Hard OCP Blind test of Vega vs 1080Ti

[LAwLz]

10 minutes ago, zMeul said:

sorry, but I don't think that's how it works - flip a switch and the raster changes

the Raster Engines need to be physically capable of executing the new algorithms in the 1st place

I think it is a fair assumption to make that Vega has the necessary hardware to do it since it is suppose to be one of the new features.

It is a very complicated thing to do though so it is not really a surprise that AMD are struggling to implement it. So I think it's a software issue rather than a hardware one.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I never said people were wrong in saying it was not enabled. What I was saying is that people talk about it without understanding what it is. 

 

Yes  but that assumption relies on several things. 

1) That Fiji was actually memory starved. I have so far not seen any evidence for this whatsoever. And no, overclocking the memory and getting more performance does not imply that the card has a memory bottleneck. 

2) That Nvidia's color compression is miles ahead of AMD's. A few generations ago I think AMD said their compression on average saved 40% bandwidth. I really doubt Nvidia's saves like 90% or however much it would need to make the 980 match the Fury in terms of effective memory bandwidth. 

3) That AMD has made no improvements at all to the memory compression or controller.

 

I strongly doubt all three of those things are true, and if they aren't then you can't conclude that Vega is memory starved. 

The difference in compression between AMD and Nvidia is actually very large, although as you say that doesn't mean higher performance. If the GPU is doing all the work it possibly can adding more memory bandwidth won't do much at all.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/8

 

Quote

The net impact then, as NVIDIA likes to promote it, is a 70% increase in the total effective memory bandwidth. This comes from the earlier 40% (technically 42.9%) actual memory bandwidth gains in the move from 7Gbps GDDR5 to 10Gbps GDDR5X, coupled with the 20% effective memory bandwidth increase from delta compression. Keep those values in mind, as we’re going to get back to them in a little bit.

 

[Prysin]

On 28/07/2017 at 9:18 AM, VanayadGaming said:

 

 

The guys at HardOCP did a blind test with the help of AMD where they built 2 identical systems one with a 1080Ti and one with an RX Vega. Both had either freesync/gsync monitors. The thing here is that Kyle supplied his own 1080ti and did a full system reinstall just to make sure the nvidia system is not being tampered with. 

The conclusion was this:
 

 

Also, only a few said that 300$ more was worth it for one of the cards.

Well, this was tested in doom, so AMD does have an advantage there...but it looks promising indeed. I might just buy one if the prices are decent (+freesync ofc)

the reason they tested DOOM was because the game itself is CAPPED at 200 FPS. Thus aslong as a GPU can hit that, at those settings, it doesnt matter which GPU you use FPS wise, HOWEVER, pipeline responsiveness can still be felt, even throught Freesync/G-sync

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

The difference in compression between AMD and Nvidia is actually very large, although as you say that doesn't mean higher performance. If the GPU is doing all the work it possibly can adding more memory bandwidth won't do much at all.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/8

 

 

Sigh, and people doubt me when i say Nvidia will be 1-2 generations of GPU tech ahead of AMD for the foreseeable future.

[Sauron]

17 hours ago, hobobobo said:

4kb bus is not really good for games, its good for compute. Even with my limited understanding im pretty sure games dont saturate that bus well enough, gddr5 is 256kb and 5x is 352 and all games are made for that. Im pretty sure the game engine doesnt just go "oh, i can pack the last 16 commands into one now" just by itself. So the 4kb bus width is underused. Thats, as i see it, part of the reason why fury x aged so well

 

But then again, thats just my own conclusion for my own entertainment. All speculation is well and good, but we will see in 2 days

 

edit: and i think im terribly wrong on how memory bus operates

Well, that's exactly the opposite of saying it was bottlenecked by the memory bandwidth... which is what I was contesting. Not to mention it's not up to the game to decide how fast data is pulled from vram. The program requests some data, it's up to the card to retrieve it as quickly as possible. What you could say is that games use textures that are too small because otherwise they would choke lesser cards - therefore the faster memory doesn't affect game performance as much as it could, but that's besides the point.

[mrchow19910319]

Isn't Doom run better on AMD's card than one nvidia's card? 

 

IF I remember correctly, that was the case because of vulkan? 

[LAwLz]

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

The difference in compression between AMD and Nvidia is actually very large, although as you say that doesn't mean higher performance. If the GPU is doing all the work it possibly can adding more memory bandwidth won't do much at all.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/8

Holy crap AMD what are you doing!?

 

Anyway, still don't think that the "evidence" presented proves that Fiji was memory bottlenecked, nor that you can use that to conclude that Vega is memory bottlenecked either.

[MageTank]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Holy crap AMD what are you doing!?

 

Anyway, still don't think that the "evidence" presented proves that Fiji was memory bottlenecked, nor that you can use that to conclude that Vega is memory bottlenecked either.

You know what they say... There is no problem too big or too small that can't be solved by throwing obscene amounts of memory/memory bandwidth at it. And by they, I mean me. I say that. 

 

I should also say that I am joking, because I am. You know what else is a joke? Lay's memory bandwidth. That guy is bad at memory overclocking and should feel bad. Just don't tell him I said that, he knows where I live. 

[LAwLz]

Just now, MageTank said:

You know what they say... There is no problem too big or too small that can't be solved by throwing obscene amounts of memory/memory bandwidth at it. And by they, I mean me. I say that. 

Well, you can't solve the core not being able to keep up by throwing more memory bandwidth at it.

[MageTank]

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Well, you can't solve the core not being able to keep up by throwing more memory bandwidth at it.

I mean, it wouldn't stop me from trying. I did it with my G4400, and that thing bottlenecked my ram hard, lol. 

 

This is a joke. You can't solve everything with memory bandwidth. Except maybe world hunger, but I have not tried yet. 

[LAwLz]

Just now, MageTank said:

I mean, it wouldn't stop me from trying. I did it with my G4400, and that thing bottlenecked my ram hard, lol. 

I know what you're saying and I understand it, but I just want to make it clear to everyone that memory is not everything. Even your G4400 was only bottlenecked by RAM in some situations, but not all of them.

 

Throw it a small loop that can fit in L3 cache and RAM will not matter at all for example. Same with GPUs. That's why you should expect next to no performance difference (except in some situations like 4K gaming, but even then it will be small) from enabling it.

 

Again, totally get what you are saying but I am a bit worried people will see that post and go "oh, so memory is all that matters? Then TBR will fix the performance issues for sure!".

[MageTank]

10 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I know what you're saying and I understand it, but I just want to make it clear to everyone that memory is not everything. Even your G4400 was only bottlenecked by RAM in some situations, but not all of them.

 

Throw it a small loop that can fit in L3 cache and RAM will not matter at all for example. Same with GPUs. That's why you should expect next to no performance difference (except in some situations like 4K gaming, but even then it will be small) from enabling it.

 

Again, totally get what you are saying but I am a bit worried people will see that post and go "oh, so memory is all that matters? Then TBR will fix the performance issues for sure!".

I hope they see the last 2 posts and assume that I am joking, because I am. It's a little hard to convey over text though. 

 

I in no way, shape or form, advise people to try to solve their problems with memory alone. Faster memory can help when you are I/O bound on the CPU side of things, but it will not help make a lack of cores automatically better, as if you all of a sudden had more cores. 

 

I'll place an edit on both of those posts, to show that I was joking so that someone doesn't randomly come across them some time in the future, an treat them as a fact.

[Jito463]

15 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I'll place an edit on both of those posts, to show that I was joking so that someone doesn't randomly come across them some time in the future, an treat them as a fact.

More memory bandwidth solves everything!  MageTank said so!

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

I hope they see the last 2 posts and assume that I am joking, because I am. It's a little hard to convey over text though. 

 

I in no way, shape or form, advise people to try to solve their problems with memory alone. Faster memory can help when you are I/O bound on the CPU side of things, but it will not help make a lack of cores automatically better, as if you all of a sudden had more cores. 

 

I'll place an edit on both of those posts, to show that I was joking so that someone doesn't randomly come across them some time in the future, an treat them as a fact.

I've been reading too many /r/AMD threads.

Poe's law is in full effect on me.

 

Also, I am totally telling @Lays and you can not stop me!

[MageTank]

Just now, LAwLz said:

I've been reading too many /r/AMD threads.

Poe's law is in full effect on me.

 

Also, I am totally telling @Lays and you can not stop me!

He will just post his ram benching at unstable clocks, knowing I technically can't refute it without buying an OCFm or Apex board to do it myself. I'll probably send him that post in our hardware chat anyways, lol.

 

As for the topic, I've been pondering what could possibly be holding Vega back aside from architecture/driver issues, and it has me wondering if AMD is using strict power limits for a reason. In my head, if the cards are as over-engineered as people claim, they should have no problem allowing a higher power limit (as long as it's within ATX spec). For some reason, they are using obscene volts while using strict power limits simultaneously. The only reason I can think of as to why they would do this, is that they set a strict clock speed goal for these cards to hit, and couldn't hit them on a few of their samples without obscene volts. Rather than cut those down, or move the frequency goal back, they decided to throw more volts at them, and decided to set the volts high for every card as a precaution. This makes no sense to me, and I have no idea if they really did this or not, but I honestly can't think of any other reason for every Vega FE card to be this grossly overvolted.

 

It can probably be blamed on a rushed launch, as it wouldn't surprise me if they were rushed out the door with higher than required volts due to insufficient testing time, but even that is still a bad thing for Vega. If they cannot get this voltage and power limit issue solved, we are gonna have yet another AMD GPU architecture that is extremely poor at overclocking (Fury style). 

[Agosto]

As always, we need actual benchmarks. 

Sadly we don't know when RX Vega SKUs will hit reviewers' test benches.

[laminutederire]

37 minutes ago, Agost said:

As always, we need actual benchmarks. 

Sadly we don't know when RX Vega SKUs will hit reviewers' test benches.

Apparently Linus has his, so others probably have theirs as well. Either they just got it, and they can start benchmarks and put the video in the week or end of the week, hopefully before it hits stores, or they had it for a while like a week or two and they have the video ready already ! 

[MysticLTT]

On 7/28/2017 at 4:12 AM, Taf the Ghost said:

The weird thing is that if AMD has a GPU that slots between a 1080 & 1080 Ti, they could retail it at $599 USD and it's hard to complain about that, too much.

 

It's going to run hot/higher TDP, but at that class of buyer, it's little more than a talking point. This marketing roll out is either going to be a lesson in Anti-Hype or someone screwed up the pricing.

TDP is a noticeable pain in summer.

[leadeater]

Just now, MysticLTT said:

TDP is a noticeable pain in summer.

And a saving grace in winter 

[Agosto]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And a saving grace in winter 

Everyone who has the money to buy a video card has home heating, but not everyone has AC.

[Derangel]

8 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Isn't Doom run better on AMD's card than one nvidia's card? 

 

IF I remember correctly, that was the case because of vulkan? 

Not really. Both AMD and Nvidia have spent a lot of time making Doom work for them. They've both shown it off as a big title at events. There might be a tiny lean towards AMD, but there is nothing bad about playing it on Nvidia. Plus we're talking about a 1080ti vs a card that might not even match a 1080. The slight lean in AMD's favor would be demolished by the stronger card. Doom is one of the best optimized AAA titles for both camps in a long while.

[mrchow19910319]

29 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Not really. Both AMD and Nvidia have spent a lot of time making Doom work for them. They've both shown it off as a big title at events. There might be a tiny lean towards AMD, but there is nothing bad about playing it on Nvidia. Plus we're talking about a 1080ti vs a card that might not even match a 1080. The slight lean in AMD's favor would be demolished by the stronger card. Doom is one of the best optimized AAA titles for both camps in a long while.

I see. 

[juri-han]

ive always been team red but vega looks to be a flop, all these blind tests and trying to factor in g-sync/freesync monitors as part of the overall price are just shady tactics, i ran crossfire 290x for awhile but sold one when the bitcoin mining craze kicked up again (also due to the total lack of support for muli-gpu in games anymore) ill wait for official benchmarks and price to come out but as a AMD fan i cant help but feel disappointed..... at least ryzen turned out to be legit  

 

also no mention of settings so what is the point of this blind test? both monitors had 100hz cap if they are playing 1080p even a 1070 will get that, then on top of that thet pick doom (wonder why) even a fury x with vulkan can... if anything this a test in gsync vs freesync not rx vega

[Jito463]

On the bright side, if Vega turns out to be not worth it, at least my R9 390 still holds up well enough.  I don't even need to upgrade, I just wanted to as part of my complete system rebuild with Ryzen.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, Agost said:

Everyone who has the money to buy a video card has home heating, but not everyone has AC.

Well I actually did use my dual 290X system as a heater, works really well. Start up Nicehash, let it run all night, wake up in the morning to a nice warm room. Cards are on water so no noise.

 

Sure I have heaters and AC too but the AC is in a different room and my heater doesn't offset itself by making money .