NVIDIA Volta with GDDR6 in early 2018?

[james.miller]

You pretty much said they cant do 4k30 and cant do native 4k games.

No i didn't and no i didn't. I can't make it any clearer

And before you jump on and say i only meant at comparable levels of pc it is comparable because even now games targeted at high settings for ps4 and xbox one. Watched enough digital foundry videos to know as well as others. And they even said Scorpio will
target 4k60 at high settings to compare it to the pc version.

Then you know forza on the ONE was reducing the render resolution, the texture detail, the shadow resolution and the fps of the internal mirror when on a track full of cars, right? I mean, it's there in the video and you've watched enough of them. You also know, then, that it wasn't happening in the PC demo and so you know it's not an apples to apples comparison. Additionally, you do not know if the same optimisations where being applied to the scorpio port since i cant see it confirmed or denied anywhere right now. Is it reasonable, then, to assume that forza was doing the same thing on scorpio given take 10 ported the ONE code in 2 days with pretty much no optimisations going ? (really, would they turn it all off?). If your answer is yes then you must see what's wrong with people pointing out the PC dropped frames in forza when it had none of those optimisations the ONE definitely has and probably the scorpio does as well? Not that i have a problem with any of that, I want to see more of it on the PC as well.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

This is disappointing
A 815mm2 chip and only 15TFLOPS.
42% more CUDAS than P100 and 42% more performance. This doesn't seem like an upgrade at all. Just a bigger Pascal on 12nm

does the 815mm2 include the die space of the HMB2 dies? it must do

 

[Rroff]

Nope the chip he was holding up had a core the size of a large wristwatch as he said. The chip has some space used by specialised processors and other stuff for fast interconnects, etc. which don't exist on earlier GPU designs - probably wouldn't be possible to make a traditional GPU scaled upto 800+mm2 at all.

 

[r7slayer]

No i didn't and no i didn't. I can't make it any clearer



Then you know forza on the ONE was reducing the render resolution, the texture detail, the shadow resolution and the fps of the internal mirror when on a track full of cars, right? I mean, it's there in the video and you've watched enough of them. You also know, then, that it wasn't happening in the PC demo and so you know it's not an apples to apples comparison. Additionally, you do not know if the same optimisations where being applied to the scorpio port since i cant see it confirmed or denied anywhere right now. Is it reasonable, then, to assume that forza was doing the same thing on scorpio given take 10 ported the ONE code in 2 days with pretty much no optimisations going ? (really, would they turn it all off?). If your answer is yes then you must see what's wrong with people pointing out the PC dropped frames in forza when it had none of those optimisations the ONE definitely has and probably the scorpio does as well? Not that i have a problem with any of that, I want to see more of it on the PC as well.

ohh jeeze you really do go on. I'm not on about the Xbox one... The scorpio bro keep up. Turn 10 said themselves they just turned up the resolution to 4k native and had it run at 60FPS with no frame drops and the GPU utilisation was sitting around 60% with it going upto 70% the odd time and it wasn't ported this was run with the game as is within the engine running with max amount of cars to stress things.

You actually said scorpio has half the gpu throughput of one 1080i ti grunt to default to 4k60? 4k30 even? at anything like comparable levels of detail to the pc? educate yourself.

Your making out scorpio can't do 4k60 or even 4k30 for that matter. Forza 6 PC Vs Xbox one do not look a whole load different so yes it has comparable levels of detail. Yes i watched the video also i think your referring to Forza Horizons about the other thing.
So can it even 4k60 fps? Yes it can Forza can...

Your wrong but can't admit it so just move on.

 

[Greebo]

This is disappointing
A 815mm2 chip and only 15TFLOPS.
42% more CUDAS than P100 and 42% more performance. This doesn't seem like an upgrade at all. Just a bigger Pascal on 12nm

At least their graph they published a few years is right that it will be 50% ish faster than Pascal. Which should mean 60fps at 4k in every game finally.

Just need to know how many kidneys we need to sell.

 

[Duff-Man]

This is disappointing
A 815mm2 chip and only 15TFLOPS.
42% more CUDAS than P100 and 42% more performance. This doesn't seem like an upgrade at all. Just a bigger Pascal on 12nm

The main difference seems to be the "tensor cores". These won't have much impact for gaming (and probably won't make it through to the Geforce line), but it's a complete game-changer for some HPC applications.

Granted, only a subset of HPC applications will be able to make use of it, but those that will are mainly the applications that already see great gains from GPUs. This design philosophy could speed up those same applications by a further factor of ten(!).

It's clear to see where the development effort has been spent. But for gaming, yes, I'd expect it to behave very much like a scaled-up die-shrunk Pascal.

 

[Rroff]

At least their graph they published a few years is right that it will be 50% ish faster than Pascal.

Gaming cards would likely be a bit faster - even just assuming they left some of that compute capabilities dark that would allow for a fairly big increase in clock speed and so on. Combined with the smaller node a high end GeForce Volta should be somewhere around 70% faster than a high end Pascal card (I don't think it impossible for bigger gains than that if they spent some effort stripping out and building a focused gaming card).

It's clear to see where the development effort has been spent. But for gaming, yes, I'd expect it to behave very much like a scaled-up die-shrunk Pascal.

Volta has had quite a bit of attention paid to things like ILP - that will likely also have some implications on the gaming side.

 

[VincentHanna]

It's never been much of an issue previously, but how far away are we from the PCI Express 3.0 x16 speeds being a bottleneck?

 

[Bollse]

Still just a load of rumours on Volta? Any concrete information on gaming GPU's?

 

[james.miller]

r7slayer:

Spoiler

ohh jeeze you really do go on. I'm not on about the Xbox one... The scorpio bro keep up.

That's two separate threads of the conversion there and you're twisting them to infer something i never said.

you wrote that i said: "they cant do 4k30 and cant do native 4k games.". They = not singular. I was not talking about the xbox one when i said that (though you can include it just fine). I was talking about the ps4 pro and the scorpio (it's all in my post)

Secondly I mentioned the ONE because the scorpio forza demo code was lifted and ported straight from the ONE. So i asked (you haven't answered) if it's reasonable to assume the optimisations from the one (dynamical scaling and so on) were still in place. I think that's very reasonable, no? Also YOU mentioned the ONE when talking about detail levels being comparable (even though all that fancy stuff is switched off on the pc)

it [detail level] is comparable because even now games targeted at high settings for ps4 and xbox one

Turn 10 said themselves they just turned up the resolution to 4k native and had it run at 60FPS with no frame drops and the GPU utilisation was sitting around 60% with it going upto 70% the odd time and it wasn't ported this was run with the game as is within the engine running with max amount of cars to stress things.

Indeed and they didnt say they switched any of the ONEs optimisations off.

You actually said scorpio has half the gpu throughput of one 1080i ti grunt to default to 4k60? 4k30 even? at anything like comparable levels of detail to the pc? educate yourself.

It does, roughly. I wont sit here and claim 4k 60 is the same as 4k60 when it's being internally rendered at a lower resolution, when texture detail is being scaled down, when fps gets halved to 30 etc. It is not the same.

Your making out scorpio can't do 4k60 or even 4k30 for that matter.

I never said nor implied either console couldnt output or play games at those resolutions. I've said at comparable settings right from the beginning. I didnt backtrack, i havent changed my argument.

Forza 6 PC Vs Xbox one do not look a whole load different so yes it has comparable levels of detail. Yes i watched the video also i think your referring to Forza Horizons about the other thing.
So can it even 4k60 fps? Yes it can Forza can...

No i'm talking about forza 6. Though you watched the video so you already know it's happening, right?

check out the 'comparable level of detail' on the road surface and the shadow from the spoiler at 2:09 onwards . That sort of thing can add or remove fps in the double digits on the pc.

You're wrong

About what? That there's a complete lack of 4k60 native games on the ps4 pro despite people telling me its more than up to the job (where's that list of games i keep asking you for?) or about the forza demo on the scorpio probably still running all those bandwidth saving optimisations from the ONE or that the scorpio has half the gpu throughput of a 1080ti or that barebones programming and fancy tricks alone isnt enough to make up that delta?

I dont understand why you are so desperately trying to defend these consoles? It's not like i'm writing scorpio off, i'm looking forward to it! 4k native or not.

 

[VincentHanna]

James Miller

You clearly didn't read the article I posted here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...-motorsport-on-project-scorpio-the-full-story

Clearly, there's still a large amount of GPU overhead left over on Scorpio, so where can the engine be taken from there? Turn 10 is still working on this, but the quality settings from Forza Motorsport 6 Apex on PC can be fully invoked on Scorpio. Turn 10 literally ramped up everything to ultra and it just worked, with the game retaining a 4K60 performance level. As well as validating the capabilities of the new console, we also get an insight into how some ultra-level settings may actually amount to a rampant misuse of PC GPUs' capabilities.

"The crazy story here is that we've gone over our PC ultra settings and for everything that's GPU-related, we've been able to max it - and that's what we're running at, 88 per cent," says Tector, pointing to the utilisation data at the top of the screen. Right beneath it is the anti-aliasing setting - 4x, or rather 8:4x using the Radeon EQAA hardware AA.

"This is rendering the player LOD for every car, so you won't see a single LOD pop. [It's the] top-level model you'd see in race, one below what you see in Autovista, the model you usually only see for the player. And then we balance out LODs across the scene. It's a disgusting abuse of GPU power is what it is, right?"

With the equivalent of PC's ultra settings invoked, shadow quality and corresponding resolution are ramped up, more subtle areas of the lighting are enhanced, foliage density increases and the number of taps used for motion blur quality doubles. Based on the ForzaTech screenshot Microsoft provided for our Scorpio coverage, essentially the same level of geometry used for the car nearest to the camera is being used on the vehicle furthest away. Taking the shot into Photoshop, it's occupying approximately 1500 pixels out of 8.3 million - a disgusting abuse of GPU power indeed.

"It's horrible but we can do it and we still have the power left over," Tector concludes.

The extent to which the comparison is valid is highly debatable, but we tried to replicate the ForzaTech content on the PC version based on this ultra-level stress test. It's impossible to keep all cars snapped into place as per the Scorpio demo, but the evidence seems to suggest we're looking at performance in the same ballpark as an Nvidia GTX 1070-class GPU here and even that can drop frames at ultra settings when wet weather hits. Turn 10's stringent budgeting would ensure that this would never happen in a console release.

 

[james.miller]

I've quoted from it, posted a video in it here and talked about the differences DF observed when comparing the one and PC version directly. Pretty sure I've read it I'm not convinced they turned any of the one optimisations off, nothing in the article suggested they did and they way they spoke about how quickly it was ported would suggest they didn't. That's my assumption anyway .

 

[Curlyriff]

I've quoted from it, posted a video in it here and talked about the differences DF observed when comparing the one and PC version directly. Pretty sure I've read it I'm not convinced they turned any of the one optimisations off, nothing in the article suggested they did and they way they spoke about how quickly it was ported would suggest they didn't. That's my assumption anyway .

When you say One, do you mean Scorpio?

And you may have read it but clearly didn't understand it. There is no "One" optimisations because it is the Scorpio that doesn't have the same. They ported the PC version to Scorpio not the xbox one version as otherwise they can't crank anything up to Ultra as settings don't exist to do so.

I think that is where you are going wrong in the first place. They are using Ultra PC settings is the part where it states 88% utilisation.

"This is rendering the player LOD for every car, so you won't see a single LOD pop. [It's the] top-level model you'd see in race, one below what you see in Autovista, the model you usually only see for the player. And then we balance out LODs across the scene. It's a disgusting abuse of GPU power is what it is, right?"

This is also nuts because the PC version actually doesn't do this and does have some LOD pop at times.

Further to that:

shadow quality and corresponding resolution are ramped up, more subtle areas of the lighting are enhanced, foliage density increases and the number of taps used for motion blur quality doubles.

This is actually above and beyond what the current Ultra settings in PC have then. They are adding to the game and still running native 4k60fps.

 

[nashathedog]

This is disappointing
A 815mm2 chip and only 15TFLOPS.
42% more CUDAS than P100 and 42% more performance. This doesn't seem like an upgrade at all. Just a bigger Pascal on 12nm

When you put it like that it's not,
It sounds like the core for core performance is identical on the two which is a bit odd seeing as it's a new architecture on a smaller node, That or it's one hell of a coincidence.

 

[D.P.]

Great article :https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/05/10/nvidias-mammoth-volta-gpu-aims-high-ai-hpc/

Most significant new architecture since Fermi.

 

[D.P.]

When you put it like that it's not,
It sounds like the core for core performance is identical on the two which is a bit odd seeing as it's a new architecture on a smaller node, That or it's one hell of a coincidence.

I don;t think you understand how this works. The FP32 performance is simply the number of FP32CUDa cores, x clock speed x 2. They increased CUDA core count by 50%, hence there is a 505 increase in FP32 performance all while staying within the same 300w envelope.


Furthermore, its not a new node, it is a refinement of the 16nmFF node, which is why the chip comes in at 815mm^2. Most of the improvements are from architectural changes and scaling up. NVidia is quoting 50% energy efficiency improvement form the architecture, which given the chip has 50% more FP32,FP16,FP64 cores and a bunch of brand new Tensor cores yet the power requirements are unchanged sounds about right. For applications such as deep learning Volta can be 8-12x faster than the GP100. You need to think about that for a second, when has there been a GPU that is 10X faster than its predecessor?





Performance in games is going to be completely different. The brand new thread scheduling could potentially make drastic improvements. The gaming parents will have the Tensor Cores and FP64 cores removed giving die space over for more FP32 CUDA cores, geometry engines, ROP cache etc., as well as increasing clock speed. A gaming GPU based off Volta could be 70-100% faster than pascal equivalents, on a fab process that is only an optimized version of the 16nmFF used by Pascal.

 

[james.miller]

I've quoted from it, posted a video in it here and talked about the differences DF observed when comparing the one and PC version directly. Pretty sure I've read it I'm not convinced they turned any of the one optimisations off, nothing in the article suggested they did and they way they spoke about how quickly it was ported would suggest they didn't. That's my assumption anyway .

When you say One, do you mean Scorpio?

Nope, i mean ONE. I posted the video in post #210. Forza 6 xbox one vs PC comparison. The same video from the article.

And you may have read it but clearly didn't understand it. There is no "One" optimisations because it is the Scorpio that doesn't have the same.

That sentence doesn't makes any sense. The ONE version does have optimisations, I've mentioned them more than once. it's discussed in that video, which was from that article! apparently i'm the only one who hasnt read it/doesnt understand it

They ported the PC version to Scorpio not the xbox one version

The process of getting ForzaTech up and running on the makeshift Project Scorpio hardware took just two days, and according to Chris Tector, the majority of that time was adapting the codebase from an earlier XDK [the PC-based development environment] that dated to just after Forza Motorsport 6's ship-date.

Theoretical data and projections became very real with the arrival of prototype Scorpio hardware at the beginning of the year. In mid-January, Matt Lee from the Xbox Direct3D team arrived at the Turn 10 studio with a bunch of early components, eager to get Project Scorpio up and running with actual code.

"They wanted to get an early native title, one that was actually built for Scorpio," recalls Tector. "There'd been a ton of compatibility testing with previous titles but they really wanted to prove out one that was built against the XDK - and we could then do performance evaluation on it, running natively on the machine instead of through emulators and such."

idunno. It doesnt say that to me.

..as otherwise they can't crank anything up to Ultra as settings don't exist to do so.

this doesnt make much sense. Easier to have one code base will all the settings available these days. Easier still to move from the one the the scorpio when the hardware makeup is so similar.

 

[Curlyriff]

SNIP

OK first off though we are discussing the Scorpio and 4k rendering which has nothing to do with what the One settings or system is.

So in the quote you took, it states

[the PC-based development environment]

which in turn is the PC settings and code system.

The first screen shot is indeed the older build with the "One" settings which utilised 66% where I clearly stated they are on about the PC ultra settings which utilised 88%, two different things.

Further to that the first paragraph is on about it running on a PC to simulate the Scorpio based on the provided spec by MS originally and that is why it is the 66% and One build.

Once they got the hardware from MS they then ported the PC to the Scorpio and that is what was utilising the said 88% and they then did a pass over adding in the extra foliage etc that the PC version doesn't have at any setting.

What you are missing is the timeline they start from talking about how it was going to now is that they are talking what they have done over months and that eurogamer were there to talk about the whole process.

In regards to the settings, again what I am saying is when they took the original One build all those Ultra settings are not present, they are not coded at all. That comes with the PC version and is separate code. That is what developers do with consoles games. They literally code for the settings they want and not low, medium, high, ultra, uber etc.

It also clearly states they took the Ultra settings from PC. This sentence right here

Turn 10 is still working on this, but the quality settings from Forza Motorsport 6 Apex on PC can be fully invoked on Scorpio.

is stating that. That is the 88% part again not the 66% you are talking about. They are two different things. That is why I think you are miss-understating.

That video is not what the PC settings run is, that was the One run prior to them showing off how far they can push it.


Edit: Also the makeup hardware isn't so similar and again that is another point. The Scorpio is completely different on that front and that is why they took the PC version/settings and build for that.

Edit 2: I meant there is no One optimised settings in the Scorpio build when running the PC build with 88% utilisation. There is in the 66% utilisation as that is the same optimisation with 4k assets as correctly noted.

 

[james.miller]

The words. They escape me. I have none.

1:51 onwards.

"Now remarkably it took just two days to port over the forza engine from xbox ONE to scorpio, and most of that was in updating the codebase with the latest XDK, the newest xbox development environment so to speak"


Since that (the first video in the article...... -.-) pretty much invalidates everything you've just posted.....Are we done now, can these guys get back to discussing volta?

 

[Curlyriff]

The words. They escape me. I have none.

1:51 onwards.

"Now remarkably it took just two days to port over the forza engine from xbox ONE to scorpio, and most of that was in updating the codebase with the latest XDK, the newest xbox development environment so to speak"


Since that (the first video in the article...... -.-) pretty much invalidates everything you've just posted.....Are we done now, can these guys get back to discussing volta?

I am because you just don't get it at all. You are missing everything that is stated and looking at it as one thing and not two separate things. You have ignored direct quotes and reference where they show otherwise. Will continue with Volta because you just want to read what you want and decide that 50% of the article is not there.

Edit: One last thing though, that video is indeed about the specific Xbox one port as I stated about when they also firm up the 66% utilisation. They just haven't done a video with details on the second half of what eurogamer went into. You validate half the Eurogamer post but seem to fail at understanding there is more to it.

That video thus becomes irrelevant to what was stated above from my reply or the article.