Wednesday, June 6th 2018
AMD "Vega" Outsells "Previous Generation" by Over 10 Times
At its Computex presser, leading up to its 7 nm Radeon Vega series unveil, AMD touched upon the massive proliferation of the Vega graphics architecture, which is found not only in discrete GPUs, but also APUs, and semi-custom SoCs of the latest generation 4K-capable game consoles. One such slide that created quite some flutter reads that "Vega" shipments are over 10 times greater than those of the "previous generation."
Normally you'd assume the previous-generation of "Vega" to be "Polaris," since we're talking about the architecture, and not an implementation of it (eg: "Vega 10" or "Raven Ridge," etc.). AMD later, at its post event round-table, clarified that it was referring to "Fiji," or the chip that went into building the Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Nano, etc., and comparing its sales with that of products based on the "Vega 10" silicon. Growth in shipments of "Vega" based graphics cards is triggered by the crypto-mining industry, and for all intents and purposes, AMD considers the "Vega 10" silicon to be a commercial success.
Normally you'd assume the previous-generation of "Vega" to be "Polaris," since we're talking about the architecture, and not an implementation of it (eg: "Vega 10" or "Raven Ridge," etc.). AMD later, at its post event round-table, clarified that it was referring to "Fiji," or the chip that went into building the Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Nano, etc., and comparing its sales with that of products based on the "Vega 10" silicon. Growth in shipments of "Vega" based graphics cards is triggered by the crypto-mining industry, and for all intents and purposes, AMD considers the "Vega 10" silicon to be a commercial success.
61 Comments on AMD "Vega" Outsells "Previous Generation" by Over 10 Times
Yeah Vega competes with Volta in compute with HALF the die size, and its mobile/APU chips are more efficient than Pascal. Vega is a fantastic architecture.You are incorrect. Fiji is fantastic at mining, and in fact it is better than Polaris depending on what you are mining.
Furthermore it's not "just mining" that is helping Vega's sales. Rendering farms and scientific research firms are buying them up in droves, and it is incredibly efficient in laptops.
-Maxwell can do gaming best (As long as the game doesn't use all of Vega's features)
-Volta does AI best
That's it lol. So if Vega is a master of "few", it's better than any other architecture as far as I can tell. All of the others pretty much only do one thing well.
- Versatility. The performance is quite a bit higher in each respective segment (AI/machine learning/gaming/prof. apps) In fact a Pascal Geforce card already gets similar or better perf in most of the workloads its NOT optimized for versus a Vega alternative. When we get into the Quadro world... its not even a competition
- Perf/watt. The higher performance level is attained within a much tighter TDP budget.
- A much wider boost range. This is why Nvidia cards get put into laptops a lot more. Its 2018 and AMD still has a completely silly GPU boost that is more than a generation behind reality. Vega is the perfect example of it; it boosts itself out of the comfortable temp range and underclocking/volting gets better results. But even then, the boost range remains limited and its one of the reasons the perf/watt stays behind. Its also the reason you don't see Polaris in throttling laptops - performance would nosedive.
Vega only competes in one area and that is price. Price does not make it (GCN) a good architecture. Nor does it finally make AMD turn a good profit on their GPU division - something that has never happened... ever.
You also seem to forget that all of these Nvidia 'architectures' are not some unicorns that all live in separate worlds, they're all branches of the same underlying tech/arch. Nvidia diversifies without losing the edge in any segment, with new systems or tweaks. Tensor cores, NVlink, perhaps a small subsystem for RTX when it gets there... Not with entire new 'architectures'. So yes, the jack of all trades master of none does apply to GCN and does not apply to whichever Nvidia 'arch' you pick. I mean its not even a discussion or a contest anymore. Its a different way of building GPUs and its evident which of the two is more effective.
I could have been a real dumb ass and said "Jack of ALL trades, master of NONE" like the saying actually goes. But Vega does seem to be the master of a SMALL portion of games and computing--therefore I said master of "few." However, it's performance per watt and overall performance are generally abominable--unless you like playing the bitcoin game. But then the MSRP is not bad on the Vega series.
Vega 56 will probably be my next card, if I can nab one up for less than $450 in the near future--I've got a kilowatt to burn. Otherwise, it's 1070ti.
Just imagine if mining never happened , do you really believe the numbers would be the same? That's my point, I'm sure you get it now .
The best thing Vega 64 has going for it is Freesync, other than that I personally feel it's not good. Even if I was gifted one I wouldn't use one in my machines. I'd give it away or sell it.