Tom's Hardware's AMA With AMD, In Its Entirety

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jumpmanxt

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Does AMD have an official download link for their cleanup utility? I can't get the link in the article to work (http://www2.ati.com/drivers/amd_cleanup_util_1.2.1.0.exe).
 

ronch79

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WHy wasn't AMD asked about the future of their CPU division? Do they plan to offer FX SKUs using the Steamroller core? What about Excavator? Any plans to continue making x86 CPUs after Excavator?
 

InvalidError

Titan
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Because the AMA panel was from the GPU division and deferred CPU-related questions to AMD's upcoming forum and interviews elsewhere. In other words, they probably were not authorized to discuss CPU-related questions.
 
Nice interview, its eye opening to see how little people in position to know actually knew about AMD and its projects. The automatic knee-jerk reaction is to assume a problem when there is no problem other than the assumption of problems.

 

goodguy713

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well this was pretty informative actually. the temp issue with the 290 and 290x seems like it can be solved just by gaming out side in 30 degree weather.. lol
 

MajinCry

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Gah. Forgot about the AMA. I'd have asked if there would be any performance benefit from wrapping, say, DirectX 9 to Mantle, due to the low-level aspect of the latter.
 

InvalidError

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Sounds like a silly idea to me since the point of Mantle is to bypass DXn's complexity and overhead in the first place by giving programmers lower-level access to the hardware.

If you make DXn libraries that translate the DXn API to Mantle, you lose pretty much all advantages Mantle is intended to provide since you have to jump through all DXn hoops on top of dealing with Mantle stuff.

With DXn, you get: Game -> DXn APIs -> driver hardware abstraction layer -> low-level drivers -> hardware
With Mantle, you get: Game -> Mantle -> low-level drivers -> hardware
With "Mantlified DXn" you get: Game -> DXn API -> DXn translation layer -> Mantle -> low-level drivers -> hardware

Converting DXn to Mantle is likely less efficient since it introduces an extra middleware layer that may not be able to execute calls as efficiently as a middleware layer that speaks native hardware language - the hardware abstraction layer has liberties in how to translate DXn calls to hardware that Mantle would not have.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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Doing better in areas they are lacking (per-core performance) is only one way to go about improving their market position. Reducing the industry's dependence on AMD's biggest weakness by heavily promoting HSA works too but does require more effort to drive market interest and adoption.

As I have been saying for a while, most of the gaming and image/video processing algorithms that "require more cores" are embarrassingly parallel and would be perfect candidates for GPGPU. Once you remove that from the CPU's workload, most of what is left is heavily branch-dependent code that may be nearly impossible to break into threads in a sensible manner.
 
WHy wasn't AMD asked about the future of their CPU division? Do they plan to offer FX SKUs using the Steamroller core? What about Excavator? Any plans to continue making x86 CPUs after Excavator?
Because this is a GPU AMA with GPU reps. There were CPU questions but they were not answered (and realistically the GPU division probably didn't really know the answers)
 

silicondoc_85

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Like of course ! AMD website sucks, as it always has, it's a huge pain compared to nVidia's website, which rocks and rocks and rocks.

I just bought a brand new high end SB950 AM3+ board and guess what ?
AMD HOSTS NO DRIVERS FOR IT - FOR THEIR OWN CHIPSET.

You get links at the bottom of the page after the massive runaround - to manufacturers of motherboards...
See it would cost amd money to have drivers for their products online... they prefer to laythe burden upon their "partners" or should I call them abused spouses ?

Yeah, I thought I knew how much amd sucks which is to the far reaches of the universe, but then I saw even greater suckage from them.

I give mantle about a 3% chance of not being a huge pain in the rear 99% of the time for dubious and very "massaged" benefit, with many unstated caveats and issues, only to be told a couple years later, in passing, while proclaiming "the new solution" and bashing the superior competition, since that's how it's been done for a decade plus now.
 

silicondoc_85

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Allow me to answer that.

YES ! There will be huge gains ! Think of it as BF6 or BF8 !
Think of very expensive items on your fireplace's mantle !

Of course all that will come "in the future" with "the game dev partners" "doing all the work", and after the gigantic flops and artifacts and visual anomalies and embarrassing fragolific fallout, the amazing promises will then come "in the future", when " the great advantages can be put to use! ", so of course, BUY IT NOW !, because years down the road the benefits will "materialize" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow I amd so fired up !!!!!!

 

ihog

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Using a 100% reference design at launch ensures that AMD can control every facet of the initial production. It minimizes the number of variables that can "go wrong."

Apparently, their production design just sucks then. The reference cooler is awful. AMD did a bad job, and they should feel bad.

Also, Tom's, these mobile ads are beyond annoying. Sure, one is fine, even though none should show up since I'm a member, but every single time I click out of one, another pops up. Mod edit for language. Keep it family friendly please!
 

InvalidError

Titan
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The reference cooler should be fine for the most part but the fan design is very odd. I'm sure it could be improved substantially with very minor tweaks. For example: the fan blades are practically perpendicular to the rotation tangent. This creates high resistance in front of them and turbulence around them instead of making the blades shove the air outside the centrifugal fan. Simply rotating the blades about five degrees counter-clockwise should improve that a fair bit by making the inner edge slice into air in front of it with the blade curve guiding that outwards, assisted by centrifugal force. A very minor tweak but I bet it would significantly improve airflow and noise.
 
Sep 22, 2013
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All of this was very interesting, especially the favorite color question. However, this is my favorite response:
A. Mantle is a full graphics API. Anything indie developers are doing with other APIs today can be done on Mantle, plus you get direct hardware access. Anything with a GCN graphics core can leverage Mantle. We're open to working with any developer on Mantle! Please contact us.

It would rock to see Indie devs able to pump out better products with AMD support. DX11 isn't exactly Indie-friendly.

Here's to Indie games getting wide-spread attention and support due to Mantle. I'm excited (and I'm running a 770 4GB right now.... don't tell anyone!).
 
Wow way to try and polish a turd. Sure the reference cards to some may be appealing in looks and how they dont vent into the case but who in the hell wants a jet engine in their house? If the 290/x is supposed to be such an amazing card at that temp why is nvidia doing so much better at alot less temp? A turd is still a turd at the end of the day anyway you polish it.
 
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