AMD: Vega Not Optimised for Gaming

AMD’s Raja Koduri admits that it did not optimise its Vega GPU architecture for gaming. Not yet, at least. The problem is due to the Infinity Fabric that AMD uses to interconnect its Vega architecture. Specifically, Infinity Fabric is optimised for server use. However, Koduri promises that a “consumer optimised” version will be incoming soon.

Vega – Not Optimised for Gaming

Koduri made the surprising confession on his Twitter account. In particular, he blamed AMD’s use of Infinity Fabric. In addition, though, Koduri criticises early Vega reviews for failing to accurately show the architecture’s performance-per-watt. Koduri tweeted*:

“Seems like a lot of questions around power of Vega. The initial round of reviews didn’t showcase the perf/watt dynamic range of Vega well.

New articles in the last few days showing interesting range of options. Vega10 has the largest perf/watt dynamic range than any GPU I recall.

There is a dilemma of whether the default setup be optimized for perf/$ or perf/watt. Ideally both, but sales data tends to favor perf/$, but some opinions favor perf/watt. We tried to give user options to default based on their preference.

Rationalizing Vega architecture based on RX implementation is an incomplete analysis.

To really understand an architecture – you need to understand the architecture in the content of overall roadmap, trade-off and constraints.

Infinity fabric on Vega is optimized for server. It’s a very scalable fabric and you will see consumer optimized versions of it in future.”

Infinity fabric on Vega is optimized for server. It's a very scalable fabric and you will see consumer optimized versions of it in future.

— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) August 30, 2017

Koduri’s promise of a “consumer optimised” Vega could mean a couple of things. First, AMD could use optimised Vega to produce efficient, low-power, budget Vega cards. Alternatively, it’s possible that the company launches a true beast of a graphics card, one that fulfils the true promise of Vega.

Gamers Vs. Miners

Koduri also weighed in on the on-going gamers versus cryptocurrency miners argument:

“Every Vega we sell effectively adds a new user to our small base of enthusiast gamers and it’s in our best interest to enable a lot of them.

The noise around the pricing doesn’t help us at all. Not sure where that is coming from – it only benefits competition.

We live in interesting times, where the gamer doesn’t want the miners to buy and miners don’t want the gamers to buy GPUs.

It’s hard to filter out the biases of miners and gamers as more often than not we don’t know who is who on social media.”

It's hard to filter out the biases of miners and gamers as more often than not we don't know who is who on social media

— Raja Koduri (Bali Makaradhwaja) (@RajaXg) August 29, 2017

*Edited for clarity. Please see Koduri’s Twitter for the original context.