[News] AMD says that RX Vega is "just around the corner"

[StyM]

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/...around-corner/

AMD presented a 'Tech Summit' last week in Beijing, China. As is sometimes the case, the amount of detail and subjects covered varied to what we have heard in earlier presentations. This was especially true with regards to the upcoming Radeon RX Vega.

As VideoCardz reports, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su talked about Ryzen 5, and there were various tech demos but most of the new stuff at we are covering in the news today came from a segment of the presentation by Scott Herkelman, co-founder of BFG-Tech, former general GeForce manager at Nvidia, and currently a VP at AMD.

The biggest takeaway from China (sorry) was Herkelman's revelation that Vega would be important to AMD's laptop plans. As AMD's 14nm Vega is compact and efficient it can be leveraged in laptops, said the VP. However, detail wasn't specific enough to determine whether Vega would come to laptops as a discrete graphics chip, in a new APU design, or via both of those routes. Whatever the way to the portable market, Vega will facilitate OEM partner creation of "thinner and lighter notebooks, that still pack that punch you need to drive virtual reality or the latest and greatest AAA games." That sounds rather attractive.

[AliG]

*shrug*

I honestly don't think Vega will be that impressive. I had high hopes for Ryzen because AMD themselves were publishing selective benchmarks, and there was a massive volume of leaks. Those turned out to be mostly true, and Ryzen can be a big winner in the right circumstances. We're getting crickets on Vega's performance.

It'll probably beat the 1080 - but can it even be in the same breadth of the Ti, and at what price?

[kromosto]

I will be happy if it can beat 1080. Of course mine is just guesses by my feelings and I think vega will perform very similar to 1080 but nobody will say it is as good as 1080.

[StAndrew]

*shrug*

I honestly don't think Vega will be that impressive. I had high hopes for Ryzen because AMD themselves were publishing selective benchmarks, and there was a massive volume of leaks. Those turned out to be mostly true, and Ryzen can be a big winner in the right circumstances. We're getting crickets on Vega's performance.

It'll probably beat the 1080 - but can it even be in the same breadth of the Ti, and at what price?

As much as holding the performance crown is important, I think AMD can come away with a win on price/performance... If they can stay within 10% of the TI (which is a very reasonable expectation), I think that's acceptable.

[qcmadness]

I don't think Vega can beat GTX1080.
And power efficiency will be 30% worse.

My take: ditch GCN.

[AliG]

As much as holding the performance crown is important, I think AMD can come away with a win on price/performance... If they can stay within 10% of the TI (which is a very reasonable expectation), I think that's acceptable.

So I actually don't think within 10% of Ti is reasonable expectation. If it was much faster than the 1080, we'd have already seen some sort of benchmark showing that off. I'm sure it'll be a good value card - I just do not have any hope it'll be competitive at the top level based off that horrible GDC presentation.

I don't think Vega can beat GTX1080.
And power efficiency will be 30% worse.

My take: ditch GCN.

They did.... Have you not seen the new architecture nor their 2x power efficiency claims?

[Tim]

Every month for the last I don't know how long, it's been round the corner. Yawntastic vaporware cards. I didn't know there could be a paperlaunch of a paper paperlaunch, riding on a paper airplane that's thrown around every tech show or press conference, but somehow AMD is getting away with it!

[AliG]

Well, I think it's more along the lines of them completely underestimating the ramp up time of HBM2. But regardless, this isn't a great look.

[StAndrew]

So I actually don't think within 10% of Ti is reasonable expectation. If it was much faster than the 1080, we'd have already seen some sort of benchmark showing that off. I'm sure it'll be a good value card - I just do not have any hope it'll be competitive at the top level based off that horrible GDC presentation.

I don't think 10% is out of their reach. Well, maybe. With the 480 being rehashed into the 580, the gap between the 580 and 590 probably won't be substantial unless they plan a 585 intermediate card or 595 flagship card? At least AMD knows the bar they need to reach; hopefully they find a way to push clock speeds to make up the performance disparity. But I have a feeling they were ready for this. Titan X P has been out for a while; one would hope they didn't just settle for beating the 1080 and actually attempted to match or at least to come close to the Titan. If they did attempt, and were successful, then AMD should be in a ok positioning.

Now one would argue that Volta is right around the corner and AMD's Vega is a generation behind but I have a feeling Volta is more delayed than we think. I have a feeling the 1080TI was originally supposed to be positioned between the 1080 and Titan X P but due to possible delays on the Volta architecture (or 12nm process), Nvidia realized the TI was going to be their flagship card for a while and decided to push it even further than the Titan to insure Vega doesn't take the performance crown before Volta is released.

[vario]

So I actually don't think within 10% of Ti is reasonable expectation. If it was much faster than the 1080, we'd have already seen some sort of benchmark showing that off. I'm sure it'll be a good value card - I just do not have any hope it'll be competitive at the top level based off that horrible GDC presentation.



They did.... Have you not seen the new architecture nor their 2x power efficiency claims?

Well, in reality AMD rarely has single chip TOP DOG card, and it doesnt matter much, what AMD needs is widespread availability of good mid to high end product, and its that part thats been missing for over a year now.Vega could be just that, and just like always, some 2xvega card few months later that WILL be faster than the 1080ti.We also had one leak, this compute from sisoft sandra.
My money is on vega being somewhat on par with 1080, depending on the workload slightly faster or slower, in games.In compute it may be a lot better.
Theres one thing however which worries me, amd may have went nvidia route with not optimizing drivers for older cards route to "force" the switch.Mass effect andromeda benchmarks show it, where even fury x ends up slower than the 480 even tho 480 in itself isnt particurarly fast in it.
If thats the case, thats one way less reason to buy AMD cards, until now it was, you buy a card with some problems, but later on they are fixed, and support is great, but a mid range product beating TOP DOG product, and even 390X , i dont buy it unless they just didnt do the work for the older cards.

[zanzabar]

Every month for the last I don't know how long, it's been round the corner. Yawntastic vaporware cards. I didn't know there could be a paperlaunch of a paper paperlaunch, riding on a paper airplane that's thrown around every tech show or press conference, but somehow AMD is getting away with it!

i would bet that the part has been done since before the 480 and they skipped it, but they went all retarded and full on HBM2 before preproduction even started they cannot sell them since they could not afford to or even get enough test run HBM2 to launch the card. if they shipped it right now with samsung's low clocked non bulk stuff they would be sending out at a minimum of $1600 in whole sale HBM2 for an 8GB card.

[Tim]

i would bet that the part has been done since before the 480 and they skipped it, but they went all retarded and full on HBM2 before preproduction even started they cannot sell them since they could not afford to or even get enough test run HBM2 to launch the card. if they shipped it right now with samsung's low clocked non bulk stuff they would be sending out at a minimum of $1600 in whole sale HBM2 for an 8GB card.

I think you're spot on. Will we ever hear the full story I wonder.

[zanzabar]

I think you're spot on. Will we ever hear the full story I wonder.

the worst part is that since it only supports 2 stacks they could not bring it back to hbm1 since they could only put 2GB of ram on it.

[AbortRetryFail?]

i would bet that the part has been done since before the 480 and they skipped it, but they went all retarded and full on HBM2 before preproduction even started they cannot sell them since they could not afford to or even get enough test run HBM2 to launch the card. if they shipped it right now with samsung's low clocked non bulk stuff they would be sending out at a minimum of $1600 in whole sale HBM2 for an 8GB card.

I don't doubt the cards are done, but distribution is likely limited to the enterprise side for fun&games. I suspect Fiji is in surprising demand for 'Radeon Instinct boards' and that the culls go to desktop (hence, the endless sale of R9 Fury Xs for $255US before rebates... )

I also don't doubt that desktop Vega will be in short supply, and that AMD sees big money to be made with the Radeon Instinct MI25s. In a sense they are competing with themselves, too. It's no secret that AMD was planning an interposer / high-bandwidth memory SoC'

It would appear that AMD is positioned to 'maximize its investment' so-to-speak -- and expand into mobile Soc, deep learning, SFF, even an ITX 'Project Quantum'

nVidia will likely be 'constrained' (Is that fair?) in the initial market, and AMD will explore (exploit?) every option from data-cemter to ARM.

[zanzabar]

any way you look at it NV and amd cannot really ship parts until bulk HBM2 goes into production. we are already delayed 2 years and it looks like it happen again since samsung has not added it for sale (could be reserved) and hynx has not said anything. they both were supposed to ship bulk by the beginning of june but we are not even hearing things about samples.

[Darakian]

any way you look at it NV and amd cannot really ship parts until bulk HBM2 goes into production. we are already delayed 2 years and it looks like it happen again since samsung has not added it for sale (could be reserved) and hynx has not said anything. they both were supposed to ship bulk by the beginning of june but we are not even hearing things about samples.

I thought mass production kicked up in january
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9969/j...-specification

[zanzabar]

I thought mass production kicked up in january
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9969/j...-specification

you have to spin out 1-2 test batches since the release candidate test had low yields and did not meet speed expectations (that is why micron bailed.) i know samsung is shipping some small batch low bin stuff that does not meet speed and it is around $200 a GB (or $800 a stack.) there was supposed to be a full speed run that would ship in march but it looks like that missed or pre sold, and if this one is good then they should be able to ship bulk by june.

[Darakian]

Citation needed.

[AliG]