AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

humbug · 20 Sep 2016 at 14:37

orbitalwalsh said:
bit on console topic but got me wondering if Xbox Scorpio will use a heavily cut down Vega 10 (ones that didn't cut the mustard) with GDDR5. Would be great business for AMD and i find it hard to stomach that it could be an overclocked RX 480 with the thermals it produces just wouldn't sit right in a console without throttling.
Interesting thought and good business practice to sell chips that aren't 100% just

The PS4 Pro has the same GPU, its running at about <1000Mhz. probably a low power GPU at that, on the desktop it seems to be running much higher than its optimal zone.

bru · 20 Sep 2016 at 14:42

ok now this is doing my head in completely, nearly every review I'm looking at has slightly different figures.

One thing that did catch my eye though was this little nugget.

When all's said and done the RX 470 is good for up to 4.9 TFLOPS of compute power when operating at the maximum boost frequency. In contrast the RX 480 is good for 5.8 TFLOPS, while Nvidia's GTX 1060 chucks out just 4.3 TFLOPS.

So we mustn't forget that the FP16 numbers are not necessarily indicative of desktop GPU performance.

I suppose it is this theoretical peak performance vs actual useable performance. Something that AMD have been improving with each generation, so we hope they continue to do so.

nashathedog · 20 Sep 2016 at 14:56

humbug said:
Right, thats all it was, a crap stock cooler, any normal AIB cooler on it and it was perfectly fine.

Except when firms such as MSI & ASUS cheaped out and used heatsinks that were made for cooler chips than Hawaii. 90 degree temps with 90% fan speeds is not acceptable from aftermarket coolers, But that's not down to AMD that's the board partners screwing the buyers with underdeveloped cards.

h4rm0ny · 20 Sep 2016 at 15:11

orbitalwalsh said:
bit on console topic but got me wondering if Xbox Scorpio will use a heavily cut down Vega 10 (ones that didn't cut the mustard) with GDDR5. Would be great business for AMD and i find it hard to stomach that it could be an overclocked RX 480 with the thermals it produces just wouldn't sit right in a console without throttling.
Interesting thought and good business practice to sell chips that aren't 100% just

It's an idea, but the console market is far larger than the desktop GPU market so using failed Vega 10's for the console markets would only make sense if it had a stunningly high failure rate. (High enough that it didn't make sense to try in the first place).

SiDeards73 · 20 Sep 2016 at 15:12

nashathedog said:
Except when firms such as MSI & ASUS cheaped out and used heatsinks that were made for cooler chips than Hawaii. 90 degree temps with 90% fan speeds is not acceptable from aftermarket coolers, But that's not down to AMD that's the board partners screwing the buyers with underdeveloped cards.

I bought a Ref 290 and swapped it for a 290 Tri-X when they become available, i lived with the Ref 290 long enough to know the heat was never the issue, it was the fan noise that was the deal breaker for me.

i am still running the 290 Tri-X, its been a solid solid card, probably the best AMD card ive owned, however i am looking to upgrade, Vega cant come soon enough, price and performance dependant i am signing up for 2 Vega cards.

humbug · 20 Sep 2016 at 15:16

nashathedog said:
Except when firms such as MSI & ASUS cheaped out and used heatsinks that were made for cooler chips than Hawaii. 90 degree temps with 90% fan speeds is not acceptable from aftermarket coolers, But that's not down to AMD that's the board partners screwing the buyers with underdeveloped cards.

Like Asus, who used the Kepler Cooler for Hawaii, Kepler is at a different angle and bigger, so half the heat pipes didn't even make contact with the GPU.

nashathedog · 20 Sep 2016 at 15:47

humbug said:
Like Asus, who used the Kepler Cooler for Hawaii, Kepler is at a different angle and bigger, so half the heat pipes didn't even make contact with the GPU.

MSI were the same, recycling Kepler heatsinks, It's sad how companies such as those don't make the effort with AMD like Sapphire and Powercolor do, from what I gather the difference between there 290's and 290x's and the others is night and day. I certainly **** out with my MSI Gaming, In comparison my current Tri-x cooler is a work of art.

TNA · 20 Sep 2016 at 15:47

SiDeards73 said:
I bought a Ref 290 and swapped it for a 290 Tri-X when they become available, i lived with the Ref 290 long enough to know the heat was never the issue, it was the fan noise that was the deal breaker for me.

i am still running the 290 Tri-X, its been a solid solid card, probably the best AMD card ive owned, however i am looking to upgrade, Vega cant come soon enough, price and performance dependant i am signing up for 2 Vega cards.

Two?

I want one too if price for performance is good. But definitely no more than one, multi gpu sucks.

KillBoY_UK · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:05

Final8y said:
Power and heat with the 290/390 has always been an issue, don't make out that that people said otherwise, the 290 got slammed everywhere the 390 came custom cooled from day one and seeing as most know that the 390 is a tweaked 290 moaning about the power and heat had already run its course with the 290.

The 5970 was a dual GPU card that used less power than the 480.

My bad I was referring to the 5870! I should have know better i was running Xfire 5850's back then!

bru · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:13

All this talk of previous cooler is really not relevant to this thread.

Bottom line is, according to this new rumour, the Vega 10 (that is the bigger of the two Vega chips due next year) is looking like being two 470's in size, hopefully with better performance, otherwise Vega will be left a long way behind, with Volta coming next year as well.

Poneros · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:16

I think trying to determine what performance is going to be is a fool's endeavour. No concrete info & no way to know how to interpret the numbers even if the rumours were 100% factual - e.g. if you have £100 but don't know (and can't find out) the price of anything, what does having £100 mean? The main takeaway from this is that we can (very likely expect) it in early/mid 2017 and it will have HBM2, which we pretty much know already anyway. Anything else is just going to be day dreaming.

flopper · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:27

Poneros said:
I think trying to determine what performance is going to be is a fool's endeavour. No concrete info & no way to know how to interpret the numbers even if the rumours were 100% factual - e.g. if you have £100 but don't know (and can't find out) the price of anything, what does having £100 mean? The main takeaway from this is that we can (very likely expect) it in early/mid 2017 and it will have HBM2, which we pretty much know already anyway. Anything else is just going to be day dreaming.

Called a wet dream for a reason.

Killer7xx · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:30

I don't believe that article is right, Vega 11 is supposed to be the bigger chip and Vega 10 is supposed to be the smaller one.

TheRealDeal · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:38

Killer7xx said:
I don't believe that article is right, Vega 11 is supposed to be the bigger chip and Vega 10 is supposed to be the smaller one.

Polaris 10 was the bigger chip and Polaris 11 the smaller. If this holds true with Vega then 10 is the bigger chip. Unless AMD have stated somewhere that 11 is the bigger chip in the Vega family.

Doogles · 20 Sep 2016 at 16:41

Glad I brought the 1070 at this rate these Vega's will need to be on par with Volta.

TNA · 20 Sep 2016 at 17:02

Doogles said:
Glad I brought the 1070 at this rate these Vega's will need to be on par with Volta.

Yeah, glad I got my 1070. The big Vega chip needs to be at least as fast as Titan X pascal or it will be very underwhelming. That is my expectations, if they can at least hit titan xp speeds and comes in around £500-600 I will get one. If not I will just wait for 1170.

Final8y · 20 Sep 2016 at 17:29

TNA said:
Yeah, glad I got my 1070. The big Vega chip needs to be at least as fast as Titan X pascal or it will be very underwhelming. That is my expectations, if they can at least hit titan xp speeds and comes in around £500-600 I will get one. If not I will just wait for 1170.

How about if comes in at Titan X pascal speed and £50 under Titan X pascal price, thats sounds a lot more reasonable.

Bonjour · 20 Sep 2016 at 17:38

TNA said:
Yeah, glad I got my 1070. The big Vega chip needs to be at least as fast as Titan X pascal or it will be very underwhelming. That is my expectations, if they can at least hit titan xp speeds and comes in around £500-600 I will get one. If not I will just wait for 1170.

Surely it would be £800 minimum if it matched TXP?

You won't get 100% of the performance for 50% of the money. That would be crazy.

bru · 20 Sep 2016 at 17:52

Well that rumoured FP16 performance puts it at about two 480's which is not as quick as the 1080, let alone the TitanX or even Volta.

mahius · 20 Sep 2016 at 17:54

And so the madness begins once again. I expect a couple hundred pages of no actual news, arguments about random nonsense, talking about Nvidia cards, fake leaks/rumours before it all goes mental early 2017 shortly before release and we all go nuts over some random chinese guy benchmarking it on a stream. Then it releases well over the price AMD announce, doesn't improve too much on price/performance and the hype dies after folks once again realise that their new hopes and dreams of AMD making a comeback or a card to destroy Nvidia's top-end Titan X was all but merely clouds in the sky.

Yeah... sounds about right.

Except the RX 480 ain't half bad, if you can get a decent one close to £200 like I did.