Wednesday, May 11th 2016
AMD Pulls Radeon "Vega" Launch to October
In the wake of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards, which if live up to their launch marketing, could render AMD's high-end lineup woefully outperformed, AMD reportedly decided to pull the launch of its next big silicon, Vega10, from its scheduled early-2017 launch, to October 2016. Vega10 is a successor to "Grenada," and will be built on the 5th generation Graphics CoreNext architecture (codenamed "Vega").
Vega10 will be a multi-chip module, and feature HBM2 memory. The 14 nm architecture will feature higher performance/Watt than even the upcoming "Polaris" architecture. "Vega10" isn't a successor to "Fiji," though. That honor is reserved for "Vega11." It is speculated that Vega10 will feature 4096 stream processors, and will power graphics cards that compete with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Vega11, on the other hand, is expected to feature 6144 stream processors, and could take on the bigger GP100-based SKUs. Both Vega10 and Vega11 will feature 4096-bit HBM2 memory interfaces, but could differ in standard memory sizes (think 8 GB vs. 16 GB).
Source:
3DCenter.org
Vega10 will be a multi-chip module, and feature HBM2 memory. The 14 nm architecture will feature higher performance/Watt than even the upcoming "Polaris" architecture. "Vega10" isn't a successor to "Fiji," though. That honor is reserved for "Vega11." It is speculated that Vega10 will feature 4096 stream processors, and will power graphics cards that compete with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Vega11, on the other hand, is expected to feature 6144 stream processors, and could take on the bigger GP100-based SKUs. Both Vega10 and Vega11 will feature 4096-bit HBM2 memory interfaces, but could differ in standard memory sizes (think 8 GB vs. 16 GB).
116 Comments on AMD Pulls Radeon "Vega" Launch to October
Money is coming from PSN+ and Game sales.
"PlayStation 4 Build Cost Is $381- Only $18 Below The Retail Price"
Only Nintendo did that but with the WiiU that changed as well.
Its about the game sales, not the console.
If Polaris is ready for production I suppose that Vega is close too and the only reason for the Q1 2017 launch was the dependency on HBM2.
If the 1070 actually gives 980Ti performance, I'd say that's a pretty good jump from Nvidia. That means they still have the 1080, 1080Ti and possibly Titan that just widens the gap even more from Maxwell's high end performers.
AMD can't keep playing the "wait and see what our competition brings to the table" game. If they can get Vega out before Nvidia's top tier cards (1080Ti and/or a Titan model) and can prove they outclass the 1080 with ease, then they can hold the market hostage for a bit until the 1080Ti or new Titan comes out to compete.
GTX 1080 is ONLY 13% faster than 28nm R9 Fury X and to get there it must be clocked to 1.6-2.1 gHz despite being a 16nm process. NOT very impressive since R9 clocks at 1.05gHz!!!!
Vega with HBM2 AND a 14nm process AND Asynch Compute in HARDWARE not SOFTWARE like NVidia will romp all over GTX right at Christmas!!!
Very SMART move by AMD.
The 14nm Polaris release already shows a huge advantage over GTX 980 and that will likely price around $350 or so.
cuz non x 380 is better than 980....
It's a back and forth game that has been played for eternity and is very obvious. People should relax and enjoy the bout as usual and purchase whatever you want in the end, because it'll all be good.
* Release Vega 10 with HBM2 and almost no availability due to a lack of HBM2 supply. It'll be like Fury X2's "launch", only worse - if that's even possible.
* Rework Vega 10's memory controller to interface with HBM1. Probably not feasible due to the 4GB limitation of HBM1 which would likely cripple Vega, and I'm not sure how much - if any - HBM1 will continue to be produced now the industry is going to HBM2.
* Rework Vega 10's memory controller to interface with GDDR5/X. Supply won't be a problem and the characteristics of GDDR5 are a known factor, but since we can safely assume Vega has been designed around HBM2, it's almost certain that using GDDR5 will result in sub-optimal performance. That's not to mention the fact that the chip design will have to be respun and retested, and the PCB will have to be redesigned around a small GPU and separate memory chips as opposed to a single monolithic MCM...
Of course there's always the possibility that HBM2 production is progressing a lot better than has been revealed, and Samsung is just keeping their cards close to their chest - although I don't see why they would, since any positive news about HBM2 would result in a press release to boost their stock price. Then there's the fact that NVIDIA will be looking to grab HBM2 for GP100, and if they're able and willing to pay more for HBM2 supplies than AMD, we all know who Samsung will sell to.
It may be that AMD are betting on SK Hynix's HBM2 in Q3 rather than Samsung's - since SK Hynix was responsible for HBM1, and thus may have more success with HBM2 - but if that's so then they're cutting things very, very close.
Any way you look at it, the next 6 months are gonna be interesting. I will reserve judgement until I've seen hard benchmarks of GP104, but if it's as fast as NVIDIA claims, and GP100 is significantly faster... I fear that AMD is going to have a painful year.
So with Polaris they started with bigger chip first, so 10 > 11.
With Vega other way round (it seems)
While I thought Nvidia since it patched thing up with Samsung will have their production, that was to commence mass production of HBM stacked memory starting early 2016. At issue, is all that is for Nvidias' HPC contracts and Tesla production first. They will fill the high margin Professional first, so I would look for a Titan/GTX till into the Q1 2017.
"From our forums the rumour is spread that AMD changed to launch date of Vega to October."
It's a 99,9% rumour. But have fun discussing it and geting emotional about something which is probably not more than hot air. :D
It's very unlikely AMD is this fast with their HBM2 cards, whereas Nvidia is not. Also they would go for GDDR5X on an performance card, not HBM2, because it's senseless there. Only the fastest chips will need very expensive HBM2, it's a waste on performance cards.
Also, Vega is not a performance chip, it's enthusiast segment with HBM2 (that's why it has HBM2!). :D
hahaha.. so many things are wrong here.
What Nvidia did with the GP104 is just unprincipled. If the performance rumors are true, then TitanX performance for $380 when a 390/GTX970 can play all your games at decent frame rates on max settings is is just unnecessary. Nvidia is trying to strangle AMD and squeeze them out of the high performance high profit GFX market.