Poll: ** The AMD VEGA Thread **

[Stanners]

I am lost for words how inept their marketing department is. It makes me think they are having serious issues somewhere and have thrown the FE out just to meet the 1H forecast. Fingers crossed that they are getting to the root cause of whatever it is(if their is an issue)

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

MSI Marketing Director (The guy who made the comment about power draw) says "please don't compare this card too much with RX Vega"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/commen...ng_director_dont_compare_vega_fe_too/djmlkk3/
https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/51759395#51759395

AMD staff on twitter: "I think it’s premature to worry about a product’s gaming performance by judging a different product NOT optimized for gaming."

https://twitter.com/killyourfm/status/880907322259677184

Well people where hoping that AMD would say something. I guess this is close enough.


Edit: Also I didn't realise that Vega is using infinity fabric
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/commen...n_technologies_group_at_amd_and_were/dhqoev5/

 

[JediFragger]

Well people where hoping that AMD would say something. I guess this is close enough.

Yup. Hope it's more like 20% increase and not 5-10%

I'm also hoping for strong DX12 perofrmance.

 

[nashathedog]

It's an unmitigated marketing disaster. The FE card is being slated on forums due to the benching carried out over the past few days, but AMD keep quiet. So it's left to the more sensible posters to tell the doom mongers to wait for Siggraph. But it's now, in the middle of this PR **** storm, that AMD choose to announce details of an RX Vega-less Siggraph. Unbelievable.

You never know it might be coming a little earlier.

 

[hyperseven]

Yup. Hope it's more like 20% increase and not 5-10%

I'm also hoping for strong DX12 perofrmance.

What about async compute? Not been mentioned for ages, it used to be such a hot topic of contention.

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

You never know it might be coming a little earlier.

Well, they've changed their press release slightly overnight, so it looks like that was just a genuine error. And the quotes above as posted by Chuk Chuk are at least an attempt at making the right noises. So maybe, MAYBE, there's still hope.

 

[Steampunk]

A couple of things could be happening. Drivers are not ready but they had to get the product out for their H2 17 deadline and AMD didn't think anyone would notice on a prosumer card. Or some bright spark at AMD has everything disabled because they are still sandbagging RX performance and decided enabling game mode on FE would give too much information away before RX release. In both cases, it's pretty foolish to think the internet wouldn't take everything apart to see how it works, especially as everyone is waiting for RX, but all there is to play with is the FE.

This is why AMD should have come out ahead of time and said the FE drivers are lacking a game mode until a future driver release, and many of the new gaming features aren't yet enabled.

 

[Panos]

Edit: Also I didn't realise that Vega is using infinity fabric
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/commen...n_technologies_group_at_amd_and_were/dhqoev5/

Raja said so back at CES 2017 but as you see in this discussion, technical subjects are brushed under the carpet.
So he said
a) that a Ryzen CPU + Vega GPU will build an ecosystem, for greater performance combined than each part on it's own.
b) multiple Vega CARDS will be seen and working as a single entity in the system.
c) the HBM Ram on the Vega Cards, is actually Cache, and it will be used as such by the other AMD parts in the system.

However most here thing that ( a ) and ( c ) cannot be done, even if Ryzen is SOC CPU and actually has direct access to the GPU.
And still confuse the ( b ) with Crossfire even if AMD is strapping 4 CPUs on the same PCB and selling them as single CPU because of the infinity fabric. Something that up to now couldn't be done.

 

[WeSbO]

So as it seems now most (if not all ) features aren't turned on yet, and FE is just works as a bigger Fiji ATM.
Will be interesting to see the improvement.

It doesn't even look like a 14nm Fiji at the moment, if you put Fiji on 14nm and gave it a die size of 590mm2 it would be killing this FE (a Fury X on 14nm would be about 290mm2)

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

A couple of things could be happening. Drivers are not ready but they had to get the product out for their H2 17 deadline and AMD didn't think anyone would notice on a prosumer card. Or some bright spark at AMD has everything disabled because they are still sandbagging RX performance and decided enabling game mode on FE would give too much information away before RX release. In both cases, it's pretty foolish to think the internet wouldn't take everything apart to see how it works, especially as everyone is waiting for RX, but all there is to play with is the FE.

According to Adored AMD don't sandbag. If they do, they've just started.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am lost for words how inept their marketing department is. It makes me think they are having serious issues somewhere and have thrown the FE out just to meet the 1H forecast. Fingers crossed that they are getting to the root cause of whatever it is(if their is an issue)

Yep this and you have people religiously defending this launch too and we all know at some point they will fix it but not after loads if initial reviews showing issues. The people defending this need to realise that most gaming cards are bought by non-techies who will only look at tech sites in a cursory manner and will see things about Vega not being good for gaming,having driver issues and using a lot of power and being very delayed. Then they see Nvidia making noise about Volta too.

This is why AMD has so low marketshare - they can't seem to launch anything cards properly and make multiple PR blunders and it affects the brand and this is why 70% of dGPUs bought are Nvidia ones despite most of them not being enthusiast class ones.

Even ATI could do better than this.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

Raja said so back at CES 2017 but as you see in this discussion, technical subjects are brushed under the carpet.
So he said
a) that a Ryzen CPU + Vega GPU will build an ecosystem, for greater performance combined than each part on it's own.
b) multiple Vega CARDS will be seen and working as a single entity in the system.
c) the HBM Ram on the Vega Cards, is actually Cache, and it will be used as such by the other AMD parts in the system.

However most here thing that ( a ) and ( c ) cannot be done, even if Ryzen is SOC CPU and actually has direct access to the GPU.
And still confuse the ( b ) with Crossfire even if AMD is strapping 4 CPUs on the same PCB and selling them as single CPU because of the infinity fabric. Something that up to now couldn't be done.

I should have paid more attention. (c) Sounds like the CPU using the HBM as a cache for system RAM rather than drives on the system. Which sounds awesome, and would probably be really easy to do.
(b), is very interesting. In theory if they could get that working with the same scaling as the CPUs; Nvidia could actually be in trouble.

 

[Steampunk]

According to Adored AMD don't sandbag. If they do, they've just started.

Well they've just released a new card with most of the new performance features disabled, and not said why. We've also seen AMD hold their cards very close to their chests for a few years now, with no leaks, and a tight hold on any meaningful information. I think Adored is just wrong, and he makes a lot of assumptions on zero evidence.

 

[nashathedog]

did you consider that previously they only referred to the pro line up and now they are referring to the whole vega family.

Of course but they've still haven't named it directly so really it still tell's us nothing, After the play on words we got with Vega and the 1H release we know they tend to fall back on word play.

 

[Panos]

A couple of things could be happening. Drivers are not ready but they had to get the product out for their H2 17 deadline and AMD didn't think anyone would notice on a prosumer card. Or some bright spark at AMD has everything disabled because they are still sandbagging RX performance and decided enabling game mode on FE would give too much information away before RX release. In both cases, it's pretty foolish to think the internet wouldn't take everything apart to see how it works, especially as everyone is waiting for RX, but all there is to play with is the FE.

Yep. And many have forgotten already two days later that where the Vega FE card matters, machine learning etc, is faster than the TXp by a hefty margin. That shows the the grunt power is there, and that piece of software doesn't need gaming optimisations.

 

[JediFragger]

Well they've just released a new card with most of the new performance features disabled, and not said why. We've also seen AMD hold their cards very close to their chests for a few years now, with no leaks, and a tight hold on any meaningful information. I think Adored is just wrong, and he makes a lot of assumptions on zero evidence.

We also know that nVidia get to know way ahead of us what the performance level is likely to be (partners sharing info etc) SO this may be a part of a new strategy to keep things from them

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

Well they've just released a new card with most of the new performance features disabled, and not said why. We've also seen AMD hold their cards very close to their chests for a few years now, with no leaks, and a tight hold on any meaningful information. I think Adored is just wrong, and he makes a lot of assumptions on zero evidence.

I agree it is strange that they disabled those feature but not said anything. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are sand bagging. I wouldn't say on no evidence.

Of course but they've still haven't named it directly so really it still tell's us nothing, After the play on words we got with Vega and the 1H release we know they tend to fall back on word play.

It better than being explicitly omitted.

 

[nashathedog]

Drivers are not ready but they had to get the product out for their H2 17 deadline and AMD didn't think anyone would notice on a prosumer card.

Only the most inept people in the business would think that, Every nerd on the planet was sat on the edge of their seat in anticipation for the FE's gaming prowess to be shown so that we could get an idea how the same chip would do in RX Vega.

 

[Besty]

Nice pun.
Its not a train wreck yet. AMD can salvage with aggressive pricing.

I agree with steampunk. greying our gaming mode option for the FE would have been the smartest move. nobody would have cared and it would have been damage limitation. As it stands AMD have now put pressure on one of the historically weakest parts of the company: the driver team.

ahh well here's to a early october rx launch

 

[Jono8]

Still don't really understand the point of the FE at the current price. It looks like for pro use a Quadro P4000 would be a better proposition for around the same money, and if you wanted something that can do a decent job of both pro work and gaming then you would get the Titan XP.