Is 7nm Vega on the way for gaming?

[D.P.]

Doesn't raytracing tech take away the amount of shader space available and as a process slow everything down? From my limited understanding I've read that's why it won't be in the 2060 and why AMD aren't using it in Navi. It's not like they can't do it but that they don't want to compromise the product. If that all holds weight I can't see Sony/Microsoft going for a tech that limits their system as a whole. That and the fact it's new tech that is maybe what is causing Nvidia cards to break then I Sony/MS don't really want everyone returning their broken consoles. They want the reliability of a long term tried and tested partner with the latest tech and the 7nm custom APU offers that. Intel have no pedigree to offer Sony/MS here. As it is I expect Sony have chosen AMD for PS5 because it will have been devised for a long time.

Nvidia is obviously in a better position than AMD in the GPU market. But AMD certainly have some 7nm Aces up their sleeves which should see them win back some market share from both Intel and Nvidia. And really that's what gamers should want. For every company to look to innovate and be profitable enough to keep investing. It is critical that Navi is a success because if Nvidia continue to drastically outsell AMD with inferior products we'll see less AMD investment and Nvidia will offer worse value in hand. If rumours are true AMD will be offering 2070 performance for £250 and 2060 performance for £200. If Navi isn't highly profitable future offerings will be worse and prices will rise.

RTX hardware support obviously takes up die space, although we don't have official number form nvidia. While in theory that die space could be used to add more shaders, that only works if the architecture can support more shaders and moreover, the architecture can scale linearly without changes. This is almost certainly not the case, as witness in the fact that when AMD scaled Hawaii to Fiji the extra shaders just didn't perform close to what would be expected (lack of scalability), and when moving to Vega AMD were unable to increase the shader count due to architecture restrictions. In then becomes a question of how much R&D is spent on a new architecture. The there is always the otpion of making a larger die to accomodate the RTX hardware, this is what Nvidia did with Turing..

Some people moan that Nvidia should not have added RTX hardware but added more shaders, but this might simply be impossible. Turing without RTX would liekly perform identically, but the chip would be a bit smaller and cheaper to make. Also looks like 2060 will get get RTX support.


AMD aren't adding hardware RTX support to Navi because they were caught off guard by Nvidia and don't have time to implement such hardware. These GPUs start develop 4 to 5 years prior to release.

Adding RTX wont limit the console, it would give the console new and unique features that offer market differentiation. Consoles are an appropriate startign point for ray tracing since console gameras are happy at 30FPS with reduced quality settings.

RTX is not causign Turing cards to break, that is just nonsense. It is liekly the new GDDR6 memory or the fab process.

Nvidia are not really any further behind than AMD are at 7nm. Once 7nm is mainstream nvidia will absolutely be there with competing products.At the moment there is no need, AMDs' 7nm Vega 20 is actually slower than NV Volta on 12nm.

 

[D.P.]

Vega 7nm for Gamers appears to be a very hard no. It has been said multiple times by multiple people, it is too expensive to be a consumer GPU.

Why there wasn't a cheaper version created for consumers I have no idea. Unless we are watching the most amazing piece of gamesmanship ever from AMD it just isn't happening though.

The Vega II trademarking was a brain fart of the guy who has just 'retired' after being out of the game for months.

7nm is a very expensive process right now for a large chip, hence Nvidia stayed at 12nm and AMD moved to 12nm for 590.
Add on the costs of HBM2 + interposer and you end up with an expensive GPU that just doesn't perform.

The reality is, TSMC's 7nm process provides about 25% more performance at the same power . This is taken form AMd's own material and the results of Vega 20.

 

[bru]

Well all I will say is that if the news that 7nm Vega for the consumer is cancelled is true, then it goes to show that I was correct. 7nm Vega was planed for the desktop, despite being a compute card as some have said. Its difficult to cancel some thing that was never planned for in the first place.
If this is true then it gives more credence to the Vega +15% from large Navi, as that would certainly be a good reason not to go ahead with 7nm Vega.

As always we will have to wait and see.