** The AMD Navi Thread **

[Panos]

Exactly the problem i have with all the reviews out there. Most of them are performed by idiots who simply don't take the time to dig deep. I have no issue with Vega getting some minus points for "out of box" performance metrics cause that a valid point to consider as not every consumer will be tinkering. That said, as a reviewer, you should dig deep to get an understanding of why things are working the way they are and if you can do something to boost a performance metric. So few are doing it.

Not so long ago i had a guy over from school an he played a bit on my PC and was amazed by the fluidity. The same guy had a day earlier been saying that AMD and ATI (yes ATI) sucks. He had a hard time believing that all that was in my machine was a "measly" ryzen 2600 and "a poor mans graphics card" aka vega 64.

I agree with you. GURU3D is the prime example of such idiocy when he put 1200mv-1250mv as floor voltage and the card. Complaing the ref card cannot overclock.

Also you will find the complete lack of Nitro and Red Devil reviews. The only AIB ones used by the reviewers are Gigabyte (crap cooler) and Strix (no VRM cooling).

A much smaller site who tested all 4, including tweaking, is usually dismissed.
On that site it shows the difference between Strix and Nitro is over 15% out of the box. With tweaking goes to almost 30%. With the same tweaking even the reference performs 20% better than the Strix.

That 20% is the difference between losing to gtx1080 or beating it consistently by a a good margin.

 

[D.P.]

Don't forget about price

It doesn't matter if Navi can only match vega in performance and power consumption - Navi will no doubt be far cheaper than Vega

that is very debatable. The 7nm process is much more expensive and even with the smaller dies costs will be higher unless yields can be very healthy. Memory will be cheaper but GDDR6 is expensive in itself compared to earlier GDDR technologies. And a big part of the cost of AMD cards is the heftier power circuitry and HSF due to inefficiencies.

I'm not saying there wont be any cost reduction, but it wont be large enough to see drastic changes in pricing. Moreover, AMD will need to do something more than offer yesterday's GPS for a few quid less in order to entice sales. I just have little faith we will see anything else from AMD.

 

[Panos]

Am I the only one who doesnt bother any more about all this?
My (reference) Vega 64 is there, water-cooled, tuned and nothing has changed a year now. Its performance even got better with the drivers over the year. Freesync on the 2730Z does its job and everything is fine.
The only thing looking forward is the new Ryzen 3000 cpus as I need more grunt cpu power these days.

 

[nashathedog]

Navi was never confirmed as a Polaris replacement either. In fact, there is literally no actual confirmed information about Navi. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Everything has come from rumours and speculation, which is why our playful discussions have become so convoluted and contradictory.

Based on that rumours and speculation though, you cannot say that Navi is a Polaris replacement when leaked Navi SKUs also match or better Vega performance too. Navi looks to be a total reset of the low and midrange market segment, replacing both existing Polaris and Vega products with a new range based off the same architecture.

Navi is a Polaris replacement in semantics only, in that if Polaris represents AMD's low-to-midrange product (with RX Vega being high tier and Radeon VII as top tier), then yes Navi is replacing Polaris as the midrange product. But in terms of performance tiers, Navi is replacing Vega as well.

I'm pretty sure we've known Navi was to be the next Polaris since Raj Koduri told us as much but I can't find where he said this, I found this though,

https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/navi-gpu-release-date-performance

Despite claims of GTX 1080 performance, the next-gen 7nm Navi GPUs will be specced to dominate the mid-range market, taking on the GTX 1660 Tiet al, rather than trying to outpace the old Vega cards or go toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s top Turing GPUs at the high end. AMD has confirmed as much with the Navi graphics card stack positioned below the Radeon VII.

Admittedly it's a bit thin on the ground for me to claim it confirms anything so I'll keep looking for the Koduri quote. If I find it I'll post it but if I get bored of looking I won't.

 

[nashathedog]

Don't forget about price

It doesn't matter if Navi can only match vega in performance and power consumption - Navi will no doubt be far cheaper than Vega

Vega 56 is £250, you think it will be cheaper than that?

As humbug said we're unlikely to get better performance cheaper than what we can get for our money right now.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

Am I the only one who doesnt bother any more about all this?
My (reference) Vega 64 is there, water-cooled, tuned and nothing has changed a year now. Its performance even got better with the drivers over the year. Freesync on the 2730Z does its job and everything is fine.
The only thing looking forward is the new Ryzen 3000 cpus as I need more grunt cpu power these days.

Well you do own a Vega 64! You'd be mad to replace such a fast GPU. I'm very excited about Navi because my GPU is 10 years old.

 

[nashathedog]

Am I the only one who doesnt bother any more about all this?
My (reference) Vega 64 is there, water-cooled, tuned and nothing has changed a year now. Its performance even got better with the drivers over the year. Freesync on the 2730Z does its job and everything is fine.
The only thing looking forward is the new Ryzen 3000 cpus as I need more grunt cpu power these days.

Hi, Bother about what exactly? The 14nm Vega's are great tinkering cards that literally feel like a different card once you have them set up right, I had a lot of fun tweaking my V64 Red Devil & regret not holding on to my Limited Edition Nitro plus (3x8 pin model) for longer to see how far I could push that. I now have the VII which again can have it's characteristics significantly changed if you put the time into fine tuning it, something the reviewers never do which is a shame as it is an enthusiast level card so prospective buyers are likely to be interested in doing that.

 

[Tom B]

I don't think AMD would have released the VII if they had a better card coming in 6 months time, it just seems like a waste of money on advertising, production, driver/software development etc to produce a card, even if they already had the hardware, for such a short run.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

More Navi leaks to get excited about: AMD's new Radeon RX 3080 XT: RTX 2070 performance for $330

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

Vega 56 is £250, you think it will be cheaper than that?

It'll at least have to match that with the 1660ti

But it's more about AMD becoming profitable again. Vega isn't profitable based on reports.

 

[Grim5]

Considering how expensive HBM is it would be taking up a fair chunk of the vega 56s cost to build

The Radeon 7s memory IIRC wholesale cost was about $250, obviously Vega would be cheaper with half the memory but still expensive

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

More Navi leaks to get excited about: AMD's new Radeon RX 3080 XT: RTX 2070 performance for $330

Interesting if true. And then there are other rumours saying a 2070Ti will be announced at Computex. It might get a little interesting yet!

 

[nashathedog]

I think this year will see nothing to unseat the VII and we'll only see V64 performance at best, It's quite possible AMD are fast tracking a multi-chip design which we'll see used next year, if that was the case we could see multicore Navi gpu's taking on cards like the 2080, VII & 2080ti.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

More Navi leaks to get excited about: AMD's new Radeon RX 3080 XT: RTX 2070 performance for $330

This looks like AdoredTVs leak re-posted

 

[LePhuronn]

This looks like AdoredTVs leak re-posted

Although this author claims to have "exclusive" sources in other Navi articles, this one about the RX 3080 XT looks like it's just fud rewritten from AdoredTV's Navi part 2 video and WCCFTech's article similarly parroting the same information.

What I do find interesting is the different leaks coming out. For instance:

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65560/amd-launch-next-gen-navi-graphics-cards-e3-2019/index.html
AdoredTV Jim has never been given leaks regarding Navi release schedule, all he's ever been given was a CES demo and then bumped because of a retape. Add to that, TT Anthony's "exclusive" source claims

Navi will be a muhc better GPU architecture and from what I'm hearing about performance it'll also be surprising.

Which is somewhat contrary to the information AdoredTV Jim was given.

 

[Grim5]

I think this year will see nothing to unseat the VII and we'll only see V64 performance at best, It's quite possible AMD are fast tracking a multi-chip design which we'll see used next year, if that was the case we could see multicore Navi gpu's taking on cards like the 2080, VII & 2080ti.

Ooh have t had one of those in a while

Would be cool to see Nvidia and amd go at it again with dual chip on single pcb designs

 

[Troezar]

Ooh have t had one of those in a while

Would be cool to see Nvidia and amd go at it again with dual chip on single pcb designs

I'd like to see multiple chip cards but seen by the OS as one GPU. That must be the future if only for reducing cost?

 

[ToTheMax]

I'd like to see multiple chip cards but seen by the OS as one GPU. That must be the future if only for reducing cost?

Something like a chiplet approach for GPU's

 

[nashathedog]

Ooh have t had one of those in a while
Would be cool to see Nvidia and amd go at it again with dual chip on single pcb designs

I don't mean a crossfire set up but one that works in a similar way to how Ryzen does.

I'd like to see multiple chip cards but seen by the OS as one GPU. That must be the future if only for reducing cost?

That's what I meant. If AMD can pull that off it'll be a game changer putting Nvidia on the back foot.

Something like a chiplet approach for GPU's

Exactly.

 

[LePhuronn]

I think workstation and data centre compute cards will go chiplet pretty soon, but it's tricky for gaming. Or at least that's what David Wang alluded to a while back.

I wonder through if you could split workflow components into chiplets though, kinda like the co-processors of the old days. Traditional raster die, ray tracing die, AI die, compute die all connected by a central controller, although it depends on how much of a single games frame can be generated in parallel before stitching together and displaying.