AMD: Speculation, Rumors, and Discussion (Archive)

[Dave Baumann]

Hawaii's default is "advanced fan control", rather than a standard fan table, it will operate within a bounding box of peak ASIC temperature, fan speed and power; it will allow the ASIC go up to peak temp before going to peak fan speed and then it will modulate clocks based on power. AiB's have the option of tweaking those parameters or removing advanced fan control entirely and going back to a standard fan curve. If someone saying that they are running 95C frequently then its likely that its running the advanced fan control - just because there is a graph of one sample doing something in one case does not mean that applies to all cases.

As for "cost of reference cooler" that's nothing to do with it, its more the fact that there is not much more thermal capacity on blower designs, hence the reason Fiji ships with a water cooler.

 

[Moloch]

Dave, given how much cooler AiB aircooled designs run I'm not sure how you can say that.

 

[Kaarlisk]

aircooled

"blower" is not the same as "aircooled"

 

[3dilettante]

Dave, given how much cooler AiB aircooled designs run I'm not sure how you can say that.

Are there any third party blower coolers? They tend to go for an open design.

 

[gamervivek]

nvidia's reference blower coolers on Titan/780 were top-notch.

 

[Moloch]

"blower" is not the same as "aircooled"

Of course, I totally Britta'd what he was emphasizing but I still don't agree with the route they took with the reference cooler.

 

[Alexko]

Of course, I totally Britta'd what he was emphasizing but I still don't agree with the route they took with the reference cooler.

I think they have to use blowers as reference designs to avoid random failures if people happen to have poorly ventilated cases.

 

[Moloch]

I think they have to use blowers as reference designs to avoid random failures if people happen to have poorly ventilated cases.

I kinda wondered if people would get that.
I came to a similar conclusion wrt cases, it's a shame they weren't able use a solution with better acoustics, they could have avoided the comparisons to a certain Nvidia failed flagship from a few years back.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Reference consumer designs are designed to cover the broadest use possible, which includes OEM, system integrators and all manner of unspecified case form factors out there in use by end users, to that end they broadly exist within the PCI Express form factor rules in order to accommodate as many systems as possible; additionally blowers will be friendly to a wide variety of systems and more readily accepted by OEM's/SI's. Higher capacity air coolers are indeed available, but they break the dimensions and the airflow - by choosing to do this with the reference design you are choosing to remove some TAM for the product, however when things are borderline that isn't a decision that needs to be made with product that will go into AiB production because the AiB's have the freedom to do that. In the end, everybody is covered - if a retail user has a case that can accommodate a wider and/or fatter solution then there are more than enough options out there, if a customer needs a more standard reference design then they are available to.

 

[Jawed]

There isn't much of a TAM for a graphics card when every review says "too noisy, get the NVidia"

This is what your new colleague said:

http://techreport.com/review/25509/amd-radeon-r9-290x-graphics-card-reviewed/13

The Hawaii GPU brought the 290X to the cusp of success, but a bigger power envelope and a really aggressive PowerTune profile ensured the victory. That victory comes at a cost: a relatively noisy card, whether on the default or uber fan profiles, and positively toasty GPU temperatures. 290X owners will also see more variable clock speeds (and thus performance) than they've come to expect. These aren't deal-breaker problems—not when there's a $100 price difference versus the GTX 780 on the table—but they're still hard to ignore.

http://techreport.com/review/25611/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-graphics-card-reviewed/12

Perhaps more importantly, the GTX 780 Ti achieves these performance levels while running at much lower temperatures and noise levels than the R9 290X. This truly is the finest single-GPU graphics card on the market, and it's a very attractive overall package. If you buy your video cards based on bragging rights rather than value proposition, then the GTX 780 Ti is the card to beat. You can even make a value case for it over the $150-cheaper R9 290X if you factor in the bundled games, Shield discount, and quieter operation.

What's interesting is that NVidia proved that it's possible to make a blower style cooler that works and doesn't sound atrocious. It doesn't wiggle within the tight constraints of some group of people who are clearly not enthusiast gamers. So what. It's an easy sell to the actual enthusiast gamers who've bought reference blower cooled 780Ti and still buy reference cooled Titan X and 980 Ti.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

AMD announces replacement for display controller block: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9836/amd-unveils-2016-vistech-roadmap

Display Port 1.3, HDMI 2.0a, Freesync over HDMI, and HDR support. HDR support also requiring some other things, and what exactly is supported (there's a lot of argument over what 'HDR' should mean in the industry) isn't specified.

 

[RedVi]

Is that the temp where it starts to throttle back the clocks?
RedVi, I take it you don't have AC?

Nope. From testing when I got the card it doesn't seem to throttle when hitting 95C, but I haven't tested it in actual games. My Major concern is that the fans can actually reach 100%. I'm used to AMD cards never getting close to their max fan speed, my MSI 290X behaves more like a nvidia card (ones I've owned). Given this fact I would guess that on hotter days playing more demanding games that it must be throttling, but as I said I haven't tested it properly.

 

[Moloch]

Well if your room is that hot then there's really not much you can do besides getting AC, any card you get is going to be spinning it's fan like there's no tomorrow get the temp under control. Also I'd personally be miserable in such a hot environment.

 

[RedVi]

I have a ceiling fan on and a window open which helps me manage and at least distributes the hot air around/out of the room a bit. My PC is under my desk so the worst part is the hot air near my feet. In winter it's actually very ideal. Putting my PC on my desk could help a lot, but it would increase noise. Right now noise is actually decent with my particular case with noise absorbing foam and a front door. The issue isn't that the fan at load is louder than any other card I've had, it's that it has nowhere to ramp up to so I'd assume throttling will happen.

Anyhow, this isn't exactly the thread for this discussion. I don't intend slander AMD or MSI, although I do believe that applying some better thermal paste could make a difference. I will say though that I will weigh things like a GPU's TDP, cooling and fan range when making my next purchase. I was actually planning on considering a watercooled card as the possible trade off of any pump noise would be muffled somewhat by my cases sound dampening.

 

[Dave Baumann]

There isn't much of a TAM for a graphics card when every review says "too noisy, get the NVidia"

That's not a physical reduction in TAM. Additionally, many concluded "wait for the AiB boards" and there have subsequently been countless AiB board reviews of Hawaii in various forms.

What's interesting is that NVidia proved that it's possible to make a blower style cooler that works and doesn't sound atrocious.

Sound is a by-product of CFM, CFM dictates the cooling capacity - i.e. a heatsink with the fan capped at 1000 RPM has a lower TDP capacity than a fan capped at 2000 RPM. Hawaii's cooler can run quieter, perfectly acceptability but obviously the performance will be lower, due to running at a lower TDP. You'll note that the TDP's of Titan and R9 290X are different, as are the measured values in the review linked to.

 

[RedVi]

That is the throttling temp for the GPU as we are all well aware (and so desirable that AMD haven't repeated the exercise) A 95°C GPU for the MSI Lightning card being discussed is hardly its operating temperature parameter.

Just to clarify, my card is an MSI 290X Gaming, not lightning. It has a 30MHz stock OC in "gaming mode" (default).

 

[ImSpartacus]

Higher capacity air coolers are indeed available, but they break the dimensions and the airflow - by choosing to do this with the reference design you are choosing to remove some TAM for the product

There isn't much of a TAM for a graphics card when every review says "too noisy, get the NVidia"

Does "TAM" stand for "Technology Acceptance Model"?

 

[Alexko]

Does "TAM" stand for "Technology Acceptance Model"?

Total Addressable/Available Market.

 

[Razor1]

There isn't much of a TAM for a graphics card when every review says "too noisy, get the NVidia"

This is what your new colleague said:

http://techreport.com/review/25509/amd-radeon-r9-290x-graphics-card-reviewed/13


http://techreport.com/review/25611/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-graphics-card-reviewed/12


What's interesting is that NVidia proved that it's possible to make a blower style cooler that works and doesn't sound atrocious. It doesn't wiggle within the tight constraints of some group of people who are clearly not enthusiast gamers. So what. It's an easy sell to the actual enthusiast gamers who've bought reference blower cooled 780Ti and still buy reference cooled Titan X and 980 Ti.

Well the default coolers for the nV coolers they work well for the 7 series and titan of that line, not so good for the 9 series and its Titan. Temps tend to get too high even though the chips are rated for those temps.....

 

[dbz]

Well the default coolers for the nV coolers they work well for the 7 series and titan of that line, not so good for the 9 series and its Titan. Temps tend to get too high even though the chips are rated for those temps.....

A bit of apples-to-oranges scenario if you are comparing temps. Nvidia's default throttle limit for the GM200 series is 83C, as opposed to 95C with Hawaii. Hardly surprising that the reference 980Ti/Titan X throttle under load. Almost all reviews of the Nvidia reference cooler using the 91C max limit (using software to exploit the 110% power limit) don't show throttling (example). I'd also note that using the 110% power limit puts the 980 Ti firmly in the same wattage as the 290X, so I certainly don't buy the argument that the need for lower power dissipation is the only thing that separates the Nvidia and AMD coolers' effectiveness, as Dave Baumann seems to be opining.
One thing that isn't under dispute is that one of the main review/ community perception negatives from the AMD stock cooler is the noise. You won't find any review having the Nvidia reference cooler anywhere as noisy as AMD's even though the stock (load) rotational speeds are very similar ( ~ 2450 rpm for the Nvidia cooler, 2650 rpm for the 290X).

Anyhow, unless AMD are planning on revisiting their current blower/shroud reference design for the 400 series, it probably isn't that apropos.