Really? RX 580 at 1400 MHz consumes ~210 watts in games (ComputerBase.de), so Polaris with 64 CUs at 1400 MHz would need over 400 watts for typical gaming and likely 450-500 watts for heavy workloads. As we saw on HD 7870 vs 7970 or R9 290X / Fury, performance of current GCN implementations doesn't scale well with the number of CUs. Also, how would AMD get in the HPC market with Polaris, which doesn't support fast Int8, FP16 nor FP64?
AMD Vega Hardware Reviews
- Thread starter ArkeoTP
- Start date
Sorry, brain glitch. I calculated with a straight doubling all around of Polaris, giving 72 CUs, and then maintaining clocks letting the additional CUs compensate for the clock deficit (with a bit of rounding - we all know that small changes to frequency and voltages on this part of the curve makes for large differences where P is roughly O(f^3))
My main point stands though - what we have seen so far of Vega doesn't impress much given both complexity and time to market. But rather than assume that this is the whole story, I'd like to have more information, preferably straight from AMD, regarding the architecture and product. They have been too quiet.
Anyone know what % of AMD's revenues are GPU related? With an earnings update pending and a $14 share price I'd wager Polaris silence is more about share price damage control. Lots of Threadripper, easy on the GPU PR.
Sure would've been nice to see something competitive. I read an article this week about how Ryzen revealed just how much Intel was fleecing customers and the idea was that Vega would do the same (but for Nvidia) since the 1000 series is a small die, etc. Seems Vega cannot possibly be competitive based on size and power though so no downward price pressure on the high end [emoji853]
Sure would've been nice to see something competitive. I read an article this week about how Ryzen revealed just how much Intel was fleecing customers and the idea was that Vega would do the same (but for Nvidia) since the 1000 series is a small die, etc. Seems Vega cannot possibly be competitive based on size and power though so no downward price pressure on the high end [emoji853]
The thought that AMD perhaps as a cost cutting measure got rid of their actual good GPU people and replaced them with B tier staff terrifies me. That would spell disaster for competition in the market.
You don't have a Zen moment often, but that's what it would take from Navi at this rate to rebound, if Vega turns out like my fears.
Gotcha. Although older HDMI specs would still be grandfathered under their old certs, no? Kinda like PSU efficiency ratings.
This never happened though there has been a lot of turnover in the last 5+ years as new players entered or tried to enter the market. Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, etc.
The "chip X has +35% per wafer yield than chip Y, so it should be 35% cheaper!" analysis is cringeworthy, but gets repeated over and over in regard to multiple semiconductor. At design complexities we are currently dealing with, anything that appears "easy to manufacture" had hundreds of millions, if not more, invested on the front end specifically to make it so. Throw in short product cycles, and the amount of R&D that need to be amortized per chip is substantial but gets lost when people start focus solely on per-wafer manufacturing costs and yields.
And yet, there's no way for wall street to comprehend anything more complex...
Polaris came after Fiji which was 64 CUs so it's safe to assume Polaris can scale to be as large as Fiji.
Anarchist4000
Veteran
How bad can a report be if Ryzen appears to have been well received and all the Polaris (along with practically every other generation) has been sold out thanks to mining at potentially inflated prices?
XB1X was approximately Polaris with 48 CUs and we've seen a 64CU Fiji, so no reason to think otherwise.
Then the results of vega rx are definitely going to be interesting.
That's what I'm wondering about. Even if the Vega isn't up to nVidia's best can you really call it a fail if they can't keep them on the shelves?
I know from a gaming perspective yes and sure, with lots of room to argue...but from a financial perspective aren't they mostly concerned about selling units and if the current mining craze continues they shouldn't have problems for the foreseeable future so why all the doom and gloom talk?
Because we generally want AMD to succeed based on merits of an excellent design, not based on selling units solely for a market it's not designed for and only exists on the flimsiest of ideals.
No argument from me on that one, but again from a business perspective why does everyone seem so doom and gloomy? I really don't get that one I guess.
Anarchist4000
Veteran
I have no idea on the doom and gloom as the CPU side alone should be able to carry them if they make gains there. That seems to have been the goal when they cut high end Polaris and possibly low end Vega to save cash. Only guess is because FE doesn't look to have good gaming performance, but we're also yet to see any valid gaming results with all the features enabled.
Agreed, but it's too early to gauge success based on the merits. We do however know that retailers are selling a lot of cards to miners and it's hard to see a financial downside to that in the short term.
Not only that, but the newer mining code is CUDA optimized now and gtx1070s beat the rx580 on hashrate and consumption. AMD cannot count on the mining demographic.
Distributors pick up all the extra margin from the inflated prices and ramping up manufacturing takes time and puts them at a risk of being stuck with a bunch of unmovable product that can't compete with dirt cheap miner cards flooding the second-hand market once the bubble pops.
We've been here before.
So a 250 $ish MSRP card is beaten by a 350$ one? That's hardly an issue; the demants is (was) there for both vendors' creations to go out of stock
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