navi confusion

[Soulkeeper]

I'm looking over the wiki specs and I guess the RX 5700 XT isn't meant to replace vega64 or Radeon VII ?
The number of SPs is low and the mem bandwidth, and lack of HBM, is low.
Is there supposed to be a higher end version announced at the same time ? or maybe later ?

 

[ao_ika_red]

Radeon VII is supposed to be with us until 2020. 5700XT is the big Navi like its predecessor, RX580. What we're waiting for is the announcement of small Navi, 5600 series probably.
sourced from old rumour mill: http://www.redgamingtech.com/navi-a...-july-more-powerful-navi-launching-next-year/

 

[Soulkeeper]

5700XT is only 2560 SPs 40CU tho, so it can't possibly be faster than Radeon VII ?
yet VII is not RDNA

Why are people excited about 5700XT, it's just a midrange card right ? No reason for someone not to get a VII right now instead ?

 

[ElFenix]

navi is a volume consumer part that is much cheaper to manufacture. it's not really a vega vii replacement as that's a workstation/datacenter card that is sold with consumer drivers.

 

[DrMrLordX]

5700XT is meant to perform a bit faster than an nVidia RTX 2070. For reference, Radeon VII trades blows with RTX 2080. As for what it replaces . . . some of us are still scratching our heads about that one, but time will tell.

Next year, we may see a Navi card that beats the 2080Ti (and, logically, Radeon VII).

As for Radeon VII, unless you really just want to support AMD on the high-end or want it for that 1/4 FP64 performance, you may not want one. There are no custom Radeon VIIs. Supplies may dry up eventually. It has already been hinted by @Yotsugi that Radeon VII would go EoL as soon as Navi launched, and sure enough, the AMD store doesn't even sell Radeon VII anymore.

Radeon VII prices are also starting to go down. NewEgg has the XFX card for "only" $680! What a deal. Also, all the Radeon VII game bundles have changed. Instead of Division 2, DMC5, and RE2, now you get Division 2 Gold and World War Z. Kinda wondering if that's what you get with 5700XT and/or 3900x in July.

 

[ao_ika_red]

Why are people excited about 5700XT, it's just a midrange card right ? No reason for someone not to get a VII right now instead ?

Because Navi is a new architecture and it's meant to replace the long overdue Polaris.

 

[ao_ika_red]

As for Radeon VII, unless you really just want to support AMD on the high-end or want it for that 1/4 FP64 performance, you may not want one.

Yeah, Radeon VII is finally displaced HD7970 as the FP64 king. Its performance on Milkyway@home and Einstein@home tops all consumer card in the market right now.

 

[SPBHM]

it's a bigger die than Polaris (on a more advanced process) and using more expensive and advanced memory than Polaris did, so it's clearly supposed to be a little higher than Polaris was I think,
but it's not going for the big die and just overall complexity that Vega 56/64 or Fury had, the fact that it's fairly close to Radeon 7 it's pretty nice, but it's clearly not designed or positioned as a replacement

 

[Soulkeeper]

Thanks for the comments everyone.
It seems like they've kinda left the door open for a higher end HBM RDNA offering later.

 

[Despoiler]

Thanks for the comments everyone.
It seems like they've kinda left the door open for a higher end HBM RDNA offering later.

AMD has gone bottom to top for new lineups for that last few generations. 80% of all GPU sales are mid and low tier cards.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Thanks for the comments everyone.
It seems like they've kinda left the door open for a higher end HBM RDNA offering later.

Dunno if we'll see HBM2 (or 3) on consumer cards again. We will see a faster Navi next year to challenge 2080Ti etc.

As @Despoiler pointed out though, the majority of GPU sales are in the range below where 5700/5700XT are priced now. When will AMD choose to serve that market with Navi?

 

[Soulkeeper]

I was wondering about that too.
Looking at the navi gddr6 with the same bandwidth as vega64 HBM
I still really like the idea of on package memory reducing the board size and increasing efficiency.
But in practice it didn't actually do any of that.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I still really like the idea of on package memory reducing the board size and increasing efficiency.
But in practice it didn't actually do any of that.

We'll probably never know, since AMD hasn't released any GDDR-based Vega10/Vega20 products for comparison.