AMD Readies Radeon RX 500X Series Graphics Cards

[Vya Domus]

Because... Navi is supposed to be the next GPU architecture from AMD? And you don't do a refresh of an existing arch when you have an upcoming arch

No , you can do a refresh precisely because of that , it's cheap and effective and it doesn't interfere much with the development of your next product. In case you didn't notice this refresh is only up to the 580X part , in other words the high-end is still open for something else , presumably Vega on 12nm or Navi.

There is absolutely no connection between this and Navi , you are making it up despite having no evidence just so you can get to say this :

- particularly if the existing arch is already crap - unless the upcoming arch is also crap, or late, or...

It's astonishing how people turn baseless assumptions into facts just so they can speculate about something bad in the future with regards to their not so favorite color.

 

[windwhirl]

Because... Navi is supposed to be the next GPU architecture from AMD? And you don't do a refresh of an existing arch when you have an upcoming arch - particularly if the existing arch is already crap - unless the upcoming arch is also crap, or late, or...

Uhmm... AMD used GCN 1 for the Radeon HD 7000/Rx 200/Rx 300 series, GCN 2 for HD 7790/Rx 200/Rx 300 series, GCN 3 for R9 285/Rx 300 Series... lots of rebranding there. If you look at Nvidia, you'll find a similar story there.

It's a common tactic. Polaris may have not been as good as anyone could have wanted, because of the relatively low number of CUs and the memory bandwidth, but it's already proven to work well enough.

 

[R0H1T]

If you can rework Vega's on-die HBM2 design to work with off-die GDDR5/X in a reasonable amount of time, I'm sure AMD would love to hire you. Except for the fact that Vega was deliberately designed to NOT use GDDR because it's a power-hungry chip and GDDR is power-hungry memory, so there is literally zero chance they would bother. Oh, and the fact that Vega is a dead-end architecture...

Vega had a whole year in development before it was released, the first leaks from Zauba IIRC were way back in 2016. Not to mention it's also in Raven Ridge, works with DDR4, so the assumption that it may need a totally reworked controller is flawed IMO. Also what about Vega on 7nm, do you think it's a straight die shrink with no improvements or changes, from the existing design, at all?

 

[EntropyZ]

Oh, a refresh that's this late, they promised die-shrunk VEGA to appear on Q4 2017*. Don't care anymore, an overclocked GTX 1060 pretty much smashes 1920x1080/2560x1080 in DX11 games. I wanted the get the RX580, but it has significantly lower 1% lows on 1080p with some of the games I play and the mining fiasco started. I don't think it's gonna be some kind of miracle and be worth anything over Pascal unless you reeeaaaally need Freesync right now. I wanted to get a Freesync 2 monitor but those are rare and extremely expensive.

I'm running the LG 29UM69G and to be honest. I'm not missing Freesync as it already has some compensation built in. It's not perfect, but it just works.

Better to wait for Turing(*2) at this point. Or die-shrunk VEGA that, maybe, is going to appear for a decent price. Or just snag a 10 series card when the prices drop below MSRP.

Don't expect AMD Navi to come here soon, they're probably saving that for consoles or something... they aren't gonna save us all from the Green Greed team, their market share doesn't seem to satisfy them anymore.

*They are beating a dead horse with VEGA now, it's just Polaris with more power under it and HBM put on it, when you put it in layman's terms. They said it was a completely different architecture, I beg to differ when VEGA seems to handle voltage and power nearly the same way as Polaris and they both get exponentially harder to maintain good temperatures with, unless you undervolt, both architectures seem to have the same roof when it comes to that.

I think there are even tests clock for clock at same base speed where VEGA 56 for example is not much faster than an RX580. VEGA would have only be good if it was undervolted out the box and had a firm price, but that never happened (2nd mining craze).

VEGA reminds me too much of the R9 Fury(X). Which were OK cards for the time.

*2(Nvidia Turing a.k.a Volta with GDDR6 for gaming with no tensor cores, because why would you invest in an architecture millions of dollars and release only 2 GPUs which are only for professional use and not for gaming, even if they are more than thousands of $ a pop. Plus Nvidia is sneaky and trying to distance themselves away from the "Poor Volta" AMD video. So they're not using that name anymore for the next-gen AFAIK.)

Their marketing never ceases to impress.

 

[iO]

I bet they gonna cheap out and its the exact same die with a few more Mhz and 5% higher performance just like the 580 rebrand.

 

[Assimilator]

No , you can do a refresh precisely because of that , it's cheap and effective and it doesn't interfere much with the development of your next product.

I honestly don't think AMD has enough engineering talent and enough budget to concentrate on redesigning existing chips at the same time they need to design a competitive successor. Considering Navi has been pushed back to 2019, it's possible that they're concentrating on redesigns, but that would be a self-defeating choice.

Not to mention it's also in Raven Ridge, works with DDR4, so the assumption that it may need a totally reworked controller is flawed IMO.

Fair enough, but I feel that if it was so easy to couple Vega and GDDR5/X, AMD would have already done it to address the gap between Polaris and Vega.

Also what about Vega on 7nm, do you think it's a straight die shrink with no improvements or changes, from the existing design, at all?

Given how Polaris had no change from 400 to 500 series, yes.

 

[Vayra86]

Oh, a refresh that's this late, they promised die-shrunk VEGA to appear on Q4 2017*. Don't care anymore, an overclocked GTX 1060 pretty much smashes 1920x1080/2560x1080 in DX11 games. I wanted the get the RX580, but it has significantly lower 1% lows on 1080p with some of the games I play and the mining fiasco started. I don't think it's gonna be some kind of miracle and be worth anything over Pascal unless you reeeaaaally need Freesync right now. I wanted to get a Freesync 2 monitor but those are rare and extremely expensive.

I'm running the LG 29UM69G and to be honest. I'm not missing Freesync as it already has some compensation built in. It's not perfect, but it just works.

Better to wait for Turing(*2) at this point. Or die-shrunk VEGA that, maybe, is going to appear for a decent price. Or just snag a 10 series card when the prices drop below MSRP.

*They are beating a dead horse with VEGA now, it's just Polaris with more power under it and HBM put on it, when you put it in layman's terms. They said it was a completely different architecture, I beg to differ when VEGA seems to handle voltage and power nearly the same way as Polaris and they both get exponentially harder to maintain good temperatures with, unless you undervolt, both architectures seem to have the same roof when it comes to that.

I think there are even tests clock for clock at same base speed where VEGA 56 for example is not much faster than an RX580.

*2(Nvidia Turing a.k.a Volta with GDDR6 for gaming with no tensor cores, because why would you invest in an architecture millions of dollars and release only 2 GPUs which are only for professional use and not for gaming, even if they are more than thousands of $ a pop. Plus Nvidia is sneaky and trying to distance themselves away from the "Poor Volta" AMD video. So they're not using that name anymore for the next-gen AFAIK.)

Obviously Vega is just another iteration of GCN just like Polaris. Its still the same core architecture, similar to Nvidia's Kepler>Maxwell>Pascal. Volta is also just another iteration that adds tensor cores for specific segments and further optimizations and tweaks. Back when Nvidia presented the early roadmaps with Maxwell on it, it had much of the technology that was eventually postponed to appear in Pascal such as stacked DRAM. Hence the 'Paxwell' term was born.

So yes, all of that info is fluid and subject to change and a new name does not a new architecture make.

About clock for clock - this may be true but its not a very relevant comparison. Apply that to Pascal and it provides no real information, because the actual clocks are so much higher and another big influence is the shader count that uses this clock, plus the resources around it (ROP, VRAM, etc.).

The distinction here is 'refresh' - which means its not a new iteration of architecture but rather, a refined product based on existing architecture.

 

[EntropyZ]

Obviously Vega is just another iteration of GCN just like Polaris. Its still the same core architecture, similar to Nvidia's Kepler>Maxwell>Pascal. Volta is also just another iteration that adds tensor cores for specific segments and further optimizations and tweaks. Back when Nvidia presented the early roadmaps with Maxwell on it, it had much of the technology that was eventually postponed to appear in Pascal such as stacked DRAM. Hence the 'Paxwell' term was born.

So yes, all of that info is fluid and subject to change and a new name does not a new architecture make.

About clock for clock - this may be true but its not a very relevant comparison. Apply that to Pascal and it provides no real information, because the actual clocks are so much higher and another big influence is the shader count that uses this clock, plus the resources around it (ROP, VRAM, etc.).

That's just it, RTG(AMD) needs that Zen core approach for graphics cards, but its way too early and anyone who buys them would become an early beta tester, as none of the games would be optimized for such a radical change. It's probably not feasible at this point, unless they get process nodes done right and there are hundreds other factors involved. It might reduce the temperature issues but that might be offset by something worse, hell, it would be an interesting time, just as R9 Fury/Nano when it released.

I can just imagine the die shot, would look pretty impressive. The problem would be creating another cooling solution for it, especially if it ran HBM, which drag out the release date of such a thing even longer.

Maybe they're not doing it because multi-GPU cards suck at rendering games properly and efficiently, even drivers play a big part of that working well. I mean they have to have tried to make such a beast at some point to test the concept.

A man can dream, right?

 

[jabbadap]

Generation is a fluid concept. Tonga formally came as part of 200 series but it was really AMD's first 3rd generation GCN GPU. Memory compresson on Tonga was purely a hardware change.

Edit.
And AMD has put the specs in most of the pages now:
570X - 32CU, 2048/??/??, 926/1206 MHz, 4GB GDDR5, 211GB/s. 150W.
560X - 16CU, 1024/??/??, 1090/1200 MHz, 2GB GDDR5, 112 GB/s. 60-80W.
550X - 8CU, 512/32/16, boost 1183 MHz. 50W.

Specs match the current lineup, clocks actually seem a bit lower.
I am assuming (hoping?) these are not final.

So they are not going to use this:

Spoiler: Radeon Vega Mobile

Where is that thing anyway. Amd announced it on CES in January 2018. Haven't seen anything after that.

 

[Vayra86]

So they are not going to use this:

Spoiler: Radeon Vega Mobile

View attachment 99537

Where is that thing anyway. Amd announced it on CES in January 2018. Haven't seen anything after that.

https://www.pcgamer.com/intels-team-up-with-amd-produces-the-fastest-integrated-graphics-ever/

 

[jabbadap]

https://www.pcgamer.com/intels-team-up-with-amd-produces-the-fastest-integrated-graphics-ever/

Technically that is false, kaby lake G has integrated intel graphics(intel HD graphics 630) and discrete Vega via pcie 3.0 x8 bus...

But I don't mean that, Lisa Su herself kept that Radeon Vega Mobile silicon in her hands on CES 2018.

 

[HD64G]

Vega had a whole year in development before it was released, the first leaks from Zauba IIRC were way back in 2016. Not to mention it's also in Raven Ridge, works with DDR4, so the assumption that it may need a totally reworked controller is flawed IMO. Also what about Vega on 7nm, do you think it's a straight die shrink with no improvements or changes, from the existing design, at all?

And people need to remember Ryzen G series with a Vega IGP into it. So, why not a Vega GPU (polaris sized) paired with GDDR5X or even GDDR6 in order to not be great for mining? Wouldn't it be great for gaming market? And with Vega scaling higher in clocks it would be between 1060 and 1070 also in performance. Not a bad move at all from AMD if it ends being that.

 

[EntropyZ]

And people need to remember Ryzen G series with a Vega IGP into it. So, why not a Vega GPU (polaris sized) paired with GDDR5X or even GDDR6 in order to not be great for mining? Wouldn't it be great for gaming market? And with Vega scaling higher in clocks it would be between 1060 and 1070 also in performance. Not a bad move at all from AMD if it ends being that.

If only they could keep power consumption and heat from plaguing GCN cards of over 120W TDP. Although that might not matter as much if the price is right. But if is Polaris sized, with that much performance it would be an easy buy for 1080p/1440p. 1440p monitors are pretty affordable nowadays.

Personally, right now an RX580/GTX 1060 6GB is enough for my ultrawide needs. But I'm having an itch already to upgrade to something 50% as fast, so I can run anti-aliasing or heavy post-processing. The cards on the market right now are still above MSRP but retailers are caving slowly. It's been 2 years since Pascal release, it is time to replace the old and on with the new.

Edited my previous post because I had a non-lethal brainfart. This is why I shouldn't post just before work.

 

[iO]

Powercolor says its for OEMs and not a new SKU.

 

[windwhirl]

Powercolor says its for OEMs and not a new SKU.

Our dreams for new cards... Gone in an instant...

 

[Fluffmeister]

Powercolor says its for OEMs and not a new SKU.

Basically as i thought.

 

[coonbro]

sad thing with AMD is how there latest drivers may not support your older games some need to go back to like 12.6 and these newer cards cant ''roll back '' this is why I went back to NVidia [900 series] it still supports all my OS's used and all my games work . sadly AMD cant say or do any of that anymore .

just another ''latest'' hardware that cant support 1?2 of what the older hardware could for the same if not more prices . they see you coming a mile away with there hook line and sinkers ..

enjoy

 

[cdawall]

sad thing with AMD is how there latest drivers may not support your older games some need to go back to like 12.6 and these newer cards cant ''roll back '' this is why I went back to NVidia [900 series] it still supports all my OS's used and all my games work . sadly AMD cant say or do any of that anymore .

just another ''latest'' hardware that cant support 1?2 of what the older hardware could for the same if not more prices . they see you coming a mile away with there hook line and sinkers ..

enjoy

What games doesn't amd support now? They fixed the issue with the old dx9 titles.

 

[vega22]

What games doesn't amd support now? They fixed the issue with the old dx9 titles.

i thought some stuff like the older gta games still crashed?

i would of thought gddr5x would of made sense for the 70 and 80 cards as they're somewhat starved in that area but to do the whole range?

 

[Space Lynx]

Look at FordGT90 system specs "Samsung SyncMaster T240 24" LCD (1920x1200 HDMI) + Samsung SyncMaster 906BW 19" LCD (1440x900 DVI)"

My apologies for assuming, I know he games a ton as I see him on Steam almost daily gaming, and know he is huge tech person enjoys the hobby. My apologies I will never assume again or post again, have a good week my superior.

 

[cdawall]

i thought some stuff like the older gta games still crashed?

i would of thought gddr5x would of made sense for the 70 and 80 cards as they're somewhat starved in that area but to do the whole range?

My HTPC currently has a 390X in it with the latest of latest drivers I will have to give it a go. I know it works fine for older titles like carmageddon, red alert and KOTOR.

 

[Assimilator]

Powercolor says its for OEMs and not a new SKU.

Harvested dies, I'll bet.

 

[kruk]

sad thing with AMD is how there latest drivers may not support your older games some need to go back to like 12.6 and these newer cards cant ''roll back '' this is why I went back to NVidia [900 series] it still supports all my OS's used and all my games work . sadly AMD cant say or do any of that anymore .

just another ''latest'' hardware that cant support 1?2 of what the older hardware could for the same if not more prices . they see you coming a mile away with there hook line and sinkers ..

enjoy

What are you talking about? Latest drivers here, and I just finished an almost 20 years old DX7 game without a single problem. I never had to downgrade my drivers and I mostly play DX9 and older titles.

 

[Assimilator]

What are you talking about? Latest drivers here, and I just finished an almost 20 years old DX7 game without a single problem. I never had to downgrade my drivers and I mostly play DX9 and older titles.

Which game?

 

[kruk]

Which game?

Gothic 1 from 2001.