AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

[harney]

I just can't stand the additional latency of mGPU setups now, whereas before it never used to bother me. Weird.

Single powerful card + nice Gsync/Freesync monitor all the way imo, provides a much richer all-round experience

Agree

 

[opethdisciple]

I hope that Vega brings some new universal technology that is usable across all games that significantly or at least decently improves gaming performance.

This new HBCC maybe useful, but only if it's usable by devs with little effort.

 

[benjii]

I've had 3 different generations of AMD multi-gpu setups, my last being dual 290's. I was sick of it by the end and switched to a Fury. Admittedly, the month long waits for good drivers are a thing of the past with AMD, they're infinitely better on driver updates. However, that wasn't the only issue. Flagship model GPU and a freesync/gsync monitor is the only option for me now.

 

[shankly1985]

I think HBCC is controlled by Amd themselves. The demo it says amd forced the vram to 2GB..

Maybe we get some driver options to config the settings.

 

[Mtom]

I hope that Vega brings some new universal technology that is usable across all games that significantly or at least decently improves gaming performance.

This new HBCC maybe useful, but only if it's usable by devs with little effort.

It's hardware controlled so it needs only minimum effort in low level APIs (few lines of code to enable), and works by default in lower dx versions as far as i know.

 

[opethdisciple]

It's hardware controlled so it needs only minimum effort in low level APIs (few lines of code to enable), and works by default in lower dx versions as far as i know.

Sounds similar to what AMD and Nvidia did a few years ago with the shader cache albeit in software rather than hardware.

 

[nashathedog]

8gb should be enough for a good couple of years anyway imo. Until PS5 and an even newer Xbox comes out. By the time 8gb is not enough we will be on a new gpu.

I dunno, I'd bet money on Nvidia getting involved with a game soon after Vega releases and trying to get the memory usage pushed beyond 8gb's so the Ti and TXp's can be seen to stand above every other card just like they did with the Fury and ROTTR.

 

[shankly1985]

I dunno, I'd bet money on Nvidia getting involved with a game soon after Vega releases and trying to get the memory usage pushed beyond 8gb's so the Ti and TXp's can be seen to stand above every other card just like they did with the Fury and ROTTR.

But then the Vega GPU can use more Cache memory from storage and RAM 512TB
But AMD isn't just calling this HBM or VRAM; it's now a "High-Bandwidth Cache" (HBC) and there's also a new "High-Bandwidth Cache Controller" (HBCC). The distinction is important, because the HBCC plays a much more prominent role in memory accesses. AMD calls this a "completely new memory hierarchy." That's probably a bit of hyperbole, but the idea is to better enable the GPU to work with large data sets, which is becoming an increasingly difficult problem.

As an example of why the HBCC is important, AMD profiled VRAM use for The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4. In both cases, the amount of VRAM allocated is around 2-3 times larger than the amount of VRAM actually 'touched' (accessed) during gameplay. The HBCC takes this into account, allowing the GPU to potentially work with significantly larger data sets, providing a 512TB virtual address space.

 

[silversurfer]

I think the point of HBCC is being missed, no game requires 8gb to render one frame. Its not a simultaneous requirement, AMD is proposing or stating they will juggle textures before they are ever required. Instead of brute force they declare they have improved the intelligence of design and operation of a graphics card not to require the loading of every part of the game textures into immediate GPU memory.

Maybe it'll screw up, maybe it'll be bad 1% of the time and people will avoid it like the plague as its a nightmare for min frame rates. Or it could be perfect, do you believe in this guy :

 

[opethdisciple]

Spoiler

I think the point of HBCC is being missed, no game requires 8gb to render one frame. Its not a simultaneous requirement, AMD is proposing or stating they will juggle textures before they are ever required. Instead of brute force they declare they have improved the intelligence of design and operation of a graphics card not to require the loading of every part of the game textures into immediate GPU memory.

Maybe it'll screw up, maybe it'll be bad 1% of the time and people will avoid it like the plague as its a nightmare for min frame rates. Or it could be perfect, do you believe in this guy :

Looks at OP's username and then picture.

 

[FoxEye]

8gb should be enough for a good couple of years anyway imo. Until PS5 and an even newer Xbox comes out. By the time 8gb is not enough we will be on a new gpu.

If they're bigging up the HBCC as a way to reduce mem usage, I'd bet that only the top Vega card will have >4GB. I reckon the 1070/1080 class cards will have 4GB only, to keep costs down. And that will certainly put many off.

 

[JediFragger]

Couldn't you find a bigger picture of the guy?? Any chance you can stick it in spoiler tags??

 

[silversurfer]

tbh any true Vega faithful should be printing off said picture and sticking it on the side of the monitor for daily adoration

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Going to take a lot of convincing, 8GB being fine, because of the new HBCC.

 

[old gamer]

tbh any true Vega faithful should be printing off said picture and sticking it on the side of the monitor for daily adoration

I made my own face mask with it and now I stare at the mirror and stroke myself

 

[silversurfer]

Going to take a lot of convincing, 8GB being fine, because of the new HBCC.

Hopefully its a really unpopular idea and people dont get it, any squeeze on stock initially might mean the 4gb version is the one to get. After a while it'll sink in, presuming Raja Koduri was correct in his estimations

 

[D1craig]

They should figure out how much vram it mirrors for nvidia and say on the box "effective xxgb vram" instead of 8gb with hbcc.

 

[akarypid]

Am really excited to see what HBCC brings.
At its Capsaicin & Cream event today, AMD announced that its High Bandwidth Cache Controller (HBCC), a feature introduced by its "Vega" GPU architecture to improve memory management, will increase game performance tangibly. The company did a side-by-side comparison between two sessions of "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided," in which a HBCC-aware machine purportedly presented 2x better minimum FPS, and 1.5x better average FPS scores, than a non-HBCC-aware system (though the old, trusty frame-rate counter was conspicuously absent from both demos).

AMD also went on to show how HBCC seemingly halves memory requirements, by deliberately capping the amount of addressable memory on the HBCC-aware system to only 2 GB - half of the 4 GB addressable by the non-HBCC-aware system, while claiming that even so, the HBCC-enabled system still showed "the same or better performance" through its better memory management and bandwidth speeds. If these results do hold up to scrutiny, this should benefit implementations of "Vega" with lower amounts of video memory, while simultaneously reducing production costs and overall end-user pricing, since smaller memory pools would be needed for the same effect.

https://www.techpowerup.com/231093/...e-controller-improves-minimum-and-average-fps

Technically I would say they demonstrated "slowdown avoidance" (in the absence of enough RAM) as opposed to performance improvement. Like you said in the second paragraph the only reason this happened is that they ran the game with 2GB of memory so that game data does not fit in VRAM. This forced the card to move data back and forth from system RAM, which the HBCC powers.

In reality this is a non-issue as cards come with enough VRAM for games to work properly. Nowadays 4GB is more than enough for 1080p gaming and 8GB is more than enough for 1440p. Cards that are capable of 4K like the 1080ti have 11GB.

As long as you have enough to store all game data, you don't need the HBCC, the game will run at full speed and the HBCC cannot "improve" the speed. Only in cases where you don't have enough VRAM would the HBCC become handy and that would just prevent the slowdown.

On the other hand, it makes for future-proofing your card. If you buy a 4GB Vega that is fast enough for 4K and a game with 7GB of data sets comes along, you should be able to play it at full speed (without slowdown) because of the HBCC.

The HBCC is really a feature for professional use where cards doing data crunching need to process huge data sets.

 

[akarypid]

To me these technologies sound like they are aiming at the 4k market.

Not even. They're mostly aiming at the professional market, but... since you have them on the card why not use them to save on memory chips? A true 4K card should come with 8GB-12GB of VRAM, whereas AMD is using 4GB-8GB and says 'use the HBCC instead'.

It's not a bad idea, but what I'm saying is that AMD have designed a single architecture for gaming/professional and the focus was on the professional side. Nvidia instead just put 11GB on the 1080ti and called it a day.

 

[opethdisciple]

Technically I would say they demonstrated "slowdown avoidance" (in the absence of enough RAM) as opposed to performance improvement. Like you said in the second paragraph the only reason this happened is that they ran the game with 2GB of memory so that game data does not fit in VRAM. This forced the card to move data back and forth from system RAM, which the HBCC powers.

In reality this is a non-issue as cards come with enough VRAM for games to work properly. Nowadays 4GB is more than enough for 1080p gaming and 8GB is more than enough for 1440p. Cards that are capable of 4K like the 1080ti have 11GB.

As long as you have enough to store all game data, you don't need the HBCC, the game will run at full speed and the HBCC cannot "improve" the speed. Only in cases where you don't have enough VRAM would the HBCC become handy and that would just prevent the slowdown.

On the other hand, it makes for future-proofing your card. If you buy a 4GB Vega that is fast enough for 4K and a game with 7GB of data sets comes along, you should be able to play it at full speed (without slowdown) because of the HBCC.

The HBCC is really a feature for professional use where cards doing data crunching need to process huge data sets.

4Gb isn't enough for 1080p gaming. Dishonered 2 is using 5.5Gb at 1080p. (According to Guru3d)

My 970 which is more than powerful enough to run the game at this res, hitches badly due to vram. Currently down two levels to high to get it to pay fine.