I noticed that but still not holding my breath for much more pref then 1080 and probably will cost more unless AMD is cool with slim margins
I'm not holding my breath for more either lol
But I think they're alright with the margins. Epyc and Ryzen have such good yields and such high margins they can skimp a bit here. They just need Vega to tide them over until they can get IF on the GPU with Navi.
EDIT:
Apparently all previous die size estimations were really wrong. PcPer is reporting a 564mm die size... Holy hell this is bad lol
https://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/Radeon-Vega-Frontier-Edition-GPU-and-PCB-Exposed
Was pretty quick on the article.
Also glad that back end of the PCB is super bare, was looking forward to the smaller card lenght
Ryan from pcper in the Livestream confirmed that he had talked to AMD and that the current and only driver out for the launch of Vega frontier edition does in fact have all of the Vega gaming optimizations done up till this point. Vega frontier edition is not targeted at gamers, but it is the full fat Vega core running with gaming optimized drivers, so it is reasonable to extrapolate from Vega frontiers performance numbers as to what RX Vega performance numbers will look like.
To the point that "well the FirePro W9100 used more power than the R9 290x but was based on the same core and clocked lower," that is true, but the Frontier Edition is not 100% analogous to a FirePro card. The Radeon Pro line is the equivalent to the old FirePro line, and the frontier edition isn't in the Radeon Pro line. FirePro and Radeon Pro cards have ECC memory, the Frontier Edition does not. The Frontier Edition gets a gaming mode in its driver with a gaming optimizations. It's not a firepro equivalent, and the comparison isn't one to one.
2 Likes
Dat VRM though. Overbuilt as fuck.
Taken from nVidia's white paper but this is what they say about HBM2:
Another benefit of HBM2 memory is native support for error correcting code (ECC) functionality. ECC
provides higher reliability for compute applications that are sensitive to data corruption. It is especially important in large-scale cluster computing environments where GPUs process very large datasets and/or run applications for extended periods.ECC technology detects and corrects single-bit soft errors before they affect the system. In comparison, GDDR5 does not provide internal ECC protection of the contents of memory and is limited to error detection of the GDDR5 bus only. Errors in the memory controller or the DRAM itself are not detected.
~ https://images.nvidia.com/content/pdf/tesla/whitepaper/pascal-architecture-whitepaper.pdf
Did AMD offer any official word on HBM2 implementation on Vega FE?
1 Like
AFAIK no nothing like an official statement or a spec page.
However, in the AMA on Reddit, someone from AMD when asked if FE had ECC enabled, said it did not and then proceeded to say "Why would you want it?."
That makes me kinda feel like they have no clue wtf they are talking about but it could still also be true
Another weird thing was that PcPer said, apparently quoting from AMD, that changing the driver mode doesn't actually do anything besides changing the UI. Which seems weird as hell. Why even bother with the different modes then?
Maybe, because its not a pro card as much as it's a gaming card that they're trying to spin for professional use?
2 Likes
That is exactly what I think. It is effectively the top end RX-Vega with 10 bit color.
I'm not going to say that person was lying but I would rather wait for a proper white paper release to know what features are actually included on Vega FE. Radeon Instinct MI25 is a very similar design and does have ECC enabled so perhaps it's all software layer. With the official classification on Vega FE being "HBC" they're marketting this as if the HBM is operating as an L4 passthrough cache level for system memory, kinda like eDRAM on Skylake. While I admit I don't know what workload that benefits it probably isn't gaming.
1 Like
Yeah I'm waiting as well. Whole thing has been a bit of a mess. No point in getting nuts now. Just wait and see.
Working with huge data sets and shit for rendering and scientific applications. But yeah not gaming
The more I think about this card, the more it looks like a Titan card.
- Both aren't marketed as gaming cards, but get gaming drivers
- Both aren't marketed as gaming cards, but have the gaming branding on the side of the card (Radeon or GeForce)
- Both don't sit proper in a lineup of cards. Titan Xp isn't a GTX card or a Quadro, Vega FE isn't an RX card or a Radeon Pro.
- Both sit at astronomically high prices.
This thread makes me sad 
But honestly, I'll still be getting Vega when it launches. Why? Because if it wasnt for idiots like me, we'd all probably be paying $1000+ for xx80ti (reference) cards and $2000+ for Titans....
1 Like
As long as prices are good I plan on going Vega, prices are key for them as usual.
1 Like
Yeah I just read through their marketing material and it's not just to do with system memory, it's more to do with system storage. I assume this is the next step from the Radeon Pro SSG but rather than have the storage on the card they're offering the option for a more dynamic storage environment (NAS possibly?) that the HBM will act as cache for. I'm sure in the ideal environment this actually provides exceptional benefits to performance as the ASIC can work through the HBM in larger chunks while PCI-E or networked storage maintains the bulk of the data.
I would go as far as to say that software such as drivers written to allow for this kind of caching would be detrimental to gaming.
From the PcPer review comments section discussion it seems that the Vega's Tile based rendering is turned off, that would likely affect the performance negatively in games but might be a positive for the DCC tools, might make sense. Still, unless AMD confirms I'm going to say this is just speculation and do take with a load of salt.
Hmm thats a pretty interesting pcb design.
I personally really like the Fury X form factor and hope to see it again on more of AMD's high end cards. Maybe Vega will get something like it for the gaming version. It seems that their HBM cards really don't need much space.
It is, and it lends some insight to Vega's operating power. With a VRM stacked so wide like that I'd expect a high current design. @Castellorizon and I had a chat about it and it looks like Vega's target vCore is in the 900-937mv range with current as high as 400A. This VRM looks to be rated at twice that, allowing 800A. This could mean AMD is playing it safe, or they're expecting massive power draw from higher clockrates/input voltage (not so different from Fiji).
Vega is very likely pushed right up against its efficiency wall at 1.6GHz.
2 Likes
Looks like a 6+2 phase card, with 6 phases being doubled to 12 for vcore or something like that..
Any information on the pwm and mosfets / powerstages that are used?
I much prefer this approach to them under powering it like the 480. Hopefully they won't pull a stunt like that again.
As for Vega, I am interested in seeing just how much the clock speed can be pushed when it is cooled properly. I imagine that power consumption would skyrocket, but it might be able to over clock a lot better than the stuff from AMD has been able to recently. The gaming card might even come clocked a lot higher than the FE. I imagine that the FE is expected to not need to be clocked as high, so they are using the lower binned parts or early production chips or something similar. Either way, I don't think that I have ever seen even aftermarket AMD cards ever overclocked to 1600 mhz, so they are definitely gaining ground on that front. Maybe not like nVidia has managed, but there is progress. They have also been touting how this is one of the biggest architectural changes made to GCN in a long while. It is also supposed to be their first gpu with infinity fabric. I'm guessing that is why it is taking them so long to get it out there. The drivers and getting things to work smoothly have likely been a big pain. I am interested to see how this whole infinity fabric ecosystem that they are developing progresses. Maybe we can get the theoretical benefits of APU compute with infinity fabric and HBM (at least on the gpu), allowing for a lot more flexibility than a traditional APU. Combining GPU and CPU compute has likely been AMD's end game since they started looking at buying ATI.