AMD's Ryzen CPUs (Ryzen/TR/Epyc) & Vega/Polaris/Navi GPUs

Ryzen processors are now optimized for both Alliance and Horde in World of Warcraft 
Blog Post created by erin.maiorino on Feb 8, 2019
https://community.amd.com/community...-both-alliance-and-horde-in-world-of-warcraft

The Ryzen performance tides are turning in DirectX® 12 for World of Warcraft®!

The latest content update for World of Warcraft®: Battle for Azeroth™, “Tides of Vengeance,” not only brought new questlines, missions and expeditions, it also ushered in optimizations for DirectX 12 multithreading. This means that the in-game renderer can now use multiple CPU threads. AMD Ryzen™ processor owners raise your main hand high: your game will now run at higher FPS¹ for an even smoother, more enjoyable gaming experience.  

When compared to previous DirectX 12 performance, the multithreaded optimizations provide an average performance boost of up to 35%¹ when gaming at 1080p on Level 10 image quality. This improvement even includes the experience in the bustling new capital cities of Boralas and Dazar’alor 

Let us know your Ryzen experience in World of Warcraft: Battle of Azeroth by tagging us on Twitter with @AMDGaming or @AMDRyzen. 

Learn more about  Tides of Vengeance.  

FOR THE ALLIANCE! 

Erin Maiorino, Ryzen Desktop Product Marketing Manager at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies, or opinions. Links to third party sites and references to third party trademarks are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied."

 

Crazy! Thing is, it doesn't take Furmark to make it spin at the ear piercing 2900rpm that was being heard in that video - regular gaming makes it spin that fast (basing this off Guru3d article).

 

I just read a different article about RVII and it seems that AMD is measuring temperature using the Junction temps. instead of the overall ambient temp. of the card.
This might explain why the fans run so loud at such loads (though, undervolting the GPU to 1.080V seems to quiet it down a lot).
AMD reportedly said they used this method to more accurately read temperatures.
Here's the article in question.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18194190/amds-radeon-vii-is-a-hot-loud-powerful-answer-to-nvidia

"What’s actually going on with the heat is a bit complicated, though. At first, it seemed like the Radeon VII was burning up: I measured a peak temperature of 105 degrees Celsius playing Black Ops IIII, at 4K resolution and ultra settings, which is a really hot peak temperature.
But AMD told me that’s not only within normal operating temperatures, but that this card measures temperature very differently than before, so it’s not really comparable with other GPUs. The Radeon VII uses junction temperature — the highest operating temperature of the actual semiconductor and not the surrounding exterior — to better gauge and throttle performance under load, and it’s also doubled the number of temperature sensors since the last Vega card (64 in total)."

 

Anyone considering buy a Radeon VII direct from AMD may want to take a look at AMDs warranty. You get an amazing 1 year warranty on a $700 GPU.

Might need to purchase from board partners.

 

Hey, it's cutting edge tech, warranty? That's for consumers, we're explorers of the void of new experiences.

What's it to us if the first 2 GPU's die in the first days / weeks, we've got a whole year of warranty on each and every GPU to keep trying to get a good one.

In 1 year that fresh new design GPU will be old hat, drawer fodder, and we'll get the new hotness right on the heals of the 1 year warranty expiring.

Seriously though, 1 year is pretty standard, and extended warranty's for long term buy's follow up from AIB's soon enough if you want to keep one long term.

AMD has been reliable as well, with cards still kicking after 5-9 years, they aren't like Nvidia sourced RTX GPU's dropping like clockwork - around the clock.

 

At least they fixed it? Hope it doesn't fail and brick cards.

https://www.techpowerup.com/252476/amd-radeon-vii-has-no-uefi-support

 

I guess it was early and you didn't have your coffee yet... I was referring to your 2 brand new dead Nvidia 2080ti's as examples:

" What's it to us if the first 2 GPU's die in the first days / weeks, ..."

AMD Releases BIOS for Radeon VII with UEFI GOP hardocp.com
Submitted 1 day ago by mockingbird-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/apny16/amd_releases_bios_for_radeon_vii_with_uefi_gop/

mockingbird-[ S] 153 points 1 day ago
" AMD has released a BIOS for the Radeon VII with UEFI GOP included for our AIB partners. We will also make a one click installable BIOS available to end users via AMD.com. We do not expect gaming performance differences between the non UEFI BIOS and the UEFI GOP included BIOS, although the non UEFI BIOS may experience slower boot times from cold boot."

Radeon VII GPU Not Working
"I solved the issue by using kernel 4.20 and adding these binaries /~agd5f/radeon_ucode/vg20 to /lib/firmware/amdgpu
Source: Phoronix "

 

World of Tanks Update 1.4 adds multi-threading support, enabling AMD's SMT to be more effective in game, boosts performance
Submitted 9 hours ago by 808hunna
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/apvat4/world_of_tanks_update_14_adds_multithreading/

Update Review: Update 1.4 - SMT update starts @ 11:30
World of Tanks Europe

(According to the Steam Hardware Survey) AMD Has seen an 11.3% increase in market share from September-January
https://www.reddit.com/r/AyyMD/comments/aprdod/according_to_the_steam_hardware_survey_amd_has/



OMG I was the first. Ayyyyyyy.
submitted 8 hours ago by john_rising
https://www.reddit.com/r/AyyMD/comments/apw0vp/omg_i_was_the_first_ayyyyyyy/


Linux Gaming: 0 to Steam with the Sapphire RX 590 on Ubuntu!
Level1Linux
Published on Feb 12, 2019
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...am-with-the-sapphire-rx-590-on-ubuntu.827489/

 

19.2.2 driver update just made Radeon VII much better (overclocking)
not an apple fan
Published on Feb 14, 2019
19.2.2 driver update just made radeon VII much better (overclocking)

 

Here's a busy guy, 53 videos on AMD / Nvidia / Intel benchmarks of Apex Legends!

Apex Legends GPU and CPU Benchmark Test - 53 videos
TechEpiphany

 

Asus ROG Zenith Extreme Alpha, X399 VRM Temp Test
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Feb 17, 2019


Jarrod'sTech 5 hours ago
"Great now my Zenith Extreme is obsolete throws into the trash"

Spoiler

Hardware Unboxed 5 hours ago
"Sucks when you finally realize you've been using the BETA version all this time!"

Hall James 5 hours ago
" @Hardware Unboxed Well, Asus unlike many of the other manufacturers took their time releasing another high end X399 board. They all had 'beta' boards too before the Creation and whatnot."

Hardware Unboxed 5 hours ago
" @Hall James It was just a joke, I wouldn't read too much into it and certainly didn't require further analysis "

RAVI KUMAR Balasubramaniam 1 hour ago
" @Hardware Unboxed What you have Just tested is ALPHA version!"

Gup Sterg 3 hours ago (edited)
"Thanks for data points . ZE had 2x 8pin not 1x 8pin + 1x 4pin as stated in video. ZE had 3x phase SOC not 2 and ZEA has 4x SOC and not 3x as stated in video. SOC VRM components also gained an upgrade on ZEA. ZE used CSD97374M, ZEA uses IR3555, 60A capable instead of peak 60A. The IR3555 also have other benefits AFAIK, for example integrated temp sensor, so SW monitoring gives internal temperature not a diode placed near VRM."

Cloud Navy 5 hours ago
"I heard Vega VII can overclock to 2000MHz now? if thats true are you going to be benchmarking with it overclocked ? Thanks!"

Hardware Unboxed 5 hours ago
"Seen"

Cloud Navy 5 hours ago
" @Hardware Unboxed Good enough <3"

HU said they were going to revisit the AMD Radeon Vega VII after driver updates / fixes, this could be fun.

Radeon VII Overclocking and Modding
Submitted 12 hours ago by CarbonFireOC
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/argy6f/radeon_vii_overclocking_and_modding/

"How are you guys doing overclocking your Radeon VIIs? I've had some good success!

Firestrike graphics score 33,315 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/18358630

I put together a guide of my build here: https://imgur.com/a/ecbuxwY

Working with hellm yesterday, we were able to pick up a bunch of points and stability with registry powerplay tables, taking the record in 3Dmark graphics score for Radeon VII. We were up to 2270Mhz on the core and 1252Mhz on the memory. "

 

Metro Dev: Ray Tracing Is Doable via Compute Even on Next-Gen Consoles, RT Cores Aren’t the Only Way
https://wccftech.com/metro-dev-ray-tracing-doable-compute/

Well, might as well use most of that dormant (and much more powerful) compute on AMD gpu's towards this in that case.
RVII has ridiculously big FP64 for example... raw compute goes past 2080ti even and holds ground (somewhat) with Titan itself.

I'm not a big proponent of Raytracing as I think its a very small visual impact for a high perf. downgrade as its done now... but since/if RT is the future, then might as well abolish proprietary idiocy.

This only goes to reinforce the notion that every proprietary thing that NV implemented can already be done via compute (and probably much more easier than investing money into a closed system).
But then again, NV has cash to burn, so its likely they wanted to close off the market to AMD intentionally via closed-source.

Hopefully, this will knock them back a peg or 10... we need more support for open source features that make better use of compute in games.

Its already been demonstrated that AMD optimized titles run great on both NV and AMD (with maybe slight advantage to AMD), whereas NV optimized titles run good on NV hardware only and poorly on AMD.

 

I did say that before, not everyone uses the full features of Radeons since market share is too low and even developers use Nvidia as Test rig.
Especially HBCC and other Radeon feature if used correctly can push Radeons to the limit. The implementation might not even need to be tweaked for Consoles because the same AMD ASIC can handle that. And also DX12 has the same compute features like Vulkan too.

 

VideoCardz: Upcoming ASUS X570 motherboards (ROG)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/asf2z0/videocardz_upcoming_asus_x570_motherboards_rog/

"Just received a word from ASUS employee.

Upcoming ASUS X570 motherboards:
ROG CROSSHAIR VIII FORMULA
ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO
ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO (WI-FI)
ROG CROSSHAIR VIII IMPACT
12:14 PM - 19 Feb 2019"
https://twitter.com/VideoCardz/status/1097952708722655235

AMD Hiring Ten More People For Their Open-Source/Linux Driver Team
Written by Michael Larabel in Radeon on 20 February 2019 at 01:00 PM EST. 48 Comments
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Hiring-10-More-Open-Source

Radeon VII OC vs RTX 2080 Stock | 10 Games 1080p 1440p 4K Benchmark Tested | Ryzen 5 2600X @4.2GHz
TheSpyHood
Published on Feb 20, 2019
This is a pc gaming benchmark test between Radeon 7 OC vs RTX 2080 Stock with the Ryzen 5 2600X @4.2GHz

Spoiler: Games + System Specs

Games those are tested listed below :
Metro Exodus
Ace Combat 7
Apex Legends
Anthem
Battlefield V (Battlefield 5)
Fallout 76
Far Cry New Dawn
Monster Hunter World
Resident Evil 2 Remake 2019
The Division 2

System Specs :
Operating System : Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit
Motherboard : Asus Prime X370-Pro
CPU : AMD Ryzen 5 2600X @4.2GHz
GPU 1 : AMD Radeon VII 16GB Overclock
GPU 2 : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB Stock
RAM : 16GB DDR4 3200MHz

 

AMD Navi: Everything you need to know
Is AMD's Navi back on track for 2019? Here's everything you need to know
By Chuong Nguyen — Posted on February 20, 2019 9:43AM PST
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-navi-rumors-price-release-date/

 

Aren't the rumors of Navi delays for ray tracing support?

 

From that same article:

"AMD originally stated that it wouldn’t be supporting ray tracing, which has been a hallmark of Nvidia’s RTX series, at least not until the technology can be implemented on all of its graphics cards. “Utilization of ray tracing games will not proceed unless we can offer ray tracing in all product ranges from low end to high end,” AMD’s senior vice president of engineering at the Radeon Technologies Group told 4Gamer in an interview.

This news has led to speculation that Sony’s upcoming Playstation 5 won’t support ray tracing, given that the console is expected to be powered by Navi graphics, and AMD’s hesitation on implementing this tech could be based on cost. AMD CEO Lisa Su had hinted about Navi’s competitive pricing in a prior interview with PCGamesN, where she discussed performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar as motivations behind Navi’s design.

At CES 2019, however, Su did state that AMD was “deep in development” on ray tracing technology. AMD even announced that the Radeon VII will support a DLSS-like up-scaling technology. Whether or not either of these advanced AI features will be included on Navi is still unknown.

To keep Navi’s pricing competitive, it’s unlikely that the GPU architecture will come with dedicated ray tracing cores, and adding support for the feature could result in a performance hit. For gamers looking at ray tracing, AMD’s recent comments led many to believe that the capability won’t be implemented until Navi 20 or even on AMD’s next-gen graphics architecture, which was previously codenamed Kuma and is now rumored to be known as Arcturus.

Updated on February 20, 2019: Added latest release date rumors. "


@Coreteks released a short acknowledgement from AMD that the DXR backup method is already supported across all GPU's in their software stack, using existing hardware.

I haven't posted it because it's a side comment / confirmation, and I was waiting for an official statement from AMD before posting.

Navi has been long designed and taped out, but the first 7nm "turn" had problems, so another run through was needed, I doubt there is / was time to do anything "special" to the design to incorporate dedicated elements for RT - at that time RT wasn't even released.

AMD: All current AMD GPUs will support Ray Tracing via DX12 fallback
Submitted 22 hours ago by bizude
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/asugrh/amd_all_current_amd_gpus_will_support_ray_tracing/

https://twitter.com/coreteks/status/1098174427609612288?s=19

Caffeine_Monster 13 points 20 hours ago
"Most likely. There is an open source DX12 fallback for cards without specialised hardware: https://github.com/Microsoft/DirectX-Graphics-Samples/tree/master/Libraries/D3D12RaytracingFallback

So in theory you can run run tracing with an AMD HD 7000 / NvidiaGTX 900 series card or later.

Though realistically only the fastest and cards will be able to run ray tracing in real time using a software fallback - how usable it will be is questionable."

Raytracing with @Radeon VII
https://twitter.com/compguru910/status/1098666833702412290


Understandably, considering there are only 2 games running RT and they are coded for Nvidia RT, I doubt there will be any need for AMD to support RT on PC any time soon.

Nvidia will be fighting an uphill battle to break through with RT in games on PC for quite some time.

Considering the vulgar and exaggerated Metro implementation of GI not even in line with game design - overly dark in rooms not designed for GI and blown out textures and colors washed out with overly bright light outdoors, RTX GI is far from desireable.

Nvidia has a lot to improve on over a long time before it's actually something you'd want - rather than something you fawn over due to having spent $xxxx's for useless tech.

 

DXR running on Radeon VII
Submitted 5 hours ago by compguru910
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/at7i4d/dxr_running_on_radeon_vii/

"This is only significant because previously DXR was disabled in the drivers, even when using the fallback layer. This is using the updated fallback layer (1.5) which didn't work previously on AMD cards. This doesn't mean that it will work in games, just that we're back to square one with fallback support. I don't have a Vega 64 or P10 card to test on with yet, but will update if I stumble across one.

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...2128/RadeonVII_DXR_2.PNG?width=826&height=488

https://media.discordapp.net/attach...18817/RadeonVII_DXR.PNG?width=1057&height=354


And here is a 2080 Ti for comparison
https://media.discordapp.net/attach...31/200_Ti_raytracing.PNG?width=830&height=487 "

compguru910[ S] 8 points 4 hours ago
"Wrote an article further diving into my thoughts on these findings
https://www.pc-better.com/dxr-on-radeon-vii/ "

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the case of software being coded to make use of NV hardware whereas OpenCL (or whatever AMD uses for compute) support is just non-existent?

 

It's a little of all of those things...

AMD isn't going to enable Real-Time Ray-tracing until it's time. AMD already made a clear statement that they were going to route of enabling developers to make content and get used to the ideas behind replacing current technology with RT elements, and then move on to Real-time support when ready. Whenever that is.

Given the lack of finished games - Nvidia RTX add-on's are still a work in progress - it will be a long time before games are ready to take advantage of full RT.

I wouldn't lose sleep over it, let those poor saps stuck with RTX GPU's waste their time fretting over putting it to use for value. I'd rather not be bothered with the drama and wait for it to be working through AMD hardware.

The games are all playable without Gameworks, as always, so I turn it off and ignore it all.

 

So, is this case similar to when TressFX wasn't working properly on NV hardware due to NV not optimizing their drivers to work correctly with it... only here, we're not only lacking proper drivers, but also proper OpenCL or GPGPU support from devs to make full use of FP32 and FP64 in AMD cards?

 

AMD is still in development for ray-tracing, so there are probably a few elements still not released. Same goes for the DLSS equivalent. I hope AMD doesn't waste too much time on that BS, but silly market requirements induced by Nvidia too early will push AMD to offer something I suppose.

RTX RT / DLSS is Nvidia's focus to generate some kind of exclusive BS to sell suckers high priced RTX GPU's, and it's not even "complete" in 2 games and already RTX is some kind of exclusive magic that is a "must have" over AMD Radeon VII even though R7 is kicking it with the 1080ti / 2080 - Nvidia knows that the RTX BS tips the suckers into spending for their GPU's over more reasonably priced AMD GPU's.

2 lousy games, nowhere near 25 games, no where near a measurable % of games released or releasing in the announced future. And it's a *must have* for the "Nvidiots".

Fortunately there are enough sane people out there not willing to drop tons of cash on Nvidia crap, so AMD will still be selling RX 5xx / RX Vega / Navi.

IDK when consoles will offer Ray-tracing BS, or when it will come to AMD PC GPU's, but I honestly don't care in the least. So far RTX has not got anything I'd elect to prefer to run in a game.

For me RTX tacked on fluffery is more Nvidia Gameworks BS to turn off.

 

Nvidia still uses OpenCL 1.2 and latest vulkan. Older APIs in OpenCL are still used but comes at expensive cost of performance. So, if you have a worst low end GPU from AMD or Intel they still have atleast OpenCL 2.x support.

AMD is focusing CPU market more than GPU since best CPU will win over and be purchased in large quantities by consumer, prosumer, Professional Engineers, CAD, Cloud Infrastucture etc.. and that nets them max profit for funding their GPUs. Once they find sweet spot we might be seeing Vega 7 like performance on their iGPUs in future.

 

As I said, I'm not too bothered by RT or DLSS... and if anything, I don't see any kind of notable difference between RT on and off (except a huge performance hit).
The differences are minute (equivalent to playing games on Ultra vs High - minimal difference which no one notices for a large performance impact).

My point was that RT and DLSS are both features that CAN be executed on general compute hardware as it exists (both AMD and game devs confirmed it can be done - AMD said they can get DLSS like results via Microsoft API if I'm not mistaken without the blurring effect or significantly reducing that blurring, and BFV devs said RT can be executed on general compute)... furthermore I was driving a point with RVII having low performance in RT in that particular software so I was wondering if that's due to drivers and/or lack of developer optimizations (because, with all the compute power behind RVII, it should technically be faster if the algorithms are coded to take advantage of both FP32 and FP64) or something else?

 

Beta 17: Dual Reserved Queue Support with Radeon Rays
FEB 21 @ 2:37PM - LAKULISH
https://steamcommunity.com/games/596420/announcements/detail/1743360777226556930

We've just released Steam® Audio 2.0-beta.17 [valvesoftware.github.io], which includes several new features, including support for real-time indirect sound simulation using AMD Radeon™ Rays. Previously, Radeon™ Rays was supported only for baking. With this release, Radeon™ Rays and AMD TrueAudio Next can be combined to perform indirect sound simulation and rendering on the GPU without interfering with graphics or general GPU compute. This blog post discusses how this works.

Spoiler: Details...

Previously, on Steam® Audio...
Over the last few releases, we have added features to the Steam® Audio that enable the GPU to be used in different ways for accelerating spatial audio computations.

In 2.0-beta.13, we added support for TrueAudio Next. This feature uses the Resource Reservation capability of supported AMD GPUs to carve out a portion of the GPU (called a "reserved queue") dedicated to audio convolution processing. This allows the GPU to be used for significantly speeding up spatial audio rendering, while ensuring that audio and graphics do not interfere with each other. The result is stable graphics frame rates, and fast, glitch-free audio processing.


Figure: Impact on GPU rendering performance when reserving 4 CUs for TrueAudio Next processing. The plots show the average FPS observed on various GPU benchmarks when run at the same time as a TAN benchmark using Steam®® Audio. Measurements obtained using a Radeon™ RX 480 GPU with 4 reserved CUs, 256 total convolution channels and 1.3s IRs. All values are shown as a percentage of a baseline that is obtained when the TAN benchmark is not running. For example, reserving 10% of the available CUs reduces the average FPS in the Timespy benchmark by about 10%.

In 2.0-beta.15, we added support for Radeon™ Rays. This feature runs on any GPU supporting OpenCL 1.2 or later, and uses the GPU to accelerate indirect sound simulation (ray tracing and related processing). Since the reserved queue was used by TrueAudio Next, Radeon™ Rays would run on the remainder of the GPU, along with graphics and general compute. If used for real-time simulation, it would therefore interfere with graphics frame rates, which is why this feature was restricted to baking only.

What's new?
Starting with AMD Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition v19.2.1, AMD GPUs support up to two reserved queues. In other words, the GPU compute units can be divided into three sets: 2 reserved queues, and 1 general queue. This feature (called "Dual RTQ") only requires a driver update.

In 2.0-beta.17, Steam® Audio runs Radeon™ Rays on the second reserved queue, thereby isolating indirect sound simulation from graphics as well. This way simulation (using Radeon™ Rays), convolution (using TrueAudio Next), and graphics can all be run on the same GPU without interfering with each other. This results in stable frame rates, glitch-free audio processing, and low-latency indirect sound simulation.

How Dual RTQ works
As an example, consider a Radeon™ RX Vega 64, which contains 64 Compute Units (CUs). A maximum of 16 CUs (25% of the GPU) can be used in all reserved queues combined. One way to partition this would be:

• First reserved queue, 4 CUs. Used by TrueAudio Next.
  
• Second reserved queue, 8 CUs. Used by Radeon™ Rays.
  
• Remainder of the GPU, 52 CUs. Used for graphics and general compute.

This can be set up using the Steam® Audio Unity Plugin as follows. Begin by attaching a Steam® Audio Custom Settings component to the Steam® Audio Manager Settings GameObject. Then in the Inspector tab, configure it as follows:

• Set Max Compute Units To Reserve to 12. This is the total number of CUs used in both reserved queues combined (4 for TrueAudio Next + 8 for Radeon™ Rays).
  
• Set Fraction Compute Units for IR Update to 0.67 (approximately 2/3). This is the fraction of reserved CUs to be used for Radeon™ Rays. (0.67 * 12 total reserved CUs = 8 CUs for Radeon™ Rays).

The remaining 52 CUs will be used for graphics and general compute.

Performance
Below are representative speedup numbers for various simulation scenarios with varying numbers of CUs reserved for Radeon™ Rays. All measurements were obtained on an Intel® Core i7 5930K (Haswell E) CPU, along with an AMD Radeon™ RX Vega 64 GPU, running Windows 10 64-bit and AMD Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition v19.2.1.

Rays / Bounces / Sources
Time (4 CUs)
Time (8 CUs)
Time (16 CUs)
Speedup 4 -> 8
Speedup 8 -> 16
8192 / 8 / 4
24.8
16.4
13.2
1.5
1.2
8192 / 8 / 16
67.9
44.3
32.3
1.5
1.4
8192 / 32 / 4
74.5
45.7
34.1
1.6
1.3
8192 / 32 / 16
202.1
115.7
74.2
1.7
1.6
32768 / 8 / 4
62.1
35.8
22.9
1.7
1.6
32768 / 8 / 16
184.6
102.7
62.3
1.8
1.6
32768 / 32 / 4
233.7
126.1
74.1
1.9
1.7
32768 / 32 / 16
687.8
361.5
198.6
1.9
1.8
Table: All of the above numbers correspond to an IR duration of 2.0 seconds, and 1st order Ambisonics. All times are in milliseconds.

Based on the above numbers, 4 CUs are sufficient to simulate 4 sources with 8k rays and 32 bounces at a 10 Hz update rate. With 8 CUs, a ~10 Hz update rate can be achieved with 16 sources, 32k rays, and 8 bounces. Also, as the number of CUs dedicated to Radeon™ Rays is increased, the speedups increase roughly linearly, especially when the amount of simulation work is high (many rays, many bounces, and/or many sources).

Learn More at GDC!
Interested in learning more about how Steam® Audio uses TrueAudio Next and Radeon™ Rays to accelerate spatial audio on GPUs? Join us at GDC 2019, where we'll talk about Steam® Audio, TrueAudio Next, Resource Reservation on AMD GPUs, and more!

Session: Powering Spatial Audio on GPUs Through Hardware, Software, and Tools (Presented by AMD)
Track: Audio
Date/Time: Wed, Mar 20, 12:30pm

Click here for more information.

Steam (beta) launches support for real-time indirect sound simulation using AMD Radeon™ Rays
Submitted 1 day ago by bizude
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/atdi3h/steam_beta_launches_support_for_realtime_indirect/

Huh, I wondered where this stuff was available...

Welcome to the AMD Fan Store
https://www.amdfanstore.com/default.asp

 

AMD Radeon VII Water Cooling & Overclock Mod, Pt 1/2
Gamers Nexus
Published on Feb 23, 2019
We heard that AMD updated its drivers to fix overclocking support on Radeon VII, so now we're liquid cooling ours into a "Hybrid" to overclock heavily.

Spoiler: Details...Links...

AMD's Radeon VII has already gone through our review process (including a tear-down) and has been extensively analyzed. At this point, though, we still don't know the upper-bounds of "normal" overclocking conditions. This has led us to another one of the GN famous Hybrid Mods, where we bolt on some cooling parts to the card, blast the VRM with fans, and hope to reach higher clocks than stock. Because drivers were broken at launch, it shouldn't be hard to overclock at least marginally better than we've seen already, but those limits will be lifted higher thanks to reduced power leakage with liquid cooling.

Find the original Radeon VII review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9rht...
Find the original Radeon VII tear-down here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b9_c...

Kord Martin 1 hour ago
"I have one! Got mine last week. Waiting now for EK to make a waterblock."

Scott Laxon 15 minutes ago
"Saw a reply to a question from EK saying about 4-8 weeks"

Anthony Wahl 5 minutes ago
"Stock Radeon VII beats 2080 ti at 8k editing and destroys it and the rtx titan, tesla v100 and titan V at mining Ethereum." [Nooo!!]

 

"Good news for the 12 of you who have have this!"

https://www.amazon.com/PowerColor-R...LB/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

$999.99 and FREE SHIPPING.

 

AMD Radeon VII Chilling & Undervolting
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2019/02/24/amd_radeon_vii_chilling_undervolting/1

Conclusion

The new AMD Radeon VII video card with an MSRP of $699.99 has proven to be an interesting video card. It’s interesting in terms of gaming performance and it is proving to be interesting as a hardware enthusiast video card. It actually turns out to be more flexible than anticipated in terms of different techniques to reduce power, temperature, fan noise, and even improve performance.

 

AMD's Latest Radeon Drivers Finally Bring Official Support to Ryzen Mobile
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-drivers-ryzen-mobile,38694.html

" According to AMD's release notes , the new driver offers an average of 10% more performance in gaming compared to the October Ryzen Mobile driver, and in eSports titles specifically, an average of 17% more performance. Of the games tested, most of them showed double-digit performance gains, especially Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. These kinds of gains could easily turn an unplayable experience into one that is playable, and such extreme gains are seen because this driver is a year and a half newer than the launch revision.

Consumers will be able to get incredible drivers, designed to deliver stable and reliable experiences through extensive quality-assurance and third-party testing, and all notebooks and desktops powered by Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics processor will be supported with Radeon Settings in Radeon Software. Radeon Settings is the one stop application to configure all your graphics settings, check for updates, and provide feedback to AMD. Optimized experiences are delivered with Radeon Settings for Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics processors enabling configuration of video playback and game settings to personal preferences.

Ryzen Mobile will also get bug fixes, UI updates, quality of life improvements, stability enhancements, and more than just what 19.2.3 says since the driver includes all the features of every past Radeon driver that didn't make it to Ryzen Mobile. The old method of downloading new Raven Ridge drivers straight from Microsoft and installing them manually (and thus losing out on AMD's useful software) is finally no longer necessary. Although long overdue, this new driver is quite welcome, and AMD will hopefully continue releasing official Ryzen Mobile drivers"

This is excellent.
AMD finally delivered on their promise.
It might be noteworthy for people to re-run Ryzen Mobile gaming benchmarks now both on Vega and RX560x to see what kind of differences are noticeable.

It might actually make me want to get myself the Acer Nitro 5 with RX560x just to tie me over until Zen 2 laptops come out (so I can at least continue working in 3d Studio Max)

 

Stoked to try this out on my A485 (2500u). I just ran a ton of benchmarks so I can at least compare it to something.

 

Please post your comparison results here

 

EDIT: Two reboots later and audio managed to restore itself. Yay!

They broke audio support in my E485 (no sound output), though they are beta drivers (in AMD-speak, they call these "Optional" drivers).

 

I'd wait because OEMs rarely open up for AMD because the market share is low.. I'd wait for Radeon 7 based mobile GPu and maybe the drivers are fully generic just like Intel.

 

Did you first remove the previous drivers completely with amd cleanup utility and clean install the latest ones?

If not, try that. Alternatively, try to remove the drivers completely with amd driver cleanup utility and install the original oem drivers followed by express install of the latest ones?

That might help. If not try posting that problem to AMD on their discussion forums. Also check if there might be new drivers for your audio.

 

I know the mobile market share is low for AMD... but am eyeing the Acer Helios 500 (Ryzen+Vega) right now, and the thing isn't available in UK as of yet.
Plus I'm getting into a bit of a time bind as I will need a laptop for 3d work soon... that's why I was thinking of getting the Nitro 5 to work with for the time being and then wait it out for the Zen 2 laptops when they come out (which might be shortly after desktop release, or 6 months after that (towards the end of this year).

I really want to avoid Intel/NV laptops but the market is pretty much saturated with those things (like a plague)... so, if worst comes to worst, I might even have to opt for a reasonably powerful Intel/NV laptop given how disappointing Asus products have been (lousy cooling implementation and extremely noisy) and even Acer doesn't know when the Helios 500 with Ryzen/Vega will be available in UK (which is odd).

 

SALE - Newegg has the Sapphire Nitro+ Vega 64 (aka the best cooling V64) in stock for only $420 with the Raise The Game: Fully Loaded bundlenewegg.com
Submitted 12 hours ago by Dr_Kekyll
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/av7xq2/newegg_has_the_sapphire_nitro_vega_64_aka_the/

$419 - $180 (game bundle) = $239 - Amazing drop from the crypto days.

SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX Vega 64 DirectX 12 100410NT+SR 8GB 2048-Bit HBM2 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card - $419
Get 3 Free Games w/ purchase, limited offer
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202321

Lotos 7 points 10 hours ago*
"Bought it, got it, love it."

Edit: I had a Vega 64 reference that I bought with the pick 15 eBay deal for $330. This card is in a league of its own when it comes to thermals, sound, and performance."
Lotos 1 point an hour ago
"I did do an under volt. I noticed with an under volt my fan rpm sits around 1400 instead of 1550.

Playing apex legends or insurgency sandstorm with the hbm at 1000Mhz, a core boost of around 1590Mhz and a hot spot temp of about 86C I am 100% satisfied with the noise.

Im also saying this as someone who plays with open back headphones and has their pc right next to them on their desk."

Here's the cheapest AMD Vega 56 on newegg, it's not the $280 Reference Blower Cooler, it's one of the nicest 3-fan cooler AIB models for just a bit more than the most expensive 1660ti, and the Vega 56 tuned for best performance, coolest operation, and least power draw will be much faster, so it's worth a little more than a 1660ti / 2060.

PowerColor RED DRAGON Radeon RX Vega 56 DirectX 12 AXRX VEGA 56 8GBHBM2-2D2HD/OC 8GB 2048-Bit HBM2 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support ATX Video Card - $369
Get 3 free games w/ purchase, limited offer
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131740

Let's hope the European AMD RX Vega price drops make it over here to the US and all the AMD GPU's drop in price and start getting more market share from Nvidia.

 

Well results with synthetic benchmarks are absolutely no gain, lol. At least with 3D Mark 11, Firestrike, Timespy, cloud gate, etc... Oh well, at least they decided to start including the mobile Vega.

 

I meant gaming results.

 

I haven't ran a single game on this A485 sadly. Benchmarks are easier because I can hit run while I do research (and yeah spend hours browsing NBR, lol).

 

I am in the same boat. I am stuck at home in a chair in the living room for the next 6 months or so. I am looking at a Matebook D14. 2500u, 8gb ram and 256gb ssd. The main reason is it has a backlit keyboard and FHD.

 

Synthetic benches aren't indicative of real-life performance... but games are.
I can understand the differences and how easy it is to just click on a benchmark and let it run in the background.... but sadly, its not the ideal way of going about things.

 

Wow, what a great price on an RX 580 - $169!! Limited time, 2 days...

PowerColor RED DRAGON Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 AXRX 580 8GBD5-3DHDV2/OC 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support ATX Video Card
Get 2 free games w/ purchase, limited offer

• $169.99
• Sale Ends in 2 Days (Thu)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814131720

 

AMD EPYC™ + Radeon Instinct Customer Testimonial: Cray
AMD
Published on Feb 27, 2019
AMD customer Cray highlights the company’s experience with the EPYC™ processor.


Cray Testimonial — AMD’s Forrest Norrod
AMD
Published on Feb 26, 2019
AMD’s Forrest Norrod talks about its history with Cray and recent collaboration for the HPC server market. Discover more: http://www.amd.com/epycserver


AMD Next Horizon – Leadership in 7nm
AMD
Published on Feb 27, 2019
AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster discusses 7nm process technology. Discover more from Next Horizon: http://www.amd.com/nexthorizon


AMD Next Horizon – Total Datacenter Commitment with Mark Papermaster
AMD
Published on Feb 27, 2019
AMD CEO Lisa Su and CTO Mark Papermaster talks about the company’s total commitment to datacenter. Discover more: http://www.amd.com/nexthorizon

 

If the game doesn't have an in game benchmark than there is a lot lot of variability in that. I have no preconceptions that this thermally limited Vega 8 will be any sort of gaming GPU outside of the occasional round of indie games when on a flight or something...

 

A game benchmark however is also not too indicative of how a game will behave.
Different areas will exhibit different stresses on the hardware, plus, I don't know if the game benchmark is updated along with the game itself post release (and if not... the benchmark would not take into account any optimizations by devs for certain hardware that would improve performance).

I agree the Vega 8 would be limited at best, but it is still viable.

 

First Proper Ryzen Mobile Drivers Tested, Better Performance, Many Bugs Fixed!
Hardware Unboxed


Are Quad cores Finally Dead in 2019? feat. Ryzen CPU Scaling Benchmark
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Mar 3, 2019

 

Radeon VII Powerplay Overclocking Results & Liquid Mod, Pt 2/2
Gamers Nexus
Published on Mar 2, 2019
This is our second (and maybe final) part of our AMD Radeon VII liquid cooling mod, including powerplay table overclocking with registry changes.

Spoiler

Article: https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/34...
Driver revision 19.2.3 was used. It was newest at time of testing and resolved many overclocking bugs from the original drivers.
We might revisit this once we're back from Taipei and China. We have more we could probably do with this card, including additional debugging/playing around with overclock settings, but this liquid cooling mod and powerplay tables registry change will set the stage for our liquid-cooled Radeon VII. A livestream with chilled water might be in order for our return home.

 

The new Ryzen mobile drivers definitely have improved performance and stability for the most part but has anyone heard of losing brightness control after waking the computer up from sleep with these new drivers?

 

I've been hearing about this wake from sleep issue with Windows 10 for a while now, but not only with AMD also Intel iGPU / Nvidia GPU's, you might read some of these and see if the solutions / suggestions help:

Wake from Sleep Brightness

As for me I avoid these issues starting many years ago, I disable Hibernation and don't use sleep or hibernation as variance in support occurs regularly with new Windows updates and GPU driver updates, it gets tiring after a while tracking down solutions, disabling and relying on fast SSD / CPU for quick reboots is much easier.

Start CMD window As Administrator:

powercfg /h off <= disable hibernation, reboot

powercfg /h on <= enable hibernation, reboot - not recommended.

You also save 1x memory sized hidden file hiberfil.sys in C:\ after disabling hibernation and rebooting.