HBM has been the thorn in AMD's side on this one. Not meeting spec, requiring overvolting to even come close to spec, etc. Yields must also blow because in true AMD form the core is overvolted as well.
Best move for AMD would be to release a nano that's clocked lower, binned, and has extremely low power consumption. It would compete with the 1070 but potentially could have extremely low power consumption right from the factor.
I think this would be a horrible decision, whatever they do is going to take a few months, and in a few months they will have Volta to compete with not the current gen of Nvidia cards. Having a Vega thats competing with a 1070 is not going to be enough, this would leave Nvidia with the 1080/1080Ti/Titan, and then volta 2060/2070/2080 all ahead of them. You dont want to be in a situation where your only competitor has 6 cards faster than your fastest offering.
I think they should push out another respin as fast as possible and aim for 1080Ti level of performance or Volta is going to murder them. They need to get clock speed up and power usage down ASAP. Luckily for them 6 months should be enough time to get a respin out. They need at least one top tier card in their linup, having only a 1070 competitor will not be enough IMO.
Really not at all sure if they'll bother - 6 months time is firmly into the sort of time scale for Volta to appear and at that point they'd need to improve really quite massively over Vega as it stands to make it worthwhile.
Primitive shaders which unlocks the improved geometry performance of Vega is not enabled in drivers. The features that are enabled such as Draw stream binning rasterizer are not well optimized. AMD needs to improve their drivers and extract the best possible performance out of Vega hardware.
2. HBM2 clocks - AMD's memory partners are struggling with HBM2 clocks/yields . Vega 10 was supposed to launch with 2 Gbps HBM2. Instead they have launched with 1.89 Ghz , which in fact was achieved through overvolting. By mid-2018 AMD should get its HBM2 vendors Samsung and Hynix to deliver 2 Gbps HBM2 stacks at good volume and healthy yields.
But to 1080ti perf/power from where they are now? Needs much more than a refresh! Navi might do it.If they get Vega to at least 1080Ti levels of both performance and power usage they will have a chance, as that should be about 2080 level of performance, and the Volta Ti will not launch for at least a year. So if vega hits 1080Ti levels that will give them something to hold off volta, and they can then focus on navi. Bottom line is they need to get something to market in the next 6 months that can sit up in the top end with the nvidia cards, or their market share is going to tank hard.
But to 1080ti perf/power from where they are now? Needs much more than a refresh! Navi might do it.
The 2070 will match the 1080ti, 2080 a bit faster etc. It's how NV do it.
Honestly they've had no top card at all for six+months & Fiji only half counted brute that. Vega crashing won't hurt their market share overly.
Their bigger problem in market share terms is going to be Polaris.....
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Rofl, how sad it is that we're already talking about Vega respin just 9 days after it launched...
Zlatan. You need to tell us morePrimitive shaders are enabled, but it is not useful without the NGG path. This will improve the performance and decrease the power consumption.
HBM2 is fine. But the pseudo channel mode is currently missing.
Primitive shaders are enabled, but it is not useful without the NGG path. This will improve the performance and decrease the power consumption.
HBM2 is fine. But the pseudo channel mode is currently missing.
Primitive shaders are enabled, but it is not useful without the NGG path. This will improve the performance and decrease the power consumption.
HBM2 is fine. But the pseudo channel mode is currently missing.
Finally, AMD is connecting Vega’s ROPs directly to its L2 cache. This will boost performance in games that use deferred rendering because it allows the GPU’s render backends to write directly to L2 rather than moving data through main memory first.
If they get Vega to at least 1080Ti levels of both performance and power usage they will have a chance, as that should be about 2080 level of performance, and the Volta Ti will not launch for at least a year. So if vega hits 1080Ti levels that will give them something to hold off volta, and they can then focus on navi. Bottom line is they need to get something to market in the next 6 months that can sit up in the top end with the nvidia cards, or their market share is going to tank hard.
They can't and won't meet 1080TI on both performance and power usage with a refresh. That mark won't be hit until Navi by which time Volta will be significantly ahead in every metric sans of course price to the consumer.
After the launch reviews i would agree with this. However some of these undervolting youtube vids and web reviews show some promise but only if they work with a majority of the chips. If AMD can respin and then bin the chips well enough maybe they can eek out 1080Ti performance over the next 6 months at least for one high end SKU getting all the top binned chips and getting special attention to voltage and clocks.
They can't bin the chips well enough now with a mature process. I seriously doubt will see Vega on a high performance process unless it's easy/cheap to port to from 14LPP.
Moving to a high performance process from GF will help with clocks and may help power consumption but the yields will more than likely be worse than now, so we're right back to the overv-olting nonsense to keep profit margin high.
If the HBM problems get sorted, and they are on a new process, and they bin high and apply appropriate voltages and have phenomenal cooling, Vega may match 1080ti on performance and possibly even come close on power consumption. That said, I don't see AMD going through the trouble given that 1080ti performance on AIB cards will be had for under $700 at that point.
AMD realizes Vega is stillborn. I'm sure they are working hard to correct that with Navi but I wouldn't expect anything sooner. This is the 480 launch all over again with hopes that the 500 series would use faster memory and have improved power consumption and look how that panned out.
I have a feeling you are right, but i hope for AMD's sake you are wrong. AMD is going to be in a world of hurt if they have nothing to counter volta till navi.
I think they have the mid range pretty well covered now with vega 56 and polaris. After volta launches and the 2050/2060/2070 is released vega 56 should compete very well with the 2060, obviously AMD will have to drop its price down to $200-300 to reflect its performance vs the 2060. And RX580 or small vega should do ok vs 2050 and under cards, for under $200 price point.
No, this doesn't work. Some people hate this idea but the markets you're talking about here, even outside notebooks which is a big percentage, really are quite TDP sensitive, as has been proven a few times before. That's very definitely true with xx50 style chips - the 580 just won't fly in that market at all - but also holds through to the xx60 tier to a fair extent.
I also rather doubt if they can really sell vega 56 down at xx60 pricing levels.