It Can't Run Crysis: Radeon Instinct MI60 Only Supports Linux

[btarunr]

AMD recently announced the Radeon Instinct MI60, a GPU-based data-center compute processor with hardware virtualization features. It takes the crown for "the world's first 7 nm GPU." The company also put out specifications of the "Vega 20" GPU it's based on: 4,096 stream processors, 4096-bit HBM2 memory interface, 1800 MHz engine clock-speed, 1 TB/s memory bandwidth, 7.4 TFLOP/s peak double-precision (FP64) performance, and the works. Here's the kicker: the company isn't launching this accelerator with Windows support. At launch, AMD is only releasing x86-64 Linux drivers, with API support for OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.0, and OpenCL 2.0, along with AMD's ROCm open ecosystem. The lack of display connector already disqualifies this card for most workstation applications, but with the lack of Windows support, it is also the most expensive graphics card that "can't run Crysis." AMD could release Radeon Pro branded graphics cards based on "Vega 20," which will ship with Windows and MacOS drivers.



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[Kamgusta]

You can play Crysis in Linux using Wine.
So, yeah, it can play Crysis, after all.

 

[Patriot]

Supports hardware virtualization, can totally play crysis

 

[lexluthermiester]

@btarunr
You had to know the flack you were gonna get with this article. And to be fair, there are many ways to run Windows based software on Linux. And to suppose the Windows support isn't incoming might be a tad naive. Delayed, maybe, but non-existent? I'll believe that when AMD confirms it.

 

[Patriot]

@btarunr
You had to know the flack you were gonna get with this article. And to be fair, there are many ways to run Windows based software on Linux. And to suppose the Windows support isn't incoming might be a tad naive. Delayed, maybe, but non-existent? I'll believe that when AMD confirms it.

You mean the prorender cards based on it they showed earlier in the year? Yeah, vega 7nm has windows support, for the instinct60/50 it doesn't much matter.

 

[qubit]

Are AMD expecting this card to only be used in supercomputers, which normally don't run Windows? Seems a risky move to make to cut out Windows support.

 

[Vayra86]

Gaming and datacenter product in the same article.

Was that really necessary? It's really starting to become quite annoying, these silly references with AMD GPUs. And they don't help the utter state of confusion for some around Vega 20 either.

 

[m4dn355]

TPU and fellow members should put the Crysis reference to rest. Amen

 

[bug]

Are AMD expecting this card to only be used in supercomputers, which normally don't run Windows? Seems a risky move to make to cut out Windows support.

Are you implying AMD don't know their customers?

 

[HTC]

Are AMD expecting this card to only be used in supercomputers, which normally don't run Windows? Seems a risky move to make to cut out Windows support.

The problem with Windows is the licensing costs because Windows does it on a per certain-amount-of-cores basis and Linux does not: it's that simple.

In the supercomputer world, you generally have thousands of CPUs and / or GPUs and the licensing costs are staggering in these situations if using Windows.

 

[bug]

The problem with Windows is the licensing costs because Windows does it on a per certain-amount-of-cores basis and Linux does not: it's that simple.

In the supercomputer world, you generally have thousands of CPUs and / or GPUs and the licensing costs are staggering in these situations if using Windows.

Not to mention with Linux being open source you can customize everything down to the OS to fit your needs. Which in supercomputing tend to get quite specific.

You can play Crysis in Linux using Wine.
So, yeah, it can play Crysis, after all.

Does Wine come with display outputs now?

 

[Valantar]

Does Wine come with display outputs now?

Steam Play does. No official Crysis support, but no doubt that'll arrive soon.

Still, this whole "OMG OH NOES this datacenter product isn't for gamers OMG OMG AMD hates gamers!!!!11!!1!" stuff is getting too old, it ought to be put out to pasture a long time ago.

 

[Frick]

TPU and fellow members should put the Crysis reference to rest. Amen

Yes, but not because of age but rather because Crysis was very forgiving when you dialed back the settings. It was only on the highest settings it became properly brutal on the hardware.

 

[qubit]

The problem with Windows is the licensing costs because Windows does it on a per certain-amount-of-cores basis and Linux does not: it's that simple.

In the supercomputer world, you generally have thousands of CPUs and / or GPUs and the licensing costs are staggering in these situations if using Windows.

So you're saying that the licensing costs would outweigh extra sales of the cards? I don't have any numbers to make a proper judgement, but it doesn't seem right to me. Dunno.

 

[HTC]

So you're saying that the licensing costs would outweigh extra sales of the cards? I don't have any numbers to make a proper judgement, but it doesn't seem right to me. Dunno.

No, but i'm saying it favors Linux / other OSes instead of Windows because of licensing costs: that is regardless of the number of CPUs / GPUs used in the supercomputer in question.

Micro$oft is still operating "in the past" with the way they manage licensing and that forces customers that have high core / thread counts to look for alternatives: the higher the core counts, the more they are driven away from Windows and unless whatever is needed to run on the supercomputer only runs on Windows, they'll look for other OSes.

 

[Aquinus]

Isn't this kind of like buying a 2P Xeon server with a ton of cores and not very high clock speeds then complaining about it not running games well?

It's a GPU that's not intended for playing games, so why do you people even care?

 

[Vayra86]

Still, this whole "OMG OH NOES this datacenter product isn't for gamers OMG OMG AMD hates gamers!!!!11!!1!" stuff is getting too old, it ought to be put out to pasture a long time ago.

Exactly, its quite next level to see staff doing subtle flamebaits.

And not in a good way, and it happens in nearly every piece @btarunr puts out, editorial or not. What happened to just reporting the news?

Isn't this kind of like buying a 2P Xeon server with a ton of cores and not very high clock speeds then complaining about it not running games well?

It's a GPU that's not intended for playing games, so why do you people even care?

See above. There was no reason to put the title it had, and it was obvious this was going to happen because of it. Hell, even without it, its hard enough...

 

[Deleted member 158293]

It's not supposed to, bad clickbait post (not really an article).

OTOH Having AMD devote thier resources to their Linux drivers is a *MASSIVE* win for Linux users everywhere!

 

[Vya Domus]

It's a GPU that's not intended for playing games, so why do you people even care?

Hope, desperation, frustration, etc. The current consumer GPU landscape isn't very appealing to most hence the bizarre interest in this.

 

[IceShroom]

Can't we just use the technique which is used for the freesync hack to display image.
(https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...an-be-tricked-to-support-amd-freesync.247162/)

 

[lexluthermiester]

TPU and fellow members should put the Crysis reference to rest. Amen

Not a chance. Crysis is still a relevant performance metric because it still taxes cards even to this day.

 

[jabbadap]

The purpose of this card is to play Crysis not run it... Albeit it should do the both at the same time just fine.

 

[bug]

The purpose of this card is to play Crysis not run it... Albeit it should do the both at the same time just fine.

That wouldn't be much of an achievement since the AI in Crysis is notoriously bad.

 

[lexluthermiester]

That wouldn't be much of an achievement since the AI in Crysis is notoriously bad.

Try playing on the hardest difficulty setting..

 

[bug]

Try playing on the hardest difficulty setting..

Never played it, but it was discussed at length when it was released. It used to resort to tricks like "seeing" you even when cloaked. And there was this video where a guy simply ran in circles and the enemies made a bee line in his wake.

And generally speaking, you get your rear handed to you on higher difficulty settings because the computer gets super-human accuracy and reactions, not because the AI is good or not.