is buying.
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When they have 0% of the market there is no where else to go but up

AMD would have anticipated RTG underperforming a bit when they allocated more resources towards Zen. As I mentioned above Vegas may still be doing something rather well. Case in point SSGs or possibly whatever design the oil and gas industry settled on that originally spawned the SSG idea. Customers with massive datasets to process, which may be what Inventec is targeting. That could still consume a lot of inventory if AMD is already pushing fabs to the limit with Ryzen.
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Anticipated? They knew the moment Pascal was released, where they stacked up, and that is no where.
AMD would have some justification for a price increase. The BoM isn't that high, so making them "unsellable" wouldn't be logical. Logically they are assuming they can and will sell well at a higher price.
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THE BOM isn't that high but still have to factor in margins for both AMD and seller, which can and will push up the price. So if the retailers can't buy Vega 64 for 499 for resale, that is not good for the retail price. Now Vega 56 has the same BOM, same boards, same electricals (capacitors, VRMs, etc), same Vram, same everything as Vega 64. That means Vega 56 AMD will need to take a cut on their margins which I wouldn't be surprised if its lower than 30% to keep retailers at 399, most likely its also going to get a price hike too. 50 bucks?

That may not be a valid comparison as gaming performance hasn't been dictating prices with the mining boom. Optimized Vega likely outperforms 1080 in mining performance and efficiency. Same applies for pro and compute workloads. Markets where HBCC could be a godsend and suck up supply that is already constrained by fab capacity. Gaming performance matters little if higher margin markets are pricing out gamers.
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not going to happen, the blockchain driver just fixes bugs in current AMD drivers, there is no "extra" performance. So expect Vega to max out at 45mhs on full tilt and over clocks. Which at 500 watts its a waste card for mining, might as well get toilet paper that is how unprofitable it is.

Higher margin areas nV is fully competitive, not just competitive, crushes AMD's products, granted some aren't cost equivalent but the cost gives other benefits too. And initial hardware cost is a small portion of total cost of what ever those companies are doing. Power consumption which is a HUGE minus for AMD's current products over two years easily will over come the hardware costs. those systems run 24/7.
 
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razor1 said:
Anticipated? They knew the moment Pascal was released, where they stacked up, and that is no where.
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When AMD reallocated funds from GPU to CPU design. That's product development and engineering staff. Unless the resources we're completely wasted before, it certainly won't help.

razor1 said:
not going to happen, the blockchain driver just fixes bugs in current AMD drivers, there is no "extra" performance. So expect Vega to max out at 45mhs on full tilt and over clocks. Which at 500 watts its waste card for mining, might as well get toilet paper that is how unprofitable it is.
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But did that driver rewrite the application for packed, more efficient paths? All those new instructions that should benefit hashing and addressing. Reducing ALU work significantly. That will require developer intervention and who knows what HBM could do out of spec. I'm assuming timings for high memory overclocks weren't high on AMDs priority list here. Reduce the ALU load, bring down clocks, and that power consumption drops dramatically. For a financial firm throwing near 100m at experimenting with crypto they would have the talent to do that.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
That may not be a valid comparison as gaming performance hasn't been dictating prices with the mining boom. Optimized Vega likely outperforms 1080 in mining performance and efficiency. Same applies for pro and compute workloads. Markets where HBCC could be a godsend and suck up supply that is already constrained by fab capacity. Gaming performance matters little if higher margin markets are pricing out gamers.
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It absolutely is a valid comparison. Current prices today, Aug 18 2017, and for the past couple of weeks, have shown the 1080 in stock and reliably priced at $509 USD. Vega 56 at $499 is a dead card. Vega 64 priced with $50 of the 1080ti is also a dead card. Mining isn't what is driving these AMD prices, because they haven't been on the market long enough to react to demand shortages.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
When AMD reallocated funds from GPU to CPU design. That's product development and engineering staff. Unless the resources we're completely wasted before, it certainly won't help.
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They started realocating GPU funds the moment they started working on Zen, and GCN was on top of nV. (Keplar). They thought they had the time on the GPU side to be safe, they never planned for Maxwell. Maxwell just made them do a double take. The combination of the 20nm fail and Maxwell, both things AMD has no control over, screwed them over, they knew it at that point nothing they could do with GCN will ever be enough. And when Pascal came out, they just started spinning things.

But did that driver rewrite the application for packed, more efficient paths? All those new instructions that should benefit hashing and addressing. Reducing ALU work significantly. That will require developer intervention and who knows what HBM could do out of spec. I'm assuming timings for high memory overclocks weren't high on AMDs priority list here. Reduce the ALU load, bring down clocks, and that power consumption drops dramatically. For a financial firm throwing near 100m at experimenting with crypto they would have the talent to do that.
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There is no way to do that, the algorithm is what it is, the pack math what I hinted at before, is only to alleviate the GPU's internal cache and register needs and that is if they are really hit on that right now, which they aren't, the calculation amounts for ETH mining don't push the GPU much. Having said that it can be done, but not going to get much out of it. Maybe 10% in perf/watt in mining man, and will not be enough to overcome the crazy power consumption. Now by doing so it probably won't increase performance but will drop power consumption a little that is where my estimates of the 10% in perf/watt increases for mining come from.

I don't get why you can't understand this. The Eth algorithm is open source, just look at it and see.
 
razor1 said:
I don't get why you can't understand this. The Eth algorithm is open source, just look at it and see.
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It's really simple IMHO, this sums it up perfectly:
2OggKej.jpg
 
Anarchist4000 said:
Going off comments their engineers made on drivers, some core parts are temporarily disabled. What temporarily means is unknown, but Vega still does some things rather well. It's just the graphics that seem a bit soft and not unreasonable for drivers to correct that.
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You know it only sucks at the part people would buy it for
 
To be honest, Vega is actually better than I feared it would be. It is not cutting edge in terms of power consumption or performance, but it is not a complete also-ran either.

It is a bit of a brittle position though. While "I don't care about power / temps" is valid for right here and now, you must remember than power/temps can be traded for speed at any time by both vendors. An inherent architectural power advantage will inevitably translate to an inherent performance advantage assuming even remotely similar basic performance. This is part of why the 1080ti exists (and titan), and why it is currently unchallenged.
 
PhaseNoise said:
To be honest, Vega is actually better than I feared it would be. It is not cutting edge in terms of power consumption or performance, but it is not a complete also-ran either.

It is a bit of a brittle position though. While "I don't care about power / temps" is valid for right here and now, you must remember than power/temps can be traded for speed at any time by both vendors. An inherent architectural power advantage will inevitably translate to an inherent performance advantage assuming even remotely similar basic performance. This is part of why the 1080ti exists (and titan), and why it is currently unchallenged.
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That is true, if AMD challenged the 1080ti I would not be surprised to see a 1090/ Pascal refresh or what ever come out that is just higher clocked out of the box card, and of course higher power consumption. Its pretty much all relative.

But tell ya the truth these Vega cards don't look good, worse gap than last generation, I was kinda expecting Vega 64 to be around 10% faster, but after FE it was obvious, AMD had nothing left in the tank to beat the gtx 1080.
 
razor1 said:
That is true, if AMD challenged the 1080ti I would not be surprised to see a 1090/ Pascal refresh or what ever come out that is just higher clocked out of the box card, and of course higher power consumption. Its pretty much all relative.

But tell ya the truth these Vega cards don't look good, worse gap than last generation, I was kinda expecting Vega 64 to be around 10% faster, but after FE it was obvious, AMD had nothing left in the tank to beat the gtx 1080.
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Agreed on both issues.

I suspect it will hit slightly-better-than 1080 speeds in time. I don't buy the "Fine Wine" marketing spin for a second, let's instead call it what it is: the driver team missing the launch window.
But either way, I'd expect a bit better showing for upcoming titles versus older. But as Leatherman indicated, I don't think this alters the competitive landscape in any meaningful way. The people buying Vega are doing so because it is for freesync or is Anything But Nvidia. I do not see it being better from a performance or value angle overall. It's an acceptable card, just not a good one.

So yeah, I'd agree it's a bit underwhelming. I actually think AMD is very aware Vega is a stopgap, but that's just wild speculation on my part. In the meantime folks who want AMD for freesync or other reasons have a card which can at least play the games at high/ultra settings.
 
razor1 said:
That is true, if AMD challenged the 1080ti I would not be surprised to see a 1090/ Pascal refresh or what ever come out that is just higher clocked out of the box card, and of course higher power consumption. Its pretty much all relative.

But tell ya the truth these Vega cards don't look good, worse gap than last generation, I was kinda expecting Vega 64 to be around 10% faster, but after FE it was obvious, AMD had nothing left in the tank to beat the gtx 1080.
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AMD push GCN to the limit, pretty much this is how far it can go, Hexus push their Asus Vega 64 Strix from 1630mhz to 1980mhz (I am surprise they were able to push it that high) only increase performance by 6.4%. At least I am looking forward to post GCN architecture from AMD, whether it will compete with NVidia remains to be seen but anything is better than this architecture.
 
Chimpee said:
AMD push GCN to the limit, pretty much this is how far it can go, Hexus push their Asus Vega 64 Strix from 1630mhz to 1980mhz (I am surprise they were able to push it that high) only increase performance by 6.4%. At least I am looking forward to post GCN architecture from AMD, whether it will compete with NVidia remains to be seen but anything is better than this architecture.
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Anything over ~1900mhz right now is falsely reporting per other news sources.

That chip was definitely not running that fast.
 
Magic Hate Ball said:
Anything over ~1900mhz right now is falsely reporting per other news sources.

That chip was definitely not running that fast.
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That is certainly true since Hexus never provide any evidence that they ran at that speed and only so far Hexus review the Strix version.
 
ati 7000 series card
Nvidia 7600 gt
Ati x1800 gto
Ati 4850
amd 6870
amd r9 290
amd rx 480 (needed native hdmi 2.0 out since the displayport did not work with an adapter for my 4k tv)

Nvidia 1080

Just ordered it, will pick up today in store. I have been pretty loyal to amd , still a happy owner of a Ryzen 1700, but the inflated price and stock issues for no real performance gains... I'm just tired of waiting.

Hopefully Navi will be a more competitive chip and I will be glad to jump back.

PS, I know a 1080 is not a true 4k card, but I never needed to run games on ultra settings, and for the games that run terribly no matter what I can just drop those to 1440p.
 
NoNRG said:
Why are we arguing so much about the price when there aren't any cards in stock anyways?
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Low stock influences price, if retailers had stockpiles of Vega 64s that cost over 600 dollars that no one was buying over 1080s, they would lower those prices to get their inventory to move. Constrained supply us terrible for price, same thing happened with Pascal launch and the inflated prices there. 1080s were selling for 600 to 700 dollars, 1070s in the 450 range, this was before the next mining spike.
 
NoNRG said:
Why are we arguing so much about the price when there aren't any cards in stock anyways?
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Nothing really to argue over, its just crappy that AMD did that, have to wait and see what the actually selling price of these cards will be, but since the 1070's are higher than normal price, going to a 1080 is actually a better option. AMD is saying Vega pricing is due to demand, which doesn't look likely it looks like its because they want to sell their cards at higher prices and they are limiting stock on purpose or by manufacturing reasons.
 
tybert7 said:
Low stock influences price, if retailers had stockpiles of Vega 64s that cost over 600 dollars that no one was buying over 1080s, they would lower those prices to get their inventory to move. Constrained supply us terrible for price, same thing happened with Pascal launch and the inflated prices there. 1080s were selling for 600 to 700 dollars, 1070s in the 450 range, this was before the next mining spike.
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Well the 1080's are easy to get for 500 bucks now.
 
razor1 said:
Nothing really to argue over, its just crappy that AMD did that, have to wait and see what the actually selling price of these cards will be, but since the 1070's are higher than normal price, going to a 1080 is actually a better option. AMD is saying Vega pricing is due to demand, which doesn't look likely it looks like its because they want to sell their cards at higher prices and they are limiting stock on purpose or by manufacturing reasons.
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Hmm well for initial release, I do believe demand is high due to AMD fans or anti Nvidia folks, the real test is what will the demand be after the 1st month of sales.
 
Chimpee said:
Hmm well for initial release, I do believe demand is high due to AMD fans or anti Nvidia folks, the real test is what will the demand be after the 1st month of sales.
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From the sound of it though they didn't have enough stock, GN was saying like something around 50 to 75 units for both the Packs and individual card for Newegg. Don't know how true that is though.

Newegg is the biggest graphics card etailer in North America, there is no way others will be getting more then them....

Actually easy to find out the MSRP

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/search...rue&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&keys=keys

best buy retailer selling the black ones for $599

Best Buy will not price gouge either, nor do they shift prices to supply and demand. At least that is what I was told when ordering gtx 1070's from them during the early months of the mining crazy.
 
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_mockingbird said:
Radeon RX Vega 64 FE (Fanboy Edition)

Can you say otherwise when AMD wants it to sell for $599?
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In stock or not any AMDrone that called the Nvidia Founders card the fuck you edition should be calling the same thing on the vegdozer. AMD is screwing their small fan base.
 
razor1 said:
From the sound of it though they didn't have enough stock, GN was saying like something around 50 to 75 units for both the Packs and individual card for Newegg. Don't know how true that is though.

Newegg is the biggest graphics card etailer in North America, there is no way others will be getting more then them....

Actually easy to find out the MSRP

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/search...rue&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&keys=keys

best buy retailer selling the black ones for $599

Best Buy will not price gouge either, nor do they shift prices to supply and demand. At least that is what I was told when ordering gtx 1070's from them during the early months of the mining crazy.
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bestbuy does adjust prices for demand, check rx580 prices. Also, the vegas include wolfenstein and prey for free.
 
tybert7 said:
Yes, and the cost advantage is structural. Amd has a bigger more expensive chip with more expensive ram, I'm sure the purchase price for retailers for 1080s is far below the Vega 64, and will remain so even after production ramped higher.
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I suspect AMD thought checkbox buzz words would help them sell underperforming video cards. They thought wrong.
 
sabrewolf732 said:
bestbuy does adjust prices for demand, check rx580 prices.
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No they don't (and this is what the ordering manager stated to me when before I started buying in quantity) Rx580 overclocked versions are that expensive they upped the price for those which made them a worse buy then the rx480 variants, there were many complaints about rx580 prices at launch. That was before the mining craze. I got my first rx580's just before the mining craze and bought them for 300 bucks a pop, reference MSI's.

Even newegg they don't up the prices, it all depends on what they get them for from the AIB partners.

Another thing both of these guys stated to me to pretty much the same degree, is also why they get so little quantity, its because they can't get them at the price they are looking for and keep MSRP. They are being sold out before they reach them. This is where I started to get my cards else where, through a friend of friend who works at a distributor.
 
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razor1 said:
No they don't (and this is what the ordering manager stated to me when before I started buying in quantity) Rx580 overclocked versions are that expensive they upped the price for those which made them a worse buy then the rx480 variants, there were many complaints about rx580 prices at launch. That was before the mining craze. I got my first rx580's just before the mining craze and bought them for 300 bucks a pop, reference MSI's.

Even newegg they don't up the prices, it all depends on what they get them for from the AIB partners.

Another thing both of these guys stated to me to pretty much the same degree, is also why they get so little quantity, its because they can't get them at the price they are looking for and keep MSRP. They are being sold out before they reach them. This is where I started to get my cards else where, through a friend of friend who works at a distributor.
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https://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-am...cs-card-black-crimson/5859900.p?skuId=5859900

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-am...0-graphics-card-black/5869603.p?skuId=5869603

$380 and $320 were not launch prices for those skus. I've worked at bestbuy previously, to say prices don't fluctuate is silly. I will argue that they are less likely to change prices based on demand, but mining seems to have changed that.
 
Presbytier said:
It is not free if it costs an extra $100 to get those free games.
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The $800 water cooled Vega card I just bought tonight at newegg was bundled as
$670 for the card
$130 for the 2 games

I don't want this kind of bundle price. Steam is selling Prey for $30 right now. Wolfenstein II will be ~$60 at launch in October. Seems an overpay bundle!

:(
 
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sabrewolf732 said:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-am...cs-card-black-crimson/5859900.p?skuId=5859900

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-am...0-graphics-card-black/5869603.p?skuId=5869603

$380 and $320 were not launch prices for those skus. I've worked at bestbuy previously, to say prices don't fluctuate is silly. I will argue that they are less likely to change prices based on demand, but mining seems to have changed that.
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That one card is a limited edition card that no one reviews, there were no articles about MSRP for that card that I know of or can find right now. Also this card overclocks pretty much to the max of the best rx580's can do.

Also I stated, they only put a price that is reasonable for what they can get it for. Retailers, like Best Buy or Newegg, don't stroke the price gouging market.
 
Archaea said:
The $800 water cooled Vega card I just bought tonight at newegg was bundled as
$670 for the card
$130 for the 2 games

I don't want this kind of bundle price. Steam is selling Prey 2 for $30 right now. Wolfenstein II will be ~$60 at launch in October. Seems an overpay bundle!

:(
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WTF?
 
Archaea said:
The $800 water cooled Vega card I just bought tonight at newegg was bundled as
$670 for the card
$130 for the 2 games

I don't want this kind of bundle price. Steam is selling Prey 2 for $30 right now. Wolfenstein II will be ~$60 at launch in October. Seems an overpay bundle!

:(
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Ouch
 
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