** The AMD Navi Thread **

[MyBrainz]

^ LuL ^

 

[4K8KW10]

^ LuL ^

Someone got drunk and began posting not connected things... And spam.

 

[4K8KW10]

AMD to launch next-gen Navi graphics cards at E3 2019 https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65560/amd-launch-next-gen-navi-graphics-cards-e3-2019/index.html

 

[LePhuronn]

I guess we'll see at E3 how much conflicting information ends up being true. This particular article states:

"The full launch for Navi will be on 7/7 which has been previously rumored..."
I thought that was Ryzen, but why not both I guess. But it's STILL a Sunday though. Weird, but not an issue I guess.


"As for performance I've heard that we are looking at it easily beating the Radeon RX Vega 64 and coming close to the RTX 2080"
That's another shift of the goalposts upwards, pushing Navi dangerously close to Radeon VII in performance. What about the bottom end? So much for replacing Polaris.


"Navi 20 will reportedly not be that much of an upgrade in performance"
So it's not a 2080Ti beater with Ray Tracing then? Not that it matters because it's not coming any time soon.


"AMD's first post-GCN architecture is Navi which is where most of the improvements in performance comes"
And here we all thought Navi was GCN 6.


CHOO CHOO! All aboard! Personally I don't even care what Navi can do any more, I just want to see the damn thing come out and how tiny the boards are going to be. They must be tiny, surely?

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Ive said it before....

 

[4K8KW10]

I guess we'll see at E3 how much conflicting information ends up being true. This particular article states:

"The full launch for Navi will be on 7/7 which has been previously rumored..."
I thought that was Ryzen, but why not both I guess. But it's STILL a Sunday though. Weird, but not an issue I guess.


"As for performance I've heard that we are looking at it easily beating the Radeon RX Vega 64 and coming close to the RTX 2080"
That's another shift of the goalposts upwards, pushing Navi dangerously close to Radeon VII in performance. What about the bottom end? So much for replacing Polaris.


"Navi 20 will reportedly not be that much of an upgrade in performance"
So it's not a 2080Ti beater with Ray Tracing then? Not that it matters because it's not coming any time soon.


"AMD's first post-GCN architecture is Navi which is where most of the improvements in performance comes"
And here we all thought Navi was GCN 6.


CHOO CHOO! All aboard! Personally I don't even care what Navi can do any more, I just want to see the damn thing come out and how tiny the boards are going to be. They must be tiny, surely?

1. 7/7/7 is alright. 7th day of the 7th month, celebrating the 7nm manufacturing process
2. The higher the performance, the better. As always
3. Hopefully, it will be a non-GCN architecture
4. With HBM2, yes. With GDDR, not quite

 

[LePhuronn]

1. 7/7/7 is alright. 7th day of the 7th month, celebrating the 7nm manufacturing process
2. The higher the performance, the better. As always
3. Hopefully, it will be a non-GCN architecture
4. With HBM2, yes. With GDDR, not quite

1. No ****, Sherlock. But it's a SUNDAY
2. But this is yet another bump up in what Navi's performance is suggested to be. It's getting ridiculous. One minute it's replacing Polaris, then it's replacing Polaris and Vega, now it's touching Radeon VII.
3. If it's not GCN then it's not Navi. It's that "next gen"/Arcturus thing.
4.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

3. If it's not GCN then it's not Navi. It's that "next gen"/Arcturus thing.

COuld they have merged the 2 into the same project?

 

[Steampunk]

COuld they have merged the 2 into the same project?

No. They are quite different projects, with Navi being a mid-range part at the end of GCN, with Arcturus being the start of a new architecture designed around the advantages of 7nm and smaller.

When reading website speculation, you have to be mindful that these places make up rumours to get page clicks, and then they circle around with every website quoting "leaks" that can be traced back to one of them making unsubstantiated rumours for click-bait articles.

 

[LePhuronn]

Could they have merged the 2 into the same project?

It's possible that some concepts we'll see in Next Gen/Arcturus could be developed as a first iteration into GCN 6, but I don't see the actual implementation being transferable.

I'm still of the opinion that Navi is AMD cutting their teeth on their first 7nm-centric GPU design to transfer that knowledge onto Next Gen/Arcturus later on. It just so happens they're using GCN as that test bed because they are familiar with it. It's likely we'll see a chunky performance gain given it's a 7nm design, not a shrunk from something bigger, with a pure gaming focus, but the benefits will be lowered costs and higher yields, not an Nvidia crusher. A reset of Radeon Technologies, if you will.

This is why "Navi 20 with ray tracing" makes no sense to me, unless it turns out Navi "fixes" all of GCN's "problems" and gives that architecture a big kick of longevity; I don't think anybody would really care what's under the hood if the performance was there, the only reason we see so much "yawn, GCN AGAIN?" is because the previous 5 iterations just haven't pushed the performance envelope all that much.

 

[DrCheese]

Not sure what the point in it being the same as the RTX2080 is - I thought the Radeon VII already did that?

 

[LePhuronn]

Not sure what the point in it being the same as the RTX2080 is - I thought the Radeon VII already did that?

This is why I said shifting the goalposts again.

But then consider that Radeon VII isn't a real product, it's a PR stunt made possible by a perfect storm of failings by Nvidia. If Radeon VII truly is powered by repurposed MI50 packages, there is little chance in it being profitable as a stand-alone entity and AMD would look to replace it as soon as viable.

Unfortunately, the big deal AMD made about 16GB VRAM is a precedent I think they'll struggle to reverse. I don't see 16GB GDDR6 being strapped to a Navi even if the core is capable of matching performance. But then Vega 64 to Radeon VII is a fairly big gap that could be filled by a Navi that almost matches the Radeon VII but only has 8GB VRAM (like how the 1070 Ti was close to the 1080, rather than being half way between 1070 and 1080).

Who knows? We still have no solid leaks, so roll on Computex and E3.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

It's possible that some concepts we'll see in Next Gen/Arcturus could be developed as a first iteration into GCN 6, but I don't see the actual implementation being transferable.

I'm still of the opinion that Navi is AMD cutting their teeth on their first 7nm-centric GPU design to transfer that knowledge onto Next Gen/Arcturus later on. It just so happens they're using GCN as that test bed because they are familiar with it. It's likely we'll see a chunky performance gain given it's a 7nm design, not a shrunk from something bigger, with a pure gaming focus, but the benefits will be lowered costs and higher yields, not an Nvidia crusher. A reset of Radeon Technologies, if you will.

This is why "Navi 20 with ray tracing" makes no sense to me, unless it turns out Navi "fixes" all of GCN's "problems" and gives that architecture a big kick of longevity; I don't think anybody would really care what's under the hood if the performance was there, the only reason we see so much "yawn, GCN AGAIN?" is because the previous 5 iterations just haven't pushed the performance envelope all that much.

Have you seen the rumours that it won't be GCN though? That's what I'm going on here. I haven't got a clue about the different architectures. But it could just be that with the waiting they've got the first of the arch ready now.

 

[LePhuronn]

Have you seen the rumours that it won't be GCN though?

I have, and I have no idea where they've come from so late in the day. We're expecting Navi later this year and for the longest time all the speculation has said GCN 6. Even a recent article about Raja Koduri claimed he was tasked with "fixing" GCN; if he was successful then it certainly didn't show up in Vega.

That's not to say the GCN rumours are true, we just don't have the information. But I would be very surprised if cash-strapped AMD managed to fund 3 different architectures at the same time (Zen, Zen 2 and Navi) even with the suggested investment from Sony. But then that could be why Navi is a year late.

See what I mean? "But then" "but then" "but then" I'm qualifying and countering everything I say. We just dunner know.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

This is why I said shifting the goalposts again.

But then consider that Radeon VII isn't a real product, it's a PR stunt made possible by a perfect storm of failings by Nvidia. If Radeon VII truly is powered by repurposed MI50 packages, there is little chance in it being profitable as a stand-alone entity and AMD would look to replace it as soon as viable.

Unfortunately, the big deal AMD made about 16GB VRAM is a precedent I think they'll struggle to reverse. I don't see 16GB GDDR6 being strapped to a Navi even if the core is capable of matching performance. But then Vega 64 to Radeon VII is a fairly big gap that could be filled by a Navi that almost matches the Radeon VII but only has 8GB VRAM (like how the 1070 Ti was close to the 1080, rather than being half way between 1070 and 1080).

Who knows? We still have no solid leaks, so roll on Computex and E3.

If Navi matches 2080 at £450 it won't need to have 16gb but 12gb would be nice

 

[LePhuronn]

If Navi matches 2080 at £450 it won't need to have 16gb but 12gb would be nice

But AMD made a big song and dance about 16GB, so there will need to be a significant differentiatior between a £450 card and a £650 card; 8GB RAM and a smidgen less performance would be that differentiatior.

 

[Chrisc]

I guess we'll see at E3 how much conflicting information ends up being true. This particular article states:

"As for performance I've heard that we are looking at it easily beating the Radeon RX Vega 64 and coming close to the RTX 2080"
That's another shift of the goalposts upwards, pushing Navi dangerously close to Radeon VII in performance. What about the bottom end? So much for replacing Polaris.

To be honest, i think at most it will be around V64 levels. No chance will it be close to 2080.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

But AMD made a big song and dance about 16GB, so there will need to be a significant differentiatior between a £450 card and a £650 card; 8GB RAM and a smidgen less performance would be that differentiatior.

Depends how long they want R7 to be around and if it'll have a market as a compute card even with a similar performing Navi card.

 

[BongoHunter]

Depends how long they want R7 to be around and if it'll have a market as a compute card even with a similar performing Navi card.

I don't think they want R VII to be around that long as it's just leftovers from Instinct manufacturing IIRC - it's a good idea as keeps them in the game until their next round of cards

 

[LePhuronn]

The kit inside Radeon VII should be an Instinct MI50 card. If that kit didn't pass qualification for Instinct then AMD will keep on banging out Radeon VII because they can recoup a bit of money. If that kit was simply moved away from Instinct into Radeon VII then AMD will want to replace it as soon as they can because they'll be losing boat loads of revenue by not selling a datacentre compute card.

it is possible that a similarly-performing Navi would allow what's inside Radeon VII to become a baby Instinct card (i.e. slightly gimped MI50 that doesn't need data center certification), but that's just gonna confuse matters.