Vega Frontier Edition officially launched $999

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

I think it will be around 1080ti area or better. 

I don't think this will be the case, in all of their gaming demos, the Vega card is on par or slightly worse/better than a 1080.... Even in their latest demo, they needed 2 Vega FE cards to match the gaming performance of single 1080 Ti

[The Benjamins]

2 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I don't think this will be the case, in all of their gaming demos, the Vega card is on par or slightly worse/better than a 1080.... Even in their latest demo, they needed 2 Vega FE cards to match the gaming performance of single 1080 Ti

what demo did they need 2?

 

I remember them shows off 2 in one system with no numbers shown. Also they are the FE not the gaming version.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

what demo did they need 2?

The Prey Demo.

 

Nvm, I thought they had FPS numbers

[VagabondWraith]

7 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

I think it will be around 1080ti area or better. well these cards hit the selves on 7/1 and some reviews have pre ordered the card. PCPer is one that I know of that will be getting the card on release.

If it was 1080 Ti performance or better, AMD would be shouting from the rooftops about it. Yet, it's just an eerie silence. 

 

They were quite vocal about Ryzen pre-release and rightfully so. It turned out to be very good. Vega's identity crisis says it all imo.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, VagabondWraith said:

If it was 1080 Ti performance or better, AMD would be shouting from the rooftops about it. Yet, it's just an eerie silence. 

 

They were quite vocal about Ryzen pre-release and rightfully so. It turned out to be very good. Vega's identity crisis says it all imo.

well this is not a gaming card so they don't want to shoot them selves in the foot having lower numbers then the gaming card will bring being the Vega for front.

 

I think Vega FE will do good in games but RX Vega will have some good improvements over it so that's why they are not talking about it now for this release.

 

in about a week we should see Vega FE reviews.

[MadyTehWolfie]

In B4 volta xx70 matches or beats it.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, MadyTehWolfie said:

In B4 volta xx70 matches or beats it.

This will probably be the case

[VagabondWraith]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

well this is not a gaming card so they don't want to shoot them selves in the foot having lower numbers then the gaming card will bring being the Vega for front.

 

I think Vega FE will do good in games but RX Vega will have some good improvements over it so that's why they are not talking about it now for this release.

 

in about a week we should see Vega FE reviews.

But that's what I'm talking about is RX Vega. SIGGRAPH is when it's supposed to be released or at least a launch date announcement. That's Q3 which is already late. It's said to be limited in supply so it may be September-ish before some availability is stabilized. That's 14 months after NVidia's 1080 released.

 

Hence, why I said... wait for Volta™.

[i_build_nanosuits]

11 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

well this is not a gaming card so they don't want to shoot them selves in the foot having lower numbers then the gaming card will bring being the Vega for front.

 

I think Vega FE will do good in games but RX Vega will have some good improvements over it so that's why they are not talking about it now for this release.

 

in about a week we should see Vega FE reviews.

Titan X is not a ''gaming card'' per say but it does perform on par or better than the ''ti'' counterpart in games...it's no different with AMD, this card support the RX drivers and it is what it's running right now and it's likely a fully enabled Vega chip the same or better than what will be in the top end RX vega card, so there is no reason why this FE card would be any worse than the RX vega in games.

[Coaxialgamer]

I have to say ,i see many parralels to the 2900xt .

Hot , power hungry , late , expensive to produce and can't compete adequately .

I'm certain the µarch itself will be refined  and put to good use in future .

 

Its shockingly similar to terascale's history .

[Valentyn]

21 minutes ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

Titan X is not a ''gaming card'' per say but it does perform on par or better than the ''ti'' counterpart in games...it's no different with AMD, this card support the RX drivers and it is what it's running right now and it's likely a fully enabled Vega chip the same or better than what will be in the top end RX vega card, so there is no reason why this FE card would be any worse than the RX vega in games.

 

There might be, the FE uses it's own unique drivers. Not Radeon Pro, not ReLive Radeon RX.
It's drivers "switch" between Pro and Gaming uses; so it's not optimized for either perfectly.
Raja already stated Radeon RX will be faster and have drivers specifically for gaming.

 

Where as the TitanXp, is running pure GeForce gaming drivers, but has enough grunt to do other tasks. Which is why NVIDIA list it as:

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/deep-learning-ai/developer/

NVIDIA TITAN Xp - The fastest accelerator for deep neural network training on a desktop PC based on the revolutionary NVIDIA Pascal™ architecture

[Humbug]

Would have been amazing 8 months to 1 year ago.

Now it's meh.

[Valentyn]

2 minutes ago, Humbug said:

Would have been amazing 8 months to 1 year ago.

Now it's meh.

 

Those HBM2 delays. The fact that the Watercooled card is also coming Q3 also means there really must have been supply issues.

Shame AMD never had the funds to also develop a GDDR5/X version of Vega; and instead went all in on a "Tesla" based deep learning card. Then tried to taper it down to consumers.

Hopefully with Ryzen, and Epyc they can break even for once; and start putting real R&D money into the GPU department.

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

 

Those HBM2 delays. The fact that the Watercooled card is also coming Q3 also means there really must have been supply issues.

Shame AMD never had the funds to also develop a GDDR5/X version of Vega; and instead went all in on a "Tesla" based deep learning card. Then tried to taper it down to consumers.

Hopefully with Ryzen, and Epyc they can break even for once; and start putting real R&D money into the GPU department.

Frontier Edition is a "tweener" for certain workstation use cases. For as much as it's Vega, it's not the really interesting stuff.

 

At the same time, CPUs is where AMD has been focusing its resources, so the Radeon group is making due until they can shift to Navi at 7nm and with Infinity Fabric between dies.  That's clearly the way to go, as it'll also let AMD make 4-way package Compute Cards.  GPUs dies have gotten massive, which is also why we've heard a few rumbles of a Pascal refresh from Nvidia. The Volta dies for the high-end chips are huge.

[Valentyn]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Frontier Edition is a "tweener" for certain workstation use cases. For as much as it's Vega, it's not the really interesting stuff.

 

At the same time, CPUs is where AMD has been focusing its resources, so the Radeon group is making due until they can shift to Navi at 7nm and with Infinity Fabric between dies.  That's clearly the way to go, as it'll also let AMD make 4-way package Compute Cards.  GPUs dies have gotten massive, which is also why we've heard a few rumbles of a Pascal refresh from Nvidia. The Volta dies for the high-end chips are huge.

 

Honestly I like the postion the FE is sitting in. Only thing we don't know about is gaming. If it's gaming results are as good as the professional results it'll be a stellar card.

My old man uses Solidworks and other engineering stuff. Recently replaced his Sandy Bridge system with a Ryzen 1600. Now he just needs a GPU, and FE might perfectly suit his needs for everything he does.

 

Although with him still running a Fermi based card, anything would be a massive upgrade

[DarkBlade2117]

3 hours ago, deXxterlab97 said:

So blueeee

Someone made an album of various color schemes. Can't go wrong

 

If Vega for consumers looks anything like this, one with the silver/blue is what I'll be looking for. Sadly... the water cooled variant is likely out of my budget of ~$500 so that probably won't happen.

[Dackzy]

what a beautiful card, I kinda want it just because it looks so nice and I need to replace my current GPU

[Valentyn]

Just now, DarkBlade2117 said:

Someone made an album of various color schemes. Can't go wrong

 

If Vega for consumers looks anything like this, one with the silver/blue is what I'll be looking for. Sadly... the water cooled variant is likely out of my budget of ~$500 so that probably won't happen.

 

How much for the Hello Kitty one?

 

[DarkBlade2117]

Just now, Valentyn said:

 

How much for the Hello Kitty one?

 

I'd pay an extra $100 easily

[Humbug]

 

7 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

Shame AMD never had the funds to also develop a GDDR5/X version of Vega; and instead went all in on a "Tesla" based deep learning card. Then tried to taper it down to consumers.

According to Raja Koduri a few years ago AMD fell into this trap where they thought that high end PC graphics was coming to an end. And that APUs were the future...

But what actually happened was the PC gaming resurgence continued and APUs never caught up to even mid range discrete graphics. But AMD during that period where they predicted wrong cut their R&D into discrete graphics. During this period they were actually doing good in the high end with HD7xxx series and later R9 2xxx series but the negative effects of that R&D cut are felt years later starting with Fiji when AMD started to fall slightly behind Nvidia on the high end. Now they have actually remedied the situation by forming the Radeon Technology Group. But again the results take a few years to show.

 

Vega will be a great innovative architecture that is too late to market to really turn things in AMD's favour. Still they will price it competitively and so you can be sure that us consumers will get a good deal. They will probably give us near 1080ti performance at GTX 1080 prices. Combined with AMD's great driver support etc... so we will benefit from it. But it just won't be the game changing part that it could have been had they launched it even 6 months ago. Not to mention all the lost sales from people who got sick of waiting and bought Nvidia.

 

15 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

 

Hopefully with Ryzen, and Epyc they can break even for once; and start putting real R&D money into the GPU department.

Not just break even. They will make small profits this year. Even before Ryzen launched they had managed to cut their losses significantly if you look at the trends over time.

And next year they will make much more significant profits. Because they will have the full 12 months with the full Ryzen lineup. In addition to the Zen APUs for desktop and laptops, and Vega, and the Epyc Server parts, and threadripper. In particular the laptop market is huge, and AMD getting a foothold in that will be a big deal. Finally they have the low TDP architecture to do so without sacrificing performance. And Intel will not be able to touch the new APUs with Zen cores and Vega graphics. Not to mention revenue from new consoles...

 

R&D for GPUs is already in good hands, since RTG was formed. But because of the long product development process it takes a while for those benefits to hit the market. Even Vega was in the works before RTG ws formed. Navi will be the first design which was RTG from start to finish.

[Humbug]

12 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

so the Radeon group is making due until they can shift to Navi at 7nm and with Infinity Fabric between dies.

Infinity Fabric is the most industry shaking invention in recent memory.

Massive implications for AMD... both on CPU and graphics.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, Humbug said:

Infinity Fabric is the most industry shaking invention in recent memory.

Massive implications for AMD... both on CPU and graphics.

Just imagine if they could use that to take 2 GPU dies and make it work as one just like Threadripper and Epyc did for CPU's. they could develop a high yields, high efficiency small die part and stack them to compete in the high end.

 

I personally excited for the zen+vega APU's for desktops.

[Valentyn]

8 minutes ago, Humbug said:

Not just break even. They will make small profits this year. Even before Ryzen launched they had managed to cut their losses significantly if you look at the trends over time.

And next year they will make much more significant profits. Because they will have the full 12 months with the full Ryzen lineup. In addition to the Zen APUs for desktop and laptops, and Vega, and the Epyc Server parts, and threadripper. In particular the laptop market is huge, and AMD getting a foothold in that will be a big deal. Finally they have the low TDP architecture to do so without sacrificing performance. And Intel will not be able to touch the new APUs with Zen cores and Vega graphics. Not to mention revenue from new consoles...

 

R&D for GPUs is already in good hands, since RTG was formed. But because of the long product development process it takes a while for those benefits to hit the market. Even Vega was in the works before RTG ws formed. Navi will be the first design which was RTG from start to finish.

 

I remember Raja stating the issues with GPUs at AMD prior to 2015. It was rather heartbreaking really. The smartest thing the board of directors ever did was put Lisa in charge, and head hunt Raja and Keller back.

To think the previous management actually believed GPUs were dead and consoles/APUs were the future. 

 

If AMD finally makes a solid profit I'll be over the moon. It all depends on Epyc though; and the APUs. They need mass market penetration. Although seeing OEMs actually properly pick up AMD in well over a decade is fantastic.

AMD in the Green, and having money to put into R&D, along with more investor confidence is the best thing the market could wish for. Especially consumers.

 

Add in the fantastic early reports on IBM's 7nm process able to deliver up to 20% performance per watt over 10nm; and the jump from 14nm for Zen and Navi might be fantastic.

[Valentyn]

2 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Just imagine if they could use that to take 2 GPU dies and make it work as one just like Threadripper and Epyc did for CPU's. they could develop a high yields, high efficiency small die part and stack them to compete in the high end.

 

I personally excited for the zen+vega APU's for desktops.

 

You just described Navi.

Scalabile small cores on an interposer. Raja was actually speaking to PcPer about it in 2016.
That's the end goal; as AMD moves back to their old, but fantastic small die strategy. When they were their strongest was during that period.

[Humbug]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

Just imagine if they could use that to take 2 GPU dies and make it work as one just like Threadripper and Epyc did for CPU's. they could develop a high yields, high efficiency small die part and stack them to compete in the high end.

That's what they are doing. It's called Navi. Still about a year away though.

 

It will allow AMD to have better profit margins than they do now on high end graphics. Because they will combine dies, while Nvidia will still be shooting for big and expensive low yield monolithic dies.