Poll: ** The AMD VEGA Thread **

[Angilion]

Arguing one way or the other about the RX gaming performance with a card that is not even intended for gaming is premature, to insist on using the FE results as indicative of the RX gaming performance is a huge gamble, what if these results turn not to be indicative of the RX performance at all?
Suddenly you look like a ####, same goes for a lot of reviewers who currently gamble their reputation like this, PcPer.

Vega RX has at best the same GPU as Vega FE.
Vega RX has at best the same type of memory as Vega FE.
Vega RX has at best the same amount of memory as Vega FE.
Vega FE has what are stated to be gaming-specific drivers.

It's not a huge gamble to use the FE performance as being indicative of RX performance because it's fundamentally the same card. If RX differs in hardware from FE, then RX will be worse than FE because it has to be much cheaper.

It might previously have been theoretically possible that RX would use GPU and memory clocked significantly higher than FE, but the power requirement and heat generation of FE cards completely rules that out.

So any increase in performance would be down to an extra month's development on the drivers that have already been in developement for at least a year. It's...optimistic...to think that will make a huge difference to performance.

It comes down to this - if AMD does have something much better than Vega FE, why did they release Vega FE as the halo version at >£1000 a card?

 

[Angilion]

Wonder how many waiters have already jumped on the Green train after seeing the FEs gaming results ?

I've ordered a 1070. Who knows when there will be stock at the price I paid, though (£355)? I'm not paying 25+% extra because of mining, which is what's required to get a card now. I've been waiting long enough, another month won't be too bad.

There's just nothing else better in the <£400 range and that's what I'm willing to pay for a graphics card. We all have a limit to what we're willing to pay for our toys and that's mine for this toy. I see no reason to think either AMD or nVidia will bring out a better card in that price range within the next 6 months at least and I've had enough of making do with my 7950. Got my money's worth from that card, that's for sure, but it's underpowered enough in modern terms to be reducing the fun I have playing.

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

At this point for £400 I would be either waiting for Vega or Volta. Pascal is old news now and Volta is not far away.

Old news or not doesn't mean anything except for the cheaper cards, 980Ti still gives quite punchy performance. 1080Ti will be the same.. Just depends if you wanna spend that much

It's just that the "cheaper" cards are now quite a bit more expensive than they used to be.

 

[Erik13]

Pc per bought another card to see crossfire performance.

Lol Vega mystery will make Amd rich

 

[silversurfer]

There was never any point buying Frontier because Rx Vega is just the same card, same performance or it could be theres great variation across Vega models. Since we know of Vega on APU, its the latter I take as the more likely outcome.
Just drawing the shortest line between two points is human fallacy. I just think it's murky and unknown and maybe AMD is behind in development or perhaps they hit a wall. Good to hear views but nobody actually knows here

That's AMDs fault though?

This is just pure AMD defense league. There's no point me replying with anything of content because it'll be brushed aside.

Its a delibrate mistake, perhaps AMD is wrong to do so but they stressed Frontier would not perform in games or should be judged on that?
If somebody buys Frontier to use every day then thats an opinion to note from an actual user. It looks negative, my own guess this just means delays maybe the wildly negative speculation means they'll price it aggressively and as a bonus we see gains in development also.
Or it could be a washout but nobody who appreciates technology is gaining from AMD failing to compete with Nvidia if that occurs

Now RX Vega will batter a 1080, and possibly match a 1080ti. See you in 4 weeks when it trades blows with a 1070 in some titles, and a 1080 in others, but gets absolutely nowhere *near* a 1080ti.

Quote button primed and ready

So long as its priced correctly, I'm not sure I care. If some are in hope Vega would beat anything Nvidia sells I'd tend to agree with you on that but maybe Vega is the best card for Vulkan etc. Maybe it finds a niche of unique performance in some way, thats how I'd assume AMD finds its attack vector

It comes down to this - if AMD does have something much better than Vega FE, why did they release Vega FE as the halo version at >£1000 a card?

There isnt a higher Vega card. Not till they refresh on 7nm and after that they'll be focused on Navi. Not sure if thats correct, but going on what Ive read or heard

 

[TNA]

Had an MG279Q too. Forget I said anything, I'll leave you to your own devices

Well I had G-Sync and got Freesync now. As long as I stay in range, there is zero difference. That has been my experience, hence my reply

Am cool with freesync monitor having all different ranges it keeps the price down for people that might not need high refresh rates and higher prices.

I could easy get by using something like 48/60hz just vsync the game keeping Freesync always working and adjusting graphics settings to always remain inside 50/60fps
Smooth gaming.

This is exactly what I do. Most games I play 60fps so it makes no difference whether I am on G-Sync or Freesync.

Is there any indication of what the specs for gaming level Volta cards are? Is there any indication that they will be released this year? You can pay US$150,000 for a workstation using Volta GPUs (although I don't know if they're actually shipping yet), but that doesn't mean much to anyone looking for a graphics card to game on, since those don't exist and won't have the same specs anyway. nVidia aren't even talking about Volta for gaming yet.

It's always possible to wait for the next generation...and then wait for the next generation...and then wait for the next generation.

My understanding is Votla will bring a big jump in performance.

If one is dying for an upgrade and cannot wait they should get a card now sure. But I believe there are sweet spots in time where you get most bang for buck for upgrading. It is usually at the start of a new graphics card where you either get the old card super cheap second hand or you get the new card that has come out and enjoy it for a long time as you got it at the start of is life cycle. If you get it a GPU 3/4 through it's life cycle for the same price as release, it is not exactly optimum if you care for such a thing.

I got a 1070 at the start of it's life cycle for less then they cost now and enjoyed it for ages. Now I have played everything I want to on that and a 1080 I had for a while. Want something new now.

One thing I will say is, sure you do not have to wait, just don't do what some others did when they purchased a 980Ti and then less than a month later 1080 came out and they were crying due to listening to the guy that said buy now, not worth waiting as you will always be left waiting as there is always a new card. Not suggesting Volta is coming out next month btw.

End of the day though, each to their own, everyone's needs are different and if buying now gives you the maximum happiness then that is what you should do

Old news or not doesn't mean anything except for the cheaper cards, 980Ti still gives quite punchy performance. 1080Ti will be the same.. Just depends if you wanna spend that much

It's just that the "cheaper" cards are now quite a bit more expensive than they used to be.

Yep. Never argued otherwise

 

[Angilion]

[..]
My understanding is Votla will bring a big jump in performance.

So no, there is no indication of what the specs of Volta gaming cards will be.

Many people had the understanding that Vega would be better than a 1080ti.

If one is dying for an upgrade and cannot wait they should get a card now sure. But I believe there are sweet spots in time where you get most bang for buck for upgrading. It is usually at the start of a new graphics card where you either get the old card super cheap second hand or you get the new card that has come out and enjoy it for a long time as you got it at the start of is life cycle. If you get it a GPU 3/4 through it's life cycle for the same price as release, it is not exactly optimum if you care for such a thing.[..]

I agree with that, but...

One thing I will say is, sure you do not have to wait, just don't do what some others did when they purchased a 980Ti and then less than a month later 1080 came out and they were crying due to listening to the guy that said buy now, not worth waiting as you will always be left waiting as there is always a new card. Not suggesting Volta is coming out next month btw.

...there's no indication that Volta for gaming cards is coming out this year. Not even rumours that it might happen. The rumours are a release early next year. Maybe. With unknown specs at an unknown price. It's reasonable to assume that nVidia will probably bring out a very similar range of models as in the 10x0 series with a more than trivial improvement in each model. They could do that and they know that's a successful approach, so they probably will. But what specs, what prices, what dates? Maybe it'll be 6 months. Or 8 months. Or 10 months. It's not like they're having trouble selling 10x0 cards at relatively high prices and yields must be superb after this much time to refine things. So they don't have an urgent need to hurry. Not unless AMD suddenly find Vega 2 down the back of a sofa and it's much better than Vega or AMD sell Vega cards at £300.

By the time Volta gaming cards are out, the rumour mill/hype train for Navi will be well underway, so maybe wait for Navi. The last shown roadmap put Navi at H1 2018, after all. Maybe not very much after Volta for gaming cards.

End of the day though, each to their own, everyone's needs are different and if buying now gives you the maximum happiness then that is what you should do

Heavily modded FO4 with practically infinite settlement budget...my 7950 is not up to the job. Not by a long chalk. I wasn't in the market for a new card when the 10x0 cards came out and I've been waiting for Vega since I was in the market. Now Vega is out and it's mediocre. Waiting another 6, 8, 10 months to buy at the beginning of the next new cycle while using hardware that's way under par for playing the game I like most in the way I want to play it isn't appealing. I think you're right that close to the beginning of a card cycle is usually the sweet spot for buying, but it's too far away right now for me with my 10-15fps FO4 settlements. I could make much simpler settlements, but I want to play with elaborate settlements. That's the toy I want to play with and that's the toy I'm willing to pay another £350 for. Which sounds nuts to me. I've never paid more than £200 for a graphics card and in the past that was fine (especially if you bought 2nd hand - IIRC this 7950 cost me £100) but today it's not. It took me a while to talk myself into it even though I'm no longer seriously poor. Being careful with money is what stopped me being seriously poor and I take care to keep that habit.

 

[TNA]

So no, there is no indication of what the specs of Volta gaming cards will be.

Many people had the understanding that Vega would be better than a 1080ti.



I agree with that, but...



...there's no indication that Volta for gaming cards is coming out this year. Not even rumours that it might happen. The rumours are a release early next year. Maybe. With unknown specs at an unknown price. It's reasonable to assume that nVidia will probably bring out a very similar range of models as in the 10x0 series with a more than trivial improvement in each model. They could do that and they know that's a successful approach, so they probably will. But what specs, what prices, what dates? Maybe it'll be 6 months. Or 8 months. Or 10 months. It's not like they're having trouble selling 10x0 cards at relatively high prices and yields must be superb after this much time to refine things. So they don't have an urgent need to hurry. Not unless AMD suddenly find Vega 2 down the back of a sofa and it's much better than Vega or AMD sell Vega cards at £300.

By the time Volta gaming cards are out, the rumour mill/hype train for Navi will be well underway, so maybe wait for Navi. The last shown roadmap put Navi at H1 2018, after all. Maybe not very much after Volta for gaming cards.



Heavily modded FO4 with practically infinite settlement budget...my 7950 is not up to the job. Not by a long chalk. I wasn't in the market for a new card when the 10x0 cards came out and I've been waiting for Vega since I was in the market. Now Vega is out and it's mediocre. Waiting another 6, 8, 10 months to buy at the beginning of the next new cycle while using hardware that's way under par for playing the game I like most in the way I want to play it isn't appealing. I think you're right that close to the beginning of a card cycle is usually the sweet spot for buying, but it's too far away right now for me with my 10-15fps FO4 settlements. I could make much simpler settlements, but I want to play with elaborate settlements. That's the toy I want to play with and that's the toy I'm willing to pay another £350 for. Which sounds nuts to me. I've never paid more than £200 for a graphics card and in the past that was fine (especially if you bought 2nd hand - IIRC this 7950 cost me £100) but today it's not. It took me a while to talk myself into it even though I'm no longer seriously poor. Being careful with money is what stopped me being seriously poor and I take care to keep that habit.

Well thanks for taking the time to justify to us your decision to purchase 1070

I do understand what you are saying. Still think RX Vega will better than you think though. We will soon see

 

[Mauller]

So any increase in performance would be down to an extra month's development on the drivers that have already been in developement for at least a year. It's...optimistic...to think that will make a huge difference to performance.

Did nobody actually notice the image i posted yesterday, it pretty much shows that the current Vega driver branch is months old, older than drivers seen at the end of march. The driver may have the latest game profiles from the main driver branch in it, but that doesn't mean the vega driver itself is current.

 

[akarypid]

Did nobody actually notice the image i posted yesterday, it pretty much shows that the current Vega driver branch is months old, older than drivers seen at the end of march. The driver may have the latest game profiles from the main driver branch in it, but that doesn't mean the vega driver itself is current.

I don't think that anybody is doubting that Vega FE is running on 'pro drivers'.

What people are worried about is that drivers will give another 10% and this is the very best case scenario. On PC Perspective they said 10% at best and Gamers Nexus said 'if you expect 30-40% it is unrealistic'.

At this point, we know the chip, we know the thermal solution will be better in the gaming card, so we're not really waiting for RX Vega. We're waiting on its drivers to see what difference they make.

From what I read so far:

• 10% is something that everyone feels is a given. Almost everyone expects this to be the minimum improvement.
• 20% is not too far-fetched (PC Perspective things so, but Gamers Nexus draws the line at 30-40% as absurd). It's less likely but possible.
• >=30% is a bit of wishful thinking

At least that's the sentiment I've seen around forums...

 

[r7slayer]

yes i did but i didn't dare post because of the chance i missed something and get made to look like an idiot lol. I don't quite understand the driver version numbers anyways.

 

[Mauller]

What people are worried about is that drivers will give another 10% and this is the very best case scenario. On PC Perspective they said 10% at best and Gamers Nexus said 'if you expect 30-40% it is unrealistic'.

Yeah, except 30-40% can be perfectly realistic and it happens often with game readying drivers. If the drivers really are not there for Vega features, its not entirely unrealistic for there to be a significant improvement in performance overall, maybe not straight away, but compared to current Vega FE drivers there can reasonably be 30-40% more performance over the coming months, if not at launch with RX Vega.

 

[Shaz12]

So no, there is no indication of what the specs of Volta gaming cards will be.

Many people had the understanding that Vega would be better than a 1080ti.



I agree with that, but...



...there's no indication that Volta for gaming cards is coming out this year. Not even rumours that it might happen. The rumours are a release early next year. Maybe. With unknown specs at an unknown price. It's reasonable to assume that nVidia will probably bring out a very similar range of models as in the 10x0 series with a more than trivial improvement in each model. They could do that and they know that's a successful approach, so they probably will. But what specs, what prices, what dates? Maybe it'll be 6 months. Or 8 months. Or 10 months. It's not like they're having trouble selling 10x0 cards at relatively high prices and yields must be superb after this much time to refine things. So they don't have an urgent need to hurry. Not unless AMD suddenly find Vega 2 down the back of a sofa and it's much better than Vega or AMD sell Vega cards at £300.

By the time Volta gaming cards are out, the rumour mill/hype train for Navi will be well underway, so maybe wait for Navi. The last shown roadmap put Navi at H1 2018, after all. Maybe not very much after Volta for gaming cards.



Heavily modded FO4 with practically infinite settlement budget...my 7950 is not up to the job. Not by a long chalk. I wasn't in the market for a new card when the 10x0 cards came out and I've been waiting for Vega since I was in the market. Now Vega is out and it's mediocre. Waiting another 6, 8, 10 months to buy at the beginning of the next new cycle while using hardware that's way under par for playing the game I like most in the way I want to play it isn't appealing. I think you're right that close to the beginning of a card cycle is usually the sweet spot for buying, but it's too far away right now for me with my 10-15fps FO4 settlements. I could make much simpler settlements, but I want to play with elaborate settlements. That's the toy I want to play with and that's the toy I'm willing to pay another £350 for. Which sounds nuts to me. I've never paid more than £200 for a graphics card and in the past that was fine (especially if you bought 2nd hand - IIRC this 7950 cost me £100) but today it's not. It took me a while to talk myself into it even though I'm no longer seriously poor. Being careful with money is what stopped me being seriously poor and I take care to keep that habit.

If Vega is this much of a flop I don’t really think Navi will be all that competitive with Volta. It has to take out the 1080ti first and Volta will be way above that.

 

[r7slayer]

Yeah, except 30-40% can be perfectly realistic and it happens often with game readying drivers. If the drivers really are not there for Vega features, its not entirely unrealistic for there to be a significant improvement in performance overall, maybe not straight away, but compared to current Vega FE drivers there can reasonably be 30-40% more performance over the coming months, if not at launch with RX Vega.

Wasn't the Furyx struggling to beat the 980 but now it competes and sometimes beats a 980ti? That's around 30% at least there made in improvements.

 

[Sargatanas2511]

Wasn't the Furyx struggling to beat the 980 but now it competes and sometimes beats a 980ti? That's around 30% at least there made in improvements.

Enabling tile based rendering alone, based on the 780>980 performance jump *should* provide around 15-20% all on its own, while lowering power consumption at the same time.

 

[Mauller]

Enabling tile based rendering alone, based on the 780>980 performance jump *should* provide around 15-20% all on its own, while lowering power consumption at the same time.

should be quite a reasonable decrease in power consumption when TBR is in use. It actually uses more power to pass data around than it does to process the same piece of data nowadays.

 

[WeSbO]

On PC Perspective they said 10% at best and Gamers Nexus said 'if you expect 30-40% it is unrealistic'.

To be fair, those are just the same guesses as anyone else can have, they do not have insider info concerning this, so those are not end all be all statements, and should never be considered as such, reviewers have been wrong many many times...

That being said, a 30/40% gain out of drivers alone does seem unrealistic I will agree with that, but as we have close to zero info, we don't know RX might get a new stepping, we don't know what crap they have done to the current drivers, I mean it's just as much of a guess as is the percentage of driver improvement.

On a side note Level1tech also made a good point by saying it wouldn't really be the right time to bring out a new gaming card, because AMD can't even produce enough of the current cards on the shelves even though they are selling at unreasonable prices, so would it really be smart to potentially kill your own sales (knowing the market share that AMD have)

 

[Mauller]

On a side note Level1tech also made a good point by saying it wouldn't really be the right time to bring out a new gaming card, because AMD can't even produce enough of the current cards on the shelves even though they are selling at unreasonable prices, so would it really be smart to potentially kill your own sales (knowing the market share that AMD have)

how is it not a good time? these cards would be made in lower numbers compared to the 500 series anyway and fill a different performance bracket.

 

[jonjay]

Vega RX has at best the same GPU as Vega FE.
Vega RX has at best the same type of memory as Vega FE.
Vega RX has at best the same amount of memory as Vega FE.
Vega FE has what are stated to be gaming-specific drivers.

It's not a huge gamble to use the FE performance as being indicative of RX performance because it's fundamentally the same card. If RX differs in hardware from FE, then RX will be worse than FE because it has to be much cheaper.

It might previously have been theoretically possible that RX would use GPU and memory clocked significantly higher than FE, but the power requirement and heat generation of FE cards completely rules that out.

So any increase in performance would be down to an extra month's development on the drivers that have already been in developement for at least a year. It's...optimistic...to think that will make a huge difference to performance.

It comes down to this - if AMD does have something much better than Vega FE, why did they release Vega FE as the halo version at >£1000 a card?

This man is like a Vulkan...logic is his language.

 

[melmac]

Is not a gaming card nor is advertised as such. So AMD can provided it without proper gaming drivers. Where is their fault?

While it's not a pure gaming card, you can game on it and AMD stated that this was possible. If you check the product page here:-

https://pro.radeon.com/en-us/product/radeon-vega-frontier-edition/

Click driver download and there it says very plainly

I just want to Game

If you want to game on a Windows® platform, get your driver here and switch to “Gaming Mode.”

So, yes, it is AMD's fault if they don't provide proper gaming drivers when they themselves link to them from the actual FE Vega product page.