5 ms·

Agreed, the 3090 is definitely meant for ML, but my guess is people are largely buying it for gaming purposes.

by athorax 6y ago

llampx 6y ago
Wouldn't the Titan series be more meant for ML?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  I thought Quadros were meant for non-gaming workloads and the Titans were just more powerful than the top-tier mainstream/gaming card? Or have things changed?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - andoriyu 6y ago
    Yes, Quadro was for non-gaming workloads. Titan meant a different thing with every new iteration. Some were explicitly "non-gaming card that you can play games on" other were "got tier gaming card". RTX Titan for example was not as good in FP64 calculation compared to RTX Quadro. While first Titan was good at both. Nvidia kept changing what Titan means in order to extract most amount of money without hurting Quadro sales. Even at its peak certain things were software limited for Titan, but not for Quadro. Nvidia has tons of artificial limitations for each of their graphics card once you go beyond gaming.
- Macha 6y ago
  There's no titan this time around and nvidia have been talking about simplifying their lineup and implying the 3090 is to fill the titan shaped hole in the lineup, but also leaving them room to release a RTX Titan Ti or whatever if they change their mind. Also I imagine to head off consumers who would otherwise be like "Maybe I'll wait for a 3080 Ti". I also expect been a kind of struggle between their consumer side who need some other reason to sell their top end GPUs beyond just the whales when game developers aren't really that interested in pushing out features that will require it given the niche ownership, while the datacenter people want to protect their Quadro margins. This to me seems their most likely reason for the on-again/off-again relationship with pushing their high end cards for compute usage vs gaming usage.
- whynotminot 6y ago
  Let's be real, the only reason the 3090 isn't a Titan card is because Nvidia saw this coming and didn't want AMD to be able to top their "untouchable" Titan brand.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    There is no reason AMD wouldn't pull their own "Titan"-class GPU. A 6900XT with 32GB of HBM would destroy anything NVidia could muster.
    - whynotminot 6y ago
      I mean they kinda already did put out a Titan class card. My point was that the 3090 is a Titan in all but name, and AMD unveiled their very capable response today. I'm saying the only reason Nvidia didn't call it a Titan was because they knew it wasn't going to have an unassailable advantage over AMD.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        AMD Titan-class cards tend to have HBM. I'm saying that AMD can very probably still do even better.
        snvzz 6y ago
        AMD has a CDNA in their pipeline which they haven't talked about in a while. That's their compute oriented architecture, whereas RDNA is graphics-oriented.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Indeed. I still think it might be possible to see an RDNA2 HBM card.
      - llampx 6y ago
        There's no Titan-"class" A Nvidia card is Titan if it has the name and the drivers, and not if it doesn't.
nightski 6y ago
How can the 3090 be meant for ML when it has intentionally gimped ML functionality?
- riku_iki 6y ago
  > gimped ML functionality curious what is that?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulgerhardt 6y ago
    The 3090 supports but doesn't let you enable the titan driver paths, SR-IOV, NGX, and critically, is capped to half-rate tensor operations with FP32 accumulate. An official firmware release could change this but they're likely saving it for the Titan cards down the road.
    - moyix 6y ago
      Where do you see that this is artificial (i.e. in software/firmware) rather than just missing some hardware that's present on the Titan/Quadro cards?
      - paulgerhardt 6y ago
        The same thing happened with the 2080 / Titan and looks to be confirmed for the 3000 series by AnandTech. https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/1301996479448457216 https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/1301996479448457216 The Reddit AMA implies the Ampere architecture supports this configuration but is software limited under the FP32 section: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/ilhao8/nvidia_rtx_30series_you_asked_we_answered/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/ilhao8/nvidia_rtx_3... To epistemologically correct, I don't believe one will ever see a statement from NVIDIA confirming that this is a software limitation. I believe it's just inferred. edit: This is close to confirmation: https://imgur.com/a/RH8vyz9 https://imgur.com/a/RH8vyz9 -though I may suspect there are non reversible hardware fuses at play too.
jmt_ 6y ago
Steve from GamersNexus has a good video about this. His argument is similar to yours -- nVidia is marketing this card as a god-tier gaming card (and is of course very powerful for this purpose) but practically it's better suited for people who need high VRAM + strong compute on ML/productivity tasks. His argument being that, in terms of price to value of 3080 vs 3090 for regular ol' gaming, the 3080 is a better choice, and really access if you actually need something as intense as a 3090.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  Except the 3090 doesn't get the Titan driver, so the 3090 is still artificially slow at a variety of productivity workloads (see Linus Tech Tips review where they checked a few of these). Aka, it's a more expensive 2080 Ti, not a cheaper RTX Titan.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Agreed, the 3090 is definitely meant for ML, but my guess is people are largely buying it for gaming purposes.

llampx 6y ago

Wouldn't the Titan series be more meant for ML?

colejohnson66 6y ago
I thought Quadros were meant for non-gaming workloads and the Titans were just more powerful than the top-tier mainstream/gaming card? Or have things changed?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- andoriyu 6y ago
  Yes, Quadro was for non-gaming workloads. Titan meant a different thing with every new iteration. Some were explicitly "non-gaming card that you can play games on" other were "got tier gaming card". RTX Titan for example was not as good in FP64 calculation compared to RTX Quadro. While first Titan was good at both. Nvidia kept changing what Titan means in order to extract most amount of money without hurting Quadro sales. Even at its peak certain things were software limited for Titan, but not for Quadro. Nvidia has tons of artificial limitations for each of their graphics card once you go beyond gaming.
Macha 6y ago
There's no titan this time around and nvidia have been talking about simplifying their lineup and implying the 3090 is to fill the titan shaped hole in the lineup, but also leaving them room to release a RTX Titan Ti or whatever if they change their mind. Also I imagine to head off consumers who would otherwise be like "Maybe I'll wait for a 3080 Ti". I also expect been a kind of struggle between their consumer side who need some other reason to sell their top end GPUs beyond just the whales when game developers aren't really that interested in pushing out features that will require it given the niche ownership, while the datacenter people want to protect their Quadro margins. This to me seems their most likely reason for the on-again/off-again relationship with pushing their high end cards for compute usage vs gaming usage.
whynotminot 6y ago
Let's be real, the only reason the 3090 isn't a Titan card is because Nvidia saw this coming and didn't want AMD to be able to top their "untouchable" Titan brand.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  There is no reason AMD wouldn't pull their own "Titan"-class GPU. A 6900XT with 32GB of HBM would destroy anything NVidia could muster.
  - whynotminot 6y ago
    I mean they kinda already did put out a Titan class card. My point was that the 3090 is a Titan in all but name, and AMD unveiled their very capable response today. I'm saying the only reason Nvidia didn't call it a Titan was because they knew it wasn't going to have an unassailable advantage over AMD.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      AMD Titan-class cards tend to have HBM. I'm saying that AMD can very probably still do even better.
      - snvzz 6y ago
        AMD has a CDNA in their pipeline which they haven't talked about in a while. That's their compute oriented architecture, whereas RDNA is graphics-oriented.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Indeed. I still think it might be possible to see an RDNA2 HBM card.
    - llampx 6y ago
      There's no Titan-"class" A Nvidia card is Titan if it has the name and the drivers, and not if it doesn't.

nightski 6y ago

How can the 3090 be meant for ML when it has intentionally gimped ML functionality?

riku_iki 6y ago
> gimped ML functionality curious what is that?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- paulgerhardt 6y ago
  The 3090 supports but doesn't let you enable the titan driver paths, SR-IOV, NGX, and critically, is capped to half-rate tensor operations with FP32 accumulate. An official firmware release could change this but they're likely saving it for the Titan cards down the road.
  - moyix 6y ago
    Where do you see that this is artificial (i.e. in software/firmware) rather than just missing some hardware that's present on the Titan/Quadro cards?
    - paulgerhardt 6y ago
      The same thing happened with the 2080 / Titan and looks to be confirmed for the 3000 series by AnandTech. https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/1301996479448457216 https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/1301996479448457216 The Reddit AMA implies the Ampere architecture supports this configuration but is software limited under the FP32 section: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/ilhao8/nvidia_rtx_30series_you_asked_we_answered/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/ilhao8/nvidia_rtx_3... To epistemologically correct, I don't believe one will ever see a statement from NVIDIA confirming that this is a software limitation. I believe it's just inferred. edit: This is close to confirmation: https://imgur.com/a/RH8vyz9 https://imgur.com/a/RH8vyz9 -though I may suspect there are non reversible hardware fuses at play too.

jmt_ 6y ago

Steve from GamersNexus has a good video about this. His argument is similar to yours -- nVidia is marketing this card as a god-tier gaming card (and is of course very powerful for this purpose) but practically it's better suited for people who need high VRAM + strong compute on ML/productivity tasks. His argument being that, in terms of price to value of 3080 vs 3090 for regular ol' gaming, the 3080 is a better choice, and really access if you actually need something as intense as a 3090.

kllrnohj 6y ago
Except the 3090 doesn't get the Titan driver, so the 3090 is still artificially slow at a variety of productivity workloads (see Linus Tech Tips review where they checked a few of these). Aka, it's a more expensive 2080 Ti, not a cheaper RTX Titan.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]