AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Launches Today, Initial Results A Bit Of A Let Down

[boffo]

Intel adds 128 MB L4 for some Broadwell (DDR3)/Skylake(DDR4) CPUs which are pretty fast (at least on Windows) compared to AMD APUs. Also the Xbox One CPU already uses 32 MB eSRAM. Using HBM for that will make AMD more competitive. Btw. Intel already plans to increase L4 to 256 MB for Kaby Lake (still 14 nm, 2016).

And the Playstation 4 uses GDDR5 as the memory for the GPU and CPU. Definitely AMD have some experience in using GPU ram for the CPU.

[dungeon]

Yeah other long standing idea is like that on Playstation 4, just put fastest available at the time...

Idea to drop user expandible RAM, where all memory is HBM let say. So you want a more RAM, just buy a APU with more RAM.

Why is not, mostly just because of the price at the time and not enough capacity for all PC users to be happy Those are never happy "i wanna edit my 16K videos"

Well that might easely fly in embeded sector, but PCs are all about expandibility Can i change this - you can, can i overclock this and that - you can, can i add this - why not, etc... and all that is cheap - yes... no more questions... i will buy it

Well things are changed in PC market with APUs puting everything in it... PC users already buy one product only because this codec is decoded, on this one but not on this one... whole new APU just because of that So drop that expandible RAM idea - please do

[boffo]

Yeah other long standing idea is like that on Playstation 4, just put fastest available at the time...

Idea to drop user expandible RAM, where all memory is HBM let say. So you want a more RAM, just buy a APU with more RAM.

Why is not, mostly just because of the price at the time and not enough capacity for all PC users to be happy Those are never happy "i wanna edit my 16K videos"

Yeah, but those people wouldn't buy an APU. Most people don't upgrade the ram. And some producers solder the Ram on the motherboard.
It all depends of when the HMB fabs will be mature.

[dungeon]

Yeah, but those people wouldn't buy an APU. Most people don't upgrade the ram. And some producers solder the Ram on the motherboard.

Yes i know PCs are traditionaly RAM playground, this way or another... what i said is to stop that tradition and just put RAM on APU.

[Kano]

HBM seems to be more expensive than GDDR5 and you can not upgrade it. But it could be used as cache even if relatively small. The PS4 has soldered GDDR5 thats something you might be able to use with laptops/all-in-one systems, the question is if Sony has exclusive rights for this design. I am sure MS would have liked that as well.

[boffo]

HBM seems to be more expensive than GDDR5 and you can not upgrade it. But it could be used as cache even if relatively small. The PS4 has soldered GDDR5 thats something you might be able to use with laptops/all-in-one systems, the question is if Sony has exclusive rights for this design. I am sure MS would have liked that as well.

The radeon Fury is a low production volume card, this is useful to AMD and the HBM partners to improve the fabs and lower the cost of the memory. A similar strategy has been used before like the Radeon HD 4770. It was the first 40 nm card, the others 4000 HD series were 55 nm.
Sony has the rights for that design.
I don't think HBM would be like L4, because of the design, it's a stacked memory+interposer. It's an order of magnitude more than the intel L4. Plus everything is going in a chip to reduce the power consumption.

[dungeon]

The radeon Fury is a low production volume card, this is useful to AMD and the HBM partners to improve the fabs and lower the cost of the memory. A similar strategy has been used before like the Radeon HD 4770. It was the first 40 nm card, the others 4000 HD series were 55 nm.

I expected Radeon 4870 would be better comparison here (4770 was introduced 9 months after 4870), because that was first time any company shiped product with GDDR5... same now with Fury X and HBM

[boffo]

I expected Radeon 4870 would be better comparison here (4770 was introduced 9 months after 4870), because that was first time any company shiped product with GDDR5... same now with Fury X and HBM

The logic is the same. It's an economy of scale problem. Just look at the cost of a solar cell Kw/$, the technology are the same since the 70s, but look at the cost.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Price_history_of_silicon_PV_cells_since_1977.svg/2000px-Price_history_of_silicon_PV_cells_since_1977.svg.png

Look at the cost in the 70s vs today. I speak of the solar cells because I'm an electrical engineer.

[tiwake]

they also use S3TC instead of ASTC this makes all these tests invalid in my point of view.

the test is only valid if the furyX use ASTC and the other cards use only S3TC (because they only can perform S3TC by hardware)...

otherwise we do not get the result of the capabilities of the FuryX hardware we only get the result of using wrong and obsolet technique on the furyX card.

Is this a feature the game or game engine has to enable/support? If its compression wouldn't the hardware/driver automatically "just do it"?

[chithanh]

About the upgradeability: AMD has built NUMA systems for a while now, and some of you may remember the RS780 boards with sideport memory. I don't think it is an unsolveable problem to have some fixed amount of HBM on the interposer, and allowing the user to install extra memory in DDR4 slots.

Plus, an increasing number of systems (ultrabooks, tablets, HDMI stick PCs, Apple's current Mac Mini, etc.) have soldered non-upgradeable RAM anyway.