Poll: ** The AMD VEGA Thread **

[Nexus18]

They may be the latest drivers but I will be shocked if there aren't new/better drivers for gaming vega when it launches..... Do people really think that there won't be another driver update between now and vega gaming release day?

But that is the point - the launches are better and first impressions count. Its the same with things outside computers too - things like cameras,etc or basically even things like cars.

Its why this all irritates me so much,AMD probably has spent a decent amount of money on the GPUs,cards and developing new tech,only for them to fall at the last hurdle. The R9 290X/R9 290 are a prime example of that - a slightly better cooler and no quiet mode,and Nvidia would have been pushed far more.

Its the same with this card,they should have just been honest and said the gaming drivers were not representative of final performance, as they don't utilise all the new features we have developed yet,and a proper gaming optimised driver would be released at the same time as the RX Vega.

It doesn't matter "that" much though, mindshare/branding etc. is far more important.

I will use the case of mobile phones again as it is probably easiest to explain just how important branding etc. is.

Take the HTC one m7 and the galaxy s4.... The HTC one m7 trashed the galaxy s4 in pretty much every expert review out there and even was more popular on forums such as this but at the end of the day, Samsung have this brand perception of being better and also far larger and as a result, they still sold a **** load more than what the htc one m7 did despite the one m7 being a universally better product.

You just have to look at apple/iphone, yes they make great products but they aren't "that" good especially for the money but due to their branding/mind share and everything, they have people "religiously" follow and buy whatever they do, heck, a lot of people can't even afford to buy the products and take out loans just to be able to buy their products hence why there was even a documentary on the "apple religion", that is just how important mindshare/branding is.

Also, you just have to look at these 2 tech giants (apple and samsung), they have made plenty of big mistakes for release day reviews/purchases as well but due to them and the brand perception they have, these issues are overlooked, AMD can only dream of having such brand power.

So yes, launch day reviews etc. is important but there are other things that are far more important and unfortunately I don't think AMD will ever get to where nvidia is for brand power.

Also, another thing, look at youtubers, they have massive influence on brand power etc. (and companies such as EA, samsung etc. see this hence why they are now "exploiting" them too). The vast majority youtube gamers/twitch streamers all use nvidia/intel hardware and these companies often partner up with them to do giveaways on a monthly basis.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

It's also got a gaming control panel and yet you can't game on it!

The U.I change does nothing though, bar change from Blue to Red lol.

 

[Erik13]

Well Amd official said that Fe doesn't have Rx Vega drivers, case closed for me at least. They didn't include proper gaming drivers intentionally...

 

[five8five]

I wouldn't say completely wrong - AMD were emphatic that people would want the RX Vega version for gaming performance however I disagree strongly that the PR disaster isn't AMD's fault - its pretty much inevitable and easily foreseeable that people would benchmark the FE edition to try and get a feel for Vega gaming performance and that and the lack of proper communication with consumers by AMD is the cause of the PR disaster nothing to do with PCPer.

I agree RX if you're a gamer but as you say there is massive interest to see the performance of Vega as AMD have released so little official information.

If the RX launch hadn't been delayed and it coincided with the FE all the attention would have been on the RX and AMD wouldn't be in this mess.

 

[five8five]

The U.I change does nothing though, bar change from Blue to Red lol.

I thought there were extra / different settings depending if you were in Pro or Gaming mode.

 

[D.P.]

D.P - i don't profess to be an expert but even if i were in the negative camp on vega i would find it very hard to believe that a chip as big as vega and with so much on paper capability can't beat an overclocked 980ti (in some benchmarks) in games.

i doubt AMD would have green lit the launch. it would be cheaper for AMD not to launch vega 1.0 at all and simply go for a launch with an improved 1.1 stepping of the chip on the basis that no gamer is going to buy the card if it's trading blows with an highly overclocked Fury X in gaming.

AMD must know what the final silicon is capable of doing in the lab with a bunch of optimised and debugged games (doom being one) and are working frantically to get more working as we type.

I'm not saying that there are problems with Vega in it's current form. I just don't think you can right off the current performance and assume that magical in 1 months time there will be an extra 40% performance.

The typical posters with extreme AMD favoritism are throwing out all these ridiculous excuses that just fall flat on the face. Staying things like Vega FE is not a gaming card or it doesn't have gaming drivers is just utter BS when AMD explicitly stated the exact opposite.


There could be a number of reasons for Vegas performance. For starters:

There are no more stream processed than Fiji, so AMD are relying on faster clocks and IPC improvements. It looks like AMD wanted the GPU to run at 1600MHZ but 1382MHZ is what they got in practice. Maybe GF pocess is still not working out for them. Given the actual typically clock speed we expect about 35% faster than Fiji, and that is in general what the bench makes have shown. In some cases some games were 45% faster showing that some bottlenecks were removed and new features are running.


Then there is the question of what actually IPC improvements are there. Despite so thing AMD have said to.mislead less informed people, Vega is still a GCN architecture and shares many of the same inner workings. There are still only 4 shader engines for example, and many well.infirmed people have suggest that is a bug limitation of the GCN architecture when scaled to 4000+ GCN processors. AMD and Nvidia always make big claims about perormance gains or what constitutes a new architecture. Remember AMD claims Polaris is 2.5x as efficient as Fiji, which is obvious nonsense. AMD claimed the 390x was a while new architecture over 290x, and then in defending their rebrand tried to claim the NV 970 was rebrand of the 980 or some such nonsense.

We do know there are some significant changes to features. For example AMD have now caught up with Nvidia or even surpassed with the D12 feature level support. Things like conservative rastorization have been added. These features need explicit coding for in games to be benefitial, but now both AMD and Nvidia have more comparable feature sets then hopefully the ball will starts rolling.

Bandwidth. Vega Fe has less bandwidth than the FuryX and much less than the 1080ti. It is recently been the case that AMd cards required more BW due to lower compression methods. Now AMD have a card with less BW than the competition, so it comes down to how much improvements AMD have made. Perhaps Vega is getting BW limited a lot. I saw the 4K results were no better for Vega, where traditionally this where AMD could close the gap.

Actual raw horse power. Given the typical clock speed of Vega (1382MHz) and the actual clock speed for the 1080ti,Vega Fe in practice has less FP32 performance than the 1080. Their boost clock performance compared to 1080to base.clock is good, but Vega can't hot it's boost clock often while 1080ti will nearly always run significantly faster than base. Like the bandwidth, AMd cards have needed significantly more FP32 performance to keep up with Nvidia, but now those stats have reversed.


We have an AMD card with lower FP32 compute and lower bandwidth competing against a Nvidia card. Previous generations would indicate the Nvidia card would win by quite a margin, u less AMD had made significant strides in IPC but there is no evidence they have.


So no, I don't think people should be surprised it is a long way behind the 1080ti . I personally thought it would be about 10-15% better than it is but then it isn't hitting the clock speeds AMD talked about.

 

[humbug]

You don't get it though. The mere existence of a link from a section labelled "just a gamer" shows AMD view this as also being a gaming card.

Its marketing, "Its a workstation card that you can game on too" never mind that you can game on any workstation card, the link they provide is the same link to the same driver, there is only one driver.

The fact that it has a "gaming mode" should tell you this is not a dedicated gaming card, a dedicated gaming card does not have a fudge switch on it to enable it to play games, a fudge switch to enable it to play games does not make it a gaming card, its the sort of thing where in "gaming mode" it has the ability to play games, not to be confused with "Gaming Card", again, vs Fury-X running 40% faster on the same number of shaders and 100% higher memory speed while only pushing out the same performance should make it obvious that this "gaming mode" is very much a "mode that enables it to play games" and nothing more.

 

[Jokester]

I agree RX if you're a gamer but as you say there is massive interest to see the performance of Vega as AMD have released so little official information.

If the RX launch hadn't been delayed and it coincided with the FE all the attention would have been on the RX and AMD wouldn't be in this mess.

Exactly, it's another mess of a launch from AMD.

If they wanted the FE to not be seen as a legitimate gaming product, they shouldn't have done a paper launch with RX Vega explicitly comparing the FE with FuryX and they then certainly shouldn't have a link to (non) gaming drivers on the website. If they launched it separately, focused on it's productivity performance and made no reference to gaming officially then it would have been a lot better.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

I thought there were extra / different settings depending if you were in Pro or Gaming mode.

PcPer found nothing, but AA settings for games.

 

[five8five]

Well Amd official said that Fe doesn't have Rx Vega drivers, case closed for me at least. They didn't include proper gaming drivers intentionally...

Maybe they should have made that clear on the website so that customers who buy it know exactly what they are getting. Fortunately reviews reveal what you actually get.

 

[five8five]

Exactly, it's another mess of a launch from AMD.

If they wanted the FE to not be seen as a legitimate gaming product, they shouldn't have done a paper launch with RX Vega explicitly comparing the FE with FuryX and they then certainly shouldn't have a link to (non) gaming drivers on the website. If they launched it separately, focused on it's productivity performance and made no reference to gaming officially then it would have been a lot better.

Yeah they should have an official gaming comparison between the FE and RX so that potential customers can see the differences. It's AMDs fault it's shrouded in mystery.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Maybe they should have made that clear on the website so that customers who buy it know exactly what they are getting. Fortunately reviews reveal what you actually get.

Or you know, not added that part in. Two days ago the "gaming" part wasn't on the Frontier Edition page, or mentioned for drivers.

Then also put out a statement like " While Frontier Edition is a finished product and has the ability to toggle between Pro and Gaming modes for development and testing; the gaming drivers are not currently comparable to Radeon RX Drivers. Those will be available once Radeon RX Vega launches"

 

[five8five]

PcPer found nothing, but AA settings for games.

So there were some settings. Maybe a work in progress

 

[triss]

Its a gaming mode for a card that is not for gaming, this is the difference people are struggling to understand, nowhere in that does it say its a gaming card, what you obviously don't know is a workstation card has the ability to play games, when you are making games you need it to play those games too, that doesn't mean it will do it anything like as well as a dedicated gaming card.

This is where your logic falls down, it can play games yes, AMD say it can play games, does that mean its a gaming card? no, did AMD say it was a gaming card? no, they said it was not a gaming card and not indicative of the gaming variants gaming performance.

Can and Is are not the same thing.

The fact that it needs a "gaming mode" should tell you this is not a dedicated gaming card.

Its not, its not a separate link, its just the driver. there is only one driver for it, thats it.

So AMD said it can play games so the reviewer tested games. Glad we cleared that up perfectly valid of PCPer to do that.
ATM its the fastest for gaming ( i doubt any firepro will beat it atm but happy to be corrected) current gen GPU AMD have it was always going to be tested in games.
I fully agree we shouldnt take RX vega's final performance from it but atm its all people can go off and in a lot of ways its not a full production card either and i'd expect the Firepro equivilant to be better and certified.

But it is a separate link , Yes it goes to the same driver but unless you check both people wouldn't know that.
They shouldn't have the i just want to game section at all if its not for gaming

The Gaming mode argument can work both ways.
As you say a proper workstation card doesnt have a "gaming mode" switch as its not needed and you can game on it regardless.
Maybe FE vega was going to be a gaming gpu with a Pro mode Switch

 

[Nexus18]

Again....

Why are people basing so much on raja saying "you can game on it"?

I have a few old GPUs lying around here i.e. a nvidia 8400 and amd 4850 etc., and guess what I can also game on them..... But does that automatically mean that I would get great performance with max settings on them????? Nope.....

I think it is safe to say that he simply meant yes, you can game on them, nothing more and nothing less. Unless did he specifically state somewhere that you would be getting 60 fps at 4k with max settings in most games????

Thing is though in most cases where nVidia has hot and loud cards they also are the top performing cards available - it slightly mitigates those factors if you have the performance to back it up.

And with the nVidia 5800 cards they rightly got ripped to shreds for it where the cards were both hot, noisy and not the fastest by a mile.

Yes you are right but the people who use that excuse never bring the performance part up.....

I remember in the 970 thread, you had someone bringing up that the main reason they went with the 970 over amds equivalent card was due to the power consumption and electricity costs, someone then worked it out that if you gamed for 6 hours every day, the difference in cost only amounted to about £10 spread across 1-2 years!!! For most people on here it is more just about what epeen points they can add to the list to brag about.

But my point was, on this sub forum and others, it is tic for tac, if one company does something great, it isn't a big deal according to the other side, come next year, if that company does something just as great or better, it is then the second coming according to those who originally didn't think much of it. Guaranteed this will be the case when nvidia get proper dx 12/async support on their cards as well as the similar performance gains that AMD cards see, the people who originally said all the stuff of "meh, doesn't matter, no dx 12 games" or whatever will be the ones shouting from the roof tops about it

 

[five8five]

Or you know, not added that part in. Two days ago the "gaming" part wasn't on the Frontier Edition page, or mentioned for drivers.

Then also put out a statement like " While Frontier Edition is a finished product and has the ability to toggle between Pro and Gaming modes for development and testing; the gaming drivers are not currently comparable to Radeon RX Drivers. Those will be available once Radeon RX Vega launches"

Thing is we don't know much difference the RX drivers are going to make. It's all speculation as AMD have said very little.

 

[Rroff]

But my point was, on this sub forum and others, it is tic for tac, if one company does something great, it isn't a big deal according to the other side, come next year, if that company does something just as great or better, it is then the second coming according to those who originally didn't think much of it. Guaranteed this will be the case when nvidia get proper dx 12/async support on their cards as well as the similar performance gains that AMD cards see, the people who originally said all the stuff of "meh, doesn't matter, no dx 12 games" or whatever will be the ones shouting from the roof tops about it

True that.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

They may be the latest drivers but I will be shocked if there aren't new/better drivers for gaming vega when it launches..... Do people really think that there won't be another driver update between now and vega gaming release day?



It doesn't matter "that" much though, mindshare/branding etc. is far more important.

I will use the case of mobile phones again as it is probably easiest to explain just how important branding etc. is.

Take the HTC one m7 and the galaxy s4.... The HTC one m7 trashed the galaxy s4 in pretty much every expert review out there and even was more popular on forums such as this but at the end of the day, Samsung have this brand perception of being better and also far larger and as a result, they still sold a **** load more than what the htc one m7 did despite the one m7 being a universally better product.

You just have to look at apple/iphone, yes they make great products but they aren't "that" good especially for the money but due to their branding/mind share and everything, they have people "religiously" follow and buy whatever they do, heck, a lot of people can't even afford to buy the products and take out loans just to be able to buy their products hence why there was even a documentary on the "apple religion", that is just how important mindshare/branding is.

Also, you just have to look at these 2 tech giants (apple and samsung), they have made plenty of big mistakes for release day reviews/purchases as well but due to them and the brand perception they have, these issues are overlooked, AMD can only dream of having such brand power.

So yes, launch day reviews etc. is important but there are other things that are far more important and unfortunately I don't think AMD will ever get to where nvidia is for brand power.

Also, another thing, look at youtubers, they have massive influence on brand power etc. (and companies such as EA, samsung etc. see this hence why they are now "exploiting" them too). The vast majority youtube gamers/twitch streamers all use nvidia/intel hardware and these companies often partner up with them to do giveaways on a monthly basis.

It mattered enough that ATI still had better mindshare - they had some fantastic launches like the 9000 series,X800 series,HD4000 and HD5000 series which were great performers from the first week of release. This meant when they misstepped with series like the HD2000 people still gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Remember Nvidia even going back even over a decade still sponsored more games than ATI,and were giving away loads of free hardware too,yet ATI still managed to gain more marketshare than AMD currently.

They need to get their house in order,as Nvidia due to the way they launch things,etc is managing to sidestep those issues you mentioned.

 

[Mauller]

Gamers Nexus teardown, he measures the die directly and it comes out around 490-500mm^2, he does a shoddy job of it from how it looks in the video, including part of the interposer at times. but knocking 1mm off one of the measurments is puts it around 494mm^2.

 

[humbug]

Exactly, it's another mess of a launch from AMD.

If they wanted the FE to not be seen as a legitimate gaming product, they shouldn't have done a paper launch with RX Vega explicitly comparing the FE with FuryX and they then certainly shouldn't have a link to (non) gaming drivers on the website. If they launched it separately, focused on it's productivity performance and made no reference to gaming officially then it would have been a lot better.

The RX variant of the card, the 'Gaming variant' is not ready yet.

And whatever AMD's marketing mistakes it very obviously is not a gaming card, AMD are not marketing it as a gaming card, there have been very clear Vega FE is not a gaming card, they have said it is such simple terms time and time and time again, just because they say its capable of gaming does not suddenly make it a gaming card.
That is not AMD's fault you miss understand that, that's your own doing.