Where the hell is NAVI???????????

[4K8KW10]

And for the life of me I can't find the source which alluded to it flip flopping back to the arch codename again.

Unless I dreamt that bit

In any case, my underlying point was the talk of a 7nm+ design with 7000+ shaders is more likely to be the post-Navi, non-GCN "next gen" in 2020. If AMD were going to bust past the 4096 shader limit dogging GCN for so long, I think they would've done it already. Unless of course they did manage it with GCN6 for Navi hence the rumoured "performs better than expected" which might give it another shot in the arm and whole new arch is pushed back from 2020.

According to you, what does Scalability mean on the slide written under Navi?

 

[LePhuronn]

According to you, what does Scalability mean on the slide written under Navi?

Something that GCN can't do which is why Navi was pushed back an entire year and the roadmaps updated with "next gen" in 2020, a mere 1 year after Navi is to be released.

Don't start quoting roadmaps as gospel in the same breath as using them to dismiss my discussion points. But alas you seem to have turned into a bit of a flip-flopping hypocrite as of late.

 

[4K8KW10]

Something that GCN can't do

Why do you think GCN can't go for higher than 4096 shaders?

which is why Navi was pushed back an entire year

Or only because there is no 7nm and there was no 7nm process available throughout 2018.

 

[LePhuronn]

Why do you think GCN can't go for higher than 4096 shaders?

Because it never has? Allegedly AMD could've broken the ceiling but it required significant investment to do so. Perhaps they've done just that with Navi.

Or only because there is no 7nm and there was no 7nm process available throughout 2018.

So the Navi arch which is apparently designed specifically for 7nm couldn't be produced because there was no running process to actually produce it. Hence being pushed back a year. SO what are you contesting here?

I'm sorry, do you actually have a point or are you just selectively quoting isolated chunks purely to say the exact opposite?

 

[4K8KW10]

Because it never has? Allegedly AMD could've broken the ceiling but it required significant investment to do so. Perhaps they've done just that with Navi.



So the Navi arch which is apparently designed specifically for 7nm couldn't be produced because there was no running process to actually produce it. Hence being pushed back a year. SO what are you contesting here?

I'm sorry, do you actually have a point or are you just selectively quoting isolated chunks purely to say the exact opposite?

You began with the opposite claiming there was no Navi 20 but Arcturus

 

[Ross Thomson]

I may or may not get navi when it is released but I am waiting till it is to compare with what the green team has. I'm in no rush to replace an rx460 or rx480 I currently use.

 

[LePhuronn]

You began with the opposite claiming there was no Navi 20 but Arcturus

That's because there is a lot more rumour, chatter and conjecture to support Navi being superseded rather than expanded. I never claimed a damn thing, I merely suggested.

I'm done pulling teeth with you, enjoy your echo chamber.

 

[FoxEye]

To be honest I do wonder about GCN and how far away Arcturus really is, If Navi is to be in both the next Xbox & Playstation it would make sense to stretch compatibility for as long as they can.

I imagine Sony would skip the last GCN iteration and go straight for "Next Gen", launching PS5 in December 2020 or later.

It would be madness to go with the last hurrah of GCN (Navi) if something revolutionary was to launch the year after.

Besides, if there's any truth to that pic (quoted) then Navi is a half-way house, and Sony (etc) have been funding "Next Gen" not Navi. That would actually make a lot of sense.

 

[nashathedog]

I imagine Sony would skip the last GCN iteration and go straight for "Next Gen", launching PS5 in December 2020 or later.

It would be madness to go with the last hurrah of GCN (Navi) if something revolutionary was to launch the year after.

Besides, if there's any truth to that pic (quoted) then Navi is a half-way house, and Sony (etc) have been funding "Next Gen" not Navi. That would actually make a lot of sense.

I thought Navi was made with the consoles in mind, I thought AMD had told us this but I better have a hunt first & find out who my source was.

I was wrong, from what I can see nothings been confirmed.

Googled: https://www.google.com/search?q=is+...rome..69i57.1446j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[FoxEye]

I thought Navi was made with the consoles in mind, I thought AMD had told us this but I better have a hunt first & find out who my source was.

Googled: https://www.google.com/search?q=is+...rome..69i57.1446j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Well, ask yourself: why would Sony pay AMD (and work with them) to polish the aging turd that is GCN, when AMD have a brand new ground-up architecture coming straight after?

Seems more likely that Sony would work with AMD on their new architecture, not their ancient one.

 

[humbug]

Well, ask yourself: why would Sony pay AMD (and work with them) to polish the aging turd that is GCN, when AMD have a brand new ground-up architecture coming straight after?

Seems more likely that Sony would work with AMD on their new architecture, not their ancient one.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

Well, ask yourself: why would Sony pay AMD (and work with them) to polish the aging turd that is GCN, when AMD have a brand new ground-up architecture coming straight after?

Seems more likely that Sony would work with AMD on their new architecture, not their ancient one.

Next years Arcturus is a high end GPU to compete with Nvidia's high end GPUs. How can they afford to put 2080 performance into a PS5 for £299 or whatever the new console will cost?

A games console isn't a high end PC with a 9900K etc. It needs to have cheap hardware so Navi will be better suited.

 

[FoxEye]

Next years Arcturus is a high end GPU to compete with Nvidia's high end GPUs. How can they afford to put 2080 performance into a PS5 for £299 or whatever the new console will cost?

A games console isn't a high end PC with a 9900K etc. It needs to have cheap hardware so Navi will be better suited.

If AMD have a brand new, non-GCN architecture (GCN debuted in 2011) why would they keep that to just the high-end?

Would be like trying to sell Bulldozer chips after Zen released. GCN is ancient, creaking at the seems, and doesn't seem likely to offer significant performance increases in future. It's gone as far as it can.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

If AMD have a brand new, non-GCN architecture (GCN debuted in 2011) why would they keep that to just the high-end?

Would be like trying to sell Bulldozer chips after Zen released. GCN is ancient, creaking at the seems, and doesn't seem likely to offer significant performance increases in future. It's gone as far as it can.

Yes you're right, it's madness but they did it last time. They went to the effort of making two seperate architectures; Vega for high end and Polaris for low end.

Okay, Vega uses expensive HBM2 memory which they couldn't put on a low end card. But why not add support for GDDR5? Navi apparently supports both GDDR6 and HBM2.

 

[FoxEye]

Yes you're right, it's madness but they did it last time. They went to the effort of making two seperate architectures; Vega for high end and Polaris for low end.

Okay, Vega uses expensive HBM2 memory which they couldn't put on a low end card. But why not add support for GDDR5? Navi apparently supports both GDDR6 and HBM2.

Not quite. Vega and Polaris are both GCN. "Next gen" is not, apparently. It's ground-up new.

Again it's more akin to the move from Bulldozer (and it's subsequent iterations, Excavator and Piledriver) to Zen.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

Not quite. Vega and Polaris are both GCN. "Next gen" is not, apparently. It's ground-up new.

Again it's more akin to the move from Bulldozer (and it's subsequent iterations, Excavator and Piledriver) to Zen.

Yeah but isn't GCN just an instruction set? Like x86 is an instruction set that started originally in the 8086. So the new "Next gen" is a more advanced instruction set, akin to the move from x86 to the new AMD64 instruction set.

 

[LePhuronn]

If AMD have a brand new, non-GCN architecture (GCN debuted in 2011) why would they keep that to just the high-end?

They won't but maybe this time AMD will start big and work backwards. The key word here is something 4K8K tried to beat me around the head with: scalability. Can we say that any given iteration of GCN is truly scalable? Yes, there was suggestion of a "big" Polaris which was axed in favour of Vega, but how hot and hungry would that have been?

I think Navi has a shot at being a bit more "scalable" than previous GCN iterations: it's safe to say that the performance tiers currently populated by Polaris 20, 30 and Vega 10 will be replaced with a Navi product, and I have a feeling Radeon VII will be replaced also. But that's still not a recipe for future success in its own right, more like experimenting with forward-looking ideas and experience with explicitly designing for 7nm, rather than shrinking from a larger node.

So it's possible "next gen" will start big and then be scaled downwards, because let's be honest here, GTX 1080 performance for $250 and RTX 2080 performance for $380 would be perfectly acceptable in the midrange, allowing singular dedication towards the high end, then replace Navi later on.

 

[JediFragger]

Would be like trying to sell Bulldozer chips after Zen released.

You forget, 99% of the PC component buying population are not tech nerds like us. It's the fps they only care about, and if it's good enough its good enough!

 

[FoxEye]

But why would Sony throw time and money at AMD's last GCN hurrah, knowing that something much more modern is coming a year later.

Consoles have to last 5-6 years or so.

Building PS5 from GCN's last hurrah would be bizarre.

Also why the heck would AMD need/want to partner with Sony to make another GCN card? It's not even the first time they've used GCN in a console!

A partnership on something new makes more sense to me.

 

[CuriousTomCat]

I doubt anybody outside AMD and Sony knows why they specifically chose GCN for the PS5.