AMD Vega MegaThread! FAQ and Resources

[Rexer]

At the end of the free year ... 1 of 8 eligible Win 7 / 8 users had upgraded to Win10. MS's frustration at the "failure to update" reception of the free offer was what led to the Borg like ... "You will be assimilated" tactics that only served to drive more away from taking the plunge. What I have noticed in the past is, every time there's a new API, AMD jumps on it and the marketing machine pushes out "look we're better in this new thing ... check out this game demo benchmark for a game that won't be out for a year", ... and than it's out and the gap is nothing to get excited about.

Not that that is a bad thing in any way unless of course the focus on that results in less focus on addressing what is out now. We still see each side doing better in different games, but as we still see reviewers reporting results for DX12 games in DX11 because the DX12 implementation is still boinky, DX12 to my eyes is going to be a long transition with games started in development 3 years ago w/ DX11 now being adapted for DX12.

Windows 8 was "gonna change everything" ... and pre-release we saw lotsa benchies showing it would ... but it didn't, most game benches were slower. So I think it's gonna be quite some time before we can makes heads or tails out of DX12.

The 290x "was gonna crush" the nVidia 780, but nVidia dropped the Ti ... and then we found out with both cards OC'd, it didn't even top the 780. But it was close and the competition dropped prices for everyone ... I saved $300 off the prices from 2 weeks before buying 2 780s (SLI) compared to the prices on the 780s before the new cards dropped.

As long as you don't want the card that "has the title", you made out good. The 39x series didn't work out so well against the 9xx.... w/ the 970 selling at more than 2 times the rate of all R7 / R9 2xx and 3xx cards combined. I still believe that nVidia used predatory pricing on the 970, not to compete, but to purposely hurt AMD financially during a tough stretch.

If I won a 4k monitor, I'd sell it .... holds no attraction to me at 60 Hz. From an investment in technology perspective, when the 1st Display Port 4k monitor hits the shelves, the value of everything else at 4k is going to drop in the toilet. I noticed one think in the last year or so is that hardware srveys no longer break out display resolution above 2560 x 1440 ... now whydooyathink that is ?Seems the industry doesn't like folks having access to the fact that adoption of 4k remains at sub 1% levels and feel that having that thrown out there for public consumption is being perceived as stifling investment in new monitors.

Right now you can do quite well at $200 @ 1080p, the 1070 is just fine at 1440p.... why the Titan keeps coming up is kinda discussion beyond me because the only person who'd pick one for a gaming box is the guy who puts to together a build by selecting the Graphics card filter on newegg or PCPP and sorts everything by highest price... with the 9xx series, the highest performing gaming card was not the one at the top; the 980 Ti was. Leave the Titan to those who wanna play games on their workstation box w/o killing rendering performance.

But I think you hit the nail on the head with the 1070 ... that's where the market is. The 970 was priced weirdly low such that it made everybody who normally budget a 960 level card spring for the 970. From nVidia's side, it didn't work out as well as the 980 became a non-factor with many at that budget range springing for dual 970s instead of the 980. Obviously nvidia made more money selling one 980 than two 970s and I suspect that's why we see SLI performance way way down from last generation.

That (x70 tier) is what AMD should have their sights set on....The 970 remains the most popular card in use today. AMD has only one entry in the top 20 and that's not a card but a card series. There are 4.2 970s in use for every 79xx card in use and almost 10 970s in use for every 390 series card in use. The 1070 is 63% faster than the 970 ... and with no competition, nVidia's been able to rake it in.

So this is where they have to make their mark. Ya gotta think that AMD wouldn't have sat back for so long with no new entries until they could show a win in this sector. Great news for us,.. ya know there's $100 of room in the 1070 prices so if we see 1070 like performance at $300 from AMD, it's good news for everyone.

Instead they got the RX480 out, which can do 1080P flawlessly and handles 1440p rather well, and can even play in the 1070's ballpark on games that actually cater to the newer APIs out there (not that black box Nvidia proprietary GameWorks stuff) : DX12 and Vulkan : 80% of the performance for 60% of the price, it may sway some. Too bad it's such a good deal that the price for it actually went UP since it came out.

Yeah, I have to agree the market ballpark is favor of the 1070. It's a pretty healthy card all the way around and so far for the last year, AMD hasn't a clear or substantial answer to it. Vega has been mute till now.
To some degree AMD's 480 did a decent job with to compete with 970. It's sort of sad it's a few years late. Nevertheless, the later Crimson versions helped improve 480's performance. Also, I've had friends flash the 480 bios to 580 specs with some success (a few guys had to revert back to the stock bios because of board configs). They notably ran cooler which makes me suspect 480 was really meant to be 580 from the start but was down clocked for marketing purposes. Marketing is a tricky and cunning strategy.
I don't think neither AMD or Nvidia have anything to worry about being bankrupt by each other thanks to the bit miners who are scooping as many 8gb cards as they can. Right now that's unfortunate for gamers. But I also learned Nvidia is producing a card strictly for cryptocurrency miners so that's helpful.
I discovered this information while hunting for a new video card to replace a 390x. I blew it up constantly ramping it's clocks. I originally planned earlier this year to wait for Vega. So looking for a temporary fix, I sought out a 580 8gb and found most models were out of stock in less than 2 months. ? It put me on sort of a desperate straight so I grab the one of the last few under $250.00. AMD also acknowledge a video card shortage due to the bit mining community buy out and asked manufacturers and retailers to later set aside a reserve for the gaming community.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3201011/components-graphics/what-the-radeon-vega-frontier-editions-specs-and-pricing-mean-for-pc-gamers.html

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-gpu-cryptocurrency-ethereum-mining/

 

[Rogue Leader]

Haha! RL, if I were from the sells team in AMD I would do the absolute opposite given that information: up the MSRP before release for all the miners to pay the adopters fee, then 3 months later reduce it by 30% or something.

Am I being too evil? haha.

Cheers!

Thing is, miners buy the CHEAPEST card they can buy that can still perform cluster computes (and the RX570/580 is cheaper than the GTX1060) while gamers want the best performing card - so if AMD jacked up the price on Polaris, miners wouldn't buy them anymore.

And, in that vein, AMD don't care: their chips ARE selling like hot cakes because they ARE the best in class (high performance for cheap, otherwise miners wouldn't buy them all) - it's just gamers that lose big time here, because they are now forced to buy the overpriced, less efficient competitor's product.

As for me, I still rock my reference RX480 8 Gb.

The reason the miners are buying AMD is that AMD designs are *shader heavy*-which means very high performance in mining tasks compared to their price point. Case in point an RX 580 can mine data as fast as a GTX 1070- it totally eclipses the 1060. AMD have an outright performance (and perf / w) advantage in this area- which is why they are so popular and why miners will still by the cards even at inflated prices.

It unfortunately puts the AMD boards totally out of position vis a vis their gaming performance segment though.

But in that respect Vega cards should give miners unbelievable performance, making it worth the extra money to them, and making it impossible for folks like us to buy them at a reasonable price.

Its not that I don't have the money (and hell I'm gonna sell my reference RX 480 to these guys), its that I don't want to pay an inflated price for something. Waste of money.

 

[Martell1977]

But in that respect Vega cards should give miners unbelievable performance, making it worth the extra money to them, and making it impossible for folks like us to buy them at a reasonable price.

Its not that I don't have the money (and hell I'm gonna sell my reference RX 480 to these guys), its that I don't want to pay an inflated price for something. Waste of money.

It's odd that the miners still use GPU's, I thought that the mining had moved on to ASIC(or something like that) mining and GPU mining wasn't worth it anymore.

 

[goldstone77]

But in that respect Vega cards should give miners unbelievable performance, making it worth the extra money to them, and making it impossible for folks like us to buy them at a reasonable price.

Its not that I don't have the money (and hell I'm gonna sell my reference RX 480 to these guys), its that I don't want to pay an inflated price for something. Waste of money.

It's odd that the miners still sue GPU's, I thought that the mining had moved on to ASIC(or something like that) mining and GPU mining wasn't worth it anymore.

New cryptocurrency has appeared. Etherium for one, which is profitable to use video cards atm.

 

[Martell1977]

New cryptocurrency has appeared. Etherium for one, which is profitable to use video cards atm.

Ahh, I was only aware of Bitcoin and Litecoin. I was thinking of doing bitcoin but found out that GPU mining wasn't worth it anymore and Litecoin was fast on it's way to be the same way.

 

[cdrkf]

Haha! RL, if I were from the sells team in AMD I would do the absolute opposite given that information: up the MSRP before release for all the miners to pay the adopters fee, then 3 months later reduce it by 30% or something.

Am I being too evil? haha.

Cheers!

Thing is, miners buy the CHEAPEST card they can buy that can still perform cluster computes (and the RX570/580 is cheaper than the GTX1060) while gamers want the best performing card - so if AMD jacked up the price on Polaris, miners wouldn't buy them anymore.

And, in that vein, AMD don't care: their chips ARE selling like hot cakes because they ARE the best in class (high performance for cheap, otherwise miners wouldn't buy them all) - it's just gamers that lose big time here, because they are now forced to buy the overpriced, less efficient competitor's product.

As for me, I still rock my reference RX480 8 Gb.

The reason the miners are buying AMD is that AMD designs are *shader heavy*-which means very high performance in mining tasks compared to their price point. Case in point an RX 580 can mine data as fast as a GTX 1070- it totally eclipses the 1060. AMD have an outright performance (and perf / w) advantage in this area- which is why they are so popular and why miners will still by the cards even at inflated prices.

It unfortunately puts the AMD boards totally out of position vis a vis their gaming performance segment though.

But in that respect Vega cards should give miners unbelievable performance, making it worth the extra money to them, and making it impossible for folks like us to buy them at a reasonable price.

Its not that I don't have the money (and hell I'm gonna sell my reference RX 480 to these guys), its that I don't want to pay an inflated price for something. Waste of money.

Oh yeah I'm not saying it won't be a problem for Vega... on the one hand it's good AMD are selling lots of cards, but the price hikes aren't good for their long term market share.

 

[Martell1977]

Oh yeah I'm not saying it won't be a problem for Vega... on the one hand it's good AMD are selling lots of cards, but the price hikes aren't good for their long term market share.

What really sucks is that, unless specified in their contract, only the retailers are seeing increased profit from the price gouging. AMD sells to board partners, board partners sell to retailers.

Long term, maybe not, but they are getting a good boost for now. Demand is not a bad thing, but for long term, it will likely be Ok as the miners will be replacing them with new models when there is a power advantage. Should be interesting to see how it goes with Vega considering how miners are soaking up the Polaris stock. I'd think those buying now would skip Vega and get Navi. But I don't know the life cycle for GPU's and mining.

 

[varis]

For one thing I would think GPU demand in the mining market would be much more volatile than the gaming market. For mining, there aren't that many cryptocurrencies that are actually popular and in a phase where mining is lucrative. In gaming we easily have dozens of titles - then again only a handful are the really popular AAA titles which attract great masses.

The difference is in value for the GPU owner. The attractiveness of a popular AAA title doesn't suddenly double in a month, then double again in the next month... for everyone.

 

[renz496]

But in that respect Vega cards should give miners unbelievable performance, making it worth the extra money to them, and making it impossible for folks like us to buy them at a reasonable price.

Its not that I don't have the money (and hell I'm gonna sell my reference RX 480 to these guys), its that I don't want to pay an inflated price for something. Waste of money.

It's odd that the miners still use GPU's, I thought that the mining had moved on to ASIC(or something like that) mining and GPU mining wasn't worth it anymore.

there are new type of crypto coin. right now the most popular one is ether. from what i can understand this new algo was designed in a way that more ASIC "resistant" so GPU mining will be viable for much longer than it was before. but even if ASIC exist at some point there is many other crypto currency keep popping out. it seems there is dozens/hundreds type of crypto currency exist right now. so even if current popular coin no longer viable to be mine using GPU at some point there is always other alternative. i think this is what spur the confidence in GPU maker to allow AIB to make mining specific GPU. nvidia already roll out GP106 and GP104 based mining card.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

Both AMD and Nvidia will need to release mining cards that are so much better for mining (high hash-rate, lower power consumption), that it knocks the inflated price of the RX 570/580 cards back down to normal price and keeps miners from buying all the GTX 1070s and RX Vega before gamers can get them. I would love to have an RX Vega card for gaming to use with a free-sync monitor. Right now a GTX 1070 is all there is for a mild-budgeted gamer who wants more than 1080p 60Hz, and G-Sync is that much more expensive also. Even if I wanted to crossfire RX 570 or 580, I can't because they're none available.

My point is I hope AMD can deliver enough RX Vega cards without miners thinking they will be better than the mining cards, because from what I was reading a few days ago miners think mining specific, non-gaming cards will be a waste and have zero resale value. That's why I say the mining cards will need to be sooo much better at mining that a gaming card will become next to pointless to buy over it. Which really takes away from the attractiveness of GPU mining, because if mining goes under at least you could always sell your GPUs to gamers. Maybe these mining specific cards will knock some people out of the business, get a better balance on everything.

 

[goldstone77]

But in that respect Vega cards should give miners unbelievable performance, making it worth the extra money to them, and making it impossible for folks like us to buy them at a reasonable price.

Its not that I don't have the money (and hell I'm gonna sell my reference RX 480 to these guys), its that I don't want to pay an inflated price for something. Waste of money.

It's odd that the miners still use GPU's, I thought that the mining had moved on to ASIC(or something like that) mining and GPU mining wasn't worth it anymore.

there are new type of crypto coin. right now the most popular one is ether. from what i can understand this new algo was designed in a way that more ASIC "resistant" so GPU mining will be viable for much longer than it was before. but even if ASIC exist at some point there is many other crypto currency keep popping out. it seems there is dozens/hundreds type of crypto currency exist right now. so even if current popular coin no longer viable to be mine using GPU at some point there is always other alternative. i think this is what spur the confidence in GPU maker to allow AIB to make mining specific GPU. nvidia already roll out GP106 and GP104 based mining card.

From my understanding it could be any workload(algorithm), so they can't ASIC optimize for it.

 

[renz496]

Both AMD and Nvidia will need to release mining cards that are so much better for mining (high hash-rate, lower power consumption), that it knocks the inflated price of the RX 570/580 cards back down to normal price and keeps miners from buying all the GTX 1070s and RX Vega before gamers can get them. I would love to have an RX Vega card for gaming to use with a free-sync monitor. Right now a GTX 1070 is all there is for a mild-budgeted gamer who wants more than 1080p 60Hz, and G-Sync is that much more expensive also. Even if I wanted to crossfire RX 570 or 580, I can't because they're none available.

My point is I hope AMD can deliver enough RX Vega cards without miners thinking they will be better than the mining cards, because from what I was reading a few days ago miners think mining specific, non-gaming cards will be a waste and have zero resale value. That's why I say the mining cards will need to be sooo much better at mining that a gaming card will become next to pointless to buy over it. Which really takes away from the attractiveness of GPU mining, because if mining goes under at least you could always sell your GPUs to gamers. Maybe these mining specific cards will knock some people out of the business, get a better balance on everything.

this is the problem with this mining specific card. GPU maker want miner to buy this mining specific so they will not flood the market with used card in the future. but miner want something directly opposite; they want the ability to resale the card to maximize their "profit". honestly i don't know if GPU maker can make specific tuning to this mining card that cannot be done with regular GPU. right now i even heard there is specific BIOS to maximize the hash rates. so even if this mining card comes with optimized BIOS user still able to use modded BIOS on regular GPU. unless GPU maker make specific limitation like how it was done with their gaming and professional card (like how S9150 have unlocked DP rate while 290X was limited to 1/8 for it's DP despite using the same chip). but even if GPU maker did something like that i dare to bet there will be people making new coin to bypass such design just how current crypto currency are made to be ASIC resistant.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

Then the only thing the mining specific cards will have as an advantage is price. They should be much cheaper. That should bring the price back down to normal on the gaming GPUs though right?

 

[mitch074]

Yeah, I have to agree the market ballpark is favor of the 1070. It's a pretty healthy card all the way around and so far for the last year, AMD hasn't a clear or substantial answer to it. Vega has been mute till now.
To some degree AMD's 480 did a decent job with to compete with 970. It's sort of sad it's a few years late. Nevertheless, the later Crimson versions helped improve 480's performance. Also, I've had friends flash the 480 bios to 580 specs with some success (a few guys had to revert back to the stock bios because of board configs). They notably ran cooler which makes me suspect 480 was really meant to be 580 from the start but was down clocked for marketing purposes. Marketing is a tricky and cunning strategy.

Not exactly - from the beginning, AMD announced that the 14nm process used for the 480 was pretty much experimental; the 580 was made using a "stabilized" 14nm process, and as such it holds up better. Moreover, AMD was really running out of cash so they set up a very high default voltage to make sure they could get as many working chips as they could. Flashing a 480 with a 580 BIOS will merely lower the voltage and "overclock" the chip some. Note that you can obtain the same result with manual downvolting and overclocking of the card through the driver's control panel (I shaved off 0.15 V from mine under Windows at all power levels, leading to much lower temperatures). The main reason one would flash a 580 VBIOS is that you then don't have to go through the driver to set these voltages - due to Polaris' VBIOS being signed, voltmodding the card through the VBIOS has become much more of a hassle (not that it fails, but drivers will refuse to load on badly signed VBIOSes).

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

If you can get a 580 bios to flash that's nice. If you can't then there is a Pixel Clock Patcher that will disable the signature check on the driver - https://www.techpowerup.com/228536/amd-bios-signature-check-re-enabled-with-relive-locks-out-polaris-bios-modders?cp=3

 

[goldstone77]

What the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition's specs and pricing mean for PC gamers
The first Radeon Vega graphics card is here, and it isn't cheap.
By Brad Chacos
Senior Editor, PCWorld | JUN 16, 2017 7:21 AM PT

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3201011/components-graphics/what-the-radeon-vega-frontier-editions-specs-and-pricing-mean-for-pc-gamers.html

Other Links to Vega Frontier Edition

https://hothardware.com/news/amd-radeon-vega-frontier-edition-hbm2-preorder

https://exxactcorp.com/index.php/product/prod_detail/2566

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11548/amd-radeon-vega-frontier-edition-retail-listings-appear-cards-at-1199-and-1799

 

[renz496]

well AMD have been long dreaming to have their own titan like nvidia. initially Fury X was supposed to be AMD version of titan (that's why it was not part of R9 300 series). but they got ninja'd by 980ti. when AMD decided to price Fury X at the same price as 980ti i heard some of AMD board partner did not like that decision.

 

[goldstone77]

The most intriguing part of this is that the liquid cooled version requires 75 watts more power...

 

[-Fran-]

The most intriguing part of this is that the liquid cooled version requires 75 watts more power...

The pump is usually power hungry compared to everything else. And you can also say they might bump the speeds a bit? But I think the first point is the biggest difference.

Cheers!

 

[cdrkf]

The most intriguing part of this is that the liquid cooled version requires 75 watts more power...

The figure is 'max tdp'- so I think the liquid cooled card allows a higher power limit for the gpu.

At stock settings in games I doubt the difference will be that much (water pumps don't use *that much* power- probably 10w more than an air cooler).

The difference will come in when you try to overclock the two cards- the liquid cooled card should have much more headroom before it throttles.

 

[goldstone77]

The most intriguing part of this is that the liquid cooled version requires 75 watts more power...

The figure is 'max tdp'- so I think the liquid cooled card allows a higher power limit for the gpu.

At stock settings in games I doubt the difference will be that much (water pumps don't use *that much* power- probably 10w more than an air cooler).

The difference will come in when you try to overclock the two cards- the liquid cooled card should have much more headroom before it throttles.

That could help explain the big price hike compared to the air cooled model. Some $600 for water cooling is ridiculous at first glance.

 

[cdrkf]

The most intriguing part of this is that the liquid cooled version requires 75 watts more power...

The figure is 'max tdp'- so I think the liquid cooled card allows a higher power limit for the gpu.

At stock settings in games I doubt the difference will be that much (water pumps don't use *that much* power- probably 10w more than an air cooler).

The difference will come in when you try to overclock the two cards- the liquid cooled card should have much more headroom before it throttles.

That could help explain the big price hike compared to the air cooled model. Some $600 for water cooling is ridiculous at first glance.

Just keep in mind the Vega FE is a pro card- so they carry a premium over consumer. There's also the argument that offering a closed loop water cooler in a professional product is risky- so it might be a much more expensive unit with higher reliability than for a consumer card (as if the thing leaks and destroys a work machine whilst it's in the middle of something mission critical for a big company- that could go very badly for whoever sold them the card...)

 

[renz496]

so board partner already get their RX Vega for AMD. though we might not going to see custom Vega on launch day.

https://videocardz.com/70465/msi-damn-rx-vega-needs-a-lot-of-power

 

[varis]

300W for a gaming card would be somewhat crazy. But we've seen that stuff in R9 series.

On the upside, high TDP + high price probably means miners won't be interested. Unless the compute power is through the roof.

BTW why do you think custom boards wouldn't come on launch day (late July), or right after?

 

[renz496]

300W for a gaming card would be somewhat crazy. But we've seen that stuff in R9 series.

On the upside, high TDP + high price probably means miners won't be interested. Unless the compute power is through the roof.

300w for single GPU is still considered as normal. but people are questioning about the 375w version. is that power already include the AIO or just for the GPU alone. if the "reference" already use that much that some more extreme edition from board partner going to use even more. and it might stress the PSU as well. there was a case with 390X burned the 8 pin power connector (Corsair AX1200w).