VEGA IS FINALLY HERE, ITS IN STOCK ALONG WITH SOME EPIC BUNDLES & FREESYNC DEALS!!

[ljt]

How is this the same company that came up with Ryzen?

Indeed! It's like the polar opposite to the Ryzen launch!

I know they are "technically" separate groups, but surely they speak to each other

At least with the CPU division, they realised their market share was low, so came in with competitive performance at a much cheaper price.

However their GPU division, who also has a lower market share have missed the fact to gain market share you have to;

A) Release at the same time as your competition with competitive performance for a lower price

B) Release something significantly better than your competition and price it equally

 

[beany_bot]

The problem. And I mean BIG problem for AMD here. Is that I think their vega cards are hella expensive to produce due to the cost of HBM2. I wouldn't be surprised if they were loosing money at $499 and only just breaking even at $599. I do feel bad for them as someone had to pick up the mantle of HBM2 and run with it. And it will be the way to go in the future but by god it's going to hurt AMD right now. It is a shame really because unlike "play it safe" Nvidia, they are trying to push the envelop with new tech. But it's just too expensive and not yet better than existing tech.

 

[FoxEye]

No gamer one in their right mind will buy Vega 64 for £600+ to get 1080 level performance. AMD has really dropped the ball with this launch and I suspect they are not targetting gamers at all. The recent mining drivers shows their actual target market.

But if they keep selling out, then someone is buying them :/

 

[LoadsaMoney]

I suppose we can't blame AMD, as Nvidia sell their cards at stupidly high prices, and get bought in droves, so why shouldn't AMD be allowed to do the same ey.

 

[Gerard]

I suppose we can't blame AMD, as Nvidia sell their cards at stupidly high prices, and get bought in droves, so why shouldn't AMD be allowed to do the same ey.

But that goes along the same lines as Intel before ryzen came out, little performance bumps because of a lack of competition. The bumps are bigger than what the cpu's get but if amd was snapping at their ankles you can bet they would be trying for much larger performance improvements.

 

[beany_bot]

I suppose we can't blame AMD, as Nvidia sell their cards at stupidly high prices, and get bought in droves, so why shouldn't AMD be allowed to do the same ey.

Because Nvidia had no competition. So they were just setting a bar. Greedy yes but doable. AMD are trying to price above better performing cards... lol

 

[TallPaul1878]

The problem. And I mean BIG problem for AMD here. Is that I think their vega cards are hella expensive to produce due to the cost of HBM2. I wouldn't be surprised if they were loosing money at $499 and only just breaking even at $599. I do feel bad for them as someone had to pick up the mantle of HBM2 and run with it. And it will be the way to go in the future but by god it's going to hurt AMD right now. It is a shame really because unlike "play it safe" Nvidia, they are trying to push the envelop with new tech. But it's just too expensive and not yet better than existing tech.

I get the feeling that AMD should have kept on with GDDR5 for these cards and saved HBM2 for a halo product to take on the 1080ti or Titan.

The 1070 and 1080 have been out for over 12 months. AMD could quite easily have put something together that is 10-15% better. It's not like these companies aren't opening up their rivals products to get a look at the competition. They could have had a good 6 months, right up to the Christmas period, where they have the fastest cards on the market.

It's the right thing, long term, to pursue HBM2 for their cards but my opinion is that they should have stuck with conventional GDDR5 just to get back into the competition.

Reviews say the card is one of the finest put together cards they've seen. The VRMs are exceptional. It's a good platform to build on but there will be no building if they can't compete where it counts.

 

[Boot_Loop]

I have no doubt the 2060 will match the Vega56 with out even breaking a sweat. Most likely trounce it.

Sure, but you're looking at 8 months+ for Pascal 2060. By that point the Vega revision will be a few months away.

 

[Gerard]

I get the feeling that AMD should have kept on with GDDR5 for these cards and saved HBM2 for a halo product to take on the 1080ti or Titan.

The 1070 and 1080 have been out for over 12 months. AMD could quite easily have put something together that is 10-15% better. It's not like these companies aren't opening up their rivals products to get a look at the competition. They could have had a good 6 months, right up to the Christmas period, where they have the fastest cards on the market.

It's the right thing, long term, to pursue HBM2 for their cards but my opinion is that they should have stuck with conventional GDDR5 just to get back into the competition.

Reviews say the card is one of the finest put together cards they've seen. The VRMs are exceptional. It's a good platform to build on but there will be no building if they can't compete where it counts.

I would doubt it, gddr5 or hbm the Vega core (imo) simply didn't scale how they expected it, hence the wattage going up substantially as they needed to pump volts through it to get the core clocks higher. Its literally a repeat of Polaris in that respect that they just had to go with what they had as there was no other option. If anything it would be even more of a power hog with gddr 5 as that takes more voltage to run as opposed to hbm.

The board layout seems to indicate they had big plans for this chip with a few sites saying its one of the best power delivery systems they've seen (or possibly they needed a great power delivery system with the amount of power this cards needs), just didn't pan out that way unfortunately.

 

[Freddie1980]

Indeed! It's like the polar opposite to the Ryzen launch!

I know they are "technically" separate groups, but surely they speak to each other

At least with the CPU division, they realised their market share was low, so came in with competitive performance at a much cheaper price.

However their GPU division, who also has a lower market share have missed the fact to gain market share you have to;

A) Release at the same time as your competition with competitive performance for a lower price

B) Release something significantly better than your competition and price it equally

AMD may be behind in both CPU and GPU markets but how they go about resolving that issue is completely different. With CPU's the issue was with hardware that was simply not good enough, Intel haven't released anything revolutionary in years and left the Window open for AMD to strike back with Zen. With GPU's AMD's GCN and Vega are arguebly better architectures then Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal but it's never been fully realised as the software aupport just isn't there. Resoling the software deficiencies is obviously proving a lot harder to resolve then building a new chip. Also Nvidia hasn't let up on progress and keeps going from strength to strength unlike Intel who have seemingly stalled.

 

[erazor51]

If by end of next month I can't get a Vega 64 AIO for <=£639 then 1080ti here I come!

 

[beany_bot]

If by end of next month I can't get a Vega 64 AIO for <=£639 then 1080ti here I come!

You're telling me you would Buy Vega for £638??

 

[beany_bot]

I would be looking to pay less than 1080 prices. considering it is on par and runs a hell of a lot more juice to do it.

 

[Shin1234]

The problem. And I mean BIG problem for AMD here. Is that I think their vega cards are hella expensive to produce due to the cost of HBM2. I wouldn't be surprised if they were loosing money at $499 and only just breaking even at $599. I do feel bad for them as someone had to pick up the mantle of HBM2 and run with it. And it will be the way to go in the future but by god it's going to hurt AMD right now. It is a shame really because unlike "play it safe" Nvidia, they are trying to push the envelop with new tech. But it's just too expensive and not yet better than existing tech.

Whilst i agree that hbm is hella expensive for a platform espec after was it hynix who last week i think it was put a blurb out that customers are 'happy' to pay twice as much for it. But i dont think this is a problem that only sits at amds feet with hbm, after watching pcper this morning they were on about that memory manufacturers are pulling back on all vga memory thus the prices could or will increase so how will this effect other graphics cards prices as the component costs rise. Twist into this doesnt volta also use hbm 2 so the prices that vega has incured for vega then shouldnt nvidia also incur those prices for volta.

 

[erazor51]

You're telling me you would Buy Vega for £638??

Only for the AIO version. 1080ti AIO costs around £800

 

[ljt]

Only for the AIO version. 1080ti AIO costs around £800

But why are you comparing the AIO Vega against a AIO 1080ti?
Vega AIO performance can't even compete with the cheapest AiB 1080ti. It's only just faster than a AiB normal 1080

 

[Rimsy]

I'd guess its because he, like so many others here, bought a freesync monitor expecting Vega to make it sing without costing a fortune.
AMD had other plans!!

 

[ljt]

I'd guess its because he, like so many others here, bought a freesync monitor expecting Vega to make it sing without costing a fortune.
AMD had other plans!!

Unfortunately I was one of those people too. I upgraded from a 1080p gsync monitor to a freesync 1440p ultrawide but kept my old Nvidia card while waiting for vega. However I'm not paying Vega prices just because I have a freesync monitor.

In fact I'm selling my freesync monitor now as it's horrible gaming without some form of variable sync so I'm going back to my old gsync panel!

 

[ICDP]

I'd guess its because he, like so many others here, bought a freesync monitor expecting Vega to make it sing without costing a fortune.
AMD had other plans!!

I agree at current prices, they are a joke to be fair. Though having purchased Vega, I am happy because it is far more able to maintain FPS well inside my Freesync range of 33-60Hz. So it has indeed made my Freesync monitor sing for a decent price.

Though that is only because I was one of the "lucky" few who got a stock RX Vega 64 at the introductory price of £450. It replaced a Fury X that was running my 4k 32" Samsung Freesync monitor. After testing the Vega at stock is actually just about acceptable for noise but it throttles from 1636 down to 1401 for most games. Even at 1400 core it is anything from 20% - 30% faster than my Fury X depending upon the game tested. Some outliers either way but that's either GPU bottlenecks or the old Fury X hitting VRAM limits at 4k.

 

[ICDP]

Unfortunately I was one of those people too. I upgraded from a 1080p gsync monitor to a freesync 1440p ultrawide but kept my old Nvidia card while waiting for vega. However I'm not paying Vega prices just because I have a freesync monitor.

In fact I'm selling my freesync monitor now as it's horrible gaming without some form of variable sync so I'm going back to my old gsync panel!

Yeah wouldn't be without adaptive sync now, it really makes a difference. Thankfully I got a Vega 64 reference at the "special" price but even then I was very close to passing it up because I am not a fan of reference blower fans. Thankfully the reference blows on Vega is OK for sound at stock, not great but bearable.