AMD Computex 2016 - Polaris and Zen Revealed

[Starelementpoke]

2 hours ago, zMeul said:

I asked him for the direct links to the actual runs that show the exact numbers AMD showed on stage ... still waiting

 

more to the point, those runs you linked show a insignificant difference between the GTX1080 and the 2x RX480; plus, they're on different versions of the game

 

---

 

his excuse the snow did it is utter bullcrap!

look at the mountain ridges in this shot:

  Reveal hidden contents

RX480 run is missing details, it has flatter geometry

Something Something contrast and people mistaking it for detail.

[nj4ck]

3 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Well, AMD will crash and burn if it continues on the path you strive for. They can't earn money selling cheap chips that cost billions to develop.

AMD is returning to performance parity (supposedly) and does not want to be your discount choice. Investors wouldn't have it any other way in either case. It's very easy to explain their return to normal prices: the performance is much better and you'll pay for it. That's the strategy the management is going for and has publicly stated. The budget choice no more.

 

There is simply no way AMD can afford not to price according to performance. It would be corporate suicide to try keep the status quo as you wish for. AMD's GPUs cost roughly the same as Nvidia's (except GTX 1080) because there is performance parity and the CPU side will do the same where applicable meaning add and subtract dollars based on performance discrepancies and marketing strategies.

When have they stated this publicly? All I recall is them stating that they were striving to reenter the high-performance market, not that they were intending to focus solely on it and raise their prices to Intel/Nvidia's levels. I mean, technically you could say they tried that with the Fury X, and that didn't work out that well, did it? The only reason AMD exists at all today is because they've been selling metric tons of mid-range APUs for very low prices that end up in consoles.

Also, just look at the market, there's two main money makers, the low- to midrange consumer market and the server market. Consumer products above the $500 mark are a tiny, TINY percentage of the market, I highly doubt AMD would be aiming to focus on that tiny market share. They need products like the RX 480, and they need high-performance CPUs they can sell for competitive prices. And on a side note, there's two ways to make money off a product that was expensive to produce: a) you sell a few of them for an insanely high price, or b) you sell a ton of them for a very low price. 

[zMeul]

13 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

Something Something contrast and people mistaking it for detail.

look at the textures, not at the shadowed areas - they're missing detail, they're muddy

 

if someone can get their hands on a uncompressed version, it would be way easier to distinguish

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, zMeul said:

look at the textures, not at the shadowed areas - they're missing detail, they're muddy

 

if someone can get their hands on a uncompressed version, it would be way easier to distinguish

Not my words, reiterating @Notional ´s words.

 

56 minutes ago, Notional said:

People confusing high contrast for high detail, is the reason TV's in store's have contrast settings set to over 9000; and why a colour temp of 6500 Kelvin and proper calibration is not a thing on consumer products.

 

[zMeul]

1 minute ago, Starelementpoke said:

Not my words, reiterating @Notional ´s words.

I have no need for his words

[Starelementpoke]

2 minutes ago, zMeul said:

I have no need for his words

Why´d you take mine then?

[zMeul]

2 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

Why´d you take mine then?

you should've said in the 1st place you're quoting him - I wouldn't've replied

and since you said you quoted him, those aren't your words

[Trixanity]

5 minutes ago, nj4ck said:

When have they stated this publicly? All I recall is them stating that they were striving to reenter the high-performance market, not that they were intending to focus solely on it and raise their prices to Intel/Nvidia's levels. I mean, technically you could say they tried that with the Fury X, and that didn't work out that well, did it? The only reason AMD exists at all today is because they've been selling metric tons of mid-range APUs for very low prices that end up in consoles.

Also, just look at the market, there's two main money makers, the low- to midrange consumer market and the server market. Consumer products above the $500 mark are a tiny, TINY percentage of the market, I highly doubt AMD would be aiming to focus on that tiny market share. They need products like the RX 480, and they need high-performance CPUs they can sell for competitive prices. And on a side note, there's two ways to make money off a product that was expensive to produce: a) you sell a few of them for an insanely high price, or b) you sell a ton of them for a very low price. 

Entering the high performance market requires performance parity (or close to it). Since we're talking performance parity through IPC increases, it means performance increases across the board meaning being competitive in all relevant market segments. Selling 5950X-like performance for sub-$400 is just idiotic. No one focuses on selling $999 CPU products because the volume is too low but those you sell give you good margins. I'm not saying AMD aims to sell processors exclusively in the price range. What I'm saying is that their prices will look awfully similar to Intel's when all is said and done. You might be able to pick AMD up for cheaper but not half price. We're talking being competitive cheaper, not 'please buy our products instead' cheaper. This pricing scheme will span the entire product stack. You get what you pay for is what I'm saying.

 

As for staying afloat: APUs and GPUs, yes. AMD's GPUs cost roughly the same as Nvidia's. You can't pick up an AMD GPU with similar performance to Nvidia for half the price. Why is that? Because the performance is similar. They only sell the APUs cheaply because they have to, not because they want to.

 

When all is said and done: it's pointless to bury their own profits with no good reason. That means a top Zen SKU is not <$400. It's not a volume product and will probably have mediocre yields at best hence high price. That's how the prices work.

 

4 cores is mainstream right now, at best you can hope that AMD pushes 6 cores to the mainstream.

 

Finally, while up to interpretation, straight from Lisa Su "The idea that AMD is a cheap solution has to be replaced with the idea that AMD is a very competitive solution”. And when you have a competitive solution you don't give them away for free.

If the big chips cost little, you end up pushing the price tiers too close together which means you end up cannibalizing the majority of your product stack which effectively ruins your sales, so ultimately: "This just in: AMD bankrupt - who will buy the company?".

[Trixanity]

24 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

Why´d you take mine then?

Don't stick your pecker in this hornet's nest. You don't want to get involved. The NaCl content is too damn high.

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, Trixanity said:

Don't stick your pecker in this hornet's nest. You don't want to get involved. The NaCl content is too damn high.

I´m aware of all of this. Don´t care.

[Clanscorpia]

1 hour ago, nj4ck said:

When have they stated this publicly? All I recall is them stating that they were striving to reenter the high-performance market, not that they were intending to focus solely on it and raise their prices to Intel/Nvidia's levels. I mean, technically you could say they tried that with the Fury X, and that didn't work out that well, did it? The only reason AMD exists at all today is because they've been selling metric tons of mid-range APUs for very low prices that end up in consoles.

Also, just look at the market, there's two main money makers, the low- to midrange consumer market and the server market. Consumer products above the $500 mark are a tiny, TINY percentage of the market, I highly doubt AMD would be aiming to focus on that tiny market share. They need products like the RX 480, and they need high-performance CPUs they can sell for competitive prices. And on a side note, there's two ways to make money off a product that was expensive to produce: a) you sell a few of them for an insanely high price, or b) you sell a ton of them for a very low price. 

They don't seem to be focusing on the high end market

[hex4]

On 01/06/2016 at 3:44 AM, hex4 said:

It's contrast, are you seriously this inept in making out colour differences to actual graphical differences?

It also looks like this game uses different time of day and the AI are random, frame by frame the whole scene is different.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4m692q/concerning_the_aots_image_quality_controversy/

[hex4]

2 hours ago, zMeul said:

look at the textures, not at the shadowed areas - they're missing detail, they're muddy

 

if someone can get their hands on a uncompressed version, it would be way easier to distinguish

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4m692q/concerning_the_aots_image_quality_controversy/

[zMeul]

1 minute ago, hex4 said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4m692q/concerning_the_aots_image_quality_controversy/

yes, there's already a topic on that - Robert's excuse is utter bullcrap .. the snow did it

except the differences in the mountain ridges that aren't covered in snow

[hex4]

2 minutes ago, zMeul said:

yes, there's already a topic on that - Robert's excuse is utter bullcrap .. the snow did it

except the differences in the mountain ridges that aren't covered in snow

Shhh

 

Been a long time reader before signing up here, i have seen your posts before ^^

[TheRandomness]

1 hour ago, Clanscorpia said:

They don't seem to be focusing on the high end market

yet.

[vanished]

9 hours ago, nj4ck said:

I disagree, almost all the "mainstream consumers" I know use i3 or i5 chips, the people willing to spend money on an i7 usually do have a reason for doing so, at least in my experience. Be it for (future) gaming, rendering, video editing or whatever else, there's definitely a lot of people that would benefit greatly from bringing 16t cpus into the sub-$400 range. The enthusiast i7s, with tthe exception of maybe the 5820k, I hardly ever see anyone use privately. Granted, this is all anecdotal, but I know a lot of people here have been longing for exactly this kind of advancement for quite a while.

You're right, people would definitely benefit from 16t chips under 400 bucks.  The two reasons I didn't get a 5960x are cost and lower single threaded performance due to having so many cores.

[Big-G]

I'm just gonna put this out there...

 

Sorry to say this, but currently there's only one non-synthetic benchmark for the RX 480 at the moment (that I know of, and in mGPU mode), the generally AMD favorable AotS... AMD should have known people will pick it apart as they did. For all the posturing that AotS is not AMD friendly, they still can't explain why it's the only benchmark where a 390X outperforms a Titan X.

 

I will not base any decision on AotS, sorry....

[Clanscorpia]

9 hours ago, GidonsClaw said:

I'm just gonna put this out there...

 

Sorry to say this, but currently there's only one non-synthetic benchmark for the RX 480 at the moment (that I know of, and in mGPU mode), the generally AMD favorable AotS... AMD should have known people will pick it apart as they did. For all the posturing that AotS is not AMD friendly, they still can't explain why it's the only benchmark where a 390X outperforms a Titan X.

 

I will not base any decision on AotS, sorry....

Based on the performance per watt improvents and the over 5 teraflops, it's likely going to be good 

[Clanscorpia]

23 hours ago, TheRandomness said:

yet.

I mean like their buisness plan

[Valentyn]

Looks like the RX480 8GB has appeared on 3DMark 11.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11263084

 

Not a bad score at all.

 

Here is a comparison against a Fury with shaders unlocked 3840 vs 3584. CPU was also only at 4.4Ghz

[Briggsy]

4 hours ago, Valentyn said:

Looks like the RX480 8GB has appeared on 3DMark 11.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11263084

 

Not a bad score at all.

 

Here is a comparison against a Fury with shaders unlocked 3840 vs 3584. CPU was also only at 4.4Ghz
 

Not bad. Its probably overclocked, but that is a decent score. I should run my 390 through a run with latest drivers and see how far away it is.

[LabRat]

3 minutes ago, Briggsy said:

Not bad. Its probably overclocked, but that is a decent score. I should run my 390 through a run with latest drivers and see how far away it is.

it would be good to have a "nano" with 8gigs of ram.... and better cooling for $229.

 

do the 390 test.

[mariushm]

If anyone still has that 51% figure in their heads... you guys are understanding it wrong.

 

Read this:  https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4m692q/concerning_the_aots_image_quality_controversy/

 

2x Radeon RX 480 - 62.5 fps | Single Batch GPU Util: 51% | Med Batch GPU Util: 71.9 | Heavy Batch GPU Util: 92.3%

GTX 1080 – 58.7 fps | Single Batch GPU Util: 98.7%| Med Batch GPU Util: 97.9% | Heavy Batch GPU Util: 98.7%

 

Reddit user asks :

Quote

When it's claimed that there is only 51% GPU utilization does that mean 51% of each GPU is being utilized or that the performance scaling is equivalent to 151% of a single card?

 

AMD Rep answered:

Quote

The scaling from 1->2 GPUs in the dual RX 480 test we assembled is 1.83x. The OP was looking only at the lowest draw call rates when asking about the 51%. The single batch GPU utilization is 51% (CPU-bound), medium is 71.9% utilization (less CPU-bound) and heavy batch utilization is 92.3% (not CPU-bound). All together for the entire test, there is 1.83X the performance of a single GPU in what users saw on YouTube. The mGPU subsystem of AOTS is very robust.

 

So basically with a "robust" game like AOTS they achieve 1.83x out of a maximum 2x ... with arguably still some unrefined drivers, with room for improvement. The 51% number was cherry-picked.

 

Also note the other comment about nVidia cards showing better performance due to a bug in how they render:

 

Quote

 

At present the GTX 1080 is incorrectly executing the terrain shaders responsible for populating the environment with the appropriate amount of snow. The GTX 1080 is doing less work to render AOTS than it otherwise would if the shader were being run properly. Snow is somewhat flat and boring in color compared to shiny rocks, which gives the illusion that less is being rendered, but this is an incorrect interpretation of how the terrain shaders are functioning in this title.

 

 

 

 

[Briggsy]

43 minutes ago, LabRat said:

it would be good to have a "nano" with 8gigs of ram.... and better cooling for $229.

 

do the 390 test.

Yeah, on second thought I hope that's not an overclocked 480, or its weaker than a 390. Maybe Drivers aren't up to snuff for the 480 yet.

 

Here's my 390 score, overclocked to 1150/1650 which is really modest and doable by all 390s. My CPU is somewhat overclocked, but that shouldn't make a huge difference on the graphic score.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11299972

 

 

 

Did another run with stock clocks. Very close to the 480 score a few posts back. I really hope it was a stock 480.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11300012