AMD RX 3000 series

[LePhuronn]

These rumours and leaks offer up unprecedentedly cheap prices, overly high clock speeds, incredible power consumption and serious performance.
All from a new 7nm process, now don't get me wrong, this 7nm process is looking to be quite a good step from the currant 14/12nm processes, but to expect all of the above is just farcical.
We might get one or two of the promises but certainly not all four.

But these promises are somewhat interconnected though. Incredible power consumption comes from the great work TSMC have done with their 7nm process, which has also enabled (supposedly) higher than expected yields, therefore power consumption and cheap prices can both come together by virtue of TSMC's process. And again, because of the low power consumption and high yields, there is plenty of headroom to ramp up clock speeds and add more cores (in the case of the CPUs). Serious performance is not a promise or metric until itself, it's the combination of low power, high clocks and large core counts.

So if anything, Ryzen 3 and Navi can't deliver 2 of the 4, their very nature is going to deliver all 4 or nothing at all. Unless AMD start cutting corners and playing the market - prices will only be high if AMD set them high, performance will only be low if AMD gimp their work.

And also bear in mind that recent GPU prices have seriously skewed the picture; its the mining and gouging that have sent GPU prices astronomical, not the hardware. If anything these Ryzen and Navi leaks are more representative of where the market should be anyway. Plus it's quite funny to see people commenting "the Vega 56 at £299 is a great price and where it should have been all along" but then say in the same breath that a new card with matching performance built on a more efficient process, with lower manufacturing costs using more cost-effective components can't possibly be priced at £250

 

[LePhuronn]

Not when you consider the cost of the GDDR6 memory, as Gibbo has already said 8GB of it cost somewhere in the region of $112, without any margins for AIB or reseller. So that would be well over half the cost of the 3070 for example.

With no disrespect to Gibbo, are you going to just accept fully the word of somebody who is going to hike Navi prices through the roof the second they prove popular to "maintain sales expectations"? Especially if there's RX 590 and Vega 56 stock still in his warehouse that he won't be able to shift if 3070 is sold at RRP? It sounds more insidious than it is, but by countering the leaked prices now by saying "there's no way those cards will sell at those prices because of some cursory anecdotal evidence" then when Navi gets gouged to hell and back nobody will be surprised. Because it will be gouged to hell and back; even if AMD don't pitch each card a couple quid under the competing RTX product, retailers certainly will.

Also, AMD may not be paying $100 for 8GB DDR6, there's always economy of scale involved and for all we know they could have struck a great deal for massive volume based on sales projections; if AMD can sell 3 3070s for every RTX 2080, that's 3 times the amount of GDDR6, and if I was making memory I know which company would boost my profits more. And even then, if AMD are paying that much for GDDR6, we don't know how much the rest costs. The high yields from 7nm process and AMD's modular designs could mean the Navi cores are literally pennies.

And frankly the argument about AID and reseller margins is irrelevant. These leaked prices are likely to be AMD's RRP. Since when did a reseller ever sell something at RRP? AIB cards are always more expensive than reference cards because of the customer coolers and PCBs.

 

[FoxEye]

I don't know much about cars, but I do know that GPUs aren't cars.

The internal combustion engine hasn't drastically changed in the last 10 years like CPUs and GPUs have. I don't think anyone ever expects to get a V8 supercar for the price they paid last year for a Ford Mondeo.

But - until recently - that was the situation wrt tech progression. Admittedly, CPUs stagnated a bit before Zen; now we're in GPU stagnation land.

So whilst it's true today that you won't get a 1060 beater without spending 2x what your 1060 cost you two years ago, we're not used to that situation.

More than a few of us "poor people" were still/are still hoping for better products at the same price as what we've got.

I guess that makes us fools in the new reality. We'll need to stump up £500 now for an upgrade to that 1060. Gibbo loves this, naturally - myself, not so much. And Gibbo only loves it because he knows most people will just shut up and swallow the new pricing structure.

 

[henson0115]

With no disrespect to Gibbo, are you going to just accept fully the word of somebody who is going to hike Navi prices through the roof the second they prove popular to "maintain sales expectations"? Especially if there's RX 590 and Vega 56 stock still in his warehouse that he won't be able to shift if 3070 is sold at RRP? It sounds more insidious than it is, but by countering the leaked prices now by saying "there's no way those cards will sell at those prices because of some cursory anecdotal evidence" then when Navi gets gouged to hell and back nobody will be surprised. Because it will be gouged to hell and back; even if AMD don't pitch each card a couple quid under the competing RTX product, retailers certainly will.

Also, AMD may not be paying $100 for 8GB DDR6, there's always economy of scale involved and for all we know they could have struck a great deal for massive volume based on sales projections; if AMD can sell 3 3070s for every RTX 2080, that's 3 times the amount of GDDR6, and if I was making memory I know which company would boost my profits more. And even then, if AMD are paying that much for GDDR6, we don't know how much the rest costs. The high yields from 7nm process and AMD's modular designs could mean the Navi cores are literally pennies.

And frankly the argument about AID and reseller margins is irrelevant. These leaked prices are likely to be AMD's RRP. Since when did a reseller ever sell something at RRP? AIB cards are always more expensive than reference cards because of the customer coolers and PCBs.

spot on. people also forget vega was expensive because of the HBM2 specifically, gdd6 maybe expensive compared to 5 but its also cheaper than HBM2.

 

[HeX]

I'd snap up a brand new BMW M5 for £5000

Yes, because why would AMD sell a 8C/16T CPU for so much less than Intel when they could have sold it for £400-500 when Ryzen released? I mean the Intel equiv was £1000 at the time!

AMD are the underdog, they need to undercut Intel/nVidia and increase market share and garner publicity. They've done it before with the 4000 series when they undercut the GTX 260 massively and forced nVidia to drop their crazy prices to compete.

Not to mention 1080 performance (a card relesed 3 years prior in 2016) for £250 in 2019 is hardly much to ask...

 

[jigger]

Yes, because why would AMD sell a 8C/16T CPU for so much less than Intel when they could have sold it for £400-500 when Ryzen released? I mean the Intel equiv was £1000 at the time!

AMD are the underdog, they need to undercut Intel/nVidia and increase market share and garner publicity. They've done it before with the 4000 series when they undercut the GTX 260 massively and forced nVidia to drop their crazy prices to compete.

Not to mention 1080 performance (a card relesed 3 years prior in 2016) for £250 in 2019 is hardly much to ask...

Yeah, the 1080 and 2070 should be priced around £250 now.

 

[Howling]

What? It's easily worth £350+, V64 is currently £390 (and that's with over £100 off), next one is £479 here, and it's old tech.

I disagree that it's easily worth 350+. I bought my Vega64 for £449 from here on release -- that was the RRP before the hikes took effect -- that was about 18 months ago? Not too long ago - tech actually went down in price over time. Paying £250-300 for V64 levels of performance mid next year seems reasonable... 350+ feels too high, but with the way pricing has been going lately - I wouldn't be surprised to see £999 tbh -.-

 

[Sayso]

Not to mention I'd get done since I can't drive , pretty much above, buy cheap get cheap, you ain't going to get 1080 performance for 250, if 1080 performance is worth say £500, I'd say at the best you'd get it for 400 minimum if anything, because if you can get people to buy at 500 why charge 400?

Why not? its only in the last couple years this has changed..£350 used to get you last gens best card performance (not including the dual cards.) The GPU market has gone insane £350 was always the 2nd card in a range and usually has the best price/performance, there is no 1070/290 card anymore.

As for the current pricing of Vega, this is what they should have been from the start but due to mining they have stayed artificially inflated making the prices raise across the board.

 

[FoxEye]

Why not? its only in the last couple years this has changed..£350 used to get you last gens best card performance (not including the dual cards.) The GPU market has gone insane £350 was always the 2nd card in a range and usually has the best price/performance, there is no 1070/290 card anymore.

As for the current pricing of Vega, this is what they should have been from the start but due to mining they have stayed artificially inflated making the prices raise across the board.

I think the "why not" is that the pricing genie is now out of the bottle, probably for good.

AMD and nV know people will queue up to buy a £500 1080 perf card, even in 2019, if it's shiny and new.

Gamers are being milked - but gamers are also spending without restraint, paying ever-increasing amounts for anything new. Hell, if you want proof that gamers collectively have lost the plot, look at how much loot boxes and silly hats have been selling for, making the likes of EA very tidy sums indeed.

Heck, it seems to me they could offer a 1080 perf card at £500 for the next 5 years and they'd still sell in droves. People are buying, and that's the root cause of the prices. People are still buying.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

But these promises are somewhat interconnected though. Incredible power consumption comes from the great work TSMC have done with their 7nm process, which has also enabled (supposedly) higher than expected yields, therefore power consumption and cheap prices can both come together by virtue of TSMC's process. And again, because of the low power consumption and high yields, there is plenty of headroom to ramp up clock speeds and add more cores (in the case of the CPUs). Serious performance is not a promise or metric until itself, it's the combination of low power, high clocks and large core counts.

So if anything, Ryzen 3 and Navi can't deliver 2 of the 4, their very nature is going to deliver all 4 or nothing at all. Unless AMD start cutting corners and playing the market - prices will only be high if AMD set them high, performance will only be low if AMD gimp their work.

And also bear in mind that recent GPU prices have seriously skewed the picture; its the mining and gouging that have sent GPU prices astronomical, not the hardware. If anything these Ryzen and Navi leaks are more representative of where the market should be anyway. Plus it's quite funny to see people commenting "the Vega 56 at £299 is a great price and where it should have been all along" but then say in the same breath that a new card with matching performance built on a more efficient process, with lower manufacturing costs using more cost-effective components can't possibly be priced at £250

The predicted Navi 3070 price is £200 and Vega 56 equivalent, so quite game changing. But new gen should always be game changing. The 290/390 were great deals but the 470/570 pretty much matched their performance at £100 or £150 lower price point. You expect a decent improvement from a new chip, more shaders fitting in the card, more memory bandwidth, with faster Vram. If a 2060 is predicted to be slightly below a 1070 performance wise and cost slightly more than a 1060 (so let's guess £240 on a deal), AMD will have to be well below that for a Vega 56 equivalent. Also they need the 2060s competitor to be way ahead of it, otherwise when Nvidia's 7nm tech comes in AMD will be the ones left for dead.

I also think we might get 4gb versions of Navi 3070 and the GTX 2060 as lower priced mid range cards around £200. If Nvidia were happy to put out a 3gb 1060, they'll put out a 4gb budget 2060 to try and get some of that segment of the market. And if AMD are happy to put out a 4gb 580, then a 4gb 3070 kind of makes sense. That way Gibbo's quoted GDDR6 Vram price drops to only $56 and the £200 card becomes very doable as an entry level mid range card. Obviously the smart buy is spending £60 more for 8gb of Vram and another £60 for Vega 64+ performance.

The next question is how long does it take to get to market. And does supply vs demand mean prices will go way over SRP? And will some nice company do a low priced pre-order deal? Also does next gen cards make mining more attractive again or not?

 

[Nasher]

Hopefully AMD will stick to normal pricing and won't follow Nvidia down stupid street. Because it leads to the end of PC gaming over the next few years.

I think the "why not" is that the pricing genie is now out of the bottle, probably for good.

AMD and nV know people will queue up to buy a £500 1080 perf card, even in 2019, if it's shiny and new.

Gamers are being milked - but gamers are also spending without restraint, paying ever-increasing amounts for anything new. Hell, if you want proof that gamers collectively have lost the plot, look at how much loot boxes and silly hats have been selling for, making the likes of EA very tidy sums indeed.

Heck, it seems to me they could offer a 1080 perf card at £500 for the next 5 years and they'd still sell in droves. People are buying, and that's the root cause of the prices. People are still buying.

Yep, 10 years ago if a game developer tried selling a hat for $5 they would be laughed out of the industry. A PC game costing more than £30 wouldn't sell. Now people throw money at the screen for things modders used to make for free. Generation stupid now earns a wage is old enough to game :/

 

[4K8KW10]

Hopefully AMD will stick to normal pricing and won't follow Nvidia down stupid street. Because it leads to the end of PC gaming over the next few years.



Yep, 10 years ago if a game developer tried selling a hat for $5 they would be laughed out of the industry. A PC game costing more than £30 wouldn't sell. Now people throw money at the screen for things modders used to make for free. Generation stupid now earns a wage is old enough to game :/

True, maybe they follow the principle - if they give more, they will receive more. The problem is that the employers don't think so, so the wages remain small.

Also, why will AMD call the new generation "3000 series"? To troll nvidia or for a deeper reason? Do they have results from a simulation whether that would impact the next-gen Radeons sales positively or negatively?

 

[Nasher]

Maybe, steal the name and force Nvidia to pick something else. Messing up their naming convention

But also undercut them on price (hopefully).

 

[Vexr]

omg omg when's it releasing? when's it releasing?!

Hype aside, I can see why Gibbo and anyone else invested in selling graphics cards in the current climate will always be keen to downplay vapourware rumours that might encourage potential upgraders to keep their money in their pockets in the hope of something better around the corner. Afterall, despairing individuals forking out on extortionately priced hardware in the here and now is good for business and means big grins for sellers

If AMD is on to a killer process for making performance GPUs cheaply, I'm sure there'll be many a battle in the boardroom before it releases, with the stock holders representatives wanting a gouging. On the other hand, AMD GPUs are hugely underrepresented in the general market, and perhaps going OTT offering value will finally gain them a foothold when every reviewer/person of discernment out there says that it's good sense to go AMD, like with Ryzen.

Anyone know when any potential whiff of a hint of a release date might come around for these GPUs?

 

[Nasher]

Probably won't be a lot of movement for a while with Vega sales picking up.

 

[4K8KW10]

Maybe, steal the name and force Nvidia to pick something else. Messing up their naming convention

But also undercut them on price (hopefully).

One association that comes to my mind is the previous situation Radeon HD 2900 XT vs GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 3870, with RTX 2080 Ti being the Ultra, while the new RX 3080 being the HD 3870...

Or maybe AMD is angry at nvidia because they call it RTX, similar to how AMD calls it RX...

 

[AMDPower]

Ok someone help me here with the math,

The RX 3080 is rumored to be 15% faster than Vega 64, that makes it 15% faster than GTX 1080, Now we all know that 1080TI is 30% faster than 1080, so that makes a RX 3080 potentially 15% slower than GTX 1080TI.

Now if these cards overclock well, we could see another 10-15% performance gain thus making a overclocked card roughly in 1080TI stock performance level all for $250, if the rumors are true. I see many posts over the last couple of months people wanting 1080TI performance for £400. Well AMD seems to have heard you call, if all the assumptions I have made hold when they are released. They could be dud clockers or AMD get greedy and price them higher. But if AMD deliver I really see them sweeping the lower to mid segment of the market and I doubt Nvidia can match such aggressive pricing. They cant drop the price of the 2070 to $250 that is for sure, well they could but would make a huge loss i presume.

The future is bright for amd GPU segment, hopefully they can do a ryzen on Nvidia too like they have done to intel

 

[tyler_jrb]

Maybe, steal the name and force Nvidia to pick something else. Messing up their naming convention

But also undercut them on price (hopefully).

Same when I saw this. First X399 now RX 3000.

Hopefully they bring something worthy but for me next year is too late. Nvidia will already wanting to be on new and better things by then.

We need competition before the end of the year.

 

[Spils]

I think the "why not" is that the pricing genie is now out of the bottle, probably for good.

AMD and nV know people will queue up to buy a £500 1080 perf card, even in 2019, if it's shiny and new.

Gamers are being milked - but gamers are also spending without restraint, paying ever-increasing amounts for anything new. Hell, if you want proof that gamers collectively have lost the plot, look at how much loot boxes and silly hats have been selling for, making the likes of EA very tidy sums indeed.

Heck, it seems to me they could offer a 1080 perf card at £500 for the next 5 years and they'd still sell in droves. People are buying, and that's the root cause of the prices. People are still buying.

I'm with you bro and that's coming from someone who's almost every single hi end card since the end of the 1990's
I think a large part of it is people cant resist to brag about there shiny high end computer products and love throwing it in peoples faces.

I've just gone 9 months without a GPU as i would not pay the green tax - instead I spent my money on other hobbies and purchased a few nice parts for my second love(my car).
I picked up a second hand 1070 the weekend and still felt like I'd payed way over the odds.

Fingers crossed team AMD give the sensible grown ups something to buy thats shiney new and well priced that brings the prices down to a sensible level and I like Gibbo he's a good egg, but he's here to sell GPUS not make friends and give inside information that's benefits the customer. He leaks info if and only if it helps with his monthly bonus That's clear to see at the height of the 1080ti pricing war. He clearly said Nvidia would not release any new GPU's in 2018 that turned out to be totally wrong.

But hey he sold another 5000 1080s at a very good markup

 

[Raelgun]

Same when I saw this. First X399 now RX 3000.

Hopefully they bring something worthy but for me next year is too late. Nvidia will already wanting to be on new and better things by then.

We need competition before the end of the year.

Need to ask, but what can Nvidia put out by then, they basically released their entire hand now.

Theres no word even on a tapeout on a new arch from them, as they already use TMSC, they would only benefit from the 7nm shrink.

Are we gonna see another Titan T Black or something?