AMD Zen chips to debut on 17th January: Chinese mobo maker

[jigger]

Technology wise AMD are ahead of Nvidia.

No, they're not. AMD literally doesn't have anything at the high end, at all. nVidia punted that bar so far down the road that AMD will have to pull a rabbit out of their hat to catch up.

AMD haven't released the higher end of it's next generation. We know how strong the last generation was and how well those cards are holding up. Polaris is giving Pascal a though enough time on the immature 14nm process and giving away a lot of clockspeed. AMD are clearly ahead of Nvidia technologically. Nvidia haven't even got Asynchronous compute capability on on chips yet and still and still need to use an expensive off chip solution to implement VVR.

[aidanjt]

AMD haven't released the higher end of it's next generation.

Yeah, that's kinda the problem.

We know how strong the last generation was and how well those cards are holding up.

Not very, even on the last generation, AMD's best offerings lagged behind nVidia's. All AMD had was pitching their offerings on the cheap. Pascal has since catapulted them ahead way way more.

Polaris is giving Pascal a though enough time on the immature 14nm process and giving away a lot of clockspeed.

No, it isn't. Polaris doesn't scale, at all, it ends where Pascal practically begins.

Nvidia haven't even got Asynchronous compute capability on on chips yet

And? It's not like there's much of any software taking advantage of async compute yet. And it hasn't really done anything to keep AMD on par with nVidia even on synthetic benching, has it? All the supercomputers are gobbling up nVidia cards, despite the lack of async compute.

and still and still need to use an expensive off chip solution to implement VVR.

Who cares? It works, and works well. nVidia is killing it in the VR space, such as it is. Sometimes an ASIC solution is the best solution, especially for a technology that hasn't been established as being able to outlive the fad phase.

So...

AMD are clearly ahead of Nvidia technologically.

I think we've firmly established that this statement is false.

[jigger]

Not until Nvdia fix those problems and lower prices. Nvidia are simply getting murdered on the technology front. Granted AMD's move to gloflo hasn't been great, but we are seeing improvements in the process.

[SiliconAudio]

Technology wise AMD are ahead of Nvidia. The question is the release timings and move to gloflo. Polaris seems to have been a 14nm pipe cleaner for AMD and is still very competitive with Pascal, offering a lot more in many areas that Nvidia should have adressed.

How do you figure that? From all that I've seen, Nvidia's 16nm parts are more power efficient than AMD's 14nm parts and generally out-perform them dollar for dollar in the mid-range. Sure, the nVidia parts are expensive at the high end, but only because they are currently unchallenged.

[IPBA]

Really looking forward to AMD Zen. It has been way too long of a wait for Zen. Probably will be my next upgrade providing the Zen chips compete with Intel equivalents.

[aidanjt]

Really looking forward to AMD Zen. It has been way too long of a wait for Zen. Probably will be my next upgrade providing the Zen chips compete with Intel equivalents.

Likewise. Especially if Vega can come up with the goods on 1440p. I'd really like to have an adaptive sync display, but I really don't want to give nVidia £100 just for a VESA scaler that only stands out by one single feature, even if it's a particularly good adaptive sync implementation.

[jigger]

Technology wise AMD are ahead of Nvidia. The question is the release timings and move to gloflo. Polaris seems to have been a 14nm pipe cleaner for AMD and is still very competitive with Pascal, offering a lot more in many areas that Nvidia should have adressed.

How do you figure that? From all that I've seen, Nvidia's 16nm parts are more power efficient than AMD's 14nm parts and generally out-perform them dollar for dollar in the mid-range. Sure, the nVidia parts are expensive at the high end, but only because they are currently unchallenged.

Because AMD are ahead of Nvidia in just about everything apart from clock speed. Scale an RX480 to a GTX1080's clock speed and you'd have £230 cards giving everything Nvidia have a very hard time.

AMD have built in the Freesync True Audio and Asynchronous Compute engines while Nvida lack those. How power efficient and expensive would Nvidia be if the gsync module was added the the graphics cards. Plus 50 watts and another £200?

Sorry but Nvidia are behind AMD. Intel and AMD APU's have killed of most of Nvidia graphics card ranges in a couple of years. If Nvidia had the better technology that simply wouldn't have happened. AMD have 8 core 200~ watt APU's with 6-7 Tflops of graphics power in production.

[SiliconAudio]

Technology wise AMD are ahead of Nvidia. The question is the release timings and move to gloflo. Polaris seems to have been a 14nm pipe cleaner for AMD and is still very competitive with Pascal, offering a lot more in many areas that Nvidia should have adressed.

How do you figure that? From all that I've seen, Nvidia's 16nm parts are more power efficient than AMD's 14nm parts and generally out-perform them dollar for dollar in the mid-range. Sure, the nVidia parts are expensive at the high end, but only because they are currently unchallenged.

Because AMD are ahead of Nvidia in just about everything apart from clock speed. Scale an RX480 to a GTX1080's clock speed and you'd have £230 cards giving everything Nvidia have a very hard time.

AMD have built in the Freesync True Audio and Asynchronous Compute engines while Nvida lack those. How power efficient and expensive would Nvidia be if the gsync module was added the the graphics cards. Plus 50 watts and another £200?

Sorry but Nvidia are behind AMD. Intel and AMD APU's have killed of most of Nvidia graphics card ranges in a couple of years. If Nvidia had the better technology that simply wouldn't have happened. AMD have 8 core 200~ watt APU's with 6-7 Tflops of graphics power in production.

Your opinion runs contrary to basically every benchmark and published opinion out there.

I recently purchased two video cards: An RX470 for me and a 1060 for my son. Prices were almost identical and I can tell you the 1060 kicks the 470's butt in everything we've tried to date. On top of that, the 1060 draws much less power than the 470. nVidia have their own version of FreeSync, called G-Sync - a competing standard, but pretty much the same thing.

Intel's APUs have rubbish video performance compared to both AMD and nVidia. The Iris has improved things a little, but they still don't rate. I'm baffled as to where you get your information from.

[scaryjim]

DISCLAIMER: I'm not arguing for AMD having better technology than nvidia here. That's a longer conversation than this, as both have wins depending on what you're looking at. But there's a few things in your reply that simply don't stack up:

... I recently purchased two video cards: An RX470 for me and a 1060 for my son. Prices were almost identical and I can tell you the 1060 kicks the 470's butt in everything we've tried to date. On top of that, the 1060 draws much less power than the 470.

I assume that's a 3GB GTX 1060? If not you were ripped off for the RX 470 And on that basis I also assume you play no Vulkan or DX12 games - on those the RX 470 and GTX 1060 3GB are about even, with wins for both sides depending on game. In DX 11 and Open GL nvidia are faster, but those are older technologies - AMD appear to currently have the edge in new APIs. Hexus' reviews suggest the power difference is all of ~ 10W at load between those cards - less than 10% of the total PC power draw. Hardly "much less", IMNSHO...

... nVidia have their own version of FreeSync, called G-Sync - a competing standard, but pretty much the same thing. ...

"standard" is a tricky word here. AMD's Freesync uses a standard - VESA Adaptive Sync - that is therefore royalty free and available openly for everyone to use if they want to. It also adds no extra cost to the monitor - you can get freesync monitors for £100. G-Sync, on the other hand, is not a standard, nor based on one. It's a proprietary nvidia technology, so the only way to use it is to pay nvidia. It also requires additional hardware; between those it adds a significant cost - usually around £100 for equivalent monitors from the same manufacturer. So I'd hardly call it "pretty much the same thing": it's free open standards vs expensive proprietary technology...

... Intel's APUs have rubbish video performance compared to both AMD and nVidia. The Iris has improved things a little, but they still don't rate. I'm baffled as to where you get your information from.

Iris is as fast as AMD's top end APUs, which are as fast as entry/mainstream graphics cards (the A10 7850k graphics were faster than a DDR3 R7 250). And even Intel's ordinary HD graphics, which are indeed well behind Iris and A10 in terms of high-end gaming performance, are now more than adequate for the vast majority of people. Since around Sandy Bridge Intel HD has been capable of low-quality gaming and casual gaming (e.g. XCOM is very playable on a Sandy Bridge mobile i5 at low quality). There used to be a huge volume market for low end GPUs, but that's vanished over the last 5 years - mostly down to Intel's huge improvement in IGPs. Just because you wouldn't use one, doesn't mean it's rubbish. If it was genuinely rubbish AMD and nvidia would still be selling huge volumes of £50 graphics cards. They're not.

As I say, I'm not trying to argue that AMD are technologically ahead of nvidia; there are gives and takes depending on which technology you're looking at. nvidia are currently more power efficient, and their designs plus the process they're working on scale much better with clock speed. They also have a significant advantage in raw gaming performance. But part of the way they've done that is to move a lot of functions into software, whereas AMD have kept them in hardware. That means that for many compute workloads AMD cards are now better, and is part of the reason they also show much better Vulkan and DX12 performance. If you're a huge Doom fan, for instance, buy AMD. No question. If you're investing for the long term - and DX12/Vulkan is becoming more prevalent - AMD is probably also a better bet; not only are their current generation cards supporting Vulkan/DX12 better, but they've got a much better track record for maintaining performance optimisation of drivers in the long term (ask CAT ).

And there is one area where AMD are unquestionably better than nvidia - openness. As I've already mentioned, freesync is a royalty-free implementation of an open standard, whilst g-sync is proprietary (and therefore expensive). Compute is another one: AMD has great OpenCL support and is making lots of tools freely available, whilst nvidia is still focussing on its proprietary CUDA.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Are you talking about the GTX1060 3GB??

I will add these old posts here then.

There are no cards with a single GPU faster than a GTX1060 3GB which have less memory - in ROTR,the RX470 and GTX970 have better minimums and more consistant frametimes in the game and there are a few other example where you are starting to see the same. The same in games like Hitman and the latest Deus Ex. In fact DF said to just buy the 6GB version as they were not sure if 3GB would be enough.

Then look at Forza Horizon 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b7DuIIzOuE

The same goes with the R9 290 against the GTX780TI and so on. In fact the 8800GT 256MB is a great example of a card having issues within a year.

The GTX1060 3GB might great if you play a lot of WoW or something like that,but I think in another year it is going to have worse performance degradation than the RX470 overall in newer games.

The GTX1060 3GB is struggling. In all those situations the 6GB is faster and the RX470 is faster and the GTX970 is not slower.

You need at least 4GB of VRAM with a modern card with a decent speed core.

The 3GB looks OK in isolation for those just comparing a slower card to it,ie,a GTX960 or something but when compared to its brethren it shows some massive performance gaps.

Edit!!

It gets better,in some of those links the minimums are much lower for the 3GB version too. Lets look at ROTR again:

http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2016...4e69ef49d5.png







That shows the GTX1060 3GB is being VRAM saturated.

In a NV sponsored game the RX470 4GB have better minimums. It is seen with other reviews.

ROTR,Hitman,AC:U,Forza,Deus Ex:Mankind Divided and so on are some of the most graphical taxing games this year and the GTX1060 6GB does far better than 10% over the 3GB version and in many of those games the RX470 4GB and GTX970 4GB with slower cores are holding their own.

Plus plenty of people mod games too - a number of the mod creators advise over 3GB of VRAM for the highest quality texture mods too.

3GB is not enough if you want a card which lasts on a core as fast as that in a GTX1060,you need at least 4GB for longevity in a card.

This is why ignored all the people who said 2GB was fine on a GTX960/R9 380 since 4GB was OTT. Yeah,right:

https://www.computerbase.de/2015-12/...380-vram-test/

The 2GB versions are doing much worse in many games in terms of frametimes and even minimums.

So if that is with a slower set of cards,what happens with faster cards,as you want to turn even more settings up?

As the DigitalFoundry said - get a GTX1060 6GB.

Second Edit!!

Some more games having abnormal performance drops for the 3GB version:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1263-...-4-benchmarks/



Trying to compare to slower cards is not relevant as the GTX1060 3GB is a fast core more like a GTX970 or RX480. So compared to its competitors things start get worrying.

Also,another game:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-09/...-radeon-rx-480

https://pics.computerbase.de/7/4/5/5...1473672149.png

Latest Deus Ex:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-09/...force-gtx-1060



Large frametime spikes.









If you look at the benchmarks for the 4GB cards in those games(with fast enough cores) they tend to do relatively better.

Forza Horizon 3 seems to do much worse on the GTX1060 3GB too.


All of these issues you see are down to the fact the GTX1060 3GB has less VRAM and it has a fast core.

Sure a GTX1060 3GB is a better choice than a GTX1050TI 4GB as core speed is important,but the problem is the GTX1060 6GB can be had for as low as £30 more on special offer and the RX470 4GB is cheaper on offer too.

It will be great for certain games like WoW like Planetside 2 which are not VRAM heavy AFAIK but at the same time more and more newer graphical intensive titles are using more VRAM. It is a decent card - but the problem its in a very crowded market.

In isolation,ie,there was no RX470 4GB,no RX480 4GB or even no price reduced GTX970 4GB cards,it would look impressive in its own right.

However,it isn't so you can't just ignore the cards around it and those just above it.

Anyway,we are going around in circles here,so will leave it at that.

If the chap bought a RX470 for the same price as a GTX1060 6GB he overpaid for the former,or got a good deal for the latter.

GTX1060 6GB>>>>RX470 4GB for me.

If its a GTX1060 3GB,then meh - most people I know use cards for at least two years.

I have not even bothered looking more recently,but last time I checked there are quite a few newer games where the RX470 and indeed the GTX970 are doing better than the GTX1060 3GB especially when it comes to minimums and frametimes. These are some of the most intensive games out there. A GTX970 can even beat a GTX1060 3GB,so meh.

The 8800GT 256MB defenders were the same,saying it was 10x better than the HD3870 512MB and the 8800GT 512MB was not worth the extra dosh. Fast forward a few months and it was getting thrashed by the 9600GT 512MB(which was the same generation in terms of uarch and had nearly half the CUDA cores) and the HD3870 512MB and they all were suddenly quiet. The 8800GT 512MB was still top of the pile.

Like I said Digital Foundry said to get the 6GB model. Literally half the review sites out there have concerns about the 3GB model.

I would quite happily get a GTX1060 6GB over my GTX960,not a GTX1060 3GB. If you don't want an AMD card,I still recommend you get the GTX1060 6GB. It will be worth more secondhand in two years,and will give you a more consistent user experience. Save up for a month extra!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anyway,this is a Zen article,how did we get onto graphics cards?? I think we need to stay on topic here.

[aidanjt]

Anyway,this is a Zen article,how did we get onto graphics cards?? I think we need to stay on topic here.

With this innocent comment:

I hope Zen and Vega can pull AMD back into competition with Intel and nVidia. They've been becoming more and more naughty of late.

And it all kinda spiralled out of control from there.

My bad.