Vega/Navi Rumors (Updated)

[unseenmorbidity]

Do you think the weakest vega will be between the 1070 and 1080?

 

[alcoholbob]

Given how much more expensive a GSync monitor is (about 30% more) if Vega could actually reach 1080ti speeds, it would be the only real choice for 4k gaming.

I don't expect it to reach those speeds. But I suppose it might. Then all we need is someone to come out with a 4k Freesync screen that will do more than 60 Hz.

Even 1080 speeds for 1080 prices is still attractive if only, again, because Freesync is so much cheaper than GSync.

4K gaming isn't really much of a "choice" but a tradeoffs at this point. 40-50fps Freesync actually looks worse than triple buffered vsync as it still tears a bit. (I had a Fury X previously).

I don't consider Freesync/Gsync really viable tech for 4K until we have video cards that can consistently stay above 60fps at 4K 100% of the time, simply because < 60fps gameplay looks bad regardless if you have adaptive vsync or not.

 

[railven]

4K gaming isn't really much of a "choice" but a tradeoffs at this point. 40-50fps Freesync actually looks worse than triple buffered vsync as it still tears a bit. I don't consider Freesync/Gsync really viable tech for 4K until we have video cards that can consistently stay above 60fps 100% of the time, simply because < 60fps gameplay looks bad regardless if you have adaptive vsync or not.

Personally, dunno if it's because I tasted 100 FPS gaming, but I now find myself unhappy with 60 FPS. I'd only imagine the "heavy" feeling of going below that. Sure, you don't got tearing and it feels "smooth" but woof is it not fluid. But that's just me. I know for consoles FreeSync is going to be a godsend.

 

[Bacon1]

40-50fps Freesync actually looks worse than triple buffered vsync as it still tears a bit. (I had a Fury X previously).

I'm going to say your freesync wasn't working right, because it shouldn't show any tearing at all.

 

[Crumpet]

I'm going to say your freesync wasn't working right, because it shouldn't show any tearing at all.

Yeah maybe he went under the freesync range on his monitor.

I can slap GTA V up to effectively ultra settings on my ancient dying R9 290 and squeeze 50+ fps out of it, buttery smooth.

 

[CatMerc]

4K gaming isn't really much of a "choice" but a tradeoffs at this point. 40-50fps Freesync actually looks worse than triple buffered vsync as it still tears a bit. (I had a Fury X previously).

I don't consider Freesync/Gsync really viable tech for 4K until we have video cards that can consistently stay above 60fps at 4K 100% of the time, simply because < 60fps gameplay looks bad regardless if you have adaptive vsync or not.

That... shouldn't be happening.
Freesync is completely tear free within its range.

You might have had a problem with your setup.

 

[Thala]

That... shouldn't be happening.
Freesync is completely tear free within its range.

You might have had a problem with your setup.

And while Freesync/GSync should indeed be tear free, it will never be as smooth as VSync (assuming constant frame time), due to the inherent problem of displaying a frame at the wrong point in time which will result in jittery animation.

 

[snarfbot]

And while Freesync/GSync should indeed be tear free, it will never be as smooth as VSync (assuming constant frame time), due to the inherent problem of displaying a frame at the wrong point in time which will result in jittery animation.

thats exactly what freesync/gsync was created to solve though

 

[Crumpet]

And while Freesync/GSync should indeed be tear free, it will never be as smooth as VSync (assuming constant frame time), due to the inherent problem of displaying a frame at the wrong point in time which will result in jittery animation.

Hey what? Er no.

Also, Vsync gets more input lag.

 

[guachi]

I managed to hack my Freesync 4k to a range of 33Hz to 60Hz from 40-60 Hz and it's an amazing difference between just below the Freesync limit (tearing, choppy, bad!) and anything above it (smooth and acceptable frame rate)

Now, most of my games are old enough I never notice anything. But it's really noticeable with the one (1) 2017 release I purchased in 2017, Total War: Warhammer. Also, that game is a game that doesn't really need high frame rates to be playable so I could see if you like to play other types of games that 40-60 Hz wouldn't be very fun.

 

[CatMerc]

And while Freesync/GSync should indeed be tear free, it will never be as smooth as VSync (assuming constant frame time), due to the inherent problem of displaying a frame at the wrong point in time which will result in jittery animation.

..what?
It's displayed the very moment it's rendered. If the frametimes are constant, then the display will be constant.

I managed to hack my Freesync 4k to a range of 33Hz to 60Hz from 40-60 Hz and it's an amazing difference between just below the Freesync limit (tearing, choppy, bad!) and anything above it (smooth and acceptable frame rate)

Now, most of my games are old enough I never notice anything. But it's really noticeable with the one (1) 2017 release I purchased in 2017, Total War: Warhammer. Also, that game is a game that doesn't really need high frame rates to be playable so I could see if you like to play other types of games that 40-60 Hz wouldn't be very fun.

I did some testing today of LFC.
When my range is 40-144, it remains tear free until 30FPS, and then there's slight tearing at 25FPS, then it gets worse the lower you go (but always better than no freesync).
When my range is 35-144, it pushes down the tear free range to 25FPS, and tears only start appearing at 20FPS.

Again, regardless of the range, Freesync + LFC is better than no freesync at all. Though it's best to remain within your native range.

 

[Bacon1]

..what?
It's displayed the very moment it's rendered. If the frametimes are constant, then the display will be constant.


I did some testing today of LFC.
When my range is 40-144, it remains tear free until 30FPS, and then there's slight tearing at 25FPS, then it gets worse the lower you go (but always better than no freesync).
When my range is 35-144, it pushes down the tear free range to 25FPS, and tears only start appearing at 20FPS.

Again, regardless of the range, Freesync + LFC is better than no freesync at all. Though it's best to remain within your native range.

LFC should remove all tearing. Sounds like its not working.

Do you have an OSD for the monitor display hz? You'll see the hz double up, so if your game is @ 20fps the monitor will display 40hz and thus be tear free. You'll get the same frame twice which isn't ideal, but it should never tear. Same thing happens with GSync. Neither should ever tear.

 

[Bacon1]

And while Freesync/GSync should indeed be tear free, it will never be as smooth as VSync (assuming constant frame time), due to the inherent problem of displaying a frame at the wrong point in time which will result in jittery animation.

I'm now convinced that you never had freesync working. First, it's much smoother than vsync since there is no input lag while Vsync often adds 60ms+.

Freesync/GSync work by matching your monitor refresh rate to that of the program (game) output. So if the game renders @ 40fps the monitor will display @ 40hz. If it renders @ 75, monitor will refresh @ 75hz. It will go up and down as the fps changes, always displaying "instantly". So it is completely smooth and never jittery. The only thing that could be jittery is the game itself, but that has nothing to do with vsync.

 

[Erithan13]

A little more info trickling in:

Specs-wise, we are looking at the following:

14 nm Vega 10 GPU

• 4096 Stream Processors
• 64 NCUs (Next Compute Units)
• 2048-bit memory bus
• 8GB HBM2
• 512GB/s Memory Bandwidth
• PCIe Gen 3 x 16
• 225W TDP

"All signs point to the radeon RX Vega launching sometime in May this year, meaning we've got somewhere in the region of 4-6 weeks before these are finally in our hands."

Via Reddit

Alas, without clockspeeds this isn't worth much speculation. At least confirms 8GB VRAM, be very interesting to see how that plays out.

 

[crisium]

Yup, all known for months. Clockspeed please...

 

[Thala]

I'm now convinced that you never had freesync working. First, it's much smoother than vsync since there is no input lag while Vsync often adds 60ms+.

I am not discussing input lag here. Different topic.

Freesync/GSync work by matching your monitor refresh rate to that of the program (game) output. So if the game renders @ 40fps the monitor will display @ 40hz. If it renders @ 75, monitor will refresh @ 75hz. It will go up and down as the fps changes, always displaying "instantly".

You describe Freesync in laymans fashion. The issue is, that the game engine makes a prediction when the next frame is to be displayed. It is doing this prediction before the frame is rendered without any knowledge about the time it takes. When it takes longer the key frame is displayed too late resulting in jitter. If it takes less time Freesync will display it too early.

 

[tential]

Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression but it sounds like you're a little defensive about possibly not having freesync ever working.

I wouldn't be. I have a freesync monitor and I can not tell you if it works. In fact, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work currently for me.

I just don't care about freesync on my setup since I don't care about using it with an R9 290. Once I have Vega then I'll troubleshoot this disaster.

It's still new tech though, I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't ever truly experienced freesync. We need a better way of knowing if it's working I fired up phantom pain and I got half screen tearing nonstop which should never happen with a proper freesync setup I imagine.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Snarf Snarf]

Download the AMD Freesync windmill demo, there's a red bar test pattern that works really well for telling if it's working. (It's running on a display on the floor of my store here and every customer that has seen it and done the on/off test has been amazed at the difference)

@tential https://community.amd.com/thread/180553

Edit: Found the link!

 

[crisium]

V Sync has to target the minimum FPS which is the problem that Freesync solves. Freesync > 60fps V Sync. Minor drops below the 60fps range are highly intrusive on V Sync. If you're tailoring your settings around 60fps minimum for perfect V Sync play, then your averages are much higher and being wasted. With the same settings and Freesync, I can enjoy 60fps minimum and likely the 70-80fps+ averages that accompany it for the greater whole of gameplay. And that is enough to be perceptibly more fluid.

And then there's input lag, which cannot be dismissed out of hand ever. Input lag can be constant, which technically meets the definition of smoothness, but to me it's partly wasted when you can perceive the response times of your interaction. Input lag, framerate, and consistent frametimes are all equally important to getting your brain to smoothly sync up with the game.

 

[Bacon1]

You describe Freesync in laymans fashion. The issue is, that the game engine makes a prediction when the next frame is to be displayed. It is doing this prediction before the frame is rendered without any knowledge about the time it takes. When it takes longer the key frame is displayed too late resulting in jitter. If it takes less time Freesync will display it too early.

I'm sorry but can you please provide examples of games that do this?

 

[Arachnotronic]

I really want to see some legit leaks of this thing. Given how close we are to launch, I'd have hoped to see something on Vega.

 

[raghu78]

I really want to see some legit leaks of this thing. Given how close we are to launch, I'd have hoped to see something on Vega.

If AMD run a tight ship without making too much noise its better than the usual marketing talk which unnecessarily hypes up the product and builds unrealistic expectations. AMD's best products generally came when nobody expected them to deliver, like the HD 4870 . imo if AMD have a strong product they are better off keeping it a well guarded secret and let the press and the reviews speak for their product.

 

[Thala]

I'm sorry but can you please provide examples of games that do this?

Essentially all 3D PC games work like this. It is task of the engine running on the CPU to determine the time of the next frame to be displayed. Based on this the next world space and view space transforms are calculated. After this the GPU takes over. However, as i said, it is just a prediction typically done based on the frame interval of the last frames.
You can imagine, that given how Freesync works, the frame is almost never precisely displayed at the intended time resulting in jitter.

Thats the beauty of Vsync. Assuming the the GPU is always fast enough, the frame interval precisely matches the prediction resulting in a jitter free experience. Of course, i give you that, in case the time it takes to render a frame is larger than the display refresh interval then VSync jitter is much larger than Freesync jitter.

 

[unseenmorbidity]

If AMD run a tight ship without making too much noise its better than the usual marketing talk which unnecessarily hypes up the product and builds unrealistic expectations. AMD's best products generally came when nobody expected them to deliver, like the HD 4870 . imo if AMD have a strong product they are better off keeping it a well guarded secret and let the press and the reviews speak for their product.

Idk, if AMD had something that could compete with the Titanxppp, then I feel they would be shouting it from the rooftops. Nvidia's already laid their cards on the table in a preemptive strike against Vega.

They are releasing ads about VR too, which I also take to be a bad sign.

Essentially all 3D PC games work like this. It is task of the engine running on the CPU to determine the time of the next frame to be displayed. Based on this the next world space and view space transforms are calculated. After this the GPU takes over. However, as i said, it is just a prediction typically done based on the frame interval of the last frames.
You can imagine, that given how Freesync works, the frame is almost never precisely displayed at the intended time resulting in jitter.

Thats the beauty of Vsync. Assuming the the GPU is always fast enough, the frame interval precisely matches the prediction resulting in a jitter free experience. Of course, i give you that, in case the time it takes to render a frame is larger than the display refresh interval then VSync jitter is much larger than Freesync jitter.

Vsync is obsolete. I have never seen anyone suggest vsync provides a smoother game experience than adaptive sync.

 

[tential]

Download the AMD Freesync windmill demo, there's a red bar test pattern that works really well for telling if it's working. (It's running on a display on the floor of my store here and every customer that has seen it and done the on/off test has been amazed at the difference)

@tential https://community.amd.com/thread/180553

Edit: Found the link!

Thanks, also it doesn't help that I didn't lower the freesync range too. I just hate having this underpowered GPU. Just give me Vega so I can enjoy the 4k and depart from normal society already!