AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

[Kaapstad]

But you guys are not understanding and taking it all out of context...

My understanding is, if they do offer a 4gb option along a 8gb one, it will be because the hbm2 will have the ability to use normal ram or ssd as an extension and quickly swap things in and out due to being much much faster than gddr5x.

As long as people are given the 8gb option, I really do not see what the trouble is. There is nothing wrong with having extra options.

Anything involving swapping things in and out is bad as it is time consuming and relies on slower secondary memory.

AMD need to get the appropriate amount of memory on the cards for the task it needs to do and forget about any fancy memory shuffling.

 

[TNA]

Anything involving swapping things in and out is bad as it is time consuming and relies on slower secondary memory.

AMD need to get the appropriate amount of memory on the cards for the task it needs to do and forget about any fancy memory shuffling.

First of all, at the minimum we will be getting 8gb of hbm2, which is perfectly fine with me.

Secondly unless you have an inside source (do share ) no one knows if High Bandwidth Cache works or not yet. You seem certain and are writing it off already... It could end up being a feature that will benefit businesses more than us gamers, but we do not know yet.

 

[spikerules]

First of all, at the minimum we will be getting 8gb of hbm2, which is perfectly fine with me.

Secondly unless you have an inside source (do share ) no one knows if High Bandwidth Cache works or not yet. You seem certain and are writing it off already... It could end up being a feature that will benefit businesses more than us gamers, but we do not know yet.

Kaap is massively anti HBM and HBM2. He's made it illogically clear on numerous occasions.

 

[The_Gump]

Anything involving swapping things in and out is bad as it is time consuming and relies on slower secondary memory.

AMD need to get the appropriate amount of memory on the cards for the task it needs to do and forget about any fancy memory shuffling.

Why? AMD is basically giving Vega the same level of memory control and access as CPU's have... seems to work for CPU's... Vega will be able to use any memory located anywhere in a PC. The HBM on the GPU die becomes more like Cache than VRAM.... (InfinityFabric is what will allow it)

 

[Steampunk]

Why bother with texture compression or polygon culling? Lets just put a couple of terabytes of memory on a GPU and be done with it. Bigger numbers = better, everyone knows that. That's why I'll be buying Nvidia, because 1080 is a bigger number than 590, so it's almost twice as good! It costs loads more too, so it must be better!

AMD can't compete until they rename their next card to a much bigger number, like RX 2200, and maybe price it at around the £2000 mark.

 

[TNA]

Why bother with texture compression or polygon culling? Lets just put a couple of terabytes of memory on a GPU and be done with it. Bigger numbers = better, everyone knows that. That's why I'll be buying Nvidia, because 1080 is a bigger number than 590, so it's almost twice as good! It costs loads more too, so it must be better!

You forgot to add /s at the end. Kaapstad and few others may actually quote you and agree

 

[NeoWave]

As long as people are given the 8gb option, I really do not see what the trouble is. There is nothing wrong with having extra options.

Could be wrong but I thought AMD were leaving the memory configuration entirely up to the AIBs' . So it could be 4, 8, or 16gb. 'If' that is the case I'm pretty sure most cards will be 8gb, as that is where the market is atm, with a few premium 16gb ones (if Vega's performance holds up). But I can't remember where I heard it so I could be spouting guff.

 

[Steampunk]

You forgot to add /s at the end. Kaapstad and few others may actually quote you and agree

If it's the usual suspects, they'll be on my ignore list anyway.

 

[opethdisciple]

As silly as it sounds, lack of an adaptive vsync by AMD in their drivers is a big deal. It would mean I could buy an Nvidia GPU and not need to upgrade monitor.

If I went AMD the lack of an adaptive vsync would mean I'd have to get a freesync monitor too. Which incidentally doesn't mean I don't need a new monitor. Mine is old from 2008 and is only 60hz at 1200p. Also tears sometimes even with adaptive vysnc. But that's dependant on the game and probably tears as frames go below 60.

Need to think about it.

Vega is just a few months away so I need to wait. Read some more stuff and get hyped!

 

[triss]

But you guys are not understanding and taking it all out of context...

My understanding is, if they do offer a 4gb option along a 8gb one, it will be because the hbm2 will have the ability to use normal ram or ssd as an extension and quickly swap things in and out due to being much much faster than gddr5x.

As long as people are given the 8gb option, I really do not see what the trouble is. There is nothing wrong with having extra options.

First of all, at the minimum we will be getting 8gb of hbm2, which is perfectly fine with me.

Secondly unless you have an inside source (do share ) no one knows if High Bandwidth Cache works or not yet. You seem certain and are writing it off already... It could end up being a feature that will benefit businesses more than us gamers, but we do not know yet.

If there are 4GB versions then 8GB will Not be the minimum

End of the Day if HBC access slower memory such as normal ram it will be slower then using Vram. HBC wont speed up how our regular ram works its not a magic wand.
On the plus side i'd rather it use that slower Ram then not run something.
I presume its a new improved upgraded version of ATI Hypermemory ( Nvidia's was Turbocache)

 

[Sargatanas2511]

If they do bring out a 4GB option and it isn't enough for you, ignore it! If HBCC works as AMD intend it to and have shown it working, then hopefully even the 4GB one will be really good but only time will tell.

 

[Kaapstad]

First of all, at the minimum we will be getting 8gb of hbm2, which is perfectly fine with me.

Secondly unless you have an inside source (do share ) no one knows if High Bandwidth Cache works or not yet. You seem certain and are writing it off already... It could end up being a feature that will benefit businesses more than us gamers, but we do not know yet.

I am just stating the obvious

Get the correct amount of memory on the card in the first place and don't rely on fancy compression or caching to make up the shortfall.

And for the record I also think NVidia should have given the 1080 Ti the full 384bit bus and 12gb of memory as it would have added very little to the price.

Keeping it simple with the memory is probably a better solution than trying to be clever and producing a card like the Fury X which suffers a performance drop even at 1080p in some games.

If AMD put 12gb or 16gb of memory on their next high end card I would not have a problem with it even if they used HBM. To go with 4gb or 8gb is to make the card obsolete almost before it is launched.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Just reading this piece on Vega.

It goes on to say "Scott Herkelman, the former General GeForce Manager at NVIDIA and now VP of AMD took the stage".....

Didn't they also take someone from Intel to work on their CPU's?

Yes. This is interesting to me because, purely on my personal experience, when you get to the level where wages are enough to live and save comfortably on, people start to look at other factors in where they work - job satisfaction, whether your managers actually listen to you, pride in your work... All that jazz. AMD do not have much money. They can't compete with Intel on salaries (if Intel cares to compete) and probably can't really compare with Nvidia. So either Intel and Nvidia don't pay their staff enough or AMD is just that more a satisfying place to work. Given AMD has heavy engineer representation in their top level management my money's on the latter - although knowing Intel I wouldn't be surprised to learn it is the former as well!

While 4gb will become useless in the future it is still good enough for now, mean 1gb & 2gb still get used, hell that 1060 has a 3gb option, it's not so much the amount, it's what you play that requires it, so far the division has been the only game to use nearly a 2gb vram limit in my experience, sometimes there's hardly much difference between high & ultra depending how the game engine is used as games with the same engine are not identical. If your paying stupid money then you'd ideally want no less than 8gb, I'd only buy the 2gb rx 460 because its less than £100. both parties are making cards with less than 4gb vram still, so I don't know what market both are more focused on or if they trying to balance it.

All that matters is the amount of 4GB VRAM systems that are out there. So long as they are a large proportion of the customer base for games, games producers will make sure to keep their games working well on 4GB VRAM. And given we just had a successful wave of 4GB 480s being sold as well as the large amount of legacy cards that only have this, I don't think 4GB will be a serious drawback for a couple of years. These forums create a distorted impression of how often people upgrade and to what.

 

[Rroff]

Yes. This is interesting to me because, purely on my personal experience, when you get to the level where wages are enough to live and save comfortably on, people start to look at other factors in where they work - job satisfaction, whether your managers actually listen to you, pride in your work... All that jazz. AMD do not have much money. They can't compete with Intel on salaries (if Intel cares to compete) and probably can't really compare with Nvidia. So either Intel and Nvidia don't pay their staff enough or AMD is just that more a satisfying place to work. Given AMD has heavy engineer representation in their top level management my money's on the latter - although knowing Intel I wouldn't be surprised to learn it is the former as well!

Or they are just looking for new challenges or relocating due to family reasons or a thousand other reasons. You can't really read anything into it.

 

[TNA]

I am just stating the obvious

Get the correct amount of memory on the card in the first place and don't rely on fancy compression or caching to make up the shortfall.

And for the record I also think NVidia should have given the 1080 Ti the full 384bit bus and 12gb of memory as it would have added very little to the price.

Keeping it simple with the memory is probably a better solution than trying to be clever and producing a card like the Fury X which suffers a performance drop even at 1080p in some games.

If AMD put 12gb or 16gb of memory on their next high end card I would not have a problem with it even if they used HBM. To go with 4gb or 8gb is to make the card obsolete almost before it is launched.

8gb will be enough for 99% of the people though I would imagine no? Plus we do not know if there won't be more than 8gb hbm2 just yet, unlikely, but we no do not know. My guess is there would be £100+ difference in price between 8gb and 16gb one, but at least it would make a handful of people who want more vram happy

I personally would not pay the £100+ difference, simply put, lets say High Bandwidth Cache turns out to be trash like you say, even then, by the time I need more than 8gb I will have moved onto another graphics card.

These forums create a distorted impression of how often people upgrade and to what.

+1!!

But some here think their needs magically represent a huge percentage of AMD's addressable market

 

[Curlyriff]

As silly as it sounds, lack of an adaptive vsync by AMD in their drivers is a big deal. It would mean I could buy an Nvidia GPU and not need to upgrade monitor.

If I went AMD the lack of an adaptive vsync would mean I'd have to get a freesync monitor too. Which incidentally doesn't mean I don't need a new monitor. Mine is old from 2008 and is only 60hz at 1200p. Also tears sometimes even with adaptive vysnc. But that's dependant on the game and probably tears as frames go below 60.

Need to think about it.

Vega is just a few months away so I need to wait. Read some more stuff and get hyped!

Just going to put this out there but any newer card from either AMD or Nvidia really are going to be overkill if you are not moving up your monitor to either 1080p 144Hz or 1440p 100Hz in honesty.

I think you would notice much more and have a much better time gaming getting a mid end card like the 1070 or AMD equivalent and getting a new monitor than spending it all on a 1080/Ti or AMD equivalent in honestly so I feel you should be factoring in the monitor cost with your GPU purchase myself. Especially now you have gone down the Ryzen route also.

Just my thoughts tbh from what you have stated you want.

 

[Seanspeed]

8GB should be more than enough for any 1070-type competitor.

But for Vega's biggest GPU - likely to be very much what 4k customers are looking at - I think we're really gonna need to learn more about the capabilities and advantages of HBM2 in-practice and not just on-paper. 8GB may be more than enough still, it may not. If it's not 'more than' enough, I think 12-16GB would be welcome as nobody likes buying a super high end product that doesn't give the customers full confidence in its capabilities.

 

[TNA]

Just going to put this out there but any newer card from either AMD or Nvidia really are going to be overkill if you are not moving up your monitor to either 1080p 144Hz or 1440p 100Hz in honesty.

I think you would notice much more and have a much better time gaming getting a mid end card like the 1070 or AMD equivalent and getting a new monitor than spending it all on a 1080/Ti or AMD equivalent in honestly so I feel you should be factoring in the monitor cost with your GPU purchase myself. Especially now you have gone down the Ryzen route also.

Just my thoughts tbh from what you have stated you want.

I agree with this. Not so long ago I compared a 1080p 23" monitor to my Dell 27" 4K monitor and the difference in image quality was like night and day. Spending all that money on graphics card, might as well get a monitor to enjoy the good graphics with it

 

[opethdisciple]

Just going to put this out there but any newer card from either AMD or Nvidia really are going to be overkill if you are not moving up your monitor to either 1080p 144Hz or 1440p 100Hz in honesty.

I think you would notice much more and have a much better time gaming getting a mid end card like the 1070 or AMD equivalent and getting a new monitor than spending it all on a 1080/Ti or AMD equivalent in honestly so I feel you should be factoring in the monitor cost with your GPU purchase myself. Especially now you have gone down the Ryzen route also.

Just my thoughts tbh from what you have stated you want.

Yea. Your right of course. I need a new monitor. And Freesync panels are much cheaper so that's an ace in AMD's hat.

I'll wait for Vega.

But on another note I see cards like the 1070 as 1080/1200p cards now. Yes seriously, games released in the lased few months and moving forward to achieve 60 fps at 1080/1200p will require 1070 levels of performance.

Just look at ME Andromeda or Wildlands for example.

1070 = 1080/1200p
1080 = 1440p
1080ti = 4k

 

[Simon Belmont]

1070 = 1080/1200p
1080 = 1440p
1080ti = 4k

That might be true for some games, but even a GTX1080 isn't enough for 1440p let alone a 1080Ti for 4K. That's where Volta rolls in