AMD confirms 4GB limit for first HBM graphics card

[Trik'Stari]

I feel like GTA V is a bit of an aberration, Witcher 3 doesn't use anywhere near as much VRAM at all.

I'm talking <2 GB at 1080p max settings, and that game is unquestionably better looking than GTA V

Interesting.

[Norman_the_Owl]

Interesting.

This is second hand of course, "joker slunt" on youtube said it in his "performance review" on youtube

[Imabigmac]

Having a large (giant) all-silicon interposer for the GPU die and memory to sit on all connected was going to cost money. How people could not see this coming baffles me. Also, AMD needs money, and a lot of it, before the end of 2018 going through 2019 when all 2.4 billion left of its debt all comes due over just 5 quarters. AMD needs margins, so it can engage in a price war, but it needs to start high enough to get enough margins to live.

People saw that it would cost more money just they and I were expecting a trade off for HBM design to allow faster and more memory something that isn't easily done with current methods otherwise it was a waste of time and a bad move.

High margins only works if it sells. 

[han_han08]

seems like the next iteration will be better 

[Xorbot]

This pretty much solidifies my decision to go G-Sync.  With having a monitor, it rarely gets replaced at the same time a motherboard+cpu is replaced.  With this sort of piggy-back/leap-frog upgrade cycle, it probably means I would never go AMD ever again.  Toss-in the Shield requirement, it seems like there is never a point to go AMD unless it is on a second computer at this point.

 

Well played NVIDIA.  That 75/25 split will probably grow even higher, which is a remarkable feat.

[niofalpha]

I honestly kinda hope their is some sort of VRAM issue like the 970 to see if Nvidia's response is as childish as AMD's was.

[patrickjp93]

People saw that it would cost more money just they and I were expecting a trade off for HBM design to allow faster and more memory something that isn't easily done with current methods otherwise it was a waste of time and a bad move.

High margins only works if it sells.

It will in time. Micron beat Hynix HBM to market with HMC in a 3D form back in 2013, but it didn't end up in use for GPUs despite having a density, bandwidth, power, and latency advantage against GDDR5.

[Imabigmac]

It will in time. Micron beat Hynix HBM to market with HMC in a 3D form back in 2013, but it didn't end up in use for GPUs despite having a density, bandwidth, power, and latency advantage against GDDR5.

I have little doubt that HBM is superior to standard methods, and has a lot of potential in the future. Just presently and of course this just speculation but probably wont show much benefit to the performance for games - but that remains unseen. 

[Kamina]

6GB should be the new 4GB.

[MEC-777]

While it's understandable to be concerned about the total capacity, we can't forget about the fact that the frequency and bandwidth of this memory will make it stupid fast and efficient at transferring data. Also, don't forget about the other recent advancements/optimizations in data compression etc. which further reduces issues with Vram usage and data transfers.

 

4GB seems a little low to me for a GPU of this class. No doubt there will be an 8GB version. Most users would probably be just fine with 4GB - especially if you're still on a single 1080p or 1440p monitor. However, those running 4k or surround displays will probably be more wise to wait and grab the 8GB version. 

[Blaber Dear]

Keen for the release and some benchmarks that's for sure!

[Elapo]

I'm rather ignorant on this topic although I understand the basic idea. However my 2gb 960 (don't hurt me, I had my reasons) will play gta v with settings using 2.5gb+ vram (by selecting ignore whatever limits) with no problems what so ever despite only having 2gb. Could this do something similar? I'm probably way off but am curious

 

It'll just swap what's in the memory more often, which could result in lagspikes. Many people seem to think a VRAM limit is holy, but it really depends on the game. You might run into issues if you move really fast through the world, but as long as the card has enough time to load in the textures it needs for the next area, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Techhog]

I get near 3.5 on GTA V on 1080 (triple monitor or single) with everything turned up, so yeah, 4k probably gonna be more than this can handle.

Turning off MSAA would help a ton.

[GoldSrc]

Well, it's a 1st gen technology, you can't blame them for that.

[Popingheads]

AMD did address concerns about the limited amount of VRAM, which I haven't seen posted in this thread yet. Basically to get more bandwidth on GPUs required adding more VRAM, so they didn't try to optimize VRAM usage on past GPUs. To quote them:

 

"When I asked Macri about this issue, he expressed confidence in AMD's ability to work around this capacity constraint. In fact, he said that current GPUs aren't terribly efficient with their memory capacity simply because GDDR5's architecture required ever-larger memory capacities in order to extract more bandwidth. As a result, AMD "never bothered to put a single engineer on using frame buffer memory better," because memory capacities kept growing. Essentially, that capacity was free, while engineers were not. Macri classified the utilization of memory capacity in current Radeon operation as "exceedingly poor" and said the "amount of data that gets touched sitting in there is embarrassing."

Strong words, indeed.

With HBM, he said, "we threw a couple of engineers at that problem," which will be addressed solely via the operating system and Radeon driver software. "We're not asking anybody to change their games."

http://techreport.com/review/28294/amd-high-bandwidth-memory-explained/2

 

So it doesn't look like it will be that big of an issue, and the extra bandwidth on the cards will help performance at high resolutions without a doubt, plus rumors that it outperforms the Titan X. So from what I know its likely the 390x will be the card to get for 4k gaming if everything is true, and will likely keep that spot until Nvidia's next generation of cards.

[Davehaslanded]

Don't know how I feel about this, some games just required more than 4GB running at higher resolutions, pretty sure if you ran GTA V at 4k and max settings as you expect a card like this to do would go over the 4GB. Could be due to the cost? I remember seeing somewhere it costs considerably more than GDDR5

Actually Vram usage at 4k isn't too bad. i have 2x GTX 980s in 2 separate systems. Both plugged into 4k Displays (a 42 inch TV and a 4k monitor) The only thing that needs turning off as far as Vram's concerned is Anti-aliasing. I play with almost everything else at ultra/high. Most importantly textures are at Ultra. The biggest hurdle at 4k for most games tends to be the power of the GPU core as opposed to the Vram in my experience. 

 

Its also worth noting that  DirectX 12 will allow stacking of Vram in Crossfire and SLI if its supported by game developer, so 2 cards could give you 8GB of RAM

[bogus]

 As a result, AMD "never bothered to put a single engineer on using frame buffer memory better," because memory capacities kept growing. Essentially, that capacity was free, while engineers were not. 

 

This gives us a glimpse of how things were being runned in AMD - hopefully with Lisa this shit has changed.

[Sandy_Dandy]

This is bad, really bad. if the Fiji HBM card is going to be around 850$ with only 4gb many will turn away from it to the 980ti (probably 6gb). Unless there's an 8gb gddr5 option or an oem makes an 8gB... Please no.

I fail to see your point. Why spend that money on more VRAM if you don't need it? Last gen. Nvidia had "only" 3gb in their gaming cards, and that didn't seem to bother anyone. 

 

Or am I the only one who use my high-end stuff for anything other than bragging?

[Opcode]

I fail to see your point. Why spend that money on more VRAM if you don't need it? Last gen. Nvidia had "only" 3gb in their gaming cards, and that didn't seem to bother anyone. 

 

Or am I the only one who use my high-end stuff for anything other than bragging?

https://youtu.be/Cv57qDXpEPU?t=3m52s

[MrDynamicMan]

I fail to see your point. Why spend that money on more VRAM if you don't need it? Last gen. Nvidia had "only" 3gb in their gaming cards, and that didn't seem to bother anyone.

Or am I the only one who use my high-end stuff for anything other than bragging?

For a $850 CARD, the audience is going to be using higher res/more VRAM demanding display setups. And they might opt for the 980ti over the R9 3xx because of this. Which is not good for AMD