Most companies rate 120 mm as good for 250W+. You can thank Koolance for that.
http://koolance.com/radiator-1-fan-120mm-30-fpi-copper
That one is rated for 400w. ROFL.
At what noise level? If this releases at a $500 price point to compete with the 1080 I expect noise level to match. Not the 50dB that the 290X released with. That gives them numbers of 36dB and 37dB on the reference 1070/1080 to at least equal. The 295X2 being reference with a single 120mm radiator and similar power profile (430w average consumption) it was able to maintain 40-41dB (I do not know the length of time w1zzard runs this test for reference...)
I stand by 150w being a nice safe, silent number. There is a reason I can passively cool my 5960x if notched down to stock clocks.
What denial? LMAO!
Can you read? Most of my posts here center around Vega being a big disappointment so far (And likely overall). But everything I said still stands:
- Vega Frontier's drivers ARE terrible. Learn how to read some reviews, there are bugs everywhere. This is a fact that the drivers are bad, what is opinion is if better drivers will improve performance.
- Although none of us are fortune tellers, it would be idiotic to think performance won't increase by a decent margin considering how bad they are now. In fact GCN 1.0 had gained so much performance from it's 12.11 drivers that TechPowerUp said "The 7870 felt like an entirely different card", and GCN had nowhere near the issues Vega clearly has buddy:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_12.11_Performance/
- If GCN 1.0 could gain 10-20% in the first year, it is not insane to think Vega could gain the same or even more performance considering how big a departure this architecture is. Again, I am not saying Vega will become substantially stronger, but it is not at all crazy to think it could.
- The 980 Ti vs Fury debate is a dead horse. Stop beating it. The only thing I will say is that the Fury X is currently trading blows with the 1070 while the 980 Ti is treading water above he 390X. If you call that a victory, congratulations.
I am going to take this point by point.
How do you rate drivers as bad? Are they crashing, do you have proof that we will see improvement or are you just assuming this?
Vega is just GCN with an elongated pipeline to allow high clockspeed, as well as the addition of an HBC. Neither of those should require a ground up driver rewrite. This is further proven from the usage of a Fury driver from the get go. Consider the GCN 2.1
10-20% which is wishful thinking puts this even with an AIB 1080, which still consumes less than half the power.
980Ti vs Fury debate is awful, more so when you try and make the fury sound better than it is. The reference 980Ti is barely edged out by the fury, which sees no improvement in performance with AIB cards in normal situations.
The AIB model 980Ti's still consistently compete and often best 1070's
There is no such thing as a bad product, just bad pricing
.
Let's assume that indeed Vega is a worst-case-scenario, and it's performance will fall short of what it's spec suggested. If so, I would say this should be the line-up:
- $600 = Fully unlocked and water-cooled Vega. This would be the 1080 Ti competitor (still a little weaker) that trades efficiency for more features and future proofing.
- In general this is just for the AMD fanboys.
- Even if it uses 400w, I think it is imperative AMD has something comparable to the 1080 Ti so that CPU benchmarks sometimes use an AMD card.
- Over time this will likely catch up to the 1080 Ti or higher, but it will take many driver revisions.
- $450 = Fully unlocked (or not?), lower clocked air-cooled Vega. This would narrowly beat the 1080 (Or trade blows) while using 250 - 300w.
- This is the card AMD needs to nail perfectly. Most people don't buy uber graphics cards, and something at this caliber is sorely needed at a lower price point.
- Paired with a Freesync monitor this would be a very attractive alternative to Nvidia's high-end cards.
- The fact that you could crossfire 3 of these for around the same price as a Titan Xp would be a big selling point.
- $350= Cut down, lower clocked, 4GB Vega. This is the card that beats the 1070 for a tad less money.
- A very important gap to fill between the RX 580 and RX Vega cards.
- I would expect 8GB and Nano variants.
- It would be sweet if they could make a GDDR5 version to further reduce price, but I know that won't happen.
^^^I know this is a long-shot, but I feel this is what's required to even have a chance of competing. Nvidia can surely drop prices by $50 across their entire line-up, and a minor Pascal refresh could be out by December (Or a 12nm refresh by Spring 2018). Plus even at these aggressive prices AMD would still be profiting some on each card.
Long shot is a nice way to put "not going to bloody happen"