AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
edited July 2017
Dude this is a new arch - They told everyone @PDXLAN that "all your questions will be answered @SIGGRAPH."
They promised launch at Siggraph - "AMD at its Computex 2017 event announced the Radeon RX Vega, the consumer graphics product based on the architecture, will launch at SIGGRAPH 2017, that's 30th July thru 3rd August. "
Guess they will spoon feed sites with more nuggets. There is no site, that I am aware of, that has a review card either. It is completely possible that this won't actually be a (paper) launch at all, and they will wait until the end of August to do a launch. And if that happens.. then it basically means a "soft cancellation" of RX Vega. What makes them think it would be any more competitive at the end of August than it is now? If RX Vega isn't announced at Siggraph for actual purchase within the next week or two then it just adds to the list of everything terrible that is happening with Vega.
So you announce and promise a launch that has been delayed over and over and now we're near 18 months and you don't want to show the world? wow
It's possible that AMD will simply delay the launch again. But back in June, they announced that the Frontier Edition would launch in late June and the RX Vega at the end of July. For the former, they meant cards going on sale at retail, so I sure read it as meaning that for the latter as well.
Going from Q2 2017 to end of July 2017 is a delay to be sure, but I wouldn't call that 18 months. If you believe that Vega really is going to be delayed by 18 months and not launch until Q4 2018, then yeah, that would be pretty catastrophic. I don't see any reason to believe that that will happen, however.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Vega was suppose to be a counter to the GTX 1070 (June 2016) and GTX 1080 (Launched May 2016) we're over a year and now apparently a couple of days from launch for Vega. No info for anyone that has cards for testing. Rumours of delays, most likely around HBM, will probably see availability of cards in the fall. 18 months is a bit long for me to say, yes, I agree however, we're over a year now and about to be 15 months.
Vega was suppose to be a counter to the GTX 1070 (June 2016) and GTX 1080 (Launched May 2016) we're over a year and now apparently a couple of days from launch for Vega. No info for anyone that has cards for testing. Rumours of delays, most likely around HBM, will probably see availability of cards in the fall. 18 months is a bit long for me to say, yes, I agree however, we're over a year now and about to be 15 months.
Where do you get the idea that Vega was supposed to launch before Polaris? Vega was always the architecture after Polaris, from the day that AMD mentioned that the architecture existed. Rumors had Vega 10 taping out last June, and you don't do a commercial launch the day after you tape out a chip. Even if HBM2 were as abundant as GDDR5 and everything went about as well execution-wise as you'd hope, it's not likely that Vega would have launched before Q2 of this year--which was, after all, the first launch target that AMD announced.
For whatever reasons, AMD decided not to make a big chip version of Polaris to attempt to compete in the high end. It's not the first time that AMD has ceded the high end to Nvidia for a generation like that. The Radeon HD 3000 and 4000 series did likewise, and the only reason that the 4000 series was competitive at all outside of the low end is that AMD destroyed Nvidia in die space efficiency that generation with about double the performance per mm^2 that Nvidia had.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
If they do any games tests in the next couple of days and don't show any FPS and/or if there are any more Feels Per Second tests it'll be another nail in the coffin.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
hmmm
Even if HBM2 were as abundant as GDDR5 and everything went about as well execution-wise as you'd hope, it's not likely that Vega would have launched before Q2 of this year--which was, after all, the first launch target that AMD announced.
Irrespective though, it has been a long time since they have a high end competitor and all indications show it won't be as good as most first thought, and a lot of that has to do with what AMD have said over the past year.
Even if HBM2 were as abundant as GDDR5 and everything went about as well execution-wise as you'd hope, it's not likely that Vega would have launched before Q2 of this year--which was, after all, the first launch target that AMD announced.
Irrespective though, it has been a long time since they have a high end competitor and all indications show it won't be as good as most first thought, and a lot of that has to do with what AMD have said over the past year.
So basically, your argument is that if a random person with Internet access makes up a rumor that a product is launching earlier than it was ever planned to launch, and then they get tech sites to pick it up, and then the product doesn't actually launch as early as the rumor claims, that means the product is late?
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
edited July 2017
Dude that is Chris Hook AMD employee nearly 1 year ago posting a picture and quote "This is the Vega launch venue. Shh, don't tell the press....." Then there were AMD staffers posting stuff on other forums pointing to an October 2016 launch. You asked where I get the idea, I answered. There was many articles about it, then AMD stepped in and said it will be launch January 2017 to June 2017.
*Those links are just from a couple of articles I remember reading back then
When Gamers Nexus were doing tests on the Vega, i was surprised, they weren't really all that good, admittedly that was the FE, has anything really changed since then to get excited about?
When Gamers Nexus were doing tests on the Vega, i was surprised, they weren't really all that good, admittedly that was the FE, has anything really changed since then to get excited about?
A consumer version of Vega will mean much lower prices than the Founders Edition card. It will also mean gaming-optimized drivers, and hence increased gaming performance. The great unknown is, increased by how much. And that may or may not be enough to make the cards interesting.
If you buy a Quadro GP100 and try to play games on it, you can. You'll probably be disappointed with the performance, though. That doesn't mean it's a bad card. It only means that drivers that aren't optimized for gaming don't perform as well in games as you might hope. It's about the same story with the Vega Frontier Edition card.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Hardware Canucks and Linus are AMD fanboys so I am not expecting objectiveness here. The thermals and noise on the liquid cooled Vega will be good as they are with the Fury X, but a blower fan will always be shit.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
[UPDATED – 7:36 AM ET 30/7/2017] We just got word that RX Vega 56 will cost $399 and the Limited Edition liquid cooled RX Vega 64 will retail for $699 and be part of a “special bundle”. We don’t know yet what this bundle will look like. We’ve now heard similar price quotes for the entire lineup from multiple sources, which is a good sign.
We'll have to see if the pricing and speeds hold true later tonight when they come out (apparently). Lots of comments around saying an RX Vega 56 may not beat a 1070 but good price. Best to wait for reviews for all imo.
Post edited by AmazingAvery on
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Well news is out - underwhelming and disappointing
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
edited July 2017
Anandtech - instead, what we’ve been told is to expect the Vega 64 to “trade blows” with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080.
Techpowerup - AMD provided some internal performance numbers from their own testing, so as always take these with a grain of salt. These tests were done on an Intel Core i7-7700K at 4.2 GHz, 16 GB of DDR4-3000 MHz RAM and with the latest available drivers for the AMD and NVIDIA GPUs at the time. Refer to the complete slide deck at the end for full testing information, but there was nothing that caught our eye otherwise. The chosen games were all running on DX12 or Vulkan APIs, and the order of the four GPUs being presented is certainly on purpose but looking purely at the numbers and no more it appears that RX Vega 64 trades blows with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 at stock settings under WQHD (21:9, 1440p).
A $600/700, power hungry, water cooled/air cooled Vega has about = performance to a $514 aftermarket GTX 1080.
Vega is squarely geared toward the more professional crowd, not gamers. The 8K demo is really impressive on the professional cards. (Radeon Pro WX 9100: $2,199 | Radeon Pro SSG 2TB: $6,999)
Also there is nothing to offer between 200-400USD - so another Vega may be out holiday season/2018. It's most likely an RX 580/570 replacement. But then so may Volta?
Hardwarecanucks - There is certainly something you can infer about this situation though; somewhere NVIDIA’s designs skipped a full generation (or more) ahead of AMD. Like the Fiji architecture was obviously meant to compete against Maxwell GPUs only to be released a year later, Vega’s target was Pascal. The only problem is that Pascal has been gracing the GeForce lineup for a long while whereas Radeon users are only getting their first taste of that performance level now. Regardless of how you look at things, AMD is playing catch up and their launch cadence is dropping further behind.
Hardwarecanucks Let’s start with the bad news for some of you guys. The RX Vega series isn’t meant to compete against NVIDIA’s high end Pascal lineup like the Titan XP and GTX 1080 Ti. Rather, AMD is targeting the space between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 along with a segment slightly above the 1080 for the Vega 64 Liquid Cooler Edition.
But, the bundle actually looks good. It gives you wayy more than buying new computer and getting 1080 with a monitor and everything else. And also 1080 consumes the same amount of power? And doesnt have hbmi memory?
But, the bundle actually looks good. It gives you wayy more than buying new computer and getting 1080 with a monitor and everything else. And also 1080 consumes the same amount of power? And doesnt have hbmi memory?
Radeon Packs pair a GPU that you wouldn't likely want to get with a processor that gamers don't want to get.
Packages to make comparison harder are an old trick when your product is so bad that you don't want buyers to successfully make a value/performance comparison.
EDIT:
Also 1080 consumes way less power. GTX 1080: 180W Vega 64: 295W Vega 64 liquid cooled: 345W
AMD says $500 for a RX Vega 64 that they expect to be competitive with a GTX 1080 and $400 for an RX Vega 56. From the specs, the performance gap between a Vega 64 and a Vega 56 should be smaller than that between a GTX 1080 and a GTX 1070. And also delayed again until an August 14 launch. That is not exactly ideal. It's sounding like Vega is little more than a scaled up Polaris and not the architectural overhaul that AMD needs to match what Maxwell offered.
But, the bundle actually looks good. It gives you wayy more than buying new computer and getting 1080 with a monitor and everything else. And also 1080 consumes the same amount of power? And doesnt have hbmi memory?
If you pay $100 extra for a bundle, you can get $100 off on a CPU/motherboard combo deal, two free games, and $200 off on a 3440x1440 monitor. No idea why AMD is suddenly pushing 3440x1440 as the monitor resolution of choice, as that seems outright goofy to me for gaming. When they were pushing 4K for Fiji, that at least made some amount of sense other than the low refresh rates.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
But, the bundle actually looks good. It gives you wayy more than buying new computer and getting 1080 with a monitor and everything else. And also 1080 consumes the same amount of power? And doesnt have hbmi memory?
No it is not really a good deal.
You have to spend $100 extra on the card to save $100-200 on a bundle.
Spending $100 more on the card to get a bundle to save $100 is not saving anything at all(they've in the past added gamebundles without making people spend more, in fact it has been coupled along with price drops in the past as well).
Even worse, if you're in the EU you get the same bundles, but the monitor discount is N/A. So the saving is even less... well none at all.
It defies logic. Its not going to keep miners from getting them either, as people can buy the bundles and then sell the cards for more. If anything it entices people to do that so they can get an even better deal on Ryzen. Plus plenty of miners could dump the CPU/boards for most of the cost without issue.
Likewise, you're only actually saving $100 on a specific, fairly expensive monitor. You could save up to $200 if you buy the CPU, mobo, video card, and monitor all at once, but that's still over $1700 so I don't see many people doing that.
Doing bundles I think is a great idea. How they're doing them is not. This makes no sense.
The bundle is a good deal if you were going to buy the particular monitor in the bundle anyway, as it consists of paying $100 extra to get a $200 discount. It's not bad if you were going to buy a Ryzen CPU and wanted at least one of the free games anyway. Otherwise, the bundle is garbage.
I'm reminded of the old New Egg super-combo deals with 6-8 items, usually at least one of which is something you don't want at all. Having to get an item or two that you don't want overwhelms the combo discount. At least here, AMD's bundle doesn't make you buy a garbage power supply or some such. But most people who want a Vega GPU should ignore the bundle.
I somewhat expect that the Vega 56 will be a more interesting deal than the Vega 64. If the Vega 64 is the same speed as a GeForce GTX 1080, then the Vega 56 will be meaningfully faster than a GTX 1070 for only $20 more. The difference between 160 W and 210 W also matters considerably less than the difference between 180 W and 295 W.
I find it interesting that Ethereum mining is markedly slower than one would expect from the paper specs. It's possible that the gap between real-world and theoretical memory bandwidth is much greater for Vega than it is for Polaris or Pascal. (For example, a Radeon RX 580 is rated at 256 GB/s, but synthetic memory benchmarks might only give you 200 GB/s or some such.) It's also possible that Vega gets hung up on memory accesses to large tables for the same reasons as a lot of Nvidia cards traditionally had.
Still, a Radeon RX Vega 64 liquid probably is the fastest GPU in existence for more than a few compute purposes, unless you count a Tesla V100 as existing. It probably wouldn't be hard to find quite a few real-world algorithms where it handily torches both a Titan Xp and a Tesla P100. Anything heavy on local memory usage would probably do it, for example.
Graphics just isn't among them. Ever since 2012, AMD's GPUs have had a considerable focus on compute, while Nvidia's focused more narrowly on graphics, with the recent exception of GP100. That wasn't obvious in 2012-2013 because Kepler was such a botched architecture, but Maxwell has made the advantages of focusing more narrowly on things relevant to gaming apparent. Vega doesn't look to change that balance.
I'm not impressed with the reference card designs. An aluminum shroud does not make up for sub-optimal placement of the fan and heatsink. Who would pay $50 extra for an aluminum shroud, anyway? Hopefully non-reference cards will come soon.
Radeon Packs pair a GPU that you wouldn't likely want to get with a processor that gamers don't want to get.
Packages to make comparison harder are an old trick when your product is so bad that you don't want buyers to successfully make a value/performance comparison.
EDIT:
Also 1080 consumes way less power. GTX 1080: 180W Vega 64: 295W Vega 64 liquid cooled: 345W
Oh, you are right, sorry. I have checked wrong source. This power consumption for this card? I am very surprised, it is so high.
If you pay $100 extra for a bundle, you can get $100 off on a CPU/motherboard combo deal, two free games, and $200 off on a 3440x1440 monitor. No idea why AMD is suddenly pushing 3440x1440 as the monitor resolution of choice, as that seems outright goofy to me for gaming. When they were pushing 4K for Fiji, that at least made some amount of sense other than the low refresh rates.
Yes its very weird to me that they focusing on these monitors... They always showcase 4k or ultra wide, avoiding normal monitors with lower resolutions, well no wonder why now.
You have to spend $100 extra on the card to save $100-200 on a bundle.
Spending $100 more on the card to get a bundle to save $100 is not saving anything at all(they've in the past added gamebundles without making people spend more, in fact it has been coupled along with price drops in the past as well).
Even worse, if you're in the EU you get the same bundles, but the monitor discount is N/A. So the saving is even less... well none at all.
It defies logic. Its not going to keep miners from getting them either, as people can buy the bundles and then sell the cards for more. If anything it entices people to do that so they can get an even better deal on Ryzen. Plus plenty of miners could dump the CPU/boards for most of the cost without issue.
Likewise, you're only actually saving $100 on a specific, fairly expensive monitor. You could save up to $200 if you buy the CPU, mobo, video card, and monitor all at once, but that's still over $1700 so I don't see many people doing that.
Doing bundles I think is a great idea. How they're doing them is not. This makes no sense.
I did notice Europe doesn't get monitor discount! That's the deal breaker for me. I would have considered it for sure. But now, i guess we have to wait for normal benchmarks, since they avoiding any exposure, they want to get those pre-orders flowing...
There are rumors that AMD is scrambling to get driver improvements in place in time for the reviews. If that's the case, it's possible that AMD doesn't even know the final performance numbers. That's one explanation for the further delays after the Frontier Edition is already out.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Monitor discount only available in 5 countries, in North America and Southeast, no Europe. Monitor implementation of FreeSync is not the best: narrow range 80-100 Hz, and Ultimate range 48-100 Hz with flickering. See also: Reddit r/AMD PSA: Vega bundle monitor Freesync is broken
All countries get discount for combo of AMD Ryzen 7 1700X or 1800X, and ASUS CROSSHAIR VI EXTREME, GIGABYTE GA-AX370-Gaming K7, or MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM, all of which are expensive motherboards.
The two games are Prey and Wolfenstein II, which is replaced by Sniper Elite 4 in 3 European countries.
Comments
They promised launch at Siggraph - "AMD at its Computex 2017 event announced the Radeon RX Vega, the consumer graphics product based on the architecture, will launch at SIGGRAPH 2017, that's 30th July thru 3rd August. "
Guess they will spoon feed sites with more nuggets. There is no site, that I am aware of, that has a review card either. It is completely possible that this won't actually be a (paper) launch at all, and they will wait until the end of August to do a launch. And if that happens.. then it basically means a "soft cancellation" of RX Vega. What makes them think it would be any more competitive at the end of August than it is now? If RX Vega isn't announced at Siggraph for actual purchase within the next week or two then it just adds to the list of everything terrible that is happening with Vega.
So you announce and promise a launch that has been delayed over and over and now we're near 18 months and you don't want to show the world? wow
Going from Q2 2017 to end of July 2017 is a delay to be sure, but I wouldn't call that 18 months. If you believe that Vega really is going to be delayed by 18 months and not launch until Q4 2018, then yeah, that would be pretty catastrophic. I don't see any reason to believe that that will happen, however.
For whatever reasons, AMD decided not to make a big chip version of Polaris to attempt to compete in the high end. It's not the first time that AMD has ceded the high end to Nvidia for a generation like that. The Radeon HD 3000 and 4000 series did likewise, and the only reason that the 4000 series was competitive at all outside of the low end is that AMD destroyed Nvidia in die space efficiency that generation with about double the performance per mm^2 that Nvidia had.
In August 2016 - AMD director marketing posts picture of Vega launch site.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157207878190507&set=a.10152662127940507.1073741830.843865506&type=3&theater
https://www.techpowerup.com/222403/amd-pulls-radeon-vega-launch-to-october
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4sjocl/amd_vega_release_date_discussion_2016_vs_2017/
Irrespective though, it has been a long time since they have a high end competitor and all indications show it won't be as good as most first thought, and a lot of that has to do with what AMD have said over the past year.
*Those links are just from a couple of articles I remember reading back then
You was also commenting on folks speculating a fall 2016 release
If you buy a Quadro GP100 and try to play games on it, you can. You'll probably be disappointed with the performance, though. That doesn't mean it's a bad card. It only means that drivers that aren't optimized for gaming don't perform as well in games as you might hope. It's about the same story with the Vega Frontier Edition card.
Look for the Capsaicin video replay within 24 hours of the show end on @AMD's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AMD #AMDSIGG
The thermals and noise on the liquid cooled Vega will be good as they are with the Fury X, but a blower fan will always be shit.
We'll have to see if the pricing and speeds hold true later tonight when they come out (apparently).
Lots of comments around saying an RX Vega 56 may not beat a 1070 but good price. Best to wait for reviews for all imo.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11680/radeon-rx-vega-unveiled-amd-announecs-499-rx-vega-64-399-rx-vega-56-launching-in-august
A $600/700, power hungry, water cooled/air cooled Vega has about = performance to a $514 aftermarket GTX 1080.
Vega is squarely geared toward the more professional crowd, not gamers. The 8K demo is really impressive on the professional cards. (Radeon Pro WX 9100: $2,199 | Radeon Pro SSG 2TB: $6,999)
Also there is nothing to offer between 200-400USD - so another Vega may be out holiday season/2018. It's most likely an RX 580/570 replacement. But then so may Volta?
Packages to make comparison harder are an old trick when your product is so bad that you don't want buyers to successfully make a value/performance comparison.
EDIT:
Also 1080 consumes way less power.
GTX 1080: 180W
Vega 64: 295W
Vega 64 liquid cooled: 345W
You have to spend $100 extra on the card to save $100-200 on a bundle.
Spending $100 more on the card to get a bundle to save $100 is not saving anything at all(they've in the past added gamebundles without making people spend more, in fact it has been coupled along with price drops in the past as well).
Even worse, if you're in the EU you get the same bundles, but the monitor discount is N/A. So the saving is even less... well none at all.
It defies logic. Its not going to keep miners from getting them either, as people can buy the bundles and then sell the cards for more. If anything it entices people to do that so they can get an even better deal on Ryzen. Plus plenty of miners could dump the CPU/boards for most of the cost without issue.
Likewise, you're only actually saving $100 on a specific, fairly expensive monitor. You could save up to $200 if you buy the CPU, mobo, video card, and monitor all at once, but that's still over $1700 so I don't see many people doing that.
Doing bundles I think is a great idea. How they're doing them is not. This makes no sense.
I'm reminded of the old New Egg super-combo deals with 6-8 items, usually at least one of which is something you don't want at all. Having to get an item or two that you don't want overwhelms the combo discount. At least here, AMD's bundle doesn't make you buy a garbage power supply or some such. But most people who want a Vega GPU should ignore the bundle.
I somewhat expect that the Vega 56 will be a more interesting deal than the Vega 64. If the Vega 64 is the same speed as a GeForce GTX 1080, then the Vega 56 will be meaningfully faster than a GTX 1070 for only $20 more. The difference between 160 W and 210 W also matters considerably less than the difference between 180 W and 295 W.
I find it interesting that Ethereum mining is markedly slower than one would expect from the paper specs. It's possible that the gap between real-world and theoretical memory bandwidth is much greater for Vega than it is for Polaris or Pascal. (For example, a Radeon RX 580 is rated at 256 GB/s, but synthetic memory benchmarks might only give you 200 GB/s or some such.) It's also possible that Vega gets hung up on memory accesses to large tables for the same reasons as a lot of Nvidia cards traditionally had.
Still, a Radeon RX Vega 64 liquid probably is the fastest GPU in existence for more than a few compute purposes, unless you count a Tesla V100 as existing. It probably wouldn't be hard to find quite a few real-world algorithms where it handily torches both a Titan Xp and a Tesla P100. Anything heavy on local memory usage would probably do it, for example.
Graphics just isn't among them. Ever since 2012, AMD's GPUs have had a considerable focus on compute, while Nvidia's focused more narrowly on graphics, with the recent exception of GP100. That wasn't obvious in 2012-2013 because Kepler was such a botched architecture, but Maxwell has made the advantages of focusing more narrowly on things relevant to gaming apparent. Vega doesn't look to change that balance.
I'm not impressed with the reference card designs. An aluminum shroud does not make up for sub-optimal placement of the fan and heatsink. Who would pay $50 extra for an aluminum shroud, anyway? Hopefully non-reference cards will come soon.
Yes its very weird to me that they focusing on these monitors... They always showcase 4k or ultra wide, avoiding normal monitors with lower resolutions, well no wonder why now. I did notice Europe doesn't get monitor discount! That's the deal breaker for me. I would have considered it for sure. But now, i guess we have to wait for normal benchmarks, since they avoiding any exposure, they want to get those pre-orders flowing...
Monitor discount only available in 5 countries, in North America and Southeast, no Europe. Monitor implementation of FreeSync is not the best: narrow range 80-100 Hz, and Ultimate range 48-100 Hz with flickering. See also: Reddit r/AMD PSA: Vega bundle monitor Freesync is broken
All countries get discount for combo of AMD Ryzen 7 1700X or 1800X, and ASUS CROSSHAIR VI EXTREME, GIGABYTE GA-AX370-Gaming K7, or MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM, all of which are expensive motherboards.
The two games are Prey and Wolfenstein II, which is replaced by Sniper Elite 4 in 3 European countries.