[Updated with final Review] Vega FE Benchmarking by PCPER

[Humbug]

2 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

RX Vega and Vega FE should share a die (along with any cut-down Vega SKUs), but that's about all we know right now. We don't if the HBM2 is clocked faster, what the current drivers look like, why they've had to build new ones (some Raja has mentioned) or what other aspects will be with the cards.

The rx Vega will have different firmware too. Not sure how much impact that has on the gaming performance.
 

Anyway apart from all that even the Vega FE is not performing as it should in games as the gaming driver is not ready.

I think the Vega FE will perform better in games once the RX Vega is out, even though it won't be as fast as RX Vega. The driver developments on that side will be pushed out to FE Vega to be used when in gaming mode.
 

AMD has botched this launch no doubt, but we end gaming performance is still a question mark.

[Humbug]

3 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

All of the RX ones will be faster than this, it's already been confirmed.  I would honestly wait for it to come out rather than raising or lowering your hopes.  This card performs around 1070/1080 level, it's the slowest VEGA card that can game.

Not all RX Vegas will be faster than this FE Vega. Some will.

But they will all probably be faster than FE Vega is right now (in gaming).

 

Since the gaming drivers aren't ready yet you can expect FE Vega to be perform better in gaming mode after Rx Vega is launched.

 

 

Some select answers from Raja's AMA

 

Question: Was the card used in the gaming demos a Frontier Edition? And if so, was it the water cooled one or the air cooled version?
 

Raja: It was an air-cooled version

Raja : It was running on Frontier Edition

Raja : Consumer RX will be much better optimized for all the top gaming titles and flavours of RX Vega will actually be faster than Frontier version!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6bklro/we_are_radeon_technologies_group_at_amd_and_were/

[ravenshrike]

3 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Problem is that if this card is meant for content creators (which includes developers), this is rather lackluster if you can't run whatever engine you're using for the most performance to then be scaled down. 

If you can't run your game at 1080p on a GTX1080/70 then you have bigger problems than choice of dev card.

[ARikozuM]

45 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

If you can't run your game at 1080p on a GTX1080/70 then you have bigger problems than choice of dev card.

This isn't about just "running" at 1080p. It has to do with scaling at all resolutions while being able to make the most out of an architecture's potential. If Vega doesn't give developers good reason to adopt it for workstations and testing rigs, it will be passed over in favor of whatever can. 

 

Sidenote: checkong developed games requires a bit more power as you're having to check the engines and code in real-time. This is one reason why SDK's come with more power than the hardware the games are meant to run on.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

This isn't about just "running" at 1080p. It has to do with scaling at all resolutions while being able to make the most out of an architecture's potential. If Vega doesn't give developers good reason to adopt it for workstations and testing rigs, it will be passed over in favor of whatever can. 

 

Sidenote: checkong developed games requires a bit more power as you're having to check the engines and code in real-time. This is one reason why SDK's come with more power than the hardware the games are meant to run on.

None of the game performance shown so far is that bad though, more than enough to develop games on. Not only that you don't have to be able to run the maximum potential graphical settings on a development computer at all or even at high frame rates. A lot of graphical settings in games knocks back scaling of assets to lower resolutions or reduces the number of dynamic lights etc which are all rather predictable when scaling them back up and you can test them without every other setting turned up to max and so forth.

 

A lot of game developers don't actually have super high end gaming computers at all, and if you do really need one you only need one and not for every developer.

 

Optimally you would have all your game artists using Quadro/FirePro cards who all use applications that really benefit from them, Maya etc. Game coders would have GPUs that are 'enough' to run the game. Final performance optimization would be done on more representative computers that customers would have.

 

The above setup is fine for larger studios with large teams of people who can afford to have computers dedicated to tasks but smaller studios can't do that so having a GPU that has most of the optimizations for the professional tools they use to make games along with the gaming performance that is slightly higher than the most common GPU and costs less than the minimum Quadro/FirePro that is up to the task is probably appealing.

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I think I've seen one instance where a game dev had a ridiculous rig, and that rig belonged to John Carmack.  I think it was around the time Rage was being launched, but then again it was John Carmack.

Probably wasn't the case for every person involved though, there is also a reason why very few games are optimized for SLI/Crossfire unless they get direct support from Nvidia/AMD.

 

For the big AAA games on the market it's around 4:1 or higher artists to programmers, not everyone is like classic Square/Square Enix who used to make an entirely new game engine for each major game they made and what really matters is what is actually on the screen and to create those assets that takes a lot of time if you want to claim the best looking game EVARR title. So with that in mind you'll see far more people in a large studio like those with Maya/3ds Max open than coding tools or an active copy of the game on screen.

 

With increasing usage of motion capture and other film industry techniques the demand for certified professional tools is also increasing since you can't really do that properly on a 1080/Titan.

[Trixanity]

5 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

I was speaking in terms of gaming.  Plus, 2 of the cards referenced by people are not even RX cards.  Those are Firepros.

You can bet that there will be a 56 CU RX card. They need to make money off their investment. Unless their yields are incredible they will be sitting on a lot of cut down chips and they probably can't move all of them in the Pro segment. Not to mention they have a product stack to fill out regardless of their yields.

[MyName13]

Question: what is this vega FE?How is it different from Vega instinct?

[Valentyn]

52 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

Question: what is this vega FE?How is it different from Vega instinct?

Instinct is AMD's counter part to NVIDIA's Tesla.

 

So Instinct MI25 vs Tesla P100. 

Radeon Pro vs Quadro

Frontier Edition vs Titan ( Prosumer line )

Radeon RX vs GeForce

[Valentyn]

Another big oddity.

Seems Frontier Edition is doing worse in Sniper Elite 4 than the last demo's AMD showed with an FPS counter as well. They were showing around high 60's - mid 70's. FE can't even break 60.

 

 

[Valentyn]

The Frontier Edition outside of Tomb Raider is essentially scoring 980Ti numbers, that is just above Fury X.

 

It's losing to a reference 1080 in Ashes of the Singularity as well!!!

 

 

Old engineering sample matched 1080 in Ashes.

https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/alleged_amd_vega_benchmarks_appear_online/1

 

 

Double the TFLOPs, and 50% smaller process, 4x the VRAM that's faster than Fiji, and is 50% slower than TitanXp, and losing to its own previous engineering sample demos.

 

[Valentyn]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

@Valentyn As Jason said, don't worry about gaming performance on a card not meant for gaming.  

It's clocked 400Mhz above the old engineering sample. 1200Mhz vs 1600

 

Raja himself confirmed that engineering sample was running Fiji drivers with a debugging layer. Also known as, No gaming Vega optimizations.
 

So if FE has no optimization either, the fact that it's clocked 400Mhz higher should mean improved performance over the old Engineering samples from 6 months ago. Not less performance.

 

I cannot wait for the Q2 Earnings and Investor call, going to try and at least get a Vega FE related question in.

[Trixanity]

4 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Because it isn't designed/optimized for gaming, and probably has piss poor drivers atm. Honestly, I feel bad for content creators that will use this one for gaming.  

I'm honestly not buying that. Why? They've made a dual driver stack with both RX and Pro drivers. It's supposed to be used in content creation environment first and then gaming second. Therefore the gaming performance should not be gimped. 

 

If there wasn't any gaming drivers for it, then sure. But there are.

 

So we can only assume the driver stack is broken as the silicon is the same we'll get in the RX variant which at best is binned for higher clock speed but probably with half the memory.

 

If the driver stack is broken, then how did AMD achieve the numbers they claimed? That's uncertain. I'd assume either internal alpha driver or a driver specifically optimized for the benchmarks showed but in either case not ready for release. That or it uses the old driver branch Fiji uses and the Vega branch is still broken.

 

So perhaps what we're seeing is a Pro driver being ready and RX driver that's nowhere near complete performance wise but reasonably stable otherwise.

 

Regardless of the circumstances it's not good enough. They sold the card as having a dual driver stack and at least one half isn't working.

[Valentyn]

9 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Because it isn't designed/optimized for gaming, and probably has piss poor drivers atm. Honestly, I feel bad for content creators that will use this one for gaming.  To be fair, there are plenty of games that do piss poor with OCing parts.  I was running a 280x cf for awhile, 3 and 4 hate not only CF yet the OCs too.  It didn't mind the 9370 OC, but the 280x OCs and CF was too much for it.  

Sorry, AMD's design is the same across the board. It's not like NVIDIA that lasers off compute. 

 

As mentioned the Engineering sample was not "opimised" for gaming either. Raja confirmed it was running a debugging PCB, and Fiji drivers with a debugging layer. Yet was also 400Mhz slower than Frontier Edition; yet somehow is beating it 3D tests.


The 390X was at most 2K Firestrike points ahead of the FirePro W9000 which was a downclocked 290X.

AMD's compute between the two was the same, with the 390X beating the FirePro mostly because of increased clocks in all 3D professional work. It was only in application certified workloads the FirePro won due to Drivers.

 

The Frontier Edition does NOT have professional certified drivers. PCWorld had a hands on with FE before launch and confirmed that with AMD, PcPer has confirmed it, and so has Exxactcorp ( one of AMD's partners for professional products).

 

It's the same reason a Quadro P5000 hammers a normal 1080 in Pro work, certified drivers.

If you want a Pro only card from AMD, you need to wait for the Radeon Pro.

 

https://exxactcorp.com/amd-professional-graphics-solutions/vega_solutions.php

 

Developers, and creators working with design tools who want the superior performance and are fine with not having application certification. Those who wish to have certified app support can turn to the “Vega” versions of Radeon™ Pro WX coming Q3, 2017

 

https://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-Vega-Frontier-Edition-Air-and-Liquid-Cooled-GPUs-Now-Available-Pre-Or

 

 

Before you pre-order, however, there’s one big caveat. Although AMD touts the card as ideal for “innovators, creators, and pioneers of the world,” the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition will lack application certification, a factor that is crucial to many who work with content creation software and something typically found in high-end professional GPUs like the Quadro and FirePro lines.

For those hoping for Vega-based professional cards sporting certification, the Vega Frontier Edition product page teases the launch of the Vega-powered Radeon Pro WX in Q3 2017.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3202659/components-graphics/hands-on-amds-radeon-vega-frontier-edition-vs-nvidia-titan-xp.html

 

Note that the Frontier Edition will do so with pro-optimized software support, though the drivers for the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition won’t actually be fully certified. 

[PCGuy_5960]

11 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

I really hope that is sarcasm because the only people toting it as a gaming card is one interviewer for a review company asking how it games, and some random guy benching it for gaming.  

I wouldn't call Gamers Nexus and PcPer "Some random guy". According to AMD this is a workstation 1st, gaming 2nd card, so it is a gaming card

[cj09beira]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

I wouldn't call Gamers Nexus and PcPer "Some random guy". According to AMD this is a workstation 1st, gaming 2nd card, so it is a gaming card

2nd 

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, cj09beira said:

2nd 

Yes, so what? It is a gaming card, it's not like the Quadros or FirePros which don't even have gaming drivers.... The FE has a gaming mode

[cj09beira]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

Yes, so what? It is a gaming card, it's not like the Quadros or FirePros which don't even have gaming drivers.... The FE has a gaming mode

just poking you :-)

yes its partly a gaming card, although it seems that the gaming side is nowhere near a finished state

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, valdyrgramr said:

Instinct would be the Firepros.

That's wrong. Instinct, namely the MI25, is a VEGA based server accelerator and a product category set to directly rival Tesla and Xeon Phi. It's designed for deep learning and machine intelligence. It's not a FirePro card. Especially when FirePro doesn't exist anymore. The professional lineups from AMD are currently Radeon Pro and Radeon WX.

 

[Drak3]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

I know, I realized that after I posted that.  However, I'm still going to call them firepros since their new names are stupid.  RX makes me think of medications.

FirePro was a great name. They'd probably would have kept it if it weren't for the whole "AMD GFX cards are hot fire" meme.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

The gaming mode was more aimed towards game developers and content creators.  It wasn't intended to be a full gaming card like the RX ones.  Calling it a gaming card wouldn't be right.  It's a professional card that can game as it's not part of the gaming/RX line of VEGA. 

So the same thing as the Titan Xp. Why should we not benchmark the Vega FE in games? I mean, if we can benchmark the Titan Xp in games, we should benchmark the Vega FE as well

[Drak3]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

So the same thing as the Titan Xp. Why should we not benchmark the Vega FE in games? I mean, if we can benchmark the Titan Xp in games, we should benchmark the Vega FE as well

Nope. It's the same thing as the Titan, Titan Black, and Titan Z. Cards that were pretty damn good at workstation tasks and fairly good at gaming. The Titan X, Titan X, and Titan Xp are all shit for most workstation tasks, and really are only good for wasting money gaming.

[PCGuy_5960]

Just now, Drak3 said:

The Titan X, Titan X, and Titan Xp are all shit for most workstation tasks, and really are only good for wasting money gaming.

According to Nvidia they are "deep learning cards" and not meant for gaming

[Drak3]

Just now, PCGuy_5960 said:

According to Nvidia they are "deep learning cards" and not meant for gaming

The marketing page is wrong. The Titan Xp only differs from the Titan X(P) in CUDA Core count and clocks (and if you overclock both, you get the same performance at the Xp can't clock quite as high at the X(P). It also uses the same exact drivers. Whereas TESLA, Nvidia's actual deep learning cards, are not only on a completely different driver stack, they're not available to the public through any official means, and lack any hardware/firmware optimizations that make them viable for any gaming.

[cj09beira]

what i think happend:

they developed the "pro" side of the driver first, but then had the idea of having the gaming driver available also, but they haven't finished it yet, so they just made it not crash, and eventually will get updated and be probably just as fast as a Rx vega