Question Speculation: RDNA2 + CDNA Architectures thread

[uzzi38]

All die sizes are within 5mm^2. The poster here has been right on some things in the past afaik, and to his credit was the first to saying 505mm^2 for Navi21, which other people have backed up. Even still though, take the following with a pich of salt.

Navi21 - 505mm^2

Navi22 - 340mm^2

Navi23 - 240mm^2

Source is the following post: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/PC_Shopping/M.1588075782.A.C1E.html

 

[soresu]

HBM2 has ECC built in, although it is OK to ingore the ECC checks

Here is the official release from AMD.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/professional-graphics/radeon-pro-vii

In the ProRender Release, HBCC is still a big differentiator, I suppose it is one of the reasons they want to hang on to it.

Radeon™ ProRender Suite

AMD Radeon™ ProRender is our fast, easy, and incredible physically-based rendering engine built on industry standards that enables accelerated rendering on virtually any GPU, any CPU, and any OS in over a dozen leading digital content creation and CAD applications.

gpuopen.com

Indeed it seems they just released a big update to it (ProRender/Radeon Rays).

Still playing catch up to OptiX no doubt. Certainly without a mountain of cash and free cards to throw at pro GPU renderer devs - ie Autodesk (Arnold), Maxon (RedShift), Pixar (Renderman) and Isotropix (Clarisse) - I don't expect any future movement on use of Radeon Rays for acceleration on AMD GPU's.

Interesting that they have abandoned OpenCL completely for the Radeon Rays 4.0 library update though - listing only DX12, Vulkan and HIP as backends for it (link).

It's also gone from open source with v2 to closed source with v4.

 

[Glo.]

Epic Games reveal Unreal Engine 5 demo running on PlayStation 5 (with RDNA2 graphics) - VideoCardz.com

Unreal Engine 5 During the Summer Game Reveal hosted by Geoff Keighley, a demo of Unreal Engine 5 has been showcased for the first time. The demo was running on the next-generation Sony Station 5 gaming console, which is based on AMD RDNA2 architecture. The demo is titled “Lumen in the Land of...

videocardz.com

Ok, this is stunning.

 

[soresu]

Epic Games reveal Unreal Engine 5 demo running on PlayStation 5 (with RDNA2 graphics) - VideoCardz.com

Unreal Engine 5 During the Summer Game Reveal hosted by Geoff Keighley, a demo of Unreal Engine 5 has been showcased for the first time. The demo was running on the next-generation Sony Station 5 gaming console, which is based on AMD RDNA2 architecture. The demo is titled “Lumen in the Land of...

videocardz.com

Ok, this is stunning.

The YT video links this Epic blog entry.

A first look at Unreal Engine 5

Get a glimpse of new and improved real-time rendering features currently in development.

www.unrealengine.com

 

[Elfear]

Epic Games reveal Unreal Engine 5 demo running on PlayStation 5 (with RDNA2 graphics) - VideoCardz.com

Unreal Engine 5 During the Summer Game Reveal hosted by Geoff Keighley, a demo of Unreal Engine 5 has been showcased for the first time. The demo was running on the next-generation Sony Station 5 gaming console, which is based on AMD RDNA2 architecture. The demo is titled “Lumen in the Land of...

videocardz.com

Ok, this is stunning.

That looks incredible!

 

[jpiniero]

Epic Games reveal Unreal Engine 5 demo running on PlayStation 5 (with RDNA2 graphics) - VideoCardz.com

Unreal Engine 5 During the Summer Game Reveal hosted by Geoff Keighley, a demo of Unreal Engine 5 has been showcased for the first time. The demo was running on the next-generation Sony Station 5 gaming console, which is based on AMD RDNA2 architecture. The demo is titled “Lumen in the Land of...

videocardz.com

Ok, this is stunning.

Looks like we are officially in the "look at what we can do with next gen hardware!!" silly season.

 

[coercitiv]

A commentary walk-through - they give some insights into how the tech works.

 

[soresu]

Looks like we are officially in the "look at what we can do with next gen hardware!!" silly season.

At this point they cant get much better than this - I'm interested to see this Nanite virtualised geometry combined with hyper realistic digital humans though.

 

[uzzi38]

Some additional points about that demo:

Completely shader based. Including global illumination.

Runs at 1440p30 w/dynamic resolution.

 

[beginner99]

That looks incredible!

As the last decades of tech demos have shown, the reality will be, well, far less real. It won't look anywhere close to this.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Interesting that they have abandoned OpenCL completely for the Radeon Rays 4.0 library update though - listing only DX12, Vulkan and HIP as backends for it (link).

It's also gone from open source with v2 to closed source with v4.

Yes, they did drop OpenCL support for Radeon Rays. But the OpenCL is still there for the other libraries.
ProRender w/ RadeonRays now supports Metal instead on MacOS.


Regarding the closed source, it might have something to do with this.

Might be open again at some point in the future.

All in all, this new update of GPUOpen has added lots of support for MacOS for most things(outside of DX related stuffs).

 

[DisEnchantment]

Quote from Scott Herkelman

The other point that we, here at AMD, have been planning for is the timing with the console launches, to ensure that no hardware vendor specific "proprietary" Ray Tracing technique or other GPU features slows down and bifurcates the industry to adopting next gen features. With this console momentum and Microsoft's DXR for PCs, I'm hopeful we can push towards an open ecosystem for all gaming and gamers.

Hmmm... does that mean RDNA2 is launching around console time frame? or simply timing the console launches wrt the competition locking in the ecosystem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/gj0x2x/_/fqi2ved

 

[soresu]

Quote from Scott Herkelman

Hmmm... does that mean RDNA2 is launching around console time frame? or simply timing the console launches wrt the competition locking in the ecosystem.

It sounds a lot like both want to make maximum return on their first party game IP now that PC has risen again in popularity compared to when PS4/XB1 came out.

 

[Elfear]

As the last decades of tech demos have shown, the reality will be, well, far less real. It won't look anywhere close to this.

Normally I sort of ignore most new tech demos because they're rarely done in the finished game in real-time (i.e. not some gorgeous cut scene). From the video comments it looks like this was actual gameplay which looks really good to me.

 

[Glo.]

Normally I sort of ignore most new tech demos because they're rarely done in the finished game in real-time (i.e. not some gorgeous cut scene). From the video comments it looks like this was actual gameplay which looks really good to me.

Im actually surprised by this. I did not expected that lighting on next gen consoles will be this good.

 

[DiogoDX]

Still remember that demo that epic had to lower the graphics to run on actual ps4 hardware and not the "target nexgen specs".

If this is running on actual ps5 that is great for future games.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Some additional points about that demo:

Completely shader based. Including global illumination.

Runs at 1440p30 w/dynamic resolution.

Hasn't that been a big issue (global illumination via shaders)? As in it was why they decided to push for ray-tracing?

Also interesting was it saying that it was actual geometry and not normal maps. I was expecting the industry to go more the other direction, simplifying geometry and focusing on using super high quality textures. But I'm a bit leery, in that for it supposedly being all actual geometry, there wasn't much real interaction with the environment. I'd think real geometry would be good for say destructive objects. My guess is they went overboard on geometry to show off the lighting.

Quote from Scott Herkelman

Hmmm... does that mean RDNA2 is launching around console time frame? or simply timing the console launches wrt the competition locking in the ecosystem.

I'm reading that less specific (i.e. launch timeframe) and more that they waited to develop ray-tracing specific stuff til it was solidly in place what the consoles would be doing for that, and then looking to make their dGPU offer similar, so as to make the hardware all be fairly similar to keep the market from fragmenting too much.

Normally I sort of ignore most new tech demos because they're rarely done in the finished game in real-time (i.e. not some gorgeous cut scene). From the video comments it looks like this was actual gameplay which looks really good to me.

I don't know, there was a noticeable change to certain aspects of the visuals when what looks most like typical gameplay started happening (the end when she takes off flying). My guess is that area was pretty heavily tailored to wow for the fairly static parts where they were just walking around and showing off the environment geometry. But I'm not putting too much stock into it, as we don't know how much effort it took to make that as well.

 

[xpea]

Im actually surprised by this. I did not expected that lighting on next gen consoles will be this good.

I think this demo is misleading and not so impressive for few reasons:
1- The assets are totally way above what a game will get. That is for sure. In other words, another round of unrealistic graphic demos for new gen console launch that will never materialise in shipped games...
2- 1440P with stutter (I estimate FPS between 22 and 30 in this demo) and dynamic resolution. Really ? it screams "hardware alreasdy maxed out"
3- Where is Ray tracing ? nowhere of course, because the load is already too much for the crippled PS5 RDNA2 GPU. EPIC made a smart choice with matt assets everywhere and no reflective surfaces. Again, the hardware can't handle much more.
Conclusion is by end of the year, any gaming PC with Ampere will run circles around the consoles and it's sad... Imagine how much, at mid life console, in 2-3 years, these toys will be behind 5nm MCM Hopper or RDN3... yeah... sad really sad

 

[Stuka87]

I think this demo is misleading and not so impressive for few reasons:
1- The assets are totally way above what a game will get. That is for sure. In other words, another round of unrealistic graphic demos for new gen console launch that will never materialise in shipped games...
2- 1440P with stutter (I estimate FPS between 22 and 30 in this demo) and dynamic resolution. Really ? it screams "hardware alreasdy maxed out"
3- Where is Ray tracing ? nowhere of course, because the load is already too much for the crippled PS5 RDNA2 GPU. EPIC made a smart choice with matt assets everywhere and no reflective surfaces. Again, the hardware can't handle much more.
Conclusion is by end of the year, any gaming PC with Ampere will run circles around the consoles and it's sad... Imagine how much, at mid life console, in 2-3 years, these toys will be behind 5nm MCM Hopper or RDN3... yeah... sad really sad

Dude, we do not know what actual hardware this was running on. We don't know the frame rate, because its a youtube video. You conjecture regarding Ray Tracing is just that, no details were given.

And pending tomorrows announcement, everything is pointing at Ampere being HPC only (including Titan). And one would hope that a video card that cost 3-4 times MORE than a console would be faster.

 

[Feld]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding or reading too much into it, but my takeaway from all the talk in that video about how developers can just port in max resolution/geometry assets and it works, was that the engine looks at the max detailed assets for everything and dynamically reduces poly count and such as needed when rendering according to the complexity of what is being rendered and the resolution being rendered at, to maintain a certain minimum framerate. Meaning, the demo is meant to show off the engine's capabilities as much or more as it is that of the PS5 hardware. So scenes where not much is going on might expect to have noticeably better visuals than when there is a ton of action happening, in order to continually squeeze the most out of the hardware.

 

[DisEnchantment]

I think this demo is misleading and not so impressive for few reasons:
1- The assets are totally way above what a game will get. That is for sure. In other words, another round of unrealistic graphic demos for new gen console launch that will never materialise in shipped games...
2- 1440P with stutter (I estimate FPS between 22 and 30 in this demo) and dynamic resolution. Really ? it screams "hardware alreasdy maxed out"
3- Where is Ray tracing ? nowhere of course, because the load is already too much for the crippled PS5 RDNA2 GPU. EPIC made a smart choice with matt assets everywhere and no reflective surfaces. Again, the hardware can't handle much more.
Conclusion is by end of the year, any gaming PC with Ampere will run circles around the consoles and it's sad... Imagine how much, at mid life console, in 2-3 years, these toys will be behind 5nm MCM Hopper or RDN3... yeah... sad really sad

The things being demoed is a not only about TFLOPs and graphics performance.
One of the highlights was that PS5 can stream compressed movie quality assets directly without any pop ins because it has specialized decompression HW which PCs do not have currently and the trememdous BW coming out of the storage architecture.
Ampere or anything cannot run around circles on this because it is not the GPU that is the bottleneck.

Comment from Sweeny himself.

Sony is pioneering here with the PlayStation 5 architecture. It's got a God-tier storage system which is pretty far ahead of PCs, bon a high-end PC with an SSD and especially with NVMe, you get awesome performance too."

This demo previews two of the new core technologies that will debut in Unreal Engine 5:

Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Nanite virtualized geometry means that film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data—and it just works. Nanite geometry is streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.

There are many other things mentioned by EPIC so you can read it yourself.

Dude, we do not know what actual hardware this was running on. We don't know the frame rate, because its a youtube video. You conjecture regarding Ray Tracing is just that, no details were given.

And pending tomorrows announcement, everything is pointing at Ampere being HPC only (including Titan). And one would hope that a video card that cost 3-4 times MORE than a console would be faster.

The HW its running is on PS5, that is the official statement. Other than that other things are not known.
But it is planned for early 2021 so the devs need time to tune it for better performance.

PC can take the cue from this console innovation.

 

[DXDiag]

Dude, we do not know what actual hardware this was running on. We don't know the frame rate, because its a youtube video. You conjecture regarding Ray Tracing is just that, no details were given.

Epic announced everything mate, 1440p, dynamic, 30fps, running on PS5.

 

[Dribble]

Geometry was really impressive. Lighting not so much mainly because they avoided having many lights - it was mostly just the sun. Character interaction with the world was very plastic, no softness so it felt like they were walking a barbie doll over the scene.

 

[moinmoin]

my takeaway from all the talk in that video about how developers can just port in max resolution/geometry assets and it works, was that the engine looks at the max detailed assets for everything and dynamically reduces poly count and such as needed when rendering according to the complexity of what is being rendered and the resolution being rendered at, to maintain a certain minimum framerate.

Indeed. This would make normal maps, lightmaps, LODs etc. all unnecessary. That would be a huge game changer, and also nicely future proof the games built on it as one could essentially upscale the graphics like vector graphics.

The big question is what are the hardware requirements to enable this feature? Storage bandwidth was already prominently featured. But I'd guess all the assets scaling may be rather heavy on the CPU as well (I don't think the GPU will handle that, graphics performance resources are limited as is), requiring more cores. Next gen consoles have 8x Zen 2 cores so using idling core resources for that purpose would make perfect sense.

 

[DisEnchantment]

The big question is what are the hardware requirements to enable this feature? Storage bandwidth was already prominently featured. But I'd guess all the assets scaling may be rather heavy on the CPU as well (I don't think the GPU will handle that, graphics performance resources are limited as is), requiring more cores. Next gen consoles have 8x Zen 2 cores so using idling core resources for that purpose would make perfect sense.

Just BW is not enough. NVMe RAID could match it but it is not all. The assets are highly compressed otherwise the game would need terabytes of storage.
PS5's solution is to implement dedicated HW just for decompression.

"By the way, in terms of performance, that custom decompressor equates to nine of our Zen 2 cores, that's what it would take to decompress the Kraken stream with a conventional CPU," Cerny reveals.

The only PCs which can do this would be those with HEDT processors.

So it could be horrible indeed if assets were to be scaled down on the PC because the minimum requirements would not be met to decompress them.

 

[moinmoin]

Just BW is not enough. NVMe RAID could match it but it is not all. The assets are highly compressed otherwise the game would need terabytes of storage.
PS5's solution is to implement dedicated HW just for decompression.

The only PCs which can do this would be those with HEDT processors.

So it could be horrible indeed if assets were to be scaled down on the PC because the minimum requirements would not be met to decompress them.

Kraken is proprietary so that along the performance requirement makes it unlikely that it's used outside of the PS5 to begin with.

What I'm more interested in is the fact that the "terabytes" of uncompressed data are just an intermediary step: The GPU won't be able to handle all at once either, so the assets will need to be scaled already before even the classical rendering process kicks in. Example from the demo is all the talk of that statue consisting of "more than 33 million triangles", first shown solo then shown as group of 500 statues. Without downscaling this kind of data wouldn't fit in the memory, nevermind be able to be rendered in real time by the GPU. So aside the known decompression, there is still the unknown how that downscaling is being handled. Unreal Engine 5 surely isn't supposed to run only on PS5 with these features.