New Performance Benchmarks of AMD's Vega Frontier Edition Surface

[john_]

That's nonsense. You don't understand the principles or basics of chip designs. No one "lowers IPC" to gain clock. IPC and clock are entirely separate things. Clock only depends on the chip design. NVIDIA is currently using narrow but faster pipeline. AMD is using wide but slower pipeline. Because, if you want to achieve high clocks, you're required to have a lot of stages in the pipeline, making it long. And that isn't always a best thing (Pentium 4 was a huge failure because of this) because whith longer pipeline, you're gaining latency and discarding things half way through costs more, causing even higher performance penalties.

IPC on the other hand means Instructions Per Cycle (IPC). It doesn't matter whether core has 500MHz or 3GHz. One cycle is 1Hz essentially. So, IPC tells you how much work a chip can perform in 1 cycle. That's it.

My apologies for quoting you. My apologies for making you read nonsense. Maybe if you could combine that "lower IPC" I wrote with your info about longer pipelines, you could realize what I was thinking and correct me with a more polite post. Anyway....

 

[efikkan]

Like I said just the other day, the AMD product cycle:
"It's going to be the best thing ever" -> denial -> "it's actually better, you just don't see it because of missing optimizations."
Many of you are at phase two, but some have even progressed to phase three:

Mining software will most likely need to be optimized to take advantage of the architecture...

There is no reason why mining should be optimized for each architecture.

 

[Alphadark]

So a graphics card that is specifically designed and optimized for non-gaming tasks is being blasted for its gaming ability...

This has to be the saltiest, most negative forum in the PC community

 

[phanbuey]

Like I said just the other day, the AMD product cycle:
"It's going to be the best thing ever" -> denial -> "it's actually better, you just don't see it because of missing optimizations."
Many of you are at phase two, but some have even progressed to phase three:

There is no reason why mining should be optimized for each architecture.

That's a silly statement... instruction sets and designs of hardware are constantly evolving to be faster and more efficient. Code that uses old methods to accomplish the same thing less efficiently should absolutely be rewritten to take advantage of faster/better methods (if they are indeed faster and better).

 

[efikkan]

That's a silly statement... instruction sets and designs of hardware are constantly evolving to be faster and more efficient. Code that uses old methods to accomplish the same thing less efficiently should absolutely be rewritten to take advantage of faster/better methods (if they are indeed faster and better).

In order for that to be true, the new archtecture would have to expose new hardware feature enabled through the API(OpenCL). Does Vega have any such features that you know of?

 

[Xzibit]

What happened to the results of the Titan Xp ?

He went through all that trouble testing it before the live stream, referencing the numbers throughout the stream and just left it out ?

 

[TheOne]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't people defending the Titan Xp vs Vega FE news thread by claiming that this is a Prosumer card like the Titan Xp, and now people are swearing it's a Professional card like Quadro, I don't really follow the Professional or the Prosumer market so I have no idea, just thought I would mention it.

Also I find it kind of funny that this card does well in Fallout 4 when it's one of the games that Ryzen takes a hard hit in.

 

[phanbuey]

In order for that to be true, the new archtecture would have to expose new hardware feature enabled through the API(OpenCL). Does Vega have any such features that you know of?

That's not always true - i.e. Ryzen optimizations do not always require coding for new instruction sets, but there are architecture specific optimizations that enable applications to take better advantage of the architecture (i.e. Ryze of the Tomb Raider).

My point was - this is a card maker that is known for making cards that perform well in compute tasks... they just came out with a brand new card geared for computing; and the current batch of computing software performs terribly on it... is it 1) that the card maker forgot how to make cards that perform compute tasks well or 2) that the software/drivers/system that is running that card immature and needs optimization?

I would bet 2.

 

[Xzibit]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't people defending the Titan Xp vs Vega FE news thread by claiming that this is a Prosumer card like the Titan Xp, and now people are swearing it's a Professional card like Quadro, I don't really follow the Professional or the Prosumer market so I have no idea, just thought I would mention it.

Also I find it kind of funny that this card does well in Fallout 4 when it's one of the games that Ryzen takes a hard hit in.

AMD target it to Prosumers. Here is what the same reviewer said.

From a professional workload angle, the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition fares much better, splitting the line between the features, performance, and support that NVIDIA offers between its GeForce and Quadro products. By enabling those features, and in doing so giving the Vega FE the ability to battle a much higher performance GPU (otherwise) in this space, AMD is hoping to convince those creators to take notice and invest. To be clear, in most cases, the P5000 Quadro card will offer performance that exceeds Vega FE, but at double the price.

Looked at solely through the lens of a professional user that is only tangentially interested in gaming, AMD can claim the product to be a success. For $999 the Vega Frontier Edition offers high levels of performance in some of our tested workloads from SPECviewperf, LuxMark and Cinebench. Our testing obviously isn't comprehensive due to time constraints, but it is a good indicator that AMD was right to target this product and this price at that kind of user.

The results are on this page. Seams very few read that far into an article if at all.

PCPerspective - The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition 16GB Air Cooled Review - Professional Testing: SPECviewperf, LuxMark, Cinebench

 

[RejZoR]

My apologies for quoting you. My apologies for making you read nonsense. Maybe if you could combine that "lower IPC" I wrote with your info about longer pipelines, you could realize what I was thinking and correct me with a more polite post. Anyway....

I'm sorry if you get offended so easily. I just corrected you.

 

[efikkan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't people defending the Titan Xp vs Vega FE news thread by claiming that this is a Prosumer card like the Titan Xp, and now people are swearing it's a Professional card like Quadro, I don't really follow the Professional or the Prosumer market so I have no idea, just thought I would mention it.

Also I find it kind of funny that this card does well in Fallout 4 when it's one of the games that Ryzen takes a hard hit in.

It doesn't matter, both Titans and Quadros works excellently in gaming, it's not like they lack any gaming oriented features. So anyone who claims that Vega FE as a prosumer card should not perform well in gaming is wrong, unless AMD intentionally neutered the card.

That's not always true - i.e. Ryzen optimizations do not always require coding for new instruction sets, but there are architecture specific optimizations that enable applications to take better advantage of the architecture (i.e. Ryze of the Tomb Raider).

There are no substantial features in Ryzen to optimize for. But Ryzen have an inferior prefetcher, which limits its ability to feed its computational resources. If you want to optimize for Ryzen, you remove bloat and make the code more cache friendly, which will scale on all architectures.

My point was - this is a card maker that is known for making cards that perform well in compute tasks... they just came out with a brand new card geared for computing; and the current batch of computing software performs terribly on it... is it 1) that the card maker forgot how to make cards that perform compute tasks well or 2) that the software/drivers/system that is running that card immature and needs optimization?

I would bet 2.

As mentioned, there is no reason why a professional or prosumer card should perform any worse.
All new architectures have some specific glitches to be fixed in the drivers, that's why we always see a ~5-15% improvement the first year or so. But arguing that driver maturity will make the product vastly better is nonsense, it's always about fixing a few edge-case.

 

[Brusfantomet]

FuryX is 4096bit
Vega is 2048bit.

So that fancy HBCC does not counter the loss of memory bandwidth.

4094 bit at 500 Mhz giving 512 GB/s versus
2048 bit at 943 Mhz giving 483 GB/s

the memory bandwith is not that different from the Fury to Vega.

By your comparison my aging 290x with its 512 bit memory bus should have a higher memory bandwidth then a titan Xp with a 384 bit bus.

 

[semantics]

Also there could be ECC used slowing Games down by upto 20% alone, in some cases.

With the first real GCN5 Driver the clould be a 20% uplift easy.

ECC? I have yet to see any documentation or any site talk about how the card has ECC, i doubt the card has ECC. Which is why the card is a joke if you're a professional, the drivers aren't pro drivers the card lacks ECC. Do I want my shit to work or not?

 

[0x4452]

the Vega Frontier Edition stands extremely close to NVIDIA's GTX 1080 Ti video card in Fallout 4

The PCPer article shows this:

 

[S@LEM!]

Just by seeing Vega FE matching 1070 on Witcher 3 @4K, it is a SOLID proof about poor performance due to DRIVERS! Fury X is exactly there: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_1080_Gaming_X_Plus_11_Gbps/25.html

No more talk needed, just patience until RX Vega is out.

that's actually a good point, something is not right here. well we will just have to wait and see, heck AMD was not joking when delaying Vega for software optimization.

 

[MrGenius]

Was the driver in "Gaming Mode" or "Pro Mode" for these gaming benchmarks? Seems like that might matter. But I can't find it mentioned anywhere.

EDIT: I found the answer to that question. Yes, it was in "Game Mode". Which, as it turns out, is pointless.

You probably didn’t have it in game mode!

Actually, I did. And, to make matters worse for that point of view, AMD has confirmed that switching between Game Mode and Professional Mode will have no performance impact, only visual and UI elements (of the ReLive driver settings GUI *only* - not your games) will change.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graph...B-Air-Cooled-Review/Answering-Questions-you-A

Also, is "fine tuning from mining software" even a thing? That sounds a little counterintuitive. Shouldn't it be entirely dependant on the hardware how well the software runs? I mean mining software is supposed to be difficult to run right? Isn't that what gives the currency being mined its value. If you could just tweak the mining software to make it easier to run wouldn't that currency's value depreciate?

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Delightful, another thread full of green fanboism and speculation on something that isnt supposed to be a gaming card, even though it is supposed to be able to play games too. I seriously doubt this card/release was meant to be faster then green its a new entry into a new architecture, period. Check your expectations at the door and be real.

 

[jigar2speed]

Obviously some wrong technical decisions were taken by AMD's engineers and now they have to get back to drawing board (I am certain they already are). Remember HD 2900 XT happened but so did HD 4850, 4870, 5850 & 5870. Come back is absolutely possible here but for now AMD suffers market share.

 

[cdawall]

Delightful, another thread full of green fanboism and speculation on something that isnt supposed to be a gaming card, even though it is supposed to be able to play games too. I seriously doubt this card/release was meant to be faster then green its a new entry into a new architecture, period. Check your expectations at the door and be real.

It isn't unrealistic to expect a card to equal the titan Xp when released after and sharing the price point.

I actually almost ordered one of these just because I had free money from mining. At this point in time its looking like it was a good choice for me to sit on it. Maybe the rx vega stuff will be better, but we don't know, we won't know for probably another 6 months.

 

[the54thvoid]

There's a lot of heads in the sand here.

People are defending it by saying it's not a gaming card. So why the hell did AMD give it a gaming mode that actually has no benefit to gaming performance.
It's another example of terribly misguided AMD marketing. They could have simply said, IT IS NOT a gaming card and it won't have a gaming mode. Instead they say it's not a gaming card and they give it an absolutely pointless gaming mode.
It's another shot in their own foot. You can't defend this type of mixed message, it's just ignorant.

Edit: Ryzen owner so not a hater. I support them with my money.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

It isn't unrealistic to expect a card to equal the titan Xp when released after and sharing the price point.

I actually almost ordered one of these just because I had free money from mining. At this point in time its looking like it was a good choice for me to sit on it. Maybe the rx vega stuff will be better, but we don't know, we won't know for probably another 6 months.

You may look at cards differently them most folk, but most of the thread is about gaming, not mining. I think many, not all, people are putting unrealistic expectations on this card release. AMD can only reiterate its intended purpose and its not gaming or mining.

There's a lot of heads in the sand here.

People are defending it by saying it's not a gaming card. So why the hell did AMD give it a gaming mode that actually has no benefit to gaming performance.
It's another example of terribly misguided AMD marketing. They could have simply said, IT IS NOT a gaming card and it won't have a gaming mode. Instead they say it's not a gaming card and they give it an absolutely pointless gaming mode.
It's another shot in their own foot. You can't defend this type of mixed message, it's just ignorant.

Edit: Ryzen owner so not a hater. I support them with my money.

AMD didnt misguide anyone here, everyone just started assuming everything and anything else except what AMD had said in the beginning, that its not a gaming card release. Its a card that can game very well.

I would like to think AMD had actual game developers in mind with this cards not so much the tech, CAD/etc. render type stuff. A card like this could make play-testing games easier to deal with QA issues and less game release date bugs. just an opinion here.

 

[notb]

Why do you think that could be?

To stop these cards being sold so quickly to mining customers.
Sure, a card sold is a card sold - it makes the same profit no matter who buys it.
But a gaming customer is so much better for the company!

1) There's a big issue with guarantees: in some countries consumer products have a minimal length of guarantee, e.g. 2 years in most of Europe). Gaming GPUs aren't built to survive that ~17500 h of heavy load, so companies would have to increase production cost.
This could be, among other things, the reason why vendors seem to ship more high-end products lately (e.g. ASUS Strix, MSI Gaming and Gigabyte G1 are way easier to find than the lower-end models).
If GPUs are divided into 2 segments: consumer (gaming, home GPGPU) and commerial (mining), the latter one could be sold with much shorter guarantee period (the NVIDIA is rumored to offer 3 months).

2) Gaming (and GPGPU) business is pretty simply and easy to forecast. This makes investing in gaming hardware pretty straightforward and low-risk.
Developing a new GPU (or CPU for that matter) takes years. We know N millions people are gaming today, so it's very likely that N millions will game 3-5 years from now.
How many people will be mining in 2020? Will mining still exist? Which financial institution will support developing your new mining-oriented products if you might not sell it at all?

Also, I don't think gaming crowd would like such a change of the market. We're not far from a situation when only miners (commercial users) can afford new GPUs, while gamers have to buy used parts. This would make the GPU business strangely similar to automotive one...

 

[Xzibit]

There's a lot of heads in the sand here.

People are defending it by saying it's not a gaming card. So why the hell did AMD give it a gaming mode that actually has no benefit to gaming performance.
It's another example of terribly misguided AMD marketing. They could have simply said, IT IS NOT a gaming card and it won't have a gaming mode. Instead they say it's not a gaming card and they give it an absolutely pointless gaming mode.
It's another shot in their own foot. You can't defend this type of mixed message, it's just ignorant.

Edit: Ryzen owner so not a hater. I support them with my money.

Is it misguided when they tell you what it is

The Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition graphics card is designed to simplify and accelerate game creation by providing a single GPU that is optimized for every stage of this workflow, from asset production, to playtesting, to performance optimization.

People might have been expecting something else and it seams the issue is with their expectations.

 

[cdawall]

You may look at cards differently them most folk, but most of the thread is about gaming, not mining. I think many, not all, people are putting unrealistic expectations on this card release. AMD can only reiterate its intended purpose and its not gaming or mining.

Oh it had nothing to do with it's performance in mining. I would use it for gaming just like I use my pair of 1080Ti's now. Having the ability to mine as well is a bonus.

 

[the54thvoid]

Is it misguided when they tell you what it is

I don't think you are being ignorant. I think you are bi or multi lingual, yes? It is very misguided, on a PR front to sell a non gaming card and put a gaming mode on it. That is misleading. It implies it has a mode that is created for gaming. Clearly it does not because as you like to remind me, it's not a gaming card. I know it's not a gaming card.

But it has a Gaming Mode. It's like selling a car with flight mode. Except it can't fly. Or a dog with cat mode, that can't meow.

I ask about your lingual ability as I want to give you the benefit of understanding my point. If you want it even more clearly, it's like selling a card with Ausum mode that doesn't actually overclock.

If you still prefer to imagine I am thick as shit, then your understanding of English is rather poor.