AMD Polaris architecture – GCN 4.0

[Ferrari100]

You're seriously overestimating how much people care about the tiny minority of DX12 titles utilizing async shaders to a strong degree man.

Whatever you say that's fine. It's the people who choose a GPU based on price/performance who will ultimately make that decision not just me or you.
So will people prefer an AMD GPU that potentially offers up to 30% performance increase in Async enabled games or a more expensive option that does not? Who knows.


But what is only a few titles will soon be many more and if anybody values competition in this space surely it is only right for AMD to capitalise on this strength the same way Nvidia try to capitalise with their proprietary GameWorks. It's the same thing except there is nothing stopping Nvidia putting Async hardware in their GPUS - but AMD are unable to see GameWorks code and performance suffers sometimes because of it.

 

[Deleted User 234324]

You're seriously overestimating how much people care about the tiny minority of DX12 titles utilizing async shaders to a strong degree man.

Few titles may use it now but with the release of the PS4.5 later this year and other future consoles soon after that which will all likely be using a variation of the polaris gpu's async will become a major thing.

 

[andybird123]

Is it really a 30% performance boost, or is it just removing a bottleneck that AMD suffers from casuing a 30% performance drop in other titles.

Do you buy a card that needs special optimisation thats only in a few games, or a card that performs equally well in DX11 and DX12.

Do you know what patents AMD has on its gcn/ACE architecture to be able to say that youre sure that nvidia can copy the relevant hardware that allows AMD-like async usage?

 

[Ferrari100]

You're seriously overestimating how much people care about the tiny minority of DX12 titles utilizing async shaders to a strong degree man.

Many many people disagree with you man including yourself, otherwise you wouldn't care to be discussing it right now, right?

 

[h4rm0ny]

I understand that - none of it covers what I'm trying to convey in terms of some simple way of looking at the equivalency of AMD and nVidia's approaches without getting bogged down into the technical debate.

If it helps, I understood what you meant. I think it's accurate as far as it goes. AMD benefit more from Async than Nvidia do for architectural differences - though I don't understand them fully myself. But you can look at it two ways. You can say Nvidia doesn't have a big problem for Async to solve, or you can say that AMD do. But the result either way is AMD taking a relative jump forward in games that do this. And whether that is AMD getting a boost, or AMD removing a ball and chain from its ankle, in a lot of scenarios that means AMD pulls ahead.

 

[andybird123]

Few titles may use it now but with the release of the PS4.5 later this year and other future consoles soon after that which will all likely be using a variation of the polaris gpu's async will become a major thing.

PS4 doesnt use an API compatible with PC. Async also has to be tuned on a per GPU basis, so tuning async for a console GPU will leave it poorly optimised for most PC GPU's.

Async hardware has been available for how many years in consoles? And its been used in how many PC titles so far?

People keep saying this but it still hasnt happened, games take 3+ years to develop, so if PS4.5 is out later this year then by 2019 we might have some PC games using async?

You'll have to excuse me if i dont hold my breath

 

[Ferrari100]

Is it really a 30% performance boost, or is it just removing a bottleneck that AMD suffers from casuing a 30% performance drop in other titles.

Do you buy a card that needs special optimisation thats only in a few games, or a card that performs equally well in DX11 and DX12.

Do you know what patents AMD has on its gcn/ACE architecture to be able to say that youre sure that nvidia can copy the relevant hardware that allows AMD-like async usage?

It is a performance boost regardless. From a consumer point of view does it matter where that boost ultimately comes from?

I do not believe AMD have patented ACES or anything like that. Nvidia just believed DX11 would last a lot longer guess so never added the hardware (which would have increase power usage).

 

[D.P.]

Few titles may use it now but with the release of the PS4.5 later this year and other future consoles soon after that which will all likely be using a variation of the polaris gpu's async will become a major thing.

I doubt it. How many developers will spend the time making optimal async code paths for GCN 1.4, GCN 1.3, GCN 1.2, GCN 1.1, Maxwell 2, Pascal etc.?

Plus if Polaris is going in the direction that the rumors indicate then it will benefit much less form async compute because the utilization will be much more in line with maxwell GPUs . If AMD don't fix the for tend bottlenecks then Polaris will be extremely underwhelming.

Personally I think AMD are going to do a much better job of Polaris with a brand new command processor and geometry setup to feed the reduced compute shaders leading to a much more balanced GPU.

 

[Ferrari100]

PS4 doesnt use an API compatible with PC. Async also has to be tuned on a per GPU basis, so tuning async for a console GPU will leave it poorly optimised for most PC GPU's.

Async hardware has been available for how many years in consoles? And its been used in how many PC titles so far?

People keep saying this but it still hasnt happened, games take 3+ years to develop, so if PS4.5 is out later this year then by 2019 we might have some PC games using async?

You'll have to excuse me if i dont hold my breath

Nobody is asking you to.

 

[Rroff]

Personally I think AMD are going to do a much better job of Polaris with a brand new command processor and geometry setup to feed the reduced compute shaders leading to a much more balanced GPU.

Certainly appears to be the way they are going with Polaris though whether that will hold true for the bigger GPUs as someone posted before is another question - maybe we'll see async quietly drop off the agenda and get pushed under a rug.

 

[Ferrari100]

Certainly appears to be the way they are going with Polaris though whether that will hold true for the bigger GPUs as someone posted before is another question - maybe we'll see async quietly drop off the agenda and get pushed under a rug.

Why would AMD sweep there greatest asset under a rug?
Lol

In fact, why would anybody except for Nvidia want that? Baffling

 

[Rroff]

Why would AMD sweep there greatest asset under a rug?
Lol

In fact, why would anybody except for Nvidia want that? Baffling

You mean the same AMD that have a history of dropping the ball on their headline technologies?

 

[Ferrari100]

You mean the same AMD that have a history of dropping the ball on their headline technologies?

So we should all be encouraging them, right? If we all want GPU'S at a good price we should be embracing competion, not hindering it. Your negative post suggests we should just allow AMD to fail as they have done in the past? Why is that?
Not that we need to as they are prioritising Async compute based on what we have heard so far.

 

[D.P.]

Why would AMD sweep there greatest asset under a rug?
Lol

In fact, why would anybody except for Nvidia want that? Baffling

Because if it no longer holds a big benefit to AMD GPUs then it simply won't get hyped up so much by AMD. Plus as Roff says, AMD have ah it of hyping up a technology and then forgetting about it. AMD was the first to introduce Tessellation and then let nvidia take the lead. What about TrueAudio, AMD still supporting that?


We will see when Polaris launches. I have a good feeling about Polaris performance, in which case async compute simply won't be talked about as much as with Fiji.

 

[Rroff]

I kind of hope nVidia fails with their new audio engine as if its adopted by a good number of games and trueaudio is still sitting there useless I'm never gonna leave that one alone

Some might see this as negativity on my part but its more I'm tired of AMD not bringing some great tech into the mainstream despite the amount of hype and talk about it.

 

[Ferrari100]

Because if it no longer holds a big benefit to AMD GPUs then it simply won't get hyped up so much by AMD. Plus as Roff says, AMD have ah it of hyping up a technology and then forgetting about it. AMD was the first to introduce Tessellation and then let nvidia take the lead. What about TrueAudio, AMD still supporting that?


We will see when Polaris launches. I have a good feeling about Polaris performance, in which case async compute simply won't be talked about as much as with Fiji.

Of course it will be talked about if it's Async compute that is enabling the performance gap.
AMD's further additions to their new arch will only compliment that.

So far Async clearly does hold up in in Hitman and AOTS where the 1080 is concerned.
Unless you have firm evidence that the 1000 series makes the Async performance gap dissappear, which you do not, please explain how there is no longer a 'big benefit'. I see a 390x comparable GPU only 20% behind a 1080 based on what we have seen so far.


Nobody is hyped about anything. It's hope. Hope that AMD realize their greatest asset and capitalise on it. They will I am sure.
AMD are not hyping ASYNC either since they were told not to about six months ago. They are getting their heads down and there engineers are working hard.

Why turn this into a thread about AMD'S mistakes in the past? You never made a mistake and tried to make up for it later?

 

[Deleted User 234324]

AMD have bought plenty of tech to the mainstream, the biggest I can think of right now is GDDR5 and HBM.

 

[Phixsator]

Because if it no longer holds a big benefit to AMD GPUs then it simply won't get hyped up so much by AMD. Plus as Roff says, AMD have ah it of hyping up a technology and then forgetting about it. AMD was the first to introduce Tessellation and then let nvidia take the lead. What about TrueAudio, AMD still supporting that?


We will see when Polaris launches. I have a good feeling about Polaris performance, in which case async compute simply won't be talked about as much as with Fiji.

Yes TrueAudio is still being fully supported.. if you had watched the webinar that has just been you would know that they intent to use it for 3d audio positioning in VR and was listed as an important feature of Polaris.

 

[Ferrari100]

I kind of hope nVidia fails with their new audio engine as if its adopted by a good number of games and trueaudio is still sitting there useless I'm never gonna leave that one alone

Some might see this as negativity on my part but its more I'm tired of AMD not bringing some great tech into the mainstream despite the amount of hype and talk about it.

If it wasn't for AMD you can forget HBM. But you have a point, this is why It's fine for AMD to do what they can to make Async as valuable to them as they can. At the end of they day, when Nvidia are just as good at it, it's the consumers that win overall.
Nvidia, as Oxide devs have already stated by way of Nvidia requesting they do not use ASync at all, would prefer nobody have such technology, is that right this should happen?

 

[Rroff]

Yes TrueAudio is still being fully supported.. if you had watched the webinar that has just been you would know that they intent to use it for 3d audio positioning in VR and was listed as an important feature of Polaris.

Seems nVidia's main focus for it is VR as well - hope we see better audio pushed into games I'm bored of plain old stereo panning and/or some basic static environment modulation.