What does AMD Vega need to be a success?

[MysticLTT]

20 minutes ago, lettuce head said:

he sounds like a 980ti owner who's mad he didn't wait for a 1070 at launch

They are 1 yeah apart, I don't think anyone could wait that long.

[Guest]

16 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

To release ALREADY by the time these actually finally get to the shops Volta will be releasing and completely overshadow it at this pace.

Not hating, but i don't think it will play out like this. Just look at the last time they heavily delayed a product (Zen). I have no doubt that there is something going on behind the scenes, my guess would be Scalability. All the demos, Q & A and Marketing (talking MI25) clearly hint at an Infinity Fabric for GPUs. If they can pull a Ryzen, pretty sure it won't be overshadowed.

[i_build_nanosuits]

19 hours ago, SoloDolo said:

-Do you think AMD Vega will be superior to the GTX 1080 Ti?

-What does AMD Vega have to be to make it a win for AMD? 

- no of course it won't be

- they just need to finally launch it

[othertomperson]

10 hours ago, App4that said:

AMD chose to run HBM2, they're stuck. They could have saved Vega as a 580 replacement to fight Volta. Not really about what's fair, but what it will take to get people away from Nvidia.

They could have stuck with GDDR5(X) and made a 1070/1080 replacement around a year ago to fight Pascal. As it is Vega is going to be fighting Volta whether it makes financial sense or not, just like Fiji has been fighting the 1070.

 

it's hard to consider this unfair because this is the result of every decision AMD has made. Nvidia were clearly astute to save HBM2 for the P100.

 

8 hours ago, App4that said:

A 390 beat a 970. The 480 and 580 beat a 1060. If you want to go off trends Nvidia will lose again in the midrange, which Vega is included in. Vega isn't just a high end architecture. All AMD has to do is beat Nvidia's best selling cards which are the 1070 and below to win. 

You're looking at some very cherry-picked benchmarks if that's the conclusion you've reached.

[SoloDolo]

8 hours ago, App4that said:

Because you keep going back to stock clocks. But I already said this is off topic. But talk to @Morgan MLGman

 

A 390 beat a 970. The 480 and 580 beat a 1060. If you want to go off trends Nvidia will lose again in the midrange, which Vega is included in. Vega isn't just a high end architecture. All AMD has to do is beat Nvidia's best selling cards which are the 1070 and below to win. 

 

The problem here is that Nvidia hold the high end market then which is still sizable.   A 480 is right on par with a 1060. Its a wash in most games. However, a 480 does do better in DX12. Still,  Nvidia is hardly losing at the mid range though as the 1060 still sells well. Nvidia holds a large market lead and will continue to unless AMD comes out swinging. Price to performance is not always going to bring you into the black on sales.

 

 The Ryzen series CPUs are serious challengers to Intel as the  R5 series offers I5 levels of gaming with high end I7 levels of multi tasking.  AMD needs to offer a serious challenge to Nvidia. Offer a great price and great performance. AMD Vega has to be spectacular to really pull back on Nvidias lead. 

[Majestic]

Honestly, If you look at 580 vs. 1060, it still loses heavily in some titles eventhough the 580 is the faster card. I think that VEGA needed to launch in a space occupied by 4K monitors. Because I'm predicting it will heavily lose to the 1080 or 1080TI in 1080p/1440p scenarios, or high refresh.

 

I'm predicting it will not look pretty on launch in the 1080p/1440p segment and it will only compete with the 1080 on 4K. Maybe the 1080ti, but that sniper elite demo showed it was only marginally faster than the 1080, thus will only really be interesting for people at 4K or production. Hence it's going to launch the pro version first.

[App4that]

1 hour ago, othertomperson said:

They could have stuck with GDDR5(X) and made a 1070/1080 replacement around a year ago to fight Pascal. As it is Vega is going to be fighting Volta whether it makes financial sense or not, just like Fiji has been fighting the 1070.

 

it's hard to consider this unfair because this is the result of every decision AMD has made. Nvidia were clearly astute to save HBM2 for the P100.

 

You're looking at some very cherry-picked benchmarks if that's the conclusion you've reached.

I actually agree it's fair, if AMD had taken the lessen they should have learned from the Fury, we'd have Vega already. But they just had to go after HBM2.

 

But bro, it's not cherry picking. Look at all the titles out and AMD has been beating Nvidia in the low to mid range since the 390. 

58 minutes ago, SoloDolo said:

The problem here is that Nvidia hold the high end market then which is still sizable.   A 480 is right on par with a 1060. Its a wash in most games. However, a 480 does do better in DX12. Still,  Nvidia is hardly losing at the mid range though as the 1060 still sells well. Nvidia holds a large market lead and will continue to unless AMD comes out swinging. Price to performance is not always going to bring you into the black on sales.

 

 The Ryzen series CPUs are serious challengers to Intel as the  R5 series offers I5 levels of gaming with high end I7 levels of multi tasking.  AMD needs to offer a serious challenge to Nvidia. Offer a great price and great performance. AMD Vega has to be spectacular to really pull back on Nvidias lead. 

The high end matters to you, it matters to a lot of the people who would use this forum. But we're a small section of the market. The 1070 is the money, that's where people are buying. That's where AMD messed up bad not pushing a card against. 

[Misanthrope]

It needed to be about about 3 or 4 months ago, not 2 months from today. So imho, it already failed.

[App4that]

13 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

It needed to be about about 3 or 4 months ago, not 2 months from today. So imho, it already failed.

The irony of saying this in a topic where people are saying because it's newer, it's better 

[SoloDolo]

7 hours ago, App4that said:

I actually agree it's fair, if AMD had taken the lessen they should have learned from the Fury, we'd have Vega already. But they just had to go after HBM2.

 

But bro, it's not cherry picking. Look at all the titles out and AMD has been beating Nvidia in the low to mid range since the 390. 

The high end matters to you, it matters to a lot of the people who would use this forum. But we're a small section of the market. The 1070 is the money, that's where people are buying. That's where AMD messed up bad not pushing a card against. 

The 1070 and 1080 have been out for over a year now. If Vega is ahead of the 1070 it really wont matter as the 1170 will launch a couple months after Vega. I think Vega has to be a powerhouse all around. Something were they can hit close to an 1170 performance but with a much better price.  

 

I think AMD at this point probably messed up with going with HBM2 where it seems to be the largest hold up. 

[App4that]

18 minutes ago, SoloDolo said:

The 1070 and 1080 have been out for over a year now. If Vega is ahead of the 1070 it really wont matter as the 1170 will launch a couple months after Vega. I think Vega has to be a powerhouse all around. Something were they can hit close to an 1170 performance but with a much better price.  

 

I think AMD at this point probably messed up with going with HBM2 where it seems to be the largest hold up. 

Yeah no argument on the HBM2, I was saying that a year ago and no one listened. But if you think Volta is months away you haven't been watching Nvidia. We might get a Pascal refresh, but I doubt it. Earliest we'll see Volta is 2018, Q1 2018. That's a whole lot of time for Vega to outsell PAscal, and then AMD can just put Vega up against the 1160 and 1170 with a price slash. AMD has already proven they can live without going after the upper market, Nvidia can't live that way. If they don't have the top card they lose sales fast. 

[lettuce head]

19 hours ago, FTL said:

Not hating, but i don't think it will play out like this. Just look at the last time they heavily delayed a product (Zen). I have no doubt that there is something going on behind the scenes, my guess would be Scalability. All the demos, Q & A and Marketing (talking MI25) clearly hint at an Infinity Fabric for GPUs. If they can pull a Ryzen, pretty sure it won't be overshadowed.

i sincerely hope youre right.

 

5 hours ago, App4that said:

-snip-
AMD has already proven they can live without going after the upper market, Nvidia can't live that way. If they don't have the top card they lose sales fast. 

they've proved they can float without targeting the upper market in the gpu department. I believe q4 revenue report showed that they had 1.1 billion dollars of revenue for a 54 million dollar loss or something of the like in the gpu market. So they need to make waves.

[Guest]

On 6/2/2017 at 0:09 AM, SoloDolo said:

Do you think AMD Vega will be superior to the GTX 1080 Ti? What does AMD Vega have to be to make it a win for AMD? 

For it to be a win for AMD, the answer to your first question has to be a yes. Looking at the specs so far, it seems like it might be. More vRAM, faster memory bus, etc. We'll just have to wait and see if it lives up to those specs. A 1080TI is pretty damn hard to top. Plus, like everyone's been saying, the price might be too high, as usual. I'm gonna call anything above $1,700 too much for it to be more successful than the 1080TI.

[mr moose]

Like any top shelf product from any industry, if they want it to be successful it has to be first and it has to be good.  Coming out a year latter and being marginally better does not create sales.  The top shelf sales have already sold and those looking to upgrade already have their sites on ti or better performance.  Therefore Vega has to be better than the 1080ti and anything Nvidia releases immediately after.  Just being better than the 1080 is not going to cut it.   

[othertomperson]

On 2017-6-2 at 3:32 PM, App4that said:

I actually agree it's fair, if AMD had taken the lessen they should have learned from the Fury, we'd have Vega already. But they just had to go after HBM2.

 

But bro, it's not cherry picking. Look at all the titles out and AMD has been beating Nvidia in the low to mid range since the 390.

I have done. Last generation the 390 beat the 970 at stock which was fair enough (given the 390 itself was just a cherry picked and heavily overclocked 290), but Maxwell (particularly GM-204) overclocked like an absolute bitch... which I mean in a good way  This generation the 1060 and 480/580 are very well matched. Some games like Hitman favour AMD, but generally there's very little between them. Even Ashes of the Singularity favours Pascal over Polaris now by a tiny amount.

 

There's also the issue of the 390 itself. Computationally that Hawaii chip was monstrous. It should never have been competing with such a small GPU as the 970! Or the 780 Ti for that matter. AMD has needed to sort its shit out in terms of driver software for a long time. if they had done that they would have left Nvidia in the dust years ago in terms of pure grunt.

 

I'm just going to full on rant at that "FineWine" bullshit now I'm on the subject. AMD makes some amazing hardware, but hampers the drivers so hard that you don't see the physical benefit of it until years have passed, and then has the gall to rename it the 390 and give it a driver update and put the price up on new purchases? And we're supposed to think this is a pro-consumer move!? No, I'm sorry but AMD need to sort their shit out. I'd say "yippee Dx12 is now here to do their job for them" but apparently Nvidia got the same memo because computationally the 480 and 1060 seem to be very similar. In other words, any "FineWine" that the 480 gets, so does the 1060. Not that AMD aren't lying through their teeth and pretending otherwise, naturally. They're a company and do all the same shit as Nvidia and Intel, I get it and I don't begrudge them their marketing bs more than anyone else, but their "holier than thou" following I find grating.

 

On 2017-6-2 at 3:32 PM, App4that said:

The high end matters to you, it matters to a lot of the people who would use this forum. But we're a small section of the market. The 1070 is the money, that's where people are buying. That's where AMD messed up bad not pushing a card against. 

Lol that depends on whether you listen to AMD 2016 or AMD 2017  AMD 2016 was claiming that the mass market was in the midrange (280, 380, 480, 580 area, and so that's where they need to focus to turn a profit. They used this to justify not having an above-mid-range product for a year. AMD 2017 are saying that, while that's where they sell the most volume margins are so bad that they actually make 2/3 of their revenue from the enthusiast range, despite not selling as much in terms of sheer numbers.

[typographie]

On 6/2/2017 at 10:32 AM, App4that said:

The high end matters to you, it matters to a lot of the people who would use this forum. But we're a small section of the market. The 1070 is the money, that's where people are buying. That's where AMD messed up bad not pushing a card against. 

^^^ This. It would be swell if AMD had a 1080 Ti competitor, but I think what they need is something in the ~$300 range. I've always kind of assumed Vega would not be one single product, but a family of cards picking up where Polaris left off—but then most of a year went by.

[App4that]

19 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

-snip-

It's kinda sad how the mob has left AMD. When the 390 was beating a 970 that cost at least 50 bucks more, no one called cherry picking. You have to remember how AMD biased this forum was. Up until recently any 480 vs 1060 topic was all about the 480. When AMD rebranded the 480 a 580, the fans hung on.

 

Now that Vega is looking to be a mid card to compete with Volta's mid card, everyone is going to jump ship?

 

Et tu fanboys? 

[jpfeif]

I think that it must be because of all of the hype around it.

[othertomperson]

59 minutes ago, App4that said:

It's kinda sad how the mob has left AMD. When the 390 was beating a 970 that cost at least 50 bucks more, no one called cherry picking. You have to remember how AMD biased this forum was. Up until recently any 480 vs 1060 topic was all about the 480. When AMD rebranded the 480 a 580, the fans hung on.

 

Now that Vega is looking to be a mid card to compete with Volta's mid card, everyone is going to jump ship?

 

Et tu fanboys? 

I don't have time for fanboys of any persuasion. Brand loyalty is stupid. I care about hardware. I bought Pascal because it was literally the only product in the market. And I paid a ridiculous sum for this reason.

[App4that]

59 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

I don't have time for fanboys of any persuasion. Brand loyalty is stupid. I care about hardware. I bought Pascal because it was literally the only product in the market. And I paid a ridiculous sum for this reason.

Hey, you're talking to the guy who had little hope for Ryzen and ended up owning it. Totally agree on brand loyalty being a trap.

 

What I don't understand is why the posibility of Vega not being the fastest card avalible mean so much to people. Price to performance should mean more. 

[othertomperson]

13 hours ago, App4that said:

Hey, you're talking to the guy who had little hope for Ryzen and ended up owning it. Totally agree on brand loyalty being a trap.

 

What I don't understand is why the posibility of Vega not being the fastest card avalible mean so much to people. Price to performance should mean more. 

Because AMD cannot afford to price it low. It is a extraordinarily expensive part to make, so they need it to perform accordingly. Nvidia, with their small die and cheap vram, can afford a very aggressive price war. AMD cannot.

[App4that]

4 hours ago, othertomperson said:

Because AMD cannot afford to price it low. It is a extraordinarily expensive part to make, so they need it to perform accordingly. Nvidia, with their small die and cheap vram, can afford a very aggressive price war. AMD cannot.

Can and will are exclusive to each other. Nvidia is overcharging for every card they make, if they drop the prices where they should be, then Volta will be attacked for it's pricing unless Nvidia prices Volta where it should be. Nvidia is caught, AMD isn't. AMD can price to disrupt. 

[othertomperson]

1 hour ago, App4that said:

Can and will are exclusive to each other. Nvidia is overcharging for every card they make, if they drop the prices where they should be, then Volta will be attacked for it's pricing unless Nvidia prices Volta where it should be. Nvidia is caught, AMD isn't. AMD can price to disrupt. 

"Overcharging" is a matter of subjective opinion. Nvidia are charging what they can in light of no competition. History tells us that Nvidia can be very profitable selling cards like the 1080 for £300-£400, and cards like the 1080 Ti for £500. The GDDR5X will push those numbers up a little, but not as much as HBM2. What you suggest, though, is that AMD take a card that has more in common with Big Pascal (GP-100) and charge £300 for it to undercut what Nvidia are capable of. That isn't an option.

 

There's a reason AMD didn't just rebrand Fiji and charge £300 for it and call it the 490 to go head to head with the 1070 despite it being competitive in terms of performance.

[App4that]

54 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

"Overcharging" is a matter of subjective opinion. Nvidia are charging what they can in light of no competition. History tells us that Nvidia can be very profitable selling cards like the 1080 for £300-£400, and cards like the 1080 Ti for £500. The GDDR5X will push those numbers up a little, but not as much as HBM2. What you suggest, though, is that AMD take a card that has more in common with Big Pascal (GP-100) and charge £300 for it to undercut what Nvidia are capable of. That isn't an option.

 

There's a reason AMD didn't just rebrand Fiji and charge £300 for it and call it the 490 to go head to head with the 1070 despite it being competitive in terms of performance.

So the 1060 doesn't have competition? Does the GPU in the 1060 support SLI? Does the card? 

 

People made the same excuses for Intel, then when there's competition and Intel doesn't drop the price, but drops features and cashe, people make new excuses. 

 

It's Nvidias bad view of their consumers that has them caught, if they price their products where they should, they're stuck with those prices with the following cards. 

[othertomperson]

2 hours ago, App4that said:

So the 1060 doesn't have competition? Does the GPU in the 1060 support SLI? Does the card? 

 

People made the same excuses for Intel, then when there's competition and Intel doesn't drop the price, but drops features and cashe, people make new excuses. 

 

It's Nvidias bad view of their consumers that has them caught, if they price their products where they should, they're stuck with those prices with the following cards. 

Looking on Amazon,

 

RX 580: ~£250

GTX 1060: ~£250

 

What's your point? Two nearly identically powered cards for near identical prices.