AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

[Rezident]

I have a feeling overall confidence in AMD delivering anything in the GPU and CPU area is quite low by the standards of enthusiasts - its why I do hope both their next launch GPU and CPU launches hit the ground running in terms of performance and quality of the launched products(no buggy GPU coolers for example),since the last few have been rather hit or miss(or have been delayed way too much in terms of actual products being available - Kaveri is an example of this). Even if AMD can't dislodge the best Nvidia cards or the best DIY CPUs Intel can offer,they just need to be able to cover enough of their ranges with decent enough products,and with a competent launch.

I emphasise both since AMD as a brand is negatively affected if either of its ranges don't fire,and I suspect the last few years of their CPUs being a bit meh hasn't helped their perception especially among some of the less techy types(sort of seen people have some connection between the CPUs being meh and their GPUs being meh by connection,etc).

I don’t see the connection between the cpus and gpus, isn’t that just marketing? I assume AMD cpus are a bit meh although I don’t know as I haven’t bought one in about 15 years as they’re not as fast as Intel (Athlon 1000MHz! was my last one). The gpus have always been competitive, in fact, price performance-wise they are better for me than nvidia whenever I’ve been buying one (about once every two years). The last time Nvidia was better £/performance for me was my 8800GTX, which was a long time ago). I still think of the gpus as ATI really. I think a lot of people would have Intel cpus with an ATI, I mean AMD gpu. Marketing aside, I would see AMD cpus and gpus as totally different entities.

 

[Rroff]

This is why I am saying is if they can have a solid Vega launch and a solid Ryzen launch,together people will have more confidence in them.

This is why I hope they have decent cooling for the Vega cards at launch and reasonable pricing for the performance level they provide.

Even look at the Fury launch - if it had launched with coolers which were not buggy and AMD had even launched at £50 lower prices for the Fury X and Fury,it would have given a far better impression. The problem is that they tried to match the pricing(or even slightly exceed the pricing) of the GTX980 and GTX980TI. Yes,it worked to maintain the pricing of the larger volume R9 390 and R9 390X series cards,but it didn't help their perception as much as they should have.

Personally I dunno what they were thinking with the Fury line up - especially with the 390X in the mix. Should have just moved the 390X to a Fury "LE", launched the Fury then held the Fury X off until the seasonable trading period when they could have better delivered on the product (the hype in the meantime would have served them well) with some of the niggles fixed. I kind of feel like they knew they couldn't compete with nVidia and just threw what they had out there desperately when they could have employed a more measured strategy.

 

[Gregster]

Personally I dunno what they were thinking with the Fury line up - especially with the 390X in the mix. Should have just moved the 390X to a Fury "LE", launched the Fury then held the Fury X off until the seasonable trading period when they could have better delivered on the product (the hype in the meantime would have served them well) with some of the niggles fixed. I kind of feel like they knew they couldn't compete with nVidia and just threw what they had out there desperately when they could have employed a more measured strategy.

The Fury/X were/are fairly decent in truth. I was very impressed with my FX and whilst the 4GB was the "meh" factor, it did perform very well compared to my Maxwell Titan. I did run out of VRAM in occasional titles at 1440P but it didn't really have the frames in abundance to justify having all the bells and whistles on either. I kinda regret getting rid of mine but the 1080 was a fair bit faster overall at my res to warrant the purchase for me.

Moving on, I wouldn't mind another AIO card like the FX either and maybe one of the AIBs will deliver for Vega but I can't help but worry that Vega is too little too late in truth.

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Apologies for mentioning older cards/NVidia as well but it is part of the Vega chat

 

[queamin]

The way some of you talk it seems there is no point selling any cards after 6 months launch as it is not worth it?.

 

[Rroff]

The way some of you talk it seems there is no point selling any cards after 6 months launch as it is not worth it?.

One thing a lot of people seem to be missing is that moving on from 16/14nm is going to get increasingly expensive in terms of upfront R&D costs - 7nm is estimated to be around 9x that of 28nm - so not only do these cards need to sell well to make a profit on their development and production they also need to be selling well enough to float things moving forward. So AMD can't afford not to be "on point" on delivering these products.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don’t see the connection between the cpus and gpus, isn’t that just marketing? I assume AMD cpus are a bit meh although I don’t know as I haven’t bought one in about 15 years as they’re not as fast as Intel (Athlon 1000MHz! was my last one). The gpus have always been competitive, in fact, price performance-wise they are better for me than nvidia whenever I’ve been buying one (about once every two years). The last time Nvidia was better £/performance for me was my 8800GTX, which was a long time ago). I still think of the gpus as ATI really. I think a lot of people would have Intel cpus with an ATI, I mean AMD gpu. Marketing aside, I would see AMD cpus and gpus as totally different entities.

I think its more from what I got from the non-techy types in recent years. Most people who are enthusiasts know AMD had the Athlon 64 and Phenom II which were decent enough chips. Look back at the last 5 years,and loads of newer gamers don't know this,and also loads of new gamers never heard of ATI,only AMD.

When AMD launched non-competitive CPUs,it also reflects badly on their cards,especially when their cards run a bit hotter or consume a bit more power,people will unconsciously link it to their CPUs being meh too.

The whole point is if AMD can launch a fairly competitive line of CPUs together with a decent Vega launch,lots of newer gamers will actually see them as having solid products across the board.

In many ways,AMD should have kept the ATI branding on their graphics card IMHO OFC.

Personally I dunno what they were thinking with the Fury line up - especially with the 390X in the mix. Should have just moved the 390X to a Fury "LE", launched the Fury then held the Fury X off until the seasonable trading period when they could have better delivered on the product (the hype in the meantime would have served them well) with some of the niggles fixed. I kind of feel like they knew they couldn't compete with nVidia and just threw what they had out there desperately when they could have employed a more measured strategy.

It seem a bit rushed and too optimistic on pricing. I can appreciate the Fury cards kind of made sure the R9 390 series pricing could be maintained unlike the R9 290 series,but I think another month or two for the Fury X to be launched bug free and even at a lower price would have helped the perception more.

Its why I hope Vega has a solid launch - even Polaris was flawed due to its meh cooler. It gave Nvidia some leeway as they released aftermarket GTX1060 cards before AMD could.

 

[Rroff]

To be fair much of the issues with Polaris's launch are in the hands of GF who don't seem to have quite delivered on the production quality they were promising and early sampling/Samsung's variant would have appeared to offer.

I'm pretty sure AMD were targetting around 200MHz higher clock speed and better electrical/thermal properties more inline with what you can see on TSMC and Samsung's offerings.

 

[D.P.]

I don't think we will see a lot of people using them in the latest Steam survey.

Whatever the margin NVidia makes out of them the total value will be totally dwarfed by what they make from GTX 1070 sales for example.

The thing is the Titan is basically just a scaled up 1080, so the additional R&D is pretty minimal. They don't need a high volume to generate some significant revenue for minimal investment off the back of the mainstream pascal.

 

[TNA]

The thing is the Titan is basically just a scaled up 1080, so the additional R&D is pretty minimal. They don't need a high volume to generate some significant revenue for minimal investment off the back of the mainstream pascal.

Agreed. This makes a lot more sense to me.

 

[queamin]

To be fair much of the issues with Polaris's launch are in the hands of GF who don't seem to have quite delivered on the production quality they were promising and early sampling/Samsung's variant would have appeared to offer.

I'm pretty sure AMD were targetting around 200MHz higher clock speed and better electrical/thermal properties more inline with what you can see on TSMC and Samsung's offerings.

I agree with this and the high clocks of pascal took Amd by surprised.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

To be fair much of the issues with Polaris's launch are in the hands of GF who don't seem to have quite delivered on the production quality they were promising and early sampling/Samsung's variant would have appeared to offer.

I'm pretty sure AMD were targetting around 200MHz higher clock speed and better electrical/thermal properties more inline with what you can see on TSMC and Samsung's offerings.

Yeah,but TBH AMD should have known GF has a history of having issues like this. For instance the reference RX480 cards had an overbuilt VRM system but a cooler which could not handle a GPU maxing out the VRMs.

The issue is the cooler had no real leeway so,once GF had issues it really started to struggle and it didn't help Nvidia had aftermarket GTX1060 6GB cards before aftermarket RX480 cards too.

I just hope Vega launches not only with a decent reference design but actually has aftermarket designs ready to go at launch or close to launch.

 

[Mauller]

Yeah,but TBH AMD should have known GF has a history of having issues like this. For instance the reference RX480 cards had an overbuilt VRM system but a cooler which could not handle a GPU maxing out the VRMs.

The issue is the cooler had no real leeway so,once GF had issues it really started to struggle and it didn't help Nvidia had aftermarket GTX1060 6GB cards before aftermarket RX480 cards too.

I just hope Vega launches not only with a decent reference design but actually has aftermarket designs ready to go at launch or close to launch.

AMD has always given their parts very generous power delivery setups on their reference parts.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD has always given their parts very generous power delivery setups on their reference parts.

Yeah,but in the end if they spent that money on better cooling instead of their marginal stock coolers,it would have been a better SKU overall. It was the same with the R9 290 series too. They finally learnt that with their CPU coolers now,but its still taking some time on the GPU side.

Edit!!

The reference GTX1060 despite having a lower TDP has a much more substantial cooler relative to the RX480:

http://www.fudzilla.com/images/stories/2016/Reviews/GTX_1060/Reference/gtx_1060_6_heatsing.jpg
http://i1232.photobucket.com/albums...hire RX 480/DSC_0152_zpsboxkknh6.jpg~original

 

[Besty]

kaapstad you are nice guy but damn if that's not one of the biggest AMD thread trolls of recent times on ocuk then i will eat my Jen-Hsun Huang signed black leather jacket #banter

 

[Panos]

The Fury/X were/are fairly decent in truth. I was very impressed with my FX and whilst the 4GB was the "meh" factor, it did perform very well compared to my Maxwell Titan. I did run out of VRAM in occasional titles at 1440P but it didn't really have the frames in abundance to justify having all the bells and whistles on either. I kinda regret getting rid of mine but the 1080 was a fair bit faster overall at my res to warrant the purchase for me.

Moving on, I wouldn't mind another AIO card like the FX either and maybe one of the AIBs will deliver for Vega but I can't help but worry that Vega is too little too late in truth.

-------------

Apologies for mentioning older cards/NVidia as well but it is part of the Vega chat

I will agree with you. My Nano is exactly the same. The only two games that hit the 4GB VRAM, can be toned down a bit. Everything else runs fine at max settings.

Yes at same settings, CPU etc the Nano at 1150 is around 35% slower than my 1080 @2190 on all games (2560x1440) I play, however kept the Nano and sold the 1080 because of the Freesync monitor I have.

 

[Kaapstad]

kaapstad you are nice guy but damn if that's not one of the biggest AMD thread trolls of recent times on ocuk then i will eat my Jen-Hsun Huang signed black leather jacket #banter

Not at all.

I am just trying to make the point that a lot of people are very rigid in their thinking as to what NVidia are likely to do when Vega launches, most people think the only option is the 1080 Ti version (cut down) of what is now the Pascal Titan.

I am just pointing out that NVidia do have other routes to go.

I have decided to delete my pic of the Quadro cards a few posts back as some people are finding it a bit too stressful.

 

[Telecaster]

The way some of you talk it seems there is no point selling any cards after 6 months launch as it is not worth it?.

It's the nature of the beast that is the GPU market though, isn't it?

It's only a few weeks after a new card is released before people on forums are telling other's to put off their next GPU purchase, because the next set of Emperor's New Clothes is just around the corner.

Personally I don't mind a wait, if it's worth it. AMDs MO seems to be a long wait and then we end up with 12 month old performance, it would be nice for them to release something relevant even if we do have to wait for it.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

People do realise the Pascal Titan X is actually not using a full chip?? There is the leeway Nvidia has - they release a fully enabled GP102 based graphics card.

 

[queamin]

But they keep selling cards well after launch and how many times have we seen Nvidia cannot do no wrong yet Amd are getting slammed even before the cards are launched it was different when Amd was in the lead and gets their cards out first.

At least let them release the card before slating it, after it launch then slate it if you don't think it is good enough.

 

[Brumboy]

I hope they bring out a card that's around the 1070/1080 level but much much cheaper.

Anything around £300 would be great.