New AMD Polaris based GPU

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neblogai

Member
Oct 29, 2017
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A 12nm Polaris could be used in laptops where AMD is notably absent except for their APUs. Downclock them and combined with the 12nm process maybe power is low enough to compete with nvidia in mid-range performance. On the downside it would be hard to compete since Polaris is getting old and Nvidia has the whole market to themselves.

For laptops, AMD have promised to release a discreet Vega for mobile this year. With HBM2, it should be quite power efficient, although if nVidia releases midrange/laptop chips on 7nm and with GDDR6 (they are an early 7nm client of TSMC)- that should be better.
 

krumme

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2009
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A 12nm Polaris could be used in laptops where AMD is notably absent except for their APUs. Downclock them and combined with the 12nm process maybe power is low enough to compete with nvidia in mid-range performance. On the downside it would be hard to compete since Polaris is getting old and Nvidia has the whole market to themselves.
No.
12nm is not going to make any difference that matters here. Look at Zen 12nm. Look at nv 12nm. 12nm just a miniscule step forward.
Nv can downclock their stuff too. Not that they need. Polaris is more like Maxwell efficiency than Pascal. It's not the same league.

Any Polaris 12nm is made for desktop and the reason is to use gf capacity because of the wsa. No redesign.
A beefed up Polaris at 200usd is super. Or a 150usd 4gb version. I can't see why people need more for 1080 60hz.

....Neither can all the 1060 users.
 
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krumme

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2009
5,956
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For laptops, AMD have promised to release a discreet Vega for mobile this year. With HBM2, it should be quite power efficient, although if nVidia releases midrange/laptop chips on 7nm and with GDDR6 (they are an early 7nm client of TSMC)- that should be better.
Vega for mobile gaming is just slow.
And expensive.
And inefficient
7nm Vega for b2b market makes tons of sense though.
 

ozzy702

Golden Member
Nov 1, 2011
1,151
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They'll end up a lot more expensive though due to RTX tax.

Is it confirmed that lower tiered cards will be RTX? I doubt it. They'll stick to GTX branding and small, cheap dies for the budget oriented cards.
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
7,065
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Can I just say how strangely refreshing it is to see an AMD hype train stall out at the station?

A few more rounds of this and people may have actual, realistic expectations for the second fiddle, cash strapped RTG group...
 

itsmydamnation

Platinum Member
Feb 6, 2011
2,867
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Doubt they are cash strapped anymore, but it will still take years of good Financials from amd to make a full recovery in the gpu space
 

Malogeek

Golden Member
Mar 5, 2017
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Is it confirmed that lower tiered cards will be RTX? I doubt it. They'll stick to GTX branding and small, cheap dies for the budget oriented cards.
There seems to be TU116 and TU117 with RTX features so it's assumed they're 2069 and 2050.
 
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Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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There send to be TU116 and TU117 with RTX features so it's assumed they're 2069 and 2050.

Not sure what the purpose of RTX stuff on low end cards is. If a 2080Ti can barely manage 1080P, a card with half the performance would be hobbled with performance that is low enough to be of zero use. Other than as a sales gimmick I suppose.
 

ozzy702

Golden Member
Nov 1, 2011
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Not sure what the purpose of RTX stuff on low end cards is. If a 2080Ti can barely manage 1080P, a card with half the performance would be hobbled with performance that is low enough to be of zero use. Other than as a sales gimmick I suppose.

This. It makes no sense for the 2070 to be RTX, let alone lower tiered cards. I don't see them wasting die space on 2060 and under GPUs although it's certainly possible. It would be strange for the 2070 to be the only sku with it's own chip, but still why put completely useless features on 2060 and under cards that cost expensive die space?
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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This. It makes no sense for the 2070 to be RTX, let alone lower tiered cards. I don't see them wasting die space on 2060 and under GPUs although it's certainly possible. It would be strange for the 2070 to be the only sku with it's own chip, but still why put completely useless features on 2060 and under cards that cost expensive die space?

-I can only imagine the cards were designed for 7nm, where the die shrink would bring die sizes back to standard for each tier. Even if the features were useless at a certain time, the die size would not be prohibitively expensive to produce and the whole lineup would maintain feature parity.

This gen looks nuts thanks to NV having to backport a 7nm design to 12 nm. I wouldnt be surprised to see a GP104 chip rebranded as a GTX 2060 and a GP106 rebranded as a GTX 2050, with NV just ditching the smaller TU dies until 7nm is ready.
 
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Malogeek

Golden Member
Mar 5, 2017
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Not sure what the purpose of RTX stuff on low end cards is. If a 2080Ti can barely manage 1080P, a card with half the performance would be hobbled with performance that is low enough to be of zero use. Other than as a sales gimmick I suppose.
One could argue (and many have been) that it's useless on a 2080ti even since at the resolution it's apparently playable at, it's still classed as a gimmick for those users. Maybe the future for Nvidia is everyone running 50% or even 25% of resolution with RTX enhancements and upscaled with DLSS. *shudder*
 

tviceman

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Mar 25, 2008
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Can I just say how strangely refreshing it is to see an AMD hype train stall out at the station?

A few more rounds of this and people may have actual, realistic expectations for the second fiddle, cash strapped RTG group...

Hahahaha yep. It seemed that after every single major Nvidia launch, the AMD hype train created an unbelievable green-team-dream-slaying chip. Each and every time, it never came to fruition, and the excuses flew off the shelves faster than light. Eventually, reality wins out. And right now our reality is that AMD likely can't catch Nvidia at all, and so now Nvidia is testing out new tech and bloated dies at the expense of consumers.
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
7,065
7,491
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One could argue (and many have been) that it's useless on a 2080ti even since at the resolution it's apparently playable at, it's still classed as a gimmick for those users. Maybe the future for Nvidia is everyone running 50% or even 25% of resolution with RTX enhancements and upscaled with DLSS. *shudder*

- That's actually a very astute observation.

Maybe the end goal here is to use trained networks/DLSS style techniques to upscale images on the xx60 level cards and below to inflate performance numbers.

Consoles have been using variable rendering for a while to extract maximum performance, NV is likely aiming for a technique that's independent of developer resources or engine optimizations.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,015
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- That's actually a very astute observation.

Maybe the end goal here is to use trained networks/DLSS style techniques to upscale images on the xx60 level cards and below to inflate performance numbers.

That only works if you can get everyone to benchmark with those settings. As soon as anyone using an existing method where the magic tricks don't help, the numbers don't look as good.

And right now our reality is that AMD likely can't catch Nvidia at all, and so now Nvidia is testing out new tech and bloated dies at the expense of consumers.

Maybe we'll eventually get fortunate and have history repeat where AMD comes out with a nice lean chip that punches above its weight class like the 4850 and 4870 back in the day.

I don't think that happens until after Navi unless Navi is itself a new architecture. AMD's GCN is a lot like Intel's Core in that it's long in the tooth and in need of replacement. Even if NVidia blunders with RTX, AMD isn't in a position to capitalize like they did with Ryzen.
 
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Guru

Senior member
May 5, 2017
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For laptops, AMD have promised to release a discreet Vega for mobile this year. With HBM2, it should be quite power efficient, although if nVidia releases midrange/laptop chips on 7nm and with GDDR6 (they are an early 7nm client of TSMC)- that should be better.
That is wrong. Its AMD that has the 7nm process advantage over Nvidia. In fact AMD is using it for all their upcoming products, server CPU's, mobile Vega graphics, professional Vega graphics, etc... that they've got most of the production to themselves, so much of the production so that they can't even release a 7nm desktop GPU until Q2 2019.

TSMC has its hands full right now and unless they can increase production of 7nm by 50%(not going to happen anytime soon), its AMD that will have 7nm process almost exclusively for themselves until mid 2019.

In terms of this rumor, its just not true! If there is 12nm parts its 100% going to be OEM parts. Though the 14nm they use is so refined at this point that its probably cheaper to produce on it, than to switch to 12nm for the same products. Yields are going to be lower on 12nm as opposed to the mature 14nm node, that any tiny advantage from the sammer node will be lost.

So to me, unless 12nm has been shown to produce same effective dies as 14nm, there is no reason for AMD to switch.
 

Guru

Senior member
May 5, 2017
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That only works if you can get everyone to benchmark with those settings. As soon as anyone using an existing method where the magic tricks don't help, the numbers don't look as good.



Maybe we'll eventually get fortunate and have history repeat where AMD comes out with a nice lean chip that punches above its weight class like the 4850 and 4870 back in the day.

I don't think that happens until after Navi unless Navi is itself a new architecture. AMD's GCN is a lot like Intel's Core in that it's long in the tooth and in need of replacement. Even if NVidia blunders with RTX, AMD isn't in a position to capitalize like they did with Ryzen.

This has been debunked so many times. Just because AMD calls it GCN, doesn't mean its the same architecture. Just because Nvidia has been calling it different names doesn't mean its a different architecture.

Even today with Turing, Nvidia's architecture holds roots from Fermi, their GTX 400 series. Okay? And even that had so many similarities with their 200 series.

On the other hand the difference between GCN architectures from 1 to 4 is huge. You can't even compare GCN 2 to 3 or 3 to 4, the differences are huge, so its not the same architecture, though obviously like Nvidia its got roots since GCN 1.

But even GCN 1 has roots since their HD 2000 era. In fact their HD 2000 era graphics were the biggest change in architecture, as they switched to unified architecture.

Vega on the other hand is a new design for them, its a massively redesigned architecture from their GCN ones, though obviously as with any architecture it has to draw roots from somewhere. I mean cars from 100 years ago had an engine, cars today still have an engine, are they the same? Cars 100 years ago had wheels, cars today still have wheels, are they the same?

So no, you are completely wrong in your premise. AMD's architectures are not old, its not the same architecture, in fact they are all massively different from one another, if anything its AMD that had innovated a lot more and added a lot more new features and stuff, while Nvidia played it safe. I'd say that was AMD's error, they innovated too fast, they though low level API's would come faster and become more popular and the standard faster, but that didn't happen.

Even GPU's like Fury were designed to take full advantage of low level api's, if back then low level api's took off, like say Vulkan which is based off of AMD's Mantle, then the Fury X would have swiped the floor with the GTX 980ti.

Nvidia on the other hand were reiterating more, rather than innovating. They more closely designed new architectures to the previous one, deciding to reiterate more and focused on DX11 and high level API's, which bear fruit for them. Even Pascal was much more DX11 focused, rather than DX12/Vulkan. In fact even Volta didn't change that, even Volta is essentially 100% Pascal for DX12/Vulkan. Only Turing is a much more refined DX12/Vulkan architecture and we see that in games like Doom and Wolfenstein 2. In fact Turing cards gain over 50% more performance when compared to Pascal cards in Wolfenstein 2 according to all review sites. The biggest gain Turing has over Pascal is in Wolfenstein 2.

We see it in games like Sniper Elite 4 as well, Nvidia's Vulkan/DX12 performance is only matching AMD's performance only now with Turing.

Navi will be different though as AMD learned their lesson, Vega was supposed to be this jack of all trades monster, good at workstations, good at AI, good at gaming, good at encoding and it ended up being an amazing professional card, beating the Titan X pascal, but it sucked in games.

Now they are taking a different approach, designing 7nm Vega purely for professional workloads and designing a new architecture purely for gaming workloads.
 
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neblogai

Member
Oct 29, 2017
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That is wrong. Its AMD that has the 7nm process advantage over Nvidia. In fact AMD is using it for all their upcoming products, server CPU's, mobile Vega graphics, professional Vega graphics, etc... that they've got most of the production to themselves, so much of the production so that they can't even release a 7nm desktop GPU until Q2 2019.

TSMC has its hands full right now and unless they can increase production of 7nm by 50%(not going to happen anytime soon), its AMD that will have 7nm process almost exclusively for themselves until mid 2019.

You are only assuming AMD's lead in 7nm in consumer products. But their CFO revealed that new generation of consumer graphics chips in 2019 will come last, after Vega 7nm, Epyc 7nm, and then Ryzen 7nm. So, probably in the second half of next year. However, nVidia was also mentioned as one of the first users of 7nm at TSMC, and we do not know which chips will it be. nVidia have not revealed their smaller dies yet- and 7nm midrange GPUs for gaming laptops would be reasonable for them to do, in light of Intel entering mobile GPU market, and AMD making a (14nm?) product specifically for that market.
 
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tviceman

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Mar 25, 2008
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Maybe we'll eventually get fortunate and have history repeat where AMD comes out with a nice lean chip that punches above its weight class like the 4850 and 4870 back in the day.

I don't think that happens until after Navi unless Navi is itself a new architecture. AMD's GCN is a lot like Intel's Core in that it's long in the tooth and in need of replacement. Even if NVidia blunders with RTX, AMD isn't in a position to capitalize like they did with Ryzen.

That would be fantastic. There is definitely an opportunity, especially given the fact that Nvidia did not make tangible perf/w improvements in traditional rendering and bloated by a substantial amount. If AMD punches into 7nm first with consumer product, which is a real possibility since Vega 20 is 7nm and coming in Q4 2018 / Q1 2019, we could see a return to stiff competition. Still, the best I can see is AMD catching or only slightly surpassing Nvidia in perf/w for traditional rendering (i.e. not ray tracing) at 7nm vs. Nvidia's 12nm lineup.
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
7,065
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That only works if you can get everyone to benchmark with those settings. As soon as anyone using an existing method where the magic tricks don't help, the numbers don't look as good.

-After the sometimes absurd levels of kowtowing to NV from reviewers during this latest launch, is such a thing really so outlandish?

There is a long and storied history of driver level "optimizations" in the video card space. If NV can enable variable rendering as the default in drivers they'd likely get away with it for a while since image quality comparisons aren't really a thing in modern reviews. Everyone just assumes the final rendered product is exactly the same between all vendors, and that no one is taking any shortcuts.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,841
5,456
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TSMC has its hands full right now and unless they can increase production of 7nm by 50%(not going to happen anytime soon), its AMD that will have 7nm process almost exclusively for themselves until mid 2019.

If anything, AMD is small fish when it comes to TSMC's 7 nm production. The issue isn't capacity per se, it's more that the wafer costs are insane at 7 nm, and early on it's even worse. That's why you are likely going to only see very high margin products from AMD (and nVidia) until the middle of the year at the earliest... and that includes Ryzen.
 
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