Question 'Ampere'/Next-gen gaming uarch speculation thread

[Ottonomous]

How much is the Samsung 7nm EUV process expected to provide in terms of gains?
How will the RTX components be scaled/developed?
Any major architectural enhancements expected?
Will VRAM be bumped to 16/12/12 for the top three?
Will there be further fragmentation in the lineup? (Keeping turing at cheaper prices, while offering 'beefed up RTX' options at the top?)
Will the top card be capable of >4K60, at least 90?
Would Nvidia ever consider an HBM implementation in the gaming lineup?
Will Nvidia introduce new proprietary technologies again?

Sorry if imprudent/uncalled for, just interested in the forum member's thoughts.

 

[eek2121]

Many people were concerned that the 3080 series and above would be bottlenecking PCIe 3.0. Initial tests are looking like a ~1% difference from PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 4.0, so not a major issue on the GPU side just yet.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 PCI-Express Scaling

NVIDIA Ampere finally brings PCI-Express 4.0 support to the high-end graphics market. The new interface promises twice the bandwidth of PCI-Express 3.0. We've setup an AMD Ryzen 3900XT system to test how various PCIe generations and lane widths affect gaming performance.

www.techpowerup.com

The real bottlenecks will happen once games begin to utilize DirectStorage.

 

[sze5003]

I'm just laughing at the ms flight 2020 benchmarks. So many bottlenecks it looks like. If 3080 had more ram I'd be perfectly happy to upgrade to it for 3440*1440p but I'm not convinced yet.

 

[eek2121]

I look forward to the first round of units catching fire.

I expect that “jebaited” comment an AMD rep made wasn’t about price, but rather about NVIDIA’s jacked up power consumption.

 

[Zstream]

I'm just laughing at the ms flight 2020 benchmarks. So many bottlenecks it looks like. If 3080 had more ram I'd be perfectly happy to upgrade to it for 3440*1440p but I'm not convinced yet.

Yeah, I wouldn't buy this for 4k but rather 1440p. To each his own I guess. The next generation or two will be perfect for 4k.

 

[blckgrffn]

JHH lies aside, I'm not terribly convinced I should spend the money on a 3080 now. I'd find it remarkable if AMD somehow nudged up along all the models including the 3090, for a slightly lower price and less power usage, allowing room for OC or higher performing models later on.

Of course it's AMD so they'll find a way to mess this up.


Two schools of thought here.

1. Doesn't AMD software have a power option for usage? I know Nvidia control panel's got a selector for power use during various states. I have mine set on bare minimum for everything. Performance is noticeable, unfortunately.

2. In regard to Supers, one would hope, maybe pray, that by the time Supers come along, Samsung 8N will have matured leading to lower clocks, or the Supers may be delivered on a more efficient and mature node. IDK.

Yeah, they do, but it gets cleared out with new drivers frequently and seems to stick for quite some time then it doesn't.

I had great luck with MSI Afterburner on my 1080ti but I despise having third party software like that (it's a personal thing, I want it clean, you can have a different preference).

My 290x has a switch for UEFI or Legacy BIOS. I want a switch for "the sane power usage/performance settings" to set and forget. Like I said, there are probably tens of people clamoring for this feature.

 

[Ajay]

JHH lies aside, I'm not terribly convinced I should spend the money on a 3080 now. I'd find it remarkable if AMD somehow nudged up along all the models including the 3090, for a slightly lower price and less power usage, allowing room for OC or higher performing models later on.

Of course it's AMD so they'll find a way to mess this up.

OT, but I really hope AMD has a good launch this time around. Given the pretty good hardware on the 5700XT, seems like the RDNA2 GPUs should be really solid - so long as the launch drivers don't suck.

 

[blckgrffn]

OT, but I really hope AMD has a good launch this time around. Given the pretty good hardware on the 5700XT, seems like the RDNA2 GPUs should be really solid - so long as the launch drivers don't suck.

And when would AMD launch drivers suck?

Oh right, every new architecture.

I am really hoping that with RDNA v1 being "mature" and the fact that RDNA v2 has to have been live for a while in Series X/Series S units at this point it's more like when Hawaii launched and stuff just kept working fine.

 

[A///]

I expect that “jebaited” comment an AMD rep made wasn’t about price, but rather about NVIDIA’s jacked up power consumption.

Makes sense. AMD has been out of the budget game for a while. I don't expect prices not to climb in the coming years until Intel provides a really competitive product. At this point, AMD have had JHH's ass handed to them on a silver platter, and something tells me they knew a long time ago how crappy this node was.

 

[A///]

Yeah, they do, but it gets cleared out with new drivers frequently and seems to stick for quite some time then it doesn't.

I had great luck with MSI Afterburner on my 1080ti but I despise having third party software like that (it's a personal thing, I want it clean, you can have a different preference).

My 290x has a switch for UEFI or Legacy BIOS. I want a switch for "the sane power usage/performance settings" to set and forget. Like I said, there are probably tens of people clamoring for this feature.

What does that switch do exactly? The NVidia control panel has this drop down for power usage. Kind of like the power plan on Windows. It works, but it's not the best. I think MSIAB extends this featureset?

AMD Drivers for the RX5000 still aren't great, but I've heard rumors of AMD hiring more people for RTG and other stuff. Hopefully I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I think I'm the only one, and its not even with Nvidia that I'm disappointed, but apparently no one is even planning on using that USB-C VR headset connector? That's quite disappointing.

I'm just laughing at the ms flight 2020 benchmarks. So many bottlenecks it looks like. If 3080 had more ram I'd be perfectly happy to upgrade to it for 3440*1440p but I'm not convinced yet.

I really am baffled at that, and just cannot figure out why we aren't seeing at least 12 (but 16/18 would be much nicer as well). Even if it were $50 more. I'd actually possibly consider it. Seems like at most I'd consider the rumored 3070Ti with 16GB, since no way I'd get the 3090.

Yeah, they do, but it gets cleared out with new drivers frequently and seems to stick for quite some time then it doesn't.

I had great luck with MSI Afterburner on my 1080ti but I despise having third party software like that (it's a personal thing, I want it clean, you can have a different preference).

My 290x has a switch for UEFI or Legacy BIOS. I want a switch for "the sane power usage/performance settings" to set and forget. Like I said, there are probably tens of people clamoring for this feature.

I say bring back the Turbo button!

 

[jpiniero]

I think I'm the only one, and its not even with Nvidia that I'm disappointed, but apparently no one is even planning on using that USB-C VR headset connector? That's quite disappointing.

Isn't it like completely dead?

 

[sze5003]

I think I'm the only one, and its not even with Nvidia that I'm disappointed, but apparently no one is even planning on using that USB-C VR headset connector? That's quite disappointing.



I really am baffled at that, and just cannot figure out why we aren't seeing at least 12 (but 16/18 would be much nicer as well). Even if it were $50 more. I'd actually possibly consider it. Seems like at most I'd consider the rumored 3070Ti with 16GB, since no way I'd get the 3090.



I say bring back the Turbo button!

You're not the only one. I was also wondering why the usb C went away. The Reverb G2 VR headset which I plan on upgrading to next, uses usb C for power now instead of usb 2/3.0. Luckily I do have a usb C port on my Mobo I can try to use.

For me, 3090 is the only option since I'm not willing to wait 6 months or more for the in between card. I know for sure there will be one with the gap from 3080 to 3090. They do this on purpose to get the highest sales possible before coming out with something that's close to a 3090 for less money.

 

[blckgrffn]

What does that switch do exactly? The NVidia control panel has this drop down for power usage. Kind of like the power plan on Windows. It works, but it's not the best. I think MSIAB extends this featureset?

AMD Drivers for the RX5000 still aren't great, but I've heard rumors of AMD hiring more people for RTG and other stuff. Hopefully I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong.

Back in the day, right around the turn of the aughts to the teens, when we moved from BIOS to UEFI (and Windows 8!) and that switch is for max compatibility so if you were running Win 7 on old hardware it would work fine, and if you wanted max UEFI comparability (fast boot and stuff?) you put it in the other position. I believe this simply loaded a different firmware on the card itself on boot. I know it had to be set to UEFI for my UEFI board or I didn't get video out.

This would be like what AMD did for the 5600xt, but I want to choose to stay on quiet/max perf per watt or max performance. Flip switch, be done.

The power limiter in the AMD Radeon Drivers works fine, but based on other tweaks it can clear out on reboot. Maybe it's changed, but I've stepped away from demanding gaming (SC2 with my son doesn't really ramp up the card anyway) so I haven't looked at it again. I'd say outside this, I've been really happy with how solid the drivers have gotten.

I will say that it really cheesed me to have to create an account to get into the advanced settings on the nvidia control panel on my daughters school PC, rocking a GTX 950 for all those Google Meets.

Maybe we can get the switch and bring back the USB-C video outputs all at the same time! It will please hundreds or more!

 

[blckgrffn]

JHH lies aside, I'm not terribly convinced I should spend the money on a 3080 now.

2. In regard to Supers, one would hope, maybe pray, that by the time Supers come along, Samsung 8N will have matured leading to lower clocks, or the Supers may be delivered on a more efficient and mature node. IDK.

Frankly, with the TDPs and chips they’ve launched with here, how can they possibly get anything better without a really helpful respin or making the Supers @ TSMC or SS 7 EUV? I know this isn’t trivial but these existing cards are huge, clocked to the max and making use of most of the die.

The 3090 will be “faster” but there seems only a slim line between the 3080 and 3090 outside of frame buffer, and very little headroom at all for 3090 Super or Ti.

I am choosing to be optimistic and based on what nvidia knows about RDNA2 they needed this approach as an opening salvo.

 

[A///]

Frankly, with the TDPs and chips they’ve launched with here, how can they possibly get anything better without a really helpful respin or making the Supers @ TSMC or SS 7 EUV? I know this isn’t trivial but these existing cards are huge, clocked to the max and making use of most of the die.

The 3090 will be “faster” but there seems only a slim line between the 3080 and 3090 outside of frame buffer, and very little headroom at all for 3090 Super or Ti.

I am choosing to be optimistic and based on what nvidia knows about RDNA2 they needed this approach as an opening salvo.

AMD has 20K 300mm wafers booked on 5nm for 2021. Likely for Epyc. The only way I see them, NVidia, moving to a better process is either 7nm clears up at TSMC, which it won't, or Samsung makes improvements on the 8N or their 7nm matures enough and shows excellent yields and performance.

Earlier hopes of Hopper coming alone in 2021 were dashed as everyone figured both AMD and Nvidia would play cat and mouse again like years ago. Hopper may be a straight up paper launch in very late '21.

 

[A///]

Back in the day, right around the turn of the aughts to the teens, when we moved from BIOS to UEFI (and Windows 8!) and that switch is for max compatibility so if you were running Win 7 on old hardware it would work fine, and if you wanted max UEFI comparability (fast boot and stuff?) you put it in the other position. I believe this simply loaded a different firmware on the card itself on boot. I know it had to be set to UEFI for my UEFI board or I didn't get video out.

This would be like what AMD did for the 5600xt, but I want to choose to stay on quiet/max perf per watt or max performance. Flip switch, be done.

The power limiter in the AMD Radeon Drivers works fine, but based on other tweaks it can clear out on reboot. Maybe it's changed, but I've stepped away from demanding gaming (SC2 with my son doesn't really ramp up the card anyway) so I haven't looked at it again. I'd say outside this, I've been really happy with how solid the drivers have gotten.

I will say that it really cheesed me to have to create an account to get into the advanced settings on the nvidia control panel on my daughters school PC, rocking a GTX 950 for all those Google Meets.

Maybe we can get the switch and bring back the USB-C video outputs all at the same time! It will please hundreds or more!

Yeah. My BIOS has UEFI but I have it setup on legacy boot because at the time I couldn't tell a discernible difference in boot times, but I was on Windows 7. For some reason I'd got it in my head earlier or was it last night you were talking about dual vBIOS video cards, which make sense if you don't want to fiddle with various performance settings all the time. Though I guess profiles would work.

 

[MrTeal]

For the love of god, what on earth is jebaited, and why has it gone from 0 to being in every third post here in the last month?

 

[blckgrffn]

I was pretty sure that nvidia has Ampere shipping from TSMC in the form of other "professional" products.

I just spent way too long comparing A100 and GA102 on wikipedia. The 400W GA100 leads me to at least believe that if nvidia showed up with truckloads of money there could be some Ti/Super versions of Ampere to be had. Maybe.

I can't figure out if a A100 would even be a better consumer GPU than the GA102 at this point, there appears to be a huge difference in CUDA cores between the two of them.

 

[Aikouka]

For the love of god, what on earth is jebaited, and why has it gone from 0 to being in every third post here in the last month?

It's a meme that started on Twtich.tv based upon the Twitch emote "Jebaited". It's about the equivalent of saying "Hah! Got'cha!"

 

[blckgrffn]

Yeah. My BIOS has UEFI but I have it setup on legacy boot because at the time I couldn't tell a discernible difference in boot times, but I was on Windows 7. For some reason I'd got it in my head earlier or was it last night you were talking about dual vBIOS video cards, which make sense if you don't want to fiddle with various performance settings all the time. Though I guess profiles would work.

What you were envisioning was what I was wishing would happen IRL. As other's have said, the Turbo button reborn. So that I could un-press it.

 

[A///]

What you were envisioning was what I was wishing would happen IRL. As other's have said, the Turbo button reborn. So that I could un-press it.

It exists on EVGA's 10 series. Dual BIOS and Dual BIOS with flashback or even flashback protect are extra costs that add up. I agree these should be standard, but AIBs always cut corners somehow.

The high cost of a good X570 or even the average sales price of a B550 board should ensure decent feature parity but it seems to be an afterthought. I'm guessing in the coming years AMD will dictate what AIBs can and cannot due, much like Intel. I don't see Intel returning from their "budget" stance which they've clawed their way to anytime soon, even with their impending lackluster hardware stack.

I do expect 'neural engines' (FPGAs, ASICs) to be onboard for mainstream processors in a few short years. They'll start off very small due to costs but there is benefit to be exploited there.

 

[Midwayman]

FWIW preorder is already open to check out on adorama. (technically backorder, but you can put in an order at MSRP)

 

[sze5003]

And they are sold out everywhere, from what I see on Newegg and evga site.

 

[ozzy702]

Wow.... every site is completely unresponsive and shut down. Impressive. Demand is through the roof. NVIDIA is going to make a killing on the 3000 series.

 

[sze5003]

I was on Nvidia's site refreshing every second. I was also on best buy's site too. Went from "notify me" to "out of stock".

Never saw one available.