[Rumor - WCCFTech] AMD Arctic Islands 400 Series Set To Launch In Summer of 2016

[Magee_MC]

Such as? I think last time we discussed this we got maybe 6 games that are DX12 for 2016.

How many DX11 games are scheduled to be released? I would think that the ratio of DX12/DX11 would be more important than the absolute number.

 

[railven]

How many DX11 games are scheduled to be released? I would think that the ratio of DX12/DX11 would be more important than the absolute number.

In 2016? I Can only name the ones I'm interested in, and they won't really matter to this issue since they aren't "heavy hitters."

EDIT: But I'd be willing to wager, DX11 titles > DX12 titles in 2016. But if you use a modifier like "those games don't matter" it can go either way. /shrug.

 

[gamervivek]

AMD can't go back to smaller dies because they've lost the clockspeed advantage and the situation has reversed with smaller dies from nvidia competing with AMD's bigger dies and nvidia having no competition at the biggest die size possible.

If AMD could release a 1.5Ghz 350-400mm2 AI chip with some arch. improvements atop of that, it'd reach like 60-70% improvement over Fury X. Fat chance though. They'd be lucky to get out a 1.2Ghz stock chip and expect nvidia to be closer in clocks than with Maxwell cards.

WCCF's rumors are the same as always, keep posting whatever they come across even if it goes against their previous 'articles' and so at least one of them will be close enough.

 

[AtenRa]

What i mean has nothing to do with how many DX11/12 games are going to be released in 2016.

The point im trying to pass is that DX-12 titles will be the barometer of future performance and those are the ones everyone will watching very closely in 2016.

 

[Magee_MC]

In 2016? I Can only name the ones I'm interested in, and they won't really matter to this issue since they aren't "heavy hitters."

EDIT: But I'd be willing to wager, DX11 titles > DX12 titles in 2016. But if you use a modifier like "those games don't matter" it can go either way. /shrug.

That's what I was was trying to get at. I'd expect that the vast majority of the big games in 2016 would be DX12 exclusive or DX12 and DX11. I don't expect that many of the big hitters would be DX11 exclusive.

Games from smaller studios/indie games I would expect that a lot of them might be DX11 and below since that is what they have experience with and they're not pushing the envelope in terms of performance or visuals.

 

[railven]

That's what I was was trying to get at. I'd expect that the vast majority of the big games in 2016 would be DX12 exclusive or DX12 and DX11. I don't expect that many of the big hitters would be DX11 exclusive.

Well, that is rather subjective. 2016 is going to see a lot of once console exclusive games getting PC versions. These games are most likely going to be DX11. They will be "big" titles for "gamers" of all platforms, but like most Japanese titles, ignored by tech sites.

Games from smaller studios/indie games I would expect that a lot of them might be DX11 and below since that is what they have experience with and they're not pushing the envelope in terms of performance or visuals.

Namco/Square-Enix/SeedX are not "smaller studios/indie" publishers. They aren't just big in the PC space.


Anyways, back to what I was asking - what titles are going to be DX12 that are major hitters? Atenra and I discussed this before, and at most I believe we only got 6 and of those 6 not all were confirmed to even be DX12.

 

[Magee_MC]

What i mean has nothing to do with how many DX11/12 games are going to be released in 2016.

The point im trying to pass is that DX-12 titles will be the barometer of future performance and those are the ones everyone will watching very closely in 2016.

Agreed, however, I expect that if a game is available in both DX11 and DX12 the review sites will use whichever version gives the best results for whatever card they are testing, and those will be the numbers that get trumpeted on release. If AMD's results in DX12 are restricted to the developers optimizations and NV is able to optimize with drivers for DX11, then it becomes a question of how much time and effort the developers put into optimizing. With the ability of NV to throw money at the devs, it will be very interesting to see how that scenario plays out.

 

[railven]

Agreed, however, I expect that if a game is available in both DX11 and DX12 the review sites will use whichever version gives the best results for whatever card they are testing, and those will be the numbers that get trumpeted on release. If AMD's results in DX12 are restricted to the developers optimizations and NV is able to optimize with drivers for DX11, then it becomes a question of how much time and effort the developers put into optimizing. With the ability of NV to throw money at the devs, it will be very interesting to see how that scenario plays out.

If Ashes is any kind of example, Nvidia must have a lot of money/sway. Woof.

 

[Magee_MC]

Well, that is rather subjective. 2016 is going to see a lot of once console exclusive games getting PC versions. These games are most likely going to be DX11. They will be "big" titles for "gamers" of all platforms, but like most Japanese titles, ignored by tech sites.



Namco/Square-Enix/SeedX are not "smaller studios/indie" publishers. They aren't just big in the PC space.


Anyways, back to what I was asking - what titles are going to be DX12 that are major hitters? Atenra and I discussed this before, and at most I believe we only got 6 and of those 6 not all were confirmed to even be DX12.

For a quick and easy source, wikipedia has 7 games listed as already being released or available with early access that have DX12 support available or said to be coming. 10 games are also listed as expected to be released in 2016 and are speculated to have DX 12 support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_12_support

Of all of those 17, I would say at least 12 of them would be expected to be "bigger" titles.

 

[Magee_MC]

If Ashes is any kind of example, Nvidia must have a lot of money/sway. Woof.

I don't think that there's any question that NV is the big kid on the block with the uber deep pockets.

 

[railven]

For a quick and easy source, wikipedia has 7 games listed as already being released or available with early access that have DX12 support available or said to be coming. 10 games are also listed as expected to be released in 2016 and are speculated to have DX 12 support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_12_support

Of all of those 17, I would say at least 12 of them would be expected to be "bigger" titles.

I saw that list, and if I had to guess it is very inaccurate. For example, the games marked as "released" don't even have DX12 support (yet).

And as far as I'm aware, Far Cry Primal/The Division are DX11 - Gameworks.

But with nothing for either title confirmed, I'm just speculating on Ubisoft's prior history of slathering Nvidia "optimizations" all over their games.

I don't think that there's any question that NV is the big kid on the block with the uber deep pockets.

Just sucks we aren't getting huge DX12 advertisements. I personally think the reason is Nvidia is working behind the scenes.

 

[RussianSensation]

Well, that is rather subjective. 2016 is going to see a lot of once console exclusive games getting PC versions. These games are most likely going to be DX11. They will be "big" titles for "gamers" of all platforms, but like most Japanese titles, ignored by tech sites.

Namco/Square-Enix/SeedX are not "smaller studios/indie" publishers. They aren't just big in the PC space.

What are these games? Most of these will probably be locked to 30-60 fps and be broken out of the box based on most Japanese game releases from these studios. FFVX is also not slated to be ported to the PC in 2016.

Anyway, this is not relevant to the topic of this thread.

And as far as I'm aware, Far Cry Primal/The Division are DX11 - Gameworks.

But with nothing for either title confirmed, I'm just speculating on Ubisoft's prior history of slathering Nvidia "optimizations" all over their games.

Just sucks we aren't getting huge DX12 advertisements. I personally think the reason is Nvidia is working behind the scenes.

The topic of this thread is AMD hardware, R9 400 series not Gameworks or NV.

--------

AMD can't go back to smaller dies because they've lost the clockspeed advantage and the situation has reversed with smaller dies from nvidia competing with AMD's bigger dies and nvidia having no competition at the biggest die size possible.

This is a point I agree with as well. AMD cannot improve performance 80-100% from a 596mm2 Fury X if their maximum R9 400 chip is 300-350mm2 card. It's not even just what the competition is doing with its strategy but building off a 50-100% increase in performance from existing Fiji products.

More rumours:

Reuters:

"Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd will start making new chips for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc next year, South Korea's Electronic Times reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources.

The paper said Samsung's foundry business and Globalfoundries will jointly start producing a central processing chip as well as a graphics processing chip for AMD next year using their 14-nanometre technology."

Guru3D :

"Not Global foundries, not TSMC .. but Samsung will be fabbing next years Arctic Islands family of GPUs. Since it's Samsung it'll be a 14nm FinFET fab, opposed to Nvidia who will be using 16nm for their Pascal architecture at TSMC.

Rumor is that not just the GPUs will be fabbed by Samsung, the APU and processors as well or at least part of the lineup.

According to industries on the 21st, Samsung Electronics’ System LSI Foundry Business Department will start mass-producing AMD’s new GPU ‘Greenland (development code name)’ along with Global Foundry (GF) starting from 2nd quarter of 2016. Greenland will be produced from Gen. 2 14-nano FinFET LPP (Low Power Plus) processing and its electricity efficiency per watt is 2 times higher compared to 28-nano GPU (code name: Fiji) that is currently being sold in markets. Proportion of production supplies is very fluid as AMD will regulate proportion between 2 businesses according to many conditions such as yield and others.

AMD had been asking TSMC from Taiwan to be in charge of GPU production but it decided to cut contract with TSMC with 28-nano being the last production after issues with yield and instable supplies had continued. Its alternatives were Samsung Electronics and GF. AMD, Samsung Electronics, and GF had finalized on such decision when Samsung Electronics and GF were signing on contracts on common license for 14-nano processing last year, Afterwards AMD decided to pass over 20-nano processing and go straight to 14-nano processing.

Because Samsung Electronics and GF have same IP for 14-nano processing, chips that are designed by AMD will all be produced at both factories.” said a person who is familiar with this industry. “If products are produced from both factories, AMD won’t have to worry about a problem regarding lack of supplies.”

 

[SlowSpyder]

I'm getting an Asus MG279Q (1440p, Freesync, 144Hz). Going to upgrade to an R9 390 for ~$300 to enjoy sync tech now and push that resolution, but holding off till the 14/16nm GPU's for a big upgrade. But the upgrade bug is biting now... Can't wait till we get some new hardware not built on 28nm.

 

[Headfoot]

Depending on how well the new DX12 Multi GPU modes go over in terms of support, multiple small die could once again be a viable strategy. That, and if they figure out how to do some sort of MCM-on-interposer die combination system/fabric that scales better than PCIe based communication. Along the lines of NVlink and the way the Xeon Phi's fabric works

 

[Vesku]

I'd expect AMD to continue to not clock as high then if they are all Samsung-GF and Nvidia is all or mostly TSMC. Might be offset by extra transistors they can pack in.

Apple must be claiming an immense amount of TSMC 16FF and FF+ wafers.

 

[RussianSensation]

Depending on how well the new DX12 Multi GPU modes go over in terms of support, multiple small die could once again be a viable strategy.

I don't understand how several posters are trying to push this theory when:

1) AMD has moved away from small die chips looking at the general trend starting with HD3870. What is the trend in die sizes? UP, it's not down. So why in the world would AMD suddenly say Jeez, let's go back to small die strategy? It makes no sense because (1) It contradicts what they have actually been doing in reality and (2) it contradicts the entire foundation of Lisa's strategy to move AMD away from a budget brand. Budget brand <=> no single large die chip flagship cards like 3870->6970 days.

2) With delays of Fury X2 and multi-GPU issues in some popular AAA 2015 games (even though a lot of these are console ports), it's too risky to rely on dual-chip mid-range cards as your strategy. This is even more dangerous because UE4 doesn't support multi-GPU out of the box. This doesn't mean that AMD won't make multi-GPU chips for VR, but relying on small die multi-GPU chips for gaming will fail automatically. This is because if the competitor's product offers 40-50% more performance against a small die chip, no one is going to buy a card that requires CF to get that extra 40-50%. This has already been proven over and over with HD4870X2, HD5970, 6990, 7990, R9 295X2, etc. Dual chip GPUs hardly sell and most of the market doesn't care about them for gaming. Why would AMD make a crucial mistake of going against market trends? Considering they delayed Fury X2, they are actually paying attention how these style products are mostly not very popular.

3) It's actually not even possible to achieve an 80-100% gain in performance over Fury X when coming off a 596mm2 chip with a 300-350mm2 14nm AI. This alone destroys the theory of the small die strategy. What would be the point of just improving perf/watt 2X of Fury X but be barely faster? Perf/watt must go hand-in-hand with increased performance or otherwise such a strategy is again an automatic fail because the competitor will be doing BOTH.

4) Small die strategy implies NO flagship performance in a single chip card. That means, you cannot charge flagship GPU prices. That means you have lower profits margins, lower revenue and automatically give the competitor the entire $500+ GPU market. Every one of these things is what AMD is trying to fix while small die strategy goes the complete opposite way of higher margins, higher revenue, better brand image, etc.

5) With HD7970->290X, we have seen AMD roughly use the last gen's flagship performance as next gen's mid-range. This is not a viable strategy when utilizing the small die strategy since a mid-range small die chip of one generation cannot again be reused as a mid-range small die chip of the next gen -> You also have no room for the upgrade on the next node.

Since 14nm node is likely to stick around for years to come, it would be impossible to make substantial gains of 25-30% in performance if you are stuck on 300-350mm2 14nm die.

We just have to look at 7970->290X->Fury X to see that as long as there is no next gen node, large die strategy is not just an option, but it's going to become essentially to remain competitive since new nodes are not gong to be available to AMD like clock work every 18-24 months as was the case in the past.

My opinion is that small die vs. large die strategy isn't even debatable. The only way for AMD to turn around its GPU business is to fully adopt the large die strategy and scale its chips from 300mm2 to 600mm2 on the same node, and then start the entire cycle over with the 10nm node, then 7nm node, etc. We have already seen both companies doing exactly that with 28nm node, and there is 0 reason to indicate this is suddenly going to change, especially when Fury X has come so close to capturing the stock performance crown this gen.

 

[Kuiva maa]

Namco/Square-Enix/SeedX are not "smaller studios/indie" publishers. They aren't just big in the PC space.

Square Enix is pretty big on the PC as well. Deus Ex, Hitman, FFXIV RR, Tomb Raider ,Thief, Sleeping Dogs etc all are AAA heavy hitters that sold millions on the PC.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Apple must be claiming an immense amount of TSMC 16FF and FF+ wafers.

Given that iPhone 7/7 Plus + iPad Pro + possibly iPad Air 3 (if it uses A9X) will all use TSMC-built silicon, I think you are correct.

 

[railven]

Square Enix is pretty big on the PC as well. Deus Ex, Hitman, FFXIV RR, Tomb Raider ,Thief, Sleeping Dogs etc all are AAA heavy hitters that sold millions on the PC.

Oh I'm aware of that, but most of those games aren't advertised as Square-Enix, and most veteran PC gamers remember them more as Eidos franchises.

For example, when you see anything for Tomb Raider, it isn't "Square-Enix devs working on" it's "Crystal Dynamics" or for Thief/Dues "Eidos Montreal" But for the more traditional SE games, for example the Final Fantasy ports, it's identified as SE as the devs, even though a good chunk of them were ported by other studios - such as FF7/FF8 were originally ports by Eidos).

When Steam does a publisher deal, they still show Eidos, and under it are the usual Eidos titles, while the Square-Enix tab will often show more of the FF/DQ ports under their tab.

 

[Stormflux]

What do people think of AMD building up the RTG (Radeon Technologies Group) brand lately? New Initiatives, Driver Suite and look. Would it be wise/likely for AMD to drop their name from the new series of GPUS?

RTG 490X (Or even a whole new naming scheme (my preference if they go this route) as it's gotten convoluted with R7, R9, and now Fury lineups)

vs.
AMD R9 Radeon 490X

AMDs image is a double edged sword these days.

 

[Techhog]

What do people think of AMD building up the RTG (Radeon Technologies Group) brand lately? New Initiatives, Driver Suite and look. Would it be wise/likely for AMD to drop their name from the new series of GPUS?

RTG 490X (Or even a whole new naming scheme (my preference if they go this route) as it's gotten convoluted with R7, R9, and now Fury lineups)

vs.
AMD R9 Radeon 490X

AMDs image is a double edged sword these days.

If they change the naming scheme again, people are just going to say that they change it every two years.

 

[railven]

What do people think of AMD building up the RTG (Radeon Technologies Group) brand lately? New Initiatives, Driver Suite and look. Would it be wise/likely for AMD to drop their name from the new series of GPUS?

RTG 490X (Or even a whole new naming scheme (my preference if they go this route) as it's gotten convoluted with R7, R9, and now Fury lineups)

vs.
AMD R9 Radeon 490X

AMDs image is a double edged sword these days.

I personally felt that botched the Fury name to hell and back. When I first heard about Fury, I was under the impression it would be AMD's answer to the "Titan" name. Instead they turned it into a new tier completely replacing what was once the top tier.

To your original question, I'd love it if they got rid of the AMD name. I've personally hated when they dropped ATI and frankly I think that is when they're overall brand cred started to go down hill (factor in the AMD CPU division basically floundering).

I don't know how I feel about "RTG" as to me it feels took much like they'd be copying "GTX" and the sort. They definitely can't drop the Radeon name. ANd if it's named RTG Radeon <something> it seems redundant "Radeon T... G... Radeon"

Either way, I don't like what they ended up doing with Fury, but am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on a new naming scheme (if they choose to even do one).

 

[Techhog]

I personally felt that botched the Fury name to hell and back. When I first heard about Fury, I was under the impression it would be AMD's answer to the "Titan" name. Instead they turned it into a new tier completely replacing what was once the top tier.

To your original question, I'd love it if they got rid of the AMD name. I've personally hated when they dropped ATI and frankly I think that is when they're overall brand cred started to go down hill (factor in the AMD CPU division basically floundering).

I don't know how I feel about "RTG" as to me it feels took much like they'd be copying "GTX" and the sort. They definitely can't drop the Radeon name. ANd if it's named RTG Radeon <something> it seems redundant "Radeon T... G... Radeon"

Either way, I don't like what they ended up doing with Fury, but am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on a new naming scheme (if they choose to even do one).

I think that it was originally an answer to Titan, but 980 Ti coming sooner than expected at a lower price than expected backed them into a corner.

 

[3DVagabond]

What do people think of AMD building up the RTG (Radeon Technologies Group) brand lately? New Initiatives, Driver Suite and look. Would it be wise/likely for AMD to drop their name from the new series of GPUS?

RTG 490X (Or even a whole new naming scheme (my preference if they go this route) as it's gotten convoluted with R7, R9, and now Fury lineups)

vs.
AMD R9 Radeon 490X

AMDs image is a double edged sword these days.

A rose by any other name....

I don't think it matters at all. The people who wouldn't buy something because it's AMD would still buy nVidia, Intel, etc...

 

[railven]

I think that it was originally an answer to Titan, but 980 Ti coming sooner than expected at a lower price than expected backed them into a corner.

I get the feeling they had the names chosen before the 980 Ti announcement. THe names being: Fury Fury X and Fury X2 (and for some reason the Nano is tagged under the Fury at newegg possibly because it is Fiji based).

Having 3 cards with the prestige name of Fury waters it down to me. "Titan" only existed with one current card replaced by something almost yearly (and we can all laugh at Titan Z).

I can only imagine what AMD does with next Gen Fury - they would have to add something to the name so we know it isn't related to Fiji Fury.

How I was honestly expecting Fury to roll out was:
Fiji XT == Fury X
Fiji Pro == 390X
EDIT - what is now Nano == 390
Dual Fiji Pro == 395X2
(if needed Dual Fiji XT == Fury X2)

All top tier cards for their prior naming scheme, and one prestige Fury. Instead they basically pulled a 58xx to 69xx name shift but added Fury to the stack. Just annoying if you ask.