Pricing Discussions around AMD VEGA *over-flow*

[homerdog]

The only bright spot is vega 56 because at $400 its cheaper and faster than the 1070 mostly by large enough performance deltas to make up for any extra power usage.

I wouldn't bet on Vega56 being cheaper than the 1070 in real life. It will more than likely go for >MSRP just like Vega64. And remember for a very long while the 1070 was available for ~$370, and I dare say most people that were ever going to purchase a 1070 have bought one by now.

Also the 56 is hardly faster than the 1070 in games that people actually play. Look at the top Steam games; there is clearly a disconnect lately between the games reviewers use and the games people play in real life.

 

[DavidGraham]

Swap out 3 of those Ubisoft games for Rise of the Tomb Raider, Doom and Hitman and swap out ME:A for a Battlefield game and you might have something.

Don't swap out anything, a game is a game. Test everything. The games you listed are already included in every single review, so you are not adding anything new here. A better list will include all.

 

[Anarchist4000]

Also Fiji was made at TSMC whereas Vega is made at Globalfoundries, which should be charging substantially less per state-of-the-art wafer.

That completely overlooks wafer allocation and doesn't take opportunity cost into account. All the assumptions I've seen are based on GF having unlimited production capacity in the short term. It's likely not that Vega is expensive from prior generations, but AMD choosing to fabricate higher margin (Ryzen) parts. Hence attractive Vega 56 using salvage from pro parts like WX, SSG, FE etc. Same logic applies to Polaris mining continuing for so long.

 

[mrcorbo]

Don't swap out anything, a game is a game. Test everything. The games you listed are already included in every single review, so you are not adding anything new here. A better list will include all.

This statement leads me to believe that you don't have a very good understanding of the actual process that leads to all those pretty graphs.

 

[DavidGraham]

This statement leads me to believe that you don't have a very good understanding of the actual process that leads to all those pretty graphs.

At least I am not discarding good, optimized and popular games just because they have an infamous publisher, or lack the knowledge to know which games are actually being currently tested.

Conscious users buy the GPU that pushes faster fps in unoptimized or graphically intensive games, because optimized games can run well on any decent GPU. A GTX 1070 can blast a 100fps @1440p in Doom or Forza 6, but only a GTX 1080 can push 60fps in Quantum Break, HellBlade, or Watch_Dogs 2.

 

[mrcorbo]

At least I am not discarding good, optimized and popular games just because they have an infamous publisher, or lack the knowledge to know which games are actually being currently tested.

Conscious users buy the GPU that pushes faster fps in unoptimized or graphically intensive games, because optimized games can run well on any decent GPU. A GTX 1070 can blast a 100fps @1440p in Doom or Forza 6, but only a GTX 1080 can push 60fps in Quantum Break, HellBlade, or Watch_Dogs 2.

You can't test everything. The best you can hope for is to present a representative sample. 4 games from one publisher on a short list is not a representative sample. I tried to take your list and turn it into a representative sample which, yes, includes games that are already being used for benchmarking and I think my resulting list is better than yours.

 

[DavidGraham]

4 games from one publisher on a short list is not a representative sample. I tried to take your list and turn it into a representative sample which, yes, includes games that are already being used for benchmarking and I think my resulting list is better than yours.

But you did the same, Hitman and Tomb Raider are from Square Enix, add that to Deus Ex Mankind Divided (which is also widely tested), and you have 3 games from the same publisher, 3 is no different from 4, no?

Also it doesn't matter which games are from which publisher, the only thing that matters is that they are recent, popular, graphically intensive or all of those. My argument is to expand your list (10+ games) and be versatile, I won't adhere to certain names or specify ones that should be tested, what matters is that you take a diverse enough sample to cover most workloads to truly represent the complete picture.

 

[mrcorbo]

But you did the same, Hitman and Tomb Raider are from Square Enix, add that to Deus Ex Mankind Divided (which is also widely tested), and you have 3 games from the same publisher, 3 is no different from 4, no?

Also it doesn't matter which games are from which publisher, the only thing that matters is that they are recent, popular, graphically intensive or all of those. My argument is to expand your list (10+ games) and be versatile, I won't adhere to certain names or specify ones that should be tested, what matters is that you take a diverse enough sample to cover most workloads to truly represent the complete picture.

Replied here. This is OT in this thread.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Stop it you two, you're getting off the point. This isn't a green vs red contest here, this is a trying to figure out what is going on with Vega's pricing and such moving forward.

I gave myself today off from thinking about it. I think it's out of our hands entirely and I don't think a decision has been made yet, it's gonna be a wait and see.

I will argue with Dave, (if I can call you "Dave" DavidGraham, if not I'll stop.), that the Vega56 is just trading blows with the 1070. I really believe that the 1070 is a dying architecture and the Vega is a new one and the old one has been pushed to the max and has been maximized as well as it can be, where as the Vega I think was rushed out the door a bit and has more flexibility in AMD's ability to tweak it after release to increase performance/power consumption because of the infinity fabric and some features I know they haven't even exposed yet that I'm not supposed to know about!

I really feel the Vega series is going to be making some dramatic improvements over a very short time, and continue to do so for the life of the card. It was designed to be flexible, so finding new ways of optimizing should be a lot easier and since it's all open everyone will benefit from it. Sorry, not fanboy talking there. That's me being sober for a change when I'm hanging around really interesting people who are talking about things I'm not sure I understand fully, probably shouldn't know about,, and they're nice enough to at least try and explain it to me since they know that I'm either pretty good at keeping my mouth shut about specifics or I'm too ignorant to understand the specifics and pass them along. Either way if nothing else I came away with the feeling that the people involved in making it sure did believe in it and in its future success...so until I hear otherwise I will too!

A Ryzen setup with a Vega is gonna be a hella stomper and a value at that, but they're still working out a few things. Hell, I'd almost kill for a Ryzen with a Vega56 right now, I had 5 minutes on one and it was sooo gloriously good! I'm trying to figure out a legal way to make some money quck to buy a Ryzen system with a Vega56, but that could be hard if there aren't any Vega56s available!

Wow, I think the meds just kicked in...I'm feeling all calm. I think I'll go enjoy it when it lasts, this AMD stuff is sort of stressing me out although I'm not as concerned about being sampled anymore. I have a feeling that isn't gonna be happening any time in the near future again if they decide on this in a way which I strongly disagree with and I rather vociferously berate them for the deception/betrayal....but like I say, I gotta live with myself and set an example for my kids.

I hope this all turns out to be a big deal about nothing but bad planning and communications, that can be fixed easily with the right actions and by publicly addressing the situation and how it will be handled going forward. If this turns out to be a purposeful plan on AMD's part to offer a very limited supply for $399 without telling anyone the prices would jump and then not having enough cards to avoid selling them all out in pre-orders. The bundles are still available, but the bundles suck and aren't the value add that they're made out to be.

<sigh>

I gotta go pout some more, but could we not turn this in to a red/green fight unless it's important to why they picked that particular price point? The vega56 is gonna blow the 1070 out of the water once it gets a bit better optimized.

 

[xEx]

The manufacturing cost is a small part of the total cost of creating the product. Most of the cost is in the design and verification which increases drastically with nodes. So as much as it cost AMD to manufacture VEGA vs fiji its the huge amount of money that took AMD to design and verify the new chip.

 

[Anarchist4000]

That's me being sober for a change when I'm hanging around really interesting people who are talking about things I'm not sure I understand fully,

There's your problem. Even engineers need a beer to properly understand everything. It's scientifically proven engineers work better that way.

 

[itsmydamnation]

There's your problem. Even engineers need a beer to properly understand everything. It's scientifically proven engineers work better that way.

 

[seahawk]

Stop it you two, you're getting off the point. This isn't a green vs red contest here, this is a trying to figure out what is going on with Vega's pricing and such moving forward.

I gave myself today off from thinking about it. I think it's out of our hands entirely and I don't think a decision has been made yet, it's gonna be a wait and see.

I will argue with Dave, (if I can call you "Dave" DavidGraham, if not I'll stop.), that the Vega56 is just trading blows with the 1070. I really believe that the 1070 is a dying architecture and the Vega is a new one and the old one has been pushed to the max and has been maximized as well as it can be, where as the Vega I think was rushed out the door a bit and has more flexibility in AMD's ability to tweak it after release to increase performance/power consumption because of the infinity fabric and some features I know they haven't even exposed yet that I'm not supposed to know about!

I really feel the Vega series is going to be making some dramatic improvements over a very short time, and continue to do so for the life of the card. It was designed to be flexible, so finding new ways of optimizing should be a lot easier and since it's all open everyone will benefit from it. Sorry, not fanboy talking there. That's me being sober for a change when I'm hanging around really interesting people who are talking about t.....

Mabye Pascal feels old and dying to you because NV released it over a year ago? Sure one can always wait for the AMD driver team to magically unlock VEGA, but then that is the same team that barely could make fully functioning launch driver. I have the feeling that at the time AMD might have improved VEGA drivers to a meaningful level, VEGA will no longer be facing Pascal but Volta and that will be hugely one sided.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Mabye Pascal feels old and dying to you because NV released it over a year ago?

Pascal is old because it's basically Maxwell in 16FF+ and super optimized for higher frequencies.
It's as old and dying as Polaris.

 

[Alexko]

I must confess that the precise meaning of the word "dying" in the context of a GPU architecture eludes me.

 

[xEx]

Pascal is old because it's basically Maxwell in 16FF+ and super optimized for higher frequencies.
It's as old and dying as Polaris.

Its still the faster architecture for gaming so it will only get old and dying when we get new arch. that could dethrone it.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I must confess that the precise meaning of the word "dying" in the context of a GPU architecture eludes me.

At least to me, "dying" would mean the next architecture is probably more revolutionary than evolutionary.

Its still the faster architecture for gaming so it will only get old and dying when we get new arch. that could dethrone it.

The fact that Pascal served and is serving nvidia well wasn't put into question, and I'm sure that's not what @digitalwanderer meant.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

At least to me, "dying" would mean the next architecture is probably more revolutionary than evolutionary.

I guess in that sense Navi will be more "evolutionary" than revolutionary with regard to Vega.

 

[homerdog]

I gotta go pout some more, but could we not turn this in to a red/green fight unless it's important to why they picked that particular price point? The vega56 is gonna blow the 1070 out of the water once it gets a bit better optimized.

"Let's not turn this into Red vs Green"
"Vega56 is going to blow 1070 out of the water!"

Sorry man couldn't resist.

 

[Anarchist4000]

The fact that Pascal served and is serving nvidia well wasn't put into question, and I'm sure that's not what digitalwanderer meant.

The issue is many of the Tier3 features that Vega brought imply no or very high practical limits. Meaning the architecture is fully extensible. In the same way that unified shaders merged vertex and pixel shaders, Vega may do the same for the entire pipeline to replace fixed function, but the APIs and pipelines aren't there yet. Volta likely has much of the same capability, therefore there will be a break and Vega more forward looking than Pascal. Much the same way that DX12/Vulkan and the async scheduling break from DX11.