Vega FE Tear Down

[xkm1948]

http://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/2972-amd-vega-frontier-edition-tear-down-die-size-and-more

Well, that PCB looks quite, hmm, empty?

 

[xkm1948]

FuryX PCB

R9 290X Reference PCB

 

[Steevo]

M.2 solder mount points on the end.

AMD was serious about running 100+TB on this bitch, so what happens when "Pro-pro-card" comes out with the ability to render 6K or IMAX in near real time during workflows and development.

 

[mtcn77]

"Where are our thermal pads? Oh, that is right: this is HBM!"

 

[Steevo]

Also, this guy is a fucking retard, lets not take out screws, hold the plate on backwards, whats is this vapor chamber.... durr hurr I 'm a tech specialist.... better use this cloth I found to wipe the die, fibers don't matter to sensitive electronics...

 

[Aenra]

A lot of people swear by (quality) fiber cloth. Are you saying it's wrong to use it? Starightforward question, no irony.

As to his disassembling, not everyone is as dexterous, or as.. natively skilled; i fail to see the issue. First time i touch something, i'm careful, i'm anxious, i know i'm bound to do something wrong (which is fine, because being careful means i never damage it).
What i -do- not fail to see, is that his reviews are usually the most deep, fair and/or extensive. He doesn't "present", he actually reviews. Meaning that on top of the specific product's numbers, he actually has other products' performances to match it with, which he does. Most do not.

*e.g. i could not care if Aenra thinks 'x' mobo is "bestest", i would have cared however if Aenra told me that said 'x' mobo is better because look at the numbers when compared to 'y' mobo, same CPU on. That's a review. The rest is sell-outs/fanboys having fun with their free toys. Locals included ^^

He's also very thorough in explaining what and how he does it, so you may feel free to disagree with him or at the least, inform yourself. And quite frankly, he's also quite fair.. unlike other 15yr olds i could think of.

As always, just me, i'm sure others will disagree

[and had you paid attention, you'd have mentioned something else actually.. he measured the die wrongly. Now that is a mistake]

 

[jboydgolfer]

I too feel the guy could be a little bit more "skilled" ... as far as wiping the chip, ill use anything....my T-shirt or socks , I really don't care I've been doing it long enough, I know nothing is going to happen and it's not gonna make any difference. I've watched a few of This guys videos in the past,personally i was never too impressed , I don't know if it's his actual personality, or if he's just dumbing it down for the videos... but these "techvideo" guys are a dime a dozen hell theyre a penny a dozen ...find another. (maybe one that cuts his hair and bathes )

 

[Solaris17]

damn all that PCB real estate. wasted

 

[mtcn77]

damn all that PCB real estate. wasted

You're wrong. The copper block radiates heat to components underneath. There is none underneath. Components are right where they need to be. Let's get some M.2 action going. Enough whining already, let's get serious.

 

[RejZoR]

People complaining over empty PCB. Well, it's HBM powered card. What did you expect if stacks of what would otherwise be GDDR5 trashed all over the said PCB is now neatly packed next to the GPU core? FuryX could be that short because cooling was offset by the tubes and radiator somewhere else. This one is air cooled. You need space for the fan and heatsink on the PCB. It's not a hard concept to understand you know... The water cooled one will most likely be the same as FuryX.

 

[mtcn77]

I too feel the guy could be a little bit more "skilled" ... as far as wiping the chip, ill use anything....my T-shirt or socks , I really don't care I've been doing it long enough, I know nothing is going to happen and it's not gonna make any difference. I've watched a few of This guys videos in the past,personally i was never too impressed , I don't know if it's his actual personality, or if he's just dumbing it down for the videos... but these "techvideo" guys are a dime a dozen hell theyre a penny a dozen ...find another. (maybe one that cuts his hair and bathes )

He had a news editor Michael who had the air of someone who knew what he was talking about.

 

[jboydgolfer]

I'm really surprised that AMD went with the whole founders edition name, why would they do that ?

 

[Solaris17]

He had a news editor Michael who had the air of someone who knew what he was talking about.

You work with this guy or something? lol

You're wrong.

So you an engineer now?

The copper block radiates heat to components underneath. There is none underneath. Components are right where they need to be.

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Let's get some M.2 action going. Enough whining already, let's get serious.

M.2 as in the hard drive? On a GPU? What?

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

The fact that a gamers website is reviewing the FE card speaks loudly to their stupidity. How many times does it take to get the message across, its not intended as a gamers card.

 

[xkm1948]

People complaining over empty PCB. Well, it's HBM powered card. What did you expect if stacks of what would otherwise be GDDR5 trashed all over the said PCB is now neatly packed next to the GPU core? FuryX could be that short because cooling was offset by the tubes and radiator somewhere else. This one is air cooled. You need space for the fan and heatsink on the PCB. It's not a hard concept to understand you know... The water cooled one will most likely be the same as FuryX.

Judging by the position of the PCI-E pins, the water cooled version uses the exact same PCB as the air cooled version.

The fact that a gamers website is reviewing the FE card speaks loudly to their stupidity. How many times does it take to get the message across, its not intended as a gamers card.

Yet it has a Gaming mode.

So We can't compare it to actual workstation card. Because it is unfair.
So we also can't compare it to gaming card, because it is unfair.

I guess Vega FE is already the Winner in its own ZONE now. It cannot be compared to ANY OTHRR GPUs. It is all by itself mighty and good.

 

[mtcn77]

You work with this guy or something? lol



So you an engineer now?



I'm not sure what to make of this.



M.2 as in the hard drive? On a GPU? What?

Yes.

 

[Steevo]

M.2 as in the hard drive? On a GPU? What?

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...ew-ssg-a-gpu-with-1tb-of-ssd-storage-attached


Yes M.2 SSD on a graphics card.

 

[r9]

PCB doesn't need to be that long its just cosmetics.
Can't blame them, short cards always looked ugly to me .

 

[MrGenius]

Yet it has a Gaming mode.

And you would think using it does something to help games perform better. But you might be wrong to think so. Since just switching to "Gaming Mode" does nothing for gaming performance(see quote and/or link directly below). Because all it really does is let you use WattMan and Chill(see EDIT below). Of course being able to use WattMan will give you the ability to overclock, which can give you better gaming performance. Chill, on the other hand, is just a power saving feature. And, as such, can't give you better gaming performance.

AMD has confirmed that switching between Game Mode and Professional Mode will have no performance impact, only visual and UI elements (of the ReLive driver settings GUI *only* - not your games) will change.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graph...B-Air-Cooled-Review/Answering-Questions-you-A

EDIT: Apparently there's a bit more to it than that. You also get the rest of the gaming settings that you don't get with the Radeon Pro and AMD FirePro drivers. Which I presume includes per game or global customization of AA, AF, tessellation, frame rate target control, etc..

Here's a little video I found that shows how it works.

Bigger version found here: https://gfycat.com/RectangularObviousDuckling
And where I originally found it here: https://videocardz.com/70511/amd-radeon-vega-frontier-features-gaming-mode

I also found a vid showing a Pro Mode vs. Gaming Mode vs. Gaming Mode OC comparison in various graphics and gaming benchmarks. It's interesting to see that Pro Mode is slightly better than Gaming Mode(non-OC) in most scenarios(12 of 15).

 

[Laki89]

Yes M.2 SSD on a graphics card.

It's not hard to imagine that one day PC (some sort of) will be one big GPU and i am not joking
Only question is: will it be useful ?
Edit: it already exist for years, just nobody called it that way

 

[Steevo]

It's not hard to imagine that one day PC (some sort of) will be one big GPU and i am not joking
Only question is: will it be useful ?
Edit: it already exist for years, just nobody called it that way

AMD already has the tools to make this happen with a good background in CPU and GPU architecture, they have things like CUDA direct conversion with only like 5-6% performance penalty to convert, and now the last piece is a GPU die that has how much ever memory you need it to, so take a M.2 with a whole movie file and you want to run the last composition and render, plug it in and go to work with more performance than anyone else, or huge datasets, or whole game files.

AMD could have just as easily put a small Ryzen core on or into Vega to decompile instructions meant for X86 instead of GPU hardware, that is capable of passing all threads off to the primary CPU system with a EPYC, or Ryzen Pro chip while speeding up conversion.

 

[XiGMAKiD]

With that much empty space they could just go with GDDR5/X for lower tier Vega so it can released early, and release the top of the line HBM version sometime later when there's still place for it in the market

 

[Laki89]

AMD already has the tools to make this happen with a good background in CPU and GPU architecture, they have things like CUDA direct conversion with only like 5-6% performance penalty to convert, and now the last piece is a GPU die that has how much ever memory you need it to, so take a M.2 with a whole movie file and you want to run the last composition and render, plug it in and go to work with more performance than anyone else, or huge datasets, or whole game files.

I know exactly what was AMD vision when they put 1TB on GPU - to have fastest storage on planet for any kind of computing job and to skip motherboard limitations (bottleneck)
just question is: how much will it cost?

AMD could have just as easily put a small Ryzen core on or into Vega to decompile instructions meant for X86 instead of GPU hardware, that is capable of passing all threads off to the primary CPU system with a EPYC, or Ryzen Pro chip while speeding up conversion.

it's not hard to imagine and maybe we see something like that in a year or two

 

[mtcn77]

I know exactly what was AMD vision when they put 1TB on GPU - to have fastest storage on planet for any kind of computing job and to skip motherboard limitations (bottleneck)
just question is: how much will it cost?

it's not hard to imagine and maybe we see something like that in a year or two

The cost is out of the question. Today's gpus max out at 850MB/s of data streaming. That is horrid in any circumstance. These do 4500.

 

[Laki89]

The cost is out of the question. Today's gpus max out at 850MB/s of data streaming. That is horrid in any circumstance. These do 4500.

That's big leap, but also don't forget nVlink