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http://fudzilla.com/news/graphics/41643-amd-vega-10-scores-24-tflops

One thing is very apparent. The GPU will have massively increased throughput, compared to previous iterations of GCN.

4096 GCN cores, would have to have 1.5 GHz core clocks to have that level of compute performance.

24 TFlops of half precision performance and 12 TFlops of single precision performance.

That is not going to be a cheap component...

MPt v2 (Mac Pro tube) is definitely waiting for Vega.

Two Zen CPU's and one Vega could be Viable...

2x95W + 1x180W = within Tube limits
 
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24 TFlops of half precision performance and 12 TFlops of single precision performance.

That is not going to be a cheap component...

MPt v2 (Mac Pro tube) is definitely waiting for Vega.

Two Zen CPU's and one Vega could be Viable...

2x95W + 1x180W = within Tube limits

2x95W + 1x180W + 4x12W = 418W

...and that doesn't account for fan, networking, T-Bolt, USB, ....
 
IMO. It will still be similar setup to todays. 140W Intel CPU, plus dual 125-130W GPUs.

I was theory crafting what is possible with 16 nm FF+ based on what Nvidia was able to achieve on this process.

They pretty much got that 70% reduction in power consumption, or 60% higher frequency, at 50% smaller density.

3840 CC chip from Nvidia has 476 mm2 die size. Lets compare this to 3072 CC's and 600 mm2.

Same TDP on both chips - 250W, however the clocks are on average 55% higher on GP102 chips. All of what they achieved was due to process itself.
GTX 1080 - 1.9 GHz boost clocks, at 200W average power consumption with 2560 CC's.
Tesla P4 - same GP104 chip, with 1000 MHz core clock, and... 75W TDP. A third, compared to 2816 CC chip from 28 nm generation: (GTX 980 Ti).

Now lets take this into what AMD can have. There are three ways to achieve the rumored 12 TFLOPs of compute power performance level.

3072 GCN core chip with 2 GHz core clock.
4096 GCN core chip with 1.5 GHz core clock.
6144 GCN core chip with 1 GHz core clock.

AMD touts that upcoming Vega architecture will have 3 times higher perf/watt compared to previous generation GPUs. If they count it from FPS in games - no problem at all, new technology in graphics, plus much improved throughput o the GPU, and much higher clocks will tell whole story.

So lets use simply Fiji as a reference here. 4096 GCN core chip on 28 nm process consumed on average 246W, with 280W peaks under load. Scaling it to 16 nm FF+ gives us around 120W on average under load, with 140W, at... 1.25 GHz core clocks. Whole process scales for up to 70% reduction. So it can be 50% reduction in power and 20% higher frequency at the same time. Here, however, we have 1.5 GHz core clocks. So how it will fare? Knowing past of AMD it will consume much more. 50-60W alone more. So we are looking at 1.5 GHz, 4096 GCN core chip with 185W of TDP.

Its hard to predict how it will behave. If AMD created more balanced architecture, with much higher throughput, we can expect breakthrough for them, similar to what was Maxwell for Nvidia. I know you will say that will make them behind Nvidia. I will not debate it until I will see the end results, however, I am highly skeptical it will make them behind Nvidia. AMD already had Maxwell-like increase in perf/watt, from just process shrink. Same thing as Nvidia with Pascal. They reused the Maxwell arch on 16 nm, called it Pascal, but added finally dynamic scheduling.

Why do I talk about Graphics throughput? There is absolutely no point for GPUs to have higher than 1 GHz core clocks if their graphics throughput is not very robust. Maxwell for Nvidia created big leap in throughput, and they used very high clocks for 28 nm process, for any GPUs(1.2 GHz was not uncommon). Pascal only increased this throughput, with even higher core clocks.

Now its AMD's turn. Im not very optimistic about achieving their 3 times higher perf/watt, if we compare directly the power consumption to compute output. On graphics: depends what they will change in their Graphics IPv9 compared to Polaris, Tonga and Fiji. Here they can be much, much closer to this.

If I have to say my opinion about how it will perform, and about the specs: 4096 GCN core chip with 1.5 GHz core clock, with 16 GB of HBM2 and 1 TB/s, and 96 ROPs, can be 20% faster than Pascal Titan X, and directly compete with Volta/GP100 reused in mainstream core.

The last bit. Is this the smaller or bigger Vega chip? There will be quite a big performance gap between RX 480 and potentially RX 490/RX Fury.

And one last bit. For Mac Pro the best thing would be if it would pack coherent fabric that unifies all of the components of the computer, for it to achieve highest possible efficiency/performance from the parts. If Mac Pro will use Vega GPUs, they will be extremely heavily bottlenecked by CPUs. Same thing that happens with Pascal Titan X.

Edit: It turns out, that Videocardz, have quite nice compilation of Vega rumors. http://videocardz.com/63700/exclusive-first-details-about-amd-vega10-and-vega20
Vega 10 - 225W TBP, most likely because of 8 pin connector only. So it can even fall in line with my personal expectations.
Vega 11 - smaller than 4096 GCN cores, bigger than 2304, so my sources were correct on this :).
 
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Probably the best would be: no new nMP this year, one socket 16-core Zen + Vega next year.
 
It will be interesting to see how Vega plays out. If its a 12 TFLOP part, it may have trouble competing with GP102, as the Titan X is already an 11 TFLOP part and Nvidia tends to get more "real world" performance per TFLOP. Since the Titan X is already a cut part, I could see Nvidia simply rebadging it as a GTX 1080 Ti if they really need to compete with Vega. They could also further cut it if they think they can still beat it.

The one thing I am curious about is price. Vega will likely be big and expensive given they HBM2 implementation. Will they be able to compete on cost since Nvidia seems to be less memory dependent and can get away with GDDR5/GDDR5X.

In terms of suitability for the mac pro, a GPU designed for 225 W is pretty high to fit into a 125 W envelope, but not crazy. That is not too far off from Tahiti. I think ideally Apple would like something bigger than Polaris 10 but smaller than Vega 10, but that GPU probably won't exist until Vega 11 comes out. Hopefully Apple isn't content to wait until mid to end of next year for a mac pro revision.
 
I'm not sure this is good news or not.
Cool to know about Vega, although Q1'17 is still far off, but we knew that already.
Will Vega 11 replace Polaris 10? So soon? Or will it be 490?
Big gap between 480 and Vega 10 it seems.
I believe Apple is waiting for Vega, and the nMP will be awesome.
I'm not sure regarding the CPU though. Xeon or Zen? Will Zen play nice with TB3? It's not just sticking a controller on some spare PCIe lanes.
[doublepost=1474394202][/doublepost]http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-vega-20-navi-7nm-finfet-globalfoundries/
[doublepost=1474394482][/doublepost]Polaris on the new iMac:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/41650-new-imac-will-be-a-Polaris
[doublepost=1474394753][/doublepost]https://www.techpowerup.com/226012/amd-vega-10-vega-20-and-vega-11-gpus-detailed
 
What if ZEN is delayed for consumers because Apple reserved the production up to February? It was supposed to be released next month according to last years sources...
 
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http://videocardz.com/63715/amd-vega-and-navi-roadmap

Two 8 GB HBM2 stacks. Pretty in line with what I was thinking in the context of small Vega.

Vega 10 is the bigger one, with 4096 GCN core, and two stacks of HBM2.
Vega 11 is the smaller one, with higher amount of GCN cores, than Polaris and smaller than 4096.

So this is pretty in line with what I have written some time ago.

There is another rumor that is floating around. There will be one more GPU released this year. I am still adamant that RX 490 as Small Vega can be released this year, with low availability, and wide availability in 1H 2017. However, there is a reason why AMD will not target small Vega against GTX 1080.

The performance gap of those GPUs is much higher in graphics. AMD will fit RX 480X2 between RX 480 and Vega to counter the GTX 1080. Vega is architecture that is supposed to be faster than GP102 chips. And flexible enough so two of those GPUs will be able to fit in 300W Thermal envelope(reminds of anything?).

We can extrapolate pretty much the specs of those GPUs right now. If Vega 10 with 4096 GCN cores is supposed to have 12 TFLOPs of compute power, than we are looking at 1.5 GHz core clocks. Each stack brings 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB/s. So the memory will consume at max. 16W of power from whole GPU thermal envelope(because 2 Gb memory consumes more power than 1 Gb parts). R9 Nano consumes under load 185W of power with four, 5W Memory stacks. So the GPU board consumes around 165W of power. Lets port it to 16 nm FF+. We are looking at 2048 bit memory controllers, so we save die are space(two 1024 bit controllers in the die area). The process is efficient enough that Nano at 16 nm FF+ would consume 70W of power directly ported 1:1 with everything from 28 nm process. Nvidia did this with Pascal(compare 2560 CC GPU Tesla P4 with GTX 980 Ti. P4 has 75W of TDP, GTX 980 Ti - 225W average power consumption. P4 is 1/3 of that GPU at similar core clock). So we have plenty of room to bring the big GPU to 225W of power and 1.5 GHz.

In this context interesting the most however is the small Vega, possibly with 48 CU's(3072 GCN cores). 1.5 GHz would bring the GPU to 9.2 TFLOPs levels. We are looking at 135-150W GPU here.
 
The Windows drivers are a bit junky, I cannot select 4K@60Hz, and the custom resolution page besides having serious input issues is nothing like SwitchResX, and it also does not seem to accept a pixel clock higher than 400MHz, when 540MHz is fine on the Mac.
 
New Polaris drivers in 10.12.1

But I would not risk using an RX480 in a cMP because Apple would not code these drivers with desktop GPUs in mind, especially one that has a power surge issue. The 460/470 is a safer risk.
 
New Polaris drivers in 10.12.1

But I would not risk using an RX480 in a cMP because Apple would not code these drivers with desktop GPUs in mind, especially one that has a power surge issue. The 460/470 is a safer risk.
Why do these power surges happen?

I think when I reattached the eGPU to my PC this was causing the display to flicker and the computer to crash after I removed the drivers (fans would start spinning).

I had to unplug the eGPU after the installer detected the card to be able to upgrade.
 
New Polaris drivers in 10.12.1

But I would not risk using an RX480 in a cMP because Apple would not code these drivers with desktop GPUs in mind, especially one that has a power surge issue. The 460/470 is a safer risk.

This 10.12.1 Beta removed the Baffin string in AMDRadeon4000.kext. No Polaris PCI IDs found in this kext.

The Baffin personality is now in a new kext by themselves, AMDRadeon4100.kext which contains the Polaris PCI IDs. RX 480 is not crashing in OpenGL apps anymore.
 
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This 10.12.1 Beta removed the Baffin string in AMDRadeon4000.kext. No Polaris PCI IDs found in this kext.

The Baffin personality is now in a new kext by themselves, AMDRadeon4100.kext which contains the Polaris PCI IDs. RX 480 is not crashing in OpenGL apps anymore.

How does 480 compare to 470 benchmark wise? Are they virtually the same as each other in Open Gl?
 
RX 470 on the left, RX 480 on the right.

RX470-Valley.png RX480-Valley.png

RX470-Heaven.png RX480-Heaven.png
 
I rate my RX460 eGPU experiment a FAIL (on the Mac).

The latest is that OpenGL gets disabled.

I will try again when there are new drivers.
 
This 10.12.1 Beta removed the Baffin string in AMDRadeon4000.kext. No Polaris PCI IDs found in this kext.

The Baffin personality is now in a new kext by themselves, AMDRadeon4100.kext which contains the Polaris PCI IDs. RX 480 is not crashing in OpenGL apps anymore.

I bet we see the RX480 or some derivative of it in an iMac within the next month or so.
 
I bet we see the RX480 or some derivative of it in an iMac within the next month or so.
This is VERY probable. If there are three options, one Polaris 11 (full 75W) and two Polaris 10 variants (110-125W). No more older ones, because of DP1.3/1.4.

If Apple delivers iMac (Pro) with Vega 10 Pro with 8GB HMB2, Apple can take my money.
 
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