** The AMD Navi Thread **

[BongoHunter]

I always thought Navi was going to be a Polaris replacement, at least thats what was stated way back when AMD started this journey

In my mind that puts it in the mid-range segment - the rumour mill is really going super heavy on Navi and I don't see what facts it's all being based on.

The only safe assumption in my mind is that there needs to be a Navi product at launch that will comfortably smash the best 590 out there by a decent margin, and I think that's all we're going to see in 2019 imo

 

[Chrisc]

I always thought Navi was going to be a Polaris replacement, at least thats what was stated way back when AMD started this journey

In my mind that puts it in the mid-range segment - the rumour mill is really going super heavy on Navi and I don't see what facts it's all being based on.

The only safe assumption in my mind is that there needs to be a Navi product at launch that will comfortably smash the best 590 out there by a decent margin, and I think that's all we're going to see in 2019 imo

It is a midrange replacement. I’m hoping to be within 10% of the Vega cards for the £200 mark. The vega56 is currently around £250 so I don’t think it’s an unrealistic target. I learnt my lesson from the Polaris launch where people were adamant it was going to beat a 1080, when we all know it was around 40% slower.

 

[nashathedog]

2080TI performance in August for $430 would be just what I want.

Never gonna happen.

 

[nashathedog]

Anybody expecting 2080ti performance (from any of the Navi chips) for £330 +vat is going to be very very dissapointed.

I don't think anyone is realistically expecting that level of performance regardless of price point. Unless there is indeed a big navi but I'm holding off on that unless they've found a way to make navi truly scalable.

2070 performance at considerably lower price point is what I'm expecting.

I'm not expecting any sort of big undercut, We never get one so why would we this time? On release Navi will be priced according to how it performs compared to Turing, I think Jim Adored is overstepping common sense here & starting to believe in his own expertise a little too much.

 

[nashathedog]

GCN is a failed architecture. Don't know why you keep insisting on it and promoting Navi as being GCN.

Really........really.......I mean really.

The mind boggles, how can you even consider thinking that let alone typing that out.

I'm not an expert on these things but I think GCN's been a success, In the beginning the 7000 series forced Nvidia to use Big Kepler to have the performance lead, Since then every GCN GPU has aged better than it's Nvidia counterpart. During this time AMD's software guys have had the underlying GCN software to work from allowing them to improve their driver support tenfold. My biggest worry when leaving GCN will be related to how long it takes the driver team to become comfortable coding for it's replacement. If they decided to break GCN's 64cu limit & extend it's life span to include a couple more gen's I'd be fine with that especially if post Navi also had a chiplet design.
GCN's done AMD proud.

I always thought Navi was going to be a Polaris replacement.

I can't recall ever hearing anything other than that from AMD.

 

[Bacon?]

I'm not expecting any sort of big undercut, We never get one so why would we this time? On release Navi will be priced according to how it performs compared to Turing, I think Jim Adored is overstepping common sense here & starting to believe in his own expertise a little too much.

As I said before take a look at the prices of Vega at the moment, they've had to dramatically reduce prices since launch and those cards are built with a pcb designed for high power draw and with expensive HBM. Navi should be able to offer better performance at lower prices due to using GDDR6, lower power draw and thus cheaper pcb elements and the advancements that 7nm brings over the current node, ie better performance, effeciency (especially the effeciency clock speed curve that really holds polaris back) and die shrink. There's also the possibility that if Navi has been co designed for the consoles which makes a lot of sense then potentially we could see a chiplet design with the graphic, io and memory controllers on seperate parts.

 

[LePhuronn]

I'm not expecting any sort of big undercut, We never get one so why would we this time?

Because Nvidia are taking the **** and this is the perfect opportunity for AMD to regain marketshare.

On release Navi will be priced according to how it performs compared to Turing...

Then AMD are idiots if they think they can command Turing prices when they have every drop of mindshare going against them, and will have wasted a golden opportunity to change the negative perception of their company and products. Same exactly applies to people thinking an 8 core Zen 2 will the same price as a 9900K just because it's as good/better.

...I think Jim Adored is overstepping common sense here & starting to believe in his own expertise a little too much.

Jim's only as good as his sources, I sincerely doubt he's made those prices up.

In a period where Nvidia and Intel are losing significant investor and shareholder trust over their prices, sales and practices, it is simply not common sense for AMD to take the same approach and fleece the market just because their competitors can.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

In a period where Nvidia and Intel are losing significant investor and shareholder trust over their prices, sales and practices, it is simply not common sense for AMD to take the same approach and fleece the market just because their competitors can.

There's taking the same approach and then there's offering 2080 and 2070 level products for about half the price. You're left questioning if they could even do that and turn a profit. GDDR6 and 7nm won't come in as cheap as GDDR5 and 14nm either.

 

[4K8KW10]

GDDR6 and 7nm won't come in as cheap as GDDR5 and 14nm either.

It depends. They can use GDDR5X and if the new NGG architecture fixes the GCN problems, we would see a 80-90 sq.mm 7nm chip that is as fast as the 232 sq.mm 14/12nm Polaris.

 

[LePhuronn]

"2070 level for half the price"

OK...

Nvidia get lambasted for RTX raster performance because it hasn't moved on in 3 years.
Nvidia get lambasted for RTX prices because they are astronomical, and sales figures take a noticeable hit.
AMD get lambasted for Radeon VII's raster performance being (essentially) equal to the RTX 2080, because that level of performance is 3 years old.
AMD get lambasted for RX Vega's performance being inferior to GTX 1080, already a year old at that point, and costs a good chunk more.

But then when rumours claim AMD are developing a lean, small, gaming-focussed product with no expensive RAM and compute silicon dragging the price to stupid levels, suddenly it's completely insane to suggest, expect, nay demand that a graphics card that performs the same as something from 3 years ago should cost about £250.

And in the same breath then say "I'm not paying RTX money" "if Navi costs £400 I'm not buying".

It's contradiction to the point of idiocy; make up your damn minds people.

 

[LePhuronn]

It depends. They can use GDDR5X and if the new NGG architecture fixes the GCN problems, we would see a 80-90 sq.mm 7nm chip that is as fast as the 232 sq.mm 14/12nm Polaris.

No, because GDDR5X requires additional work in traces, pin out and signal fidelity compared to GDDR5. GDDR6 is essentially a drop-in replacement for GDDR5, which is why I was surprised and disappointed RX 590 didn't get GDDR6.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

"2070 level for half the price"

OK...

Nvidia get lambasted for RTX raster performance because it hasn't moved on in 3 years.
Nvidia get lambasted for RTX prices because they are astronomical, and sales figures take a noticeable hit.
AMD get lambasted for Radeon VII's raster performance being (essentially) equal to the RTX 2080, because that level of performance is 3 years old.
AMD get lambasted for RX Vega's performance being inferior to GTX 1080, already a year old at that point, and costs a good chunk more.

But then when rumours claim AMD are developing a lean, small, gaming-focussed product with no expensive RAM and compute silicon dragging the price to stupid levels, suddenly it's completely insane to suggest, expect, nay demand that a graphics card that performs the same as something from 3 years ago should cost about £250.

And in the same breath then say "I'm not paying RTX money" "if Navi costs £400 I'm not buying".

It's contradiction to the point of idiocy; make up your damn minds people.

It's whether it's realistic and profitable for AMD. Most people would snatch your arm off £300 for 2070 performance or £400 for a 2080 performance? So why would they sell them for £250 and £330 and probably make perhaps half the profit per unit?

 

[4K8KW10]

No, because GDDR5X requires additional work in traces, pin out and signal fidelity compared to GDDR5. GDDR6 is essentially a drop-in replacement for GDDR5, which is why I was surprised and disappointed RX 590 didn't get GDDR6.

If you throw more memory bandwidth on the RX 590, likely nothing will change, so it isn't worth it. What's the problem to rework the PCB, if GDDR5X is considerably cheaper than GDDR6?

 

[vapor matt]

If Navi can equal a 2080 in performance AMD would be mad to sell it to cheap. after all you cant have a team running R&D and expect top notch GPU's when they return very little profit. If AMD can undercut the 2080 price point and still make a good profit then well and good, but I don't expect AMD to commit suicide on price.
I also think navi will if its very lucky equal a 2080 in performance. even the 2080 is out of reach to many PC gamers. Polaris plus 25% is what I would be expecting at most. priced accordingly will be a very popular card for mid range PC gamers. just like the RX580 has been and RX590 is now.

 

[bru]

Yeah, because by using GCN, the Radeons lost all the advantages they had enjoyed prior to that - performance per square mm, performance per watt, absolute performance crown or at least healthy competition in that, etc.
If you argue, at least try to defend your point.

Ok Radeon 7970 1st generation GCN. First card to support PCIe 3.0 faster than the GTX 680 when introduced

Jaguar based APU's and its successors, without which there would be no PlayStation 4 or Xbox one

2nd generation GCN cards brought us Freesync.

2nd gen also brought us the legendary R9 290X and its successors.

3rd generation GCN brought us Fiji and with that the introduction of HBM memory.

4th generation GCN brought us Polaris RX480 and its successors.

5th generation GCN brought us Vega and its successors, of course including the world first 7nm GPU's

6th generation GCN will bring us Navi and as of yet we don't know just what that will bring.

Now all the while the money that AMD was making from all these GCN based GPU's allowed them to develop the Zen CPU architecture and we all know just what that has done for the Computing world.

Not too forget that AMD's share price climbed up from its lowest ever of 1.67 on the 24th July 2015 which was just under two years before Zen arrived, so it was GCN based GPU's that helped save AMD from sinking even lower.

So to defend my point as it were I offer the above. GCN may not have always offered the best cards in all segments all the time, but it has been far from a failed architecture.

GCN is a failed architecture.

 

[Phixsator]

"2070 level for half the price"

OK...

Nvidia get lambasted for RTX raster performance because it hasn't moved on in 3 years.
Nvidia get lambasted for RTX prices because they are astronomical, and sales figures take a noticeable hit.
AMD get lambasted for Radeon VII's raster performance being (essentially) equal to the RTX 2080, because that level of performance is 3 years old.
AMD get lambasted for RX Vega's performance being inferior to GTX 1080, already a year old at that point, and costs a good chunk more.

But then when rumours claim AMD are developing a lean, small, gaming-focussed product with no expensive RAM and compute silicon dragging the price to stupid levels, suddenly it's completely insane to suggest, expect, nay demand that a graphics card that performs the same as something from 3 years ago should cost about £250.

And in the same breath then say "I'm not paying RTX money" "if Navi costs £400 I'm not buying".

It's contradiction to the point of idiocy; make up your damn minds people.

I think a large part of the reason for this is that people in general have been made accustomed to the "new" price tags with nvidia raising it every generation and crazy part is that it's been the consumers that have come up with explanations
in order to justify it which is just mind blowing to me. "It's okay, it has 10% more cuda cores so of course the price has to increase 20%" and then add to it the echochamber and we got 100% justification it seems.. I'm left wondering what happened to the old ways of offering last gen high end card performance in the new gen's mid tier for the same price that the mid tier has always cost.

 

[4K8KW10]

If Navi can equal a 2080 in performance AMD would be mad to sell it to cheap. after all you cant have a team running R&D and expect top notch GPU's when they return very little profit. If AMD can undercut the 2080 price point and still make a good profit then well and good, but I don't expect AMD to commit suicide on price.
I also think navi will if its very lucky equal a 2080 in performance. even the 2080 is out of reach to many PC gamers. Polaris plus 25% is what I would be expecting at most. priced accordingly will be a very popular card for mid range PC gamers. just like the RX580 has been and RX590 is now.

RX 590 is an old chip, originally released back in 2016. That is 3 years in which they got some performance improvements simply by tweaking the manufacturing processes. Something similar to what intel has been doing since 2011.
AMD must give consumers something meaningful and cheap, in order to return the market share and public opinions on the company.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would be wary of getting too hyped on Navi. Even if the test examples were fine,we don't know whether mass production will be as easy. From what I have read,the reason Navi was not previewed in January as it needed a respin.

 

[vapor matt]

RX 590 is an old chip, originally released back in 2016. That is 3 years in which they got some performance improvements simply by tweaking the manufacturing processes. Something similar to what intel has been doing since 2011.
AMD must give consumers something meaningful and cheap, in order to return the market share and public opinions on the company.

RX580 and RX590 are still selling well, unless your an enthusiast you don't even know about Navi. I hope navi does bring 2070 to 2080 performance, I just cant see AMD selling it for peanuts of a return in profits, or future R&D will suffer.

 

[4K8KW10]

RX580 and RX590 are still selling well, unless your an enthusiast you don't even know about Navi. I hope navi does bring 2070 to 2080 performance, I just cant see AMD selling it for peanuts of a return in profits, or future R&D will suffer.

I don't worry about the R&D. AMD has very healthy revenue flow from Ryzen. Soon, AMD will be debt free, and can throw as many people as possible on the GPU problems.