Poll: The Vega Review Thread.

[ubersonic]

In terms of gaming an epic fail yes. In terms of selling cards to miners as quickly as they can make them. Epic success!

Jesus Christ lol.

Vega is one of the worst cards from a mining pov that's been launched in years, I'm sure some retards did buy a few for mining due to the "70-100MHs" hoax that everyone and their dog could tell wasn't real, but most of the sales will have been down to gamers and/or professional users.

As somebody who hasn't held any brand loyalty since 3DFX folded I find it bizzare how far the AMD haters are willing to go to turn a blind eye to the plus points of Vega or what an awesome deal it was at £450...

 

[Gregster]

Which is odd in itself, because they don't seem to be better than the 480/580/1070 for mining, but are more expensive and use more power.

So most of us are scratching our heads why miners would want them.

Hasn't the latest driver just improved mining hash rate thingys or have I missed something?

 

[subbytna]

Looks like the owners thread can't take a joke



Wishful thinking...

Not really, historically AMD are much better with driver support than Nvidia. Might take a bit longer to get driver updates out, given their minimal financial clout, but they support their GPUs way longer than Nvidia support theirs.

 

[FoxEye]

Jesus Christ lol.

Vega is one of the worst cards from a mining pov that's been launched in years, I'm sure some retards did buy a few for mining due to the "70-100MHs" hoax that everyone and their dog could tell wasn't real, but most of the sales will have been down to gamers and/or professional users.

As somebody who hasn't held any brand loyalty since 3DFX folded I find it bizzare how far the AMD haters are willing to go to turn a blind eye to the plus points of Vega or what an awesome deal it was at £450...

There are EVGA 1080s on sale now at £430.

Correction. There are Inno3D 1080s for sale at £450. Google shopping lied to me

The Vega 64 was never an awesome deal. Ever.

 

[D.P.]

Well there you have it ladies and gents ^ AMD are doomed he tells thee!

I'm just pointing out the obvious issues surrounding AMD's very late delivery of a GPU that is only on par with a previous generation Nvidia GPU when accounting for node differences.

AMD are far form doomed given their CPU division is now competitive, which is afar more important than the graphics. Plus AMD are making lots of GPU sales from miners so they aren't in any real danger.


If Navi is on track then it would be end of 2018 (at best 1 year from now), while Volta looks very much like early 2018.


The other issues surrounding Navi and against Volta is Nvidia have their very own optimized 12nm process form TSMC. Navi is speculated to use a GF 7nm process but that wont be ready unto the very end of 2018 at the earliest, more like 2019 for a GPU . So Navi might also end up being a GF 14nm card, or it gets delayed further. Contrayto soem lies coming from SemiAccurate and regurgitated here by certain posters, the TSMC 7nm process is by all accounts ahead of the Global Foundaries 7nm process.

 

[eddyr]

Which is odd in itself, because they don't seem to be better than the 480/580/1070 for mining, but are more expensive and use more power.

So most of us are scratching our heads why miners would want them.

Potnetially 50% better at same power. If the powersaving also translated to the mining workloads.

Not sure if this has been picked up on.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_64/29.html -power consumption
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_64/34.html -MH/S

The 2nd Bios with powersave config gives the biggest reduction in power draw (in gaming and furmark tests at least) while also providing the highest MH/S out of the 6 configurable power settings.

edit. It cuts power consumption by 33% compared to the stock 1st bios balanced configuration. Curious as to whether both the reduction in power draw and improved mining perf are simultaneously sustained.

 

[FoxEye]

Hasn't the latest driver just improved mining hash rate thingys or have I missed something?

Yes and no

 

[ubersonic]

Hasn't the latest driver just improved mining hash rate thingys or have I missed something?

No, it's a bugfix for a driver flaw that was going to see mining performance drop in a few months time, it's also a driver that has been in the works for some time and was announced months ago, news sites are just hyping it as a new mining boosting driver so they can clickbait people with tales of how AMD are now courting miners over gamers. When in reality this was a simple case of a company getting embarrassed by a driver bug that affected their GPUs compute ability, and patching it.

 

[Mayh3M]

Jesus Christ lol.

Vega is one of the worst cards from a mining pov that's been launched in years, I'm sure some retards did buy a few for mining due to the "70-100MHs" hoax that everyone and their dog could tell wasn't real, but most of the sales will have been down to gamers and/or professional users.

As somebody who hasn't held any brand loyalty since 3DFX folded I find it bizzare how far the AMD haters are willing to go to turn a blind eye to the plus points of Vega or what an awesome deal it was at £450...

It was £450 for the first, what was it, fifteen minutes? During this time, miners were lapping them up and gamers were busy reading/watching reviews.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Where did I say that?

I'm just pointing out the obvious issues suroduing AMD's very late delivery of a GPU that is only on par with a previous generation Nvidia GPU when accounting for node differences.

AMD are far form doomed given their CPU division is now competitive, which is afar more important than the graphics. Plus AMD are making lots of GPU sales from miners so they aren't in any real danger.

I know how well they're doing CPU wise but your post came across like their GPU division is screwed for competing with nVidia in terms of gaming performance which is what most in this section care about.

We seem to have little idea yet if it's miners buying in, some are saying it's down to freesync and professionals yet others think somehow they're good for mining, but as you said yourself their costs to produce and limited R&D means they need mining to stay profitable.

 

[ubersonic]

Not really, historically AMD are much better with driver support than Nvidia. Might take a bit longer to get driver updates out, given their minimal financial clout, but they support their GPUs way longer than Nvidia support theirs.

That explains why my Quadro NVS 290 from 2007 had it's last driver update 10 months ago, and my FireMV 2260 from 2008 hasn't had a driver update since 2010?

 

[Brazo]

Jesus Christ lol.

Vega is one of the worst cards from a mining pov that's been launched in years, I'm sure some retards did buy a few for mining due to the "70-100MHs" hoax that everyone and their dog could tell wasn't real, but most of the sales will have been down to gamers and/or professional users.

As somebody who hasn't held any brand loyalty since 3DFX folded I find it bizzare how far the AMD haters are willing to go to turn a blind eye to the plus points of Vega or what an awesome deal it was at £450...

Wasn't really £450 though was it. A handful of subsidised cards and that's it back up to its real RRP.

Vega may be a bad mining card we don't really know yet but we didn't know it was bad before all the vega got snatched up. Indeed at that point it was rumoured to be awesome.

 

[D.P.]

Not really, historically AMD are much better with driver support than Nvidia. Might take a bit longer to get driver updates out, given their minimal financial clout, but they support their GPUs way longer than Nvidia support theirs.

You logic is the wrong way round here. AMD have less budget for driver development, therefore it takes longer for them to deliver all the optimizations available. Nvidia can delver more mature drivers on release so users get that performance form early on, not 12 months down the road when new models are being released. This isn't a critique of AMD or the quality of their drivers, it is just a fact that Nvidia throw far more money at drivers and and have a far more more complex driver architecture which partially explains the improved DX11 performance since their drivers are doing a lot of management over API calls to optimize intricately for the GPU architecture.

This is made extremely clear with all these rumours of Vega features enabled or not for launch, reviewers only getting drivers at the last minute or getting a new driver half way through the review period, and the rumours of AMD delaying Vega so the driver team have more time to eek out more performance gains.

 

[Panos]

Wasn't really £450 though was it. A handful of subsidised cards and that's it back up to its real RRP.

Vega may be a bad mining card we don't really know yet but we didn't know it was bad before all the vega got snatched up. Indeed at that point it was rumoured to be awesome.

True. And according to Gibbo on the news thread about Vega, is down to AMD and partners to honour the price of the oversold cards that went into the back order like mine.
Good thing cancelled the order then and bought a brand new Aorus 1080ti extreme for less than 700 last night. (there was somewhere an offer)

 

[ubersonic]

It was £450 for the first, what was it, fifteen minutes?

Indeed, but for that time it was epic value, hopefully once AMD see that there is demand they will offer that price again (though I wouldn't hold my breath as they seem to be selling at the higher price too, I think AMD really underestimated how enticing the compute performance and the FreeSync support would be to many consumers but then it seems many consumers did too lol).

During this time, miners were lapping them up and gamers were busy reading/watching reviews.

Miners, as a general rule do not buy cards that perform the same as cheaper cards while using more electricity. Miners as another general rule do not order expensive FreeSync screens with their GPUs.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Miners, as a general rule do not buy cards that perform the same as cheaper cards while using more electricity. Miners as another general rule do not order expensive FreeSync screens with their GPUs.

I wouldn't be so sure yet, I've seen figures of a Vega FE doing 42 Mh/s at a very low core clock so the power draw will be nowhere near as high.

 

[Brazo]

Miners, as a general rule do not buy cards that perform the same as cheaper cards while using more electricity. Miners as another general rule do not order expensive FreeSync screens with their GPUs.

To be fair we didn't know the mining performance or lack of. They were bought blind based on existing AMD performance. I doubt anyone was silly enough to lock themselves into an expensive free sync screen given the projected gaming performance.

 

[Gregster]

No, it's a bugfix for a driver flaw that was going to see mining performance drop in a few months time, it's also a driver that has been in the works for some time and was announced months ago, news sites are just hyping it as a new mining boosting driver so they can clickbait people with tales of how AMD are now courting miners over gamers. When in reality this was a simple case of a company getting embarrassed by a driver bug that affected their GPUs compute ability, and patching it.

Cheers. I didn't read other than the headlines

 

[five8five]

All AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 sins

https://videocardz.com/blog/all-amd-radeon-rx-vega-64-sins

We've covered most of those points in the various Vega threads

 

[ubersonic]

I doubt anyone was silly enough to lock themselves into an expensive free sync screen given the projected gaming performance.

Gibbo said there had been a big increase in FS screen sales, most of which were being bought in the same basket as a Vega card. So it wasn't just people already using FreeSync that were buying the cards.