AMD Vega with 16GB memory and 1600 MHz clock ( Confirmed )

[dalekphalm]

29 minutes ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

Modern games now use a lot of Vram. 4gb is the bare minimum and for a lot of the games now will not cut it especially at higher res which is what cards like the 1080 and 1080ti are made for and to a certain degree the 1070. Having 4gb is a no no and was barely acceptable back when the 900 series was out.

Whether that's true or not, it certainly was not true when Fiji was released - and I pretty much guarantee that it having "only" 4GB of RAM definitely hurt compared to the 980 Ti having 6GB or the Titan X Maxwell having 12GB.

 

The masses are easily manipulated by bigger numbers, since they have no context of what the number means. Even here, among the more tech affluent there were those who immediately dismissed Fiji because of it's VRAM amount.

 

I too would suspect that modern AAA games might start to push past 4GB of RAM usage, but I would definitely need confirmation before actually believing it.

 

Do you have any sources that compare RAM usage and performance suffering because of VRAM being limited to 4GB compared to a higher number?

[MadyTehWolfie]

25 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Except that:

 

1) HBM2 has significantly higher bandwidth, thus it can push the data through faster (meaning, less time needed for buffering, so less RAM required overall)

2) As I understand it, the design is intended to allow data to be accessed directly from other sources, such as RAM, rather than waiting on the CPU to pass it on.

 

Number 2 could be only referring to the professional grade cards, though.  Either way, point 1 stands on it's own.  Faster RAM trumps more RAM.

 

Think of it like a highway.  A 2 lane highway is going to be congested easier than a 4 lane highway.  If you have X number of cars you need to fit on the highway at once, a 4 lane would allow them to fit in a shorter space.  Likewise from a 4 lane highway to a 6 or 8 lane highway.  If more information can pass through at a time, then less RAM is required overall.

Maybe except in game the Vram still gets filled up regardless. While faster ram is better it doesnt matter how fast it is. If a game requires 6gb and you only have 4gb your shit out of luck

[MadyTehWolfie]

14 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Whether that's true or not, it certainly was not true when Fiji was released - and I pretty much guarantee that it having "only" 4GB of RAM definitely hurt compared to the 980 Ti having 6GB or the Titan X Maxwell having 12GB.

 

The masses are easily manipulated by bigger numbers, since they have no context of what the number means. Even here, among the more tech affluent there were those who immediately dismissed Fiji because of it's VRAM amount.

 

I too would suspect that modern AAA games might start to push past 4GB of RAM usage, but I would definitely need confirmation before actually believing it.

 

Do you have any sources that compare RAM usage and performance suffering because of VRAM being limited to 4GB compared to a higher number?

I game at higher resolutions then 1080p and can say that there are a good number of games that push over 4gb and a lot more that come close at 1080p. 

[Jito463]

2 minutes ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

Maybe except in game the Vram still gets filled up regardless. While faster ram is better it doesnt matter how fast it is. If a game requires 6gb and you only have 4gb your s*** out of luck

Considering we have no HBM2 cards to test with, you're only speculating.  I suppose you could say the same about my post, though it is at least based on reports of the technology.

[MadyTehWolfie]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

Considering we have no HBM2 cards to test with, you're only speculating.  I suppose you could say the same about my post, though it is at least based on reports of the technology.

I dont see how a 4gb card will be able to handle 6gb of data. Pretty good analogy to this is  your in a car and need to go 10 miles. One car only has enough fuel to go 3 miles and the other 10. The car with least fuel can travel the distance faster then the other. In the end it doesnt matter how fast it goes because it cant do the mileage. Dont see how the speed of the Ram would matter when it is limited by capacity or if the game requires 6gb of ram processing it faster wont change the fact it still needs to process and keep 6gb of ram. 

[Jito463]

Just now, MadyTehWolfie said:

I dont see how a 4gb card will be able to handle 6gb of data. Pretty good analogy to this is  your in a car and need to go 10 miles. One car only has enough fuel to go 3 miles and the other 10. The car with least fuel can travel the distance faster then the other. In the end it doesnt matter how fast it goes because it cant do the mileage. Dont see how the speed of the Ram would matter when it is limited by capacity or if the game requires 6gb of ram processing it faster wont change the fact it still needs to process and keep 6gb of ram. 

If the card can process the information faster, it can push it through to the GPU faster, thus it doesn't need to hold it in VRAM.  Do you really think that when you load a game, every single resource needed is loaded into VRAM and just remains there?  No, it's loaded as needed.  So once that data is pushed through, it's not needed in VRAM anymore.  Some game engines may be more inefficient in that regard, and keep it all in VRAM, but I'd wager that's very few of them.

 

I did a quick search, and found an article showing how much VRAM was being used by various games:

 

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/89/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k/index.html

 

More interesting is the follow up article, which shows how much VRAM was being used after enabling AA.

 

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/90/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k-aa-enabled/index.html

 

I say more interesting, because notice the jump in VRAM usage just from enabling AA.  Why would that be, if it's just storing the data?  It's only storing it there until it can be pushed into the GPU.  The VRAM is just a large buffer intended to hold data until the card can process it for rendering.  If the card can receive the data faster, then the buffer will be emptied quicker, and thus you don't need as much of it.

[MadyTehWolfie]

15 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

If the card can process the information faster, it can push it through to the GPU faster, thus it doesn't need to hold it in VRAM.  Do you really think that when you load a game, every single resource needed is loaded into VRAM and just remains there?  No, it's loaded as needed.  So once that data is pushed through, it's not needed in VRAM anymore.  Some game engines may be more inefficient in that regard, and keep it all in VRAM, but I'd wager that's very few of them.

 

I did a quick search, and found an article showing how much VRAM was being used by various games:

 

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/89/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k/index.html

 

More interesting is the follow up article, which shows how much VRAM was being used after enabling AA.

 

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/90/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k-aa-enabled/index.html

 

I say more interesting, because notice the jump in VRAM usage just from enabling AA.  Why would that be, if it's just storing the data?  It's only storing it there until it can be pushed into the GPU.  The VRAM is just a large buffer intended to hold data until the card can process it for rendering.  If the card can receive the data faster, then the buffer will be emptied quicker, and thus you don't need as much of it.

Enlightening, guess we'll have to see however a lot of people share my thinking which is why I still say 4gb isn't enough even if what you say is how it is because the perception is reality here if I'm wrong and you are right. Either way it'll be interesting to see. I however cannot argue this further as I haven't done nearly enough research/care enough and your argument seems very reasonable. Guess we'll see when HBM launches if it makes a difference in practice to what you say it does on paper.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

Enlightening, guess we'll have to see however a lot of people share my thinking which is why I still say 4gb isn't enough even if what you say is how it is because the perception is reality here if I'm wrong and you are right. Either way it'll be interesting to see. I however cannot argue this further as I haven't done nearly enough research/care enough and your argument seems very reasonable. Guess we'll see when HBM launches if it makes a difference in practice to what you say it does on paper.

True, it's all theoretical right now.  Frankly, I'll probably look to get one of the 8GB cards anyway, just because I like the idea of more VRAM (which is where AMD will have marketing issues with a 4GB card), but I could see it being beneficial for people who want the high end, but are on a limited budget.

[MadyTehWolfie]

Just now, Jito463 said:

True, it's all theoretical right now.  Frankly, I'll probably look to get one of the 8GB cards anyway, just because I like the idea of more VRAM (which is where AMD will have marketing issues with a 4GB card), but I could see it being beneficial for people who want the high end, but are on a limited budget.

There's also the fact that, ok it process it faster but let's say it is fast enough to process 5gb and only have 4gb at 1080p. What happens when the speeds can no longer keep up with the demand. For example, call of duty games have been know for what ever reason to use ludicrous amounts of Vram. What happens when it has to process 8gb forth of data and the speed can't do it all. This is why for people with high resolutions that can potentially use more Vram then the card can process maybe a problem. Like earlier though we won't know how the speed and bandwidth effect how much data it can crunch before being overwhelmed. I'll be looking at reviews and such on Vega for sure. Even though I never buy AMD I'm still interested to see how it does. Before anyone says anything I'm like this with cars as well. I prefer ford mustangs regardless of what the Camaro can do, but I'm not a idiot and can admit when the other is faster or better in another area. So I'm still genuinely excited to see what they come up with even if I won't be buying one.

[Hunter259]

4GB of HBM2 should be able to switch data fast enough from memory. I could see this being a problem if a game needs more memory than the system currently has and has to wait on a disk read but it would have to be switching new data in extremely often to be doing something like that.

[Paragon_X]

I believe 1600 will be the minimum, if we take in account that the Passively Cooled VEGA instict card will be at 1520ish Mhz, ramp up the power throw a good cooling solution and boom.

[MrDynamicMan]

17 hours ago, YoloSwag said:

Anybody read the comments section in the article?

it's almost the same thing here lol

 

The 1600MHz clock seems legit but 16GB of HBM2? wat?

AMD be like "Ready for 8K" - Probably gonna cost $700 and up.

 

 

Nah man. I think we're looking at a much higher price. I cant see why AMD would put 16gb on a consumer card.

[Valentyn]

2 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

Nah man. I think we're looking at a much higher price. I cant see why AMD would put 16gb on a consumer card.

Aye, Nvidia only have 16GB HBM2 on their Tesla V100 and P100. Stuff is hella  expensive. 

 

This is most likely a Instinct card, although some good news there is that the professional cards are usually clocked lower than their Gaming equivalents. 

[Carclis]

5 hours ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

I game at higher resolutions then 1080p and can say that there are a good number of games that push over 4gb and a lot more that come close at 1080p. 

That's pretty misinformed in the context of your argument. All games will push more VRAM than what is required because bandwidth is limited and higher amounts of memory are in abundance these days. That's why in benchmarks you'll find games use more VRAM on cards like the GTX 980ti than they do on the Fury X/290x. None of the cards suffer from lower VRAM, games just use as much memory as is thrown at them.

A quote from Raja Koduri on this:

"With regards to the High Bandwidth Cache from a gaming perspective. We looked at all the modern games, the big games that push memory hard, and one of the things we noticed is the VRAM – graphics memory – utilization. We look at how much of the VRAM that the game allocates. So if the game say needs 4GB of memory when we looked at actually how much of that memory is actually used to render pixels we found that many games, actually most games, don’t use more than 50% of what they allocate."

[cj09beira]

5 hours ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

I game at higher resolutions then 1080p and can say that there are a good number of games that push over 4gb and a lot more that come close at 1080p. 

Well hbm2 being so fast helps but what really helps is how Vega's memory controller handles memory allocation, from what amd has said it seems that most games when they ask for space in the vram they over estimate how much space they need, which leads to a lot of space being wasted, ( around 50%) what Vega seems to be able to do is only allocating the space needed for the data instead of the asked space, and that is how amd plans to combat the low vram quantity in some of the models.

[treeroy]

6 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Whether that's true or not, it certainly was not true when Fiji was released - and I pretty much guarantee that it having "only" 4GB of RAM definitely hurt compared to the 980 Ti having 6GB or the Titan X Maxwell having 12GB.

 

The masses are easily manipulated by bigger numbers, since they have no context of what the number means. Even here, among the more tech affluent there were those who immediately dismissed Fiji because of it's VRAM amount.

 

I too would suspect that modern AAA games might start to push past 4GB of RAM usage, but I would definitely need confirmation before actually believing it.

 

Do you have any sources that compare RAM usage and performance suffering because of VRAM being limited to 4GB compared to a higher number?

I don't have any sources ready to fire at you but if you play at resolutions higher than 1080p I believe it is very much required. I have a 780 Ti which is 3GB and games at 1440p, new ones at least, are a nightmare. 

[NumLock21]

VEGA announcement today!?

 

 

 

 

[Valentyn]

5 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

VEGA announcement today!?

It's the AMD Financial Analyst Day, and Raja is one of the speakers. So don't expect any details, just shipping timeframe, and investor talk mostly.

I expect to hear more about Ryzen R7 and R5 shipments really.

 

http://webcastevents.com/events/amd/analystday/webcast.htm

 

[MadyTehWolfie]

4 hours ago, Carclis said:

That's pretty misinformed in the context of your argument. All games will push more VRAM than what is required because bandwidth is limited and higher amounts of memory are in abundance these days. That's why in benchmarks you'll find games use more VRAM on cards like the GTX 980ti than they do on the Fury X/290x. None of the cards suffer from lower VRAM, games just use as much memory as is thrown at them.

A quote from Raja Koduri on this:

"With regards to the High Bandwidth Cache from a gaming perspective. We looked at all the modern games, the big games that push memory hard, and one of the things we noticed is the VRAM – graphics memory – utilization. We look at how much of the VRAM that the game allocates. So if the game say needs 4GB of memory when we looked at actually how much of that memory is actually used to render pixels we found that many games, actually most games, don’t use more than 50% of what they allocate."

 

4 hours ago, cj09beira said:

Well hbm2 being so fast helps but what really helps is how Vega's memory controller handles memory allocation, from what amd has said it seems that most games when they ask for space in the vram they over estimate how much space they need, which leads to a lot of space being wasted, ( around 50%) what Vega seems to be able to do is only allocating the space needed for the data instead of the asked space, and that is how amd plans to combat the low vram quantity in some of the models.

Wouldn't that mean that game devs would have to code for this? From what I gather if this is true then is memory allocation done on the games side or the GPU side? If it's done by the game side then the devs would have to code the game to allocate less memory which would not be very likely they would bother doing extra work just because AMD uses HBM2 in a low amount (4gb). Or is it on the display driver side and AMD can make it so it allocates less on the GPU side of things. Not sure I asked my questions as clearly as I'd like but yeah.

[Valentyn]

3 minutes ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

 

Wouldn't that mean that game devs would have to code for this? From what I gather if this is true then is memory allocation done on the games side or the GPU side? If it's done by the game side then the devs would have to code the game to allocate less memory which would not be very likely they would bother doing extra work just because AMD uses HBM2 in a low amount (4gb). Or is it on the display driver side and AMD can make it so it allocates less on the GPU side of things. Not sure I asked my questions as clearly as I'd like but yeah.

 

AMD Claims their new HBCC - High Bandwidth Cache Controller can do that through hardware, and their own drivers.
 

They showcased Dues Ex running off 2GB VRAM with HBCC which had better FPS, and minimums compared to 4GB without HBCC.

 

AMD also went on to show how HBCC seemingly halves memory requirements, by deliberately capping the amount of addressable memory on the HBCC-aware system to only 2 GB - half of the 4 GB addressable by the non-HBCC-aware system, while claiming that even so, the HBCC-enabled system still showed "the same or better performance" through its better memory management and bandwidth speeds.

https://www.techpowerup.com/231093/amd-vega-high-bandwidth-cache-controller-improves-minimum-and-average-fps

 

[MadyTehWolfie]

45 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

 

AMD Claims their new HBCC - High Bandwidth Cache Controller can do that through hardware, and their own drivers.
 

They showcased Dues Ex running off 2GB VRAM with HBCC which had better FPS, and minimums compared to 4GB without HBCC.

 

 

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/231093/amd-vega-high-bandwidth-cache-controller-improves-minimum-and-average-fps

 

Huh that's pretty good, wonder how it does when dev like cod like to load the whole game into Vram. past 3 cod games say 8+GB Vram cause they are stupid. Either way that's pretty cool. 

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, MadyTehWolfie said:

Huh that's pretty good, wonder how it does when dev like cod like to load the whole game into Vram. past 3 cod games say 8+GB Vram cause they are stupid. Either way that's pretty cool. 

Honestly I think a lot of game devs these days are using the commonly available large VRAM amounts as a crutch so that they don't have to optimize RAM workflow.

 

Just load all the assets into VRAM, even if you're not actually rendering most of it.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

Honestly I think a lot of game devs these days are using the commonly available large VRAM amounts as a crutch so that they don't have to optimize RAM workflow.

 

Just load all the assets into VRAM, even if you're not actually rendering most of it.

One noticeable trend, going back decades, within computers is that the more resources available, the generally worse the coding & optimization gets. I'm still amazed at how badly coded most normal webpages are.  But they can get away with it because of more CPU horsepower. 

[Valentyn]

11 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

One noticeable trend, going back decades, within computers is that the more resources available, the generally worse the coding & optimization gets. I'm still amazed at how badly coded most normal webpages are.  But they can get away with it because of more CPU horsepower. 

Sums up the whole ANDROID vs IOS phone hardware as well. 

8core processors, 4GB RAM, well over 64GB built in. 

 

The sheer size of some Android applications, and the poor performance is astounding. Especially given the hardware grunt packed into new flagships. 

 

[MadyTehWolfie]

28 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Honestly I think a lot of game devs these days are using the commonly available large VRAM amounts as a crutch so that they don't have to optimize RAM workflow.

 

Just load all the assets into VRAM, even if you're not actually rendering most of it.

Yeah though with Cod when I had a low Vram vard it had to laod the next part of the level into Vram. >_> what the heck cod!