New Performance Benchmarks of AMD's Vega Frontier Edition Surface

[jabbadap]

So, tiling and immediate mode is done in hardware and hardware is magically suppose to know which one to use. LOL? Of course this stuff works on hardware level, do you seriously believe that I think it's done in software? The decision making which of these hardware implementations are used is however done in SOFTWARE. And clearly, AMD has massive issues with drivers at the moment. So, which part of it you don't understand now?

NVIDIA is not selling Titans in stores to have a higher margin and keep it all for themselves. C'mon, it's business 101. They don't have time to sell every GeForce by themselves, but they sure can handle sales of just 1 type of card...

Well you could buy other pascal FEs on geforce.com store too(currently all of them are out of stock)... Ain't vega FE should use the same driver as upcoming RX Vega will use(by amd on that reddit ama)? So probably we will see performance uplift for that too at least at the time RX Vega releases.

Spoiler

The Frontier Edition was designed for a variety of use-cases like Machine Learning, real-time visualization, and game design. Can you play games on Frontier Edition? Yes, absolutely. It supports the RX driver and will deliver smooth 4K gaming. But because it is optimized for professional use cases (and priced accordingly), if gaming is your primary reason for buying a GPU, I’d suggest waiting just a little while longer for the lower-priced, gaming-optimized Radeon RX Vega graphics card

 

[deu]

I find it amusing people still trying to defend a failed product launch and a bad flagship produxt.

People are not defending VEGA; they are amused of ignorance of people like you. Sorry to be harsh but thats basically what it comes down to. FE is not made for gaming per say. (AMD have even said so), so anyone thinking that it performancewise will resemble the RX VEGA's price/performance is going to do a TITAN on themselves. So either you are a troll or just super badly informed. There are so many unknowns and it looks like RX vega will actually be able to perform as hoped, giving 1080Ti a run for its money (asuming they can price it right)

 

[BiggieShady]

Seems like tiled based rasterizer is off and fallback (intermediate rasterizer) gets activated, because tests produced same images on Vega FE as on Fiji cards.

 

[RejZoR]

People are not defending VEGA; they are amused of ignorance of people like you. Sorry to be harsh but thats basically what it comes down to. FE is not made for gaming per say. (AMD have even said so), so anyone thinking that it performancewise will resemble the RX VEGA's price/performance is going to do a TITAN on themselves. So either you are a troll or just super badly informed. There are so many unknowns and it looks like RX vega will actually be able to perform as hoped, giving 1080Ti a run for its money (asuming they can price it right)

They think us saying "lets wait for actual RX Vega and see" is more ignorant then their baseless pissing on entire Vega lineup based off Vega FE alone. XD

 

[deu]

How much do you think AMD should price this? Anything over current 1080 price line-up will be bad.

If it performs way better than the 1080 they will price it higher but at a better dollar/performance ratio. But wait until we have ANY actual information of performance (again you can see from the "test" that it by no means can be taken as an indicator of another card for gaming.)

 

[jabbadap]

Gamernexus have their review up too:

http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2973-amd-vega-frontier-edition-reviewed-too-soon-to-call

Seems to confirming pcper's position of card on current driver stack: gaming performance between gtx0170 and gtx1080.

 

[deu]

AMD has unofficially lost the GPU war. Volta is coming and that GTX 2060 will plow the fastest Vega.

Are you by any chance employed in the white house?

 

[john_]

People are not defending VEGA; they are amused of ignorance of people like you. Sorry to be harsh but thats basically what it comes down to. FE is not made for gaming per say. (AMD have even said so), so anyone thinking that it performancewise will resemble the RX VEGA's price/performance is going to do a TITAN on themselves. So either you are a troll or just super badly informed. There are so many unknowns and it looks like RX vega will actually be able to perform as hoped, giving 1080Ti a run for its money (asuming they can price it right)

I think that "FE is not a gaming card" argument is baseless. The card does come with a gaming mode and the card is also meant for developers of games. So, how helpful is to a game developer, to create a game on FE and then while testing that game on FE, to get a completely false indication about how that game would run on an equivalent RX model? It would always look performing poorly. And why is that? Because the FE is not for gaming? It doesn't make sense to me. Also it will be a first seeing huge performance penalties on a (let's say) semi pro card. I mean from under 1080Ti on an RX, dropping to under 1080 performance on a FE, it's a ridiculously big gap. Add to that that the developer had payed 300 to 500 dollars more and it only gets worst.

AMD delayed Vega RX as much as it could. I mean, there where half a dozen events where they could introduce this card, and they chose Siggraph that has nothing to do with gaming? Obviously the choice had to do with dates. Siggraph was the last one on the list. So, it seems they are not ready yet. In my opinion, if someone was benchmarking an RX Vega TODAY, the performance of RX Vega would have been about the same as FE, if they where running at the same frequency. If RX Vega hits 1700MHz stable, then I guess we will be looking at a power hungry card that would offer at least performance somewhere between 1080 and 1080Ti. If there are some features in the cards, both RX and FE, that are not yet enabled, features that could offer higher performance, then and only then we could see a 1080 Ti competitor, and why not a 1080 Ti killer.

The market needs a 1080 Ti killer. Nvidia fans need a 1080 Ti killer, more than anyone else. Nvidia fans not having a modern Nvidia card need to go to the latest models, because we all know - or at least heard that ugly rumor - about how old Nvidia cards age badly. Nvidia fans that do have a good modern Nvidia card, also need a 1080 Ti killer, because not only Nvidia cards, but also GSync monitor prices are staying high, if not increasing. I was looking at the latest 34UC89G-B from LG. $1000. The equivalent 34UC79G with FreeSync, that was out in last September, but have almost identical specs, had a starting price of $700. We are talking about $300 difference. And considering that now sells for under $600, the difference is over $400. It's only one model but it seems that as long as AMD doesn't have hi end gaming cards, Nvidia fans needing a hi end GSync monitor, would have to pay much more for that GSync tech, compared to the past. Everyone NEEDS a 1080 Ti killer.

 

[RejZoR]

Then why has Raja been saying "wait for faster RX Vega" when gaming was in question? Surely, full fat, 16GB HBM2 would be a better option for games no matter what. And yet, that's not the case. So, clearly there is some sort of difference that makes otherwise superior product inferior for gaming. But apparently bunch of randoms online know more than AMD itself about yet unreleased product. Which makes everyone barking at how poor Vega is even more hilarious...

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

Seems like tiled based rasterizer is off and fallback (intermediate rasterizer) gets activated, because tests produced same images on Vega FE as on Fiji cards.

This is actually huge news, if true.

 

[notb]

They think us saying "lets wait for actual RX Vega and see" is more ignorant then their baseless pissing on entire Vega lineup based off Vega FE alone. XD

But why wait for "actual RX Vega"? Is this one some beta variant for testers? I used to think it's a final product with some target user group in mind.
If you call it a professional card - fine. But it's not very good at professional tasks as well - often loosing significantly to a "pure gaming" (your words!) Titan Xp.
And it uses more power, runs at higher temperature and make more noise.

Is there anything that this card does well?
(other than being better than previous AMD offerings, so it should win hearts of die-hard AMD fans...)

 

[BiggieShady]

This is actually huge news, if true.

During PcPer live stream they were running tiled rasterizer test program, I didn't watch so I unfortunately can't confirm it, but I read it in the article comments by the guy who participated in the test

 

[efikkan]

So, tiling and immediate mode is done in hardware and hardware is magically suppose to know which one to use. LOL? Of course this stuff works on hardware level, do you seriously believe that I think it's done in software? The decision making which of these hardware implementations are used is however done in SOFTWARE. And clearly, AMD has massive issues with drivers at the moment. So, which part of it you don't understand now?

Switching between tiling and immediate mode is done in hardware, and it can be done many times during rendering of a single frame. The driver can only tell the GPU which options it's allowed to use, not decide which instruction should be executed in which mode. And as I've told you, if tiled mode have problems(as you hinted at) then that has to be fixed in the hardware, this is outside the realm of what tweaking in a driver is able to do.

Low-level scheduling is after all not controlled by the driver. The GPU itself controls assigning the workloads to various GPU clusters, fetch data/textures, etc. The driver only sees queues of operations, while the GPU scheduler balanced the load, handles resource dependencies/hazards, etc. It is in fact kind of analogous to what your OS kernel sees in the CPU; it sends a chain of instructions, which the CPU's prefetcher decodes, executes out of order, optimizes, prefetches, guesses branches, etc. You can never do this sort of stuff in software, since this has to be completed in clock cycles, which means on a ns scale. The same is true for GPUs, it's just even more sensitive there, if they were to be tightly managed by the CPU the overhead would be huge. If something doesn't work right in the hardware, then the driver can't fix this, it can only enable/disable feature sets, and of course not in real time.

Then why has Raja been saying "wait for faster RX Vega" when gaming was in question? Surely, full fat, 16GB HBM2 would be a better option for games no matter what.

It's called PR bullshit, and everyone does it. The only thing which will happen between now and RX Vega is minor driver tweaks, and of course AMD trying to get a couple of game developers to "optimize" for their hardware so they can claim it shows the "true potential".

I think that "FE is not a gaming card" argument is baseless. The card does come with a gaming mode and the card is also meant for developers of games. So, how helpful is to a game developer, to create a game on FE and then while testing that game on FE, to get a completely false indication about how that game would run on an equivalent RX model?

Exactly, Vega FE would be useless for development if it performed vastly different from consumer cards.

If RX Vega hits 1700MHz stable, then I guess we will be looking at a power hungry card that would offer at least performance somewhere between 1080 and 1080Ti. If there are some features in the cards, both RX and FE, that are not yet enabled, features that could offer higher performance, then and only then we could see a 1080 Ti competitor, and why not a 1080 Ti killer. The market needs a 1080 Ti killer…

Yes, and considering Volta will arrive next year and Navi will arrive roughly a year after that, AMD needs to at least compete well with the upcoming GV104 to even be relevant.

 

[RejZoR]

But why wait for "actual RX Vega"? Is this one some beta variant for testers? I used to think it's a final product with some target user group in mind.
If you call it a professional card - fine. But it's not very good at professional tasks as well - often loosing significantly to a "pure gaming" (your words!) Titan Xp.
And it uses more power, runs at higher temperature and make more noise.

Is there anything that this card does well?
(other than being better than previous AMD offerings, so it should win hearts of die-hard AMD fans...)

This is VEGA FE. It doesn't have RX in front like the GAMING one will. But whatever, right?

I've never seen such abundant ignorance when NVIDIA had anything delayed or released in different than usual manner. But for Vega, everyone is freaking out with such illogical BS it's making my head hurt real badly.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

Waits for paper launch of cards

We waited 2 years to wait 29 days to be told to wait some more. And I say "we waited" after I bought a 1080. I will buy a Vega card if it turns out to put up the numbers, if not, no big deal 1080tis will be a bit cheaper by then. Hell, a 1080 can probably be had for sub $500 already, I got mine for $520ish.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

People are not defending VEGA; they are amused of ignorance of people like you. Sorry to be harsh but thats basically what it comes down to. FE is not made for gaming per say. (AMD have even said so), so anyone thinking that it performancewise will resemble the RX VEGA's price/performance is going to do a TITAN on themselves. So either you are a troll or just super badly informed. There are so many unknowns and it looks like RX vega will actually be able to perform as hoped, giving 1080Ti a run for its money (asuming they can price it right)

If it performs way better than the 1080 they will price it higher but at a better dollar/performance ratio. But wait until we have ANY actual information of performance (again you can see from the "test" that it by no means can be taken as an indicator of another card for gaming.)

Holy smokes, you guys make too much sense, use too much logic and your lack of jumping to conclusions should get you banned from this thread

 

[notb]

This is VEGA FE. It doesn't have RX in front like the GAMING one will. But whatever, right?

OK, you've said its a professional card, not a gaming one. I actually agree.
Once again: what is this card good at? Why would anyone choose it over a Titan Xp?

From pro.radeon.com/en-us/product/radeon-vega-frontier-edition/
"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."

So I'm not really into game development or even hardcore gaming, but wouldn't it make sense for game-development GPU to perform similarly to the best gaming one from same generation? Especially if it's meant to be used for "playtesting" and "performance optimization".

Also, after going through the Vega description, I have to point something out.
I've been following PC stuff development for quite a while now (possibly longer than many TPU forum users live) and I don't think I've ever seen such a marketing BS. :-/
"
Be first. Be the Pioneer.
The Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition Story
Who are the pioneers? They are the ones who have cured diseases and strengthened our bodies. They work to heal our planet and explore new ones. They work to undo mankind’s mistakes and protect the next generation from making them again. Harnessing science to fuel creativity, and employing creativity to drive science. They pursue an unerring, unwavering path towards their goals. There are no barriers, no compromises. They are people who see boundaries as starting lines, and who risk everything in pursuit of innovation. They are the early adopters, the people whose passion is to pursue what is new and different. Their achievements won’t be measured in days, weeks or even years. They’ll be measured in centuries.
"

 

[RejZoR]

It's good at things that you'd otherwise need a $3000+ Quadro...

 

[deu]

Holy smokes, you guys make too much sense, use too much logic and your lack of jumping to conclusions should get you banned from this thread

Thanks! Someone have to try!

 

[deu]

I think that "FE is not a gaming card" argument is baseless. The card does come with a gaming mode and the card is also meant for developers of games. So, how helpful is to a game developer, to create a game on FE and then while testing that game on FE, to get a completely false indication about how that game would run on an equivalent RX model? It would always look performing poorly. And why is that? Because the FE is not for gaming? It doesn't make sense to me. Also it will be a first seeing huge performance penalties on a (let's say) semi pro card. I mean from under 1080Ti on an RX, dropping to under 1080 performance on a FE, it's a ridiculously big gap. Add to that that the developer had payed 300 to 500 dollars more and it only gets worst.

AMD delayed Vega RX as much as it could. I mean, there where half a dozen events where they could introduce this card, and they chose Siggraph that has nothing to do with gaming? Obviously the choice had to do with dates. Siggraph was the last one on the list. So, it seems they are not ready yet. In my opinion, if someone was benchmarking an RX Vega TODAY, the performance of RX Vega would have been about the same as FE, if they where running at the same frequency. If RX Vega hits 1700MHz stable, then I guess we will be looking at a power hungry card that would offer at least performance somewhere between 1080 and 1080Ti. If there are some features in the cards, both RX and FE, that are not yet enabled, features that could offer higher performance, then and only then we could see a 1080 Ti competitor, and why not a 1080 Ti killer.

The market needs a 1080 Ti killer. Nvidia fans need a 1080 Ti killer, more than anyone else. Nvidia fans not having a modern Nvidia card need to go to the latest models, because we all know - or at least heard that ugly rumor - about how old Nvidia cards age badly. Nvidia fans that do have a good modern Nvidia card, also need a 1080 Ti killer, because not only Nvidia cards, but also GSync monitor prices are staying high, if not increasing. I was looking at the latest 34UC89G-B from LG. $1000. The equivalent 34UC79G with FreeSync, that was out in last September, but have almost identical specs, had a starting price of $700. We are talking about $300 difference. And considering that now sells for under $600, the difference is over $400. It's only one model but it seems that as long as AMD doesn't have hi end gaming cards, Nvidia fans needing a hi end GSync monitor, would have to pay much more for that GSync tech, compared to the past. Everyone NEEDS a 1080 Ti killer.

1. Raja said loud and clear: the GPU is NOT FOR GAMING. Gamers should wait for RX VEGA. Is there any information that proves anything other than the two card will not be the 100% same card as alot of people i this thread already treats them?
2. Assuming that a contencreator using etc. maya performance is will get preportional performance ingame is like saying that render perf should be equal to gaming performance. (Im pretty sure that you agree that that is not the case)
3. It may be possible that the RX Vega is 1:1 with the FE (but we dont know), so presenting that as a fact (as alot of people do), based off of their possitive/negativeness towards AMD is not a solid argument for the performance. There is so many unknowns that people are ignoring (again guessing based off of their own "knowledge".
4. We can all agree that a 1080Ti killer would be nice but I would argue that that is not what VEGA is. VEGA is a solid step into a WAY longer strategy using HBM2 new chip design new (almost everything) What we need is a card that can perform like a 1080+ but at a competive price. Right now I run all games on my 1440p monitor with a 1070 (and it will be enough for 95% of the gamers out there). The problem is that not 95% wanna spent that much money on a 1070+ card let alone a 1440 144 hz monitor so they are the 95% under it. THATS what AMD is targeting. with 460/470/480 they made a huge push to Nvidia's pricing, with VEGA they should hopefully force Nvidia to do the same again, but Nvidia can push out binned 1080Ti-chips out and with a few improvements win the crown, but the crown is the 1% the rest is where the money is. A RX VEGA will push a 1440p in current games to the needs IMO. The 4K monitors with either gsync/freesync is still a 95%+ thing (ALOT of people are still sitting on a 1080 60 hz screen.) Would I like RX VEGA to beat 1080Ti? sure but its not what its for. Its for reclaiming market and pushing new technology; kinda like Ryzen is; it doesnt win the "gamingcrown" but still it is selling like butter to almost every regment due to price performance.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I think that "FE is not a gaming card" argument is baseless.

You missed the fact that AMD said it wasnt a gaming card. Most of your arguments are as delusional as this statement.

 

[efikkan]

You missed the fact that AMD said it wasnt a gaming card. Most of your arguments are as delusional as this statement.

No, you missed the part that AMD said it was the ultimate gaming card:

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.

And we're just going to continue knocking down your BS with AMD's own words.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

No, you missed the part that AMD said it was the ultimate gaming card:

And we're just going to continue knocking down your BS with AMD's own words.

You're talking shit quite frankly, they and I'm quoting your quote said... "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" where in there does it say it's the ultimate gaming card, where in there does it say it has to beat the GTX 1080/ti? basically say's it will enable dev's to create and test content creation with one solution, is it really that hard to comprehend?

Your trolling and assuming that Vega FE will be representative of RX Vega in gaming is either plain ignorance or fanboyism/AMD hatred or a mixture of both. Do you not think that AMD know's exactly how FE and RX will perform compared to each other yet still decided to release the FE knowing it's gaming performance is lacking, hang on scratch that, why would they develop Vega at all for 2+ years and $$$$$'s of R+D costs knowing that based on FE gaming results it's no better than Fury X, heck even if they tweaked polaris with higher clocks/TDP it would be on the same level, so why didn't they just do that? Not too mention you don't even know RX Vega release specs/clocks etc but hey why let facts or reasoning get in the way of a good ol' fashioned fanboy witchhunt

 

[john_]

1. Raja said loud and clear: the GPU is NOT FOR GAMING. Gamers should wait for RX VEGA. Is there any information that proves anything other than the two card will not be the 100% same card as alot of people i this thread already treats them?
2. Assuming that a contencreator using etc. maya performance is will get preportional performance ingame is like saying that render perf should be equal to gaming performance. (Im pretty sure that you agree that that is not the case)
3. It may be possible that the RX Vega is 1:1 with the FE (but we dont know), so presenting that as a fact (as alot of people do), based off of their possitive/negativeness towards AMD is not a solid argument for the performance. There is so many unknowns that people are ignoring (again guessing based off of their own "knowledge".
4. We can all agree that a 1080Ti killer would be nice but I would argue that that is not what VEGA is. VEGA is a solid step into a WAY longer strategy using HBM2 new chip design new (almost everything) What we need is a card that can perform like a 1080+ but at a competive price. Right now I run all games on my 1440p monitor with a 1070 (and it will be enough for 95% of the gamers out there). The problem is that not 95% wanna spent that much money on a 1070+ card let alone a 1440 144 hz monitor so they are the 95% under it. THATS what AMD is targeting. with 460/470/480 they made a huge push to Nvidia's pricing, with VEGA they should hopefully force Nvidia to do the same again, but Nvidia can push out binned 1080Ti-chips out and with a few improvements win the crown, but the crown is the 1% the rest is where the money is. A RX VEGA will push a 1440p in current games to the needs IMO. The 4K monitors with either gsync/freesync is still a 95%+ thing (ALOT of people are still sitting on a 1080 60 hz screen.) Would I like RX VEGA to beat 1080Ti? sure but its not what its for. Its for reclaiming market and pushing new technology; kinda like Ryzen is; it doesnt win the "gamingcrown" but still it is selling like butter to almost every regment due to price performance.

1. Well, Raja is NOT Huang. Huang would say "You know, we have an ultra expensive card called Titan which is also good for games. We are going to release a Ti card in 3 months that would perform the same in games for $300 less, but be a nice fanboy and go and buy out Titan card because we love your money and extremely high profit margins". Raja on the other hand says "Don't bother with FE. RX is just around the corner. It will be cheaper, probably clocked higher and the gaming card you are looking for. No reason to go and spent $300-$500 more".
Raja saying that the FE card is not for gaming, doesn't mean that FE is bad in gaming. Just that there is no reason to go and pay for extra pro features in drivers, that are useless in games. He is just more honest.

Also, no one says that those two cards will be 100% identical. RX will have probably higher frequencies and maybe better cooling solution. I wouldn't be surprised if the RX is at the same level of performance, or a little better if clocked higher, compared to the liquid version of FE. Now, if AMD manages also to enable some features that are now disabled in the next days, features that increase performance in games, those features will become available to the FE card also, improving it's performance in games. You'll see that, if it happens.

2. I am not sure what you try to say here, but no one is judging a card's gaming performance based on the performance it has in pro applications. Also no one comes to conclusions about gaming performance, based on the performance in pro applications. So your example here is wrong. No one cambares oranges with apples.

3. If you don't like an assumption, that doesn't mean that people who believe that this assumption is closer to the truth, are negative to AMD. I would not point you to my system specs(3 AMD PCs) to see if I am positive or negative towards AMD, I would just suggest to you to look my older posts. Believe me. You are not a bigger AMD fan than me.

4. I was always saying that Vega was meant to fight 1080 and beat it. But Vega was delayed and every time Nvidia was coming out wth a new high end GPU, people where assuming that Vega will go against that new GPU. Not AMD's fault. On the other hand AMD enjoyed this speculation and never came out to clarify which card from the competition was it's target.
As for the rest you write, I will only say one thing. Having the fastest cards, helps to sell many mid/low end cards, even when the competition is offering better models.

You missed the fact that AMD said it wasnt a gaming card. Most of your arguments are as delusional as this statement.

No it's not a gaming card, it's just a card that offers a gaming mode and also is targeting developers of games. How could I misunderstood that?
Thank you for your wisdom.

 

[rtwjunkie]

No, you missed the part that AMD said it was the ultimate gaming card:

And we're just going to continue knocking down your BS with AMD's own words.

Actually, look more closely at what they said. You are putting words in AMD's mouth. They basically said that devs can use this card from development thru testing without having to switch out cards when testing.