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Radeon VII a win or fail?

Soldato
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Something hidden away waiting to be unlocked for Windows driver maybe? Wishful thinking tbh

RadeonSI Picks Up Primitive Culling With Async Compute For Performance Wins


Prolific open-source AMD Linux driver developer Marek Olšák has sent out his latest big patch series in the name of performance. His new set of 26 patches provide primitive culling with asynchronous compute and at least for workstation workloads yields a big performance uplift.

The 26 patches allow for using async compute to do primitive culling before the vertex shader process. This work ends up yielding performance improvements for workloads that do a lot of geometry that ends up being invisible. This code is stable and passing nearly all conformance tests while working from GCN 1.1 through Radeon VII.

Marek provided some results using the ParaView workstation software we often use for benchmarking. He commented, "As you can see in the results marked (ENABLED) in the picture below, it destroys our competition (The GeForce results are from a Phoronix article from 2017, the latest ones I could find):"

image.php



For now this optimization is enabled for all professional/workstation graphics cards as Marek hasn't had the time to benchmark games. But depending upon feedback he might enable the code for all GPUs and also possible per-game whitelisting if this ends up hurting some titles.

The patch series can be found here. It looks like I have some more interesting benchmarks to add to my TODO list this week! Yes, will look at the gaming performance and more. Even if this ends up being just relevant to workstation workloads, this is great still for helping to increase the attractiveness of Mesa to those users who traditionally use the Radeon Software "PRO" OpenGL driver.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RadeonSI-Prim-Culling-Async-Com
 
Man of Honour
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Thing to remember that is only one part of the pipeline - the gains above won't be manifest as a sudden jump in game rendering (overall framerate) of that magnitude. The biggest impact infact would be reducing power use as with a non-saturation workload you'd be able to utilise the hardware more efficiently.
 
Man of Honour
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Every gpu released in the last 12 months seems the same. Overpriced. Performance is coming.

The other side of that as well is that in many cases where you do need extra GPU horsepower these days it isn't because the software side has outstripped the hardware it is often because the games are poorly optimised, etc. and you will find other games the same features and/or just as good graphics that run much better, etc.
 
Soldato
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Not really.
The only thing disappointing in my view is the price. Its a little bit out my price range.
The GPU performance is fine and it will improve.
Sorry I thought I was in the RTX thread ;)

Tbh it applies to both vendors offerings. The RTX tech is a massive disappointment but so is this vega mk2. Yes if they can rectify the noise and heat and power issues then price will always be the decider and (very low) price is what made me and many others buy vega mk1 in the end.
 
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TNA

TNA

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Not really.
The only thing disappointing in my view is the price. Its a little bit out my price range.
The GPU performance is fine and it will improve.
Come on shanks, it is a 7nm GPU and priced silly. For gamers it is a fail. It needed to be £499, run cooler and quieter and launched with no driver issues to have been a win IMO.
 
Soldato
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Come on shanks, it is a 7nm GPU and priced silly. For gamers it is a fail. It needed to be £499, run cooler and quieter and launched with no driver issues to have been a win IMO.

Looking at the performance vs my Vega 64 I would be happy with the jump. But like I said the price is the factor here and its out of my range.
£500 would be a killer sweet spot I do agree.

The GPU what you getting for £650 is very good, it's excellent at compute work loads like content creation etc and already has the pro software available.
You then get the gaming side of things that in my opinion is decent enough.
 

TNA

TNA

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Looking at the performance vs my Vega 64 I would be happy with the jump. But like I said the price is the factor here and its out of my range.
£500 would be a killer sweet spot I do agree.

The GPU what you getting for £650 is very good, it's excellent at compute work loads like content creation etc and already has the pro software available.
You then get the gaming side of things that in my opinion is decent enough.

Thing is, for those who do not care which brand GPU they have, that performance has been available at that price point for a long while now. I don't see the point of mentioning how good it is for compute as we would be buying it for gaming and judging it as a gamers card. If I was judging it as a professional card for content creation, it would be a different story.

I jumped from Vega 64 performance to my Titan XP which is similar performance to a Radeon 7. Only cost me around £460 as I recall, not brand new admittedly, but I have had it for a while now also.
 
Soldato
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Thing is, for those who do not care which brand GPU they have, that performance has been available at that price point for a long while now. I don't see the point of mentioning how good it is for compute as we would be buying it for gaming and judging it as a gamers card. If I was judging it as a professional card for content creation, it would be a different story.

I jumped from Vega 64 performance to my Titan XP which is similar performance to a Radeon 7. Only cost me around £460 as I recall, not brand new admittedly, but I have had it for a while now also.

Until Nvidia realised they lost the adaptive sync war the only option for Freesync users was AMD. Even a 1080Ti without Freesync at 4K was not a viable upgrade path for a Vega 64 with Freesync. For Freesync users this is the first time we have had a viable upgrade path from Vega.
 

TNA

TNA

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Until Nvidia realised they lost the adaptive sync war the only option for Freesync users was AMD. Even a 1080Ti without Freesync at 4K was not a viable upgrade path for a Vega 64 with Freesync. For Freesync users this is the first time we have had a viable upgrade path from Vega.
Well no AMD don't even have that no more. I was a Freesync user too. As I wanted to play 4K I got fed up and just sold my freesync monitor and got a G-Sync one, sorted.

G-sync is still the best way to play 4K even after Nvidia throwing the towel in and supporting Freesync anyway, as the Freesync one's only do 40-60hz at best.
 
Soldato
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Well no AMD don't even have that no more. I was a Freesync user too. As I wanted to play 4K I got fed up and just sold my freesync monitor and got a G-Sync one, sorted.

G-sync is still the best way to play 4K even after Nvidia throwing the towel in and supporting Freesync anyway, as the Freesync one's only do 40-60hz at best.

I know AMD don't even have that any more, that's what I said in my post. Nvidia supporting Freesync gives Freesync monitor owners more choice. Thankfully I had the foresight to stick with Freesync because I always knew it would win the A-Sync war and that Nvidia would buckle eventually. I now have a monitor that I can enjoy regardless of what GPU brand I go for. Much better than paying the G-Sync tax only to end up stuck in the Nvidia only club.

My Vega 64 could play 4K just fine on my Samsung 32" 4K monitor with a 33-60Hz Freesync range. Even though I bought a used RTX 2080 at a more respectable price it's only real benefit for most games is that it allows me some extra flexibility to stay within Freesync range. It has not transformed my 4K experience in any tangible way other than some extra eye candy.
 
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