Thursday, May 18th 2017

Raja Koduri: You Can Use Vega Frontier Edition for Gaming; But You Should Wait
In a blog post detailing AMD's Vega Frontier Edition graphics card, which we covered in-depth at the time of its announcement in AMD's Financial Analyst Day 2017, AMD's Radeon Technologies Group head Raja Koduri clarified that current machine learning poster child, the Vega Frontier Edition GPU, can also be used for gaming (who's to say some researchers, or pioneers, as AMD is so fond of calling them, won't be visiting Talos 1 themselves between coffee breaks?)
However, it is Raja Koduri's opinion that you should wait for Vega's gaming GPUs, since the Frontier Edition is "optimized for professional use cases (and priced accordingly)", and that if you want to game on AMD hardware, you should wait "just a little while longer for the lower-priced, gaming-optimized Radeon RX Vega graphics card." He then threw in a free "You'll be glad you did," as if Vega hasn't been a long, long time coming already.
Source:
AMD Vega Frontier Edition
However, it is Raja Koduri's opinion that you should wait for Vega's gaming GPUs, since the Frontier Edition is "optimized for professional use cases (and priced accordingly)", and that if you want to game on AMD hardware, you should wait "just a little while longer for the lower-priced, gaming-optimized Radeon RX Vega graphics card." He then threw in a free "You'll be glad you did," as if Vega hasn't been a long, long time coming already.
61 Comments on Raja Koduri: You Can Use Vega Frontier Edition for Gaming; But You Should Wait
It would be better for AMD to wait longer and make sure Vega beats the Titan XP at this point.
Again, I think consumer Vega will come out as soon as HBM2 is available. Could be 2 weeks, and it could be 3 months.
I had a friend say "If Vega matches the 1080 Ti I might get it, but I am not gonna wait much longer".
Then don't! You know what matches the 1080 Ti? The 1080 Ti! If that's what you want, buy it now lol.
I personally don't think it offers enough performance for the price. Fury Nitro's were $250 a month ago, and 1080 Ti is 300% the price for like 80% more performance.
Oh and the Fury's aren't that great, I have been playing with those as well and they can't even match a 980Ti in most games.
The 480->1080Ti swap is probably one of the best swaps I have done in a long time. I am hoping vega is a similar experience if it is I may end up swapping out to one of those. We will see. AMD has a habit of not delivery on promises.
I benched against a guy's 2.1GHz 1070 and won in every bench we did: Metro: LL, DE:MD, Bioshock Infinite (I think this one was a tie), and BF1. If all you play is broken Batman games and Anno, well I guess get a 980 Ti lol.
Is your favorite game 3D Mark?
Let me break down what you consider a delay In Vega. Don't have a gaming card? Vega is 1H and will be as AMD said. Many have said limited supply of HBM2, this is true. As AMD has known this for 9 months, why not drop high enterprise Level that will not be bought in massive quantities at a much higher price point? HBM2 ramps up let's hit our enthusiast market.
You probably should also pay closer attention to benchmarks the Fury benched posted above is 2X Anti-aliasing (no accident I am fairly sure), which basically makes the card work harder against the NVidia's 1X, basically as the shills did on initial Ryzen launch playing games at 720p. Do you want to buy a Vega to play games in 720p?
Should have "Multi-quoted" it, sorry for providing answers to multiple people on a intelligent level ;)
Does changing to 1x anti-aliasing magically make AMD products competitive with NV's? (WTF does that even mean... pretty sure there's no such thing. 1x is "off", and 2x is "basically free" on any modern card) NOPE! Sure doesn't so why even bring it up?
Fact is AMD has no compelling or competitive gaming products in any product stack. Ryzen is a crap gaming CPU, and we all know it. Vega is 2 years late to the party.
As I said I have played with all of those 1070/RX480(in xfire)/980Ti(in tri-SLi)/1080Ti/R9 Furys (in xfire). None of them have equaled the 1080Ti, minus 3 980Ti's with heavy overclocks.
Why would someone compare a 1080 Ti to a Fury? I wasn't talking about you lol
Then you brought up 480 CF and the 1080 Ti as if that's a thing I was talking about lol.
All I said about the 1080 Ti is that someone should buy one if that's what they want.
In other words, the only reason I would wait for Vega is that I am unimpressed by the 1080 Ti. It really is nothing special imo.
This graph really screams how many leaps and bounds forward NV is in terms of performance. This isn't even an AIB, just an FE. I mean I hope Vega doesn't suck, but I am also not holding my breath. I tried that with the release date, nearly died.
The 1080 Ti is not impressive imo:
97% / 59% = The 1080 Ti is ~65% stronger than the Fury X. WOWWWW!
It's 65% stronger than a 2 year old card. I am not impressed.
The Fury Nitro (That is roughly as strong as a stock Fury X), was $250 for many months. No, i do not think it is worth paying 3x the price for 1.67x the performance. What a joke lol