Elixer
Lifer
- May 7, 2002
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Isn't that rather presumptuous?When will AMD finally learn that with their tiny market share they can't make the rules, and they have to beat Intel and Nvidia at their own game?
Everyone was stung by the lack of both TSMC and GloFlo having anything available that was under 28nm tech. 14nm tech is just not available, and it will be that way until both TSMC and GloFlo get their crap in gear sometime late '16 for mass production.
Both camps had new tech coming, AMD with Artic Island, and nvidia with Volta.
They both read the tea leaves and saw 14nm wasn't going to happen in '15, and most likely not '16 either.
That left AMD in a predicament, they had 28nm parts working, but, doing a complete redesign of 14nm back to 28nm would have been incredibly expensive so, they instead chose to rework hawaii + HBM hoping that will get them by until 14nm tech is ready and affordable.
Heck, I am sure they would have rather used HBM2 as well, but, that is also delayed.
AMD did get HBM right, it seems to be working as advertised.
In this respect, they are the first out of the gate that beat both intel & nvidia to the punch. However, guess what, at least for current games, memory bandwidth is only part of the problem, they need more pipes (ROPs) to take full advantage.
But, in things where memory bandwidth matters the most, looking at AT's SystemCompute C++AMP test (http://anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1232), it is at the poll position. This could mean that for specific tasks, Fury is looking very, very good.
Intel took their own sweet time getting to 14nm, and, as a leader, and as the 500lb gorilla in the room could afford to take their time until it made financial sense for them to get it out.
Nvidia is hoping to stem the tides with Pascal--if they can get 14nm tech *and* HBM2 sometime in '16, and AFAIK, they have no fallback, so, the current crop of cards is what you will see for the remainder of the year, and for most of '16 (and maybe into '17) as well.
I know most of us would have loved to see a completely new design to go with HBM, and AMD just didn't have the tech available to do it.
Yeah, it sucks, but, they are trying their best with what they have, and they did lead with HBM, you got to give them that.
HBM2 in '16 won't change the picture that much, a respin of Fiji won't really help either, they just need more ROPs. Will DX12 help? Possible, but, DX12 games are far into the future.
What I find the most puzzling is, in AMD's livestream, one of the designers said that the Fury can "O/C like no tomorrow, it is a O/C'er's dream" so, what is holding back the fury, is it BIOS, or drivers, or both? It came from the horses mouth, and I really doubt that Joe lied, so... Hmm.
refs: https://youtu.be/7MEgJLvoP2U?t=3760