AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition's "game mode" has no effect on performance

[WYP]

AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition's "game mode" has no effect on performance

AMD's "Gaming Mode" has no impact on their Vega FE's gaming performance.



Read more in the impact of AMD's Vega Frontier Edition "Gaming mode".

 

[The_Governour]

I saw this before, it did not look very good for AMD. If u release a 1000€ card that is NOT marketed as a gaming card but then has a GAMING switch.....

On top of all that then it has NO impact to gaming now - as it is. As some one stated before, BOTH the Titan Xp and the Vega card are Gaming cards as PROFESIONAL working cards have optimized drivers etc from the start FOR WORK. That is part what you are paying for.

 

[Dicehunter]

I watched DudeRandom84 on YouTube as he just got a Vega FE to mess around with and the performance wasn't that good, I know it's not touted as a gaming card, Even though it has a gaming mode, But considering the RX-Vega is just going to be the same exact core and core count as the F.E but with probably slightly less memory, I don't think drivers will be able to make such a big difference, Maybe 20% over the F.E at best being extremely optimistic but that's it.

My hopes for having an all AMD rig are waning, As AlienALX always says, This is just being realistic about it.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I watched DudeRandom84 on YouTube as he just got a Vega FE to mess around with and the performance wasn't that good, I know it's not touted as a gaming card, Even though it has a gaming mode, But considering the RX-Vega is just going to be the same exact core and core count as the F.E but with probably slightly less memory, I don't think drivers will be able to make such a big difference, Maybe 20% over the F.E at best being extremely optimistic but that's it.

My hopes for having an all AMD rig are waning, As AlienALX always says, This is just being realistic about it.

Being realistic about it would be to wait.

 

[Excalabur50]

I really hate to say this but i think Vega is going to be a nearly DOA card, too little too late by AMD, and only fanboi's or those who have invested already in a high end freesync monitor are going to be happy for this card, those of us who have invested in Nvidia's architecture aren't going to find Vega good enough to warrant changing over IF that was intended.
Such a shame really seeing as their CPU's have advanced so much that they are unable to advance their GPU's a well and TBH I think it's been a big mistake to keep Fafing about with HBM it may be their downfall.
Oh well maybe next time they'll get it right

 

[Dicehunter]

Being realistic about it would be to wait.

Yes and no, You can draw some conclusions from the FE about how RX will be as it is the same core, Same core count, Same architecture and same memory being used albeit probably slightly less on the RX.

It's just an electronic product at the end of the day.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I really hate to say this but i think Vega is going to be a nearly DOA card, too little too late by AMD, and only fanboi's or those who have invested already in a high end freesync monitor are going to be happy for this card, those of us who have invested in Nvidia's architecture aren't going to find Vega good enough to warrant changing over IF that was intended.
Such a shame really seeing as their CPU's have advanced so much that they are unable to advance their GPU's a well and TBH I think it's been a big mistake to keep Fafing about with HBM it may be their downfall.
Oh well maybe next time they'll get it right

The issue is AMD at heart is a CPU company. So it makes sense they put all that money and time into Zen. Zen is pretty successful for the most part. GPUs will be next for them, but that is going to be a long time.

I personally am on the side of many experts who feel AMDs worst decision ever was to buy ATI for the amount they did. The buy was fine, but the amount was totally not worth it. It hurt them bad and then they basically did nothing with ATI. It took them YEARS before they even got APUs and while impressive, they weren't great.
Just makes me wonder how different everything would be if AMD never bought ATI. I suspect much closer competition on all fronts.

 

[Dicehunter]

The issue is AMD at heart is a CPU company. So it makes sense they put all that money and time into Zen. Zen is pretty successful for the most part. GPUs will be next for them, but that is going to be a long time.

I personally am on the side of many experts who feel AMDs worst decision ever was to buy ATI for the amount they did. The buy was fine, but the amount was totally not worth it. It hurt them bad and then they basically did nothing with ATI. It took them YEARS before they even got APUs and while impressive, they weren't great.
Just makes me wonder how different everything would be if AMD never bought ATI. I suspect much closer competition on all fronts.

ATI should still be it's own company and AMD should have stuck to making CPU's with ATI and AMD now and then partnering up for things like APU's but a company making both CPU's and GPU's stretches the budget too thin IMO.

 

[NeverBackDown]

ATI should still be it's own company and AMD should have stuck to making CPU's with ATI and AMD now and then partnering up for things like APU's but a company making both CPU's and GPU's stretches the budget too thin IMO.

That is exactly what happened too. They had to sell ALL there FABs and now we have Global Foundries.
But what lead to that event was the fact that AMD bought such an expensive company that AMD couldn't really support it especially at that price. They were not a market leader in ANY market, distant seconds or in the case of servers pretty high share but not a leader. So they took all there money away to buy ATI, but then had nothing to invest into and we can see that as slowly over time AMD has gotten further and further behind. Only this year did they do something amazing in any market they are in. Thank god for consoles. They kept them alive...

 

[Excalabur50]

The issue is AMD at heart is a CPU company. So it makes sense they put all that money and time into Zen. Zen is pretty successful for the most part. GPUs will be next for them, but that is going to be a long time.

I personally am on the side of many experts who feel AMDs worst decision ever was to buy ATI for the amount they did. The buy was fine, but the amount was totally not worth it. It hurt them bad and then they basically did nothing with ATI. It took them YEARS before they even got APUs and while impressive, they weren't great.
Just makes me wonder how different everything would be if AMD never bought ATI. I suspect much closer competition on all fronts.

Zen is great and I think Treadripper will be awesome too, just a shame they couldn't do better with the GPU's too and if they hadn't bought ATI we might not have any competition if ATI folded so who knows, maybe now that Zen is successful they might have enough cash coming in to do better R&D into GPU's so that Navi may be the card to watch out for

 

[Radioman]

I really hate to say this but i think Vega is going to be a nearly DOA card, too little too late by AMD, and only fanboi's or those who have invested already in a high end freesync monitor are going to be happy for this card, those of us who have invested in Nvidia's architecture aren't going to find Vega good enough to warrant changing over IF that was intended.
Such a shame really seeing as their CPU's have advanced so much that they are unable to advance their GPU's a well and TBH I think it's been a big mistake to keep Fafing about with HBM it may be their downfall.
Oh well maybe next time they'll get it right

Your argument is predicated on the idea that beating NVIDIA's top offers in the High-End GPU Market is AMD's only goal. The reality is most GPUs sold are the Mid-Range GPUs like the Polaris RX570s and RX580s. AMD dominates that end of the market and it makes sense for them to prioritize offering those customers an upgrade path. One of the old rules that has held is that it takes 10 times as much effort and 10 times as much resources to cultivate a new customer as opposed to selling to an existing customer. If AMD can produce an RX Vega Card that out performs a an NVIDIA GTX 1080 and prices it below a GTX 1070 ($500 USD) AMD will have overwhelming sales success despite not beating the GTX 1080ti. Remember the store shelves have been barren of GPUs Cards for months and right now there is no end in sight. My guess is the Polaris Cards will return to the shelves by the middle of the 4th Quarter in time for the Holiday Season. With the market being starved the way it has I would be very surprised if RX Vega do NOT fly off the shelves when stock is delivered in earnest at the end of August. Even at the higher price than what Mid-Range GPU Customers have become accustom to paying.

Friday I stopped by a big name distribution house to pick up some electronic parts. I checked out the section that sells GPU cards. The section was barren except for a few 50 to 100 USD Cards. For curiosity I went over and asked the Department Manager if he had any information on the GPU stock situation and when we would see relief. He didn't answer my question directly but said the situation on the shelves did not necessarily reflect what was going on. I inquired further and he told me that most of the stock had been moved to the Stock Room for security reasons. Probing around further I found out RX580s could be had for a price in excess of 400 USD. That is 175% of MSRP. Then it hit me. When you are gouging the customers you don't want to make it public. Exceeding MSRP by that type of margin is no way to ingratiate yourself to your supplier. Nonetheless it appears that people are willing to pay these prices if the seller is making these types of quotes. With that said it would seem obvious that if people are willing to pay those types of prices for Polaris Cards If Vega as priced at 500 USD and is clearly a superior card to Polaris then an extra 100 dollars is nothing to ask.

Yes Josephine AMD could make money hand over fist on RX Vega without ever impinging on NVIDIA's High Roller Clientele !

 

[AlienALX]

Then there's the opposing side. Fury X wasn't that bad. However, AMD got it all wrong and tried to market it with the 980Ti (because of the cost of producing it) and it failed miserably. Even Fury with custom cooler was dangerously near Nvidia's pricing to make it not worth having. Pretty much all of the Fury stock sold at the end for cut down prices that actually made it worth buying.

All of this because of HBM.. So what did they do? repeat the same. Another large die, more HBM.

It was the economics that screwed them with Fury.

BTW some guys have been saying that maybe gaming mode disables ECC on the HBM. Which should make the memory operate faster. I would hazard a guess and say if that's the case the memory is more than fast enough even with ECC running not to hinder the gaming performance of the card.

 

[Excalabur50]

Your argument is predicated on the idea that beating NVIDIA's top offers in the High-End GPU Market is AMD's only goal. The reality is most GPUs sold are the Mid-Range GPUs like the Polaris RX570s and RX580s. AMD dominates that end of the market and it makes sense for them to prioritize offering those customers an upgrade path. One of the old rules that has held is that it takes 10 times as much effort and 10 times as much resources to cultivate a new customer as opposed to selling to an existing customer. If AMD can produce an RX Vega Card that out performs a an NVIDIA GTX 1080 and prices it below a GTX 1070 ($500 USD) AMD will have overwhelming sales success despite not beating the GTX 1080ti. Remember the store shelves have been barren of GPUs Cards for months and right now there is no end in sight. My guess is the Polaris Cards will return to the shelves by the middle of the 4th Quarter in time for the Holiday Season. With the market being starved the way it has I would be very surprised if RX Vega do NOT fly off the shelves when stock is delivered in earnest at the end of August. Even at the higher price than what Mid-Range GPU Customers have become accustom to paying. Yesterday I was in a big name distribution house to pick up some electronic parts. I stopped by the section that sells GPU cards. The section was barren except for a few 50 to 100 USD Cards. For curiosity I went over and asked the Department Manager if he had any information on the GPU stock situation and when we would see relief. He didn't answer my question directly but said the situation on the shelves did not necessarily reflect what was going on. I inquired further and he told me that most of the stock had been moved to the stock room for security reasons. Probing around further I found out RX580s could be had for a price in excess of 400 USD. That is 175% of MSRP. Then it hit me. When you are gouging the customers you don't want to make it public. Exceeding MSRP by that type of margin is no way to ingratiate yourself to your supplier. Nonetheless it appears that people are willing to pay these prices if the seller is making these types of quotes. With that said it would seem obvious that if people are willing to pay those types of prices for Polaris Cards If Vega as priced at 500 USD and is clear a superior card to Polaris then an extra 100 dollars is nothing to ask.

Yes Josephine AMD could make money hand over fist on RX Vega without ever impinging on NVIDIA's High Roller Clientele !

Whether you support Nvidia or not people would still want AMD to do well with their cards otherwise Nvidia can keep shafting everyone as they have no direct competition and you can't compare the market ATM as mining is just a temporary blip in sales and don't dictate the true market place, truth is in no matter what competition can only be a good thing for everyone in the PC market

 

[KTM_RULZ]

Your argument is predicated on the idea that beating NVIDIA's top offers in the High-End GPU Market is AMD's only goal. The reality is most GPUs sold are the Mid-Range GPUs like the Polaris RX570s and RX580s. AMD dominates that end of the market and it makes sense for them to prioritize offering those customers an upgrade path. One of the old rules that has held is that it takes 10 times as much effort and 10 times as much resources to cultivate a new customer as opposed to selling to an existing customer. If AMD can produce an RX Vega Card that out performs a an NVIDIA GTX 1080 and prices it below a GTX 1070 ($500 USD) AMD will have overwhelming sales success despite not beating the GTX 1080ti. Remember the store shelves have been barren of GPUs Cards for months and right now there is no end in sight. My guess is the Polaris Cards will return to the shelves by the middle of the 4th Quarter in time for the Holiday Season. With the market being starved the way it has I would be very surprised if RX Vega do NOT fly off the shelves when stock is delivered in earnest at the end of August. Even at the higher price than what Mid-Range GPU Customers have become accustom to paying. Yesterday I was in a big name distribution house to pick up some electronic parts. I stopped by the section that sells GPU cards. The section was barren except for a few 50 to 100 USD Cards. For curiosity I went over and asked the Department Manager if he had any information on the GPU stock situation and when we would see relief. He didn't answer my question directly but said the situation on the shelves did not necessarily reflect what was going on. I inquired further and he told me that most of the stock had been moved to the stock room for security reasons. Probing around further I found out RX580s could be had for a price in excess of 400 USD. That is 175% of MSRP. Then it hit me. When you are gouging the customers you don't want to make it public. Exceeding MSRP by that type of margin is no way to ingratiate yourself to your supplier. Nonetheless it appears that people are willing to pay these prices if the seller is making these types of quotes. With that said it would seem obvious that if people are willing to pay those types of prices for Polaris Cards If Vega as priced at 500 USD and is clear a superior card to Polaris then an extra 100 dollars is nothing to ask.

Yes Josephine AMD could make money hand over fist on RX Vega without ever impinging on NVIDIA's High Roller Clientele !

Thats just wishful thinking. I bet Nvidia makes a good profit but you thinking that a die this size plus HBM2 will sell for less than 500$ is not realistic. At least you 're better off than others expecting Vega to sell for 400$.

 

[Dicehunter]

snip

Paragraphs dude, Paragraphs.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

If AMD sells the GPU at $500, it'll be at a loss, surely.

 

[AlienALX]

If AMD sells the GPU at $500, it'll be at a loss, surely.

And there is the crux.

Catch 22. Big die and HBM means they can't sell it cheap. However, it needs to be cheap. *around and around and around*

 

[Radioman]

Then there's the opposing side. Fury X wasn't that bad. However, AMD got it all wrong and tried to market it with the 980Ti (because of the cost of producing it) and it failed miserably.

And what is to say that will happen with Vega ? AMD has stated publicly thqat Vega will be priced competitively. Looking at the Frontier Edition Board there are a number of cost cutting measures AMD could implement. Cutting the HBM from 2 dies ( 16GB ) to 1 ( 8GB ) and reducing the VRM sections from 12 to 6.

BTW some guys have been saying that maybe gaming mode disables ECC on the HBM.

I applaud Steve Burke and the team at Gamers Nexus for unmasking the Placebo Switch but will still don't know if development of the card is complete. There is ample evidence contained in statements from AMD Officials that it is not. What Steve and GN have done is supply fodder for those that want to scuttle RX Vega before it is even launched. Let no mistake be made the launch of Vega was handled poorly, very poorly. This is what happens when a product is launched before it is ready.

 

[Korreborg]

AMD has stated publicly thqat Vega will be priced competitively.

And they stated 1080ti performance. But then again. It could still happen.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

But the thing is, the card needs to be launched or else people will just stop waiting. So many guys and gals on this forum alone have given up waiting, and rightly so. It's not like the competition (Nvidia) is waning. They're killing it, and if you can find a good price on your favourite card I say go for it. I've stopped suggesting people should wait.

So while Vega may not be ready and it shouldn't have been made available, at least in its current "Gaming Mode" form, it has to come out or else people will stop caring and move on. As Alien said, catch 22. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.