When is Volta going to be released?

[melmac]

Heres why I wouldn't advise buying a Vega - look at AMDs current best card the Fury X,
its easily beaten in most cases by the 1070, especially in VR where the difference is even higher than you see in typical benchmarks such as this one http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/116/fury-vs-gtx-1070-battlefield-dx11-dx12/index.html

Fury X also downclocks itself for no reason and you have to install third party software to fix it, also lacking various features that nvidia has such as shadowplay, SMP etc,
and its power consumption is approx twice that of the 1070 ( 2x 8pin connector vs 1x 8 pin on the 1070 ). Also don't forget that Fury X cost £500 to £600 at launch, whereas the 1070 was around £350 to £500.

Wouldn't surprise me if a similar thing happened with Vega too.

ehh, what??? Really bizarre logic there.

I wouldn't advise buying Volta because the 980ti uses way more power than the 1070 and remember the 980ti cost £550 to £800 at launch whereas the 1070 was around £350 to £500.

What do I know about Volta? absolutely nothing. And I won't be basing my purchase of a card I know nothing about on card from a previous generation, especially after a die shrink.

Just like you know nothing about Vega, so how can you advise people not to buy it?

Just say you don't like AMD. Don't make up rubbish comparisons.

 

[wrenaudrey]

VOLTA is a new architecture correct?

In that case i dont think we'll see a proper card till Q3 2018. They'll probably show off what Volta has under the hood towards the end of this year, then release a server card thingy like the P100 or something like that in Q1 2018.

But this year, i think we'll only see like a Pascal refresh with refining of the die's in which we get higher core clocks, etc maybe. And it probably wont be leaps above what we have now tbh.

So getting this series of cards now probably is not a bad idea since you wont be missing tons of performance this year.
But then again, i am not from the future so who knows whats in store.

In terms of VEGA though, i personally dont think it has the potential this year atleast to even compete with a Ti whenever that comes out or even a TXP - i believe Nvidia will still be king of the hill but evrything else will be fought below those 2 cards.

 

[nashathedog]

Fury X also downclocks itself for no reason and you have to install third party software to fix it,

News to me. I only have the air-cooled version and that never downclocks itself. If you are talking about the bug when they first introduced the power saving mode that's completely different to what you are implying, plus it was fixed long ago.

 

[mahius]

I think the guys who did the youtube video should lay off the drink lol.

Ah, but Kaap, that Youtube video was stock card vs stock card. So of course what they get would be different. Titan XP base clock is 1417Mhz vs 1607Mhz for Reference 1080.

When comparing the Titan and 1080 @2160p running the same clocks the difference is between 30% and 40% for most games.

Seeing your results at same clocks... I'll admit that I was wrong on Titan XP being only 20% faster than 1080. Your results seem similar to this Youtube video which also shows roughly 30% gain on Titan XP versus 1080. Fair enough, TXP is faster than I had previously thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ3LvV7qs7M

Clockspeed used for both cards 2101/2772

Now that's my only issue. How on earth did you manage to maintain such a monstruous overclock on Titan XP? Considering base clock, that's like 50% overclock, it's insane. It must be watercooled, in which case I can only assume it cost you a hell lot more than just the Titan XP GPU to get these results.

That's my issue with Titan XP... it's the reference cooler which restricts it in most benchmarks. The original video I provided, they didn't watercool their card like you did. If there were aftermarket cooler versions, maybe I'd actually buy one. But then I'd probably not get the sort of performance Kaap gets with TXP watercooled.

Thus we're waiting on something like a full GP 102 (1080ti maybe) or better (Volta/Vega), so we can get that sort of performance with just a single card, with a good air-cooler. I don't want to mess around with liquid-cooling, not with the lack of space remaining in my case (3 hard drives).

 

[Greebo]

The Titans overclock much better than the 1080s do. I had both.

My titan runs at 2100 as well just like that.

But thats why the 1080ti will be smoke and mirrors. It will be a faster card than a 1080 but will come with much faster stock speeds.

Of course that doesnt mean that it might overclock anymore than a titan and just hit 2100 again.

They will be able to show at stock speeds that its 10% to 20% faster than a titan xp and a steal at £800 with a custom cooler and people will buy.

 

[Ash0787]

Well I used to like AMD until I experienced their products and now I don't anymore, is that fair to say ?

I'm just looking at the products available on the market at the moment and how nvidias are better with the possible exception of the RX480 / 470 in some use cases.

I don't know when the downclocking was fixed if at all but you used to have to use a program called Clockblocker.

If you like to play around with various graphics cards I guess its ok to buy Vega
but for the average consumer that has a limited budget I would strongly advise against it.

I just gave a few examples, theres lots where AMD has been weaker than nvidia, for example here lots of disappointed customers
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5c8ez9/asynchronous_spacewarp_launches_today/

 

[Panos]

Well I used to like AMD until I experienced their products and now I don't anymore, is that fair to say ?

I'm just looking at the products available on the market at the moment and how nvidias are better with the possible exception of the RX480 / 470 in some use cases.

I don't know when the downclocking was fixed if at all but you used to have to use a program called Clockblocker.

If you like to play around with various graphics cards I guess its ok to buy Vega
but for the average consumer that has a limited budget I would strongly advise against it.

I just gave a few examples, theres lots where AMD has been weaker than nvidia, for example here lots of disappointed customers
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5c8ez9/asynchronous_spacewarp_launches_today/

a) You are unfair. You generalise some points to make your point against AMD.

b) The post from redit of "disappointed customers" was about the release of ASW for Rift in Oct 2016. AMD announced that they support ASW for Polaris cards (460/470/480). Unfortunately cards dated back in 2014 like the 200 and 300 series don't support it. If the tech cannot do it, then it cannot. Surprisingly Furys aren't supported.

However, how many "disappointed" customers AMD has for supporting DX12 on all cards from R9 290 onwards? Are "happy" the owners of GTX780, GTX780Ti, Titan, Titan Black and Titan Z without DX12 support? And referring those NV cards because they were contemporaries to the R9 290. Especially the TB came around the same month with the 290!!!!

(let alone the support of DX12 with the 9xx series, or Vulcan performance even on the 10xx series).

c) You argue that avg consumer with limited budget should buy an NV card. Define limited budget please. Because yes there is no competition atm at £400 (GTX1070) or £600 (GTX1080) or £1200 (TXP) bracket. Ignoring completely the FuryX.

However bellow that, where the "average and limited budget consumer exists" the RX480 doesn't have much issue to beat the 1060 6GB fair and square. And bellow that the RX480 4Gb is far superior to the 1060 3GB at same price bracket, and the RX470 is far superior to the 1050.

 

[TheRealDeal]

If you like to play around with various graphics cards I guess its ok to buy Vega
but for the average consumer that has a limited budget I would strongly advise against it.

I just gave a few examples, theres lots where AMD has been weaker than nvidia, for example here lots of disappointed customers
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5c8ez9/asynchronous_spacewarp_launches_today/

Again what do you know about Vega when it's not even on the market. We don't know much about it so advising against buying it is silly. Nvidia have plenty of bugs over the years but i wouldn't dare suggest to people not to buy Volta because of any old issues.

 

[old gamer]

Heres why I wouldn't advise buying a Vega - look at AMDs current best card the Fury X,
its easily beaten in most cases by the 1070, especially in VR where the difference is even higher than you see in typical benchmarks such as this one http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/116/fury-vs-gtx-1070-battlefield-dx11-dx12/index.html

Fury X also downclocks itself for no reason and you have to install third party software to fix it, also lacking various features that nvidia has such as shadowplay, SMP etc,
and its power consumption is approx twice that of the 1070 ( 2x 8pin connector vs 1x 8 pin on the 1070 ). Also don't forget that Fury X cost £500 to £600 at launch, whereas the 1070 was around £350 to £500.

Wouldn't surprise me if a similar thing happened with Vega too.

I wouldn't mind a Volta architecture 1080 equivalent or even the full size chip but it sounds like we still don't know when that is likely to materialize.

Wow a whole post of I'll informed waffle

 

[Mayh3M]

1080ti will have excellent availability from all AIB partners upon release. NVIDIA have been sitting on it for months after all.

That said, it would be wise to wait for Vega to release before buying a 1080ti, unless you're a die hard NVIDIA lover.

Good point. There is hope yet.

Why do people think Vega will be able to compete with Nvidia's top end? Am I missing something here? Nvidia has been spanking AMD for years when it comes to performance and power efficiency. How is AMD going to suddenly bridge this huge gap?

 

[Rroff]

Good point. There is hope yet.

Why do people think Vega will be able to compete with Nvidia's top end? Am I missing something here? Nvidia has been spanking AMD for years when it comes to performance and power efficiency. How is AMD going to suddenly bridge this huge gap?

Ostensibly with Vega this will be the first time on sub-28nm that AMD will have parity with nVidia in terms of the quality of the process they are using to produce the cores which should help massively. If they screw up on that aspect now it begs some serious questions.

Vega architecturally is a big step forward in terms of a more focused (and with a few new features better optimised) core pipeline able to work better with the typical data it will have to work with unlike older AMD architectures that had a poor balance of serial and parallel operation chasing a pipedream of developers massively parallelising the workload end to end.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Good point. There is hope yet.

Why do people think Vega will be able to compete with Nvidia's top end? Am I missing something here? Nvidia has been spanking AMD for years when it comes to performance and power efficiency. How is AMD going to suddenly bridge this huge gap?

They need another 5870 style card. Power Efficient, good performance, and decent price.

If Vega can slot in with NVIDIA's offering like they managed with the 5870 vs GTX 480 things would look up again.

One can only hope though, the last few years has been really hard on them; but with RTG they could hopefully manage it soon.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Good point. There is hope yet.

Why do people think Vega will be able to compete with Nvidia's top end? Am I missing something here? Nvidia has been spanking AMD for years when it comes to performance and power efficiency. How is AMD going to suddenly bridge this huge gap?

Maybe because they have not been spanking them for years. the 7970/7990 were the fastest cards of that generation. The 290x was not to far behind the 780ti and went on to compete decently with the gtx980 in performance just not power. The 295 was also the fastest card on the market for a decent amount of time. Fury X is where it went wrong imo and did not offer great price/performance.

Vega is a whole new architecture or so we are lead to believe and according to AMD will put those power issues to bed. Vega is coming a year after Pascal so people are hoping that's a full year advancement from AMD.

 

[Rroff]

They need another 5870 style card. Power Efficient, good performance, and decent price.

If Vega can slot in with NVIDIA's offering like they managed with the 5870 vs GTX 480 things would look up again.

One can only hope though, the last few years has been really hard on them; but with RTG they could hopefully manage it soon.

I'm not sure the timing is good for that right now - the 5850 was a massive card for them back then - but today that market has been largely saturated for this generation. One way or another AMD is gonna have to shake things up a bit to capitalise on the Vega release.

 

[Panos]

Ostensibly with Vega this will be the first time on sub-28nm that AMD will have parity with nVidia in terms of the quality of the process they are using to produce the cores which should help massively. If they screw up on that aspect now it begs some serious questions.

Vega architecturally is a big step forward in terms of a more focused (and with a few new features better optimised) core pipeline able to work better with the typical data it will have to work with unlike older AMD architectures that had a poor balance of serial and parallel operation chasing a pipedream of developers massively parallelising the workload end to end.

At last some sense in this discussion

Indeed the changes to Vega are so many, compared to any previous tech, that we should be optimistic.

After all, AMD deficit between the FuryX and the 1080 is not that big on games that do not gobble VRAM like Tomb Raider. Barely a 10-20% and that with 16.10.3 drivers. Since then I have seen a whooping 8% more perf across the board with the Nano on all DX12 games. The biggest issue with AMD was always the DX11 engine, and the crude brute force it needed.

 

[AthlonXP1800]

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-volta-12nm-finfet/

Look like Nvidia had decided to chose TSMC 12nm FF for Volta and GV110 will probably be the first Volta chip with HBM2 to launch this year to replaced GP100. Next year 2018 will see both GV102 and GV104 launch with GDDR6 memory.

 

[Kaapstad]

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-volta-12nm-finfet/

Look like Nvidia had decided to chose TSMC 12nm FF for Volta and GV110 will probably be the first Volta chip with HBM2 to launch this year to replaced GP100. Next year 2018 will see both GV102 and GV104 launch with GDDR6 memory.

Too many assumptions in the wccftech article.

 

[AthlonXP1800]

Too many assumptions in the wccftech article.

Fool has article about Volta on TSMC 12nm too. The source came from Beyond3D forum.

http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/22/nvidia-corporation-volta-architecture-rumor-emerge.aspx

 

[Kaapstad]

Fool has article about Volta on TSMC 12nm too. The source came from Beyond3D forum.

http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/22/nvidia-corporation-volta-architecture-rumor-emerge.aspx

So it is all down to one person offering an opinion on a forum.

Beyond3D user xpea

 

[AthlonXP1800]

So it is all down to one person offering an opinion on a forum.

Beyond3D user xpea

It seemed Xpea got it all correct, he must have some sort of insider information.

TSMC won Nvidia contract for Volta to be manufacturing on TSMC 12nm process.

TSMC lands orders for HPC chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm, says paper
Commercial Times, March 13; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Monday 13 March 2017]
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has landed orders for high performance computing (HPC) chips for AI applications from Nvidia and Qualcomm, respectively, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report.

TSMC will fabricate Nvidia's next generation Volta GPU using a 12nm process, said the paper, which added that the Volta GPU will be paired with Nvidia's Xavier supercomputer chips for self-driving car applications.

TSMC also produces the 256-core Nvidia Pascal GPU and dual-core Denver 2 CPU for Nvidia's recently released JetsonTX2 supercomputer platform, using a 16nm process, the paper indicated.

Meanwhile, TSMC also landed earlier orders for the Centriq 2400 server chips from Qualcomm. TSMC has begun volume production of the Centriq 2400 chips, using a 10nm process, said the paper.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170313PB201.html