PC Perspective Podcast #365 – 09/03/2015
Join us this week as we discuss the R9 Nano Preview, Tons of Skylake SKUs, Asynchronous Shaders and more!
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Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Allyn Malventano and Sebastian Peak
Program length: 1:49:27
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Week in Review:
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0:04:20 ASUS Z170-A Motherboard Review
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0:15:45 ASUS Strix Radeon R9 Fury Review
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0:42:40 Hot Topic: Asynchronous Shaders
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0:48:45 This week’s episode of the PC Perspective Podcast is brought to you by VideoBlocks
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News item of interest:
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IFA 2015:
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Hardware/Software Picks of the Week:
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Ryan: Skiva StandCharger
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Allyn: Tabbed Windows Explorer with QTTabBar
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Sebastian: Who needs full ATX??
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Closing/outro
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Check your post naming,
Check your post naming, should be Podcast 365 not 364.
Fixed!
Fixed!
I think PCPer left out some
I think PCPer left out some important points about Asynchronous Compute(AC) and ACE’s in the GCN architecture. We all know that GCN has ACE’s baked in, but the reason why it is there in the first place is because of consoles run custom low-level APIs that heavily use AC.
This leads me to believe that games that use AC ported from the console to the PC will keep the support for AC, since DX12 has that feature, potentially make those games a bit easier to port.
I’ve mentioned this before on a different story, but the below article is a really good and in depth read about AMD’s “long game”:
http://thegametechnician.com/2015/08/31/analysis-amds-long-game-realization/
AMD is developing
AMD is developing Asynchronous Compute even more so for the HPC/workstation market where the largest revenue potentials are. Just look at AMD’s Zen based Server systems in development. It’s AMD trying to get back into the server market, and that R&D will benefit gaming because the more games rely on the Asynchronous Compute ability of AMD’s GPUs the less the latency issues between the CPU and GPU becomes a factor in gaming, and gaming uses a lot of compute besides graphics compute to run the games.
So expect that the Arctic Islands/Greenland GPUs that will be paired with the Zen cores on a HPC/workstation SKUs to have even more Asynchronous Compute features and take more of the gaming/compute load off of the CPU. Those HPC/workstation SKUs will lead to some very powerful derived gaming APUs on an interposer for the future AMD gaming platforms. That AMD HPC/exascale system APU with some FPGA compute included right on the HBM stacks may also lead to some very interesting possibilities for future gaming systems that AMD will be creating on an interposer for even more flexibility, so expect even more technology to be made available for gaming complements of U-SAM’s research grants in the exascale computing initiative.
00:50 Sebastians voice
00:50 Sebastians voice sounds too rapey.
Allyn face when the
Allyn face when the conversation switches to anything AMD. He looks constipated as soon as AMD Nano is mentioned and the segment starts. He miraculous recovers as soon as they finish.
I’ll have to disagree with
I’ll have to disagree with Josh and how much ASYNC shaders will be used by developers. I would like to remind people how many PC games are Xbox ports that will be leveraging every drop of performance they can out of the hardware.
PC is still taking its cues from console.
That’s only because now the
That’s only because now the consoles are all using CPUs with cores that are of the same ISAs(CPU) as the ones in the PCs(x86 based), that asynchronous compute built into AMD’s GCN GPU hardware is going to be popular with the games makers, and it’s simply because of the fact that more gaming compute workloads, as well as graphics workloads can be done on the GPU with the GPU controlling more of the game. That big latency lag between CPU and GPU is going to make things less responsive for those gaming systems that can not offload the work onto the GPU. Having a GPU able to do more on its own without having the GPU needing to wait for the CPU to manage things is the future for gaming, as well as compute.
If I were a games maker, I would want to reduce latency to the smallest amount possible, I’d want to move as much of the game as possible to the GPU, with as little dependency on the motherboard CPU as possible just for the latency advantage, PCI adds to latency in addition to CPU having to manage the OS and all the other things a CPU has to do. The less done on the motherboard CPU and the more done on the GPU the better for the game to run without the drag of ever present latency between the CPU and GPU via PCI or any other connection protocol latency over the distance between motherboard CPU and PCI card based GPU.
Hopefully discrete GPUs will be getting their own CPU cores in addition to all that GCN type asynchronous compute ability and the motherboard CPU will not figure into the gaming equation but for a simple assist role, and to run the OS. Get it all done on the GPU’s die if possible, or as close to the GPU as possible(discrete GPUs with their own CPU cores, and GCN style asynchronous compute GPU cores).
We all know Nvidia will try
We all know Nvidia will try and influence every console port that uses ACE with GameWorks middleware and ask developers to drop any console enhancement which will benefit AMD GCN in the process.
Console games are closer to metal and DX12 is support to bring the PC closer to that. How much of that is going to be stripped away in a port, especially one with Nvidia backing and GameWorks middleware along with “developer recommendations”.
this is why i come to this
this is why i come to this website first now.
another technology report website is really not doing so hot nowadays. quality has gone down dramatically. especially in podcasting.
glad you guys are evolving and stepping up your game!
congrats and keep doing what your doing. its working.
You guys do not deserve AMD
You guys do not deserve AMD R9 Nano. Please send it to techpowerup.com ASAP. Thanks.
Maybe if BTARunner hadn’t
Maybe if BTARunner hadn’t written such BS commentaries berating AMD recently, they’d have one? Or maybe if they didn’t make sure they had just enough titles that are not optimized for reasonable AMD performance in their benchmark suite they’d be getting one? Anybody who doesn’t get one likely just has themselves to blame.
AMD should not give Scott W.
AMD should not give Scott W. of techreport.com any sample of their products. Scott is surrounded by a bunch of NVidiots and has no credibility now.
A long time ago, Scott W. was honest and I used to resd techreport.com regularly. Those days are long gone.
NVidiots are trolling on this as well as many other tech websites.
Well, that is the world we live in. It is very difficult to change the human nature.