**AMD Radeon 390X Graphics Card WCE**

[Kaapstad]

Fiji Radeon 390X comes with 8GB frame buffer



http://www.fudzilla.com/news/graphics/37258-fiji-radeon-390x-comes-with-8gb




drunkenmaster's view on the article

Article is bogus for many reasons, could the 390x have 8GB or an 8GB version, very possible I've said as much for a long time. But could it happen how this article says, no, it's impossible, Faud is an idiot and anyone believing this has a basic lack of knowledge or logical thinking.

It's this simple, a card will take at least 12 months to make, newer architectures/bigger new cards generally take a lot longer with the derivatives (same architecture but different shader/rop/bus counts) being quicker but still taking a decent length of time to design, lay out, tape out and get to market, mostly concurrent work but it takes time regardless.

You can not, with absolute certainty, go 2-3 months from launch and double the memory bus size... this is a literal impossibility. The article is twaddle because it's proposing something that is literally impossible. You can't take a core designed for four external connections to memory chips and just add four more without redesigning the entire chip, relaying the chip out on a transistor by transistor basis, re-taping it out, etc. This would add die size and at minimum a 12 month delay for a huge cost. This is NOT possible.

What is possible is it was always going to be an 8GB chip with 8 memory connections, what is also possible is the wait till summer is because that is when 2GB stacks will be available, letting them offer 4/8GB versions both using 4 memory stacks, just different density stacks.

On a more sensible note, 6 stacks would cost a lot less than 8, give you 6GB at a lower cost to the user yet adding 50% more memory for 4k users which will be more than enough in 99% of games for the next few years.

There are many possible specs for the 390x, what is impossible is what Faud is pushing in this article, that because Nvidia has semi announced a 12GB card that AMD at the last second reworked the card to completely change it.

Not true for power reasons, if you had a 300W Titan X with 12GB gddr5 and one with 8GB HBM, there would be likely around the 30-50W extra power available for the core on the HBM model. So the core could have a higher default clock, a much higher boost clock AND it would have the bandwidth required to feed the core running faster.

HBM's advantage isn't the raw bandwidth, it's the power saving it offers, which can then be used for core clock speeds.

Will the 390x have more room for power usage for the core compared to Titan X because of HBM, absolutely, will it be faster... depends on die size, actual performance, architecture improvements and how much money both dumped into another 28nm design. Effectively everything is somewhat compromised at this point. THe cards being released in the past year, likely including the 290x, were not what Nvidia or AMD had planned for 3 years ago. When you plan an architecture for the next node you can plan to double transistor count, some hardware feature that just simply cost too much die space on 28nm might have made sense at 20/14nm, so was included in the next architecture. When you try and move back up to 28nm with an architecture designed for a lower node, you make compromises.


HBM will allow any individual core to be noticeably faster than the same core equipped with GDDR5, the 390x will be significantly faster with HBM than had it used GDDR5.... but that doesn't translate to it being a brilliant core automatically. Depends on many more things.

 

[Kaapstad]

I can now see a lot of AMD users saying how useful 8gb or 12gb is rather than 4gb is enough.

I bet the Red Baron is measuring up his case now.

 

[Kaapstad]

Quite frankly if they dont release the 390X with 8gb they might aswell shut up their GPU department now and just go do something else, however if they do release the 390X with 8GB of HBM, then they will smash Nvidia silly with it, its that simple.

Yes thats a bold statement, but i stand behind it, this is brand new tech and something that Nvidia themselves are moving on to, so i expect the first gen of HBM cards to be something special over the GDDR5 cards, so its not a true comparison really even vs the TitanX which will have 12gb of GDDR5 on it.

I fully expect 8GB of HBM to lay waste to even 12GB of GDDR5, especially with a ramped up AMD platform behind it.

Only thing that concerns me is the possibility of it being AIO, we know HBM uses less power than GDDR5, so there should be significent reduction in heat there, however im still not convinced AMD wont just clock the nuts out of the gpu just to get performance and not care about the heat created as they will lob on an AIO, hoping this isnt the case though.

Titan X about 10% faster !!!

HBM is very fast yes but once the memory is already fast enough making it go even faster will not give any more performance as it still has to wait for the GPU core which will be the bottleneck.

Titan X v 390X will come down to which has got the fastest GPU core and that is anyones guess.

 

[Kaapstad]

I'm not sure about that.

If it were true, why bother moving to HBM?

Because HBM is better going forward as games become more demanding. HBM has the potential to run faster but only if you get something that can use it.

It is a bit like putting 12gb on a Titan X, it is nice to have there but there are no games that will use that much meaning that a 6gb card will handle things just as well.

4 x 8gb 390Xs @8k using HBM will be something to see.

 

[Kaapstad]

Anyone seen DM.

 

[Kaapstad]

Not true for power reasons, if you had a 300W Titan X with 12GB gddr5 and one with 8GB HBM, there would be likely around the 30-50W extra power available for the core on the HBM model. So the core could have a higher default clock, a much higher boost clock AND it would have the bandwidth required to feed the core running faster.

HBM's advantage isn't the raw bandwidth, it's the power saving it offers, which can then be used for core clock speeds.

Will the 390x have more room for power usage for the core compared to Titan X because of HBM, absolutely, will it be faster... depends on die size, actual performance, architecture improvements and how much money both dumped into another 28nm design. Effectively everything is somewhat compromised at this point. THe cards being released in the past year, likely including the 290x, were not what Nvidia or AMD had planned for 3 years ago. When you plan an architecture for the next node you can plan to double transistor count, some hardware feature that just simply cost too much die space on 28nm might have made sense at 20/14nm, so was included in the next architecture. When you try and move back up to 28nm with an architecture designed for a lower node, you make compromises.


HBM will allow any individual core to be noticeably faster than the same core equipped with GDDR5, the 390x will be significantly faster with HBM than had it used GDDR5.... but that doesn't translate to it being a brilliant core automatically. Depends on many more things.

Stick your neck out and predict the performance of the 390X then.

 

[Kaapstad]

Article is bogus for many reasons, could the 390x have 8GB or an 8GB version, very possible I've said as much for a long time. But could it happen how this article says, no, it's impossible, Faud is an idiot and anyone believing this has a basic lack of knowledge or logical thinking.

It's this simple, a card will take at least 12 months to make, newer architectures/bigger new cards generally take a lot longer with the derivatives (same architecture but different shader/rop/bus counts) being quicker but still taking a decent length of time to design, lay out, tape out and get to market, mostly concurrent work but it takes time regardless.

You can not, with absolute certainty, go 2-3 months from launch and double the memory bus size... this is a literal impossibility. The article is twaddle because it's proposing something that is literally impossible. You can't take a core designed for four external connections to memory chips and just add four more without redesigning the entire chip, relaying the chip out on a transistor by transistor basis, re-taping it out, etc. This would add die size and at minimum a 12 month delay for a huge cost. This is NOT possible.

What is possible is it was always going to be an 8GB chip with 8 memory connections, what is also possible is the wait till summer is because that is when 2GB stacks will be available, letting them offer 4/8GB versions both using 4 memory stacks, just different density stacks.

On a more sensible note, 6 stacks would cost a lot less than 8, give you 6GB at a lower cost to the user yet adding 50% more memory for 4k users which will be more than enough in 99% of games for the next few years.

There are many possible specs for the 390x, what is impossible is what Faud is pushing in this article, that because Nvidia has semi announced a 12GB card that AMD at the last second reworked the card to completely change it.

So the Fud article is right then lol.

Two separate designs and AMD have decided to go with the 8gb version.

 

[Kaapstad]

No, the article isn't right, it will never be right regardless of what the 390x comes with.

Firstly there won't be two separate designs, that is much of the point. YOu don't spend millions, 10mil + these days just to tape out a design, and many more 10's of millions on the design stages to have two almost identical chips. It will either always have been designed for 8 memory stacks, or always been designed for 4 stacks.

Faud's article isn't that it has 8GB, it's specific in how and why AMD moved to an 8GB version and it's complete nonsense.

Being that Faud is a useless idiot and usually posts whatever nonsense gets sent to him I would suspect he's just doing another clickbait article to get page views or he's intentionally trying to raise expectations of an 8GB card so he can complain and users will complain when it has less.

What he absolutely does not have is a legitimate source who told him AMD at the last second reworked the design and they just added 4 more stacks, it is quite literally impossible. What he could have is a bogus source telling him anything and being the idiot he is he posts it because he's too dumb to understand why it's impossible. He, along with wccrap and several of the other worst tech sites will repost anything, they don't have accuracy, general computing knowledge or much of anything, they get stories/press releases e-mailed to them and they post them as if it's definitely true.

I think I believe your previous post where you contradict yourself and basically say it is possible.

 

[Kaapstad]

@drunkenmaster

I have updated the OP with your point of view so lets see what turns up in June and see if you are right or wrong.

 

[Kaapstad]

Anyway, I'm not claiming the card has 4 or 8GB, or how it's arranged, all I'm doing is pointing out that Faud's story, which isn't primarily about the memory amount but how and when they decided to make it a higher capacity card... is ludicrous and literally impossible. The card could have either, what it absolutely can't have is 4 stacks as of a few weeks ago then add 4 more stacks at the last second after seeing some Nvidia card announced with more memory. That is not how the silicon industry works. The number of stacks on the 390x would have been finalised likely a minimum of 8-12 months before launch.

So the card could turn up with 8gb like Fud are claiming.

Who cares if Fuds informant is his granny who reads tea leaves for a day job as long as it is right.

 

[Kaapstad]

The thing is it looks like Fiji might be the first true 4K card, IE the first card that can drive 4K like a 290/X / GTX 970/80 can 1440P.

Be that as it may it will need 8GB or its not going to be a true 4K card.

You have just forgot the Titan X.

 

[Kaapstad]

He should have said the first card at a reasonable price.

+1

AMD will sell at least 5 390Xs for every one Titan X

 

[Kaapstad]

So let me see, when the watercooler was rumoured everyone went mental and I suggested that maybe, just maybe, there would be more than one edition of the card. Stock cooled and watercooled, then let the user decide what they want. I also said 8GB was more than a possibility. It also says up to 8GB, not just 8GB, this indicates 4 and 8GB versions which implies that there will be 4 stacks and both 1 and 2GB stack densities, again something I suggested was more than possible while others were posting up an irrelevant HBM 2.0 spec and insisting it wasn't possible for a couple of years.

Actually you are the guy would said it would be 4gb because of the technical difficulties with gen 1 HBM.

Stop fudging and backtracking lol.

 

[Kaapstad]

Doop Doopie Do

Must be your birthday.

 

[Kaapstad]

The question is, can they make a core that's commensurate to the giant leap that HBM represents.

On 28nm no.

 

[Kaapstad]

Who said 390X is on 28nm..

 

[Kaapstad]

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the actual limitation of HBM, and it seems that there is no difference here either. People have misunderstood Drunkenmaster on this one


Layman's:

Is it possible to fit more than 4gb on a single interposer? Potentially

Will have AMD have done it? Potentially

Is it possible to have scrapped 4gb and gone with 8gb in recent months given events? Near on impossible

Is HBM limited to 4gb? No it is limited to four dies per STACK there is no reason within the spec why adding additional stacks isn't possible, it just depends on die area and other afflicting limitations

Is the fud article nonsense then? 100% yes

Shame DM did not understand this in some of his older posts.

 

[Kaapstad]

I think that AMD looked at both the 4GB and 8GB and did the development for both with an eye to bring the 4GB card out first and then later add the 8GB card to the line up as we've seen before.

With both cards probably ready they have looked at the market and decided that with the push for more VRAM they should bring the 8GB out first and maybe add a cheaper version later. There's no way given the time frame that they would swap to 8GB if all of the development was not already finished or near to being finished. It would be short sighted not to plan for both VRAM capacities and if you have then they would be concurrent as you would want as much cross over as possible to save money.

This 100%

 

[Kaapstad]

You realise that he's trying to give a round up of what I was saying... then you agree and then say it's a shame I didn't understand.



While physically possible unlike what Fud was saying, no company will design a card where one version has 512Gb/s, another version has 1TB/s of bandwidth and they have the same amount of raw horsepower. It's inefficient and wasteful to have far more bandwidth than the architecture can handle. The cost of having a second layout, second tape out, second design team is massive. While it is possible, the chances of any company doing this is lets say 0.02% and the chances of a company without bag loads of cash spending probably 20-30% more on a single card by having a second version like AMD doing it is even lower. It would be bad engineering, it's that simple. The only realistic possibility of same cards with two different densities is as with all existing cards I can think of, memory chips of different capacity being used.

More backtracking.

Go on admit you got it wrong.

 

[Kaapstad]

Well, done, you precisely explained what I was saying by adding the context. The question was why NOT have both versions. I explained what the reasons would be if there wasn't a 8GB version. Look at the words I used, MIGHT NOT be a realistic possibility of putting 8GB, not no possibility.

Context is everything, I was asked IF there WERE ONLY 4GB cards... why would that be the case... which would be as I explained, because 8 stacks is extremely unlikely and 2GB stacks weren't available yet. I wasn't asked if there would be 8GB cards and even if I had been I didn't say they weren't possible.

From day one, I think 8 stacks is unlikely for the reasons given, I think 2GB stacks are possible but depends on when it's released, I categorically stated I believed 2GB stacks would be available LONG before HBM 2.0 chips were available... but didn't know when this would be. A 4 stack 1GB stack version is almost assured, from day one I've stated an 8GB version is possible and simply depends on when both the 2GB stacks enter production and when the cards launch.

I'm sure you didn't mean to give the context with the quote which explains the answer.

Can you give a simple one line answer, how much HBM memory will be on the 390X ?

You have three possible answers

1. It will have 8gb

2. It will have 4gb

3. I don't know

Pick one so we know what your opinion is without hiding it in walls of text.