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AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

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akarypid said:
While I can understand the sentiment, I disagree with the "charity" aspect. This used to make sense, but with the arrival and success of Ryzen lack of competition due to AMD going bankrupt is off the table. They need to deliver now.
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Do you honestly think any money from Ryzen has had an affect on Vega's R&D?

It's still a product from 2-3 years of development, long before Ryzen was even tapped out.
 
Seanspeed said:
BUT, I think you should be careful in extrapolating this kind of thing.
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Oh absolutely! I design FPGAs/ASICs and counterpart device drivers for a living, so know exactly how useless my estimates are :D

I'd say +-40% variation is the accuracy of the garbage I spout.

It gives an indication and some weight to gut feels and opinions. Nothing more.
 
0h_no_not_again said:
Agree with this. Even using the flawed Fiji arch, a 500mm^2 die (seen at Vega Preview) @ ~1000MHz will have 1080 performance. Incorporate the huge changes to Vega arch, in terms of efficiency and higher clock frequencies, and it is a good bet that Vega will greatly exceed 1080 performance.

I just can't fathom that they could have lower efficiency arch than Fiji:
Fiji has 8.9B transistors and a 596mm^2 die - 15M transistors/mm^2
Polaris has 5.7B transistors and 232mm^2 die - 24.5M transistors/mm^2

The (Very) rough maths goes, that Vega will have 12.25B transistors. That's a 37% uplift in transistors alone. Then add Raja has been quite transparent of AMD trying to achieve higher clocks with Vega.
On a different line of thought, if you did a linear scaling of Polaris (Rx480) performance per transistor, it would net a 114% increase in perf before any arch improvements. I gather 1080 is 50-80% quicker than RX480 (user bench) for reference.

Obviously I'm assuming all transistors go towards performance, which is absolutely not the case. But it gives some weight to the 500mm^2 die variant of Vega >1080 claim.

What I love about this is that the 1080 has 7.7B transistors! Significantly less than Fury :/ SO much room for improvement!

Edit: The worry is if AMD can only beat the 1080 and not the 1080ti with a 500mm^2 die. Very costly!
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The problem isn't the hardware, but the drivers; AMD have never had the greatest of launch drivers, and incorporating a lot of new tech can't make that job any easier. So, even though it should *technically* be faster than even the gtx 1080 ti, it could still fall short in dx11 titles if the drivers aren't up to scratch. AMD seem to have gotten a lot better lately, so we can only hope they have managed to get this part right considering the long lead time to get the product to market.
 
jonjay said:
What gamers should be thinking about it how games are progressively getting worse. For example, AI hasnt really moved on in the way it should have - a great youtube channel 'WorthABuy' highlights this on a weekly basis. Developers are getting sloppier and sloppier.
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Most AAA games really don't interest me any more. Overwatch is probably the only AAA game I've bought at launch in the last decade. Before that I bought Twilight Princess with a new Wii and Resident Evil 4 for my GameCube shortly after it came out. Every other game I play is either not AAA or was bought long after it commanded its high price point (typically single player or offline co-op games). I got Perfect Dark at launch for I think £60 (including the N64 expansion pack), which is nearly £100 in today's money. Wouldn't dream of spending that much these days, there's too much choice and competition for anyone to dare charging that much, plus as you say the quality just isn't as good.
 
Toss3 said:
The problem isn't the hardware, but the drivers; AMD have never had the greatest of launch drivers, and incorporating a lot of new tech can't make that job any easier. So, even though it should *technically* be faster than even the gtx 1080 ti, it could still fall short in dx11 titles if the drivers aren't up to scratch. AMD seem to have gotten a lot better lately, so we can only hope they have managed to get this part right considering the long lead time to get the product to market.
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To be fair AMD drivers have been pretty good the last few years, the problem for AMD is that DX11 is still the predominate API in games today which favors Nvidia due to Maxwell's front end can support driver command lists. Driver command lists is a massive advantage for Nvidia as it means they can force multi-threading of CPU draw calls through the driver which results in lower CPU overhead. DX11 does have support for deferred command lists which essentially does the same thing as driver command lists but this has to be supported by game developers and you don't need to be called Sherlock Holmes to work out which one developers prefer! The only draw back with Nvidia's approach is you need to be able to support command lists with the extra software writers so it's an expensive process having to re-write game code for every new game. However this has resulted in AMD having to sell costly hardware at lower prices in order to stay competitive (the 390/390X on paper should be competing against the 980/980TI when looking at power draw and die size rather then the modest GTX970). It also helps that Nvidia has the resources and market share to enable this AMD doesn't hence why AMD introduced mantle to get game developers to write more efficiently which is starting to bear fruit.
 
labbby said:
It's been a while but i know there were bios flashes out there that would do it but really cant remember if all 7950's would do it or just a certain batch... :(
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I think this actually sums it all up in fairness. AMD done such a bad job with the Polaris refresh consumers like me see more benifit and value in going 980ti or even a 290x second hand rather than sinking £230+ into a RX580 that is only a tad faster than a 290X.

Vega should off been ready first quarter. In my office currently there are 2-3 of us in exactly same boat which I find amazing.
 
jonjay said:
I think this actually sums it all up in fairness. AMD done such a bad job with the Polaris refresh consumers like me see more benifit and value in going 980ti or even a 290x second hand rather than sinking £230+ into a RX580 that is only a tad faster than a 290X.

Vega should off been ready first quarter. In my office currently there are 2-3 of us in exactly same boat which I find amazing.
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Why have you got 3 people in a boat, in your office? :D
 
Haha not really though as Intel are ahead, not behind

7950 competed with the GTX 670, look where nVidia have gone in the same time frame :(

Hopefully Vega can make us forget the last few years
 
Journey said:
Why have you got 3 people in a boat, in your office? :D
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Large IT corporate with lots of techies who game. Its a big boat so laws of averages and all that :D

In seriousness, there are several people with 7970s, 290X, 280Xs and there is no where for them to go without going Nvidia route. They, like me, were waiting for Vega or something competitive for a decent price point but lets face it there is nothing here now. So they wait but at current rate nvidia are releasing cards why wouldnt they go Nvidia. Some chaps on here made good points, I been seeing people waiting for years for AMD to compete properly with Nvidia....
 
chanjy said:
Haha not really though as Intel are ahead, not behind

7950 competed with the GTX 670, look where nVidia have gone in the same time frame :(

Hopefully Vega can make us forget the last few years
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The 7950 launched at $449.
AMD has come a long way, considering what you can get performance wise for half the price; and NVIDIA at the current price range are in a similar spot.

Both have advanced, and if you look back at the 670, it's not competing with the 7950 anymore; the latter is ahead currently. Even more so at newer APIs.

Makes you think which one really offered the best card at the time so.
 
Toss3 said:
The problem isn't the hardware, but the drivers; AMD have never had the greatest of launch drivers, and incorporating a lot of new tech can't make that job any easier. So, even though it should *technically* be faster than even the gtx 1080 ti, it could still fall short in dx11 titles if the drivers aren't up to scratch. AMD seem to have gotten a lot better lately, so we can only hope they have managed to get this part right considering the long lead time to get the product to market.
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I had heard it was also a problem with the front end of the Fiji arch, saturating way before all the CUs could be utilised. Probably a dozen other issues with Fiji that cause underutilisation...

Obviously the arch can be made to work where the application and driver are highly optimised for the arch, like DOOM.
 
chanjy said:
Crazy that AMD haven't really moved the game on since 2012 and a 7950 is still not that much worse than the latest offerings
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It's easy to think that the modern AMD GPUs aren't that much better than a 7950, but actually depending on the game you're looking at 30%-100% improvement compared to a 580 (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1722?vs=1868 - this is compared to a 7970 as 7950 wasn't in the list) and it's even further behind a Fury X (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1722?vs=1720)

The 7950 is still a great card, but AMD have moved on quite a bit since then. Now if they could just hurry up and launch Vega I'll be happy! I know we're still on course for the "first half of 2017" launch, but I HATE waiting for shiny new tech! :)
 
Confused Stu said:
It's easy to think that the modern AMD GPUs aren't that much better than a 7950, but actually depending on the game you're looking at 30%-100% improvement compared to a 580 (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1722?vs=1868 - this is compared to a 7970 as 7950 wasn't in the list) and it's even further behind a Fury X (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1722?vs=1720)

The 7950 is still a great card, but AMD have moved on quite a bit since then. Now if they could just hurry up and launch Vega I'll be happy! I know we're still on course for the "first half of 2017" launch, but I HATE waiting for shiny new tech! :)
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Sure but that's not the point. :)

I think the main problem is why would someone with a 7950 [me] buy an RX580 for 250 smackers? After a small bit of research a 290X [£80-100] or a 980ti [£220-240] is much better. Now I am aware its an old vs new arguement but the main bone of contention is there is no real upgrade path from the 290x onwards from AMD. RX480 cards done very well but they only done well for people with previous gen cards from the 7950.
 
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