General Discussions

[kingfish]

MD unveiled its new Radeon RX 5700 line of graphics cards with 7nm chips at E3 last month, and with just days to go before they launch on July 7th, the company has announced new pricing. In the "spirit" of competition that it says is "heating up" in the graphics market -- specifically NVIDIA's "Super" new RTX cards -- all three versions of the graphics card will be cheaper than we thought.

The standard Radeon RX 5700 with 36 compute units and speeds of up to 1.7GHz was originally announced at $379, but will instead hit shelves at $349 -- the same price as NVIDIA's RTX 2060. The 5700 XT card that brings 40 compute units and up to 1.9GHz speed will be $50 cheaper than expected, launching at $399. The same goes for the 50th Anniversary with a slightly higher boost speed and stylish gold trim that will cost $449 instead of $499.

That's enough to keep them both cheaper than the $499 RTX 2070 Super -- we'll have to wait for the performance reviews to find out if it's enough to make sure they're still relevant.

AMD fires back at 'Super' NVIDIA with Radeon RX 5700 price cuts 

[colesdav]

Also:

"AMD's data center GPU sales also declined on the quarter, which the company hopes will improve as its CDNA 2 graphics accelerators arrive later in the year."

"AMD's semi-custom business continues to recede as it prepares for the ramp of the Microsoft Xbox Series X and Sony PS5 that land later in the year. Those products should also help improve sales and margins."

[colesdav]

Not surprised:
https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/rumour_has_it_that_amd_s_big_navi_gpu_isn_t_as_powerfu... 

[black_zion]

Unfortunately for AMD, nVidia actually appears to be making large performance strides with Ampere  over Turing given the compute benchmarks which have been seen in official databases, so it's easy to expect at least 15% performance improvements for Ampere over Turing in every segment, which means RDNA2 will likely be at least 15% slower than Ampere at every gaming segment. Compute wise...AMD may get slaughtered. I'm sure we all saw how the nVidia A100 blew away Turing by 43% even with half its horsepower disabled.

AMD's going to need to price very aggressively, RX 500 series pricing levels, impose strict quality standards on AIBs, and get their software team straightened out quick, fast, and in a hurry.

And an apology from several C level AMD executives wouldn't hurt.

[hardcoregames_]

black_zion wrote:

Unfortunately for AMD, nVidia actually appears to be making large performance strides with Ampere  over Turing given the compute benchmarks which have been seen in official databases, so it's easy to expect at least 15% performance improvements for Ampere over Turing in every segment, which means RDNA2 will likely be at least 15% slower than Ampere at every gaming segment. Compute wise...AMD may get slaughtered. I'm sure we all saw how the nVidia A100 blew away Turing by 43% even with half its horsepower disabled.

AMD's going to need to price very aggressively, RX 500 series pricing levels, impose strict quality standards on AIBs, and get their software team straightened out quick, fast, and in a hurry.

And an apology from several C level AMD executives wouldn't hurt.

I do not see any need for an apology. A better option would be to get more developers on the driver team and use a bot to crawl the forum to see what is really the problems are.

Most times its a messay windows setup. While I use both AMD and NVIDIA video cards I have been using AMD processors for a very long time. Long time ago NVIDIA made chipsets for AMD for SLI motherboards. World has changed now however.

[colesdav]

RE: I do not see any need for an apology.

I do. I really do. Someone needs to apologise for bad GPU launches. bad drivers. bad installers. Very Old Drivers installed by Microsoft. No Driver GUI on Linux. ROCM,  and recently Blender.
Bad AIB GPU quality.
Someone needs to have a chat with Gigabyte as well about this REV 1.0 versus REV 2.0 version of RX590 trick.
The only two AMD AIB card vendors I would go near right now are PowerColor and Sapphire.
Whoever introduced Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI needs to really think seriously about what they are doing.
That interface is terrible.
On top it is taking 6-7% of Ryzen 2700X CPU for a Driver GUI is closed, and about 10-14% when I use it.

I think vast majority of effort will be taken up by supporting XBOX SERIES X and PlayStation 5. in 2020-2021.

Maybe AMD will just sell the PS5 GPU as a discrete card and be satisfied with that.  

RE: Most times its a messay windows setup.
I do not think so.

[black_zion]

Don't forget about the fact that AMD essentially doubled the prices of their GPUs simply because they had a massive backlog of unsold Polaris GPUs which prevented a price war and forced consumers to pay high prices, and if you pay $500 or more for a higher end video card, you expect it to work flawlessly and software issues to be limited to newly released games and newly patched/overhauled programs. You don't want to deal with and shouldn't have to deal with issues which persist month after month in established, unchanging software until it gets to the point where social media is full of the same complaints, the story is picked up by several reputable review companies, and there has to be a driver release which fixes dozens of longstanding bugs. 

These are the things AMD needs to apologize for. They need to apologize for treating their GPU division like it's an afterthought for years. They need to admit Navi has been a fuster from the beginning, and they need to rebuild their image very, very quickly before Intel roars onto the scene.

https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2020/03/05/resolving-top-community-issues-with-the-l... 

[pokester]

On top of that, it seems that AMD really did nothing to make Navi work with old games. In this age of digital distribution people are buying 20 year old games all the time. Navi has issues with a lot of it. It has to be that the the drivers and the changes they made in the compute architecture are not optimized for anything earlier than DX11. My guess is that it likely won't get fixed either. It certainly hasn't in it's 1st year. 

As someone who has a game library of nearly 1000 games, and most of them being old at this point, that is a huge reason to NOT buy. 

[black_zion]

Aye, one of the best things about digital storefronts like Steam and especially GoG is that you don't have to build a dedicated legacy gaming machine with period hardware and Windows XP to run those games anymore, the same machine you use to crush the latest AAA title is the same machine you can then go and play something like Worms Armageddon and other games released before Y2K on, then go punch up Crysis or FEAR, then top it off with a little 16 bit action of Rise Of The Triad right out of the digital box or with a few slight tweaks.

Performance of games released 10 or even 5 years ago isn't really an issue on newer hardware, but if there are game breaking (read: crashing) bugs which only affect one card brand, and the only solution is to use the other brand, and that game is a former AAA title which may still have an active multiplayer enjoyed by thousands, it won't matter how that card performs in modern games, you're going to jump to the other team, and if people see that a brand new expensive card has issues with games their may have paid $60+ for a few years ago, they're not going to want to risk seeing the card's value in games go to waste.

[colesdav]

It looks like Sapphire are preparing for a price war as they have just introduced the RX5700XT BE.
https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consumer/pulse-radeon-rx-5700-xt-be-8g-gddr6 

The quick conmnect fans removed, and only has a single BIOS.
Sapphire have replaced the cooler with a cheaper version and removed one heatpipe.
However the GPU is still > 2 slot at 46.5mm.
They have removed the Red LED Sapphire Logo.
The link to the original Pulse is here: https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consumer/pulse-radeon-rx-5700-xt-8g-gddr6#Specification

Interestingly they are quoting the same GPU clocks implying same performance even with a cheaper cooler.

• Boost Clock: Up to 1925 MHz
• Game Clock: Up to 1815 MHz
• Base Clock: 1670 MHz

Game Clock is the expected GPU clock when running typical gaming applications, set to typical TGP(Total Graphics Power). Actual individual game clock results may vary.

Memory Specification seems the same.

Perhaps improvements to 7nm process on Navi 10 will allow the use of cheaper cooler and still achieve the same clocks / performance?

Not sure what BE stands for.
I hope it doesnt turn out to be "Blackscreen Edition".

[black_zion]

I saw that, but it's really not a price war if it's only $10 less expensive and a way for them to use up some more Navi GPUs before Navi Refresh and RDNA2 land, plus indications are growing that September will be Ampere's launch, so AMD is going to again be competing with antiquated hardware and high prices for a while...

[pokester]

I would guess too that it is likely just a push to move remaining stock.

[colesdav]

Sapphire will keep prices as high as they can until new Nvidia cards are launched.
I expect them to drop the price after Nvidia launch the new cards, and depending on how they perform.

At least Sapphire kept the backplate, if it had been Gigabyte, that would be gone as well.

[black_zion]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/the-numbers-dont-lie-amd-gpus-are-less-reliable-than-nvidia

[pokester]

I don't find this surprising at all. Forever I have only bought AMD AIB products from a couple of vendors. Saphire and XFX. While XFX has had some cards that are not that great they usually have one in the line up that is really good. Regardless their tech support is top notch and they take care of a product under warranty with zero hassle. Saphire for the most part just makes the best AMD cards. I have however had a fan problem twice with my Saphire cards and both times their support was less than stellar. 

In general though by comparison to the Green Team, AMD does not validate nor have the oversight of its board partners. This leads to a high failure rate.

Now when it comes to Navi it is hard to say if it is really all bad hardware or people just thinking it is due to the drivers being unstable. 

Regardless, I have several times in the past and was just there last Friday and it is the same at my local Micro Center. The open box section for GPU's is full of AMD cards. I did not talk to the sales guy the other night but had previously and they did confirm they get a lot of the AMD cards back and relatively few of the Green Team cards back. Base on what I have seen at this retailer, I would have to say the above numbers look about right. The real shame of it is, that with a bit of oversight and a better driver the AMD landscape for GPUs would be so different. 

[hardcoregames_]

AFAIK Sapphire does not have a domestic service center.

MSI does

[colesdav]

Very interesting thanks.

[colesdav]

PowerColor Red Dragon and Red Devil RX5700XT have very high failure rates which is surprising, especially for the Red Devil version which has a large triple fan cooler. 

The Gamers Nexus teardown of the RX5700XT Red Devil showed good card construction and it is one of the most highly recommended RX5700XT along with Sapphire Nitro + RX5700XT.

I know that the PowerColor Red Dragon RX5700XT I tested for a PC Build  was a crash nightmare on Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 driver. 
Yet combination of 2019 19.12.1 + 20.5.1 was mostly stable when  I tested it - and that is an RX5700XT in a dual slot 40 mm cooler design.
[The backplate accounts for spec = 41mm  > 40mm so no blocked PCIe slots].

The PowerColor Red Dragon RX5700XT I tested is so close to the edge of stability at 4K  I did not attempt to overclock the GPU at all, and the card was for a PCX Build anyhow.

Perhaps the RMA rates are affected by Drivers or maybe PowerColor messed up with the cards sent to Germany, where they are a popular AMD brand.

[pokester]

I think a lot of assumption happens. As you are well aware two cards with the same model number but different revisions can be very different products. It is very common for international cards to have the same model but the USA version be different than other models. 

I am quite sure that the drivers are the big culprit in the failure rates, and not surprised with the 5500 being less problematic than the 5700xt as AMD, keeps doing the same card after card these past few generations. They release the cards maxing out the current architecture with zero power ceiling head room and that makes you have to tweak, if even possible at all to make the cards stable. 

I do think AMD's lack of oversight and validation does lead to sub-par cards. While I like XFX historically I have heard a lot of disturbing comments on their Navi based cards being no so good. Frankly there have been examples in many of the Navi cards of models not being that good. Ultimately I think most of the currently available are likely okay.

I personally swore off Power Color myself years ago after having 2 lemons in a row. I am not saying by any means they never make a good card, but I tend to purchase based on prior experience a lot. 

I also was not surprised in that article that the 2080ti would have the highest failure rate, it only makes sense but at the same time is terrible for those who really could not afford them and have them fail. In first RTX the 2080 and 2070 super had high failure rates too. As the article points out though the 2070 super has been great, and is a big reason I bought one, as I tend to keep cards a very long time. 

[black_zion]

It really would be nice to see specs from Newegg since there aren't any ASUS or EVGA cards on that list, and it would be nice if the reason for RMA were given (true hardware failure vs garbage software), but the full list does give some interesting figures. I put the summary chart into Excel for easier viewing. MSI does seem to have a much better reputation with nVidia users than AMD, and really they seem to be the best overall, makes you wonder if there is something different about MSI Europe than MSI USA....And it does seem PowerColor is the worst brand in existence despite their popularity,

[pokester]

I think the popularity of power color is very simply they have always had the cheaper options. Nice chart, it really helps put it in perspective. 

Nice to see how low the Zotac is. They are newer in the past few years to the scene. I have 2 of their cards and knock on wood both are great so far, and superb overclockers. Plus they tend to be cheaper than the others. 

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

I think the popularity of power color is very simply they have always had the cheaper options. Nice chart, it really helps put it in perspective. 

Nice to see how low the Zotac is. They are newer in the past few years to the scene. I have 2 of their cards and knock on wood both are great so far, and superb overclockers. Plus they tend to be cheaper than the others. 

I can show you a pile of fried Zotac cards. 

[pokester]

Good for you! Apparently based on the low failure rate you must have all 1.5%! Congrats!

If you have a pile of any bad cards you might want to look into how you are handling and using them. There is a big problem there. 

BTW, sure I'd love to see that picture of all bad Zotac cards you have. You have not mentioned having any of them before. 

[colesdav]

Gigabyte RX590 REV 1.0 versus REV2.0 -  the REV 2.0 removed backplate, RGB, and DVI-D output as a profit increase for Gigabyte. The performance, based on 3DMark and other benchmarks was almost identical, within expected tolerances. The REV 2.0 is/was commonly advertised with REV1.0 specs and features, at the same or higher price.

I have not seen a revision of the PowerColor Navi 10 RX5700XT Red Dragon or Red Devil cards yet.

I think that willo be in a Navi 10 refresh if it happens.

I have not noticed differences in USA versus International versions of AMD GPU in the past, but I will double check to see if the specs are different, thanks.
Maybe the construction of PowerColor cards in Europe is different to USA. I hope not.
Maybe someone like Gamers Nexus  can take a look at that if someone asks.

PowerColor Cards I have owned in the past have been fine.
Comments on some review sites have been negative about the RX5700XT Red Dragon w.r.t. failures and RMA.

[pokester]

I have no idea if any or much of anything is really different either saying common is likely not the best choice of words. I was meaning more historically. Not that I know of a bunch of difference in the current lines. I have however through the last 35 years in IT run into many differences. European models with the same number but they are not the same as US models or even big changes between revision levels. Heck I bought a card once based on how cool the picture of it looked on the box. Got it home and the card inside was completely different. That was on a HD 4850 that they changed the cooler type on but still used the same box. The new cooler sucked by comparison too, much cheaper. 

[pokester]

I was thinking Broken but yah Blackscreen works. 

[hardcoregames_]

Not sure about Sapphire's marketing but EVGA who makes my video card is very down to earth.

Sapphire shut down their forum a while ago so that resource pool is gone.

[hardcoregames_]

colesdav wrote:

RE: I do not see any need for an apology.

I do. I really do. Someone needs to apologise for bad GPU launches. bad drivers. bad installers. Very Old Drivers installed by Microsoft. No Driver GUI on Linux. ROCM,  and recently Blender.
Bad AIB GPU quality.
Someone needs to have a chat with Gigabyte as well about this REV 1.0 versus REV 2.0 version of RX590 trick.
The only two AMD AIB card vendors I would go near right now are PowerColor and Sapphire.
Whoever introduced Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI needs to really think seriously about what they are doing.
That interface is terrible.
On top it is taking 6-7% of Ryzen 2700X CPU for a Driver GUI is closed, and about 10-14% when I use it.

I think vast majority of effort will be taken up by supporting XBOX SERIES X and PlayStation 5. in 2020-2021.

Maybe AMD will just sell the PS5 GPU as a discrete card and be satisfied with that.  

RE: Most times its a messay windows setup.
I do not think so.

I use Linux CLI only as I use it for server purposes. Windows has been around longer than Linux.

Apple and MSFT competed with GUI development as the world transitioned from early DOS/BASIC based platforms to a now contemporary graphical environment.

The mouse itself was developed over a very long time but early designs go back to the 1940s.

Machine stability can be difficult to achieve. I had to use a custom RAM timings for my old G.Skill NT memory while the Flare X have proper timing tables for faster speeds.

[pokester]

I still think most of this is moot. As we approach launch day we still don't have the type of widespread improvements in the drivers to restore any faith that a plug and play at defaults solution is coming from AMD with RDNA2. So for me regardless of hardware prowess unless the drivers are a whole spectrum of better nothing else really even matters.

[hardcoregames_]

Many friends on Steam have RX 5000 cards and the games they play work fine.

This suggests some games may have issues and some do not.

[pokester]

It's not really the game side of the drivers that is the issue. It is the stability of the hardware and the many features that don't work right. Frankly it is what the Adrenaline interface and Wattman do that is the problem.  You don't have to look any further than these forums to see that every day there are numerous complaints about this still. 
Many figure out one of two things. Going green has no issue. Or in many cases installing just the AMD driver being installed from the device manager and then using a 3rd party software for adjustment greatly improves stability. However this still then cuts you off from a lot of advertised features and game profiles. 

[hardcoregames_]

My RX 480 served me well. Stability of my X570 was improved with BIOS updates.

So suggest its not always the video card. I look deeper which allows me to get more evidence to make a sound conclusion with.

Assuming facts not in evidence is taught in philosophy where decision theory is taught. This topic reaches up into grad school where military decisions are analysed based on evidentiary scenarios.

[pokester]

All I can say is say that to the literally thousands of end users that have issues. They are not all idiots and many of them return to an old card or go green for a new one out of frustration and right away they report back no issues. You are on Polaris, and it and earlier GCN were far more stable than Vega and Navi is worse than that. So your experience is not what is being talked about here as it is irrelevant to Navi moving forward. It is great you are not having problems.

I put my RX 580 back in a system a little over a week ago that I put together with an 7th gen i5 that wasn't being used. I loaded the newest driver. I had issues right off the bat. I ran DDU and returned to a late 2019 driver and used the settings I used to use and that was working okay as I expected from when it was my everyday card a couple years ago. And my issues sure as heck are not me or other equipment in that system. 

[hardcoregames_]

I have Vega graphics on my 3000G and R5 2400G processors and both work fine..

[pokester]

Well then you are really the lottery winner. You must never read the forums here as the integrated graphics issues complained about by users here are the most by leaps and bounds. 

[hardcoregames_]

pokester wrote:

Well then you are really the lottery winner. You must never read the forums here as the integrated graphics issues complained about by users here are the most by leaps and bounds. 

I pop in here often looking at issues to see if there is a common thread, without rig specs the NSA would love, its hard to be sure if there is anything I can spot as known issue

[colesdav]

I agree. It would have to be a massive turn around w.r.t many issues and it will not happen by November 2020.

[hardcoregames_]

colesdav wrote:

I think AMD need to stop the "More CPU Cores" story on Ryzen and improve IPC and maybe increase frequency.
I think Nvidia GPU CUDA and OptiX based rendring in Blender starting to take a lead over multi CPU rendering based on a few test cases I have run.
As for AMD Discrete GPUs, I think its over now. They are too far behind. I think Navi and AMD Drivers has been a disaster follow on from Vega.

Gene Amdahl commented that scaling does not use all cores as efficiently as desired. Amdahl's law - Wikipedia 

This is why I use the R5 3600. I do not like spinning my wheels.

Windows has a lot of threads so with careful management the multicore processor can perk up performance to some extent.

[hardcoregames_]

There are not many games yet that support DLSS 2.0 but eventually I see that category grow

[taskforce131]

man what dose that matter when we have black screen and crashes ? 

[colesdav]

High RMA rates matter because it often takes a very long time and lots of effort to get cards returned.
People often have to pay postage costs, tracked.

Returning GPU is often difficult and expensive.

Many users just give up trying to RMA, and I know many AMD Users seem to attempt repair themselves by repasting / new thermal pads etc or waiting for a new AMD driver to fix the problem.

Card black screen and crashing is also important and costs time and also completely ruins experience.

Even trying to get the AMD Adrenalin Installer to run is a pain at times.

I know for a fact that Adrenalin 2020 20.7.2 causes a black screen fail installation on Windows 10 64bit Pro 19.09 with latest patches.

Before installing make sure any USB Hard Drives (containing games)  or USB sticks are removed because the first hurdle to overcome is that the Adrenalin 2020 20.7.2 installer runs and then does something to the USB controllers on the motherboard causing a USB disconnect followed by reconnect, but fails to reconnect the keyboard and mouse. That hangs the PC and the install just stops.

I finally managed to get it to install following DDU 18.0.2.8 in safe mode disconnected from the Internet - ensuring DDU Advanced Option "Prevent Drivers Download from Windows Updates ..." is OFF. Boot into Normal Mode. Run Adrenalin 2020 20.7.2 installer with Factory Reset on. It reboots the PC and then installs, but blackscreens the PC at the end of the install process.

I had to repeat the above but remove the HDMI lead from the RX Vega 64 Liquid just before the final "Post Factory Reset" install. I waited 30 minutes and then connected the HDMI lead. I managed to get display output. I then reconnect the internet.

All of the above messing about and debug took far too long. It should not be needed at all.

Adrenalin 2020 20.7.2 GUI/UI is now running but I notice that it is taking between 6.6% (minimised) -14%(maximised and using menu)  of a Ryzen 2700X CPU just to run the Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI.
That works out at 1 Core 2 Threads.

Now that the Adrenalin 2020 20.7.2 Driver is installed, it looks like the driver is ~ as stable as anything else I have seen recently from AMD. But it is not giving as good performance as using Hybrid Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 GUI/UI + 20.7.2 driver.

I managed to complete BFV campaign at 4K Ultra  on HBM2 Overclocked RX Vega 64 Liquid using Radeon Chill.

However

(1). I could do with FRTC back in the driver as I run BFV with VSync off. I get screen tearing even with FreeSync on.
(2). The "Game Advisor is also running all the time and still reporting nonsense, when it works. 
(3). The Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI is still very bad ergonomic design and a bad user interface. I absolutely detest having to use it. It is full of bugs and inconsistencies.
(4). I cannot load previously created Wattman Profiles.
(5). Wattman CPU Frequency slider  Adrenalin 2019.19.12.1 has a resolution of 0.5% in the GUI/UI but 1% in Adrenalin 2020.

(6). The driver is not detecting correct PCIe Bus Speeds for the GPUs on the system.

(7). MultiGPU / DX11 CrossFire Support is abysmal, yet Crossfire is turned on during driver install with Multiple GPUs. 
(8). Turning Crossfire off on one configuration  caused PC Blackscreen and reboot. Once I logged in again, Crossfire still on. In other words I could not get Crossfire to turn off at all.
(9). In a couple of cases I see the Crossfire option on the wrong GPU completely. In one case the Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI reported that I have an RX5700XT and an RX Vega 64 Liquid, in Crossfire which is impossible. 
No user selection of which GPUs to Crossfire. In another PC Configuration with 2 RX Vega 64 Liquid  and an RX Vega 56, the Adrenalin GUI UI Crossfires the RX Vega 64 Liquid and the RX Vega 56 - The RX Vega 56 was connected to the lowest PCIe Bandwidth in real life and reported by teh Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI.
(10). DX 11 Crossfire Profiles are missing in the GUI completely.

The entire Adrenalin 2020 GUI/UI Driver experience is very negative versus Adrenalin 19.12.1.
That alone is enough to put me off AMD GPUs now, never mind the lack of "support" on anything apart from Gaming on Windows 10.

Edit - fixed some typos and also add this:
I Also forgot to mention - I still cannot assign Alt+W as the Chill Hotkey in Adrenalin 2020 drivers instead of F11.

I have filed multiple bug reports about that and it still does not work.
It works in Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 and earlier.
It does NOT work with Hybrid Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 GUI/UI and 20.7.2 driver.
So the problem seems to be the new Adrenalin 2020 Drivers only accepts F11, no matter which the GUI sends to the driver.