AMD Radeon Vega GPU Architecture

[TheinsanegamerN]

i'm really jaded about AMD..

remember guys that FAILdozer sounded REAL GOOD on paper and those slides made it look like the saviour of cpukind with it's "real" CMP and shedding of "duplicate hardware that is mostly unused", then they failed so hard the echo still sounds like a gong.

so this vega sounds reeeal good, but notice that it's really devoid of performance metrics

Yup. Everybody needs to cool their jets on both vega and ryzen until they actually come out. AMD has dropped the ball too many times to be trusted with just slides, or even performance metrics half the time.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

I hope AMD does it right this time. If not, It's gonna be another wave of disappointment not just to the Red team, but also to Intel & Nvidia camp.

 

[Divide Overflow]

Sounds promising! I'm eagerly waiting for AMD to release these and for W1zzard to review an actual card and give us the real information that matters.

 

[bug]

I hope AMD does it right this time.

Is there anyone that doesn't? Even if you only use Intel and Nvidia, you'd still want AMD to matter, if only to keep prices under control. Hoping AMD does well isn't something to argue about.
AMD's GPU were never bad and when their CPUs flopped, there were no performance numbers leaked before launch. This time we saw some numbers for Ryzen (I don't take them without a pinch of salt, but they do exist), so the story may have changed. Still, we need to see hard launches.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Lovely read, even if it perhaps does not beat Nvidia, one has to appreciate the effort

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

@bug That is what most of us would want to see.

 

[xkm1948]

OK if it has AIO and cool design then I am definitely game. Time to get a new HTPC, up with RyZen and my FuryX.

 

[Dimi]

Though it would be nice to see some good competition again, and the top end cards back down in the $3-400 again, instead of the mid-range cards being sold at $400+...

Since the AMD & Nvidia GPU market dominance, top end cards have NEVER been 300-400$ neither from AMD nor Nvidia. I don't know where you people get this from? AMD cards have generally been more expensive at launch than Nvidia.

 

[Kaapstad]

We need more than fancy slides, we need actual hardware and benches !!!

On paper spec wise the Titanic looked fantastic and look what happened there.

 

[Steevo]

On paper the 2900XT was great....... the X1800XT was great... but performance was mediocre.

 

[ShurikN]

Since the AMD & Nvidia GPU market dominance, top end cards have NEVER been 300-400$ neither from AMD nor Nvidia. I don't know where you people get this from? AMD cards have generally been more expensive at launch than Nvidia.

I've had a Gigabyte X800XT, which i bought for less than 400 eur (brand new), and that was a flagship at the time.

 

[deu]

All this is really nice techno mumbo jumbo, but does it beat a 1080 at better price?

This may come as a chok but this techno-mumbo-jumbo is the reason the apparent magic happens. Like when you and your bro's fire up the playstation and you're like: "damn bro that like a movie broooo!" ; BAM!!! = Technology! But chill the abstractionlevel will come down

 

[Captain_Tom]

Based on everything I am reading this should be at least twice as strong as the 480, and probably closer to 3x as strong.

At this point I have almost no doubt that it will beat the current Titan, but that doesn't mean much. It needs to beat the Titan XP Black Nvidia is preparing (3840 SP, higher clocks, faster GDDR5X/GDDR6). It will be a close fight.

 

[TheMailMan78]

It seems AMD is getting ready for a big push into the AI market with Zen and Vega. Perhaps since the money is there and not in super low margin OEM APU sales they will come out of their decade long slump.


About half the Vega features are AI and compute technologies being sold to us gamers as vaporware, don't get me wrong if it works for the price great, but the features they are touting are designed and made more for compute than graphics.

2900XT all over again I think. Time will tell.

 

[deu]

i'm really jaded about AMD..

remember guys that FAILdozer sounded REAL GOOD on paper and those slides made it look like the saviour of cpukind with it's "real" CMP and shedding of "duplicate hardware that is mostly unused", then they failed so hard the echo still sounds like a gong.

so this vega sounds reeeal good, but notice that it's really devoid of performance metrics

Im not saying that AMD cant fail that would be stupid but ZEN WILL be competitive and VEGA to a new beginning will; they wouldnt have sold the plateform to the goverment of china and CERN etc. if it did not perform. Again we have seen the leaked/released performance be on pair with intel. VEGA is and will be a technological marble. The only thing that can fuck it up is pricing imo.

 

[Steevo]

2900XT all over again I think. Time will tell.

I am expecting 1080 performance, but nothing more.

 

[erocker]

something big is going down,
both AMD and Nvidia hiding their card pun intended in pocket
and waiting for each other revealed it first

AMD isn't ready and Nvidia doesn't need to release anything.

 

[Vario]

I've had a Gigabyte X800XT, which i bought for less than 400 eur (brand new), and that was a flagship at the time.

Nah the flagship was X850XT PE

 

[ShurikN]

Nah the flagship was X850XT PE

When it came out there were no 850s for at least 6 more months.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Is there anyone that doesn't? Even if you only use Intel and Nvidia, you'd still want AMD to matter, if only to keep prices under control. Hoping AMD does well isn't something to argue about.
AMD's GPU were never bad and when their CPUs flopped, there were no performance numbers leaked before launch. This time we saw some numbers for Ryzen (I don't take them without a pinch of salt, but they do exist), so the story may have changed. Still, we need to see hard launches.

This is perfect, as few others said this sums up what I would think we all want/think/hope. I've said basically this and variants of it multiple times of late and seen it from everyone on here practically in different forms and variations. This is simply good period even if you don't buy it because even if you go with the opposing camp you will get a better product at a better price due to competition, period...win/win. Also as a few others said this post also includes the cautious but optimistic view that CPU's look like they will be good just not sure how much and Vega still only in theory good but no proof so need to wait. Anyway Bug's few short sentences basically could sum up the last 6 years of our hopes, thoughts and wishes, only reference not relevant till recently is "Ryzen" reference but substitute "AMD's new CPU" in place of it and literally he could have posted this years ago.

 

[efikkan]

AMD needs to improve the following aspects to be able to compete with Nvidia:
- Flexible float precision cores. GP100/GP102 has this feature already, and Vega too. This doesn't matter for current games, but it will in the future.
- Improved scheduling. AMD have great theoretical performance, but are not able to feed the cores efficiently.
- Improved rasterization. Nvidia has since Maxwell employed tiled rasterization to minimize memory bandwidth constraints, achieve cache locality and resource dependency problems. The Vega slides mention "Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer", we'll have to see what this means.

But as always, real performance matters.

 

[c2DDragon]

Hurry AMD I want to be able to MAX all current and 2017 bad console port games @ 1440p | 144hz
1070 sucks, 1080 is not powerful enough, 1080ti will be short and overpriced I think... nVidia drivers/telemetry tools are meh...
We believe in you ATI AMD ! Don't betray us.

 

[bug]

Since the AMD & Nvidia GPU market dominance, top end cards have NEVER been 300-400$ neither from AMD nor Nvidia. I don't know where you people get this from? AMD cards have generally been more expensive at launch than Nvidia.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/56092-nvidia-launches-geforce-6800-graphics-family
https://www.cnet.com/products/ati-radeon-9800/preview/

But of course, there's inflation...

 

[Xzibit]

AMD isn't ready and Nvidia doesn't need to release anything.

^This

Has anyone confirmed that VEGA is 16GB. If it is that might be part of the delay. GP100 is 4-Hi HBM2 in 3 (12GB) and 4 (16GB) stacks. If VEGA is 16GB using 2 stack that means its using 8-Hi HBM2. 8-Hi HBM2 didnt go into mass production until Q3-Q4.

UPDATE:

Maybe not.

I also noted that the chip had 8GB of memory on board, though of course we couldn't say what type of memory was being used.

 

[AntDeek]

I just got an RX 480. Will these be in similar price range, or is this a 1080 competitor? One thing I hate about the whole PCMR crap is how its moving so fast that a card I got for Christmas may soon be last gen.