Are you ready for the next generation of AMD processors and graphics? Well, AMD have two events planned in October so it's time to get excited again.
We don't know exactly what they will announce, as they've only just given us the dates. For Zen 3 their new CPU architecture we're getting something on October 8, and for RDNA 2 their new GPU architecture some event is happening on October 28. Quite a while to wait on both counts, which is a little surprising.
Source - AMD Gaming Twitter, teasing that "A new era of leadership performance across computing and graphics is coming. The journey begins on October 8.".
NVIDIA only just recently announced the RTX 30 series, with them due to release this month so AMD are running quite behind here overall. We knew they were both due to be properly announced this year though, and with the pandemic it probably hasn't been easy for any vendor to keep to their schedules.
This is all especially exciting though! On the CPU side, because AMD are continuing to be extremely competitive on both price and performance while Intel are struggling with smaller processing nodes. So AMD coming back again, with another push forwards is going to be fun to see. On the GPU side though, is where things get even more interesting, partly because this will bring Ray Tracing as well. Having all PC GPU vendors with Ray Tracing should bring it forwards, especially with Intel's new Xe-HPG GPUs coming next year too also with Ray Tracing.
What are you hoping for? Are you excited? Let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
On the CPU side though, those who already have high end Zen 2 CPUs probably won't be in a rush to upgrade.
Quoting: The_AquabatI keep hearing about Navi being buggy, I haven't find bugs on my navi. Maybe I hit the silicon lottery? is there any documentation about the bugs? are there any workarounds?
Yes, I expect it to be silicon lottery. Some get worse hardware than others. The point is, with first generation of microarchitecture, chances of getting bad hardware are higher.
Last edited by Shmerl on 9 September 2020 at 7:31 pm UTC
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/blob/master/src/amd/compiler/README-ISA.md#rdna-gfx10-hazards
And probably not all of them were found or worked around yet.
Last edited by Shmerl on 9 September 2020 at 7:32 pm UTC
Quoting: The_AquabatI keep hearing about Navi being buggy, I haven't find bugs on my navi. Maybe I hit the silicon lottery? is there any documentation about the bugs? are there any workarounds?I booted into windows for the first time in 5 years and kept getting BSODs on my Vega64. Which only happen when I have 3 monitors on. Turn off a monitor? Rock solid. Found forum posts describing this from over a year ago. While the Navi launch was a bit bumpy on linux, AMD drivers on windows have perpetually been a disaster for every GPU after polaris. A lot of the "Navi is terrible, worst thing ever" stuff is Windows drivers related. Not that there arent any hardware gotchas, or linux driver issues (see shmerl's post for references), but I've mostly heard positive things about Navi on linux recently.
Quoting: GuestI hope they will release GPUs that do not need too much power this time.
Yeah, I hope they keep power usage in check and won't go after power creep like Nvidia did with new cards.
On topic: I hope AMD continue to stand with a good market share against Nvidia, while continue to be friendly with open source graphics
TheRiddick Sep 9, 2020
Quoting: The_AquabatQuoting: ShmerlLess hardware bugs and such.I keep hearing about Navi being buggy, I haven't find bugs on my navi. Maybe I hit the silicon lottery? is there any documentation about the bugs? are there any workarounds?
Most of those reports are from Windows users, or Linux users using outdated (not bleeding edge) drivers.
Last edited by TapocoL on 10 September 2020 at 1:44 am UTC
Quoting: ShmerlWell, they probably will have a card at a power level you want, but it remains to be seen whether that will be at a performance level you want. As long as their silicon can take it and they can slap a big enough heat sink on it, they'll probably have a 300+-ish watt unit at the top end to compete better with the 3080 and not leave performance on the table. So, if you don't want that, you'll have to take a lesser part. It may not be substantially lesser, as power usage goes way up faster then performance does, but that's a tradeoff you'll have to consider.Quoting: GuestI hope they will release GPUs that do not need too much power this time.
Yeah, I hope they keep power usage in check and won't go after power creep like Nvidia did with new cards.
One thing to note - GPU's are a relatively low margin product for AMD. MM for MM of silicon, CPU's are way more profitable, and have a lot less headaches with regard to software development needed to sustain them. The higher the performance they can get out of each mm of gpu silicon they sell, the higher the profit margin they can get out of the unit. That means leaving a lot of thermal headroom on the table is lost revenue on a thin-er margin product. Naturally there are real limits to how much juice they can run with, namely folks will only tolerate so much noise, and the 12-volt rails of system PSU's can only put out so much power, but within those limits, they get the highest performance they can to be able to charge higher prices for their products.
Last edited by yokem55 on 10 September 2020 at 6:11 am UTC
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