Not only. Being liquid cooled allows the GPU to be pushed harder, longer with less or no throttling. So it should perform better than the aircooled one, even if it is not binned.
What, the pixel fill rate? Otherwise the FLOPS are slightly better than the XP (13 v 12 TFLOP). Not exactly a trouncing (good though, all the same). Memory transfer rate slightly slower.
AMD TFLOPS in the past have not matched up in gaming performance with Nvidia TFlops. Nvidia's 12 Tflop is probably worth 14-15 Tflop of AMD when it comes to gaming and 3dmark
They are going for the professional data scientists and most likely crypto currency folks. AMD chips are preferred there versus NVIDIA. They routinely sell for over asking price. AMD releasing these chips before the consumer ones may be strategy on their part to sell these for a higher average selling price.
There's even been a shortage of AMD GPUs recently after a big climb in bitcoin value. But I can't really see these being a huge hit for coin miners. It's a highly separable task, you don't really care if it's a dual GPU or Single that gives you that final "flops" number. So the Pro Duo is fairly competitive with these newer cards, especially as you don't half float precision for bitcoin either.
AI and simulation stuff however very much do need all that ram/single card performance/half float stuff. So I can see them selling out there.
What does gaming performance to FLOPS ratio in games have to do with professional software? The software is very different and how it uses the GPU is different.
The air cooled version is only 300W, merely 50W more. 50W is not too shabby for the amount of extra performance you get. And the benches are industry standard real life workstation applications contrary to what some clueless fanboys might claim.
The fact one is air cooled and the other water cooled suggests the 375W TDP is required to sustain that extra one teraflop over the XP, which manages just fine on 250W of air cooling.
"the first-run workstation/early adopter-focused Radeon Vega Frontier Edition." Hey Ryan, am I maybe not getting this right, but why does it seem like you are calling these cards Early Adapter cards? This to me sounds like u are trying to tell the public "Do not buy this".... Can you explain on this naming?
"This to me sounds like u are trying to tell the public "Do not buy this"...."
Correct. These are not consumer cards and AMD is doing all they can to tell consumers not to buy them. These cards are primarily meant for developers who need access to the Vega architecture to begin writing software against it. Hence the reason they're called "Frontier Edition"; AMD's hinting that they're not quite yet ready for us city-slicker consumers.
IMHO, The whole idea of "Frontier" is mainly a face saving launch. AMD has had a horrible rep for years of missing launch windows, not updating drivers in a timely fashion and generally just not doing what they say when they say it. Lisa has the whole gain back the public trust that our word is our bond vibe going on. Hence, the Crimson driver initiative with its regular updates. We all know initial CPU reviews are king, sometimes for life of the architecture. So why launch Ryzen with that horrible beta version microcode that wouldn't support decent memory and destroyed early benchmarks that depend on faster memory for the Infinity Fabric? Because they promised a First Quarter launch, that's why! They gave a hard window and have promised repeatedly that Vega would hit the shelves 1H 2017. They have also known for months now that its not ready for primetime and surely don't want to repeat the Ryzen launch fiasco...yet they promised a launch this quarter....Therefore, I give you(Drumroll Please) FRONTIER EDITION!!! lol
They did something else that is clever in a sneaky sort of way. Although it does not come with professional application certification, I think they are shipping it with drivers geared towards professional applications, and that is why they are anti-selling it for gaming. Raja Koduri came out and said that the Radeon RX Vega would outperform the Vega FE in gaming. I think that's because the Vega FE doesn't ship with gaming drivers.
Exxact Corp. published professional graphics oriented benchmark comparisons showing the Vega FE beating the Titan Xp, which is a card that does not ship with professional graphics-oriented drivers. The Vega FE specviewperf benchmarks are beaten handily by the Quadro P5000, which is a GP104 chip, and killed by the P6000 that uses the more powerful GP102 that the Titan Xp uses. In fact, even the previous generation M5000 that uses the GM204 and has 8GB of VRAM, less than the 12Gb of the Titan Xp, is listed on spec.org as outperforming Exxact's Vega FE specviewperf scores. One can get a Quadro M5000 for $1760 on Newegg and it does come with professional app certifications.
The Vega FE would no doubt be hammered by the Titan Xp in machine learning tasks, the other area that AMD says the Vega FE is geared towards, because the CUDA libraries have a huge advantage there. So the card doesn't seem to have much of a market. It could be for getting hardware in the hands of developers, as Ryan said. But my opinion is in line with waltsmith's. It has more to do with meeting their promised Q2 launch. I assume that by the time the Radeon Pro Vega cards launch they will have more mature drivers that will make the cards more competitive with their Quadro competition than the Vega FE is.
im going to be serious here. i invented the ideA of loading cpu instructions to the gpus buffer. its a logically simple one liner buffer call. BIG WOOP. if you want gpu calculations done using any gpu(and all) copy cuda.dll to the system32[or wow64] folder and register the dynamic link library file, and forget about buying nvidia cards ever again. ps dll-files.com isnt going anywhere ;) ;)
Yes, any time they launch a professional product like a workstation card or a server CPU they're clearly doing it to save face. I mean, why even launch non-consumer products? That's just like, silly, or something. Plus even though Ryzen is getting tons of design wins and is generally hailed as a solid architecture and lineup, it's a failure. Because. lol
its clear you got paid to trash amd. especially considering the fact that amd releases drivers monthly, and launch windows are only to boost sales in the first place, and that amd is completely SOLD OUT at walmart , fries electronics and even online vendors. its about time that nvidia took a fall for thier intentionally OVERclocked( i mean the literal term) cards that fail well within three months of load.
to be brutally honest, if you see a heavy and large bank of capacitors on anything accept a subwoofer? it means they are desperatly trying to make use of speed where they don't know watt to do with the voltage. long story short, amds gpus can red line day and night but nvidias GARBAGE would be lucky to last 3 days gunmaker guardian aka geniusthemaster- legendary white hat.
There is definitely a shortage of Radeon 570/580 cards (unless you count gougers selling them for double etc). Crypto currency strikes again... supply should shake loose again soon I hope.
AMD has two categories for professional graphics cards, Pro and FirePro. They are very different in architecture and use. AMD calls the Frontier Vega a workstation card along with its Polaris version of the WX series of cards. In this category, the Frontier Vega is twice as expensive as the next costliest card, the WX 7100. Vega=Titan FirePro=Quadro
We don't have any new information on that front, but AMD has already been rather up-front on half precision. They can run 2 FP16 ops in place of an FP32 op.
ive been screaming to get a hold of that hbm memeory, say what you want about sse4.1a and avx2, im gauranteeing that hbm will be 3 times faster than sse5 so those specs on the card are completely irrelevant. i can have 2000 high speed missiles on an OLDER graphics card and still hug 70.2 to 80.5 fps. amds nextcore is going to stomp the competition. permanently. maybe its about time they went closed source and started making microsoft and nvidia PAY for thier illigitimate cousin cards.
They are going for the professional data scientists and most likely crypto currency folks. AMD chips are preferred there versus NVIDIA. They routinely sell for over asking price. AMD releasing these chips before the consumer ones may be strategy on their part to sell these for a higher average selling price.
Crypto currency crunching typically uses consumer GPUs. I imagine for the currencies where GPUs are still vital, that likely still holds true. More bang for the buck.
for bitcoin mining its still more cost effective to purchase 3 amd saphire fury r390 and then use an amd based motherboard. after that you would want to multiplex using a usb c+firewire port to link the mother boards.
only for Bitcoin, not cryptocurrencies in general. Ethereum, Zcash, Monero, etc. are all still great on AMD cards, and Nvidia is pretty competent with them too, and much better at a few of the smaller coins.
Yes, my 12 Nvidia cards agree with you, but he did specifically refer to BTC.
Also, my Litecoin ASIC is also now not profitable. 54MH/s for 2200W (at the wall) leaves me -$4/day. Shame to see it stood there gathering dust. We were good friends.
ALSO! bitcoin gpu mining died sometime in 2013, with Litecoin ASICs being released in 2014 killing that too, Darkcoin filled a barely-profitable gap until 2015 when Ethereum launched, but eventually its growing DAG that has to be loaded into VRAM made it difficult, and then impossible to mine on cards with 2GB or less of VRAM. In 2016 Zcash launched bringing profitability back to a lot of older cards. I'm not sure when Monero launched but it is actually profitable on CPU and GPU, too, but it's the least profitable of the big 3 algos for AMD cards atm.
I've been eagerly waiting fir VEGA through delay after delay for 13 months. Yesterday i picked up an OC gtx 1080 for $330 US. I can't wait for AMD any longer and given VEGA will certainly be more expensive than $330 for grx 1080 performance AMD will have to deliver in 2018 to 2019 with Navi for it to earn my $$$. Sorry AMD i gave you every opportunity but you're unreliable to your consumers time and time again. Be prepared next round.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
61 Comments
Back to Article
nathanddrews - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
That's quite the liquid cooler for $600...$1199 for a top-end card aimed at pros gives me hope that we'll see some nicely priced consumer cards.
tuxfool - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
one would assume that the liquid cooled version is also binned for better performance.ddriver - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Even at 1800$ it is quite the deal for a workstation GPU.yankeeDDL - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Not only. Being liquid cooled allows the GPU to be pushed harder, longer with less or no throttling. So it should perform better than the aircooled one, even if it is not binned.Diji1 - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
"gives me hope that we'll see some nicely priced consumer cards"It's not like they have much of a choice with Nvidia already there at all levels of performance :)
jjj - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
This retailer lists TDP and some perf numbers https://exxactcorp.com/index.php/product/prod_deta...tamalero - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Are those numbers for real? they seem to trounce Pascal XPMeteor2 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
What, the pixel fill rate? Otherwise the FLOPS are slightly better than the XP (13 v 12 TFLOP). Not exactly a trouncing (good though, all the same). Memory transfer rate slightly slower.Morawka - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
AMD TFLOPS in the past have not matched up in gaming performance with Nvidia TFlops. Nvidia's 12 Tflop is probably worth 14-15 Tflop of AMD when it comes to gaming and 3dmarkMeteor2 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
I can't help but think it's like LINPACK, i.e. essentially meaningless. How are these figures arrived at anyway?leelab - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
They are going for the professional data scientists and most likely crypto currency folks. AMD chips are preferred there versus NVIDIA. They routinely sell for over asking price. AMD releasing these chips before the consumer ones may be strategy on their part to sell these for a higher average selling price.Frenetic Pony - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
There's even been a shortage of AMD GPUs recently after a big climb in bitcoin value. But I can't really see these being a huge hit for coin miners. It's a highly separable task, you don't really care if it's a dual GPU or Single that gives you that final "flops" number. So the Pro Duo is fairly competitive with these newer cards, especially as you don't half float precision for bitcoin either.AI and simulation stuff however very much do need all that ram/single card performance/half float stuff. So I can see them selling out there.
Alexvrb - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
What does gaming performance to FLOPS ratio in games have to do with professional software? The software is very different and how it uses the GPU is different.ImSpartacus - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Those are old benchmarks from AMD. It's stuff that Titan Xp won't do well in.The TDPs might be legit, but don't be concerned with that silly table.
Meteor2 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Also that TDP is rather high, 375W versus 250W for Pascal XP?! :(. Suggests Vega's efficiency still falls short of Nvidia tech.ddriver - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
The air cooled version is only 300W, merely 50W more. 50W is not too shabby for the amount of extra performance you get. And the benches are industry standard real life workstation applications contrary to what some clueless fanboys might claim.Meteor2 - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
The fact one is air cooled and the other water cooled suggests the 375W TDP is required to sustain that extra one teraflop over the XP, which manages just fine on 250W of air cooling.jjj - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Guess the retailer removed that info , here's the first pic i could find http://techreport.com/r.x/2017_06_16_Rumor_Vega_Fr...Meteor2 - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Which if correct underline how pointless FLOP measurements are, CPU or GPU.AnotherGuy - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
"the first-run workstation/early adopter-focused Radeon Vega Frontier Edition."Hey Ryan, am I maybe not getting this right, but why does it seem like you are calling these cards Early Adapter cards? This to me sounds like u are trying to tell the public "Do not buy this"....
Can you explain on this naming?
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
"This to me sounds like u are trying to tell the public "Do not buy this"...."Correct. These are not consumer cards and AMD is doing all they can to tell consumers not to buy them. These cards are primarily meant for developers who need access to the Vega architecture to begin writing software against it. Hence the reason they're called "Frontier Edition"; AMD's hinting that they're not quite yet ready for us city-slicker consumers.
waltsmith - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
IMHO, The whole idea of "Frontier" is mainly a face saving launch. AMD has had a horrible rep for years of missing launch windows, not updating drivers in a timely fashion and generally just not doing what they say when they say it. Lisa has the whole gain back the public trust that our word is our bond vibe going on. Hence, the Crimson driver initiative with its regular updates. We all know initial CPU reviews are king, sometimes for life of the architecture. So why launch Ryzen with that horrible beta version microcode that wouldn't support decent memory and destroyed early benchmarks that depend on faster memory for the Infinity Fabric? Because they promised a First Quarter launch, that's why! They gave a hard window and have promised repeatedly that Vega would hit the shelves 1H 2017. They have also known for months now that its not ready for primetime and surely don't want to repeat the Ryzen launch fiasco...yet they promised a launch this quarter....Therefore, I give you(Drumroll Please) FRONTIER EDITION!!! lolImSpartacus - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Yeah, it's clear that stock or drivers or something else just wasn't ready, so AMD made a psuedo-Titan.Honestly, it's not the worst idea they've had.
Yojimbo - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
They did something else that is clever in a sneaky sort of way. Although it does not come with professional application certification, I think they are shipping it with drivers geared towards professional applications, and that is why they are anti-selling it for gaming. Raja Koduri came out and said that the Radeon RX Vega would outperform the Vega FE in gaming. I think that's because the Vega FE doesn't ship with gaming drivers.Exxact Corp. published professional graphics oriented benchmark comparisons showing the Vega FE beating the Titan Xp, which is a card that does not ship with professional graphics-oriented drivers. The Vega FE specviewperf benchmarks are beaten handily by the Quadro P5000, which is a GP104 chip, and killed by the P6000 that uses the more powerful GP102 that the Titan Xp uses. In fact, even the previous generation M5000 that uses the GM204 and has 8GB of VRAM, less than the 12Gb of the Titan Xp, is listed on spec.org as outperforming Exxact's Vega FE specviewperf scores. One can get a Quadro M5000 for $1760 on Newegg and it does come with professional app certifications.
The Vega FE would no doubt be hammered by the Titan Xp in machine learning tasks, the other area that AMD says the Vega FE is geared towards, because the CUDA libraries have a huge advantage there. So the card doesn't seem to have much of a market. It could be for getting hardware in the hands of developers, as Ryan said. But my opinion is in line with waltsmith's. It has more to do with meeting their promised Q2 launch. I assume that by the time the Radeon Pro Vega cards launch they will have more mature drivers that will make the cards more competitive with their Quadro competition than the Vega FE is.
gunmaker - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
im going to be serious here. i invented the ideA of loading cpu instructions to the gpus buffer. its a logically simple one liner buffer call. BIG WOOP.if you want gpu calculations done using any gpu(and all) copy cuda.dll to the system32[or wow64] folder and register the dynamic link library file, and forget about buying nvidia cards ever again. ps dll-files.com isnt going anywhere ;) ;)
Yojimbo - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Yeah, true, but it only works on Mars on July 19th, 1964 ;) ;)Alexvrb - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Yes, any time they launch a professional product like a workstation card or a server CPU they're clearly doing it to save face. I mean, why even launch non-consumer products? That's just like, silly, or something. Plus even though Ryzen is getting tons of design wins and is generally hailed as a solid architecture and lineup, it's a failure. Because. lolgunmaker - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
they are simply trying to avoid the frustration (and driver download server load) that occurs when the cards are emmediately sold out :)gunmaker - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
its clear you got paid to trash amd. especially considering the fact that amd releases drivers monthly, and launch windows are only to boost sales in the first place, and that amd is completely SOLD OUT at walmart , fries electronics and even online vendors. its about time that nvidia took a fall for thier intentionally OVERclocked( i mean the literal term) cards that fail well within three months of load.to be brutally honest, if you see a heavy and large bank of capacitors on anything accept a subwoofer? it means they are desperatly trying to make use of speed where they don't know watt to do with the voltage.
long story short, amds gpus can red line day and night but nvidias GARBAGE would be lucky to last 3 days gunmaker guardian aka geniusthemaster- legendary white hat.
Alexvrb - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
There is definitely a shortage of Radeon 570/580 cards (unless you count gougers selling them for double etc). Crypto currency strikes again... supply should shake loose again soon I hope.lefenzy - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Frontier edition? Ryzen 3, 5, and 7? What names will AMD think of next?mrvco - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Ryzen 9!jimjamjamie - Monday, June 26, 2017 - link
Since Intel is now shipping i9-branded chips, I wouldn't be surprised to see the next iteration of Zen with Ryzen 9 branding.Meteor2 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Why, that would be Epyc and Threadripper :). Slightly naff names imho but they don't really matter.gunmaker - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
how about deathadder x.1johnpombrio - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
AMD has two categories for professional graphics cards, Pro and FirePro. They are very different in architecture and use. AMD calls the Frontier Vega a workstation card along with its Polaris version of the WX series of cards. In this category, the Frontier Vega is twice as expensive as the next costliest card, the WX 7100.Vega=Titan
FirePro=Quadro
atlantico - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Aaaatchually (nasally and whiny ;P ) the FirePro series has been renamed Radeon Pro series. That's the series with the WX prefix.http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/worksta...
So it's Radeon (RX) for gaming, Radeon Pro (WX) for workstations and Vega FE for ummm Titan matching purposes.
mapesdhs - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
Ironic given how borked the modern Titan is compared to the original, and indeed the strong FP64 of the 580.Meteor2 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
So... has Anandtech produced an article explaining how AMD have sorted out their half-precision performance with Vega?Morawka - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
http://radeon.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/u...Morawka - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
wrong arch, my bad, i don't believe the whitepapers are out yetRyan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
We don't have any new information on that front, but AMD has already been rather up-front on half precision. They can run 2 FP16 ops in place of an FP32 op.http://www.anandtech.com/show/11002/the-amd-vega-g...
gunmaker - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
ive been screaming to get a hold of that hbm memeory, say what you want about sse4.1a and avx2, im gauranteeing that hbm will be 3 times faster than sse5 so those specs on the card are completely irrelevant. i can have 2000 high speed missiles on an OLDER graphics card and still hug 70.2 to 80.5 fps. amds nextcore is going to stomp the competition. permanently. maybe its about time they went closed source and started making microsoft and nvidia PAY for thier illigitimate cousin cards.Yojimbo - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
What do you mean by sorting it out? Did they previously support half precision?tuxfool - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Yes. Polaris supports half precision, though not at double rate.Yojimbo - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Thanks. So you mean that memory bandwidth usage is halved but compute throughput is the same compared with fp32?tuxfool - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Yes. Also IIRC registers are able to store two values fp16 valuesleelab - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
They are going for the professional data scientists and most likely crypto currency folks. AMD chips are preferred there versus NVIDIA. They routinely sell for over asking price. AMD releasing these chips before the consumer ones may be strategy on their part to sell these for a higher average selling price.Alexvrb - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Crypto currency crunching typically uses consumer GPUs. I imagine for the currencies where GPUs are still vital, that likely still holds true. More bang for the buck.gunmaker - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
for bitcoin mining its still more cost effective to purchase 3 amd saphire fury r390 and then use an amd based motherboard. after that you would want to multiplex using a usb c+firewire port to link the mother boards.Notmyusualid - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Are you out your mind? Nobody with a brain is setting up mining for BTC with GPUs now.Its ASICs, or don't waste your time. Its been that way since 2015.
tsarunev - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
only for Bitcoin, not cryptocurrencies in general. Ethereum, Zcash, Monero, etc. are all still great on AMD cards, and Nvidia is pretty competent with them too, and much better at a few of the smaller coins.Notmyusualid - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
@ tsarunevYes, my 12 Nvidia cards agree with you, but he did specifically refer to BTC.
Also, my Litecoin ASIC is also now not profitable. 54MH/s for 2200W (at the wall) leaves me -$4/day. Shame to see it stood there gathering dust. We were good friends.
tsarunev - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
ALSO! bitcoin gpu mining died sometime in 2013, with Litecoin ASICs being released in 2014 killing that too, Darkcoin filled a barely-profitable gap until 2015 when Ethereum launched, but eventually its growing DAG that has to be loaded into VRAM made it difficult, and then impossible to mine on cards with 2GB or less of VRAM. In 2016 Zcash launched bringing profitability back to a lot of older cards. I'm not sure when Monero launched but it is actually profitable on CPU and GPU, too, but it's the least profitable of the big 3 algos for AMD cards atm.Toon_Spiderman - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
I've been eagerly waiting fir VEGA through delay after delay for 13 months. Yesterday i picked up an OC gtx 1080 for $330 US. I can't wait for AMD any longer and given VEGA will certainly be more expensive than $330 for grx 1080 performance AMD will have to deliver in 2018 to 2019 with Navi for it to earn my $$$. Sorry AMD i gave you every opportunity but you're unreliable to your consumers time and time again. Be prepared next round.webdoctors - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
Wow, $330? Where? That's sub-1070 pricing...bigboxes - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
You're on crack.mapesdhs - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
"I can't wait for AMD any longer..."Ahh, first world problems. ;D
Notmyusualid - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
@ mapesdhsYes Sir, but certainly better than 3rd world problems.
:)
ItDesign - Tuesday, July 24, 2018 - link
try it here much cheaper <a href="https://www.avantadigital.com">https://www...ItDesign - Tuesday, July 24, 2018 - link
https://www.avantadigital.com