Question Speculation: RDNA3 + CDNA2 Architectures Thread

[uzzi38]

Man I have been dying to make this one for a while now.

First rumours for RDNA3 are here so new thread time!

Just going to start off with this one for now: kopite7kimi on Twitter: "@VideoCardz Ah, I mean a simple mcm design with 10240 cores is not enough. Because the lift from RDNA2 to RDNA3 is much bigger than from RDNA1 to RDNA2. We should expect many big improvements in GFX11. 🤔" / Twitter

 

[linkgoron]

It can be more reason to wait for a N31 respin, because they can't really sell a $600 7800 XT that is nearly as fast as a 7900 XT.

AMD also released the 5600XT which was basically the same performance as the 5700.

 

[amenx]

It can be more reason to wait for a N31 respin, because they can't really sell a $600 7800 XT that is nearly as fast as a 7900 XT.

Sure they can. It would be a tremendous seller. They've done it before, 6800xt and 6900xt were not that far off in perf.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Your a frustrated manager because people like working from home and don't like to be micro-managed. but let's be real. a gpu dev team will be spread over different sites anyway and mostly have meetings online so location doesn't really matter.

As a senior Technical Manager myself, I am sick and tired of people in the team working from home.
We have junior engineers in the office, whose sole tasks are to flash the boards and HW and wait for instructions for the senior engineers to be able to test some thing.
Every issue needs an engagement of minimum 3 people.
1. Junior Engineer sitting in front of the boards and emulators with probes, scopes, signal analyzers, debuggers, etc.
2. Senior Engineer working on the actual topic from remote doing development and design work
3. Senior Architects to guide the Senior Engineer remotely how to debug complex stuffs, because stuffs proceed so slowly with junior engineer in front of the board, architects gets stuck helping to debug issues which would have taken them minutes to analyze on site.

Every little thing takes so much time because you need to instruct junior engineer like a robot. It is garbage for companies doing HW development.
Development HW cannot be shipped home, it is sensitive property. And Test Equipment cost more than the Engineer yearly salary.
What used to be possible within hours now can end up taking a week.

 

[eek2121]

As a senior Technical Manager myself, I am sick and tired of people in the team working from home.
We have junior engineers in the office, whose sole tasks are to flash the boards and HW and wait for instructions for the senior engineers to be able to test some thing.
Every issue needs an engagement of minimum 3 people.
1. Junior Engineer sitting in front of the boards and emulators with probes, scopes, signal analyzers, debuggers, etc.
2. Senior Engineer working on the actual topic from remote doing development and design work
3. Senior Architects to guide the Senior Engineer remotely how to debug complex stuffs, because stuffs proceed so slowly with junior engineer in front of the board, architects gets stuck helping to debug issues which would have taken them minutes to analyze on site.

Every little thing takes so much time because you need to instruct junior engineer like a robot. It is garbage for companies doing HW development.
Development HW cannot be shipped home, it is sensitive property. And Test Equipment cost more than the Engineer yearly salary.
What used to be possible within hours now can end up taking a week.

My company has no issues with remote work. We have never had an office (except for a small meeting space in a far off city) in our 10 year existence. We have no issues with productivity or profitability.

Remote work isn’t the issue, micro-managers are the issue.

 

[eek2121]

I definitely find it intriguing that RDNA3 can hit 3.2-3.5ghz clocks in non-gaming workloads like blender, yet can’t tolerate much of an overclock for gaming workloads.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1603578978245263361

This is not the first report of this that I have seen.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I definitely find it intriguing that RDNA3 can hit 3.2-3.5ghz clocks in non-gaming workloads like blender, yet can’t tolerate much of an overclock for gaming workloads.

Maybe because rendering workloads don't have the immediacy of delivering frames in real time. Also, these workloads are more parallel and less dynamic than sudden scene changes in games.

 

[Heartbreaker]

As a senior Technical Manager myself, I am sick and tired of people in the team working from home.
We have junior engineers in the office, whose sole tasks are to flash the boards and HW and wait for instructions for the senior engineers to be able to test some thing.
Every issue needs an engagement of minimum 3 people.
1. Junior Engineer sitting in front of the boards and emulators with probes, scopes, signal analyzers, debuggers, etc.
2. Senior Engineer working on the actual topic from remote doing development and design work
3. Senior Architects to guide the Senior Engineer remotely how to debug complex stuffs, because stuffs proceed so slowly with junior engineer in front of the board, architects gets stuck helping to debug issues which would have taken them minutes to analyze on site.

Every little thing takes so much time because you need to instruct junior engineer like a robot. It is garbage for companies doing HW development.
Development HW cannot be shipped home, it is sensitive property. And Test Equipment cost more than the Engineer yearly salary.
What used to be possible within hours now can end up taking a week.

Agreed, and I wasn't management.

I was a SW Dev, for Telecom HW many years ago. We had flexible work environment and while some things could be done remotely. Anyone working from home was a drag on those working on site, so it wasn't abused and was usually limited to people who were snowed in, or had to stay home with sick kids.

On top of that multi-site is hell. It was bad enough just when it was US vs Canada sites, which spoke the same language in the same time zone, because it's too easy to get Us vs Them attitudes in the teams when you don't meet face to face. But it's pure hell when it was vs China, with different time zones, and language barriers.

Nothing beats a focused, on site, collocated team. It used to annoy me when management would leave teams spread out through a building. I found significant bonus having all the team members in the same physical cubical pod.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Every little thing takes so much time because you need to instruct junior engineer like a robot.

They do have engineering degrees and not just interns, right? Wouldn't it make sense to teach them the requisites and make them more autonomous, unless the senior engineers really don't want junior skills getting upgraded too quickly, putting their own jobs in jeopardy?

I'm thinking more like, junior does all the work and senior reviews it to ensure it is up to snuff.

 

[igor_kavinski]

By the way, with so much bug fixing being done in the driver, RDNA3 will probably get faster with the release of faster CPUs as the driver overhead keeps getting minimized. So people upgrading their systems will have the pleasant surprise of seeing more performance out of their old RDNA3 cards years later.

 

[scineram]

It can be more reason to wait for a N31 respin, because they can't really sell a $600 7800 XT that is nearly as fast as a 7900 XT.

They can definitely sell a $700 7800 XT.

 

[Stuka87]

My company has no issues with remote work. We have never had an office (except for a small meeting space in a far off city) in our 10 year existence. We have no issues with productivity or profitability.

Remote work isn’t the issue, micro-managers are the issue.

Same here. We have a tiny office that two people are in. Otherwise we do not actually have a physical building that people work in. And we have employees in multiple countries. Things work out very well. Though we no longer make any hardware, we only make software. But developing it has worked very well with all of us in different places.

Though I will note when I worked on hardware development, you do need to be in the location with the equipment required for testing, so I would not have been able work from home then. However, at that company, the board engineers were east coast, and those of us working on the boards themselves were west coast. And things still worked fine. The guy above complaining about junior engineers being the issue sounds like they have unqualified people in place.

 

[beginner99]

As a senior Technical Manager myself, I am sick and tired of people in the team working from home.
We have junior engineers in the office, whose sole tasks are to flash the boards and HW and wait for instructions for the senior engineers to be able to test some thing.
Every issue needs an engagement of minimum 3 people.
1. Junior Engineer sitting in front of the boards and emulators with probes, scopes, signal analyzers, debuggers, etc.
2. Senior Engineer working on the actual topic from remote doing development and design work
3. Senior Architects to guide the Senior Engineer remotely how to debug complex stuffs, because stuffs proceed so slowly with junior engineer in front of the board, architects gets stuck helping to debug issues which would have taken them minutes to analyze on site.

Every little thing takes so much time because you need to instruct junior engineer like a robot. It is garbage for companies doing HW development.
Development HW cannot be shipped home, it is sensitive property. And Test Equipment cost more than the Engineer yearly salary.
What used to be possible within hours now can end up taking a week.

ok. fair enough. I work in SW so there is no "physical" thing that needs to be fixed or in case it does (a server) it's offshored anyway and not part of any local persons responsibilities. Plus here it's hybrid and I can get behind that 1-2 days a week, makes sense but not full time on-site.

From what I read and has been already posted:

Why do you hire incompetent people? I mean it reads like anyone could do these junior peoples job if they can't think or do anything by themselves and always need instructions. More training?

Remote work doesn't mean I can work whenever I want like in the night and not be available during the day. There is still the need to be generally available during work hours. So juniors should be able to call at least one senior at any time during workday.

You could also organize in such a way that each day one senior must be on-site that can be directly consulted.

EDIT: for me and our team it works very well. rather more efficient because we save the commute time (less frustration, more free time, better quality of life) and the horror that is open-space. How can you have discussion in open-space were there are rules in place to keep noise down? how do you share a screen to 5 people? yeah, easiest via online meeting and no need for everyone to be on-site, in fact it's easier than on-site whic means cramping into a small "instant meeting room" around a laptop screen.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Why do you hire incompetent people? I mean it reads like anyone could do these junior peoples job if they can't think or do anything by themselves and always need instructions. More training?

lets say the "incompetent" guy in the office is working on mixed signal, and the guy at home is working on digital logic. They are basically going to need step by step guidance what to look for to debug the board or the ASIC. Nobody is going to be able to have an understanding of what is what, it is a black box to any one else besides the few folks working on the same piece of logic.

The junior guys are more willing to come to office that is why we have junior guys in office. And the general tendency is to show more willingness to use lesser experienced people (because lesser expensive time wasted) as remote desktop to the actual equipment.

As regards our FW/SW dev guys, I don't usually see them on our office floor. But I make mandatory "Office Days" every month so that people see each other and they know their colleagues personally instead of treating each other like tech support on the other side of WebEx.

 

[Ranulf]

AMD also released the 5600XT which was basically the same performance as the 5700.

It still grinds my gears that I didn't pick up one of those $275-300 RX 5700 cards on sale 3 years ago. The 5600XT's msrp of $279 (most cards around $300) killed that value quick.

 

[Thunder 57]

It still grinds my gears that I didn't pick up one of those $275-300 RX 5700 cards on sale 3 years ago. The 5600XT's msrp of $279 (most cards around $300) killed that value quick.

It seems a lot of people missed out on them. I was going to get a 5600XT since it was pretty much a 5700 in performance, but figured the extra VRAM was well worth the $20-30 premium. It looks like I was right.

 

[MrTeal]

As a senior Technical Manager myself, I am sick and tired of people in the team working from home.
We have junior engineers in the office, whose sole tasks are to flash the boards and HW and wait for instructions for the senior engineers to be able to test some thing.
Every issue needs an engagement of minimum 3 people.
1. Junior Engineer sitting in front of the boards and emulators with probes, scopes, signal analyzers, debuggers, etc.
2. Senior Engineer working on the actual topic from remote doing development and design work
3. Senior Architects to guide the Senior Engineer remotely how to debug complex stuffs, because stuffs proceed so slowly with junior engineer in front of the board, architects gets stuck helping to debug issues which would have taken them minutes to analyze on site.

Every little thing takes so much time because you need to instruct junior engineer like a robot. It is garbage for companies doing HW development.
Development HW cannot be shipped home, it is sensitive property. And Test Equipment cost more than the Engineer yearly salary.
What used to be possible within hours now can end up taking a week.

Man, no offense to you, but if I was a junior engineer in your company I'd be looking for another job.

 

[desrever]

Man, no offense to you, but if I was a junior engineer in your company I'd be looking for another job.

Working on hardware sucks, its why so many people go into software instead.

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

I definitely find it intriguing that RDNA3 can hit 3.2-3.5ghz clocks in non-gaming workloads like blender, yet can’t tolerate much of an overclock for gaming workloads.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1603578978245263361

This is not the first report of this that I have seen.

What I want to know is what clock is 6950xt hitting in non-gaming workload like blender.
If it's similar to gaming or boost clock, then my conclusion is that N31 should be capable of hitting those clock, but something is making that impossible.

 

[Tup3x]

As a full stack developer I'd quit the job if I was forced to go to the office. Noisy, harder to concentrate. On top of that -2h off from freetime (less sleep too)... No way. Others in my team aggree. It's harder to be productive there.

We would just write the same Slack messages even if we were sitting next to each other. If we need to go through something it's easier to just share screen in Google Meet. Also it really doesn't matter where I am when I do code review to latest git merge request. I'd write the same thing anyway (except that I would more productive when working remotely).

Of course there are jobs that can't be done remotely but software development usually hardly is like that. We have our random team meetings but then work is pretty much out of the question.

 

[MrTeal]

Working on hardware sucks, its why so many people go into software instead.

I like hardware dev and don't really mind debug, but the descript of Jr Engineers just sitting there waiting to push buttons when senior ones tell them to sounds absolutely terrible.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Off topic but there is a clear distinction between hardware and software engineering jobs. Jobs that require hands on work and need specialized equipment are best done on site. Jobs like software engineering, sales, customer support, that do not require hands on work can be done anywhere. There are still benefits to on site work even for soft jobs, but in general the downsides far outweigh potential benefits.

I think you guys are largely in agreement and are just arguing for arguing sake...

So lets put this nonsense aside and start the N32 hype train going again

 

[TESKATLIPOKA]

Let's go back to discussing RDNA3, please. If you want to, then just create a corresponding thread where you can debate advantages and disadvantages of Home office.

Back to topic:
I found a very interesting info about power consumption from the same author.

Hard to say exactly what is causing it. Leads me to believe the graphics pipeline needs overhauling. As an example: My sample draws substantially less power in blender (297W) compared to say Witcher 3 Next Gen with every setting maxed (450~W) for nearly identical clockspeeds.

I don't think anyone would be against It If N31 had even 450W TBP, but could clock to 3.2-3.5GHz.

 

[MrTeal]

So lets put this nonsense aside and start the N32 hype train going again

I hear kopite77valtteri posted that N32 would be 72CU with a 3.5GHz base and 4.4GHz game clock. Also all AIB cards are required to be boldly emblazoned with a picture of Ruby cutting a 4090 in half with her sword.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Man, no offense to you, but if I was a junior engineer in your company I'd be looking for another job.

Then during work from home mandate what do you think is happening? We had a specific percentage of staff allowed in the same building.

You can't bring up HW in your house.
Its not like they will ship expensive hardware to your house. Unless you assume Mike Clark sitting at the office will push buttons for the staff engineers fresh out of college.

Not sure if you are aware, but lots of companies are suffering from this.

Last post on this topic.

 

[Saylick]

Back to topic:
I found a very interesting info about power consumption from the same author.

Hard to say exactly what is causing it. Leads me to believe the graphics pipeline needs overhauling. As an example: My sample draws substantially less power in blender (297W) compared to say Witcher 3 Next Gen with every setting maxed (450~W) for nearly identical clockspeeds.

I don't think anyone would be against It If N31 had even 450W TBP, but could clock to 3.2-3.5GHz.

Hmmm, I guess we need to ask ourselves: how does a gaming workload differ from a rendering workload?