Future of Radeon

[VerticalDiscussions]

Sigh... Green team always the only option eh :l? The prices tough x-x

[79wjd]

7 minutes ago, Prysin said:

however NOW software is. It took 5 fucking years, but now it is. So your point is moot.

 

Also, i think it is crystal clear that this time around, AMD and others has gone ahead and prepped the software solution FIRST, prior to banking hard on multi-GPU.

Speaking of, it's been a week. 

On 7/1/2016 at 2:47 PM, Prysin said:

ill do one better.

 

One week.

 

ill record the testing and post a video on it. Going to take a little time to tear my PC down then put FX back in and do testing.

also, testing with simulated i3, i5, i7, FX 4 and FX 6

also testing with RAM speed (because i can)

also testing with low end GPU (GTX 950) so we can see how much a Nvidia drivers help out on low end.

 

It will take a while. Probably 4 days, just to get all the benchmarking done.

 

8 minutes ago, Prysin said:

your analogy would be fitting only if there was a shortage of PSUs that could handle the 295x2. There is not. You just need to actually READ a label.

I know such a task is hugely difficult for some people. Just like adding more powerphases, connectors, traces, VRMs and cooling is to an already cramped PCB.

Fine all modify my analogy a little.....It's like buying a car and being told you can't go to a third of all gas stations around. The point is, if I'm going to pay $1500 for a card it better damn be within spec. I don't think adding an additional 8-pin power connector would have stopped AMD's engineers in their tracks....and if it would have, then they really should get a new engineering team. 

[Prysin]

2 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Well no. Because AMD got wrecked by Intel in 2011. It's no good to them now, besides which, software still isn't that well threaded. It's gotten considerably better, but it's not a solved problem for AMD. Hence the focus on IPC for Zen.

 

As for multi-GPU, well, there's been some work through DX12. But it's far from clear that multi-GPU will suddenly be amazing within a few months. Nvidia has been moving away from it, and AMD's multi-GPU cards have done worse and worse over the last few years. I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not optimistic.

Nvidia is moving away from the most difficult aspects. Not the 2x card solution.

Why?

Because scaling, coherency and synergy is a bitch when you are trying to manhandle the rendering pipe of a game to accept multiple GPUs through your own proprietary driver.

 

It would be much easier IN GAME.

 

Then there is the "holy grail" of VR, which is "one GPU per eye". Something BOTH vendors are chasing.

 

Yes the 1060 wont have SLI capabilities, but DX12 Multi-GPU should still work. The only reason nvidia is "removing" the SLI option with the 1060 is economics, not hardware or utilization. They simply DONT want to cannibalize 1070 or 1080 sales.

 

 

2 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Speaking of, it's been a week. 

 

Fine all modify my analogy a little.....It's like buying a car and being told you can't go to a third of all gas stations around. The point is, if I'm going to pay $1500 for a card it better damn be within spec. I don't think adding an additional 8-pin power connector would have stopped AMD's engineers in their tracks....and if it would have, then they really should get a new engineering team. 

you lil know it all. Go design a 3 x 8 pin dual GPU with 4GB of VRAM per dual GPU using 512bit BUS and 512MB VRAM stacks. Go on. you seem to know how to do it.

 

ill give you one week to do it.

[Mr.Meerkat]

5 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Well no. Because AMD got wrecked by Intel in 2011. It's no good to them now, besides which, software still isn't that well threaded. It's gotten considerably better, but it's not a solved problem for AMD. Hence the focus on IPC for Zen.

 

As for multi-GPU, well, there's been some work through DX12. But it's far from clear that multi-GPU will suddenly be amazing within a few months. Nvidia has been moving away from it, and AMD's multi-GPU cards have done worse and worse over the last few years. I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not optimistic.

Hmmm...in well optimised games with dual GPU CFX (which is now most triple As), you can see a 90% gain compared to a single card so...it's not that bad you know

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Speaking of, it's been a week. 

 

Fine all modify my analogy a little.....It's like buying a car and being told you can't go to a third of all gas stations around. The point is, if I'm going to pay $1500 for a card it better damn be within spec. I don't think adding an additional 8-pin power connector would have stopped AMD's engineers in their tracks....and if it would have, then they really should get a new engineering team. 

Fairly certain it was the marketing team that said "Make it run on a 6 PIN only we have to highlight efficiency!"

[Prysin]

4 minutes ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

Sigh... Green team always the only option eh :l? The prices tough x-x

yes, Team green is the only option for a masochist.

[Prysin]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Fairly certain it was the marketing team that said "Make it run on a 6 PIN only we have to highlight efficiency!"

 

 

[79wjd]

9 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Fairly certain it was the marketing team that said "Make it run on a 6 PIN only we have to highlight efficiency!"

I'm talking about the 295x2 not following the spec. Sure, it doesn't matter for safety reasons, but for $1500 I expect AMD to not cut corners and to follow the spec. 

 

10 minutes ago, Prysin said:

you lil know it all. Go design a 3 x 8 pin dual GPU with 4GB of VRAM per dual GPU using 512bit BUS and 512MB VRAM stacks. Go on. you seem to know how to do it.

 

ill give you one week to do it.

Yeah, I'm a know it all for expecting AMD to not cut corners on a $1500 card. Sorry. There's no way you could possibly believe an additional 8 pin would have pushed the card over the breaking point.

 

Oh, and you were the one who promised benchmarks in a week. 

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

I'm talking about the 295x2 not following the spec. Sure, it doesn't matter for safety reasons, but for $1500 I expect AMD to not cut corners and to follow the spec.

Oh ok. Yeah that card was like 300 watts ahead of it's time.

[Prysin]

14 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

I'm talking about the 295x2 not following the spec. Sure, it doesn't matter for safety reasons, but for $1500 I expect AMD to not cut corners and to follow the spec. 

 

Yeah, I'm a know it all for expecting AMD to not cut corners on a $1500 card. Sorry. There's no way you could possibly believe an additional 8 pin would have pushed the card over the breaking point.

 

Oh, and you were the one who promised benchmarks in a week. 

again, its a norm. not a law.

a Norm can be deviated from if you, either as a company or individual, can sign off and guarantee that your product, despite being outside of the norm, is not in any way dangerous if used under YOUR guidelines.

 

you, and several others seem to massively fail to realize that all these "specifications" you are talking about is guidelines, not a law.

[thekeemo]

2 hours ago, SamStrecker said:

I don't know about that. 

it went over the power specs for the power connectors but they are ridiculously underated. 

[PlayStation 2]

All the critical firing over the R9 295x2.

 

I really question this forum sometimes.

 

Anyways, I really hope AMD steps their shit up. I like the RX 480 and all but the whole thing with shit motherboards not being able to handle it kinda out a bad spotlight on them.

[TheRandomness]

5 hours ago, Citadelen said:

Ah so the 490 is a dual card. Well, seeing as the 480 has great scaling (from what I've seen) I think it'll be a good buy as long as it's not too expensive.

 

5 hours ago, SamStrecker said:

We might have a 295X2 on our hands but doesn't burn your house down and use 600 amps

What was the scaling on the 480 again? 70-95%? 2 8 pins would be able to give enough power from a 650~W PSU and at $350~ that **could** be amazing. Pls AMD don't fuck up harder. Or maybe have both dies on 1 interposer... idk

[Prysin]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

All the critical firing over the R9 295x2.

 

I really question this forum sometimes.

 

Anyways, I really hope AMD steps their shit up. I like the RX 480 and all but the whole thing with shit motherboards not being able to handle it kinda out a bad spotlight on them.

well its the usual "shills" doing their thing.

If it was the other way around it would be half the "issue" it is now.

[Briggsy]

56 minutes ago, Prysin said:

well its the usual "shills" doing their thing.

If it was the other way around it would be half the "issue" it is now.

When AMD beat Nvidia to 28nm in 2012, they had a golden, once in a lifetime opportunity to flood the market and destroy Nvidia's marketshare and mindshare. at the time Nvidia was still trying to peddle their micro-furnace Thermi 500 cards to any schmuck that glanced in their direction (I owned a thermi card, what a furnace it was).

 

What did AMD do with such a strong position?

...

....

.....

 

they gouged the crap out of the consumers, and pushed people into waiting for Kepler. Nvidia eventually got their 7870 competitor out, the gtx 660 - for $229, and ended up with 85% of the marketshare between those two cards (not total marketshare, just comparing sales between the 2 cards).

 

Mid/High-end cards:

7970 $550 reference MSRP

7950 $450     "       "        "

 

Mainstream cards:

7870 $350 reference MSRP

7850 $250     "       "        "

 

This time around you have Nvidia in the same position AMD was in early 2012, but AMD has rushed out the $239 competitor to the 1060, to at least have "something" to make some kind of money while the rest of their 14nm cards catch up. If AMD didn't have the 480, they would be in a horrible position, and you can bet the 1060 would have been $350 instead of $250.

[Rune]

6 hours ago, SurvivorNVL said:

I can only imagine what Raja Koduri could do if Radeon wasn't in AMD's hands, but in Intel's.  Resource wise--it'd be a powerhouse.  I can dream.

Can you imagine that? A GPU company with the R&D budget of Intel? We would have had VR ready GPU's years ago if that had happened in the 90s.

[Guest Kloaked]

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

again, its a norm. not a law.

a Norm can be deviated from if you, either as a company or individual, can sign off and guarantee that your product, despite being outside of the norm, is not in any way dangerous if used under YOUR guidelines.

 

you, and several others seem to massively fail to realize that all these "specifications" you are talking about is guidelines, not a law.

These are some amazing mental gymnastics you're pulling. I rate you a bronze for effort.

 

I remember the lot of you shitting on some of us during the 970 debacle, for some of the very same reasons that you're pulling to defend AMD. I keep seeing others on this forum say "It's okay on this forum if Nvidia does it, but it's not okay with AMD does it apparently!". Yeah, no, it's the other way around on this forum. A lot of you refuse to debate with any logic - I stated that what Nvidia did with the 970 was stupid, but the card was perfectly fine. I don't think I specifically made any stance on the 480, but I did see it potentially being an issue since it was going way over the PCIe power draw spec for a video card (please don't fucking bring up the 750 or 960 - totally different issue since the culprits weren't reference cards coming straight from Nvidia).

 

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

well its the usual "shills" doing their thing.

If it was the other way around it would be half the "issue" it is now.

Funny you say that - it's to be expected.

[SurvivorNVL]

15 minutes ago, Rune said:

Can you imagine that? A GPU company with the R&D budget of Intel? We would have had VR ready GPU's years ago if that had happened in the 90s.

This is why I believe, personally, and thanks due in part to @patrickjp93, that not only would the open source community benefit from AMD going under and Intel acquiring Radeon, but innovation entirely would benefit, we'd all benefit as an AMD64/x86 armed nVidia(acquiring x86 only through negotiation with Intel, as nVidia would need AMD64 for a bargaining chip), but we'd all benefit so hugely from Intel/Radeon and nVidia/AMD battling it out to the bitter end.  It'd be even crazier, and more fun if companies like Apple and Google acquired these giants, and then we watch the half trillion dollar companies battle it out.

[Rune]

3 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

This is why I believe, personally, and thanks due in part to @patrickjp93, that not only would the open source community benefit from AMD going under and Intel acquiring Radeon, but innovation entirely would benefit, we'd all benefit as an AMD64/x86 armed nVidia(acquiring x86 only through negotiation with Intel, as nVidia would need AMD64 for a bargaining chip), but we'd all benefit so hugely from Intel/Radeon and nVidia/AMD battling it out to the bitter end.  It'd be even crazier, and more fun if companies like Apple and Google acquired these giants, and then we watch the half trillion dollar companies battle it out.

Unfortunately, laws do prevent these sorts of things from happening. Intel is more likely to continuing throwing money and licenses at AMD to keep them afloat because its actually still cheaper than paying the government.

[SurvivorNVL]

3 minutes ago, Rune said:

Unfortunately, laws do prevent these sorts of things from happening. Intel is more likely to continuing throwing money and licenses at AMD to keep them afloat because its actually still cheaper than paying the government.

Well, technically, if AMD dies through fair competition and splits between nVidia and themselves, they'd never be hit by monopoly charges, and if Intel killed off all competition, as long as they continue to innovate and don't rack up their prices - they can be a monopoly.  It's only if they abuse their position, that they get huge fines / charges.  Which I imagine they'd be damn careful if they reached that stage.  They'd want to be as friendly as possible.

[Delicieuxz]

7 hours ago, Vode said:

Raya mentions/admits that AMD wasn't really putting a lot of resources toward advancing the technology behind GPUs. He hints at the fact they allowed Nvidia to get ahead by not focusing on GPUs as much. He says that the Rx 480 is the start of them seriously trying to compete again. The reason for slacking in the recent past behind seems to be that a large part of the industry had believed that discrete graphics were going die for a long time, also AMD focusing on Semi-Custom (XOne/PS4). Of course now we know there has been a recent growth of PC gaming in the last few years and the predictions didn't turn out to be true.

"A large part of the industry"... meaning, AMD? The only problem with discrete GPUs was that Nvidia and AMD weren't doing enough with them, making such small increases in performance generation over generation, that there was no longer any point in buying a new GPU each generation. How did Raya think that his own lack of creating an enticing product meant that people weren't wanting discrete GPUs? They were, AMD and Nvidia were simply not producing anything meaningful.

 

What a goof.

[Briggsy]

42 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

"A large part of the industry"... meaning, AMD? The only problem with discrete GPUs was that Nvidia and AMD weren't doing enough with them, making such small increases in performance generation over generation, that there was no longer any point in buying a new GPU each generation. How did Raya think that his own lack of creating an enticing product meant that people weren't wanting discrete GPUs? They were, AMD and Nvidia were simply not producing anything meaningful.

 

What a goof.

Incredibly valid point, and on two fronts. It's a self fulfilling prophecy fulfilled.

 

AMD has trouble keeping up with nvidia, so nvidia staggers their releases and produce cards that are deliberately performing as close as possible to AMD. Progress slows down, and then AMD in turn looks at the interest in discrete Graphics declining for themselves (not so much for nvidia) and decide they should invest in other technologies. By the time the fabs are ready with custom FinFET for AMD and Nvidia, AMD are off in the corner twiddling their thumbs playing xbox, and Nvidia are charging out of the gate with the biggest improvement in discrete graphic performance since 8800 era. Suddenly interest in discrete graphics explodes, and AMD are surprised about their current predicament.

 

I'll admit, the idea of integrated graphics on a cpu replacing discrete graphics is really cool, especially for small form factor, but the Fusion concept AMD has been touting since 2006 is still a decade away realistically, if for no other reason than because AMD simply do not have the budget. If they had Intels budget, a 300 watt APU that could outperform the best discrete gpu would already be a reality. Sadly for AMD, they are building a trillionaires idea with a billionaires budget.

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, Rune said:

Unfortunately, laws do prevent these sorts of things from happening. Intel is more likely to continuing throwing money and licenses at AMD to keep them afloat because its actually still cheaper than paying the government.

No, AMD going under would not mean any immediate financial loss for Intel. In a bankruptcy where the company has to be auctioned off to pay back investors and creditors, Intel buying Radeon, and Nvidia buying up the CPU IP (Intel could not buy it because of anti-trust and monopoly control laws) would give both more flexibility, but also put each other directly in the line of fire in terms of competition.

 

51 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

"A large part of the industry"... meaning, AMD? The only problem with discrete GPUs was that Nvidia and AMD weren't doing enough with them, making such small increases in performance generation over generation, that there was no longer any point in buying a new GPU each generation. How did Raya think that his own lack of creating an enticing product meant that people weren't wanting discrete GPUs? They were, AMD and Nvidia were simply not producing anything meaningful.

 

What a goof.

Intel and IBM both see dGPUs dying in the future too outside of PC gaming markets, and that will shrink to have only the highest end enthusiasts in the end.

 

57 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

Well, technically, if AMD dies through fair competition and splits between nVidia and themselves, they'd never be hit by monopoly charges, and if Intel killed off all competition, as long as they continue to innovate and don't rack up their prices - they can be a monopoly.  It's only if they abuse their position, that they get huge fines / charges.  Which I imagine they'd be damn careful if they reached that stage.  They'd want to be as friendly as possible.

Intel couldn't be convicted on anti-competitive behavior charges, but the issue of being a monopoly, and all the extra scrutiny that comes with it, would remain. In such a case though, the monopoly would disappear as quickly as it arrived. Intel would have to negotiate to get x86_64 from Nvidia and vice versa. Nvidia would also have all of that AMD IP to apply Denver and Parker technologies too. Competition would be restored in a couple years. Intel would just have to not be stupid with pricing and diminishing supplies (high pricing alone is not enough to be considered anti-competitive and predatory).

[byalexandr]

Holy crap if the 490 is a dual chip card then I might just buy two 480s right now.

[Doobeedoo]

490 being dual card is interesting really. Once I saw that name I thought Vega? But then again, naming wise wouldn't make sense. Cause it should be named differently to replace Fury lineup and it's using HBM2 so that's the reason too. And Vega wouldn't just be one chip and '490' name would be the last and only one left for that bracket names.