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AMD GPUs haven't faired well against Nvidia for some time. AMD GPUS use 1.5X more power to keep pace. The recently released Vega GPUs are underwhelming. I don't

by mmgutz 9y ago

AMD GPUs haven't faired well against Nvidia for some time. AMD GPUS use 1.5X more power to keep pace. The recently released Vega GPUs are underwhelming. I don't think Nvidia is too concerned about him going to Intel. AMD needed a shakeup in that division anyway.

fulafel 9y ago
Why do you think power consumption by itself is a pain point for AMD? Gaming customers don't care because it's only consuming more when actually playing - 500 hours played in a year times 0.1 eur/usd per kwh says you only save 50 eur or usd per year per 1000 watts reduction on power consumption, so it's like 2.5 eur or usd per year for a 50W difference. Cryptocurrency miners have voted with their wallets and gone AMD. There are some 24/7 HPC GPGPU users who put weight on power consumption but it is a small market segment. Of course lower power consumption lets you do all kinds of useful engineering decisions within the product, so lowering it would make the product faster or cheaper, but that is already accounted for in the direct cost and performance numbers of the current product.
- barrkel 9y ago
  More power means more cooling which means more noise.
- ndesaulniers 9y ago
  I'd imagine gamers being a significantly smaller market than HPC/cloud where power consumption directly correlates to Total Cost of Ownership. > There are some 24/7 HPC GPGPU users who put weight on power consumption but it is a small market segment. Ugh latest estimates on machine learning are something like $40B by 2024.
  - nl 9y ago
    Gaming is roughly double the size of data centre and professional visualisation sales combined for NVidia. I’d imagine the difference is even larger for AMD. See https://wccftech.com/nvidia-second-quarter-2017-fy-18-analysis/ https://wccftech.com/nvidia-second-quarter-2017-fy-18-analys...
    - ndesaulniers 9y ago
      Today. See my point about 2024.
- freeflight 9y ago
  In the high-end gamers do care very much about power consumption and especially cooling. Even in the mid-range it's something that can sway the buying decision from AMD to Nvidia, especially when the higher power consumption doesn't come with a performance lead. With cryptominers I'm not sure they are actually "voting" for anything, to me it rather looks like they are buying up pretty much all the decent mid to high range cards in bulk, regardless of brand, it's more about availability.
  - pizza234 9y ago
    High-end gamers are not representative of the audience. In the mid-range (/general audience) it's true heat can sway the buying decision, and in fact, everything that comes along with heat (for example, space occupation) is taken into account in the price.
  - Tuna-Fish 9y ago
    For the mass market, heat/power matters a lot. The most successful GPU of recent years was the GeForce 750 Ti. It was notable for being a GPU that did not require an external power connector that could be plugged into basically any pre-built computer with crappy integrated graphics for a major upgrade, without having to improve cooling or the PSU. This is the segment where most of the revenue is made in GPUs, and it's where AMD is really hurting. Right now, if you are building a new computer and get to make all your own component selections, a Vega 56 card at MSRP can be a really good deal, at that segment AMD GPUs are really competitive except at the very top -- you might pay a little more in the PSU and your power bill, but the sticker price of the GPU will make up for that. However, if, like >90% of gamers, you don't make all your own component decisions and don't have the power budget, the NVidia 1050Ti reigns supreme. The best competition AMD can muster against it in the "no external power connector" segment are some RX560 models. This is in itself a terrible marketing decision as it prevents the kind of word of mouth "just buy a 750Ti" advertising that worked really well for nVidia, on top of the fact that in the segment the AMD cards just do much less well than the nVidia ones.
    - paulmd 9y ago
      You're overstating some of this. Some 750 Tis actually do need an external power connector, and the high-end/enthusiast market actually doesn't care about power consumption as long as the performance justifies it. If Vega were smoking a 1080 Ti then you wouldn't hear any grumbling at all. It's when you get into a situation where Vega is pulling more power than a 1080 Ti and delivering performance that's barely above a 1070 in many titles that people start to get queasy about it. PCGH just put out their new benchmark charts and the only Vega part that can even match the 1080 on average is the 64 Liquid Cooled version, which is roughly a $650 product at the moment. You're paying 1080 Ti money for a 1080 that pulls twice as much power as a 1080, which is a pretty unappealing on the whole. The only real value argument AMD has been able to make is FreeSync, but it can't really make up for that kind of performance/value deficit. http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Grafikkarten-Grafikkarte-97980/Specials/Rangliste-GPU-Grafikchip-Benchmark-1174201/ http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Grafikkarten-Grafikkarte-97980... Another little-discussed disadvantage is that Vega is a delicate little flower, even moreso than Fiji was. Even most board partners that normally allow you to keep your warranty while using a waterblock have decided that Vega is just too delicate to have users taking the cooler off. You put a waterblock on, you lose your warranty. Many stores are not allowing returns for them either and I suspect this is a factor (along with generally immature drivers and other problems resulting in generally low user satisfaction).
- JetSetWilly 9y ago
  A 300 watt cpu is enormously bulky and makes an enormous racket. I remember when I upgraded to a maxwell-based (then pascal) GPU, it was a revelation. It no longer sounded like a hair dryer when gaming and no longer was my PC getting annoyingly toasty. Gamers care about noise and heat very much.
joefourier 9y ago
For video games maybe, but for high-performance computing, Vega is incredible bang-for-buck especially in FP16, where a $500 Vega 64 gives you 25+ TFLOPs while a $6000 Quadro with GP100 gives you 20 TFLOPS (other NVidia cards do FP16 at 1/64th the speed of FP32, making it largely pointless).

by mmgutz 9y ago

fulafel 9y ago

Why do you think power consumption by itself is a pain point for AMD? Gaming customers don't care because it's only consuming more when actually playing - 500 hours played in a year times 0.1 eur/usd per kwh says you only save 50 eur or usd per year per 1000 watts reduction on power consumption, so it's like 2.5 eur or usd per year for a 50W difference. Cryptocurrency miners have voted with their wallets and gone AMD. There are some 24/7 HPC GPGPU users who put weight on power consumption but it is a small market segment. Of course lower power consumption lets you do all kinds of useful engineering decisions within the product, so lowering it would make the product faster or cheaper, but that is already accounted for in the direct cost and performance numbers of the current product.

barrkel 9y ago
More power means more cooling which means more noise.
ndesaulniers 9y ago
I'd imagine gamers being a significantly smaller market than HPC/cloud where power consumption directly correlates to Total Cost of Ownership. > There are some 24/7 HPC GPGPU users who put weight on power consumption but it is a small market segment. Ugh latest estimates on machine learning are something like $40B by 2024.
- nl 9y ago
  Gaming is roughly double the size of data centre and professional visualisation sales combined for NVidia. I’d imagine the difference is even larger for AMD. See https://wccftech.com/nvidia-second-quarter-2017-fy-18-analysis/ https://wccftech.com/nvidia-second-quarter-2017-fy-18-analys...
  - ndesaulniers 9y ago
    Today. See my point about 2024.
freeflight 9y ago
In the high-end gamers do care very much about power consumption and especially cooling. Even in the mid-range it's something that can sway the buying decision from AMD to Nvidia, especially when the higher power consumption doesn't come with a performance lead. With cryptominers I'm not sure they are actually "voting" for anything, to me it rather looks like they are buying up pretty much all the decent mid to high range cards in bulk, regardless of brand, it's more about availability.
- pizza234 9y ago
  High-end gamers are not representative of the audience. In the mid-range (/general audience) it's true heat can sway the buying decision, and in fact, everything that comes along with heat (for example, space occupation) is taken into account in the price.
- Tuna-Fish 9y ago
  For the mass market, heat/power matters a lot. The most successful GPU of recent years was the GeForce 750 Ti. It was notable for being a GPU that did not require an external power connector that could be plugged into basically any pre-built computer with crappy integrated graphics for a major upgrade, without having to improve cooling or the PSU. This is the segment where most of the revenue is made in GPUs, and it's where AMD is really hurting. Right now, if you are building a new computer and get to make all your own component selections, a Vega 56 card at MSRP can be a really good deal, at that segment AMD GPUs are really competitive except at the very top -- you might pay a little more in the PSU and your power bill, but the sticker price of the GPU will make up for that. However, if, like >90% of gamers, you don't make all your own component decisions and don't have the power budget, the NVidia 1050Ti reigns supreme. The best competition AMD can muster against it in the "no external power connector" segment are some RX560 models. This is in itself a terrible marketing decision as it prevents the kind of word of mouth "just buy a 750Ti" advertising that worked really well for nVidia, on top of the fact that in the segment the AMD cards just do much less well than the nVidia ones.
  - paulmd 9y ago
    You're overstating some of this. Some 750 Tis actually do need an external power connector, and the high-end/enthusiast market actually doesn't care about power consumption as long as the performance justifies it. If Vega were smoking a 1080 Ti then you wouldn't hear any grumbling at all. It's when you get into a situation where Vega is pulling more power than a 1080 Ti and delivering performance that's barely above a 1070 in many titles that people start to get queasy about it. PCGH just put out their new benchmark charts and the only Vega part that can even match the 1080 on average is the 64 Liquid Cooled version, which is roughly a $650 product at the moment. You're paying 1080 Ti money for a 1080 that pulls twice as much power as a 1080, which is a pretty unappealing on the whole. The only real value argument AMD has been able to make is FreeSync, but it can't really make up for that kind of performance/value deficit. http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Grafikkarten-Grafikkarte-97980/Specials/Rangliste-GPU-Grafikchip-Benchmark-1174201/ http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Grafikkarten-Grafikkarte-97980... Another little-discussed disadvantage is that Vega is a delicate little flower, even moreso than Fiji was. Even most board partners that normally allow you to keep your warranty while using a waterblock have decided that Vega is just too delicate to have users taking the cooler off. You put a waterblock on, you lose your warranty. Many stores are not allowing returns for them either and I suspect this is a factor (along with generally immature drivers and other problems resulting in generally low user satisfaction).
JetSetWilly 9y ago
A 300 watt cpu is enormously bulky and makes an enormous racket. I remember when I upgraded to a maxwell-based (then pascal) GPU, it was a revelation. It no longer sounded like a hair dryer when gaming and no longer was my PC getting annoyingly toasty. Gamers care about noise and heat very much.

joefourier 9y ago

For video games maybe, but for high-performance computing, Vega is incredible bang-for-buck especially in FP16, where a $500 Vega 64 gives you 25+ TFLOPs while a $6000 Quadro with GP100 gives you 20 TFLOPS (other NVidia cards do FP16 at 1/64th the speed of FP32, making it largely pointless).