AMD Vega MegaThread! FAQ and Resources

[unikinqay]

I mean am I crazy for being completely and utterly like, W..T..F..? When all the hype, and press, and even great benchmarks(for Radeon) getting everyone excited...You have a big unveiling, and RELEASE..but wait, you can't actually just buy a video card on release day, or a week or a month after? How long does it have to go before someone who can actually do something says, "um, guys..do we hate money? We released a card that our main fan base(gamers) can't purchase."...So if the demand is this high. MAKE MORE. Hire another assembly factory. The demand is there..supply it PLEASE.

It could be bought on release day. Just got sold out.

And before you say AMD should magically make more fabs available for GPUs and HBM2, they can't. They don't own any fabs (and couldn't afford to build ones, which would take years anyways, and likely violate their contracts with GloFo).

Of course we shouldn't forget AMD *did have fabs* back in the day- which were spun off into Global Foundries because they were costing them too much money. The majority of Intel's R&D spend is actually on their fabs- that is why AMD have been able to compete quite well with Ryzen despite a minuscule R&D budget in comparison.

That really isn't why the are able to compete. Intel has simply stagnated due to a lack of competition which has made them billions. They should have pulled there 10nm IceLake into 2017 early 2018 but no they sat on the design to milk there 14nm process which has been very profitable for them.

I don't think that is true- Intel have been struggling with 10nm (as have the whole industry). If you think Intel are sitting on revolutionary technology that will magically propel them into the lead, just look at their woeful attempts to create a competitive phone processor. They tried several times and despite having the undisputed best silicone fabrication tech in the industry they weren't able to pull ahead.

On a side note- Intels attempted push into the Phone / Tablet space is also one of the reasons they've eased back on the PC side. There was a general consensus a few years back that 'the PC is dead, long live tablets' and all the manufacturers went along with it (AMD included for a while). It's only now they are realizing that the change wasn't as black and white as that. True- a lot of home buyers who only want to look at pictures / email / facebook have moved from laptops to smaller, cheaper and more portable tablets. That said the PC still very much has a place- as the platform you need if you want to create content rather than just consume it. It's the same deal with the server space- ARM haven't just swept in and taken over like many predicted, as it's proving just as hard for ARM to scale up to high performance designs as it was for Intel to scale down.

The fact of the matter with AMD is that each 'base' architecture lasts about 5 years (same for Intel)- and AMD screwed up with Bulldozer so everything that's happened since was pretty much guaranteed to happen. AMD then managed *not* to screw up with Zen. I think the only area where Intel has been screwing customers is by not increasing core counts sooner- they could have made hex core standard for i7 a couple of generations ago if they'd wanted. I don't think the per core performance would be much different though even if Dozer' had been more competitive.

Intel was milking us on cores for many years, Anyone doing serious video encoding, had to go with their ridiciously overprices Xeon range. Paying 5.000 $+ for CPUs that thanks to Ryzen now cost less then 1.000 bucks is a total rip off in my eyes. AMD is a Godsend in CPU market place.

 

[goldstone77]

All of you have to realize 7nm and 5nm was developed through a partnership to help with the burden of the cost for R&D!https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2017/06/13/globalfoundries-on-a-roll-with-7nm-and-5nm-announcements/#46c517734730 "In fact, it costs $271 million to design a 7nm system-on-a-chip, which is about nine times the cost to design a 28nm device, according to Gartner. “Not that many people can afford to (design chips at 10nm and 7nm) unless they have a high-volume runner and can see a return-on-investment,” said Samuel Wang, an analyst with Gartner."https://semiengineering.com/10nm-versus-7nm
"Intel plans $7 billion Fab 42 investment for 7-nm production"http://techreport.com/news/31406/intel-plans-7-billion-fab-42-investment-for-7-nm-production

Also, the comments about PC being dead. Everything has been shifting to cellphones. They continue to get bigger. Before long it will be all-in-one AR glasses everyone will wear mark my words! http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3301238/amd-vega-megathread-faq-resources/page-11.html#20068860

 

[unikinqay]

All of you have to realize 7nm and 5nm was developed through a partnership to help with the burden of the cost for R&D!https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2017/06/13/globalfoundries-on-a-roll-with-7nm-and-5nm-announcements/#46c517734730 "In fact, it costs $271 million to design a 7nm system-on-a-chip, which is about nine times the cost to design a 28nm device, according to Gartner. “Not that many people can afford to (design chips at 10nm and 7nm) unless they have a high-volume runner and can see a return-on-investment,” said Samuel Wang, an analyst with Gartner."https://semiengineering.com/10nm-versus-7nm
"Intel plans $7 billion Fab 42 investment for 7-nm production"http://techreport.com/news/31406/intel-plans-7-billion-fab-42-investment-for-7-nm-production

Also, the comments about PC being dead. Everything has been shifting to cellphones. They continue to get bigger. Before long it will be all-in-one AR glasses everyone will wear mark my words! http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3301238/amd-vega-megathread-faq-resources/page-11.html#20068860

Nothing Intel couldn't easily handle with it's $14.76 billion quarter revenue. AMD on the other hand surprised me with it's 7nm announcement. They are really hoping to hurt Intel's market share big time. We'll see, they have just woken up giant from winter sleep.

 

[Sohom]

People tend to forget that healthy competition in the industry leads to innovation. AMD have really up'ed their game. But again this mining fiasco is the one to blame for such exorbitant pricing.

 

[unikinqay]

People tend to forget that healthy competition in the industry leads to innovation. AMD have really up'ed their game. But again this mining fiasco is the one to blame for such exorbitant pricing.

Is mining really that bad for AMD? They're able to sell as many RX 570/80 and VEGA cards as they can produce. It's bad for pissed games, but I bet AMDs GPU division revenues are looking very good right now. Granted, second hand market can hit them hard when mining craze sends, but I think buyers are becoming more aware that buying second hand crypto mining GPU in not such a good idea.

 

[-Fran-]

People tend to forget that healthy competition in the industry leads to innovation. AMD have really up'ed their game. But again this mining fiasco is the one to blame for such exorbitant pricing.

Is mining really that bad for AMD? They're able to sell as many RX 570/80 and VEGA cards as they can produce. It's bad for pissed games, but I bet AMDs GPU division revenues are looking very good right now. Granted, second hand market can hit them hard when mining craze sends, but I think buyers are becoming more aware that buying second hand crypto mining GPU in not such a good idea.

There's only one real downside for AMD in this "mining frenzy": image recognition. I don't know how to really quantify that, other than making it a reflection of sales and group preference studies, but I do believe when a product servers a market it's not intended to, with downsides to the intended market, it will have an effect on brand perception to a degree.

I would also think it's a double edged sword (glass half full). If Vega is great at crunching numbers, then that means there's un-tapped potential to be had in them. So AMD, with the extra cash at hand, can turn into exploring ways of doing it; or at least making current efforts sharper and more effective: ROCm and... Ugh... HSA.

Cheers!

 

[goldstone77]

People tend to forget that healthy competition in the industry leads to innovation. AMD have really up'ed their game. But again this mining fiasco is the one to blame for such exorbitant pricing.

Is mining really that bad for AMD? They're able to sell as many RX 570/80 and VEGA cards as they can produce. It's bad for pissed games, but I bet AMDs GPU division revenues are looking very good right now. Granted, second hand market can hit them hard when mining craze sends, but I think buyers are becoming more aware that buying second hand crypto mining GPU in not such a good idea.

There's only one real downside for AMD in this "mining frenzy": image recognition. I don't know how to really quantify that, other than making it a reflection of sales and group preference studies, but I do believe when a product servers a market it's not intended to, with downsides to the intended market, it will have an effect on brand perception to a degree.

I would also think it's a double edged sword (glass half full). If Vega is great at crunching numbers, then that means there's un-tapped potential to be had in them. So AMD, with the extra cash at hand, can turn into exploring ways of doing it; or at least making current efforts sharper and more effective: ROCm and... Ugh... HSA.

Cheers!

When it comes down to it anything that makes AMD profit is a win! It keeps them in the game, and with more working capital it gives them more leverage to explore different avenues with R&D like you said. People will be disappointed when it comes to availability, but I don't think they will have a problem selling more cards when they become available. Video card business has always been good for AMD.

 

[goldstone77]

AMD: Mining Saves Vega's Bacon

Aug. 17, 2017 7:49 AM ET
Summary:

-RX Vega is mostly a disappointment as a gaming GPU.

-The cards are too expensive, too power hungry, and too late in the game to be competitive.

-While mining performance was initially lackluster, a beta driver from AMD has given them a boost and an advantage over comparable cards.
"initial mining performance was middling at best as shown by this Ethereum mining benchmark from HotHardware (all at stock speeds):"

"new driver catapulting Vega's mining performance to the top of the pack:"

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4099676-amd-mining-saves-vegas-bacon

 

[unikinqay]

AMD: Mining Saves Vega's Bacon

Aug. 17, 2017 7:49 AM ET
Summary:

-RX Vega is mostly a disappointment as a gaming GPU.

-The cards are too expensive, too power hungry, and too late in the game to be competitive.

-While mining performance was initially lackluster, a beta driver from AMD has given them a boost and an advantage over comparable cards.
"initial mining performance was middling at best as shown by this Ethereum mining benchmark from HotHardware (all at stock speeds):"

"new driver catapulting Vega's mining performance to the top of the pack:"

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4099676-amd-mining-saves-vegas-bacon

Good bye VEGA 56, miners are coming to take you away. AMD's gaming divisions has become crypto mining division.

 

[Sakkura]

Yeah the fact that it's a Vega 56 at the top of that chart is pretty scary.

 

[unikinqay]

Yeah the fact that it's a Vega 56 at the top of that chart is pretty scary.

Given that Vega 56 consumes less then 20 W more energy under max load as RX 580 does, It's a mining monster, with potential to see even higher mining performance further down the road, once the mining client developers learn how to use its full potential. It's game over for VEGA 56 as gaming card if difficulty of mining ETH doesn't increase soon or price of ETH drops significantly.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Everyone, stop with the 4 letter words.

If you notice your post is deleted, that is why

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

AMD went to great pains saying that they wanted their cards in the hands of gamers. Vega 56 is pushed back 2 weeks while at the same time they tell reviewers to focus on the 56. In the span of a few minutes, every Vega 64 card at the original MSRP is gone and official prices jump $100. 3 days after Vega 64 is released and 11 days before Vega 56 comes out, they put out a mining specific update that appears to make Vega 56 the undisputed mining champion. If I were a more cynical person, I'd suspect they knew from the beginning they couldn't make a profit at that MSRP, and intended to market it to miners all along.

 

[Martell1977]

AMD doesn't just want their cards in the hands of gamers, nor in only the hands of miners. They want everyone to have them, however, they cannot control prices beyond what they set for the board partners as MSRP. Once the retailers have them, they get to charge whatever they want. The fact that miners buy them up like they do allows retailers to gouge everyone. The only solution is to increase production, however, that can be dangerous. Say they double production and the bottom falls out of Eth...what would they do with all the extra GPU's. With millions of cards, it can take a long time to sell them, especially is miners start selling theirs. It's hard to balance and frankly, not worth the risk for AMD or it's partners. The best thing they can do is produce a great number of cards and make the profits they can while hoping that the average customer doesn't get shafted.

Have to remember, whether it be a gamer of miner, a card sale is a card sale and it's good for AMD's bottom line. Which in turn gives them money for R&D, which they desparately need.

On another note, it's not fair to compare OCing Fury and Vega. Yes Fury cards were bad overclockers, but from what I've seen, it was due to the locked HBM frequency. The biggest gain I saw from an OC of fury was from a small, forced memory OC. Vega, once it gets better than reference coolers, should better headroom, especially is board partners do some fine tuning with voltages.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

This is what Chris Hook, Radeon Senior Marketing director, said in an interview with HardOCP.

The Vega 56 which will be the king graphics card under $400. We're gonna be we're gonna give the press just enough time to review them and then we'll uh we'll have those on shelf we hope on Aug 14th.

Part of the reason that it's taken us a little longer to uh, to to launch Vega and I might as well be honest about that is that we wanted to make sure that we're launching with uh with good volume and I think that uh where we are and obviously we have to compensate for things like you know coin miners are going to want to get their hands on these so uhm we we believe that we're launching with a volume that will ensure that gamers can get their hands on them and that's what's important to us.

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/07/31/exclusive_rx_vega_interview_chris_hook

 

[Rogue Leader]

My amazon order was updated and says that I should receive my XFX Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid between August 24 and 28. Lets see if that really happens. Has anyone here even said they have one?

 

[king3pj]

The Vega 56 looks like a great card. If it was out a year ago I would have chosen it and a 2560x1440 144Hz Freesync monitor instead of my 1070 and 2560x1440 144Hz Gsync monitor. Unfortunately they were just far too late to the game for me.

Now that I have invested in an expensive Gsync monitor AMD has lost my business for the foreseeable future too. It just doesn't make sense for me to buy a card that doesn't support Gsync now that I have put my money behind that technology.

 

[jankerson]

Pauls Hardware just posted a review of the 64 stock and OCed compared to the GTX 1080 FTW2 (Stock Speed).

Well you have to watch it yourselves.

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNc1AAevMM"][/video]

 

[-Fran-]

Ok, after reading a bit more on the Vega siblings, yes I have to give the lower sibling (56) the props up, but still I won't recommend it over a nice aftermarket 1070. Let's see how some aftermarket models stack up to the 1070s and decide then.

Only remaining card in AMD's hand is drivers, but I really don't think they'll do much, if they do. Also, price gouging thanks to miners is not helping at all the situation of actually recommending any of the AMD cards.

Cheers!

 

[unikinqay]

Asus Radeon RX Vega 64 Strix Gaming review

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/109078-asus-radeon-rx-vega-64-strix-gaming/?page=9

6 % better average gaming performance with with up to 532W system power consumption.

Very suitable for gamers in colder climates

 

[volcom4c]

I mean am I crazy for being completely and utterly like, W..T..F..? When all the hype, and press, and even great benchmarks(for Radeon) getting everyone excited...You have a big unveiling, and RELEASE..but wait, you can't actually just buy a video card on release day, or a week or a month after? How long does it have to go before someone who can actually do something says, "um, guys..do we hate money? We released a card that our main fan base(gamers) can't purchase."...So if the demand is this high. MAKE MORE. Hire another assembly factory. The demand is there..supply it PLEASE.

It could be bought on release day. Just got sold out.

And before you say AMD should magically make more fabs available for GPUs and HBM2, they can't. They don't own any fabs (and couldn't afford to build ones, which would take years anyways, and likely violate their contracts with GloFo).

Never said they should "magically" do anything. Or that they OWNED their own fab shops. This is why I rarely even post opinions on forums. There's always that one person... I'm sorry I wasn't more literal in my small rant on my annoyance of this lingering topic. I'm not going to waste more time attempting to explain the overall point of the post. Seemed like everyone else got it.

 

[vMax]

New on Tom's site confirms that VisionTek's RX Vega 64 stand alone is retail $699...So we have been taken for a ride by AMD..

 

[Sakkura]

New on Tom's site confirms that VisionTek's RX Vega 64 stand alone is retail $699...So we have been taken for a ride by AMD..

While you could blame AMD for the 499 -> 599 jump, they have nothing to do with Visiontek going for 699.

 

[goldstone77]

The simple answer is Vega is pretty good, but a power consumption hog! The mining craze is ruining the prices on all video cards! ~8-12 months ago they were selling cheap RX 480 for $144.99, and the 1080 was down to $450. The market is a complete mess!

 

[vMax]

VisionTek are an official AMD RX Vega North American launch partner...So AMD must also have a hand somewhere in this..

New on Tom's site confirms that VisionTek's RX Vega 64 stand alone is retail $699...So we have been taken for a ride by AMD..

While you could blame AMD for the 499 -> 599 jump, they have nothing to do with Visiontek going for 699.