Wednesday, July 19th 2017
AMD's RX Vega Low Key Budapest Event: Vega Pitted Against GTX 1080
On the first stop in AMD's two-continent spanning RX Vega tour (which really only counts with three locations), the company pitted their upcoming RX Vega graphics card (we expect this to be their flagship offering) against NVIDIA's GTX 1080 graphics card. The event itself was pretty subdued, and there was not much to see when it comes to the RX Vega graphics card - literally. Both it and the GTX 1080 were enclosed inside PC towers, with the event-goers not being allowed to even catch a glimpse of the piece of AMD hardware that has most approximated a unicorn in recent times.
The Vega-powered system also made use of a Ryzen 7 processor, and the cards were running Battlefield 1 (or Sniper Elite 4; there's lots of discussion going on about that, but the first image below does show a first-person view) with non-descript monitors, one supporting FreeSync, the other G-Sync. The monitor's models were covered by cloth so that users weren't able to tell which system was running which graphics card, though due to ASUS' partnership in the event, both were (probably) of ASUS make. The resolution used was 3440 x 1440, which should mean over 60 FPS on the GTX 1080 on Ultra. It has been reported by users that attended the event that one of the systems lagged slightly in one portion of the demo, though we can't confirm which one (and I'd say that was AMD's intention.)
All in all, I have to say, this tour doesn't inspire me confidence. This isn't the kind of "in your face" comparison we're used to seeing from companies who know they have a winning product; should the comparison be largely in favor of AMD, I posit the company would be taking every advantage of that by showcasing their performance leadership. There did seem to be an inordinate amount of smoke and mirrors here, though, with AMD going out of its way to prevent attendees from being able to discern between their and their competitors' offering.
AMD reportedly told attendees that the AMD and NVIDIA systems had a $300 difference in AMD's favor. All other hardware being equal, and accounting for AMD's stance that a FreeSync monitor tends to cost around $200 less than a comparable NVIDIA G-Sync enabled one, that leaves around $100 savings solely towards the RX Vega part of the equation. This means the RX Vega could sell around the $459-$500 bracket, if current pricing of the GTX 1080 is what AMD considered.
Sources:
Reddit User @ Szunyogg, RX Vega Budapest Google Photos, WCCFTech
The Vega-powered system also made use of a Ryzen 7 processor, and the cards were running Battlefield 1 (or Sniper Elite 4; there's lots of discussion going on about that, but the first image below does show a first-person view) with non-descript monitors, one supporting FreeSync, the other G-Sync. The monitor's models were covered by cloth so that users weren't able to tell which system was running which graphics card, though due to ASUS' partnership in the event, both were (probably) of ASUS make. The resolution used was 3440 x 1440, which should mean over 60 FPS on the GTX 1080 on Ultra. It has been reported by users that attended the event that one of the systems lagged slightly in one portion of the demo, though we can't confirm which one (and I'd say that was AMD's intention.)
175 Comments on AMD's RX Vega Low Key Budapest Event: Vega Pitted Against GTX 1080
www.anandtech.com/show/9883/gddr5x-standard-jedec-new-gpu-memory-14-gbps
Vega has 2 stacks of HBM2 at 512 GB/s (~7.3w). GTX 1080 Ti has 11 chips of GDDR5X at 484 GB/s (~27.5w). Titan Xp has 12 chips of GDDR5X at 547.7 GB/s (~30w).
Even thought Titan Xp has a slight edge over Vega in bandwidth, Vega has significantly lower latency and more flexibility in making memory requests. HBCC spawned from lessons learned in using HBM for Fiji.I wouldn't bet on that.
And BTW, caching is about hiding latency, not increasing performance.
The latency in compute performance is also proving to be inconsistent as hell.
Decreasing latency mitigates how long it takes for the GPU to move forward when a cache miss occurs. This doesn't increase framerate (unless it is happening regularly) but it increases minimum FPS.
My point is that 13 TFLOPS of compute power shouldn't result in as low of a framerate as it gets. There's clearly something wrong in the Frontier Edition and AMD knows it.
So by Vega having 8 GB HBM with caching, it will only act as if the memory pool was larger, caching will never give you more performance than having the larger pool.I seriously doubt it. A cache miss from GPU memory over the PCIe bus to system memory will get close to a millisecond, while a cache miss for CPU to its memory is a little over 50 ns (~200-250 clocks wasted for Kaby Lake). Such cache misses for HBC would not only result in stutter, but a completely unplayable game.That's nothing new. Fury X had like ~53% more Flop/s than GTX 980 Ti, so things have been "wrong" for a while.
And BTW, back in the days we measured Flop/s for base clock, then for typical boost, and now AMD operates with max boost. So you wouldn't even hit 13.1 TFlop/s unless you increase the power limit to make it stay at 1600 MHz. We should really call it a 11.3 TFlop/s card, based on rated typical boost clock.
It seems a lot of your brain is in "AMD rulez" mode.
But then you go to a shop, you reach for your wallet... and you buy NVIDIA/Intel. That's where the (usually shouted down) sensible part of your brain decides on financial decisions. And this is a good sign. :)
I'm a Mazda MX-5 fanboy and I don't own one. I might never do.
I bought a new Toyota in January and for more or less the same money I could have bought a used MX-5 from few years back.
And I have to admit: every time I see an MX-5 I wish I had one. But I made a sensible choice. And I'm really glad I did.Problem is: the "different tasks in mind" is a theory you are popularizing. AMD said this card is - among other things - designed for creating, testing and optimizing games.
If this card is aimed at game developers, shouldn't it be the fastest Vega available? How will a Vega FE user be able to test a game that maxes RX Vega out, if he can't run it?Not at all. Still, this isn't an answer to my question.
Why don't you buy some AMD gear if you like it so much?
If you have two comparable GPUs, GPU A have 12 GB, and GPU B have 8 GB + caching, the caching will try to weigh up for the missing memory in GPU B. Whenever you need less than 8 GB, there will be no difference, and when you need more GPU B will perform up to the level of GPU A, never above it. Your confusion is what to compare it to. HBC will not have lower latency than other GPU memory, only lower latency than falling back to system memory.The driver is aware of the hardware capabilities, but it does not micro-manage low-level scheduling inside the GPU, that is controlled on the GPU side. Tiled rasterization is not a new unit with a new feature set to expose through an API, it's a reordering of operations inside the GPU.It has been enough in the past, and it's not like they start from scratch when the working chips arrive. Remember, they did demo it working in late December. Well at least this time with all the delays, the driver should be ~2.5 months more mature than the drivers of Polaris and Fiji at their respective releases.
But this boils down to what we've heard for every single generation from AMD the last five years; at release AMD fans say we can't judge it, because the driver are immature. Yet, they somehow "know" it will improve, we only need to give it more time, but no substantial improvement ever materializes.
As I've pointed out before, and as you have ignored, game designers don't have to be able to play a game at top-level quality to give you that to play.
Sure, then explain to me what they are doing this whole extra month? Drinking booze and laughing? If they knew this is what they have, they'd just release it. It would be of less of an embarrassment than delaying it for whole month and then releasing the exact same thing as we've already seen with Vega FE, just with half the memory. AMD made some questionable decisions in the past, but they aren't that dumb, you can be assured of that. If I'm aware of those things, someone paid several times as much as I am sure as hell knows that. But entire computer world seems to be entirely oblivious to those tiny facts. If everything was where it should have been, they'd release entire Vega range back then and call it a day. Even if availability would actually come later if HBM2 production is the real issue. But whatever, apparently thinking logical isn't what people are expected to do over here anymore... You can do all the math and power draw and whatever, but tell me, this aspect doesn't strike you as very odd?
People were wondering what's up when RX480 was the fastest thing they offered and was really just a mid range. It didn't really bother people that there isn't any top end. The user base simply adapted to the offerings. If AMD pulled the same thing with RX Vega, release it as GTX 1080 competitor with engaging pricing scheme, people would be all over it even if it wasn't king of the hill. And yet they aren't doing that either. So, clearly something is going on. because otherwise, they could've done all of it long ago.
It can't get any clearer than that. Anyone failing to understand that are having trouble with fundamental logic.Please try to stay serious.
They are stockpiling cards for the launch.
It is not actual gaming as either us as consumers will do, or quality control testers will do when production is near finished.
Anyone familiar to development knows you do performance optimization on hardware representative of what the end user will run. If Vega FE lacks gaming features of RX Vega, then it's completely useless for performance optimizations, which AMD claims is it's intended use.
however, there are excellent use cases for hbcc when it comes to compute, especially with the memory access/addressing improvements of last few generations that will be able to make use of system (and other bits of) memory in a single pool.
It's that or I'm reading HBCC wrong /:
As for the launch... in the optimistic variant: building inventory, shipping, preparing benchmarks for the launch even. In pessimistic one: waiting for HBM2 supply...Maybe they're hoping for a miracle?
They must have already had, since they've continued developing this card. They must have noticed months ago how will the power draw look for the performance they aimed at.
As it's been told already: a dual RX480 could be better. AMD's board or shareholders wanted a Vega release in time (to show this architecture actually works) and a launch of gaming model with solid inventory for preorders (like they did with Ryzen).That could be just about accomplishing targets.
People were wondering what's up when RX480 was the fastest thing they offered and was really just a mid range. It didn't really bother people that there isn't any top end. The user base simply adapted to the offerings. If AMD pulled the same thing with RX Vega, release it as GTX 1080 competitor with engaging pricing scheme, people would be all over it even if it wasn't king of the hill. And yet they aren't doing that either. So, clearly something is going on. because otherwise, they could've done all of it long ago.[/QUOTE]Vega FE is not exactly and enterprise-grade product. Sure, it'll be used in some workstations, but the general corporate audience would prefer something more FirePro-ish.
This would mean that Vega FE is in fact not a product. It's just a showcase of technologies that AMD has and can use in future products. I wouldn't be shocked - this kind of launches happen quite often.
how about that 126w