MonstroMart:

I doubt they beat the 2080 but the RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 should not be too hard to beat. They are way too expensive for what they are and are mostly not powerful enough for ray tracing moving forward. If AMD can come up with something equivalent and with a more realistic price they'll have a winner. I've been a nVidia owner for a long while but i'm really looking forward to Navi. Just got a 2k 144Hz monitor and the 1070 lack a little bit of power. Not a lot but i've been looking to upgrade it since December but the price of the 2070 in Canada was simply ridiculous at launch. It has come down lately (around 700$) but i'll wait Navi now since nVidia pissed me off too much with the RTX launch. If AMD can come up with something as good as the 2070 for less money i'll bite.

For particular set of reasons to which I will not go into here, I consider Vega architecture an fail with one redeeming quality which is compute. But this "failure" in form of Vega 7 has quite interesting comparison to RTX 2080. 2080 which you can buy at about 10% higher price than Vega 7 has ~3% more transistors and ~3% higher clock. On 1080p Vega 7 is about 12% slower than 2080. On 1440p, they are about equal. If those 2 values are adjusted to performance per transistor count per clock, Vega 7 is only 6% behind on 1080p and gets ahead on 1440p. Then one can say that there are only following technological differences which actually have relevance: - Vega 7 has around 30% higher compute power - RTX 2080 eats around 30% less energy - RTX 2080 has RTX, VRS, ... But from general gaming perspective they are quite equal. So where does it leave Navi 7nm and Turing 7nm? Well, 1st for Turing. As @las stated, it was meant to be 7nm. But would it be really much stronger? 2080 Ti has already 18.6 Billion transistors. That would not be any cheaper on 7nm. It would be more power efficient, and maybe clock bit higher as result. But would people buy 22~24 Billion transistor graphics card costing another 40% more than 2080 Ti? Nothing else could be expected since it would be same architecture. Now there is Navi. It is not Vega, no GCN, it is GPU where AMD did learn from their mistakes (or lack of foresight, which was pretty bad). What is biggest variable for Navi? With GCN, AMD changed multiple times number of transistors per building block drastically. (Vega 64 has same count of all building blocks as Fury X, but 40% more transistors... Sadly... Clock to Clock it does no better in games than Fury X.) So, Navi is kind of wild card till we see actual stats of 1st few different chips. Then we can approximate its transistor cost per building block in comparison to latest GCN. Power consumption will tell us a lot too in terms of actual size limits. Will AMD spend its transistor budget worse than with Vega or better than Fury X? And there is a lot of space between. = = = = So, did AMD spent all those years building something new to end up with same power efficiency as Vega? With same transistor cost per building block? I do not think so.

CPC_RedDawn:

So just because they release on a holiday means that if its lacking in performance this means that a reviewer will give it a bad review because its a waste of their time? If ANY reviewer knowingly gives a bad review just because its not insanely impressive or it doesn't beat a GTX2080Ti by 50% dont deserve to be reviewers! Its their job, they chose it, they should always be professional and truthful.

I hope you really don't actually feel you need to explain the concept of professional integrity to me, as if it might be something I'm not already keenly aware of. Let me put it this way, and after four posts in this thread, I'll then let it go. If I worked at AMD, and had Dr. Su's attention, I'd tell her the "cuteness" associated with launching a 7nm product on the 7th day of the 7th month means exactly ZERO in terms of the making a great first impression with the reviewers. You know, those people who are going to, in turn, create the first impression regarding this product with our potential customers. The "7" gimmick is just that; it's absolutely meaningless and will not likely be the cause of even a single sale. I'd offer that lifting a launch embargo on a Sunday, and here in the U.S. a Sunday that is likely part of a mini-vacation that some people have had circled on the calendar since January, probably might not be the best possible plan. I'm not suggesting reviewers would deliberately put their thumb on the scale due to this, but the tone of the words and phrases that someone chooses to frame an evaluation can be crucial. I'm just of the opinion that the reviewer at Hardware Extravaganza Deluxe would rather be in a lounger on the patio, beer in hand, watching a baseball game instead of enduring yet another iteration of the Far Cry 5 benchmark, while listening to his or her spouse ask, "Are you going to be done soon? You've been at it all day." Human nature being what it is, the demeanor of the resulting review might not be as neutral as it should be. And that would be both unfortunate, and unnecessary. Navi should be afforded every opportunity to stand or fall based solely on it's own merits, and not potentially hobbled, even a tiny bit, due to a silly date for lifting a review embargo. Since I don't work for AMD, I don't have any insight on when the reviews will go "live" any more than anyone else has. I'm simply saying Sunday, July 7th, certainly wouldn't be my first choice.

Celcius:

If I worked at AMD, and had Dr. Su's attention, I'd tell her the "cuteness" associated with launching a 7nm product on the 7th day of the 7th month means exactly ZERO in terms of the making a great first impression with the reviewers.

You missed something here, it makes a huge deal for marketing. It makes the products easier to sell, sure its a gimmick and means nothing in terms of the product. But for creating a buzz for it, it makes perfect sense to release it on this day. AMD need all the publicity they can get after the long 10 year span that Intel has slapped them into the ground. If any reviewer knocks it because it stopped them from going to the beach on the holiday is not worth listening to. As long as AMD get the chips into reviewers hands before hand I see no issue with the release date rumoured.

Not every reviewer is based in the US, so why exactly is a July 7 release a problem?

Celcius:

Just to clarify what I meant, AMD graphic card launches have a history of being marred by one thing or another. The Radeon VII with it's somewhat broken release driver, the deafening roar of the reference R9 290X in "Uber" mode, the Fury X and it's apparently less-than-silent liquid cooling, and the RX 480 with the controversy of the single six-pin power socket being "marginal" are a few examples. It seems like it's always AMD providing the axe-handle for their critics to use to beat them up with. I thought that when they finally ditched the blower-style cooler on the Radeon VII, it was a sign that the lunatics were no longer running the asylum at RTG. But, reportedly, the three radial fan arrangement wasn't what it should have been from an acoustic standpoint. The examples I listed above are, I believe, widespread perceptions held by the buying public. I'm certain there are any number of people who have actually owned, and used, these products that would steadfastly insist those perceptions are inaccurate. Just like the, "Radeon drivers are complete garbage" reputation that always leaves me totally mystified, as the last driver issue I can recall was when my first Radeon, a 9700 Pro, and Half-Life 2, were both all shiny and new. And, while I feel certain it's unwarranted, that perception never seems to go away. But, this isn't a thread devoted to that discussion. When you're chasing a formidable competitor not only for market share, but for mind share as well, your product launches need to be as perfect as you can possibly manage. Near flawless. A well-performing graphics card, neither loud or toasty, with a ready-to-rock Day One driver package, and plenty of stock on the shelves at a price that screams, "Add to Cart." When AMD elected to release Vega 64 quite literally on the heels of Threadripper, and over a weekend, some hardware reviewers, (people who do indeed make money, but aren't necessarily paid), were left in a rather stressed-out frame of mind. I'm hoping AMD took note of that. Maybe they are indeed drama-queens, but with as much as AMD has riding on Navi being well-received by the people performing the independent evaluations, I'm simply hoping they won't schedule their review sample delivery and subsequent embargo lift so as to tempt U.S.-based reviewers as to feeling they were deprived of time with family and friends, and to be in a cranky, bomb-throwing state of mind.

Wow...I guess you missed the horrifically marred launch of nVidia's RTX products to date...;) Live under a rock, eh? nVidia couldn't even ship a usable *demo* of the RTX stuff when they shipped them--just a lame 2d videoclip rendered on much more expensive hardware by professional FX people in anything *but* real time. And DLSS is an ongoing debate. From my point of view, nVidia PR has always been way, way over the top--which is just one of several reasons nVidia's products don't appeal to me. It doesn't bother me that you obviously think nVidia is the way to go, heck, no. But try and get your facts at least somewhat straight on what the competition is doing. The fact is that if the FTC in the states or the EUC in Europe knew much of anything about the proper marketing of GPUs (likely, they don't even care) nVidia would be having to rescind a few of its marketing claims--such as "real-time ray tracing," etc. The phrase is actually an oxymoron. If the mainstream version of Navi sells for < $300 and is 1.5x-2x as powerful as the RX-590, it will be a massive hit for AMD, no doubt about it, and I'm all in. My thought is that the RX-590 is just a stop gap on the way to mainstream Navi. As far as "bang-for-the-buck" goes, whether it's a CPU or a GPU, nobody does it better than AMD.

CPC_RedDawn:

You missed something here, it makes a huge deal for marketing. It makes the products easier to sell, sure its a gimmick and means nothing in terms of the product. But for creating a buzz for it, it makes perfect sense to release it on this day. AMD need all the publicity they can get after the long 10 year span that Intel has slapped them into the ground. If any reviewer knocks it because it stopped them from going to the beach on the holiday is not worth listening to. As long as AMD get the chips into reviewers hands before hand I see no issue with the release date rumoured.

He didn't miss that. He says explicitly that he thinks it may negatively impact some reviews. You disagree.

waltc3:

Wow...I guess you missed the horrifically marred launch of nVidia's RTX products to date....

No we're not missing your horrific opinions of all things Nvidia 😉 But, they are not to blame for Nvidia essentially having two product stacks superior to AMD, in both performance and efficiency in the metric that matter to most gamers: FPS, and that ain't Feels Per Second. It's unfortunate AMD is currently this far behind in the enthusiast space and I do not see that changing for the next year. You can get mad at Nvidia, but... I am just the messenger.

I believe AMD previously said in an interview they are targeting mainstream now, not high end halo products anymore. Makes sense with all their semi-custom contacts. So Navi needs to hit that near perfect price/performance ratio, which ...it seems well positioned for.

HeavyHemi:

He didn't miss that. He says explicitly that he thinks it may negatively impact some reviews. You disagree. No we're not missing your horrific opinions of all things Nvidia 😉 But, they are not to blame for Nvidia essentially having two product stacks superior to AMD, in both performance and efficiency in the metric that matter to most gamers: FPS, and that ain't Feels Per Second. It's unfortunate AMD is currently this far behind in the enthusiast space and I do not see that changing for the next year. You can get mad at Nvidia, but... I am just the messenger.

FPS is not metric that matters. FPS per $ is and there we can't say that either side wins. Power efficiency does not matter. Additional electricity cost from gaming spent with Vega 7 over RTX 2080 is small enough in life cycle to match upfront extra price tag difference on RTX 2080. (Here, price difference vs. electricity cost equals around 1200 hours of gaming. And that's with lower cost 2080.) => Not that I would advise anyone to get either of them unless there was no other way. And funny thing is that RTX 2080 is actually equal to Vega 7 in terms of performance per transistor per clock. It is actually sad. Me, seeing Vega as kind of failure speaks miles about "greatness" of Turing.

Well, I pledged not to jump back in this, yet, here I am. Shame on me. In no particular order: Wouldn't have imagined that my failure to mention Nvidia within any of my posts would be taken as granting them a pass on any of their previous product launches. And, I do not do so. The focus of this thread, I thought, was the upcoming launch of Navi. I do not, have not, and, hopefully, will not, live under any rock or rocks. I am female, not male. At least, I hope so. I'd hate to think I've been cross-dressing all these years... I framed my previous comments referencing my concern about a potential July 7th embargo-lift as affecting only U.S.-based reviewers, and possibly, U.S.-based customers. The fact that July 4th isn't significant elsewhere on Earth was never lost on me. I feel as though only two of the individuals who referenced my posts within this thread, actually read, and more importantly, understood, what it was I was trying to convey. (Thank you.) I'll take that as a failure on my part to make my point as clearly as I should have. I tend to ramble, or, so I've been told. Probably a girl-thing. In any case, I am neither vexed, nor offended. I'll keep the names of those two individuals to myself, so as to keep peace within this family. (No lists are being contemplated.) ***** The course of this thread seems illustrative as to just how high the passion, or, even tension, regarding this particular product has grown. Please; a deep breath, everyone.

K.S.:

You're fine @Celcius I got your point & @HeavyHemi worded perfectly' Back at @Celcius - It'd be unfortunate of a reviewer to allow something in their personal life, be it a launch day etc to affect their work. Granted a death in the family etc... there are things that are random/unavoidable and would affect most people. I think letting the day you normally have off or could have off affect work could be seen as unprofessional ... attempt the work, plan it out - "it is what it is" as they say. I still get your point and do agree it isn't the best idea far as industry relations (or whatever the term is) albeit good marketing...

Great many years ago when I started to use Lotus Notes we had funny workshop. There guy introduced ability to add holidays into ones calendar. You can guess that 1/2 of class added quite a few countries. I can ensure everyone that if there were no product launches around holidays across the world, we would be left with few dates. And in that situations thousands of products would not get even 1/100th of attention they are getting now. https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/ Feel free to scroll down to actual calendar.

yeah yeah but nvidia always will be step ahead

As a happy RTX 2080 owner, I hope NAVI is good! I hope AMD can at least give Nvidia some proper competition as it is just good for us the consumer...As good as Nvidia is at the moment, they control the pricing purely because AMD are just are not competitive and this certainly is not Nvidia's fault, any good business would do the same but what AMD's lack of competitive GPU's has done is allow Nvidia to take risks with Ray Tracing without too much to lose and thus put Nvidia in the driving seat for the upcoming Ray tracing war...

Navi will finally match GTX 1080 Ti with the top model, power consumption being the same. Although Nvidia already has surpassed GTX 1080 Ti power consumption wise by RTX 2080, RTX-cards are hard to sell cheap due to big chips. Like Polaris, Navi is going to be a small chip that can answer to pretty much any price interference, but power consumption will be slightly worse than on competing GeForce cards like GTX 1660 & GTX 1660 Ti. 1600-series was released to have products with smaller dies, since when RTX-implementation is done correctly, not much if any performance penalty should apply when utilizing RT-cores for their purpose. The problem is RTX-cards are less profitable and so far no game seems to properly utilize RTX-features, so performance tanks. Nvidia will already this year update their line-up into 7 nm, which means most likely updated top models far away from AMD's reach, making it tempting to pay for a major performance uplift rather than for a lesser uplift in Navi's case. For people who already own GTX 1080 or better, Navi is a rather pointless release. Nvidia though will offer even further performance, better than RTX 2080 Ti by 7 nm, which leaves the question if 7 nm will be used to produce mainstream products? It is hard to imagine why not, but in that case 1600-series would be very quickly obsolete. Maybe they have produced 1600-series quite limitedly? The 12 nm 1600-series perform better in modern and upcoming games though due to Turing architecture, when compared to Pascal, so it's existence is rather beneficial and justified even if 7 nm refresh is imminent. Anyway, for those who don't require the lowest possible power consumption, Navi will offer affordable alternative to RTX 2080 for anyone who upgrades from GTX 1070 Ti or lesser. The price is yet a mystery, but I will guess something like 500 € for the top card, 400 € for RTX 2070 alternative and 300 € for RTX 2060 alternative. We will surely see a significant performance bump at every price point, which means we finally get a true step forward in desktop GPU performance. Polaris has still room to exist at the very lower end, but Vega will vanish. Vega owners don't need to worry though - FineWine applies to every GCN-card.

i do not get the 4th of July argument ... the lunch is on 7th ....so ... 1st 2nd 3rd , 5th and 6th of july are all days that the 4th is celebrated ? if the 7/7 release date is truth is not unreasonable reviewers to get a review model after mid june no ? Now Navi ... if it comes out gives +-5% 2070 perfomance for about 250 euros will be a killer deal mind you the cheaper 2070 here (Greece) is 485 euros . @Celcius you are from the states you use nickname Celcius ? Am i the only one that finds that strange ? :P (( not in a bad way by the way :P ))

Yeah AMD never jumps ahead of N Greedia every so many generations, like the 3870X2. Ah History is good to learn....................

Fox2232:

. 2080 which you can buy at about 10% higher price than Vega 7 has ~3% more transistors and ~3% higher clock.

Radeon 7* Vega 20* Same price* Lets not go around confusing names by calling them what they aren't and claiming different prices. Radeon VII MSRP is $699 RTX 2080 MSRP is $699 Both can be found at these MSRP prices https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16814202330 https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16814137375 If you can find one of these cards for 10% cheaper, thats great, but that doesnt change that they are the same price, it simply means you should take advantage of the sale at the time Lastly if there WAS a product named vega 7, it'd be inbetween the performance of a Vega 6 APU and Vega 8 APU.

Aura89:

Radeon 7* Vega 20* Same price* Lets not go around confusing names by calling them what they aren't and claiming different prices. Radeon VII MSRP is $699 RTX 2080 MSRP is $699 Both can be found at these MSRP prices https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16814202330 https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16814137375 If you can find one of these cards for 10% cheaper, thats great, but that doesnt change that they are the same price, it simply means you should take advantage of the sale at the time Lastly if there WAS a product named vega 7, it'd be inbetween the performance of a Vega 6 APU and Vega 8 APU.

It's not about how cheap version of 2080 you can have. It is about fact that there is just one variant of Vega 7nm in consumer market, therefore there is no reason to get let's say $50 more expensive version from Asus than cheaper one from Sapphire. On other hand, 2080 has wide range of variants and price tags for better PCB design, cooling, higher clock out of the box.

This sounds rather underwhelming, though expected.. if the new gpu’s can’t even compete with the now old 2080ti, then it hardly interest me. I hope AMD will be able to up the game and at least match what nvidia were able to do months ahead of them. Now we look at AMD matching what Nvidia two years ago? (1080ti’ish?) might do better than that though, but sounds like not by much..

I think they have always stated that the first wave of NAVI would be mainstream GPUs.

Camaxide:

This sounds rather underwhelming, though expected.. if the new gpu’s can’t even compete with the now old 2080ti, then it hardly interest me. I hope AMD will be able to up the game and at least match what nvidia were able to do months ahead of them. Now we look at AMD matching what Nvidia two years ago? (1080ti’ish?) might do better than that though, but sounds like not by much..

Where's your facts? Don't post stuff you claim to know about then not post a link to reference what you said, or go polish your NEW NGRIDIA GPU. As the last few postes have stated, they release the low end first. Ever hear of History? History shows AMD usually takes the lead every so many years, Let me know I can link what I say. I'll toss in the 3870X2 for now.........