AMD VEGA confirmed for 2017 H1

Griffildur · 30 Nov 2016 at 20:02

if those numbers are real, they are bound to give Nvidia a run for its money. Things might look quite good for us gamers if that really happens and AMD doesn't screw yet another big launch.

Dave2150 · 30 Nov 2016 at 20:14

Bonjour said:
12 is still more than the TXP.

You don't get it yet, even if Vega was 20TFlops, it would still loose to TXP.

Why? Because NVIDIA rule the gaming world. They control the vast majority of the developers. All they'd have to do is make one or two changes in Gameworks code, and AMD cards would be nerfed to oblivion in that game.

It's happened before and it will happen again.

They'd also be able to force the developer to remove the option to disable Gameworks, I expect that will happen soon enough, if Vega is amazing.

D.P. · 30 Nov 2016 at 20:25

Toss3 said:
I think most people just wanted to believe AMD would create another great value product that would be almost as fast as nvidia's top offerings, but at a much lower price - you know like they used to back in the day? I honestly believed they had pulled off some sort of miracle the way that most people were hyping the gpu before launch, but it ended up being a dud.

I honestly still don't quite understand what the point of Polaris is, I mean wouldn't it have been cheaper, faster, and better to just cut down and shrink the nano? Pretty sure the nano uses less power than most aftermarket RX 480s while still outperforming them quite significantly. The Nano would have been the perfect GPU for 14nm.

The nano is expensive as heck to make, the HBM memory for starters but also the chip is huge and the only way the nano gets reasonable performance per watt is because they are hand picked chips that are under-locked and undervolted. The regular Fiji chips went in to the FuryX where water cooling was also used to help reduce power usage

AMD needed a new chip but Polaris was just a half arsed attempt, yet another tweak of Hawaii. The macro-architecture just didn't scale even to Hawaii very well so pushing it further was never going to cut it. Polaris was a weird stop-gap solution, which is why there is no high end and the launch was rushed with many stupid mistake like bad cooler and only a 6pin power.

Vega is the real update to Hawaii (Fiji was an HBM experiment of a scaled up Hawaii, Polaris is a stop gap). R&D budget resulted in the severe delays.

Bonjour · 30 Nov 2016 at 20:26

Dave2150 said:
You don't get it yet, even if Vega was 20TFlops, it would still loose to TXP.

Why? Because NVIDIA rule the gaming world. They control the vast majority of the developers. All they'd have to do is make one or two changes in Gameworks code, and AMD cards would be nerfed to oblivion in that game.

It's happened before and it will happen again.

They'd also be able to force the developer to remove the option to disable Gameworks, I expect that will happen soon enough, if Vega is amazing.

I do get that. Unfortunately

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 30 Nov 2016 at 20:45

D.P. said:
The nano is expensive as heck to make, the HBM memory for starters but also the chip is huge and the only way the nano gets reasonable performance per watt is because they are hand picked chips that are under-locked and undervolted. The regular Fiji chips went in to the FuryX where water cooling was also used to help reduce power usage

AMD needed a new chip but Polaris was just a half arsed attempt, yet another tweak of Hawaii. The macro-architecture just didn't scale even to Hawaii very well so pushing it further was never going to cut it. Polaris was a weird stop-gap solution, which is why there is no high end and the launch was rushed with many stupid mistake like bad cooler and only a 6pin power.

Vega is the real update to Hawaii (Fiji was an HBM experiment of a scaled up Hawaii, Polaris is a stop gap). R&D budget resulted in the severe delays.

The problem is Hynix said they were INTENDING to start mass production of HBM2 in August,so I think the Hynix HBM2 schedule is not helping as is the fact we don't even know if Global Foundries is even upto the task of producing an over 300MM2 14NM GPU yet.

nashathedog · 30 Nov 2016 at 21:15

Stu said:
Maybe a sign as to the credibility of this report, but I can't even access it at work because the firewall has labelled it as "suspicious"

The sites a joke, They also have a top 5 gpu's of 2016 article, Apparently the top five are the 1080, Titan X, 260x, 460 and Fury, All of which use DDR5 memory.

Seanspeed · 30 Nov 2016 at 21:29

FoxEye said:
You're a real piece of work, Seanspeed. And your reading comprehension is awful too.

I said I'm playing on a single 1080p screen, and the 480 slows down/lags in plenty of places.

Now if you're going to tell me that rendering for a VR device (of half-decent resolution) is *less* demanding than rendering a single 1080p screen, then perhaps it's *you* who's full of it.

The 480 is a mid-range - soon to be low-end - card, aimed at "VR" users as a way to generate some extra sales from people who don't know any better.

Let's face it, it's not a beefy card at all.

At no point was I suggesting the 480 was high end. But you are showing woeful understanding of how VR works, though you are at least correct that running VR titles is harder than it would be with an equivalent app running in 2d. But that's kind of key there - 'equivalent'. VR titles are typically not built to be as demanding as a normal 2d AAA game is.

The 290 is already adequate for the Rift/Vive, and the 480 is better than that and the subsequent 390 in a couple ways. Both with more on-paper power, but also with better DX11 instruction capabilities, meaning even in titles that AMD used to struggle in, it does much better. It is just fine for VR. As is a GTX970 still.

Seanspeed · 30 Nov 2016 at 21:35

Dave2150 said:
You don't get it yet, even if Vega was 20TFlops, it would still loose to TXP.

Why? Because NVIDIA rule the gaming world. They control the vast majority of the developers. All they'd have to do is make one or two changes in Gameworks code, and AMD cards would be nerfed to oblivion in that game.

It's happened before and it will happen again.

They'd also be able to force the developer to remove the option to disable Gameworks, I expect that will happen soon enough, if Vega is amazing.

This is laughable conspiracy theory nonsense.

Nvidia do not 'control' any developers. The only title that could ever be accused of being Gameworks-locked is Project Cars, and even that is debatable. The rest simply have optional effects that Nvidia have offered to the devs and thus to consumers. They can all be turned off.

You can also see a pretty notable trend of games starting to be more AMD-focused in performance through general GCN-led development on consoles transferring to PC. So if there was any valid conspiracy theory, it would be that AMD are controlling the developers. But even that wouldn't be true, it'd just be a case of circumstances for the most part.

Also 'forcing developers to not have the option to remove Gameworks features'. lol You are one serious tinfoil-hat wearing clown.

Lokken86 · 30 Nov 2016 at 21:40

Are we all aboard the hype train again?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 30 Nov 2016 at 21:55

Lokken86 said:
Are we all aboard the hype train again?

Nope.

Better to be pleasantly surprised than unpleasantly disappointed.

LoadsaMoney · 30 Nov 2016 at 22:37

nashathedog said:
The sites a joke, They also have a top 5 gpu's of 2016 article, Apparently the top five are the 1080, Titan X, 260x, 460 and Fury, All of which use DDR5 memory, apart from the Fury

Fixed

Freddie1980 · 1 Dec 2016 at 00:18

Anyone watched Hamish's latest video about the GPU wars being over? God that was depressing. In summary he concluded it doesn't matter if AMD's were faster and cheaper Nvidia's mindshare guarantees team green will always sell more.

Seanspeed · 1 Dec 2016 at 00:35

Freddie1980 said:
Anyone watched Hamish's latest video about the GPU wars being over? God that was depressing. In summary he concluded it doesn't matter if AMD's were faster and cheaper Nvidia's mindshare guarantees team green will always sell more.

It's only depressing if you buy into such absolute ridiculous nonsense.

Poneros · 1 Dec 2016 at 00:42

Marketing matters a great deal, and unfortunately in this case it's much like Apple vs Google, with AMD being Google. Great value, excellent hardware but boy do they suck sht at selling it. And with them tripping over themselves in the last 1-1.5 years it didn't do much to help - understandable, turnarounds take a long time in business, but heck, as a consumer it seems like many eternities ago. Luckily they're still in the game, and it hasn't ended yet, so who knows, maybe it will be just another dip in history (which means we might see a rise!).

nashathedog · 1 Dec 2016 at 06:43

LoadsaMoney said:
Fixed

It's the HNGN site that needs fixing, I'm simply quoting their 'Best gpu's of 2016' article that states that the Fury uses 4gb's of DDR5.

beany_bot · 1 Dec 2016 at 08:21

MY main concern with Vega is that they will price it based on Nvidias high end pricing. maybe only marginally lower. and fire it in at £800/£900. That will be "game over" for me I'm afraid. Im not paying that to game at high end, nor am I paying £600 to game at mid end.

I hope they price it to come in well below. try and really pull their boots up.

chaosophy · 1 Dec 2016 at 08:27

Poneros said:
Marketing matters a great deal, and unfortunately in this case it's much like Apple vs Google, with AMD being Google.

Except the install base of Google's Android is probably about four times more than Apple's iOS devices globally.

Panos · 1 Dec 2016 at 10:37

beany_bot said:
MY main concern with Vega is that they will price it based on Nvidias high end pricing. maybe only marginally lower. and fire it in at £800/£900. That will be "game over" for me I'm afraid. Im not paying that to game at high end, nor am I paying £600 to game at mid end.

I hope they price it to come in well below. try and really pull their boots up.

Indeed. I will stick to Nano for the long term, (1080 sold) and buy ps4 pro

beany_bot · 1 Dec 2016 at 10:43

Total guesswork but what do people think Vegas chances of running games at 4K will be? Tempted to wait and get Vega / 4K monitor but don't want to be knocking settings way back

AllBodies · 1 Dec 2016 at 11:38

beany_bot said:
MY main concern with Vega is that they will price it based on Nvidias high end pricing. maybe only marginally lower. and fire it in at £800/£900. That will be "game over" for me I'm afraid. Im not paying that to game at high end, nor am I paying £600 to game at mid end.

I hope they price it to come in well below. try and really pull their boots up.

Yeah they need to shake the market up if they want to claw back market share. They need to target £500 and minimum 10% clear lead on a GTX 1080. Or preferably an even better deal than that.

beany_bot said:
Total guesswork but what do people think Vegas chances of running games at 4K will be? Tempted to wait and get Vega / 4K monitor but don't want to be knocking settings way back

No doubt the largest Vega card will be great for 4K gaming. It'll just be a case of how much it costs.