AMD may be the underdog but it has a growing and very loyal following, to the point where
I feel expectations about upcoming products could be skewed too positively. I don’t
want anybody to be disappointed come the release of Vega, so I hope to play Devil’s Advocate
and to try and consider the worst-case scenario for the card. Information about the product
is extremely limited right now… which is my excuse to speculate in this video!
From what I’ve seen AMD is in an a position that it hasn’t been in since ATI was a separate
company. As in, its future processors actually look more competitive than the graphics cards!
From the Polaris previews and release we know that AMD is happy to pick- not misleading-
but very carefully selected benchmarks and statistics to show their upcoming products
in the best light. Like the whole 480’s in crossfire being better than a 1080 in a
particular but not very meaningful way, or Polaris being very efficient when compared
with a Geforce 950 under very specific conditions. Let’s face it- Polaris is efficient, but
hasn’t exactly surpassed Nvidia’s by as much as the previews might have led us to
believe. I urge anybody wanting to try and interpret
Vega’s previews to look back at how AMD teased their previous product, Polaris, before
launch. Their marketing and slogans have matured. But I don’t see any reason to suspect the
way in which they handle benchmarks to have changed. I still expect them to be showing
Vega in the best possible situations. Yes, we’ll be able to run Doom in Vulkan faster
than a 1080 can. Yes. We’ll have a solid 60 FPS in Battlefront too! But no, I don’t
expect these to be anything other than the best demos that AMD could have chosen to advertise
Vega. BUT from what they’ve shown so far, Zen
has shown itself to be very competitive with Intel’s current 8 core offerings in both
speed and efficiency. That’s great! I’m happy to give them this and if the price is
right then it will be an excellent product! I wish Zen the best of luck and am sure it
will be a gamechanger when it comes to the number of threads we deem necessary for our
next PCs. And I don’t mind being kinder on AMD’s CPU previews, since given how far
behind Intel they’ve been for close to a decade, any way in which they’ve closed
the gap can only be considered a victory! But when it comes to GPUs I’ve always considered
AMD’s products to be competitive with Nvidia’s which is why I’m so disappointed to see
them seemingly slip behind recently. And Vega doesn’t appear BAD, but let me
explain why I’m disappointed. My issue with AMD for a long time is that it’s been a
little late to the party. I’m still going to blame the 300 series, which despite improvements
to the GCN architecture and more RAM, it was effectively just a rebranding of the 200 series.
And by the time it was released it was up against Nvidia’s 900 series, which was a
real step up over its 700 series and had the added bonus of being more efficient than AMD’s
counterparts. AMD’s real answer to the 900 series came
with their 480 card, which nicely sat somewhere between the Geforce 970 and 980 and with comparable
power draw to those products whilst the Fury series was at least an alternative to Nvidia’s
most powerful 980 TI. Right now, I’d say that AMD has an answer to the entire Geforce
900 series lineup! The problem is that Nvidia’s 1000 series has already been out for half
a year and we’re still waiting for AMD’s answer to this.
Of course, its name is Vega and AMD has been drumming up a lot of support for this in the
form of an exciting teaser which counted down to the release of the making of the teaser.
Among other marketing videos that didn’t really give away too much.
But one thing it did reveal was an uncapped 4K Doom video, which AdoredTV has very bravely
covered over on his channel here. And I say bravely, because as much as AdoredTV loves
AMD, he’s not a blind fanboy and people didn’t like the very reasonable things that
he had to say about Vega’s performance. He clocked it about 10% faster than the Geforce
1080 series and pretty much said it’s a case of too little too late. Obviously AMD
fanboys didn’t like the sound of this so twisted his points so much that he had to
release a follow-up video to limit the damage these hyped-up sheep could do to his channel.
Talk about shooting the messenger. You see, I’m personally not too worked up
about Vega right now. I’d rather have more information on it before making a video like
this. But I have been appalled by just how much of an echo-chamber the AMD subreddit
has become. Positive speculation is quickly launched to the top of the page then used
as fact, whilst anything that gets in the way of the hype train gets attacked and criticised,
often using the same methods of speculation that they disagree with in the first place!
I’m making this video just to show I’m making a stand- not against AMD- but against
the flock mentality that its followers are adopting. They dismiss other viewpoints, apply
rose-tinted filters to every bit of information they receive and chant in a huddle together
as though doing so will guarantee AMD’s success. And to see them attack AdoredTV’s
methodical approach really does it for me. Because watching his video, it reflects how
I feel as well. AMD’s problem is that Nvidia’s 1000 series is actually pretty good. It’s
faster than their perfectly acceptable 900 series, and also more efficient. The only
issue is that it’s all really over-priced, which is largely AMD’s fault for not having
a rival product out to push prices down. And you can say what you like about these inflated
prices, but right now these help AMD as it means that price-conscious consumers in the
market for Geforce 1080 levels of performance haven’t yet taken the plunge and may give
their money to AMD instead once Vega finally comes out. Provided it’s competitive.
As much as we’d all love for AMD to be hiding their best products and benchmarks from us,
I’m not buying it. Showing Doom running on Vulkan has traditionally been AMD’s strongest
point and I see no reason for this to change now. And Battlefront 2 running at 4K might
be pretty but as AdoredTV has said, it isn’t exactly the most taxing of benchmarks. I wouldn’t
be surprised if in most situations, Vega ended up being rather comparable to the 1080 in
terms of performance. That’s right: I think what we’ve seen so far are best-case scenarios!
You heard of AMD’s Finewine technology? AMD hasn’t. But they’ve gained a reputation
in the community for squeezing more performance out of their cards over time through driver
updates, making their products age better than Nvidia’s. Hence finewine technology.
I think it’s great that owning an AMD card means it’ll get better with age, but it
also shows just how bad their drivers were upon release. Imagine if they could have looked
THAT good when they first came out! This is, after all, when the cards are judged in reviews
and when people decide whether to buy an AMD or Nvidia graphics card.
But with this we’re relying on the future to provide these performance boosts! And the
future is uncertain. Finewine is a great phenomenon but I feel should only be used to describe
benefits that have been realised, rather than to be relied upon to make existing products
better in the future. I’d rather go with what we can see right now, indeed from stuff
that AMD has hand-picked to show us! That alone is giving them the benefit of the doubt.
There’s a reason that AMD chose now, and the benchmarks it selected to showcase Vega.
And it’s not as if the Polaris previews were that different to the release day product
either. Regardless. I appreciate that these teaser
Vega videos are running on very early drivers that aren’t even optimised for the Vega
architecture, which is a radical redesign for AMD. For all we know we could get 10,
30, 50% more performance out of the cards! I hope we do.. And for AMD’s sake, I hope
that performance boosts come out now, rather than 2 years later once the card has already
been judged and surpassed by others. BUT given what we’ve seen so far and in
its current state, I do expect Vega to be an alternative to Nvidia’s 1000 series,
which is an option that AMD fans currently don’t have. I mean, right now if a last-gen
Fury X doesn’t satisfy your frame-rate needs then your only real option is to go for a
1080, or to endure the whole crossfire route and the many problems associated with multiple
graphics cards. And I’m sure you’ll agree with me that price and performance are the
two most important things when buying a new card, but let’s not forget temperatures
and power-draw, which I’m sure also play a part in the decision making.
The Geforce 1080’s die size is relatively small at just 314 mm². In this video I won’t
go into why Nvidia’s ‘high-end’ chip is more like a mid-range one, but what you
need to know is that this is the card that Vega wants to beat. And since it’s small,
it’s very power efficient. We don’t know Vega’s size for sure but FROM WHAT we’ve
seen, it looks a lot closer to 500 mm². Which is big. Not the biggest! But certainly a lot
larger than the 1080, so you’d hope for substantially greater performance as well.
Since it also means it’s more expensive and will likely consume more power. Now I
know that size isn’t everything- something I regularly have to remind the ladies in my
life of- but when it comes to making smaller die sizes, if AMD could’ve, they would’ve.
This upsets me, because although the Vega cards might be as fast as the 1080, it looks
as though this is where it’s ending. It’ll be competitive with existing, already released,
tried and tested Nvidia tech from 2016. Maybe hotter and more power-hungry, too. But it
won’t be long before Nvidia counters, either with a 1080 TI or with full-blown Volta which
I have no reason to believe will be anything but better than their current products.
That is why I feel sad for AMD. Because their upcoming tech appears competitive with last
year’s products from competitors. Somewhere they have fallen a year behind and as nice
as it can be to hope that they’re hiding the best stuff for release day, you’ve also
got to remember that the products they’re competing against are already out, are tried
and tested and are actually pretty damn good. And looming on the horizon are tomorrow’s
products. Whilst AMD is rushing to launch today’s products, Intel and Nvidia are no
doubt nearing completion on tomorrow’s. Maybe even sitting on them, waiting for AMD
to give them an excuse to release them. You think it’s coincidence that the 1080 TI
is taking so long to come out? And that is my honest speculation on AMD’s
upcoming Vega GPUs. They’ll be competitive with the 1000 series, but not as efficient.
If they’re lucky the new architecture will distance itself from Nvidia’s cards, complete
with unique strengths and weaknesses that will give the products meaning.
And I hate to end a video on such a sad note, so I’ve saved some happy stuff to the end:
this is all speculation from the scraps of information that AMD has let us know. I’ve
assumed it’s the best they can show, but it could be that they’re trying to trick
Nvidia into letting their guard down and that the best is yet to come! AMD is famed for
improving their drivers over time, and it could be that they get considerably more performance
out of them later on. I just hope for something good come release day because this really
is when the product is judged and ultimately bought.
And lastly, even if everything I say is true, releasing Vega will put AMD in a better situation
than they’re in right now and will at least temporarily provide us with an alternative
to any Nvidia product we may have wanted. The Relive drivers are a huge step in the
right direction, I am so pleased that they’ve finally got something like Shadowplay for
us Youtubers. And as AdoredTV discovered not long ago, public support for AMD is stronger
than ever. Bordering on fanatical! People want the company to succeed and just like
the Radeon 480 before it, I’m sure that people will see the benefits that Vega brings
to the table. Provided it isn’t a total disaster of a card, I’m sure that its performance
and price-point will become the new golden standard by which everything will be judged
in 2017. Plus, Zen looks awesome.