# No AMD Radeon "Navi" Before October: Report



## btarunr (Feb 8, 2019)

AMD "Navi" is the company's next-generation graphics architecture succeeding "Vega" and will leverage the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. It was originally slated to launch mid-2019, with probable unveiling on the sidelines of Computex (early-June). Cowcotland reports that AMD has delayed its plans to launch "Navi" all the way to October (Q4-2019). The delay probably has something to do with AMD's 7 nm foundry allocation for the year. 

AMD is now fully reliant on TSMC to execute its 7 nm product roadmap, which includes its entire 2nd generation EPYC and 3rd generation Ryzen processors based on the "Zen 2" architecture, and to a smaller extent, GPUs based on its 2nd generation "Vega" architecture, such as the recently launched Radeon VII. We expect the first "Navi" discrete GPU to be a lean, fast-moving product that succeeds "Polaris 30." In addition to 7 nm, it could incorporate faster SIMD units, higher clock-speeds, and a relatively cost-effective memory solution, such as GDDR6. 





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## xkm1948 (Feb 8, 2019)

With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.


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## Space Lynx (Feb 8, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.



or even if it is a challenger it will use a lot more energy. so yeah. eh.


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## Fluffmeister (Feb 8, 2019)

At least eight months away... Ouch.


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## Basard (Feb 8, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.


Something's gotta change.  They've been running with the same GPU for years now, pretty much unchanged since Fury, and it's never been that great.  They should have caught the hint after Fury's release.  Now that I look, it was summer of 2015.... yeesh.


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## FordGT90Concept (Feb 8, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.


We don't know if Navi is GCN or isn't.  All we know for sure is that it was designed for PS5, just as Polaris was designed for Xbox One X (has the full 40 compute units instead of the gimped, but higher clocked, 36 of the desktop cards).

Also, GCN has been evolving with each generation.  Vega, for example, significantly changed the compute units (longer pipes allowing for higher clocks).

GCN is still a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none architecture.  I'm not convinced AMD wants to fork Radeon architectures from Instinct and Pro cards.  They effectively need two engineering staffs to do that.

What GCN is really lacking is tiled rasterization.  If Navi brings that, it will more align it with GeForce performance in gaming.


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## notb (Feb 8, 2019)

At least 2 better reasons than "7nm allocation":
1) AMD said they're working on RTRT implementation, so it doesn't make much sense to release new cards without it. Maybe they need more time for polishing their solution.
2) 7nm is rubbish at the moment, so they'll allocate all of it to the bin and wait until TSMC improves this tech.


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## FordGT90Concept (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> 1) AMD said they're working on RTRT implementation, so it doesn't make much sense to release new cards without it. Maybe they need more time for polishing their solution.


Too late in the development cycle to rush in tensor cores.  AMD has also already tested internally that GCN can do DXR.


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## IceShroom (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> We don't know if Navi is GCN or isn't.  All we know for sure is that it was designed for PS5, just as Polaris was designed for Xbox One X.
> 
> Also, GCN has been evolving with each generation.  Vega, for example, significantly changed the compute units (longer pipes allowing for higher clocks).


Custom hardware don't work that way.
AMD creats an architecture, then AMD's partner decide what to include or not. AMD designed polaris then Microsoft decided what feature to include in their custom SoC.
And if we go by your logic, then it can be said that Nvidia designed Kepler and up for smartphone and Switch.


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## 64K (Feb 8, 2019)

I am eagerly awaiting what AMD will bring with 7nm Navi. I'm hoping for competition with the 2080 Ti for a reasonable price but I know that could be a stretch. In any case all AMD has to do is offer competition for Turing entry level through upper midrange level for a reasonable price and that's the vast majority of the market right there. Very few buy in at the 2080 Ti level anyway. It's just way, way out of reach financially.


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## Aldain (Feb 8, 2019)

why is this not tagged as a rumor???


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## bug (Feb 8, 2019)

At CES AMD announced their plans all the way to Q3. And Navi wasn't in there.
Some looked at that and concluded they want to sneak Navi in, but I was pretty sure it meant Navi is still far from launch.

Still, it matters little if Navi launches two-three months early or late. What matters is if it can take the fight to Nvidia. So far, it looks like it can't. To make things worse, in Q4'19 means it will go up against 7nm Turing (or whatever it will be called).


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## FordGT90Concept (Feb 8, 2019)

IceShroom said:


> Custom hardware don't work that way.
> AMD creats an architecture, then AMD's partner decide what to include or not. AMD designed polaris then Microsoft decided what feature to include in their custom SoC.
> And if we go by your logic, then it can be said that Nvidia designed Kepler and up for smartphone and Switch.


From cited article:


> The heart of the Xbox One X is a GPU that's roughly based on AMD’s GCN 4 (Polaris) architecture. It offers 40 compute units, 2560 stream processors, and 32 ROPs. For comparison, an AMD Radeon RX 480 offers 36 CUs, so the Xbox One X offers 11% more compute hardware than the RX 480. Compared to the PlayStation 4 Pro, the Xbox One X offers about 43% more shader throughput.
> 
> There’s of course more custom blocks here as well. A console designed for 4K and HDR still needs to work with SDR 1080p displays, and the Xbox display controller can supersample down from 4K to 1080p, or even 1440p, as needed. There’s media blocks for HEVC as well, to handle the 4K video requirements for Blu-Ray and streaming, and the Xbox Game Capture can also capture at 4K now.


These are all things the desktop Polaris card can do too (and most other GCN cards).  AMD can scale the number of compute units depending on application but the foundations are identical.




This one is exclusive to Polaris and newer:



Everything Xbox One X can do Polaris desktop cards can do too.  It's really a chicken or the egg argument.  AMD puts engineering resources into features both types of customers like.



bug said:


> To make things worse, in Q4'19 means it will go up against 7nm Turing (or whatever it will be called).


Ampere?  Unless Ampere is replacing Volta.


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## notb (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Too late in the development cycle to rush in tensor cores.


Adding tensor cores shouldn't be a problem. It's a separate module. Even if Navi wasn't MCM, this could literally be put in a separate chip (granted the interconnector is fast enough).
Nvidia sells a tensor accelerator and it can work in tandem with a traditional GPGPU device.

Also, how do you know they haven't started earlier? They most likely knew a lot about Nvidia's RTRT hardware all along. They may have been surprised by performance, so their solution needed more work to be competitive.


> AMD has also already tested internally that GCN can do DXR.


By principle you can run RTRT (DXR) even on a x86 CPU. Actually CPUs are quite competitive in this (ray tracing is a painfully sequential mathematical problem).
Using normal GPGPU you may be able to run a 500x500px 30fps render (the "preview" window in 3D software). Purpose built hardware is orders of magnitude faster.


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## bug (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> Adding tensor cores shouldn't be a problem. It's a separate module. Even if Navi wasn't MCM, this could literally be put in a separate chip (granted the interconnector is fast enough).
> Nvidia sells a tensor accelerator and it can work in tandem with a traditional GPGPU device.
> 
> Also, how do you know they haven't started earlier? They most likely knew a lot about Nvidia's RTRT hardware all along. They may have been surprised by performance, so their solution needed more work to be competitive.
> ...


If anything, it's the performance of Turing that was known to AMD (they only had to look at Volta and extrapolate). The surprise was taking what was obviously too large a chip, putting it in what should have been a Quadro card and sell it as a very expensive consumer product.
Luckily for us Nvidia took a hit based on Turing sales, so hopefully we won't see that move ever again. But this is way OT.


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## FordGT90Concept (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> Adding tensor cores shouldn't be a problem. It's a separate module. Even if Navi wasn't MCM, this could literally be put in a separate chip (granted the interconnector is fast enough).
> Nvidia sells a tensor accelerator and it can work in tandem with a traditional GPGPU device.
> 
> Also, how do you know they haven't started earlier? They most likely knew a lot about Nvidia's RTRT hardware all along. They may have been surprised by performance, so their solution needed more work to be competitive.
> ...


Look how many games actually use DXR.  Then look at the primary customer Navi is for: Sony who doesn't even use DirectX in their consoles.  I just don't see tensor cores nor DXR as being a priority for AMD, especially not something to derail product timelines for.  As the OP says, I think the delay is because of 7nm issues moreso than Navi itself.  The fact there's limited availability of Radeon VII cards also hints at 7nm issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is insisting on DXR for their next Xbox which might be Arcturus architecture (follows Navi).


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## unikin (Feb 8, 2019)

WFT, first abysmal Radeon VII release and now no Navi till Q4? What's wrong with AMD? NVidia is opening bottles right now. AMD left me no choice but to buy RTX 2060. I'm not waiting another year to get my hands on Navi. What a joke of a company. AMD has successfully destroyed ATI's legacy of good and affordable GPUs.


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## bug (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Look how many games actually use DXR.  Then look at the primary customer Navi is for: Sony who doesn't even use DirectX in their consoles.  I just don't see tensor cores nor DXR as being a priority for AMD, especially not something to derail product timelines for.  As the OP says, I think the delay is because of 7nm issues moreso than Navi itself.  The fact there's limited availability of Radeon VII cards also hints at 7nm issues.


DXR is exclusive to DirectX, but RTRT isn't 
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/vulkan-raytracing/

That said, I have no idea whether Navi will have RTRT capabilities or not.
Also, TSMC has run into prod issues before and had to scrape their entire 22nm node. I imagine 7nm is harder than that, even with the lessons learned, so yeah, prod issues combined with GloFo's downshifting on 7nm is what probably cause the delay.



unikin said:


> WFT, first abysmal Radeon VII release and now no Navi till Q4? What's wrong with AMD? NVidia is opening bottles right now.


Nvidia has been opening bottles ever since Vega (if not earlier). They may have run out of bottles to open by now.


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## FordGT90Concept (Feb 8, 2019)

bug said:


> DXR is exclusive to DirectX, but RTRT isn't
> https://devblogs.nvidia.com/vulkan-raytracing/


AMD launched their RTRT extension for Vulkan almost a year ago.  There's Radeon Rays (OpenCL solution) before that too.


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## 64K (Feb 8, 2019)

unikin said:


> WFT, first abysmal Radeon VII release and now no Navi till Q4? What's wrong with AMD? NVidia is opening bottles right now.



You have to understand AMD's position financially to fully understand why they lag behind:

2017 Annual Financial Reports

Intel 71 billion dollars revenue and 21 billion dollars profit
Nvidia 9.7 billion dollars revenue and 3 billion dollars profit
AMD 5.3 billion dollars revenue and 43 million dollars profit (this includes both CPU and GPU businesses)  

The problem AMD has is pretty obvious and frankly it's amazing that they were even able to bring Ryzen to market as it is.


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## IceShroom (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> From cited article:
> 
> These are all things the desktop Polaris card can do too (and most other GCN cards).  AMD can scale the number of compute units depending on application but the foundations are identical.
> View attachment 116039
> ...


Cause those are feature of Polaris and Microsoft decided to implement those on their console. 
DXR was introduced for GCN 2 and up and  a feature of AMD. 
And new GPU architecture AMD must support new video codec and thats why every polaris and up has HEVC support.


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## Space Lynx (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> At least 2 better reasons than "7nm allocation":
> 1) AMD said they're working on RTRT implementation, so it doesn't make much sense to release new cards without it. Maybe they need more time for polishing their solution.
> 2) 7nm is rubbish at the moment, so they'll allocate all of it to the bin and wait until TSMC improves this tech.



something tells me 7nm factories are about to start mass production on playstation 5 chips as well. sells of all gpu's are low, sells of cpu's are becoming saturated. apple phones are not selling that fast anymore, TSMC has more spare time than ever before, and sony is probably being more aggressive since it will be a fully backwards compatible ps5.  i for one am buying a ps5 on launch day... i hope sony surprises everyone with a spring 2020 release.


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## Aldain (Feb 8, 2019)

64K said:


> You have to understand AMD's position financially to fully understand why they lag behind:
> 
> 2017 Annual Financial Reports
> 
> ...



2017??? dude you kinda "internet explorer here"...

again.. why is this topic not tagged as a rumor???


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## 64K (Feb 8, 2019)

Aldain said:


> 2017??? dude you kinda "internet explorer here"...



2017 is the latest Yearly Financial Report. 2018 isn't in yet.

I hear it constantly that AMD is lazy or incompetent and that used to be true but not since Lisa Su became CEO. They dug themselves into this financial pit by being that way in the past but once again to fully understand why they lag behind you have to look at their present financials. They are a very, very small company compared to Intel and they are small compared to Nvidia as well.


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## unikin (Feb 8, 2019)

64K said:


> You have to understand AMD's position financially to fully understand why they lag behind:
> 
> 2017 Annual Financial Reports
> 
> ...



I understand where AMD stands financially, BUT they should not lie to their own fans. I have been postponing GPU buy based on AMD's GPU roadmap for more than a year and when bloody Navi should at least get release date AMD goes silent and offers us abysmal overpriced and nowhere to be found R7 - or to be truthful quality failed and crippled Instinct MI150 instead. WTF, what kind of PR is this? They're doing marvelous job if they want to lose remaining 28 % share of PC gaming market. I always bought AMD for my gaming rig just to support the underdog and partially because of ATI nostalgia (I was forced to go green for my workstations because of Adobe) but I'm not willing to go red anymore. They should admit it if they don't have competitive architecture,  close the doors and go back to their drawing boards until they have it, like they did with Ryzen. Saying to fans that they will compete and then offer us bullshit after bullshit is the worst thing they can do. Someone should get fired in their marketing department. Their last good release was Polaris 30 months back for god sake.


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## ArbitraryAffection (Feb 8, 2019)

Please no. I can't wait that long. I have the itch _right now_.


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## 64K (Feb 8, 2019)

unikin said:


> I understand where AMD stands financially, BUT they should not lie to their own fans. I have been postponing GPU buy based on AMD's GPU roadmap for more than a year and when bloody Navi should at least get release date AMD goes silent and offers us abysmal overpriced and nowhere to be found R7 - or to be truthful quality failed and crippled Instinct MI150 instead. WTF, what kind of PR is this? They're doing marvelous job if they want to lose remaining 28 % share of PC gaming market. I always bought AMD for my gaming rig just to support an underdog and partially because of ATI nostalgia (I was forced to go green for my workstations because of Adobe) but I'm not willing to go red anymore. They should admit it if they don't have competitive architecture,  close the doors and go back to their drawing boards until they have it, like they did with Ryzen. Saying to fans that they will compete and then offer us bullshit after bullshit is the worst thing they can do. Someone should get fired in their marketing department. Their last good release was Polaris 30 months back for god sake.



I understand your frustration and I agree with you that AMD needs to stop over promising and under delivering.

That may improve in the future. AMD lost their Marketing Director Chris Hook to Intel last year after 20 years with AMD.

Intel is serious about discrete GPUs imo.


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## bug (Feb 8, 2019)

64K said:


> I understand your frustration and I agree with you that AMD needs to stop over promising and under delivering.
> 
> That may improve in the future. AMD lost their Marketing Director Chris Hook to Intel last year after 20 years with AMD.
> 
> Intel is serious about discrete GPUs imo.


So... AMD will hype us up about Intel's launches next?


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## Gasaraki (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> We don't know if Navi is GCN or isn't.  All we know for sure is that it was designed for PS5, just as Polaris was designed for Xbox One X (has the full 40 compute units instead of the gimped, but higher clocked, 36 of the desktop cards).
> 
> Also, GCN has been evolving with each generation.  Vega, for example, significantly changed the compute units (longer pipes allowing for higher clocks).
> 
> ...



AMD did not design Polaris for XboxOneX. Xbox used the Polaris architechture and added some custom items that it wanted.


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## Manu_PT (Feb 8, 2019)

AMD doesnt care about PC market, at least not high end. They care about what gives them profits, console. Navi being developed with sony. They know PS5 sales gonna obliterate pc hardware sales, like it is doing now. 

All they care about is launching 2 mid range competitive cards for the battle royale or wannabe esports kids and their usual games, and thats it. Thats where 95% of the PC gaming revenue is anyway.


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## Punkenjoy (Feb 8, 2019)

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD choose to do Ray Tracing with Brute force (just tons of extra computes units) instead of using a dedicated engine. That could mean much lower DXR/RTRT performance initially, but much less silicon wasted when game don't use these features and better performance in non raytracing games. It would also be more flexible than the current Nvidia solution. The developper could use the extra computes power to do something else than RTRT when not needed

That might explain why AMD isn't more vocal about having dedicated Raytracing core. That remind me a bit the switch from hardware T&L to software T&L using Vertex Shaders Engine (that got merged into Shaders Engine/Compute core eventually).


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## ShurikN (Feb 8, 2019)

Don't need to be Jim Keller to realize (form this rumor), that AMD is prioritizing Ryzen, Epyc and Instinct. Now that GPU mining is dead, Radeon probably brings the least amount of money to AMD. 
PS5 mass production will most likely happen early/mid next year for a Q4 2020 (holiday season) release date. So at least that's not eating into it.



FordGT90Concept said:


> GCN is still a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none architecture.


Spot on. Maybe with money from CPUs they'll finally split the two in the future. Definitely not in time for Navi IMO, but hopefully for Arcturus (wishful thinking).



ArbitraryAffection said:


> Please no. I can't wait that long. I have the itch _right now_.


Haha I feel you completely, but luckily for me I won't be returning to my home country until Q2 2020... Just in time for Ryzen 3000 + Navi combo.


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## unikin (Feb 8, 2019)

How could Navi compete with Turing if it is still based on somewhat tweaked GCN? NVidia will surely move Turing to 7nm by 1H2020 and lower prices if needed while maintaining profit margin due to die shrink. AMD has missed the only time gape when they could hurt NVidia by offering mid range price/performance kings to the market and NVidia couldn't just lower their prices. All NVidia has to offer is RTX 2060 on 7 nm die for $300 and Navi will be DOA. It really looks like AMD doesn't give a flying f... about PC gaming community anymore and will serve us only slightly modified GPU console ports, which R&D was financed by Sony's capital anyway.


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## notb (Feb 8, 2019)

bug said:


> Still, it matters little if Navi launches two-three months early or late. What matters is if it can take the fight to Nvidia. So far, it looks like it can't. To make things worse, in Q4'19 means it will go up against 7nm Turing (or whatever it will be called).


I wouldn't worry so much about 7nm, if it gives Turing a similar "boost" to what we see with Vega.
What I would worry about is 2nd gen DLSS and RTX.


FordGT90Concept said:


> Look how many games actually use DXR. Then look at the primary customer Navi is for: Sony who doesn't even use DirectX in their consoles.  I just don't see tensor cores nor DXR as being a priority for AMD, especially not something to derail product timelines for.  As the OP says, I think the delay is because of 7nm issues moreso than Navi itself.  The fact there's limited availability of Radeon VII cards also hints at 7nm issues.


RTX is just an interface to RTRT. And RTRT itself can be run on any hardware that has an efficient RNG and can do basic arithmetics.
Both Nvidia and AMD have their own libraries for RTRT.

As for RTRT popularity, I think you're looking at this in the wrong way.
First of all: there are already few dozen games that are confirmed to use RTX or DLSS in future releases. This also includes titles that are very popular on consoles: Assetto Corsa, Hitman and Final Fantasy.
Second: RTRT is a feature that should be a total hit in consoles, IMO. Because while PC gamers care about fps, console people are very much into visual effects and they wish for better image quality. It's hard to believe console manufacturers will ignore RTRT.


64K said:


> They are a very, very small company compared to Intel and they are small compared to Nvidia as well.


People use this argument over and over again - like if the the whole Nvidia workforce was designing GPUs.
This job is done by a relatively small team of highly trained people. A team that AMD has as well, because clearly they do have some designs of their own. And they're pretty good from time to time.

Because AMD is small, we can expect bad customer support, less products, poor marketing and so on. But it shouldn't have such a huge impact on GPU designs.
Also, with Radeons you always have the sense that the engineers could have make them better. That they're held back by bad management decisions.


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## 64K (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> Also, with Radeons you always have the sense that the engineers could have make them better. That they're held back by bad management decisions.



I agree with you about decisions to limit R&D in their GPU business a management issue and that was the main reason I think Koduri left AMD for Intel. He wanted to do more but Lisa Su was focused on Ryzen. It wasn't a bad decision on her part though. AMD is showing a profit for a while now and bear in mind when AMD was primarily focused on their GPU business and letting their CPU business mostly stagnate AMD was up to their necks in red ink. They had all 3 console contracts but were posting losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars year after year.


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## bug (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> I wouldn't worry so much about 7nm, if it gives Turing a similar "boost" to what we see with Vega.
> What I would worry about is 2nd gen DLSS and RTX.


Disregarding 2nd gen DLSS and/or RTX, given no performance boost at all, 7nm will make the die smaller, which would mean sane prices for GPUs. I would worry about that 



Manu_PT said:


> AMD doesnt care about PC market, at least not high end. They care about what gives them profits, console. Navi being developed with sony. They know PS5 sales gonna obliterate pc hardware sales, like it is doing now.
> 
> All they care about is launching 2 mid range competitive cards for the battle royale or wannabe esports kids and their usual games, and thats it. Thats where 95% of the PC gaming revenue is anyway.


Yeah, no, that's not it. It goes up and down, but their income from "computing and graphics" (which includes GPUs) is about the same as their revenue from "enterprise, embedded and semi-custom" (which includes consoles.
http://ir.amd.com/news-releases/new...-reports-third-quarter-2018-financial-results <- scroll down to "Segment and Category Information".
Granted, it's not that granular, but I wouldn't say they will be ignoring either segment.


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## Divide Overflow (Feb 8, 2019)

Navi will be late and only targeted at low and mid-range performance tiers?
If Radeon VII is AMD's excuse at a performance part this year, competition from them for enthusiast gamers is almost all but dead.


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## efikkan (Feb 8, 2019)

AMD got their engineering samples back in October 2018, and while they were initially reported to be looking "good", they quickly became silent and rushed in a Vega20 product for CES. Navi is still lacking from launch schedules, and there is likely something wrong with the chip, at least the one intending to compete with RTX 2070/2080.

I wouldn't be surprised if "big" (consumer) Navi slips into very late 2019 or early 2020, and at this pace it will be facing the next generation from Nvidia.


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## unikin (Feb 8, 2019)

efikkan said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if "big" (consumer) Navi slips into very late 2019 or early 2020, and at this pace it will be facing the next generation from Nvidia.



True, without new architecture Navi will be DOA.  GCN can't even compete with pascal, Turing is generation ahead and tweaked 7nm Turing with higher clock boosts will be 2 generations ahead in 2020 if Navi doesn't have completely new die arch. I really hope AMD gets serious with R&D or they will lose all PC gaming market, especially with blue giant insight to compete with both.


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## M2B (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> We don't know if Navi is GCN or isn't. All we know for sure is that it was designed for PS5, just as Polaris was designed for Xbox One X (has the full 40 compute units instead of the gimped, but higher clocked, 36 of the desktop cards).



Polaris was't designed for Xbox One X.
Polaris was in development way before development of Xbox One X.


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## eidairaman1 (Feb 8, 2019)

unikin said:


> How could Navi compete with Turing if it is still based on somewhat tweaked GCN? NVidia will surely move Turing to 7nm by 1H2020 and lower prices if needed while maintaining profit margin due to die shrink. AMD has missed the only time gape when they could hurt NVidia by offering mid range price/performance kings to the market and NVidia couldn't just lower their prices. All NVidia has to offer is RTX 2060 on 7 nm die for $300 and Navi will be DOA. It really looks like AMD doesn't give a flying f... about PC gaming community anymore and will serve us only slightly modified GPU console ports, which R&D was financed by Sony's capital anyway.



Stop making assumptions, none of us know what Navi Brings, we are not AMD engineers here



Divide Overflow said:


> Navi will be late and only targeted at low and mid-range performance tiers?
> If Radeon VII is AMD's excuse at a performance part this year, competition from them for enthusiast gamers is almost all but dead.



Stop gap card, it's a RI card that had yield problems to not be a full RI card. It will suffice for them until Q4 2019+

Pretty much a Radeon Pro


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## efikkan (Feb 8, 2019)

unikin said:


> True, without new architecture Navi will be DOA.  GCN can't even compete with pascal, Turing is generation ahead and tweaked 7nm Turing with higher clock boosts will be 2 generations ahead in 2020 if Navi doesn't have completely new die arch. I really hope AMD gets serious with R&D or they will lose all PC gaming market, especially with blue giant insight to compete with both.


Development of Navi is sponsored by Sony and is primarily intended for the next upcoming PlayStation. PC gamers will get products derived from the same architecture, and as AMD have earlier stated it will offer "Vega level performance". Since the beginning, Navi has been referred to as the final iteration of GCN. There is nothing indicating that Navi will be a major improvement over Vega, but rather a more efficient successor of Vega.


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## Super XP (Feb 8, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.


*Navi* will be a new microarchitecture (in other words the first AMD Radeon uArch to *NOT* be based on *GCN*).Nov 10, 2018



bug said:


> So... AMD will hype us up about Intel's launches next?






efikkan said:


> Development of Navi is sponsored by Sony and is primarily intended for the next upcoming PlayStation. PC gamers will get products derived from the same architecture, and as AMD have earlier stated it will offer "Vega level performance". Since the beginning, Navi has been referred to as the final iteration of GCN. There is nothing indicating that Navi will be a major improvement over Vega, but rather a more efficient successor of Vega.


There will be a version of Navi for both PS5 and XBox 2 but it's not going to be gcn based. Last I heard Navi is a New GPU Design.


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## efikkan (Feb 8, 2019)

Super XP said:


> There will be a version of Navi for both PS5 and XBox 2 but it's not going to be gcn based. Last I heard Navi is a New GPU Design.


I wish that were true, but I haven't seen solid evidence to support that.
Navi is not what AMD refers to as "next gen" though.


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## medi01 (Feb 8, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I think the delay is because of 7nm issues moreso than Navi itself. The fact there's limited availability of Radeon VII cards also hints at 7nm issues


But have there been shortages of MI150? VII uses helluva expensive HBM2 and that might be the major reason of the relavitvely low availability.
Besides, as far as rumors go, VII problem was close to MSRP manufacturing price, not production issues, they were ramping it up, fearing Turing, then saw Turing was RT lol for brainwashed.

Still, MI150 chip, having size close to what Navi is expected to be, plus Navi first tested for perf in Oct 2018, coming only in Oct 2019 looks weird. How come you could successfully port Vega, but need a year to fix chip of similar size? Especially given AMD's extensive experience in embracing new nodes.



64K said:


> r competition with the 2080 Ti


Why would 980Ti ($600-ish card, eh?)  care about competition in 1k+ card area?
For starters, Navi is expected to top 1080, max 1080Ti (unlikely), but be small and cheap to produce.



unikin said:


> NVidia is opening bottles right now.


Yeah. That  20% revenue drop must have been very inspiring.



64K said:


> They are a very, very small company compared to Intel and they are small compared to Nvidia as well.


They are small compared to nVidia only if you compare market capitalization, but not revenue.
nvidia stock price is irrational, given what Intel costs, much higher revenue, same margins.


----------



## 64K (Feb 8, 2019)

medi01 said:


> They are small compared to nVidia only if you compare market capitalization, but not revenue.
> nvidia stock price is irrational, given what Intel costs, much higher revenue, same margins.



From NASDAQ I posted in #21 on this thread:

2017 Annual Financial Reports

Intel 71 billion dollars revenue and 21 billion dollars profit
Nvidia 9.7 billion dollars revenue and 3 billion dollars profit
AMD 5.3 billion dollars revenue and 43 million dollars profit (this includes both CPU and GPU businesses)


----------



## eidairaman1 (Feb 8, 2019)

VII Card should of came out during the 1080Ti Era. Too late.

AMD unfortunately is 1 step behind the 2080/Ti.

Navi needs to be something considerable, perhaps not component limited like the 480/580 were in compare to the 290-390X...


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> Adding tensor cores shouldn't be a problem. It's a separate module. Even if Navi wasn't MCM, this could literally be put in a separate chip (granted the interconnector is fast enough).
> Nvidia sells a tensor accelerator and it can work in tandem with a traditional GPGPU device.
> 
> Also, how do you know they haven't started earlier? They most likely knew a lot about Nvidia's RTRT hardware all along. They may have been surprised by performance, so their solution needed more work to be competitive.
> ...


Your getting confused clearly, Amd said ,one game is not enough dev support yet for Amd to bother.
And Amd have Rspid packed math for quadratic equations and such , different approach ,lower cost , Intrinsically (sic)clever design imho.

Sticking purpose built maths hardware on the side of an asic you Were selling For advanced maths use to prosumers is strange to me.

And you're so wrong on the difficulty of changing a asic design That much when you're virtually At validation, naive bull.


----------



## Casecutter (Feb 8, 2019)

Just me, it sounds like AMD has to allocate 7nm wafer starts to the markets and products that give them best bang-for-buck.

They want to keep filling the severer, HPC, deep learning, cloud computing with EPYC (Gen2), Ryzen (Gen3) along with huge volumes of profitable Instinct compute cards.

I mean wouldn't we think there's many clients (IBM/Apple) that want to increase or start their production, and bet TSMC is fully booked... didn't I read TSMC is build another 7nm production facility?


----------



## Aerpoweron (Feb 8, 2019)

Hi everyone.

Some people don't seem to be very happy with the delay and even the Radeon 7. Which i can understand, given all the arguments here.
But i think we live in a time, where you need to know what you want to do and buy the CPUs or GPUs which suits you best.

If you need AVX instructions a lot then go intel. If you need a lot of cores for multitasking go AMD. And so on... It really depends on your requirements.

AMD now has the professional market for the high paying customers. Navi will be a midrange card from what you can expect. And that is where you can earn your money.
In this forum we are most likely enthusiats so we want the fastest and best. But sadly this only makes a small part of the GPU/CPU market.

I really hope AMD brings something good to the table sooner or later concerning the GPUs. Because Nvidia needs competition there. Personally i think Nvidia is good for Gaming. But they have fooled me long enough. PhysiX was dead as long as it was properitary. And Nvidia stated at one point that it won't work (any longer) when you have an AMD GPU as primary and Nvidia as PhysiX accelerator, when it was working fine a month before. Then you can remember the GTX 970 memory issues. Just pick you year and you will find one or two things Nvidia has fooled with us. Sadly AMD is tending the same way, and has learned that from Nvidia, which i really don't like.

The RTX cards are well priced in my opinion. With all the specialized instruction units they have, they are quite huge and complex chips. Raytracing / DXR at least has an official API, so we can expect that it won't be dead soon. Raytracing is a nice feature so far, and very good for people who want to quick render a scene for a Movie. But in games? High performance impact. And moving/distorted water can't be done well right now.

AMD likes to adopt a new fabrication process as seen in earlier cards. But it always comes with a risk. Nvidia usually goes the save way and optimizes more on the current process. 
With Navi we will see how well the 7nm works. And we will see if AMD will introduce special Raytracing units. The question will be how much Raytracing hardware you built in, since it seems to be unusable for other workloads.


----------



## HTC (Feb 8, 2019)

Super XP said:


> *Navi* will be a new microarchitecture (in other words the first AMD Radeon uArch to *NOT* be based on *GCN*).Nov 10, 2018



Are you sure?

From what i heard / read, Navi is supposed to be the last GCN based family of cards and it will be Arcturus, If this is indeed it's name, that will be in a new non-GCN arch.

Supposedly, Navi was to be announced @ CES but due to unforseen problems, it was witheld from CES. Think TLB Phenom bug style of issues or perhaps worse. Also supposedly, Navi is meant to replace Polaris, meaning there won't be a 2080Ti contender coming from Navi arch, which means Vega VII is it, unless AMD refines it some more @ a later date: can it even be done???


----------



## Nkd (Feb 8, 2019)

Never heard of this site before. I believe this guy (http://www.redgamingtech.com/navi-a...-july-more-powerful-navi-launching-next-year/) over someone I have never heard off. He broke the Radeon 7 news before CES and the same source told him about Navi.


----------



## evolucion8 (Feb 8, 2019)

HTC said:


> Are you sure?
> 
> From what i heard / read, Navi is supposed to be the last GCN based family of cards and it will be Arcturus, If this is indeed it's name, that will be in a new non-GCN arch.
> 
> Supposedly, Navi was to be announced @ CES but due to unforseen problems, it was witheld from CES. Think TLB Phenom bug style of issues or perhaps worse. Also supposedly, Navi is meant to replace Polaris, meaning there won't be a 2080Ti contender coming from Navi arch, which means Vega VII is it, unless AMD refines it some more @ a later date: can it even be done???



Indeed, unless if AMD releases an MI60 harvested as Vega VII Pro or whatever confusing naming convention they come up with.


----------



## efikkan (Feb 8, 2019)

Casecutter said:


> Just me, it sounds like AMD has to allocate 7nm wafer starts to the markets and products that give them best bang-for-buck.


If the Navi chip for this segment was coming soon, they simply wouldn't have released Radeon VII now. So Radeon VII a pretty good indicator that the "bigger" Navi isn't coming for at least 6 months.

This will of course mean they free up some capacity for making other stuff, like more Vega20 or Zen, at least for a few months.



Casecutter said:


> I mean wouldn't we think there's many clients (IBM/Apple) that want to increase or start their production, and bet TSMC is fully booked... didn't I read TSMC is build another 7nm production facility?


AMD uses TSMC's 7nm HPC node. Apple and all the other mobile chip makers use the low power node, which are related but separate nodes.



HTC said:


> From what i heard / read, Navi is supposed to be the last GCN based family of cards and it will be Arcturus, If this is indeed it's name, that will be in a new non-GCN arch.


Yes, Polaris, Vega and Navi (which I believe are named after stars), were announced as incremental changes to GCN. Navi will also be a monolithic GPU.

What comes after Navi might be using "Super SIMD", MCM and other technologies AMD are developing.



HTC said:


> Also supposedly, Navi is meant to replace Polaris, meaning there won't be a 2080Ti contender coming from Navi arch, which means Vega VII is it, unless AMD refines it some more @ a later date: can it even be done???


It's fairly difficult to scale up a GPU, which is why all modern GPUs are made as a large design and then cut down.
But as you are saying, Navi is intended to replace their current lineup with more efficient alternatives, not compete with RTX 2080 Ti and whatever Nvidia launches next.


----------



## Casecutter (Feb 8, 2019)

efikkan said:


> This will of course mean they free up some capacity for making other stuff, like more Vega20 or Zen, at least for a few months.


Exactly, say 6mo from now they start scheduling Navi wafer starts for like end of Nov-Oct release.  That's a lot of production for "high margin" products.  Selling the runts that just don't "make the cut as Instinct " to gamers, even for little or no profit (doubt) is better then scrapping. 



efikkan said:


> AMD uses TSMC's 7nm HPC node. Apple and all the other mobile chip makers use the low power node, which are related but separate nodes.


I would think the actual wafer spin-up is the same, and many production tools are common until you get to the litho part of things that might use dedicated machines, but then go back together for cure, cut etc.


----------



## notb (Feb 8, 2019)

64K said:


> AMD is showing a profit for a while now


I don't understand the popularity of this argument. AMD is barely profitable - this kind of profit could have been made with clever accounting.
But people see a green bar on a plot and suddenly AMD is in fantastic condition. 
Call me then they have profit margin like Nvidia or Intel. They're competing on the same market and have similar costs. Where's the profit?


bug said:


> Disregarding 2nd gen DLSS and/or RTX, given no performance boost at all, 7nm will make the die smaller, which would mean sane prices for GPUs. I would worry about that


And you know all this because Radeon VII is so cheap?
What else will you tell me? That 7nm chips will be more efficient and require less cooling? 

Yes, in a distant future 7nm *may* become cheap. But at the moment it's still including a huge premium for R&D and the supply is very limited. And it may be like that for years.
So on one hand we have a new node that is very useful for smartphones makers, who can easily ask a $1000+ price for their flagship models despite the CPU being tiny and relatively cheap. They can pay a lot for 7nm.
On the other hand you have 3 companies making consumer CPUs and GPUs, who need 7nm to push performance, because that's what gaming clients demand. Their chips are huge and are a majority of PC cost.
IMO there is just one possible solution: gaming PC parts will become silly expensive. So if you're irritated by RTX or Intel 9th gen prices, brace yourself...


theoneandonlymrk said:


> Your getting confused clearly, Amd said ,one game is not enough dev support yet for Amd to bother.


Millions of notebooks weren't enough for AMD to bother and make Zen more frugal. So yeah, why make cards that support a few AAA games indeed... Although in 2019 few will become few dozen and by 2021 most new games should support RTRT (if it catches on). I wonder when will AMD decide it's worth the fuss and whether they'll still be in business.


> And Amd have Rspid packed math for quadratic equations and such , different approach ,lower cost , Intrinsically (sic)clever design imho.


Are you sure you know what rapid packed math stands for? It just means doing 2 FP16 operations with FP32 - an idea coming straight from compute cards.
So first of all: in ideal situation it gives you 2x performance - that's far cry from what purpose built ASIC can do.
Second: this will work only in specific scenarios and, more importantly, only when you force it explicitly in the code. In other words: game engines would have to be rewritten for AMD.

So both ideologically and practically it's a lot like AVX-512.


> Sticking purpose built maths hardware on the side of an asic you Were selling For advanced maths use to prosumers is strange to me.


Sorry mate... Sometimes I understand what you're trying to say and sometimes I don't. This is the latter case. Can you rewrite this sentence?


> And you're so wrong on the difficulty of changing a asic design That much when you're virtually At validation, naive bull.


IMO it doesn't need to be in the same chip. You should be literally able to add RTRT or tensor cores on a separate card. It works in the Nvidia world pretty well - it's just a question of latency. But 2 chips on the same card? Should work perfectly well. The whole point of IF is being able to combine different circuit types.


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## bug (Feb 8, 2019)

notb said:


> And you know all this because Radeon VII is so cheap?



That was just an assumption. _If_ Nvidia keeps the same hardware and builds it on 7nm, the die will be smaller and thus, cheaper (not based on Radeon VII, but on how new nodes have worked in the past).
Of course, it's possible for Nvidia to beef things up to get better RTRT performance and still end up with a huge die, but I'm hoping the beating they took recently conveys the message the market does not put up with their new prices.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Feb 8, 2019)

HTC said:


> Are you sure?
> 
> From what i heard / read, Navi is supposed to be the last GCN based family of cards and it will be Arcturus, If this is indeed it's name, that will be in a new non-GCN arch.
> 
> Supposedly, Navi was to be announced @ CES but due to unforseen problems, it was witheld from CES. Think TLB Phenom bug style of issues or perhaps worse. Also supposedly, Navi is meant to replace Polaris, meaning there won't be a 2080Ti contender coming from Navi arch, which means Vega VII is it, unless AMD refines it some more @ a later date: can it even be done???



Yet it has been talked about a navi plus Arc


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Feb 8, 2019)

M2B said:


> Polaris was't designed for Xbox One X.
> Polaris was in development way before development of Xbox One X.


Consoles take 2+ years to design, manufacture, and launch.  The SoC parameters are one of the first requirements laid out because it dictates virtually all of the other components (PCB layout, transformer requirements, connectors, cooling requirements, etc.).

Polaris debuted June 29, 2016.  Xbox One X debuted November 7, 2017.  Navi is expected to debut ~July, 2019 for a PlayStation 5 launch holiday 2020.  The timelines match.  If Navi has problems and it did in fact get bumped back to October or later, PlayStation 5 might be delayed too.  That said, Micorosft may have deliberately choosen a holiday release for the Xbox One X to maximize sales/market impact.  They may have been ready to launch many months before that so, PlayStation 5 could still make a holiday 2020 launch with the delay.

The way the custom SoC business works is that requirements are set and a contract signed.  AMD spends 6-12 months designing the chip and informs the client what the engineering specs are (power, packaging, etc.) so the client can design the rest of the package.  Then AMD starts sampling GPUs and engineering prototypes are manufactured by the client, tested internally, then shipped out to developers to create games for it.  AMD refines the process and works towards mass production while the client finalizes everything else and developers polish games.  Then at the end, you have about three months of stockpiling inventory of consoles and games alike so there's hopefully enough of everything available to meet market demand.

Desktop cards don't have the software side to worry about so much  (other than drivers, which AMD addresses with engineering samples internally)  which is why they can debut PC cards well before a console using the same architecture.


I think Microsoft's next console will be mostly DXR-based and on Arcturus.  PlayStation 5 is a small step up from Xbox One X so Microsoft likely isn't going to feel inclined to make a Navi-based console.  They're going to want to pent up hype for the big DXR push.  This also adds credibility to the idea that Navi is GCN 6.0 and Arcturus is something new with tensor cores and the like.


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## R0H1T (Feb 9, 2019)

notb said:


> I don't understand the popularity of this argument. AMD is barely profitable - this kind of profit could have been made with clever accounting.
> But people see a green bar on a plot and suddenly AMD is in fantastic condition.
> *Call me then they have profit margin like Nvidia or Intel*. They're competing on the same market and have similar costs. Where's the profit?
> 
> ...


They will never have those margins & you know why that is. People want 16 core Ryzen at or below $500 though Intel is charging virtually double/core & even then many will prefer Intel because 5.5GHz of OCing madness 

In case of Nvidia it's similar, Vega II is a dud because it sells for $699 with 16GB HBM2 & can only match or exceed 1080Ti after 2(?) years lest we forget what the competition has now & their prices! It's fashionable to hate on AMD because they always seem to under-perform or exaggerate some of their selling points, but hey none remember that 28 core 5GHz joke or "freesync doesn't even work" from you know who 

And that is why AMD will always be the underdog &/or less profitable, simply because (bigger) brand name & bluster wins all the time - virtually every time these days! AMD could sell the next gen chips beating Intel in virtually every metric, except possibly raw clocks yet Intel will still outsell them 4:1 or 3:1 as these are the times we live in & that's our fault!


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## Nkd (Feb 9, 2019)

so many people actually believing this rumor as fact? Never heard of this site. There are more than enough credible sources who have said Navi is mid year and that was after CES. I believe the guy who broke Radeon  7 news and first one to have pictures of it before CES on Navi then this random site. Do people realize there is suppose to be bigger version of Navi coming out too right? May be that is coming in q4.


----------



## Imsochobo (Feb 9, 2019)

64K said:


> You have to understand AMD's position financially to fully understand why they lag behind:
> 
> 2017 Annual Financial Reports
> 
> ...



You do know they're paying off a big dept ?


----------



## notb (Feb 9, 2019)

R0H1T said:


> They will never have those margins & you know why that is. People want 16 core Ryzen at or below $500 though Intel is charging virtually double/core & even then many will prefer Intel because 5.5GHz of OCing madness


// I don't know why we moved to CPUs, but whatever
So this is basically AMD's fault for ignoring demand.
We know what CPUs sell best today. We know how Intel makes money.
AMD should have tried to attack these markets, because clearly that's where the money is.

But AMD decided to NOT enter the profitable niches. They decided to make a very specific type of CPUs (basically: to win benchmark and excel in reviews). And as a result they have to accept a very specific profit margin - which is low. But it is their decision.
They could have made CPUs similar to Intel's. They could have gone after Intel's clients and convince them with lower prices. They would maintain their 10-15% market share, but with much higher profit.

Contrary to CPUs, AMD's GPUs are at least doing what they should. It's just that the technology is old and they seem not to have any idea how to improve it.


> And that is why AMD will always be the underdog &/or less profitable, simply because (bigger) brand name & bluster wins all the time - virtually every time these days! AMD could sell the next gen chips beating Intel in virtually every metric, except possibly raw clocks yet Intel will still outsell them 4:1 or 3:1 as these are the times we live in & that's our fault!


Not true at all.
Big brand has more market share by definition. It has little to do with profitability (at least in electronics).
In a stable market of comparable products, all producers should have similar prices. So once costs are similar, they should have similar profitability. I'm not making this up - that's how economy works. 
AMD is not making money, so they're doing something wrong. Either the prices are way too low or the costs are too high.
They're not making a fantastic product that everyone wants. They won't increase their market share by a lot.

If AMD keeps making near zero profit, they won't build any reserves and they won't have money to develop new product lines. They'll be OK as long as the market is healthy and there's high demand for what they currently make.


----------



## R0H1T (Feb 9, 2019)

notb said:


> So this is basically AMD's fault for ignoring demand.
> We know what CPUs sell best today. We know how Intel makes money.


No it's AMD which brought the eight ores to the mainstream market, Intel had been fleecing customers for ages with their quad cores & overpriced HEDT. But those sticking with Intel still bought the 7700k, then 8700k & now 9700k or above. Same with HEDT, albeit to a lesser extent because AMD's many (more) cores work better in that environment.


notb said:


> But AMD decided to NOT enter the profitable niches.


You mean the 1800x or how many derided it for being overpriced or something? Remember the competition, what was the price of 8 core Intel then?


notb said:


> They could have made CPUs similar to Intel's.


Similar how?


notb said:


> Contrary to CPUs, AMD's GPUs are at least doing what they should.


Yet it's the CPU division which is bringing in the big bucks.


notb said:


> *Big brand has more market share by definition*. It has little to do with profitability (at least in electronics).


Like Apple, no?


notb said:


> If AMD keeps making near zero profit, they won't build any reserves and they won't have money to develop new product lines.


Not entirely their fault, that's the point.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Feb 9, 2019)

notb said:


> I don't understand the popularity of this argument. AMD is barely profitable - this kind of profit could have been made with clever accounting.
> But people see a green bar on a plot and suddenly AMD is in fantastic condition.
> Call me then they have profit margin like Nvidia or Intel. They're competing on the same market and have similar costs. Where's the profit?
> 
> ...


"Where's the profit?    "                                  your guessing and want facts to prove your wrong?? odd


"Are you sure you know what rapid packed math stands for? " 

Are you, the limits are not the same on Vega 20 as 10, it can do down to 8bit and possibly 4bit Rapid packed math so you ARE wrong and its not like AVX512 which is used as you should know for things other then AI ,usually.

"So first of all: in ideal situation it gives you 2x performance - that's far cry from what purpose built ASIC can do.
Second: this will work only in specific scenarios and, more importantly, only when you force it explicitly in the code. In other words: game engines would have to be rewritten for AMD."                               

        first re read RPM specs on vega 20,,        What you mean via a new API like DX12+ or vulkan , thats happening dx11 is finally going the way of 10 and 9 , Nvidia's relic lead on older games is less relevant

My point you didnt get-
Nvidia sold CUDA on its ability to do compute prior , yet straight up it got dumped when they needed to do AI since it is not as fast as custom , specific hardware and they made tensor and RT cores which largely are better at specific tasks.

They presented a personel demonstration to PROSUMERS that GPGPU is not for them and special circuitry could be significantly better.

now go figure why Softbank sold out.

"IMO it doesn't need to be in the same chip. You should be literally able to add RTRT or tensor cores on a separate card. It works in the Nvidia world pretty well - it's just a question of latency. But 2 chips on the same card? Should work perfectly well. The whole point of IF is being able to combine different circuit types."

your opinion is that of a user not architect , it may seam easy to extend ,add a extra side bus to accommodate a new RT chip that you also just made in this last year hypothetically , then to slap it on a 2.5D interposer chip that you also just designed this last year.

But the facts are that's two to three extra chips to design ,since nvidia announced RT, plus a redesign of the one you just spent 3 years designing and validating the design of.

then you have validation testing to proof correct opperation and endurance , now add CE and enviromental testing .

your being silly , its way too much work and not possible in any way.

and finally AMD's margin increased not decreased this year, THEY ARE MAKING A PROFIT ON EVERYTHING THEY SELL they are not a charity.


----------



## 64K (Feb 9, 2019)

Imsochobo said:


> You do know they're paying off a big dept ?



Yes. A few years ago when some financial analysts sites were pretty sure AMD would need to file bankruptcy and pointed to RTG being split off as a separate company as an indication that AMD might need to sell it things were looking pretty bad for AMD. Their stock had fallen all the way to $1.60 a share and some were thinking it would continue to go lower. Even below $1 which would cause NASDAQ to de-list them from the exchange. Their market share at the time was less than half as much as what they paid for ATI back in 2006 alone. They owed far more than they were worth. They had sold their Fab and most of their assets including the office building where they were located and had to lease it back. Their GPU market share sank to 20%. Their CPU market share was pitiful. Several of their debts were listed at that time and one was for 600 million dollars which is due this year. They've been showing profits in their Quarterly Reports for a while now but not enough to completely pay off that debt. Some of it will need to be rolled over but that shouldn't be a problem.

The thing is that it's easy to do well when money is rolling in and the future looks bright. It's a lot harder to do well under adversity and AMD was under serious adversity back then and yet they still brought Ryzen to market. They have my respect for that. Having owned my own business I understand what they went through.

Today they have regained some CPU market share. They have also regained GPU market share (largely due to the mining craze though). Their stock is up to $23 a share and their future is looking pretty solid as long as they continue to make good decisions which I think they will do under Lisa Su's leadership.


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## Imsochobo (Feb 9, 2019)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> ....
> and finally AMD's margin increased not decreased this year, THEY ARE MAKING A PROFIT ON EVERYTHING THEY SELL they are not a charity.



And more importantly.
They're paying the banks instead of loaning more money!


----------



## Midland Dog (Feb 9, 2019)

eidairaman1 said:


> Stop making assumptions, none of us know what Navi Brings, we are not AMD engineers here
> 
> 
> 
> ...


navi is confirmed junkcn


----------



## eidairaman1 (Feb 9, 2019)

Midland Dog said:


> navi is confirmed junkcn



Got any legitimate links? 

Your comment is nothing but speculation at this point. 
Are you an engineer? 

I don't think so.

Typical of someone with a greeneye.


----------



## renz496 (Feb 9, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Look how many games actually use DXR.  Then look at the primary customer Navi is for: Sony who doesn't even use DirectX in their consoles.  I just don't see tensor cores nor DXR as being a priority for AMD, especially not something to derail product timelines for.  As the OP says, I think the delay is because of 7nm issues moreso than Navi itself.  The fact there's limited availability of Radeon VII cards also hints at 7nm issues.
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is insisting on DXR for their next Xbox which might be Arcturus architecture (follows Navi).



tensor cores might not be a priority for AMD (hence even their instinct lack one despite it should compete head to head with nvidia volta in ML) but not DXR. when AMD launch Vega they brag Vega have the most complete support for DX12 feature at the time unlike pascal. to compete nvidia in RT they will going to need specialized hardware that is similar to nvidia RT core. sure current GCN should be able to run RT without RT cores but the performance impact will be similar to pascal when trying to run RT. the problem with AMD is they did not have the power budget to put RT cores into their current GCN architecture. just look at Vega 20 itself. less than 350mm2 on top of being build on 7nm node. and yet the power consumption already reaching 300w mark.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 9, 2019)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Your getting confused clearly, Amd said ,one game is not enough dev support yet for Amd to bother.
> *And Amd have Rspid packed math.*


used in FC5 exclusively


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Feb 9, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> used in FC5 exclusively


It is also a main feature of their pro driver and is used much more via that, as is RPM in general on AMD hardware then your view on it , you forgot wolfenstein too, but point taken they are pushing their own tech.


----------



## Turmania (Feb 9, 2019)

I really dislike Intel and Nvdia really wanted to go back to red camp. Perhaps it will never happen, as AMD just so happens to be very often shoot themselves in the foot.


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## tfdsaf (Feb 9, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.



1. This is utter ignorance at its finest. Even Vega is NOT GCN, but even if it was there are major changes between the GCN architecture each generation. GCN 1 is literally uncomparable with GCN 4. Each GCN generation has been majorly redesigned and improved. 

2. Navi is going to be a new architecture, just like Vega is a new architecture and NOT GCN. 

3. Nvidia have been using the same architecture since their GTX 400 series. Literally the latest Turing architecture is technically an iteration and improvement over the GTX 400 architecture. Heck even that architecture shared much of the designs from the GTX 200 series. In essence the biggest architectural shift Nvidia did was from their GTX 9000 series to their GTX 200 series and then another smaller shift from their 200 series to their 400 series. Ever since the GTX 400 series its been small iterations and improvements over time. 

AMD made the unified shaders shift way before Nvidia actually, they did it in their HD 2000 series GPU's, two years before Nvidia did it. Since then the biggest jump for AMD was with their 4000 series.


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## bug (Feb 9, 2019)

tfdsaf said:


> 1. This is utter ignorance at its finest. Even Vega is NOT GCN, but even if it was there are major changes between the GCN architecture each generation. GCN 1 is literally uncomparable with GCN 4. Each GCN generation has been majorly redesigned and improved.
> 
> 2. Navi is going to be a new architecture, just like Vega is a new architecture and NOT GCN.
> 
> ...


You might want to let these guys know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_RX_Vega_series
They have Vega listed as GCN5.

As for previous iterations, they were so major redesigns, AMD themselves called them 1.1, 1.2 and so on. Only when it became painfully clear their architecture was getting long in the tooth (I believe it was with Polaris?) they went back and renamed everything. That's not to say there were no improvements (Vega is clearly faster than, say, a 290X), but I'm sure they weren't as big as AMD wished.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 9, 2019)

AMD is keeping its Next Generation GPU tight lipped. 
If speculation is correct and this 7nm Navi is based on gcn, hopefully AMD pulls this off, before the real deal is released. 
Though there's been conflicting reports claiming 7nm Navi maybe the last gcn based but will get a overhaul all thanks to 7nm.
Other sources state, 7nm Navi s a completely new GPU design. Only time will tell. 

One thing I hope AMD does not do is Re-Brand its GPU's again. This is probably one of the worst strategies a company can follow.



HTC said:


> Are you sure?
> 
> From what i heard / read, Navi is supposed to be the last GCN based family of cards and it will be Arcturus, If this is indeed it's name, that will be in a new non-GCN arch.
> 
> Supposedly, Navi was to be announced @ CES but due to unforseen problems, it was witheld from CES. Think TLB Phenom bug style of issues or perhaps worse. Also supposedly, Navi is meant to replace Polaris, meaning there won't be a 2080Ti contender coming from Navi arch, which means Vega VII is it, unless AMD refines it some more @ a later date: can it even be done???


That was a direct quote from a site that posted this 3 months ago. The question is did things change within AMD? Not sure, but seeing how Navi is delayed till October 2019, perhaps its no longer the case.



eidairaman1 said:


> VII Card should of came out during the 1080Ti Era. Too late.
> 
> AMD unfortunately is 1 step behind the 2080/Ti.
> 
> Navi needs to be something considerable, perhaps not component limited like the 480/580 were in compare to the 290-390X...


AMD doesn't have to beat the crap out of Nvidia, they only need to remain competitive in performance and price. It seems AMD puts more concentration on its CPU department, because the GPU department has been lacking for years now. AMD GPUs are far from useless of course, they can Game any game you throw at them, just that benchmarks don't do justice and many rely on benchmarks religiously. Until AMD can launch its Brand Spanking New GPU Design, they need to compete on Price/Performance.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Feb 10, 2019)

GCN5/Vega was the biggest change to GCN since its debut with the Next Compute Unit.  I really have no guess as to what they're changing in Navi.  VR is a priority for Sony so maybe some techniques in Navi to accelerate the VR experience?


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

R0H1T said:


> No it's AMD which brought the eight ores to the mainstream market, Intel had been fleecing customers for ages with their quad cores & overpriced HEDT. But those sticking with Intel still bought the 7700k, then 8700k & now 9700k or above. Same with HEDT, albeit to a lesser extent because AMD's many (more) cores work better in that environment.
> You mean the 1800x or how many derided it for being overpriced or something? Remember the competition, what was the price of 8 core Intel then?
> Similar how?
> Yet it's the CPU division which is bringing in the big bucks.
> ...


AMD brought many firsts to design and market because they can't afford to not Innovate. Intel was beat many times.

Intel tried to push Rambus, AMD stuck with DDR and WON. AMD 1st Dual Core, Tri Core Quad Core 6 Core 8 core etc. 1st on board L2 cache 1st IMC 1st to introduce a high speed HTT interconnect 1st to push industry to 64-Bit etc.

And on and on AMD lead while Intel followed.

For x86 microprocessor innovations, AMD has shown the way as well.

First superscalar RISC - K5
First to use "Flip-Chip" technology - K6
First on-chip L2 cache - K6-3
First use of copper interconnects - K7
First fully pipelined, superscalar floating point unit - K7
First to extend x86 to 64-bits (AMD64) - K8


----------



## efikkan (Feb 10, 2019)

Super XP said:


> AMD brought many firsts to design and market because they can't afford to not Innovate.
> …
> First superscalar RISC - K5


AMD have brought many useful innovations that have been appreciated by PC users. I remember the days of K6, K7 and K8 as some of the most exciting days of computing, both companies were moving fast, and AMD offered better performance at a lower price, especially later Athlons and Athlon64s.

Regarding specific innovations, while AMD K5 might be a more true RISC processor at its core, Intel also used RISC like micro operations in the superscalar design known as P6. It's also worth mentioning that AMD abandoned their K5 design and bought the successor K6 from another company.

In more recent innovations, I would mention the often overlooked extension to AVX known as FMA3, which has since been fully embraced by Intel.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

efikkan said:


> AMD have brought many useful innovations that have been appreciated by PC users. I remember the days of K6, K7 and K8 as some of the most exciting days of computing, both companies were moving fast, and AMD offered better performance at a lower price, especially later Athlons and Athlon64s.
> 
> Regarding specific innovations, while AMD K5 might be a more true RISC processor at its core, Intel also used RISC like micro operations in the superscalar design known as P6. It's also worth mentioning that AMD abandoned their K5 design and bought the successor K6 from another company.
> 
> In more recent innovations, I would mention the often overlooked extension to AVX known as FMA3, which has since been fully embraced by Intel.


AMD acquired NextGen for its K6. Very smart move back in the day. It's what AMD did there after. Great times back then.


----------



## kastriot (Feb 10, 2019)

Well they need to concentrate on  7nm cpu-s there where the money  is atm, navi has less priority simple as that.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

kastriot said:


> Well they need to concentrate on  7nm cpu-s there where the money  is atm, navi has less priority simple as that.


Agreed.  
AMD needs to have a successful commercial 7nm ZEN launch, and ensure they have sufficient 7nm chips. I think that might be one reason Navi is somewhat delayed. Or why there isn't too many Radeon VII 's available.


----------



## jabbadap (Feb 10, 2019)

HTC said:


> Are you sure?
> 
> From what i heard / read, Navi is supposed to be the last GCN based family of cards and it will be Arcturus, If this is indeed it's name, that will be in a new non-GCN arch.
> 
> Supposedly, Navi was to be announced @ CES but due to unforseen problems, it was witheld from CES. Think TLB Phenom bug style of issues or perhaps worse. Also supposedly, Navi is meant to replace Polaris, meaning there won't be a 2080Ti contender coming from Navi arch, which means Vega VII is it, unless AMD refines it some more @ a later date: can it even be done???



Arcturus is a code name for a single chip for open source drivers, not an architecture("BridgmanAMD"):

__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/9j88gc/_/e6pu7r5

and more here:
https://www.phoronix.com/forums/for...collaborate-on-some-open-source-efforts/page4


----------



## toxzl2 (Feb 10, 2019)

This is a rumor...

AMD HAS NOT CONFIRMED THIS


----------



## trparky (Feb 10, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.


Call me ignorant if you want but what is GCN and why is it so... bad?


----------



## bug (Feb 10, 2019)

trparky said:


> Call me ignorant if you want but what is GCN and why is it so... bad?


It's a architecture AMD debuted 8 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Core_Next
And it's bad* because apparently it cannot catch up to Nvidia, Perf/W is like half of what Nvidia gets, TBR is supposedly in there since Vega, but has never been enabled - which part of what perf/W sucks, need of async to feed the included resources, to name just some of the issues I know of.

* I'm not sure it's bad per se, but it's sure getting long in the tooth.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

trparky said:


> Call me ignorant if you want but what is GCN and why is it so... bad?


Graphics Core Next developed around 2011 is a dinosaur AMD designed to extend its GPU Design for many years to come. And to fuel past Gaming Consoles.

In other words, AMD needs to trash this design and move onto something Brand Spanking New. 

That's where 7nm Navi comes into play.  The Navi that's bass on something Brand New which started around 2015.


----------



## xkm1948 (Feb 10, 2019)

trparky said:


> Call me ignorant if you want but what is GCN and why is it so... bad?



Not good for gaming since it always suffer from CU under utilization due to either bad driver support or bad game developer optimization.

Also not good for general scientific computing since CUDA and Tensor Flow are the industry standards now for scientific computing.

In the end GCN becomes good for nothing. (Except crypto mining, which has also died)

#GCNMUSTDIE



Super XP said:


> Graphics Core Next developed around 2011 is a dinosaur AMD designed to extend its GPU Design for many years to come. And to fuel past Gaming Consoles.
> 
> In other words, AMD needs to trash this design and move onto something Brand Spanking New.
> 
> That's where 7nm Navi comes into play.  The Navi that's bass on something Brand New which started around 2015.




Navi is still GCN. Whatever comes after Navi will not the new uArc.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> Not good for gaming since it always suffer from CU under utilization due to either bad driver support or bad game developer optimization.
> 
> Also not good for general scientific computing since CUDA and Tensor Flow are the industry standards now for scientific computing.
> 
> ...


We don't know for sure. Based on multiple reports. One version of Navi will be Brand NEW though. Based on AMD.


----------



## xkm1948 (Feb 10, 2019)

Super XP said:


> We don't know for sure. Based on multiple reports. One version of Navi will be Brand NEW though. Based on AMD.



We shall see. I do hope they finally killed GCN.


----------



## AlB80 (Feb 10, 2019)

Even after link to the wiki GCN page many peoples do not understand difference between ISA and uArch.
GCN is ISA (instruction set architecture). GCN1.0, 1.1, 1.2... or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... And there is no reason to kill it. The times of revolutionary changes here are over.
GFX is uArch (microarchitecture that implements ISA). GFX6 aka SI is first GCN implementation (south islands). GFX7 aka CI is second (sea islands). GFX8 aka VI is third (volcanic islands, Tonga, Fuji, Polaris). GFX9 - Vega. GFX10 - Navi. Each new uArch implementation can be simply updated from the previous one or completely new design from scratch.
The PAL has references to GFX10 since June 2018.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

*Graphics Core Next...*

GCN 1st Generation: Southern Islands
GCN 2nd Generation: Sea Islands
GCN 3rd Generation: Volcanic Islands
GCN 4th Generation: Arctic Islands
GCN 5th Generation: Vega Islands  (Despite Vega being GCN, it had enough new features and enhancements, that some considered it as a highly modified GCN based GPU. You can tell by its impressive performance 
GCN 6th Generation: Navi Islands  (Is said to be the last of the GCN Gamily, I mean Family. Before AMD commercially launches its brand new GPU, Navi will enjoy the raw power of 7nm with slight improvements over Radeon VII (My Speculation of course) 
NGGCW 1st Generation: *N*ext *G*eneration *G*raphics *C*ore *W*hat


----------



## bug (Feb 10, 2019)

AlB80 said:


> Even after link to the wiki GCN page many peoples do not understand difference between ISA and uArch.
> GCN is ISA (instruction set architecture). GCN1.0, 1.1, 1.2... or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... And there is no reason to kill it. The times of revolutionary changes here are over.
> GFX is uArch (microarchitecture that implements ISA). GFX6 aka SI is first GCN implementation (south islands). GFX7 aka CI is second (sea islands). GFX8 aka VI is third (volcanic islands, Tonga, Fuji, Polaris). GFX9 - Vega. GFX10 - Navi. Each new uArch implementation can be simply updated from the previous one or completely new design from scratch.
> The PAL has references to GFX10 since June 2018.


I think you're not wrong, but since no one here really cares about the instruction set, you should assume that, unless otherwise specified, we're talking about architecture.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 10, 2019)

Super XP said:


> *Graphics Core Next...*
> 
> GCN 1st Generation: Southern Islands
> GCN 2nd Generation: Sea Islands
> ...


vega islands


----------



## Super XP (Feb 10, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> vega islands


I was being funny.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 10, 2019)

Super XP said:


> I was being funny.


aha


----------



## AlB80 (Feb 10, 2019)

Super XP said:


> *Graphics Core Next...*
> 
> GCN 3rd Generation: Volcanic Islands
> GCN 4th Generation: Arctic Islands


GCN 1...5 are marketing names. Number bumps sporadically.
GCN3=GCN4. Despite lithography update, Tonga and Polaris have identical ISA (GCN1.2) and uArch (GFX8 vs GFX8.1)


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Feb 10, 2019)

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/amd-graphics-ip.243974/#post-3838731
GCN 1 = GFX6
GCN 2 = GFX7
GCN 3 = GFX8
GCN 4 = GFX8 w/ "Next-Gen Display Engine" supporting HDMI 2.0, DP 1.3, HDCP 2.2, and PlayReady 3.0.
GCN 5 = GFX9

People were quite disappointed that Fury X/Fiji only supported HDMI 1.4/DP 1.2.  It was a card designed for high resolutions yet it couldn't drive a 4K TV>30 Hz because of the Display Engine limitation.  Stands to reason that Polaris focused on fixing that which carried over into Vega where it gets used.


----------



## efikkan (Feb 11, 2019)

I guess there always is a discussion about what constitutes a _new_ architecture, and as always, PR-people are more inclined to exaggerate generational improvements. What is even a "generation" in this context? (i.e. Intel 9th generation core?)

No CPU or GPU designs these days are starting from completely scratch, but what I and many other tech guys call a new "architecture" is when there are major changes in the overall design. There will always be grey areas, and of course some larger new architectures that influences succeeding architectures.
Examples for Nvidia:
Tesla (large)
Fermi
Kepler (large)
Maxwell
Volta

Or Intel:
Core (large)
Nehalem (large)
Sandy Bridge (large)
Haswell
Skylake
Sunny Cove (upcoming)
And then we can talk about the legacy Intel brought all the way from P6 to at least Core.


----------



## Crustybeaver (Feb 11, 2019)

eidairaman1 said:


> VII Card should of came out during the 1080Ti Era. Too late.
> 
> AMD unfortunately is 1 step behind the 2080/Ti.



I'd look at it as more struggling to compete with 2080 and 1080ti, and a country mile behind the 2080ti.


----------



## geon2k2 (Feb 11, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.



Not sure this is relevant, even with the same architecture, improvement can be very big, and with all consoles being GCN, I think it might be a good idea to keep the same.

On a different note, this is the same like saying  that all intel cpu suck as they still use 40 years old x86 architecture, while we all know there have been multiple improvements to the original architecture. 
The same is true for GCN, there have been multiple improvements over the years.


----------



## Lorec (Feb 12, 2019)




----------



## Midland Dog (Feb 12, 2019)

eidairaman1 said:


> Got any legitimate links?
> 
> Your comment is nothing but speculation at this point.
> Are you an engineer?
> ...


somewhere on videocardz, cbf looking just knocked off work, beer time


----------



## John Naylor (Feb 14, 2019)

It seems no coincidence that nVidia GFX cards suffered right after they started building consoles and then same thing happened to AMD when they "won" that market.  Once Nvidia was out of it, soon after generation to generation improvements were impressive.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 17, 2019)

Rumours & Speculation claim its delayed. Hopefully not, but AMD get it right this time around. We need very competitive GPUs and now with the DLSS flop, its now or never.


----------



## Adam Krazispeed (Feb 17, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.



Navi is NOT GOING TO BE GCN...

NAVI IS A BRAND NEW GPU ARCHITECTURE FROM THE GROUND UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

not a fan boy either, im using a evga gtx 1080 hybrid gaming 8gb card right now, but im sick of nvidias gpus... high cost, and rtx is not even a decent upgrade for me, and the rtx 2080 is only maybe a 30-40% performance increase from my gtx 1080..

and price of 700-900 bucks... NO THANKS NVIDIA.. ILL WAIT AND SEE WHAT AMD DOES WITH NAVI IN OCTOBER


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 17, 2019)

Adam Krazispeed said:


> Navi is NOT GOING TO BE GCN...
> 
> NAVI IS A BRAND NEW GPU ARCHITECTURE FROM THE GROUND UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> ...


I haven't seen any conformation of this,what sources are you going by ?


----------



## bug (Feb 17, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> I haven't seen any conformation of this,what sources are you going by ?


Initially, Navi appeared on AMD's slides as a next-gen architecture. They've been silent since, so I'm really not sure what Navi is anymore.

Edit: This is what the roadmap looks like currently: https://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-update-7nm-vega-2018-navi-2019/
Next-gen is only what comes after Navi, so Navi is still the architecture that doesn't scale to high-end   (And yes, I know it's wtftech, but that slide appears on other sites as well)


----------



## xkm1948 (Feb 17, 2019)

Vega was hyped to be completely new uArc as well, NCU instrad of GCN. We all know how that went.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 17, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> Vega was hyped to be completely new uArc as well, NCU instrad of GCN. We all know how that went.


this is exactly the scenario I think it might go (revised and redesigned gcn),though Navi is gonna be a purely gaming architecture,not compute oriented like Vega.


----------



## efikkan (Feb 17, 2019)

bug said:


> Initially, Navi appeared on AMD's slides as a next-gen architecture. They've been silent since, so I'm really not sure what Navi is anymore.


Do you remember when?
The slides I can find from back to 2016 only states "next gen memory" for Navi.


----------



## bug (Feb 17, 2019)

efikkan said:


> Do you remember when?
> The slides I can find from back to 2016 only states "next gen memory" for Navi.


I remember it was the first announcements mentioning Vega. Either the slides have been pulled or my memory is playing tricks on me, but I couldn't find those slides at a quick search.

Edit: Even so, it's pretty clear there's no "next gen memory" to be unveiled this year, so I'm still not sure what Navi is supposed to be.


----------



## efikkan (Feb 17, 2019)

Navi was supposed to arrive in 2018. Next Gen Memory was probably GDDR6.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 17, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> I haven't seen any conformation of this,what sources are you going by ?



HERE: 





> *I have also been told that Navi will be a new microarchitecture (in other words the first AMD Radeon uArch to not be based on GCN).*


NAVI New GPU Design

Unless I am not reading this right, its going to be a version of Navi, maybe the high end or maybe the midrange that will be a brand new GPU. But recently rumours claim Navi is delayed. So who knows. But this is the source nevertheless. *Mark my Words, a new GPU Design by AMD will not be GCN Based. PERIOD. *


----------



## xkm1948 (Feb 17, 2019)

Super XP said:


> HERE:
> NAVI New GPU Design
> 
> Unless I am not reading this right, its going to be a version of Navi, maybe the high end or maybe the midrange that will be a brand new GPU. But recently rumours claim Navi is delayed. So who knows. But this is the source nevertheless. *Mark my Words, a new GPU Design by AMD will not be GCN Based. PERIOD. *



Alrighy. Screen shot taken. I am coming back to ya after Navi launch.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 17, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> Alrighy. Screen shot taken. I am coming back to ya after Navi launch.


I accept the Challenge


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Feb 18, 2019)

Bare in mind that GCN is a lot like x86.  It's an extensible framework with unified instructions that have been expanded over time.  In Vega, they hugely changed the compute units but are still calling it GCN.  In Raven Ridge, they replaced UVD and VCE with Video Core Next that does both functions.

Navi is a new architecture (just like Vega was) but that doesn't necessarily mean it significantly deviates from GCN.  That's a good thing because people still rocking 7970s will still get continued support.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 18, 2019)

I agree it's a good thing to a certain extent,  IF they can remain more than competitive vs. Nvidia high end GPUs. 
AMD needs a ZEN type success with its GPU business. 

If GCN can do this I'm all for it. So far they've been trying for years now. No success.


----------



## medi01 (Feb 18, 2019)

64K said:


> From NASDAQ I posted in #21 on this thread:
> 
> 2017 Annual Financial Reports
> 
> ...



Yep, smaller, but no way small. Thank you. And this year:

2018
AMD - $6.48 bn revenue
nVidia - $9.71 bn revenue


----------



## Mighty-Lu-Bu (Feb 22, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.



I don't care if Navi isn't a challenger to the RTX 2080ti, I just want a solid card that offers better performance than Vega 64, with less TDP. I don't think that that is a lot to ask...


----------



## bug (Feb 22, 2019)

Mighty-Lu-Bu said:


> I don't care if Navi isn't a challenger to the RTX 2080ti, I just want a solid card that offers better performance than Vega 64, with less TDP. I don't think that that is a lot to ask...


Well, I wouldn't mind 2080 Ti's level of performance. But certainly not the price


----------



## Super XP (Mar 26, 2019)

This report about an October launch was dispelled recently.
NAVI LAUNCH Coming SOON

It was also reported that Ryzen CPUs are being placed on sale to clear inventory for ZEN2. And we might end up seeing a launch sometime around May 2019. Availability June 2019. 
AMD Slashes Ryzen Prices for ZEN2 room.

And lastly, how accurate is this? Found it on Wccftech by a poster lol,
*IF there is any truth to this, Oh My. Look at this with a Grain of Salt, couldn't find anything on Tom's Hardware, just there Forums with random posters. *


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Mar 27, 2019)

More like a lethal dose of salt.

The naming scheme doesn't make any sense for the alleged performance.  On top of that, what 20 games does RTX 2080 Ti get an average of 294.8 fps?  I bet Quake III is in there with 1000+ fps.


----------



## Super XP (Mar 27, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> More like a lethal dose of salt.
> 
> The naming scheme doesn't make any sense for the alleged performance.  On top of that, what 20 games does RTX 2080 Ti get an average of 294.8 fps?  I bet Quake III is in there with 1000+ fps.


Triple AAA titles I assume.  
It's a grain of salt nevertheless.

The naming looks like it's from here. 
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-navi-gpus-spotted-in-macos-mohave-update


----------



## R0H1T (Mar 27, 2019)

So why would the top(?) Navi be a direct competitor of VII, unless they wanna sell the rest of the inventory in a virtual write-off OR Navi is obscenely priced


----------



## tfdsaf (Mar 27, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> With Navi still being GCN it is probably wont be much of a challenger to current nvidia anyway.


This is the new "AMD drivers suck" myth, propagated by ignoramus or actual Nvidia shillboys. 

FIRST AND FOREMOST, GCN 1 to GCN 4 is a COMPLETELY different architecture. Vega is a completely new architecture to top it off as well, internally they never even called Vega GCN, they always called in Vega, as a codename and later as official monkier. 

Nvidia's latest Turning architecture is basically their old GTX 400 architecture on steroids. Even their GTX 400 architecture was an evolution from their GTX 200 architecture, which was Nvidia's foray into unified shaders. What has happened is that Nvidia has been continually been improving their GTX 200 architecture and over the last 12 years reached the current architecture called Turing, which is in essence their 12 years old architecture from their GTX 200 series. 

Just because Nvidia have been giving different code names to their architectures, doesn't mean its a new architecture. And alternatively AMD giving the same GCN name doesn't mean its the same architecture. 

So this garbage that has been propagated how GCN is the same architecture, while Nvidia magically creates brand new 100% different architecture every two years is a mega ton of horse manure. Nvidia's current architecture dates back to their GTX 200 series. That is 12 years! Is it fair to call it the same architecture? Well according to Nvidishillboys then yes, Turing the GTX 200 arch is exactly the same. 

If anything AMD have been reinventing their architectures a lot more, which is part of the problem. They've never stuck long term like Nvidia to an arch and improved it over time, reiterative process over 12 years. They've done a lot more clean states.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Mar 27, 2019)

tfdsaf said:


> This is the new "AMD drivers suck" myth, propagated by ignoramus or actual Nvidia shillboys.
> 
> FIRST AND FOREMOST, GCN 1 to GCN 4 is a COMPLETELY different architecture. Vega is a completely new architecture to top it off as well, internally they never even called Vega GCN, they always called in Vega, as a codename and later as official monkier.
> 
> ...



GCN is the only 1 so far with revisions.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Mar 27, 2019)

Super XP said:


> The naming looks like it's from here.
> https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-navi-gpus-spotted-in-macos-mohave-update


Just because they appear in drivers doesn't mean they'll ever see the light of day.  Drivers also give zero indication of performance.


----------



## notb (Mar 27, 2019)

Super XP said:


> And lastly, how accurate is this? Found it on Wccftech by a poster lol,


Possibly not very much given the weird naming and too small differences between models.
Remember Navi was meant to be a mainstream gaming platform, not high-end.

And another question one could ask: how interesting it this? Not much.
On the graph you've shown "Navi 12" performs like a Vega 64, while "Navi 10" would be a Radeon VII. "Navi 8" could be a polished 7nm GCN, but it's also now far from successful Radeon VII overclocks.

Performance is not a problem. AMD has that.

What would actually be interesting is these 3 bars being not FPS but peak Watts.
Nvidia's bars are actually pretty close to TPU results...


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Mar 27, 2019)

notb said:


> What would actually be interesting is these 3 bars being not FPS but peak Watts.
> Nvidia's bars are actually pretty close to TPU results...


That makes a lot more sense.


----------



## notb (Mar 27, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> That makes a lot more sense.


Assuming it is [W], it still makes no sense why "Navi 12" would draw less than Navi 8 - unless AMD changed naming (bigger die, smaller number - like Nvidia does).

200W is more or less the limit Sony is going to accept for "big" PS5 (PS5 Pro?).
Assuming they'll dump optical drive, PS5 could be half the size of PS4 Pro. I'm sure they'll go this route - users are complaining about size of current consoles.
ASRock DeskMini GTX is 2.7l (compared to PS4's 5.3l) and can come with a GTX 1080.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Mar 27, 2019)

Polaris 20 = RX 580/RX 570
Polaris 21 = RX 560

AMD tends to start with the biggest chip first so, yeah, the numbering makes sense in that context (lower number = bigger chip = more power).

I don't put much faith in the Navi # they provide though.


----------



## Midland Dog (Mar 28, 2019)

Navi gonna give you up
Navi gonna let you down
Navi gonna run around and desert you
Navi gonna make you cry
Navi gonna say goodbye
Navi gonna tell a lie and hurt you


----------



## Totally (Jul 12, 2019)

Just realized this article was wrong by nearly 2Qs. Who crystal balled this one? So I could relegate them to trash tier.


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## Super XP (Jul 12, 2019)

Totally said:


> Just realized this article was wrong by nearly 2Qs. Who crystal balled this one? So I could relegate them to trash tier.


Well we all now know Navi is designed for PC Gaming. AMD did a brilliant job with it. Just don't like the Blower Style Coolers.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 12, 2019)

Totally said:


> Just realized this article was wrong by nearly 2Qs. Who crystal balled this one? So I could relegate them to trash tier.


Source was CowCotLand:





						Radeon VII : une carte graphique pour patienter jusqu'à octobre pour larchitecture Navi ? - Cartes graphiques
					

Depuis hier, la Radeon VII d'AMD est officiellement disponible et le lancement de cette nouvelle venue semble quelque peu comp..., actualité 66004




					www.cowcotland.com


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