Hardware & Technical AMD is back on track

During the past few days, AMD has showcased their newest component technology, and the new GPU, Vega, impress the market with Doom beating the GTX 1080 in Vulkan, and scores higher than 60hz at 4k in the new Star Wars Battlefront Rouge One DLC (beta version and the actual gameplay showcase was quite static and stutter occurred).
Nvidia having an actual opponent in the high to high end GPU market is both exciting and healthy. Vega seems to be putting AMD on the map again. :)

[video=youtube_share;9YB8EVcz_xc]https://youtu.be/9YB8EVcz_xc[/video]
 
AMDs new Ryzen CPU, based on Zen, is directly targeting Intels 6900k. And it's beating the competition in render benchmarks like Zbrush and Blender.
Price and CPU boost is still very much a secret.

[video=youtube_share;Ic_5S5ymzy8]https://youtu.be/Ic_5S5ymzy8[/video]
 
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CPU performance hasn't mattered for games for a couple years now, so there's that. Still good to see competition to intel's idiotic pricing and arbitrarily cut features.
 
I wish they'd announce some prices though.

Remember the nvidia cards its competing with came out a year ago. Vega needs to be at least 10% more powerful and somewhat cheaper to draw folks away from established (and soon to be raplaced) cards.

If Vega launches at £450-£500 for a card that's 10% faster than a 1080, I'll switch to team red in a heartbeat.
 
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Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Looking forward to Vega - I may well upgrade my RX 480 to one - after I've got my RyZen 8C/16T and X370 motherboard that is....
 
I wish they'd announce some prices though.

Remember the nvidia cards its competing with came out a year ago. Vega needs to be at least 10% more powerful and somewhat cheaper to draw folks away from established (and soon to be raplaced) cards.

If Vega launches at £450-£500 for a card that's 10% faster than a 1080, I'll switch to team red in a heartbeat.

I agree. But I can't help but to wonder what Nvidia will do once Vega launches. Release 1080ti? But it can't outperform the Titan XP. And it can't be that much more expensive than the Vega or people won't buy it. And furthermore, when will Nvidia unveil Volta, which is considered just as ground breaking as Maxwell was?

But I do enjoy the fact that AMD is closing in on Nvidia on the PC market. I just hope Nvidia will enter the console market as well.
 
I agree. But I can't help but to wonder what Nvidia will do once Vega launches. Release 1080ti? But it can't outperform the Titan XP. And it can't be that much more expensive than the Vega or people won't buy it. And furthermore, when will Nvidia unveil Volta, which is considered just as ground breaking as Maxwell was?

But I do enjoy the fact that AMD is closing in on Nvidia on the PC market. I just hope Nvidia will enter the console market as well.

It will certainly put nvidia in an awkward position if AMDs top tier card outperforms the titanX for 1080 money, nvidia won't be able to catch up until Volta. As you say, it's unthinkable that the 1080ti could be faster than the titan, that would be really wierd.

If nothing else, I hope some proper competition at the high end will force prices down across the board, competition is always good for the consumer.
 
The upcoming Nintendo toaster will be using an nvidia chip, but that's more like an oversized Ouya.

yes/no/depends.

Will it be as powerful as the current gen consoles? as in normal versions not ps4 pro and xbox one scorpio...it 'could' be.

Is that enough? well...actually, yes, yes, it would be, if it can reach ps4/xbox one levels, at 1080p there is no reason to go beyond that at least not for many years, sure 4k gaming looks great, but 4k is not going to be a standard for a long time, and the VAST majority of times, 1080p looks good upscaled to 4k

Of course that is the big 'if' it becomes that powerful, and easy to develop on, and that is still unknown.
We can hope, but the thing is, its based off a custom tegra chip, it would be silly if it was weaker then the x1 chipset, and likely as with most console chipsets it is going to end up faster then that, and x1 can put out about 1 teraflop, so here's hoping.

That said, it is great to see AMD fighting back, intel and nvidia haven't really felt pressure in a good while, and it wouldn't surprise me if they haven't felt motivated to improve as much as they could because of that.
 
My hopes for Vega:
1. at least 10%-15% more performance than 1080 and perhaps even getting towards the rumoured 1080ti that nvidia are supposedly releasing in January (though I suspect they will wait for AMD to make the next move). Partly because this is the performance area I'm looking at for an upgrade from my 390X and partly because it's about time nvidia had some decent competition at the high-end to a) drive prices towards a more sensible level and b) keep the market alive with minimum two competitors not one
2. £100 less than 1080. Might be wishful thinking here because unlike the Pascal cards if AMD know that Vega is a winner they will price accordingly but recent history has shown that they might price the cards more to be more affordable than the nvidia equivalent
3. I pray to god they sort out their thermal issues. If Vega turns out to be just another radiator for my house running at 50deg idle or 75-80+ deg under load then I will be very disappointed.
 
CPU performance hasn't mattered for games for a couple years now, so there's that. Still good to see competition to intel's idiotic pricing and arbitrarily cut features.

That's bunk... Battlefield 1 is very CPU heavy and a my 4 core processor is running all 4 cores at 103% all the time while my GPU is running in the 80s. Any background operation starts to run and my frame rate tanks, making the visuals terrible. And I'm running the lowest settings. There are other games that are very CPU heavy as well.

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I agree. But I can't help but to wonder what Nvidia will do once Vega launches. Release 1080ti?

Rumor has it that Nvidia will be bring out new cards in q3/4 of 2017.
 
Well the number are fine, but what is that practical result?
When I worked with AMD CPU driven machines I was always in trouble.
And I worked with different machines over a long time at least in conjunction
with Microsoft products..

Speed means nothing if you need to reboot half a dozen times a day.

I will be member of that intel faction, because I had less problems
with compatibility on Windows as long as I can look back.

Regards,
Miklos
 
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Well the number are fine, but what is that practical result?
When I worked with AMD CPU driven machines I was always in trouble.
And I worked with different machines over a long time at least in conjunction
with Microsoft products..

Speed means nothing if you need to reboot half a dozen times a day.

I will be member of that intel faction, because I had less problems
with compatibility on Windows as long as I can look back.

Regards,
Miklos

Yes and those are the reasons I stick with Intel/Nvidia as well. I've had issues with both AMD and ATI before.
And if you look at the Vega demo, you'll notice improper frame pacing, which has been a serious issue with AMD cards (and/or drivers) before. Now, the game is beta, so I can't really build my opinion on that of course. And the cards was running an older driver too.
Anyway, competition is always a good thing. :)
 
Interesting...

News clip from Tom's Hardware:
"Battlefield 1
The Battlefield 1 demo consisted of two Titan X-equipped systems, one with Ryzen and the other with the Intel i7-6900K, playing the game with a 4K resolution at maximum settings. It is notable that AMD chose to use an Nvidia Titan X instead of one of its own GPUs, but AMD designed the test platforms to highlight CPU limitations by removing the GPU bottleneck."
 
Common sense - changing as few variables as possible, i.e. CPU & motherboard / RAM rather than effectively changing the whole PC.... :)

.... makes the results more easily comparable.

That was not what I was thinking.
Choosing a Titan XP to get rid of GPU bottlenecking means Vega will be a direct competitor to the GTX 1080/ti but not greater. But I might just be a little flimsy with it...
 
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