Vega/Navi Rumors (Updated)

[Cloudfire777]

What should Ford do if, after years in development, the new Mustang only barely beats the old Camaro, and loses handily to the new one?
They price it lower, and sell it as "performance for the working man" or some such.
Most of the people who buy it aren't taking it to the drag strip or track, or street racing, they just want a big, loud, powerful V8 that will smoke the tires and look great in the driveway. Not many of them will really care if it gets worse gas mileage or depreciates faster, because that's not why they bought it.
Plus some people buy Ford and some buy Chevy, and that's just how it is.

So if Vega only just matches the 1080ti, it'll be priced better, and people who buy it to play games without staring at the frame counter won't care if Nvidia has something slightly more efficient or faster coming out in a few months. It'll make AMD plenty of money, because what matters to most buyers isn't which company is at the top of the pile, but if it does what they bought it to do.

Any company should have an understanding about where the competition will be at when they make a product. If the architecture isnt up to the competition a year or two down the line when they launch the product, they should cap the funds for the architecture and start over again.

If Vega match GTX 1080Ti, then it is good. That will ensure sales. The 1080Ti launched like 6 months ago in August.
If Vega barely beats GTX 1080 on the other hand, then they have greatly missed since that market have been mostly saturated since the card have been out 15 months. Selling Vega with cheaper price will only do that much since the market is saturated.

 

[jpiniero]

If Vega match GTX 1080Ti, then it is good. That will ensure sales. The 1080Ti launched like 6 months ago in August.
If Vega barely beats GTX 1080 on the other hand, then they have greatly missed since that market have been mostly saturated since the card have been out 15 months. Selling Vega with cheaper price will only do that much since the market is saturated.

Performance for the faster model is probably somewhere in between the 1080 FE and the 1080 Ti FE, but to get there they had to go to 300 W so no OC room. You have to remember that the 1080 is memory bottlenecked so the slower model should still be around if not faster than the 1080 FE. If they sold that for $399 that wouldn't be too bad. Probably can't be any less than that though.

 

[richaron]

If Vega match GTX 1080Ti, then it is good. That will ensure sales. The 1080Ti launched like 6 months ago in August..

Yeah what nonsense. There's been a bunch of people spouting the same dud argument for ages now.

As if the price-performance-efficiency usual metrics no longer matter and it's only about meeting a single arbitrary performance point. None of which we know about yet, but it's obviously stupid to pretend any of these metrics exist in a vacuum.

If Vega barely beats GTX 1080 on the other hand, then they have greatly missed since that market have been mostly saturated since the card have been out 15 months. Selling Vega with cheaper price will only do that much since the market is saturated.

At least you did kind of address the price argument, but you completely misunderstand (misrepresent?) reality. There are plenty of people still looking for cards at all price points, plenty of people looking for mining cards, plenty of people waiting for prices to drop because of mining, and plenty of people looking for mid-high end and enthusiast Freesync GPUs.

Pretending there's no mid-high end market is on the same level as sticking fingers in ears and yelling "lalalalala".

 

[stahlhart]

If I have to come in here one more time to deal with antisocial behavior, this thread is getting locked permanently. Stay focused on the subject and stop the personal confrontation, NOW.
-- stahlhart

 

[Cloudfire777]

Performance for the faster model is probably somewhere in between the 1080 FE and the 1080 Ti FE, but to get there they had to go to 300 W so no OC room. You have to remember that the 1080 is memory bottlenecked so the slower model should still be around if not faster than the 1080 FE. If they sold that for $399 that wouldn't be too bad. Probably can't be any less than that though.

Highly doubt there are many left waiting for a GTX 1080 card. Most people have bought a 1080 or a cheaper factory overclocked GTX 1080 and will only get a RX Vega if its near 1080Ti and is cheaper than GTX 1080 Ti. Its either that or they will get Volta once that give them a huge jump in performance in the same price range.

Pascal like performance is pretty much saturated and people wont bite until something much better comes along.

 

[exquisitechar]

Highly doubt there are many left waiting for a GTX 1080 card. Most people have bought a 1080 or a cheaper factory overclocked GTX 1080 and will only get a RX Vega if its near 1080Ti and is cheaper than GTX 1080 Ti. Its either that or they will get Volta once that give them a huge jump in performance in the same price range.

Pascal like performance is pretty much saturated and people wont bite until something much better comes along.

No, people constantly build new rigs or upgrade their existing ones. Most people have not bought a 1080. There are actually plenty of people who would be interested in GTX 1080-1080ti performance at a better price. I'm one of them, and AMD has already noted that Vega will have good price/performance, and even compared it to Ryzen in that aspect (although I'm pretty doubtful it will come anywhere near Ryzen in that metric). If nothing else, I expect them to have learned their mistake with the Fury X and deliver on that front.

However, I do think that if that is all big Vega can do it is a failure for RTG, technologically speaking. They would fall short of what Nvidia released in August 2016, a full year before Vega. Considering that it's been delayed to late July/August, it will be competing with Volta as well, since Navi is likely an early 2019 product or late 2018 product, at best. Below GTX 1080ti performance will not be enough for that, obviously.

 

[Thala]

Highly doubt there are many left waiting for a GTX 1080 card. Most people have bought a 1080 or a cheaper factory overclocked GTX 1080 and will only get a RX Vega if its near 1080Ti and is cheaper than GTX 1080 Ti. Its either that or they will get Volta once that give them a huge jump in performance in the same price range.

This "market saturated" argument is absurd. That is as absurd as claiming it made no sense to release say a 1070 because the market is already saturated by the much older 980TI.
You have to understand that it is not the performance itself, which makes up a segment, which could potentially "saturated" but it is performance/price.
So even if Vega RX only matches GTX 1080, if it is priced below 1080 there will be a whole segment of people upgrading, namely those who did not want to pay 1080 prices before. With other words your argument is flawed with the idea, that people are waiting only for a certain performance point while completely ignoring price.

 

[tamz_msc]

I think it would be better for everyone if they can accept the fact that the launch cycles and performance tiers that AMD and NVIDIA target with their top-tier GPUs have been out of sync for at least four years. Just buy whatever you want and be happy, let those who are interested in the product being discussed in a particular thread carry on without reference to what the other camp is doing.

 

[jpiniero]

I think it would be better for everyone if they can accept the fact that the launch cycles and performance tiers that AMD and NVIDIA target with their top-tier GPUs have been out of sync for at least four years.

I don't think you can really say that. Titan X (Maxwell)'s release was March 2, 2015. Fury X's was June 24, 2015.

nVidia is unlikely to really push things on the perf/$ side this year beyond what they've already done unless AMD forces them to... So AMD should have a couple months at least, they just need to be judicious about their chip orders.

 

[amenx]

So even if Vega RX only matches GTX 1080, if it is priced below 1080 there will be a whole segment of people upgrading, namely those who did not want to pay 1080 prices before. With other words your argument is flawed with the idea, that people are waiting only for a certain performance point while completely ignoring price.

How is that possible with the current mining craze? Vega will likely be a killer mining card and price will likely reflect that as well.

 

[Samwell]

How is that possible with the current mining craze? Vega will likely be a killer mining card and price will likely reflect that as well.

HBM1 was slow in mining. As far as i know Furys performance in Eth isn't too good. I don't know whether HBM2 will change that, but it might be that mining on Vega won't be great. So might lead to the case that Vega will be in good availability as are Nvdias GDDR5X cards because of the G5X problems in mining.

 

[Cloudfire777]

No, people constantly build new rigs or upgrade their existing ones. Most people have not bought a 1080. There are actually plenty of people who would be interested in GTX 1080-1080ti performance at a better price. I'm one of them, and AMD has already noted that Vega will have good price/performance, and even compared it to Ryzen in that aspect (although I'm pretty doubtful it will come anywhere near Ryzen in that metric). If nothing else, I expect them to have learned their mistake with the Fury X and deliver on that front.

However, I do think that if that is all big Vega can do it is a failure for RTG, technologically speaking. They would fall short of what Nvidia released in August 2016, a full year before Vega. Considering that it's been delayed to late July/August, it will be competing with Volta as well, since Navi is likely an early 2019 product or late 2018 product, at best. Below GTX 1080ti performance will not be enough for that, obviously.

Lets just agree to disagree.

I think that the step from a cheap factory overclocked GTX 1070 to a similar priced GTX 1080 (if Vega is that) is too small to get the attention of the people that didnt get the factory overclocked GTX 1070.
If Vega was a 1080Ti with same price as that GTX 1070 that should be enough.

With the difficulty with Etherium mining skyrocketing the last couple of months, mining will give so little profit that the mining era on GPUs will end very soon too.
https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

This "market saturated" argument is absurd. That is as absurd as claiming it made no sense to release say a 1070 because the market is already saturated by the much older 980TI.
You have to understand that it is not the performance itself, which makes up a segment, which could potentially "saturated" but it is performance/price.
So even if Vega RX only matches GTX 1080, if it is priced below 1080 there will be a whole segment of people upgrading, namely those who did not want to pay 1080 prices before. With other words your argument is flawed with the idea, that people are waiting only for a certain performance point while completely ignoring price.

Actually its a highly valid argument.
The longer you wait with releasing a competing product, the more people will give up waiting and just get the competing GPU even if its a bit more expensive than what they ideally wanted to pay.

The last Vega presentation where AMD said Vega isnt launching until end of July while the FE edition that cost over $1000 comes out a month before, we saw many people being angry against AMD and bought 1080Ti because they were tired of waiting

 

[maddie]

I dont know.
[deleted]
Which brings the question:
Whats the point of even launching Vega if they have spent so much money on it, delayed it so much that it will end up barely paying for the engineering and manufacturing cost of Vega when all is said and done?
It will be interesting to see how it pans out for AMD.

Stop derailing this discussion with inflammatory trolling.
-- stahlhart

Even though your post was edited, you answered your own question.

At the very least, they launch it so that it still pays for the engineering and manufacturing costs expended. Rest assured that the a lot of the engineering done for Vega will be applicable to Navi, such as the HBCC, NCU, Primitive shader, Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer, etc.

Your confusion and mistake is to think that each new generation is a completely new clean sheet design. Navi is when it all comes together with scalability.

Don't worry however, you have a lot of company.

 

[Cloudfire777]

Even though your post was edited, you answered your own question.

At the very least, they launch it so that it still pays for the engineering and manufacturing costs expended. Rest assured that the a lot of the engineering done for Vega will be applicable to Navi, such as the HBCC, NCU, Primitive shader, Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer, etc.

Your confusion and mistake is to think that each new generation is a completely new clean sheet design. Navi is when it all comes together with scalability.

Don't worry however, you have a lot of company.

Well you made a couple of good point I guess.
We know that Vega is a brand new architecture built from the ground up, but have AMD ever said that Navi isnt? If Navi build further upon Vega, then I understand that Vega is being released no matter how late it is.

 

[maddie]

Well you made a couple of good point I guess.
We know that Vega is a brand new architecture built from the ground up, but have AMD ever said that Navi isnt? If Navi build further upon Vega, then I understand that Vega is being released no matter how late it is.

Vega has elements from the Fiji design, so I don't think of it as a ground up new design. It is pretty hard and probably not even wise for either Nvidia or AMD to do a completely new design, especially taking programming into account.

 

[alcoholbob]

375W stock TPD (without even overclocking) is kind of concerning. With a smaller/quieter case with lower airflow fans for example, it will probably need an open side case for venting, especially with overclocking and power limits lifted.

In my NZXT H440 for example my Titan X Hybrid ran 10C hotter with the case closed (60C vs 50C). I know Jay 2 Cents with his custom loop Ryzen build with Titan Xs needed an open side panel for decent temps.

 

[tamz_msc]

375W stock TPD (without even overclocking) is kind of concerning. With a smaller/quieter case with lower airflow fans for example, it will probably need an open side case for venting, especially with overclocking and power limits lifted.

In my NZXT H440 for example my Titan X Hybrid ran 10C hotter with the case closed (60C vs 50C). I know Jay 2 Cents with his custom loop Ryzen build with Titan Xs needed an open side panel for decent temps.

His Ryzen build had airflow issues due to the case he used.

 

[alcoholbob]

His Ryzen build had airflow issues due to the case he used.

Yeah I was kind of hinting at that with the rest of my post.

 

[3DVagabond]

375W stock TPD (without even overclocking) is kind of concerning. With a smaller/quieter case with lower airflow fans for example, it will probably need an open side case for venting, especially with overclocking and power limits lifted.

In my NZXT H440 for example my Titan X Hybrid ran 10C hotter with the case closed (60C vs 50C). I know Jay 2 Cents with his custom loop Ryzen build with Titan Xs needed an open side panel for decent temps.

It's liquid cooled. Temps will be fine. Likely in the mid 60°C range.

 

[T1beriu]

PCWorld: Hands-on: AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition vs Nvidia Titan Xp

Source for images.

 

[Krteq]

//Tiberiu was faster

 

[Malogeek]

What a completely useless article, for anyone.

 

[guachi]

Don't give them clicks. The article doesn't really tell you anything.

No charts = why bother?

 

[Ancalagon44]

For anyone who is curious, here is the most important part of the article:

In the given time we had to run the tests, we saw the Frontier Edition outscore the Titan Xp by 28 percent in Catia and Creo to 50 percent in SolidWorks. We also ran Maxon’s Cinebench, a popular OpenGL benchmark, in which the Frontier Edition was about 14 percent faster. The numbers echo what we already knew about the Frontier Edition, but this time we could see the performance demonstrations live.

Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is certainly faster in the tests we witnessed, but to be fair, it’s comparing an ostensibly consumer-focused Titan Xp card to the pro-level Frontier Edition. Nvidia’s Titan Xp, for example, officially works only with consumer drivers, while the company’s Quadro workstation products offer a lot more performance.

EDIT:

Thinking about it, it looks like AMD might have pushed Vega as far as it goes in the Frontier Edition to make sure that it beats the Titan Xp. I mean, 300W vs 250W, they probably thought lets rather use more power so that at least we can claim the title of Most Powerful GPU. Obviously this means they are not as efficient as Nvidia.

 

[tg2708]

Only competitive pricing and possible good price to performance can help AMD at this point. Faster than a 1080 or within close proximity of the ti model is a failure in my eyes since we all know the green team most likely has something in the the works to counter. Hope they have some success though but then again my sights is on navi since my current card is doing very well.

First time time impression goes a long way when trying to sell or put yourself in the best light possible. Slower now and faster later is good but when your "faster" comes at a point where the competition is moving to a more efficient and capable architecture then that effort is almost non existent since you are now competing with a product that has surpassed your current cycles capabilities while further pushing the envelope in terms of efficiency etc.