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I ordered a $499 RX Vega 64 from Amazon at 9AM this morning, mainly to show support AMD's open source Linux GPU efforts [1] and since there should be pretty goo

by lhl 9y ago

I ordered a $499 RX Vega 64 from Amazon at 9AM this morning, mainly to show support AMD's open source Linux GPU efforts [1] and since there should be pretty good compute potential, but I will have to admit to being fairly disappointed about the power consumption and general performance (only a 30% improvement vs 2yo Fiji w/ a shift from 28nm to 14nm and much touted architectural improvements [2] vs Nvidia's 70% uplift launched over a year ago). Interesting notes from the reviews - HBCC is not enabled by default but doesn't give much of a performance boost anyway [3]. According to Computerbase [4] (DE) primitive shaders are still inactive: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-08/radeon-rx-vega-64-56-test/ https://www.computerbase.de/2017-08/radeon-rx-vega-64-56-tes... (RTG engineer discussing that it should be automatically used in the future [5]) One interesting note is that while it looks like initial supplies have all sold out, early testing shows that OOTB Vega is pretty awful for mining right now. [6] Vega 64 is clocking at about 30MH/s at about 300W - a flash-BIOS'd RX 470 can get 28-30MH/s at ~150W. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx-vega-linux1&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx-vega-... [2] http://www.pcgamer.com/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56-and-vega-64-review/ http://www.pcgamer.com/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-56-and-vega-64... [3] http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_rx_vega_56_8gb_review,31.html http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_rx_vega_56_8... [4] https://www.computerbase.de/2017-08/radeon-rx-vega-64-56-test/ https://www.computerbase.de/2017-08/radeon-rx-vega-64-56-tes... [5] https://mobile.twitter.com/ryszu/status/896304786307469313 https://mobile.twitter.com/ryszu/status/896304786307469313 [6] https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/7517/23/amd-radeon-rx-vega-56--64-review-minder-euros-meer-watts-testresultaten-amd-radeon-rx-vega-voor-coin-mining https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/7517/23/amd-radeon-rx-vega-...

Nursie 9y ago
And a non-flashed 1070 can get around 30 at 120W(ish)... I guess the miners are hoping that a driver update will unleash the rumoured 70+MH/s. If it dosn't materialise I can imagine these being sold on fairly quickly, with that power consumption.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the performance is artificially hindered until later driver updates, to prevent them from being gobbled up by miners.
  - riffraff 9y ago
    why is it an issue if miners gobble it up? A sale is a sale no?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
      Miners are not the company's core base and have no particular loyalty, and will quickly fizzle out. Basically, sure, miners get them quick cash, but if miners get their graphics cards and people wanting to play games or do other things don't, it'll make those potential customers unhappy and they may go to a competitor.
    - mastax 9y ago
      Miners tend to have very high rates of warranty returns, due to running the cards 24x7x365. In some markets manufacturers are trying to market mining cards which don't have display outputs, etc. and have short warranties. Many markets (US, EU) don't let you invalidate warranties just for using a product 24x7, so it doesn't work everywhere.
      - mamon 9y ago
        They could base GPU warranties based on usage, the same way car part warranties are based on mileage. In fact Samsung already is doing the same for SSDs: they have data write limit of 400 TB.
    - Nursie 9y ago
      It's probably not an issue for AMD, as they sell either way, but it does push up prices for the gamer.
- yuhong 9y ago
microcolonel 9y ago
> According to Computerbase [4] (DE) primitive shaders are still inactive Yeah, though I think there is some opportunity for primitive shaders to be transparently extracted from vertex shaders. You could do this by following the operation dependencies back from gl_Position (or equivalent). This might not work in conjunction with geometry shaders though, or perhaps it could with some safety margin. At least from what I gather about how they're supposed to work, this should be perfectly adequate most of the time, given that the discard semantics are very conservative (backface, off screen, not beneath a sample point, etc.).
dman 9y ago
Can you share the link for amazon? I cant appear to find it on amazon.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I think it's not visible since it's out of stock, and probably backordered into oblivion if that's even possible on Amazon. It's also out of stock from every brand on Newegg, bundle or standalone. Newegg.ca has some bundles still, but they include a high end motherboard and a CPU; I might nonetheless bite. I'll more likely wait until Vega 11, when they get the opportunity to tune this sucker and make the die a bit smaller. If you haven't bought one already, it'll probably be a little while until you can buy one.
  - dman 9y ago
    I did buy one on newegg but the price surprised me. I paid 599 for it (reference PowerColor model).
pault 9y ago
Why are the AMD cards preferred by miners? Is it the price/performance ratio only? Can the 2x fp16 operations be exploited for mining?
- lagadu 9y ago
  Price/performance, yes. Specifically cost of entry/performance. For perspective, a radeon 470/570 earlier this year would pay for itself in under 3 months even in countries with fairly high electricity costs.
foepys 9y ago
Be aware that the open-source driver currently only supports headless mode on Vega. You have to use the proprietary driver to actually use the card for video output.
- jhasse 9y ago
  Only the headless support is mainlined. The open source code is already working in the amd-staging branch: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-vega-setup&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-ve...

by lhl 9y ago

Nursie 9y ago

And a non-flashed 1070 can get around 30 at 120W(ish)... I guess the miners are hoping that a driver update will unleash the rumoured 70+MH/s. If it dosn't materialise I can imagine these being sold on fairly quickly, with that power consumption.

ihsw2 9y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the performance is artificially hindered until later driver updates, to prevent them from being gobbled up by miners.
- riffraff 9y ago
  why is it an issue if miners gobble it up? A sale is a sale no?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    Miners are not the company's core base and have no particular loyalty, and will quickly fizzle out. Basically, sure, miners get them quick cash, but if miners get their graphics cards and people wanting to play games or do other things don't, it'll make those potential customers unhappy and they may go to a competitor.
  - mastax 9y ago
    Miners tend to have very high rates of warranty returns, due to running the cards 24x7x365. In some markets manufacturers are trying to market mining cards which don't have display outputs, etc. and have short warranties. Many markets (US, EU) don't let you invalidate warranties just for using a product 24x7, so it doesn't work everywhere.
    - mamon 9y ago
      They could base GPU warranties based on usage, the same way car part warranties are based on mileage. In fact Samsung already is doing the same for SSDs: they have data write limit of 400 TB.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    It's probably not an issue for AMD, as they sell either way, but it does push up prices for the gamer.
yuhong 9y ago

microcolonel 9y ago

> According to Computerbase [4] (DE) primitive shaders are still inactive Yeah, though I think there is some opportunity for primitive shaders to be transparently extracted from vertex shaders. You could do this by following the operation dependencies back from gl_Position (or equivalent). This might not work in conjunction with geometry shaders though, or perhaps it could with some safety margin. At least from what I gather about how they're supposed to work, this should be perfectly adequate most of the time, given that the discard semantics are very conservative (backface, off screen, not beneath a sample point, etc.).

dman 9y ago

Can you share the link for amazon? I cant appear to find it on amazon.

microcolonel 9y ago
I think it's not visible since it's out of stock, and probably backordered into oblivion if that's even possible on Amazon. It's also out of stock from every brand on Newegg, bundle or standalone. Newegg.ca has some bundles still, but they include a high end motherboard and a CPU; I might nonetheless bite. I'll more likely wait until Vega 11, when they get the opportunity to tune this sucker and make the die a bit smaller. If you haven't bought one already, it'll probably be a little while until you can buy one.
- dman 9y ago
  I did buy one on newegg but the price surprised me. I paid 599 for it (reference PowerColor model).

pault 9y ago

Why are the AMD cards preferred by miners? Is it the price/performance ratio only? Can the 2x fp16 operations be exploited for mining?

lagadu 9y ago
Price/performance, yes. Specifically cost of entry/performance. For perspective, a radeon 470/570 earlier this year would pay for itself in under 3 months even in countries with fairly high electricity costs.

foepys 9y ago

Be aware that the open-source driver currently only supports headless mode on Vega. You have to use the proprietary driver to actually use the card for video output.

jhasse 9y ago
Only the headless support is mainlined. The open source code is already working in the amd-staging branch: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-vega-setup&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-ve...