Tuesday, April 25th 2017

AMD Confirms Vega is Launching this Quarter

Via Facebook, AMD has confirmed that Vega is nearly here - at least, as nearly here as a "this quarter" can be. This means Vega will launch in two-months time (Q2 extends through the months of April, May and June, after all.) Through a post on its Facebook page, AMD replied that Vega will be coming "when it's ready... And it will be this quarter."

According to previous leaks (and our own deep dive on Vega's architecture), Vega should go a long way towards bridging the power/performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA's GeForce series. It will be the first time since Fury that AMD will have a competitive, high-performance graphics design (expectedly, and hopefully, since no-one likes to buy over-priced graphics cards.) The fact that AMD has teased Vega in two different pieces of media that come out in May (Arkane Studios' Prey, which comes out on May 5th, and Alien: Covenant, which also comes out during the month of May.) I've previously posited that AMD wouldn't tease Vega's launch alongside one of the most promising games of the year without giving us the chance to power it through Vega come launch day, but as Prey's release date approaches and there is no more information on Vega (much less an announcement), it's looking increasingly likely that we'll have to wait until we can see that universe in all of its Vega-rendered glory.
Source: WCCFTech
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66 Comments on AMD Confirms Vega is Launching this Quarter

#26
ratirt
hatSo, what was RX580 for?
aahh mid tier of cards? Where do those questions come from? hehe Ain't it obvious?
I was going to get a new monitor this month and a new card. F-sync is so much cheaper. Since that is the predictions for the Vega i'll wait too it's just so tempting to get a new gear for my PC :D
Posted on Reply
#27
mrthanhnguyen
uuuaaaaaaOne thing that got my attention on those demos of Vega running doom 4k 60fps, was that only 3 of the 8 tachometer leds were lit, meaning that there was still a lot of performance left in the tank...
Why they just showed a benchmark of Doom Vulkan? Why they showed the gaming benchmark of Ryzen 1800x at 4k but not at 1080p? And slightly faster than 1 year old card is not impressive at all, and its even worse if its just neck on neck with a 1 year old card.
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#28
uuuaaaaaa
mrthanhnguyenWhy they just showed a benchmark of Doom Vulkan? Why they showed the gaming benchmark of Ryzen 1800x at 4k but not at 1080p? And slightly faster than 1 year old card is not impressive at all, and its even worse if its just neck on neck with a 1 year old card.
Faster than a 1080 with only 3 out of 8 activity leds lit up (early engineering sample), that looks pretty good to me.

AMD cards do pretty well in Vulkan, it brings the best of the hardware for both team red and green. if you stack the cards by theoretical compute throughput in a chart, the order you get will be close to the order that you would get in a DooM Vulkan fps chart. So it makes sense for them to test in a flagship game using a next gen api that was born out of mantle where their cards perform really well.

Why doesn't Intel benchmark the (6/7)600K/(6/7)700K cpus against the 6950x or the 6900k in 1080p gaming benchmarks? It would make their HEDT premium/enthusiast platform look bad.
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#29
evernessince
DeathtoGnomeswaiting for Vega is like fapping, you never know when its gonna .... get here, until the last minute. o_O:rolleyes:
Lol, unless you are some vicious beat, I think you can control one more than the other.
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#30
Prima.Vera
the54thvoidIt WILL beat the GTX 1080. That's not even a hurdle. It's how close it comes to or beats the 1080ti and in what game environment. It'll be a push to beat the 1080ti but not impossible.
Speculations, guesses, fantasies...
Let's wait for the official reviews before posting any so called "facts" ;) based on ....what?
Posted on Reply
#31
Divide Overflow
A May 25th release would align quite nicely.
I'm eager to see the Vega lineup reviewed, especially by W1zzard!
I haven't been a fan of AMD stock cooling solutions for ages though. It's usually well worth it to wait a bit more for the custom cooling versions to be released.
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#32
efikkan
mrthanhnguyenWhy they just showed a benchmark of Doom Vulkan? Why they showed the gaming benchmark of Ryzen 1800x at 4k but not at 1080p? And slightly faster than 1 year old card is not impressive at all, and its even worse if its just neck on neck with a 1 year old card.
Intel, AMD and Nvidia are all guilty of leaking cherry-picked benchmarks before launches, always putting the product in the best possible light. I remember when the leaks for Fury X arrived, a lot of people canceled their orders for GTX 980 Ti, but it turned out that GTX 980 Ti outperformed it. The same happened with Polaris and Ryzen as well; we got a couple of benchmarks where the products really excels, but it's not representative of typical workloads.

So when Vega will look nice compared to GTX 1080 Ti, it really doesn't tell us much, except that it's not going to beat it.
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#33
ratirt
efikkanIntel, AMD and Nvidia are all guilty of leaking cherry-picked benchmarks before launches, always putting the product in the best possible light. I remember when the leaks for Fury X arrived, a lot of people canceled their orders for GTX 980 Ti, but it turned out that GTX 980 Ti outperformed it. The same happened with Polaris and Ryzen as well; we got a couple of benchmarks where the products really excels, but it's not representative of typical workloads.

So when Vega will look nice compared to GTX 1080 Ti, it really doesn't tell us much, except that it's not going to beat it.
For me Vega doesn't have to beat 1080ti or New Titan Xp. It would be enough if it come close enough to sustain 60FPS in 4k gaming with modern games with a price tag half of titans' or 1080Ti's and I'm good with it. plus considering buying Free-sync monitor is also relatively cheaper than G-sync. You would save a lot of cash with that setup not even seeing a difference in performance.
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#34
the54thvoid
Intoxicated Moderator
Prima.VeraSpeculations, guesses, fantasies...
Let's wait for the official reviews before posting any so called "facts" ;) based on ....what?
Well, it must beat the GTX1080 otherwise it is a total disaster, so AMD wouldn't dare release it otherwise.
Logic overcomes facts :D
Posted on Reply
#35
Vayra86
If Vega cannot match Nvidia's top end, this is a real problem for AMD. They will be a good 25-30% behind the top end in that case, which means Vega will already be stretched to its limit on release, and I don't see them pushing a +60% performance jump on the same architecture within two years, which will result in AMD lagging behind considerably over time.

And considering Polaris' growth on the RX480 > RX580 I have serious doubts process improvements on Vega will be providing the needed performance in the future.
Posted on Reply
#36
Prima.Vera
the54thvoidWell, it must beat the GTX1080 otherwise it is a total disaster, so AMD wouldn't dare release it otherwise.
Logic overcomes facts :D
AMD and logic doesn't always makes sense. I would call logic a faster than 1080 card with the price of a 1070. No that would be a winner for AMD. But very hard to believe....
Posted on Reply
#37
efikkan
ratirtFor me Vega doesn't have to beat 1080ti or New Titan Xp. It would be enough if it come close enough to sustain 60FPS in 4k gaming with modern games with a price tag half of titans' or 1080Ti's and I'm good with it. plus considering buying Free-sync monitor is also relatively cheaper than G-sync. You would save a lot of cash with that setup not even seeing a difference in performance.
If you want a 4K gaming card, you'll have to wait for the next generation, not even Titan can sustain 60 FPS in the most demanding games.
If you end up choosing between e.g. 50 FPS vs. 60 FPS, I can guarantee you'll notice the difference.
Vayra86If Vega cannot match Nvidia's top end, this is a real problem for AMD. They will be a good 25-30% behind the top end in that case, which means Vega will already be stretched to its limit on release, and I don't see them pushing a +60% performance jump on the same architecture within two years, which will result in AMD lagging behind considerably over time.

And considering Polaris' growth on the RX480 > RX580 I have serious doubts process improvements on Vega will be providing the needed performance in the future.
The efficiency gap between Pascal and Polaris is massive, if AMD are to take back most of this advantage in a single bounce, then they would have to do larger improvements than the last five years combined, and all of this with a smaller budget than before. As we've seen with the disaster called Polaris "refresh", the production node itself can't make it scale. So people better start getting some more realistic expectations.
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#38
ratirt
efikkanIf you want a 4K gaming card, you'll have to wait for the next generation, not even Titan can sustain 60 FPS in the most demanding games.
If you end up choosing between e.g. 50 FPS vs. 60 FPS, I can guarantee you'll notice the difference.
Maybe titan x can't sustain 60 FPS all the time but titan Xp sure is able to. I looked at the titan X and most of games were higher with average fps than 60. With 12GB of ram the min wont drop to 40. I'm not saying , new titan would be 60 min but if it drops to 55 or even 50 like you mentioned it wouldn't bother me at all. It depends on the preference of each player. So I disagree with you bro sorry.
The efficiency gap between Pascal and Polaris is massive, if AMD are to take back most of this advantage in a single bounce, then they would have to do larger improvements than the last five years combined, and all of this with a smaller budget than before. As we've seen with the disaster called Polaris "refresh", the production node itself can't make it scale. So people better start getting some more realistic expectations.
I wouldn't bother for the VEGA not reaching 1080Ti either. For me it is good to get a good card play 2k,4k games with 60fps and of course half the price of titan xp and lower than 1080ti for a noticeable margin. That's what I would like to see and Vega for me would be the best card on the market :) Polaris is not a disaster. It is a refresh. It is a card replacing 480 with the same price tag and a bit better. Why you call it a disaster? Do you people think that every time there's a refresh of a video card it must have 30% performance increase? That's simply crazy. rx500's got what like 3-5%? isn't that an improvement instead calling it a disaster?
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#39
efikkan
ratirtMaybe titan x can't sustain 60 FPS all the time but titan Xp sure is able to. I looked at the titan X and most of games were higher with average fps than 60. With 12GB of ram the min wont drop to 40. I'm not saying , new titan would be 60 min but if it drops to 55 or even 50 like you mentioned it wouldn't bother me at all. It depends on the preference of each player. So I disagree with you bro sorry.
No GPU this far can hit 60 FPS in games like Watch Dogs 2, Total War: Warhammer, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Styx: Shards of Darkness and Far Cry Primal. And in every game except the last two they wouldn't even be close. It's not like future games are going to be less demanding, so if you want stable 60 FPS in 4K then you'll have to wait for big Volta.
ratirtPolaris is not a disaster. It is a refresh. It is a card replacing 480 with the same price tag and a bit better. Why you call it a disaster? Do you people think that every time there's a refresh of a video card it must have 30% performance increase? That's simply crazy. rx500's got what like 3-5%? isn't that an improvement instead calling it a disaster?
If you read my post you'll see I was talking about scaling. Polaris refresh has much worse efficiency for a marginal performance gain (~3% for RX 580), that is terrible. That is really bad news when considering Pascal scales well >1700 MHz. It's a refresh, so I was not expecting 30% more performance.
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#40
ratirt
efikkanNo GPU this far can hit 60 FPS in games like Watch Dogs 2, Total War: Warhammer, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Styx: Shards of Darkness and Far Cry Primal. And in every game except the last two they wouldn't even be close. It's not like future games are going to be less demanding, so if you want stable 60 FPS in 4K then you'll have to wait for big Volta.
Well in those games you have specified 1080 Ti, is 50 FPS on average. I assume that titan Xp is bit better. Crank details down or any other option and you are good with 60-70FPS on avarage. You dont even have to get all those down. Never said they will be less demending but API's like Vulcan will help. Of course that depends if the producer will use that API. You see world in dim colors i see it a bit better. I simply disagree with your logic. I can play games 4k if i want to. Even by getting details down it's possible. You put a lot of fate in Volta. Hope you are right and wont get disappointed. But for me Vega will do just fine if the performance predictions are true and support is right.
If you read my post you'll see I was talking about scaling. Polaris refresh has much worse efficiency for a marginal performance gain (~3% for RX 580), that is terrible. That is really bad news when considering Pascal scales well >1700 MHz. It's a refresh, so I was not expecting 30% more performance.
I read your post and i disagree with you. I really dont get you dude. 3% is a refresh not a disaster for me. Just to clarify, what would be your "not a disaster" scenario?

Add on:

Well I've looked through some benchmarks and comparisons of the 480 and 580 RX's and i need to withdraw my previous statement that RX 580 is 3% faster. Well in fact it is faster from 480 but for about 10% which is decent. 3% may be accurate for a stock 580. What was most interesting is that 580’s have way more OC potential than 480 that couldn't hit 1450 even on liquid cooling. rx 580 does it on air cooler. What's also important it comes to the market improved with the same price as the 480RX as a replacement. You get 10% performance with OC potential for the exact same price I really wanna see your disaster explanation here. Cause what I see is only pros no cons.
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#41
Vayra86
ratirtWell in those games you have specified 1080 Ti, is 50 FPS on average. I assume that titan Xp is bit better. Crank details down or any other option and you are good with 60-70FPS on avarage. You dont even have to get all those down. Never said they will be less demending but API's like Vulcan will help. Of course that depends if the producer will use that API. You see world in dim colors i see it a bit better. I simply disagree with your logic. I can play games 4k if i want to. Even by getting details down it's possible. You put a lot of fate in Volta. Hope you are right and wont get disappointed. But for me Vega will do just fine if the performance predictions are true and support is right.

I read your post and i disagree with you. I really dont get you dude. 3% is a refresh not a disaster for me. Just to clarify, what would be your "not a disaster" scenario?

Add on:

Well I've looked through some benchmarks and comparisons of the 480 and 580 RX's and i need to withdraw my previous statement that RX 580 is 3% faster. Well in fact it is faster from 480 but for about 10% which is decent. 3% may be accurate for a stock 580. What was most interesting is that 580’s have way more OC potential than 480 that couldn't hit 1450 even on liquid cooling. rx 580 does it on air cooler. What's also important it comes to the market improved with the same price as the 480RX as a replacement. You get 10% performance with OC potential for the exact same price I really wanna see your disaster explanation here. Cause what I see is only pros no cons.
You read his post but you missed the point. He is not talking about performance, but about perf/watt, and this is essentially what VEGA needs to improve heavily on to ever come toe-to-toe with Nvidia. GPUs can't feasibly go past a 250W-300W TDP budget without becoming notoriously loud, stupidly hot and grossly inefficient because of current leakage at higher temps. There are many, many examples of this, such as the 7990, the GTX 690, (dual GPU cards) and R295x2, but also to a lesser degree the Hawaii cards - only the beefiest cooling solutions could get the performance out of the 290x. Everyone with a sane mind watercooled them, or bought a Tri-X or similar.

Now, today we KNOW that the best process available to AMD does absolutely zero for Polaris' efficiency, it might actually be 100% identical and just a marketing move while they push some more volts through, so AMD has only one feasible way to push performance up with Vega, and that is efficiency within the architecture itself (which is a long, high R&D cost process, for comparison, Nvidia was still finetuning the Kepler arch but they now call it Pascal, every gen they pushed the clocks higher, and to get there takes time and a very efficient node) or an even bigger die, which also increases the power required (AMD already makes big GPUs as it is) and the manufacturing cost.

Clock scaling is important, and GCN is not good at it. Never has been, and probably never will, until they fully revamp the arch.
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#43
ratirt
Vayra86You read his post but you missed the point. He is not talking about performance, but about perf/watt, and this is essentially what VEGA needs to improve heavily on to ever come toe-to-toe with Nvidia. GPUs can't feasibly go past a 250W-300W TDP budget without becoming notoriously loud, stupidly hot and grossly inefficient because of current leakage at higher temps. There are many, many examples of this, such as the 7990, the GTX 690, (dual GPU cards) and R295x2, but also to a lesser degree the Hawaii cards - only the beefiest cooling solutions could get the performance out of the 290x. Everyone with a sane mind watercooled them, or bought a Tri-X or similar.

Now, today we KNOW that the best process available to AMD does absolutely zero for Polaris' efficiency, it might actually be 100% identical and just a marketing move while they push some more volts through, so AMD has only one feasible way to push performance up with Vega, and that is efficiency within the architecture itself (which is a long, high R&D cost process, for comparison, Nvidia was still finetuning the Kepler arch but they now call it Pascal, every gen they pushed the clocks higher, and to get there takes time and a very efficient node) or an even bigger die, which also increases the power required (AMD already makes big GPUs as it is) and the manufacturing cost.

Clock scaling is important, and GCN is not good at it. Never has been, and probably never will, until they fully revamp the arch.
Maybe in Polaris case but didn’t you notice that VEGA is in fact a different architecture? How can you tell if AMD haven't improved VEGA in that matter when it is not out yet. I base on facts not tendency. It has been clearly stated that VEGA is different from Polari in any way.


Besides I’m comparing Polaris rx 480 to Polaris 580 not to Nvidia. I didn't miss the point it's just I disagree with it. From my understanding rx 580 is not a disaster like effikan stated even if the perf/watt is not the best. Do I get a say in this or is it just what you guys think?


About clock scaling. Clock scaling in 480, it has lower clock frequency than 1060 but it pulls ahead in some games. Clock rates not necessarily mean that the CPU or GPU will run faster than the other with less clock speeds. So let's leave scaling and focus on performance which is an indicator of a cards value. At least for me.
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#44
Vayra86
ratirtMaybe in Polaris case but didn’t you notice that VEGA is in fact a different architecture? How can you tell if AMD haven't improved VEGA in that matter when it is not out yet. I base on facts not tendency. It has been clearly stated that VEGA is different from Polari in any way.


Besides I’m comparing Polaris rx 480 to Polaris 580 not to Nvidia. I didn't miss the point it's just I disagree with it. From my understanding rx 580 is not a disaster like effikan stated even if the perf/watt is not the best. Do I get a say in this or is it just what you guys think?


About clock scaling. Clock scaling in 480, it has lower clock frequency than 1060 but it pulls ahead in some games. Clock rates not necessarily mean that the CPU or GPU will run faster than the other with less clock speeds. So let's leave scaling and focus on performance which is an indicator of a cards value. At least for me.
- Polaris was also a wildly different arch before AMD released it, today we know better.
- AMD's improved process has turned out to be zero gain. They just push more volts to extract a marginally higher clock - they have no headroom to push it further without going crazy on volts, temps, and efficiency
- Vega will be a wide GPU as well (likely with HBM), a big die, so not a high clock, and it will naturally be based on exisiting architecture, again, effectively a new iteration of GCN. AMD does not have resources to build from scratch, nor the time.

Do the math...
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#45
ratirt
Vayra86- Polaris was also a wildly different arch before AMD released it, today we know better.
- Vega will be a wide GPU as well (likely with HBM), a big die, so not a high clock, and it will naturally be based on exisiting architecture, again, effectively a new iteration of GCN. AMD does not have resources to build from scratch, nor the time.
Well all the doubts and concerns will get wiped after Vega is officially released. Then we will say what it can do and how it performs and of course most important thing for you (that's an assumption) perf/watt.

No resources and time? Disagree. AMD has been working long time with VEGA. Where do you guys get this stuff? Really it's an assumption of your making not a fact.
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#48
efikkan
ratirtI read your post and i disagree with you. I really dont get you dude. 3% is a refresh not a disaster for me. Just to clarify, what would be your "not a disaster" scenario?
Try reading the post again.
The performance difference is not the problem, but the huge drop in efficiency is. There is a significant increase in TDP from RX 480 to RX 580; 150W -> 185W. In some benchmarks it consumes more than GTX 1080, a card nearly twice as fast.
Polaris has been struggling with poor efficiency since the start, but the AMD fans has been claiming that it will get better and better, but instead the efficiency of Polaris refresh is worse! This is really bad news for AMD which needs more scalable products to compete.
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#49
ratirt
efikkanTry reading the post again.
The performance difference is not the problem, but the huge drop in efficiency is. There is a significant increase in TDP from RX 480 to RX 580; 150W -> 185W. In some benchmarks it consumes more than GTX 1080, a card nearly twice as fast.
Polaris has been struggling with poor efficiency since the start, but the AMD fans has been claiming that it will get better and better, but instead the efficiency of Polaris refresh is worse! This is really bad news for AMD which needs more scalable products to compete.
I been reading the post all over again and I'm tired :)
Well. I wont disagree with you but let's leave it to an individual? I got a different point of view and so should you although I wont convince you about it :) Polaris never struggled especially when you put into the picture how far behind AMD was with NV :) I'm sure you agree :D Give AMD a bit of a credit :) Still good :) There's no winner here if one is out, keep that in mind. Just chillaxe a bit and let all of us look at this crap till it ends :D :) say what's on your mind bro. All is valuable :D
BTW 580 is a great card so as 480 still is :) at least in my country :D BUT. I'm tempted with the 1080 Ti and Gsync :) I really wanna wait which is hard :) I need to change something and it bugs me out :D
Better tell me which monitor to pick since you are such a geek :P Freesync :) if you're giving a spin with this stuff too :D
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