Dark days, AMD share price at lowest ever.

[humbug]

Sorry this is something I really don't understand.
780 over 680 was a decent performance jump, 780ti over 780 wasn't anything special, but 980ti over 980 is a good 30% jump again.

Then look at Intel, Sandy bridge, Ivy bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake. Wow some massive performance jumps there.

Nobody want AMD to die off, but they seem to be heading that way.
The currant policy of raising prices to not seem like a budget brand, might help somewhat. Unfortunately the latest generation of cards doesn't seem to have caught the publics attention enough to improve things. Maybe a rebrands and very low stocked parts wasn't the best time for them to try this, who knows.

As for the NVidia 970 memory fiasco. Personally I think it was a deplorable thing to do, there is no excuse for them at all. The sad thing is that even if they had of been honest about it and advertised the card with 500MB of slow ram and only 56 ROPs it still would be the best selling card of this last year, just without all the negative publicity. I mean even with the revealed understanding of how the memory works with the last 500 meg being slower, all the reviews and benchmarks haven't changed, it is still the same card with he same performance.

Are the Hawaii re-brands and Fiji a symptom of a lack of R&D, i could already be too late and we are in fact witnessing AMD's exit from competing in GPU's.

 

[Martini1991]

No, that was the other issue, it isn't a 256bit card, its a 224-bit card with a separate 32bit 512mb crossbar and the 32bit cant be actively used at the same time as the 224bit part.
That is obviously the cost of using that design and the parts they had to cut to get salvaged cores.

Thing is, at single card and 1080p (which is probably 90% of the 970's sales) it made no difference, so they should have just been upfront from the beginning. And ultimately the 970 is still the best selling gpu in the last 3 years

Well, then they could have just made a standard 256 bit card with 4GB VRAM.
A 770 had (Although not as standard, it was 2GB standard) 4GB VRAM on a standard 256 bit bus.

I don't disagree about the GTX970 being a great card, but breaking convention for it wasn't an advantage.

 

[mmj_uk]

I would say the rebranding was a financial decision, they had all of the ability they needed to update the Hawaii core to GCN1.2 for 390X.

 

[bru]

Are the Hawaii re-brands and Fiji a symptom of a lack of R&D, i could already be too late and we are in fact witnessing AMD's exit from competing in GPU's.

I do think your right, a tightening of R&D budgets has possibly really not helped. Maybe they are saving the little they do have for a better push next generation, with the rumoured top to bottom revamp with HBM2, it is a possibility, or at least we can hope.

 

[humbug]

I would say the rebranding was a financial decision, they had all of the ability they needed to update the Hawaii core to GCN1.2 for 390X.

AMD don't number their architecture like that, thats an Anand invention.

I'm not entirely sure what was dubbed GCN 1.2 because of Delta Colour and Texture Compression was not enabled in the 285's Drivers now also available on Hawaii and Fiji.

To test it all we need is the paid version of 3DMark Vantage, a Tonga and Hawaii GPU. Reviewers being completely useless these days didn't test any of this.

The ~15% performance jump in Hawaii with the last two drivers came from somewhere.

 

[D.P.]

It's a 256 bit card, it could and should just have normal 4GB VRAM like a GTX980 (Or, better example, like a GTX 770 etc does)

I don't know where you're getting this extra VRAM lark from.

It isn't a benefit.

It is not a 256bit card though, they couldn't make it with 4Gb running at full speed. It is a salvaged chip, even if many if them are full GM204 chips a good chunk of them physically won't work as 980s. Thus there was the choice of a 3Gb card or a 4Gb card with some memory running slower. The design was a good choice, but the complete failure to warn reviewers and buyers was terrible.

At the end of the day people purchased the card based on performance in reviews, this fact did not change at all.

 

[andybird123]

Unless they bought them and then closed them, there's still the fact that AMD is making continual losses, and has massive debts too.

Are you suggesting Google should worry about fixing them, and competing against Intel and nV at the same time, or should buy them for patents and shut them down?

I'm saying that if google were to buy AMD, they probably wouldn't bother competing with Intel and nvidia in the desktop market. Whether GMD would be able to make other devices or not I don't know.

 

[D.P.]

Are the Hawaii re-brands and Fiji a symptom of a lack of R&D, i could already be too late and we are in fact witnessing AMD's exit from competing in GPU's.

I would say quite clearly yes, the 28nm plateau has of course contributed.
AMD spent a lot of engineering on some parts of Fiji but not others, the 390 series could have been a full fat Tonga.

If 20nm was an option then the Fiji would likely be a very different chip and much more interesting.

 

[Martini1991]

It is not a 256bit card though, they couldn't make it with 4Gb running at full speed. It is a salvaged chip, even if many if them are full GM204 chips a good chunk of them physically won't work as 980s. Thus there was the choice of a 3Gb card or a 4Gb card with some memory running slower. The design was a good choice, but the complete failure to warn reviewers and buyers was terrible.

At the end of the day people purchased the card based on performance in reviews, this fact did not change at all.

But the VRAM set up isn't the same as the 980, so it being a salvaged part is irrelevant to what they've done with the VRAM set up, no salvaged part in my memory has a changed VRAM set up.

They could have just made a normal salvaged card.

 

[RavenXXX2]

But the VRAM set up isn't the same as the 980, so it being a salvaged part is irrelevant to what they've done with the VRAM set up, no salvaged part in my memory has a changed VRAM set up.

They could have just made a normal salvaged card.

660/660ti.

 

[humbug]

I do think your right, a tightening of R&D budgets has possibly really not helped. Maybe they are saving the little they do have for a better push next generation, with the rumoured top to bottom revamp with HBM2, it is a possibility, or at least we can hope.

Just slapping HMB 2 on all their GPU's isn't going to cut it if they can't also increase the performance massively on much smaller chips.

They need R&D for that, i can't see where its coming from.

 

[RavenXXX2]

We may never see an AMD GPU on 14nm. That would be sad.

 

[james.miller]

But the VRAM set up isn't the same as the 980, so it being a salvaged part is irrelevant to what they've done with the VRAM set up, no salvaged part in my memory has a changed VRAM set up.

They could have just made a normal salvaged card.

It's very relevant. The salvaged cores used in the 970's have L2 cache modules disabled. on a 980 each vram chip is connected to an L2 module, each module is connected to the crossbar. since 970's have an L2 module disabled, two of the vram chips have to be connected through one l2 cache and it's that that causes this whole 3.5Gb/4Gb debate (each chip = 500Mb).

With the way the GPUs are designed, how else do you suppose they could have made a 4gb card?

 

[Martini1991]

660/660ti.

How are they different?
Nvidia specs has them pegged the same.
And is that the same thing as what they've done here?

A 680/670 had exactly the same VRAM set up. The 770/780 don't, but that's because the 770's a rebranded 680, and the 780's a different card all together.

 

[Martini1991]

It's very relevant. The salvaged cores used in the 970's have L2 cache modules disabled. on a 980 each vram chip is connected to an L2 module, each module is connected to the crossbar. since 970's have an L2 module disabled, two of the vram chips have to be connected through one l2 cache and it's that that causes this whole 3.5Gb/4Gb debate (each chip = 500Mb).

With the way the GPUs are designed, how else do you suppose they could have made a 4gb card?

I'd rather they just had a 3.5GB card, as per the 570/580 (As in cutting it out completely)

 

[james.miller]

I'd rather they just had a 3.5GB card.

That's not answering the question.

Well, then they could have just made a standard 256 bit card with 4GB VRAM.

 

[bru]

Just slapping HMB 2 on all their GPU's isn't going to cut it if they can't also increase the performance massively on much smaller chips.

They need R&D for that, i can't see where its coming from.

Sorry maybe revamp was the wrong word to use, I was meaning that maybe they have saved what they can of the R&D budget for next year for a whole new lineup of cards with HBM2 across the board.

 

[Martini1991]

That's not answering the question.

The same way in which a 670 has the same VRAM as a 680 etc?

Obviously more R&D, which is why they went the route to give the 4GB on the 970, rather than just 3.5GB.

 

[bru]

What is this nonsense about the 970 not being a 256bit card, due to it memory configuration. can we have some links to back this up please, as it seems like nonsense to me.

 

[humbug]

Sorry maybe revamp was the wrong word to use, I was meaning that maybe they have saved what they can of the R&D budget for next year for a whole new lineup of cards with HBM2 across the board.

They need to be a lot better than Pascal, the sad truth is the card its self is less important than the brand, AMD must get their market share back to 40%, for that to happen it must be 40% better at 80% of the price.