AMD Says Vega is "On Track" for Q2 2017 Release

[Raevenlord]

During its Q1 reports for fiscal year 2017 (which saw AMD's stock tumbling about, even if this Q1 only considers a single Ryzen sales-month on its accounts), AMD CEO Lisa Su referred that AMD's high-performance Vega architecture is still on track for a Q2 2017 release. The words, specifically, are these: "AMD's "Vega" GPU architecture is on track to launch in Q2, and has been designed from scratch to address the most data- and visually-intensive next-generation workloads with key architecture advancements including: a differentiated memory subsystem, next-generation geometry pipeline, new compute engine, and a new pixel engine."

So yes, AMD confirms what we suspected. This leaves a launch time-frame for Vega products until, at most, the end of June. Confirmation after confirmation, it's still a long time to wait, if you'll ask me, with little to no information in the last few months. But it's better than nothing, and I'd much prefer a real launch with retail availability than a glorified paper launch. Here's hoping Vega answers our questions and our needs. It's been a long time coming already.



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[64K]

My guess is a launch during Computex 5/30 - 6/03.

But, yeah, it does seem like we've been waiting forever for Vega to drop. Not too much longer now.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Ever since Polaris unimpressed anyway.

I hope it's not a paper launch but I'm expecting a paper launch.

 

[birdie]

NVIDIA can only dream of such amounts of free PR/publicity while continuously overpromising and underperforming. Yeah, most people tend to root for the underdog but the amount of rumors/speculations/predictions that AMD is getting in regard to its future products is simply staggering. I wonder how AMD has managed to achieve that.

 

[RejZoR]

I wish Vega will rock the gaming world so hard I'll piss my pants by laughing at all you perpetual skeptics...

 

[xkm1948]

I wish Vega will rock the gaming world so hard I'll piss my pants by laughing at all you perpetual skeptics...

I am gonna mark this and come back later to discuss.

I hope VEGA does well. No competetion is bad.

 

[PLSG08]

I'll be honest I'm not expecting much from Vega performance wise, I don't think it'll be faster than a stock 1080.

But if It's priced at around $350~400 that's nearly as fast as the GTX 1080 then I think we have a winner. Hopefully this'll bring healthy competition back to the GPU side of things.

 

[erocker]

NVIDIA can only dream of such amounts of free PR/publicity while continuously overpromising and underperforming. Yeah, most people tend to root for the underdog but the amount of rumors/speculations/predictions that AMD is getting in regard to its future products is simply staggering. I wonder how AMD has managed to achieve that.

By not releasing products nearly as quickly as the competition, its become more of an event when they actually do release something that is something actually new and not some rehash of a previous product.

 

[Hood]

NVIDIA can only dream of such amounts of free PR/publicity while continuously overpromising and underperforming. Yeah, most people tend to root for the underdog but the amount of rumors/speculations/predictions that AMD is getting in regard to its future products is simply staggering. I wonder how AMD has managed to achieve that.

You said it yourself - by continuously over-promising and under-performing (which generates gobs of click-bait). The over-promising gives AMD fans great hope, and (temporary, false) "bragging rights", then the under-performing gives Intel fans the right to say "see, I told you it was all hype", generating another surge of click-bait articles and forum posts. Even if the take-away is negative overall, it's all publicity, and better than being ignored or ridiculed, as in the past decade.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

You said it yourself - by continuously over-promising and under-performing (which generates gobs of click-bait). The over-promising gives AMD fans great hope, and (temporary, false) "bragging rights", then the under-performing gives Intel fans the right to say "see, I told you it was all hype", generating another surge of click-bait articles and forum posts. Even if the take-away is negative overall, it's all publicity, and better than being ignored or ridiculed, as in the past decade.

They haven't been ignored over the last decade or they wouldn't still be in business, I've had Phenom 2 x2 (unlocked to x4, a proper "x4" as well as numerous AMD cards: 5770 + CrossfireX/HD 7950/Hd 7970/RX 290/RX290x all of which at the time and the cost where good buys, AMD's biggest fuck up imo was bulldozer, that caused more harm than any radeon or phenom product in the last 10 years imo

 

[sergionography]

NVIDIA can only dream of such amounts of free PR/publicity while continuously overpromising and underperforming. Yeah, most people tend to root for the underdog but the amount of rumors/speculations/predictions that AMD is getting in regard to its future products is simply staggering. I wonder how AMD has managed to achieve that.

Honestly I dont believe amd is or was ever an underdog in GPUs. Its always been a back and forth battle trading blows. Its only with pascal that nvidia had an edge in performance but before that amd competed in every segment. also amd has a history of using multiple architectures in one generation which is a different approach than nvidia but is not uncommon but for that reason i mostly in the past ended up buying nvidia whem getting mid range cards, but went amd if i had the budgetto buy their new architecture. For example in the hd6000 series amd used vliw5 for anything below hd6800 series, and vliw4 for 6900 series

 

[Hood]

They haven't been ignored over the last decade or they wouldn't still be in business, I've had Phenom 2 x2 (unlocked to x4, a proper "x4" as well as numerous AMD cards: 5770 + CrossfireX/HD 7950/Hd 7970/RX 290/RX290x all of which at the time and the cost where good buys, AMD's biggest fuck up imo was bulldozer, that caused more harm than any radeon or phenom product in the last 10 years imo

Ignored by the press, not their die-hard customer base (we were talking about PR/publicity).

 

[sergionography]

I'll be honest I'm not expecting much from Vega performance wise, I don't think it'll be faster than a stock 1080.

But if It's priced at around $350~400 that's nearly as fast as the GTX 1080 then I think we have a winner. Hopefully this'll bring healthy competition back to the GPU side of things.

1. It wont be priced 350-400$ because no conpany in their right mind would tape out a new chip using hbm2 to aim for such a price target. If that was the target limit then hbm wouldve been the first trade off
2. A 4096 core fury x with 1050mhz clock performs inline with a 1070. So if you think amd would tape out a whole new chip for an extra 15-20% performance then i would think twice.
3. If vega was to use the same exact architecture as fury x with anywhere between 1250-1500mhz then you would have a 25-50% extra throughput/performance.

So to summarize i think at the worst case scenario the highest end vega would perform between 1080 and 1080ti, or basically around 50% faster than furyx. And at the best case scenario if we assume the architecture is a solid improvement in per core/shader performance then we could end up with a card twice as fast as furyx

 

[m1dg3t]

This 'news' doesn't surprise me, they have said this already. I guess because it's from Dr.Su that makes it 100%

The majority of 'hype' is/has been created by the community. Bulldozer was a disappointment but it is still a very serviceable CPU, especially when used with software that makes use of its capabilities. That is the major problem with AMD IMHO, because they are always trying new things the software doesn't leverage all of their capabilities. I'm not talking about just proprietary stuff but all software, hopefully that continues to improve and we can see the vision realized. Then we'd get to see if AMD really is at any clock disadvantage.

What fun is OCing when all you have to do is set your multi & Vcore? They shot themselves in the foot with Fury because they said too much too soon and nVidia was quick to respond with the 980ti, forcing AMD to release it practically @ max, we all seen how well the Nano does. At least we got HBM & stock LC @ that price point. The 480 is a great card, destroys the 380 by giving us ~390 performance for cheaper and using less power. Now you can even flash most of them to 580s for more performance! First you could DL RAM with them, now you can BIOS flash and get a 'NEW' card

We shouldn't give them so much flack for rebranding either, it's common practice in business and they are competing against both Intel & nVidia with substantially lower budget. It's a wonder to me how they continue to innovate and produce new products the way they do.

No competetion is bad.

Make competition, vote with your wallet. That is how the free market works. Are AMDs products so 'bad' that they are unusable?

 

[m1dg3t]

My guess is a launch during Computex 5/30 - 6/03.

But, yeah, it does seem like we've been waiting forever for Vega to drop. Not too much longer now.

Seems like the majority are still waiting for their balls to drop. Not too much longer now.

I'll be honest I'm not expecting much from Vega performance wise, I don't think it'll be faster than a stock 1080.

But if It's priced at around $350~400 that's nearly as fast as the GTX 1080 then I think we have a winner. Hopefully this'll bring healthy competition back to the GPU side of things.

So unless you get 1080 performance for 1070 price it's a fail? Are AMDs GPUs not useable, what can't you do with an AMD card that you can with an nVidia?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I'll be honest I'm not expecting much from Vega performance wise, I don't think it'll be faster than a stock 1080.

But if It's priced at around $350~400 that's nearly as fast as the GTX 1080 then I think we have a winner. Hopefully this'll bring healthy competition back to the GPU side of things.

The issue with this idea is costs. Vega is a big chip, and uses expensive HBM. As we saw with fury, this tech is more expensive then GDDR. If AMD is forced to sell these chips at $400 just to be competitive, then AMD isnt going to make the margins they need to compete. And given that nvidia drew in record revenue off of pascal, they could easily lower the price of the long-paid-off 1070 and 1080 to drive AMD into a corner. There will certainly be competition, but I wouldnt call it healthy by a long shot. Healthy would insinuate a 7970vs680 scenario, where both companies are going head to head. This year to 18 month lag AMD is on only benefits nvidia in the long run.

I have to feel bad for AMD's engineers, being hamstrung by tiny budgets. I dont feel that bad for AMD though. They dug this hole themselves.

 

[Hood]

Seems like the majority are still waiting for their balls to drop. Not too much longer now.



So unless you get 1080 performance for 1070 price it's a fail? Are AMDs GPUs not useable, what can't you do with an AMD card that you can with an nVidia?

Gsync. You asked...

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

So unless you get 1080 performance for 1070 price it's a fail? Are AMDs GPUs not useable, what can't you do with an AMD card that you can with an nVidia?

It wouldnt have been a fail if VEGA came out last year, when pascal came out.

VEGA is coming out a year late, to a saturated market. Consumers dont have unlimited patience, and those who were willing to pay for performance already bought 1080s. Those that have waited are waiting for lower prices.

If VEGA comes out, with the same performance/cost of a 1080, AMD wont sell many. That ship has sailed. AMD has to give us a reason to buy a card that hangs out with year old cards and will most likely have the perf/watt of three year old ones if polaris is anything to go by. If AMD cant deliver more performance, all they have is cost cutting.

 

[m1dg3t]

Gsync. You asked...

FREE sync, you smart.

 

[m1dg3t]

It wouldnt have been a fail if VEGA came out last year, when pascal came out.

VEGA is coming out a year late, to a saturated market. Consumers dont have unlimited patience, and those who were willing to pay for performance already bought 1080s. Those that have waited are waiting for lower prices.

If VEGA comes out, with the same performance/cost of a 1080, AMD wont sell many. That ship has sailed. AMD has to give us a reason to buy a card that hangs out with year old cards and will most likely have the perf/watt of three year old ones if polaris is anything to go by. If AMD cant deliver more performance, all they have is cost cutting.

How is it late? Have we moved to Q3 already? I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your post.

 

[m1dg3t]

I have to feel bad for AMD's engineers, being hamstrung by tiny budgets. I dont feel that bad for AMD though. They dug this hole themselves.

Think they asked Intel & nVidia to unleash that anti compete shitstorm on them? They did ask for Bulldozer and the idiots that came along with it though, least they punted them to the curb and have given us Ryzen.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

It wouldnt have been a fail if VEGA came out last year, when pascal came out.

VEGA is coming out a year late, to a saturated market. Consumers dont have unlimited patience, and those who were willing to pay for performance already bought 1080s. Those that have waited are waiting for lower prices.

If VEGA comes out, with the same performance/cost of a 1080, AMD wont sell many. That ship has sailed. AMD has to give us a reason to buy a card that hangs out with year old cards and will most likely have the perf/watt of three year old ones if polaris is anything to go by. If AMD cant deliver more performance, all they have is cost cutting.

It's not a fail, it's not been released yet..... well maybe in your mind it is
If it comes out with 1080/1080i performance at $50 less it's a win, they don't have to sell you it at the same price as a 1070 and they wont. iirc AMD set the current price/performance with the RX 480 which was as good as/better than a 970 at $100 cheaper, and guess what? NVIDIA had to drop 970's to $200 and sell the 1060 at the same price range so NVIDIA fans(fanboys) should be thanking AMD for driving down the ridiculous prices of NV cards compared to their relative performance!

Gsync. You asked...

Hmmmmm do I go freesync which is an open standard and doesnt require me to pay a premium or Gsync which is closed and comparable moniters demand a $100 premium over freesync, tough choice, I'll have to get back to you on that one

 

[cryohellinc]

I have high hopes for Vega and sincerely hope that earlier "leaks" of benchmarks on it, were on some underclocked / unoptimised engineering sample.

Vega HAS to do the trick, otherwise Nvidia's Volta will be yet another overpriced card.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

How is it late? Have we moved to Q3 already? I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your post.

It's late in that nvidia had this performance level a whole year ago. The PC world moves fast. Coming out a year after your competitor with a product that only matches their performance (and it is highly unlikely that AMD will be able to match perf/watt or OC capability) for the same price is a great way to make yourself irrelevant.

AMD either needed a bigger polaris to fight the 1070 or needed to release vega. They did neither, and now face a market that already has the performance AMD is offering.

Think they asked Intel & nVidia to unleash that anti compete shitstorm on them? They did ask for Bulldozer and the idiots that came along with it though, least they punted them to the curb and have given us Ryzen.

The failure that was bulldozer/piledriver/steamroller/excavator was a monumental failure, but as much as people want to blame intel/nvidia, AMD did this to themselves.

The core 2 came out in 2006. It took AMD two whole years to strap some L3 cache onto their core design, and they failed at doing even that.

AMD mismanaged the entire ATI aquisition, and payed far too much inthe process. They also failed to properly merge these two separate workforces for almost a decade. They also took nearly as long to finally get ATI's drivers close to nvidia's quality wise, and even then it took nvidia having an attrocious year of releases for it to happen. Even THEN, there are still some long running bugs that have not been fixed.

AMD spent 9 months rebranding their 200 series under the guise of preparing new GPUs to fight nividia, even though they had a newer arch (GCN1.2/tonga) to work with, and plenty of time to implement it. 1.2 was already taped out, they just needed to make more GPUs based on said design. the 300 series proceeded to bomb, resulting in AMD's lowest marketshare in their history of GPUs.

AMD launched a GPU line that was only competitive with 2 year old maxwell chips, and left the mid range, high end, and halo markets completely untouched, allowing nvidia to rake in cash. Even though there were plenty who would buy AMD in sheer spite of nvidia's dodgy business practices, AMD just sat on the tech and did nothing with it. This also cost them most of the dGPU laptop market, another major money maker for nvidia.

AMD sabatoged their entire CPU/APU lineup. After seeing that the construction core was an abysmal failure, they continued to push it, moving their APU line to bulldozer (and wiping out the good momentum Llano made, as bulldozer did terribly in low wattage situations) and allowed OEMS to make abysmally low quality laptops with their chips for years. Then AMD proceeded to claim they just were not going to compete with intel, shaking whatever trust they had left.



Everything up there? all AMD's doing. Not intels, not nvidias, not the illuminatis or gods, AMD's. Intel dug a small hole, AMD made it into a grave and willingly buried itself in it. So yes, I am critical of AMD, because this is a company that has had many great technologies and proceeded to obliterate their own company instead of capitalizing on that tech many times over the last decade. Somehow, I have doubt that a company like this, that has botched launch after launch, can pull off making a VEGA chip that is competitive, especially given their lackluster budget and the splitting of resources between vega and polaris. 3DFX couldnt do it at the height of their power, somehow I feel that a bruised and broken AMD cant do it properly either.

 

[m1dg3t]

It's late in that nvidia had this performance level a whole year ago. The PC world moves fast. Coming out a year after your competitor with a product that only matches their performance (and it is highly unlikely that AMD will be able to match perf/watt or OC capability) for the same price is a great way to make yourself irrelevant.

AMD either needed a bigger polaris to fight the 1070 or needed to release vega. They did neither, and now face a market that already has the performance AMD is offering.


The failure that was bulldozer/piledriver/steamroller/excavator was a monumental failure, but as much as people want to blame intel/nvidia, AMD did this to themselves.

The core 2 came out in 2006. It took AMD two whole years to strap some L3 cache onto their core design, and they failed at doing even that.

AMD mismanaged the entire ATI aquisition, and payed far too much inthe process. They also failed to properly merge these two separate workforces for almost a decade. They also took nearly as long to finally get ATI's drivers close to nvidia's quality wise, and even then it took nvidia having an attrocious year of releases for it to happen. Even THEN, there are still some long running bugs that have not been fixed.

AMD spent 9 months rebranding their 200 series under the guise of preparing new GPUs to fight nividia, even though they had a newer arch (GCN1.2/tonga) to work with, and plenty of time to implement it. 1.2 was already taped out, they just needed to make more GPUs based on said design. the 300 series proceeded to bomb, resulting in AMD's lowest marketshare in their history of GPUs.

AMD launched a GPU line that was only competitive with 2 year old maxwell chips, and left the mid range, high end, and halo markets completely untouched, allowing nvidia to rake in cash. Even though there were plenty who would buy AMD in sheer spite of nvidia's dodgy business practices, AMD just sat on the tech and did nothing with it. This also cost them most of the dGPU laptop market, another major money maker for nvidia.

AMD sabatoged their entire CPU/APU lineup. After seeing that the construction core was an abysmal failure, they continued to push it, moving their APU line to bulldozer (and wiping out the good momentum Llano made, as bulldozer did terribly in low wattage situations) and allowed OEMS to make abysmally low quality laptops with their chips for years. Then AMD proceeded to claim they just were not going to compete with intel, shaking whatever trust they had left.



Everything up there? all AMD's doing. Not intels, not nvidias, not the illuminatis or gods, AMD's. Intel dug a small hole, AMD made it into a grave and willingly buried itself in it. So yes, I am critical of AMD, because this is a company that has had many great technologies and proceeded to obliterate their own company instead of capitalizing on that tech many times over the last decade. Somehow, I have doubt that a company like this, that has botched launch after launch, can pull off making a VEGA chip that is competitive, especially given their lackluster budget and the splitting of resources between vega and polaris. 3DFX couldnt do it at the height of their power, somehow I feel that a bruised and broken AMD cant do it properly either.

HaHa Not even going to bother.