AMD admits they have "lost momentum" in gaming promises yearly GPU releases

It is great to see AMD admit their gaming GPUs are severely lacking. Polaris is almost two years old now and has no sign of being replaced at the two-year mark, and Vega is a hot mess. GPUs are so boring right now. I know there's usually an ebb and flow in engineering and computing, but GPUs have been dull for many, many months now. We've seen a one or two semi-exciting advancements—Volta offered amazing DX12-specific performance (but at an astronomical price and little uplift in DX11), and prices finally calmed down after the mining storm—but in general it's been years since GPUs have excited me. The GTX 1080 drew less power than a GTX 980, but outpaced it significantly while offering massive clock increases and a semi-new memory design. That's the last time I thought, 'Wow, that's cool.' Vega had lots of cool features, but it ended up being that drummer that turns up to a concert with this huge rack of toms, double kick drums, and an array of hand-hammered Turkish cymbals, to only just be able to manage a basic 4/4 beat. It could play 11/16 timing pretty damn well, but only one track in the setlist required it.
 
Last edited:
It is great to see AMD admit their gaming GPUs are severely lacking. Polaris is almost two years old now and has no sign of being replaced at the two-year mark, and Vega is a hot mess. GPUs are so boring right now. I know there's usually an ebb and flow in engineering and computing, but GPUs have been dull for many, many months now. We've seen a one or two semi-exciting advancements—Volta offered amazing DX12-specific performance (but at an astronomical price and little uplift in DX11), and prices finally calmed down after the mining storm—but in general it's been years since GPUs have excited me. The GTX 1080 drew less power than a GTX 980, but outpaced it significantly while offering massive clock increases and a semi-new memory design. That's the last time I thought, 'Wow, that's cool.' Vega had lots of cool features, but it ended up being that drummer that turns up to a concert with this huge rack of toms, double kick drums, and an array of hand-hammered Turkish cymbals, to only just be able to manage a basic 4/4 beat. It could play 11/16 timing pretty damn well, but only one track in the setlist required it.

LOL at that analogy!

But yes agreed, there is clearly issues with their graphics development. I mean considering the best they could do with Polaris is the 580 shows that the architecture probably didn't pan out as intended..
And Vega in my opinion is what the Fury X should have been, considering the size of that Die.
It's clear they need to get off GCN to move forwards with an entirely new architecture.
Maybe separate their gaming from their compute, as compute performance obviously doesn't help the efficiency on Vega.
 
Last edited:
LOL at that analogy!

But yes agreed, there is clearly issues with their graphics development. I mean considering the best they could do with Polaris is the 580 shows that the architecture probably didn't pan out as intended..
And Vega in my opinion is what the Fury X should have been, considering the size of that Die.
It's clear they need to get off GCN to move forwards with an entirely new architecture.
Maybe separate their gaming from their compute, as compute performance obviously doesn't help the efficiency on Vega.

The RX 580 is a solid card for most and a great card for those who play DX12 games, but it's not especially efficient once AMD and their board partners add a slight overclock, and it has been on the shelf for too long without sign of relief.

Yeah, GCN definitely seems like it's holding them back. I also think HBM and DX12 has held them back as well. And I also agree that they need to segment their line. I feel like I've been offered sloppy seconds, like a rally driver being given a formula car. Yeah, it's fast as fudge and highly engineered, but it's not what most of us need.
 
Back
Top