Gaming Discussions

[billthecat]

 I find it hard to imagine just what the hell is going though AMD's mind but for the very first time I'm actually mad at AMD.

  I've bought AMD cpu's from way back with my first AMD 386 40mhz cpu and a AMD/ATI AIW video card. Good products at good prices.  I am more sensitive to this current price's due to being disabled so it's hard to afford new products and def. can't go anywhere near high end parts. And now see low to mid range going for high end prices all I can say is no thanks AMD. I just don't get into being someone who wants to fork out gas money for someones new Ferrari.  Prices will have to change quite a lot before I see my way to even think of buying any of your products.  

     I know everyone wants to get rich, and I was scared when AMD was heading down the drain before Ryzen came around and have up till now AMD was one business I actually liked. But now, putting a god damm mid-range video cards in step with Nvidia's massive price hike is not nice at all. And with the price of the new cpu line all I can see is a very greedy company to fit in with the other scumbag's (Intel, Nvidia) prices that are both hyper inflated due to lack of supply on Intel's side and just no competition on the Nvidia side saw prices raised beyond normal costs. So AMD is getting into the lets screw the end users mindset that seems to currently be the norm for tech, games ect....

[benman2785]

dude where is your problem?

buy b450 board + ryzen 5 2600 + 16GB DDR4-3200CL14 + RX 580 = super budget built!

[ajlueke]

I certainly understand aspects of the complaint.  On the GPU side of things, the low to mid range hasn't been touched since 2016 and the Polaris/Pascal launches.  Not only does the low end have the same price/performance, in many cases the actually GPUs are the same.  Meanwhile NVidia gave an RTX update to the Pascal high end in 2018 in the form of Turing, while AMD launched Vega is 2017, only to replace Vega in 2019 with the slightly faster/more efficient Navi.  both of the recent launches featured an even higher price tier (RTX 2080 Ti for NVidia, and the Radeon VII for AMD).

On the CPU side of things, it is certainly different.  I recently upgraded my streaming PC from a A10-7800 to an Athlon 200GE.  The two chips are similar in performance, but the Ryzen based Athlon has support for 4K codecs in hardware.  Meanwhile the Athlon 200GE costs $50, while the A10-7800 retailed for $140.  The Athlon 200GE also is rated as a 35W part, vs 65W for the Kaveri APU.  So for the same CPU performance today, it is far cheaper and more efficient today than 4 years ago. 

[colesdav]

The RX5700 and RX5700XT should be the replacement for the RX480  (later /580/590) series which originally launched for  ~ $229 for the 8GB version and $200 for the 4GB version and consumed  approx 150W max. The RX480 was released  3 years ago on 29 June 2016.

The RX580 was BIOS Tweaked with higher power limit (185W). It was custom card only refresh of the RX580 and released on on 18 April 2017.

Finally the RX590 was "respun on 12nm"  on 15 November 2018, again BIOS Tweaked with even higher power limit of 225 Watts. 

The prices are currently about $230 again after the Mining Hell that lasted about 1.5 years when no one could get a GPU at all for a reasonable price. I saw new RX580s selling for $600 to $800 at one period, with new RX Vega 64's selling for even higher prices upwards of $950.

So if you look at it, AMD GPU Users have pretty much the same "RX480" GPU for 3 years with very little real performance improvement at the cost of higher power draw, and GPU prices had been inflated for about 1.5 years of that period.

In the past, new AMD GPU releases like the RX480 would offer better performance at lower cost. 

Now it seems we are expected to be happy with "mining prices" for what is in fact a mid range GPU.

Sure the RX5700XT is supposed to compete with an RTX2070, and it does give about RX Vega 64 Liquid gaming performance, but lower compute performance.

However RX Vega 64 Liquid / RTX2070 performance is now "mid range" versus RTX2080/RTX2080Ti.

The RTX2080Ti prices are far too high, and the RTX2080 prices are high before you say anything but that is because Nvidia have no competition, and I think  they still have no competition with the RX5700XT at that price, unfortunately.

[ajlueke]

There is competition at the RTX 2080 level, in the form of the Radeon VII.  AMD is now content to charge what the market will bear.  When you look at the Shader/TMU/CU numbers on Navi, they are almost identical to the RX 480.  Since the GPU performs like a Vega 64/RTX 2070, AMD has priced it at that level instead of pricing it down as they have in the past.

This helps AMD in a number of ways.  The die size of Navi, is almost half that of Vega, meaning double the chips per silicon wafer.  Pairing it with GDDR6 as opposed to HBM2 makes for a significantly more profitable GPU for AMD.  Each Navi they sell will make them far more profit than each Vega. 

The downside is, that from a consumer perspective, price/performance has stagnated.  As opposed to releasing faster GPUs into each price point, the price point now dictates what performance you get.  At about $500 you got GTX 1080/Vega 64 in 2016/2017 and now in 2018/2019 you get RTX 2070/5700 XT.  Not much difference there.  Now when faster GPUs are released, they occupy new/higher price tiers.  When/if AMD releases a Navi with the full complement of shaders/TMUs/CUs, who knows how much they will charge for it.

[colesdav]

The Radeon VII does not compete with the RTX2080. It sits somewhere between the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080.
Radeon VII is a not even a gaming GPU. There is no real use case for that 16GB of HBM2 in gaming.
You can turn on HBCC on an RX Vega 64 - remember that? 

RE: AMD is now content to charge what the market will bear. 
Good luck with that. Those prices will not hold.

RE: The downside is, that from a consumer perspective, price/performance has stagnated.
That is quite a downside. Why should I bother to purchase an RX5700XT?
I already have an RX Vega 64 Liquid, it will perform the same. It cost the same.
I will put a bet on it that Anti-Lag is just Chill, maybe along frame pre-rendering.
I will bet that Radeon  Image Sharpening and FidelityFX. will be in AMD Settings for RX Vega GPU's by the end of the year. Nvidia already have that Game Filter Feature FYI.

Still no RayTracing.
Higher power consumption.

The list is quite long, I will stop there.

I may as well go out and buy a Powercolor or MSI Vega 64 or 56 reference GPU instead.
They are selling for much lower price than what these RX5700XT will initially.

RE: As opposed to releasing faster GPUs into each price point, the price point now dictates what performance you get.

Mmm dictates, yes, I see.

RE: Now when faster GPUs are released, they occupy new/higher price tiers.
Clearly.

RE: When/if AMD releases a Navi with the full complement of shaders/TMUs/CUs, who knows how much they will charge for it.
Yeah, what would you suggest.
Maybe $2000 for the GPU plus $1000 for the GPU Support Bracket with RGB lighting to hold a 2KG, 2.5 - 3 slot high copper heatsink?

[pryde]

Mine competes just fine with a 2080  

also I would rather have performance than ray tracing  

[colesdav]

I am glad you think it does.

I would rather have performance and raytracing in many more games

[pryde]

Well I guess we have a difference of opinion

[colesdav]

Do you have a copy of Crysis 3?
If so please take a look at this one.
https://community.amd.com/thread/239684 
I would be interested to see how your Radeon VII compares to RX Vega 64 Liquid, R9 FuryX, RTX2080, GTX780Ti.
You might be able to help AMD Drivers people with some data so they can look at the performance.
Thanks.

[pryde]

Do not have crisis, but I did own about 8 Vegas, the last being an LC Vega, my Vega VII stomps it, hands down. (I'm also under water though, didnt really mess with it until I had my block, and my mobo killed itself)

[colesdav]

What are they doing wrong?
Has AMD's Radeon VII Comeback at the RTX 2080? Updated 38 Game Benchmark 3 Months Later - YouTube 
Thanks.

[pryde]

Not slapping it under water and using power play mods. Simple fix. 

[colesdav]

I do not know what you mean by "not slapping it under water"
I am not using any Powerplay mods on the RX Vega 64 Liquid in the video showing Crysis 3 performance.
 

[pryde]

You asked what they were doing wrong  slap it under water and it's a whole new card

[colesdav]

Then they would have to compare it to an RTX2080 watercooled card for a fair comparison. 
If you have Origin Access you can install Crysis 3 for free and see how Radeon VII performs on it. 
Thanks anyhow.  
 

[pryde]

Is there a bench built into crisis 3? If so I'm game sir, I don't have time tonight but I could tomorrow for ya

[colesdav]

Thank you. It's not for me it's to attempt to get AMD Drivers team to improve DX11 performance on R9Fury/RX480/580/Vega64 and maybe Radeon VII. 
You never know, it might help increase Radeon VII position versus RTX2080 since most games are DX11... 
No automatic benchmark. Please swap over to:
https://community.amd.com/thread/239684
We can discuss in more detail there.
Either the original poster (hitbm47 ) can discuss where you need to get to in the game or I will help if I get time. 
Please update that post if you are ready.
Thank you.

[hitbm47]

Hi pryde‌ colesdav‌

I really like my RX 480 and the R9 280 I had, but AMD has huge driver performance bug issues as you can see in the post colesdav‌ linked here of Crysis 3.

There are barely things wrong with Radeon cards themselves, but rather seriously with their drivers, especially when pairing an average Nvidia GPU + average CPU versus pairing any relatively new GCN GPU + average CPU.

I am also not that bothered with ray tracing, since rasterization was the best method computer scientists came up with for rendering Graphics. Ray Tracing uses more accurate calculations, but doesn't fit very efficiently within the graphics card pipeline.

For Crysis 3, if you would be willing, you just have to play the first chapter until just after you destroy the helicopter on the rainy bridge, where you then go through a green lazer room, an to your right their are large windows where GPU usage drops to almost nothing on Radeon cards to produce 20FPS on Windows 10 64-bit, whereas a GTX 780 from colesdav‌ can produce 60FPS+ in that scene.

This happens in a lot of games with Radeon cards, and @AMD should not expect their customers to afford more expensive CPUs than Nvidia customers just to barely reach minimum FPS PAR with Nvidia.

Kind regards

Jacques

[pryde]

Finally got time to download the game, will try to make time to get to the bridge (I get bored quick with single player games) but you all failed to mention something I have been craving.....MADDEN!

[zealotki11er]

There are a lot of factors for higher prices. I do not think AMD want to change that much if they did not have too. They need to make profit. Everything is more expensive now. Let me give you a quick example. HD 4870 512MB.

1) Same dis size.

2) First with GDDR5.

3)300 USD - 355 USD with inflation.

355 USD was a bargain back then and that was during the economic depression. 

The only reason 400-500 GPUs look back is because AMD and Nvidia can sell $1000+ GPUs that were never designed for gamers. 

You are not going to match 2080 Ti with $500 GPU these days unless you wait a long time. 

Progress is much slower. 

[colesdav]

How about a more recent example? 

Die Size of Polaris = 232 mm2
Die Size of RTX2700XT = 251 mm2

RX480 8GB Launch Price = $230.
RTX2700XT Launch price = $450.

Similar coolers. 

[ajlueke]

The difference is, when the Polaris GPUs launched they were slower that the Fury-X and Fury cards already available at the $500 price point, so AMD couldn't very well have priced them that high.

With Navi, Navi is faster than everything other than the Radeon VII, so it is priced accordingly.  Performance dictates price, not die size, the cooler or anything else. 

[colesdav]

Mining crashed so instead of selling  RX480/580/590 to miners the retail GPU supply chain is now flooded with 3 year old design.
I think that's what these game deals are about. Trying to tempt people to buy those RX 480/580/590 rather than write off the inventory. 
Then there is also Ebay although miners still attempt to sell old cars at existing retail pricing. 

I could get a new PowerColor RX580 8GB for almost "nothing" right now. I can get one with a free SSD and two games which cost just slightly less than the GPU.
But guess what - I don't really want the GPU. It's a 3 years old design, has AMD drivers which means generally poor DX11 performance versus Nvidia GPU.  Has no GUI on linux. Performance bad in Blender. etc.  

RE: With Navi, Navi is faster than everything other than the Radeon VII, so it is priced accordingly.  Performance dictates price, not die size, the cooler or anything else. 

OK then , please send me an RX 5700XT 50th Anniversary Edition with a 24 carat gold shroud (but fix that dent please), and diamond encrusted Radeon Logo and I might pay $450 for that.  

GPU pricing is way out of hand and people are not thinking enough about it.
Same die size 3 years later on 7nm in a blower shroud cost about the same to produce.
A Performance/price increase should be expected otherwise just stick with your existing GPU. 

[ajlueke]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think it is unfortunate that user have seen nothing new in the sub $300 price point since the Polaris/Pascal launches in 2016.  But really, if you look at it from another perspective we have entered an era of pretty much unheard of GPU longevity.  Sure, there is no $200 replacement for Polaris, but that same three year old Polaris games just as well at 1080p in new titles as it did when it launched.  When you look at the Steam hardware survey, the most prevalent NVidia GPU is still the GTX 1060 by far.  The most prevalent AMD GPU?  The RX 580.  Developers will develop there titles to perform well on the most common hardware to ensure sales, so games will still run great on that same hardware. 

In that sense, those game deals are really great for a number of users.  Being able to get RX 580 class hardware on the cheap is a great way to build a solid gaming computer that still performs well in modern titles at 1080p.  It is cheaper now to build a solid gaming computer than it has been in a long time, and that is great for the industry as a whole.  

I think the choice to replace Vega before Polaris despite Vega already being newer is pretty deliberate.  Vega, with it's enormous die and HBM2 memory was probably expensive to produce, and couldn't be sold for a price that netted much profit due to NVidia competition.  So from AMDs perspective, Vega was definitely the GPU that needed to go.  Whether or not AMD cuts down Navi more and replaces the Polaris cards remains to be seen, but we know nothing above the 5700XT is coming until Navi 20 and NVidia's 7nm Ampere effort launch in 2020. 

"OK then , please send me an RX 5700XT 50th Anniversary Edition with a 24 carat gold shroud (but fix that dent please), and diamond encrusted Radeon Logo and I might pay $450 for that. " 

Ah, the good old "appeal to extremes".  I would offer that it is classified as a logical fallacy for a reason. 

[colesdav]

There should be an AMD Navi card to take on the RTX2080/RTX2080Ti at lower cost.
Problem is - with the power consumption on RX5700XT that still seems unlikely.

I wait and see how an RX5700XT performs versus RTX2070 based on independent reviews.
Won't be long now.

Still not buying one for $450-500 though for my personal use.

[zealotki11er]

GDDR5 which is much older and cheaper.

The cooler is very different. 

Polaris was 150W part so the PCB power delivery was not as powerful. 

Performance. Polaris was against 1060 and it lost. Navi is going against XX70 GPU. 

[colesdav]

Hi,

RE: GDDR5 which is much older and cheaper.

We would have to do a historical price comparison of cost of GDDR5 at RX480 launch versus cost of GDDR5/6/HBM/HBM2 today.
RAM prices in general have been high in the past year. I so not know the exact reason but they have been falling again.
I have not looked into it for a while but here are some links that should help you calculate a comparison:

Find the memory / memory spec here:

https://www.micron.com/products/graphics-memory/gddr6

https://www.skhynix.com/products.do?ct1=36&ct2=49&lang=eng

Look up volume prices for the part here:

https://www.components-mart.com/

Note GPU manufacturers will be able to do their own negotiations so the above would only give you an idea of costs.

RE: The cooler is very different.
I think the RX5700XT uses a Vapor Chamber heatsink versus RX480 reference.

The cost increment to manufacture should not be that much.
You can see here: https://www.radianheatsinks.com/vapor-chamber-heatsink/
Add a small chamber at the bottom of a normal heatsink and fill it with some liquid.
Depends if they use an aluminium heatsink with a copper contact or a full copper heatsink but I do not think you are talking that much additional cost to manufacture.
I am not sure what other differences are yet.
We will have to see a teardown of the GPU in review and perhaps someone will do a cost difference analysis.

Here is a RX480 cooler teardown: https://youtu.be/Uvhyrz5oDPo?t=656

Here an analysis of the RX 480 reference VRM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG2e-v94L4M
I think the VRM on the RX 480 is very good quality, which is usual for AMD reference design VRM in recent years, and definitely has significantly more than 150W power delivery capability.

RE: Polaris was 150W part so the PCB power delivery was not as powerful.

There might be some increase in VRM cost versus RX480.
VRM on RX5700XT might also be over-engineered to allow performance advantage if reference cooler is removed and replaced by AIO or waterblock.
Perhaps serious overclocking is planned to allow to burn more power to get some performance increase.
Not enough information about that other than the TDP for the cards.
We will have to wait for card launch.

If 7nm RX5700XT reference VRM cost is significantly higher than on 3 year old 14nm RX480 it is AMD design decision.

Look at TDP comparison.

RTX2070 12nm Reference edition = 175W.
RTX2070 12nm Founders edition = 185W.
RX5700XT 7nm = 225W.

They all use GDDR6 memory.

RE: Performance. Polaris was against 1060 and it lost.
I think finally the RX580 beats GTX1060 in benchmarks after 3 years of RX480/580 effort, at expense of burning more power:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7EGTTwosTM
I do not think it is/was a bad GPU for it's time.

RE: Navi is against RTX20XX.

Navi is against RTX20XX "Super" cards.
Announcement expected today.
RTX2070 and RTX2060 prices might drop.

Bye.

[colesdav]

There is a picture of the RX5700XT heatshink here: https://www.techpowerup.com/img/2bTzyaw3c3RmroeE.jpg 
If that is correct it looks like a full copper vapor chamber with an aluminium fin array on top, if that picture is accurate. 

[ajlueke]

Navi uses GDDR6 does it not?

[kakutis]

tyt4w

[colesdav]

Does anyone know the physical dimensions of the RX5700XT and RX5700 yet?
They are not here: https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt
or here: https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/amd-radeon-rx-5700
Thanks. 

[colesdav]

I prefer RX690 / RX680 to the new RX5700XT/RX5700 naming scheme as well:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/radeon-rx-5700-xt-690-graphics-card-e3 

[colesdav]

I think this is worth watching if you are interested in the significant improvements in Navi compared to GCN.
RDNA vs TURING - The END of NVidia’s dominance - YouTube 

[danielderi145]

i understand your complaint, and it is true that the lack of true competition to Nvidia on the GPU side of things is disappointing to say the least, but navi is in it's diapers just now, im am more then certain that just like with intel that raised prices and decided that 4 cores is enough for the average joe, and than came ryzen and slapped them in the face, same thing will happen with amd punching at Nvidia, and i'm certain that navi will beat out the competition 

[ajlueke]

Looks like we will likely see price cuts pretty quickly.  If indeed the "Super" editions of the RTX 2060 and 2070 are released on 7/9/19 at the $399 and $499 price point AMD may reduce the prices a bit.

[colesdav]

There is already a leaked unboxing video showing the two new Navi GPU's.
I will not point to the link.
However if it is accurate:
RX5700XT points of interest. Red LED Radeon Logo. Display outputs right on the edge of the PCIe slot to maximize airflow. Additional air intake at rear of the GPU. 
RX5700.    points of interest. No LED Logo. Same display output placement. No additional air intake at rear of the GPU. Surprisingly, no backplate.

[colesdav]

I forgot to mention. According to the leaked unboxing video the TDP reported for these cards is just the TDP of the GPU and cannot be compared to the TDP reported on Nvidia website card specs which include everything. The RX5700XT has an 8+6 pin connector.

On the up side, from a different video, the performance comparisons from E3 were made against Nvidia Founders Edition RTX2060 and 2070 GPUs.

[ajlueke]

Not really much of an upside anymore.  The RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 Super will now occupy those price points so those are the GPUs we have to compare the 5700 against.  The regular old RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 are being phased out entirely and only the super variants will exist at the same price.

The upside is, the AMD cards, from Navi to the Radeon VII will likely have to drop in price based on NVidia's up scaled performance per dollar.

[colesdav]

The price is too high not even takling standard RTX 2070 and 2060 into account, which likely auto-overclock by ~ 9% on GPU core plus additional memory bandwidth overclocking possible in a dual fan version of those GPUs. 

Never mind those new RTX2070 and 2060 Super cards from Nvidia.
Is anyone surprised that Nvidia did this?

If there really is no backplate on those RX5700 blower coolers I think that really needs changed.
It will make the RX5700 GPU look very "cheap" in comparison to RTX2060/Super cards.
 
I still wait to see independent benchmarks in the hope that Navi launches well.
Hopefully it comes out with a working UEFI BIOS, good working drivers for the reviews, and I hope it performs well against those Nvidia GPU's this time.
I am hoping we do not see a repeat of the RX Vega 64/56 or Radeon VII launch reviews, because first impressions last.