ojas :
Hi AMD staff!
Have a few questions (had more, but others have already asked):
1. What's the minimum guaranteed base clock on the 290 and 290X?
There is no minimum clock, and that is the point of PowerTune. The board can dither clockspeed to any MHz value permitted by the user’s operating environment.
2. We've seen reports from Tom's Hardware that retail 290X cards are clocking much lower (someone posted a chart on this page above), and even a user on Tech Report claiming much lower clocks than review samples have.
Is this simply because the current PowerTune implementation is heavily dependent on cooling (which will be variable from card to card)?
This issue with the 290X is causing people to be cautious regarding the 290 as well.
Plain and simple, THG and Tech Report have faulty boards. You can tell because
Sweclockers performed the same retail board test and got the expected results: performance in identical to the AMD-issued samples.
Every 290X should be running 2200 RPM in quiet mode, and every 290 should be running 2650 RPM. We will be releasing a driver today or tomorrow that corrects these rare and underperforming products, wherever they may exist.
3. In light of (2) and the fact that AnandTech went so far as to recommend AGAINST the 290 due to the noise it made (i think they measured over 55 dBA), wouldn't it have been a better idea to re-do the reference cooler? Maybe make it a dual-fan blower?
Having addressed #2, we’re comfortable with the performance of the reference cooler. While the dBa is a hard science, user preference for that “noise” level is
completely subjective. Hundreds of reviewers worldwide were comfortable giving both the 290 and 290X the nod, so I take contrary decisions in stride.
4. Partly because of (2) and (3), doesn't the 290 make the 290X pointless?
Hardly! The 290X has uber mode and a better bin for overclocking.
5. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to keep the 290 at a 40% fan limit (and thus be quieter) and allow partner boards to demonstrate Titan-class performance at $425-450?
No, because we’re very happy with
every board beating Titan.
6.a.) Open? How? It's a low-level API, exclusive to GCN. How's it going to be compatible with Fermi/Kepler/Maxwell etc. or Intel's HD graphics? For that matter, will you be forced to maintain backwards compatibility with GCN in future?
You’re right, Mantle depends on the Graphics Core Next ISA. We hope that the design principles of Mantle will achieve broader adoption, and we intend to release an SDK in 2014. In the meantime, interest developers can contact us to begin a relationship of collaboration, working on the API together in its formative stages.
As for “backwards compatibility,” I think it’s a given that any graphics API is architected for forward-looking extensibility while being able to support devices of the past. Necessary by design?
6.b.) All we know from AMD as yet about Mantle is that it can provide up to 9x more draw calls. Draw calls on their own shouldn't mean too much, if the scenario is GPU bound. You suggest that it'll benefit CPU-bound and multi-GPU configs more (which already have 80%+ scaling).
That said, isn't Mantle more of a Trojan horse for better APU performance, and increased mixed APU-GPU performance? AMD's APUs are in a lot of cases CPU bottle-necked, and the mixed mode performance is barely up to the mark.
I suggested that it’ll benefit CPU bottlenecking and multi-GPU scaling as examples of what Mantle is capable of. Make no mistake, though, Mantle’s primary goal is to squeeze more performance out of a graphics card than you can otherwise extract today through traditional means.
6.c.) All said and done, will Mantle see any greater adoption than GPU accelerated PhysX? At least GPU PhysX is possible on non-Nvidia hardware, should they choose to allow it.
Wouldn't it have been better to release Mantle as various extensions to OpenGL (like Nvidia does), given the gradual rise of *nix gaming systems? And Microsoft's complete disinterest in Windows as a gaming platform...or heck, even in the PC itself.
It’s impossible to estimate the trajectory of a graphics API compared to a physics library. I think they’re operating on different planes of significance.
I will also say that API extensions are insufficient to achieve what Mantle achieves.
6.d.) Developers have said they'll "partner" with you, however the only games with confirmed (eventual) support are BF4 and Star Citizen. Unreal Engine 4 and idTech don't seem to support Mantle, nor do their creators seem inclined to do that in the near future.
Is that going to change? Are devs willing to maintain 5 code paths? It would make sense if they could use Mantle on consoles, but if they can't...
The work people are doing for consoles is already interoperable, or even reusable, with Mantle when those games come to the PC. People may have missed that it’s not just Battlefield 4 that supports Mantle, it’s the entire Frostbite 3 engine and any game that uses it. In the 6 weeks since its announcement, three more major studios have come to us with interest on Mantle, and the momentum is accelerating.
7. With TSMC's 20nm potentially unavailable till late next year, is AMD considering switching to Intel's 22nm or 14nm for its GPUs? Sounds like heresy, but ATI and Intel weren't competitors.
No.
8.Regarding G-Sync, what would be easier: Licensing Nvidia's tech and eventually getting them to open it up, or creating an open alternative and asking them to contribute? There is, after all, more excitement about G-Sync than stuff like 4K.
We fundamentally disagree that there is more excitement about G-Sync than 4K. As to what would be easier with respect to NVIDIA’s technology, it’s probably best to wait an NVIDIA AMA.
😛
9.Is AMD planning on making a OpenCL based physics engine for games that could hopefully replace PhysX? Why not integrate it with Havok?
No, we are not making an OpenCL physics library to replace PhysX. What we
are doing is acknowledging that the full dimension of GPU physics can be done with libraries like Havok and Bullet, using OpenCL across the CPU and GPU. We are supporting developers in these endeavors, in whatever shape they take.
10. We've seen that despite GCN having exemplary OpenCL performance in synthetic benchmarks, however in real-world tests GCN cards are matched by Nvidia and Intel solutions. What's going on there?
You would need to show me examples. Compute is very architecturally-dependent, however. F@H has a long and storied history with NVIDIA, so the project understandably runs very well on NVIDIA hardware. Meanwhile, BitCoin runs exceptionally well on our own hardware. This is the power of software optimization, and tuning for one architecture over another. Ceteris paribus, our compute performance is exemplary and should give us the lead in any scenario.
11.Are the video encoding blocks present in the consoles (PS4, Xbone) also available to GCN 1.1 GPUs?
You would have to ask the console companies regarding the architecture of the hardware.
12. What is it the official/internal AMD name for GCN 1.1? I believe it was Anand of AnandTech that called it that.
We do not have an official or internal name. It’s “graphics core next.”
13. I remember reading that GPU PhysX will be supported on the PS4. Does that mean PhysX support will be added to Catalyst drivers on the PC? Or rather, will Nvidia allow AMD GPUs to run PhysX stuff?
A lot of questions, but I've had them for a long time. Thanks![/quotemsg]
No, it means NVIDIA extended the PhysX-on-CPU portion of their library to developers interested in integrating those libraries into console titles.
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