Radeon Vega - The Count Down!

[HADES]

It's 2017 and that means, at least for PC enthusiasts, it is time for CES - the consumer electronic show where new exciting tech stuff will be revealed. It's starts January 4th. Thanks to YouTubers like LinusTechTips who will be at CES 2017 and will record most of the events there I can follow CES closely.

This year a lot of eyes will be on AMD. They are likely going to officially release Ryzen - their new CPU. They are also going to release more information about Vega - their new graphics card architecture.

Today AMD launched a new website with a countdown to Vega architecture preview: http://ve.ga/ ...which I take it stands for "Very Exciting Game Architecture" - of course I just made that up.

We're not likely going to see consumer-ready Vega graphics cards until mid this year, if not even later, so this architecture preview is a tease. However, Vega is huge in many ways and so the hype is justified.

 

[Tom Da Bomb]

right sounds good, lol now its just like argh hurry up and get it done, finished, and released XD just got a pc setup a year ago and its about to be out of date for games coming out in the next 2-5 years, of course it takes a lot of time, trial and error, let alone knowledge to iron out such complicated engineering.

After the next jump im guessing things should level out more where we dont have such difference in performance depending on the "Generation" the hardware was released in, in the sense that if you have a 4.00Ghz 4 core cpu from 3 or 4 years ago it probably wont nearly match up to a 3.00Ghz 2 core Zen cpu / 3.00Ghz 2 core i7 intel cpu based off how they preform processing now.

 

[HADES]

I initially heard about Zen in 2014 when Jim Keller (the CPU God) was hired back by AMD to design Zen from the ground up. Here is Jim talking about the Zen design in 2014:

Ryzen should be on par with the latest Intel i7 chips like the i7 6900. On Dec 13th last year, ADM showcased this:

As for your computer, you will likely be able to squeeze a bit more life out of it with DirectX 12 (and perhaps a slight overclock).

Right now single core performance is key. This will change with DX12 and Vulkan (the alternative to DX12) as both technologies were designed to take advantage of multiple cores.

 

[Tom Da Bomb]

O yeah i mean in the sense that in 5 years the games that come out will be designed more toward systems with the new cpu's and g'cards so my 8 cores wouldnt match up to a 4 core then when the cpu's are just processing better, even with the few games i have that do use all 8 cores.

Which of course im exaggerating that my system will be obsolete because ill probably still be able to play games coming out in 5 years by just turning the graphics settings all down and setting lower rendering settings in my g'cards UI, but more so the idea things are changing quickly and not just being increased but running in a much more efficient way which my system is lacking.

So after the next 5 years of changes those 2020 cpu's wont be so bad at matching up with the undoubtedly increased cpu's / processing units that will come out 5 years after that in the 2025+ range, its just anything before the time of 2015 was designed under an inefficient processing theory.

 

[HADES]

Got it. You're right.

I'm in this position right now. My computer is 5 years old and it can't handle lot of the newer games at normal settings. I notice issues even with everything set to low.

 

[Tom Da Bomb]

Yeah i know what you mean theres a lot of times where it feels like the cpu just isnt powerful enough with a game that just came out, even though for the resources it takes up things should be running fine, or things run fine on a newer game but every now and then when theres a lot of reflection or a specific type of graphical effect it starts to choke for what seems like no reason.