Support NeoGAF

[AquaticSquirrel]

Image of official letter below:

Spoiler

The measures typed out below:

• Bot Detection and Management:
  Use real-time bot detection mechanisms and tools to scan and filter site traffic and identify/block known malicious bots.
  
  
• CAPTCHA Implementation:
  Use challenge-response tests to determine if the user is human during the checkout process. (e.g. "I am not a robot" check box, simple math problem, picture/confident or alpha-numeric identification or honeypot)
  
  
• Purchase Limits:
  Limit purchases at launch to 1 per end-user. Reject subsequent orders containing the same information, such as name, email address or billing/shipping address.
  
  
• Reservations:
  Use a queue-based notification system which allows customers to reserve their place in line to purchase as stock becomes available in the future. If a product is show 'out of stock', customers have the option to be notified by email once the product is available.
  
  
• Manual Order Processing:
  At launch, switch to a manual order processing to properly validate orders with minimal delays.
  
  
• Limit Reseller Sales (B2B):
  During the 3 weeks after launch, limit the number of sales made to commercial re-sellers.
  
  
• Inventory-to-Cart Allocation:
  Allocate invetory only when a customer submits an order or set a time limit on how long a customer can hold our product in their cart. Inform customers that purchases are not guaranteed until the order is submitted.

Looks like they are taking it pretty seriously, seems to be a reaction to the issues and backlash facing Nvidia currently with their 3000 series paper launch.

 

[Spukc]

Wait nvidia released a new GPU?

 

[Rentahamster]

Good guy AMD

 

[Calverz]

Thank fuck. More power to amd. I might seriously consider big navi as it seems il never get an rtx 3080 at this rate.

 

[papersleeves]

Let's hope the retailers follow the guideline :/

 

[RoboFu]

thats all well and good but will any store abide by any of these? probably not becaise that could mean a lot of money to invest in their online stores.

 

[AquaticSquirrel]

Let's hope the retailers follow the guideline :/

Yeah that is definitely the main issue, I think this was smart from AMD. It shows they are doing their best to mitigate the issues faced by the 3000 series launch while also probably leaking it to the public so that if they do end up with shortages and scalpers galore they can rightfully shift the blame to retailers/store fronts for AIBs while showing they have done the best they can.

Smart move in my book.

 

[J3nga]

Guidelines are good, but will the stock be high enough to actually be able to buy it? While scalpers are a problem, non-existing stock is a bigger problem, we're yet to see if that's the case with RDNA2 cards.

 

[BusierDonkey]

All of which will fail miserably.

There are just too many people that are scalpers for a living now that can circumvent just about any attempt to slow them. Many retailers and storefronts won't follow any of these guidelines either. A sale is a sale and spending time implementing all this to prevent sales seems counterproductive when your goal is unloading merchandise.

Just putting this out is good optics for AMD themselves though. Very good idea to make sure you have your audience believing you are actively trying to help them by putting the spotlight on retailers who already bought your product and have to sell it to customers. When these all sell out in 3 seconds, immediately start showing up on Ebay and the backlash happens, you just point at the retailer and say the retailers fucked up, they didn't follow our guidelines.

 

[llien]

reaction to the issues and backlash facing Nvidia currently

NV issue is that their 3080 stock is so laughably low, they don't accept even pre-orders.
While what AMD has is the reason NV had to much more expensive GA102 as 3080 instead of GA104 (which now is just 3070).

 

[Black_Stride]

Please be RTX3080 levels
Please be RTX3080 levels
Please be RTX3080 levels

If DXR performance isn't (dont even bother turning it on) levels.
Nvidia will be shitting themselves.
They have no current chips to upgrade, so the only fighting move they have is a price cut.

 

[AquaticSquirrel]

Guidelines are good, but will the stock be high enough to actually be able to buy it? While scalpers are a problem, non-existing stock is a bigger problem, we're yet to see if that's the case with RDNA2 cards.

Hard to say at this point, on the one hand AMD are limited in wafer supply by TSMC'S capacity. They are using 7nm for CPU, Console SoC, GPU and data center so it will depend on yields/capacity and how early they have been stocking up silicon/wafers and manufacturing speed.

There is also the factor of how high demand might be, even if AMD had tons of stock, more than any previous launch even, if demand is unprecedented (3-10 times expected for example) then there will be shortages no matter what.

Only difference here is I don't believe this will be a paper launch so even in the worst case scenarios listed above a reasonable amount of real customers should hopefully be able to get their hands on them.

Of course they could also just pull an Nvidia and paper launch it, hopefully they won't but we should find out soon enough when Ryzen/Radeon new products arrive at retailers.

 

[SantaC]

Please be RTX3080 levels
Please be RTX3080 levels
Please be RTX3080 levels

If DXR performance isn't (dont even bother turning it on) levels.
Nvidia will be shitting themselves.
They have no current chips to upgrade, so the only fighting move they have is a price cut.

Being between 3070 and 3080 is good enough imo

 

[Krappadizzle]

Wait nvidia released a new GPU?

On paper they did.

 

[pr0cs]

/crossing fingers that the 6000 series is close to 3080 spec, tired of waiting for Nvidia to pull their head out of their ass in regards to product availability.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Good news all around, but whether these guidelines will be followed everywhere is a different question.

It'll be interesting to see how R5 5600/X will perform in benchmarks cuz....

 

[J3nga]

Hard to say at this point, on the one hand AMD are limited in wafer supply by TSMC'S capacity. They are using 7nm for CPU, Console SoC, GPU and data center so it will depend on yields/capacity and how early they have been stocking up silicon/wafers and manufacturing speed.

There is also the factor of how high demand might be, even if AMD had tons of stock, more than any previous launch even, if demand is unprecedented (3-10 times expected for example) then there will be shortages no matter what.

Only difference here is I don't believe this will be a paper launch so even in the worst case scenarios listed above a reasonable amount of real customers should hopefully be able to get their hands on them.

Of course they could also just pull an Nvidia and paper launch it, hopefully they won't but we should find out soon enough when Ryzen/Radeon new products arrive at retailers.

Oh there's definitely going to be shortage, I have no doubts about it. Question remains to what degree and how long it will last.

 

[papersleeves]

Yeah that is definitely the main issue, I think this was smart from AMD. It shows they are doing their best to mitigate the issues faced by the 3000 series launch while also probably leaking it to the public so that if they do end up with shortages and scalpers galore they can rightfully shift the blame to retailers/store fronts for AIBs while showing they have done the best they can.

Smart move in my book.

I agree. I just wonder if they could do more about this. Still, it's already better than team green

Being between 3070 and 3080 is good enough imo

3070 performance at 3070 pricing would be good enough for me, though I do wish they're closer to 3080 level.

 

[johntown]

I commend them for this approach. I wish all new tech hardware makers would follow similar rules.

 

[Kenpachii]

Step 1: deliver a limited amount in the first week but still a lot
step 2: deliver 10 times more the second week to let scalpers sit on their cards forever.

 

[Silver Wattle]

All of which will fail miserably.

There are just too many people that are scalpers for a living now that can circumvent just about any attempt to slow them. Many retailers and storefronts won't follow any of these guidelines either. A sale is a sale and spending time implementing all this to prevent sales seems counterproductive when your goal is unloading merchandise.

Just putting this out is good optics for AMD themselves though. Very good idea to make sure you have your audience believing you are actively trying to help them by putting the spotlight on retailers who already bought your product and have to sell it to customers. When these all sell out in 3 seconds, immediately start showing up on Ebay and the backlash happens, you just point at the retailer and say the retailers fucked up, they didn't follow our guidelines.

It is the retailers fault, how the fuck can you try to frame this as AMDs fault? AMD doesn't have the power to tell large chains to implement theses guidelines or they don't get stock.

Stock allocation is entirely on the resellers.

 

[Maybe It's Medicine?]

Easy pr win for them. I'm not going out of my way though. Not even going to bother until next year.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Stock allocation is also NOTHING like MSRP.....the retailer wants the cash and wants to turn over the inventory especially on low margin PC parts. There is zero incentive to constrain bulk online purchases for the retailer outside of charge backs/fraud. The only time they care is when there is a line of 100 people outside the front doors...then one person walking out of the door with 50x is a bad look.

"the bricks are for show...but the clicks bring us the DOUGH $$$$" That is a real thing and something that was used to push the wave of digital storefonts/ecom in the early/mid 2000's.

 

[Black_Stride]

Good news all around, but whether these guidelines will be followed everywhere is a different question.

It'll be interesting to see how R5 5600/X will perform in benchmarks cuz....

The 3600 is damn champ!
With a 3070 - 3080 GPU at 4K or 1440p you are well sweet.
That 5600X is dead in the water, will wait for a 5600 and hope it can champ the situation at a kinder price like the 3600 has been.
But realistically I dont think AMD could price that thing competitively vs its own baby sister.

I said this before, I dont think we are going to get CPU limited any time soon a six core 3600 will be nextgen ready easy work.........the second gen AM5 chips will be out by the time a 3600 is even remotely seen as truly slowing a system down and below console spec.
The 8 core zen 2 consoles got a lot of people shook, no need to panic..........yet.

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

I wish we had benchmarks already though. Legit ones, before anyone jumps on me. Would love to see the GPU's go head to head and see if AMD can hold a candle to DLSS and RTX.

 

[PhoenixTank]

I wish we had benchmarks already though. Legit ones, before anyone jumps on me. Would love to see the GPU's go head to head and see if AMD can hold a candle to DLSS and RTX.

They're probably close to the mark on CPUs at least. GPUs... only a little tease so far. One would hope we'd hear about RT at the presentation, before launch.
I still recommend waiting for independent benches but Covid Logistics does make that harder to swallow. I guess ideal middle ground would be try to buy on release, leave sealed until reviews are out & return if they're not what you expected.

 

[supernova8]

Not to sound cynical but AMD simply putting out these guidelines is a meaningless gesture.

Doesn't sound like they are providing/sponsoring any technical help whatsoever. If a website doesn't already have some of these measures in place, I highly doubt they will do it just because AMD asked them to. Especially if AMD isn't footing the bill.

As someone involved in running an ecommerce site (not selling PC stuff though, so no I cannot get you a Big Navi lol), I'm well aware of the cycle that exists when you ask your IT services provider(s) to implement new features. If you're running some barebones Shopify site or something then yeah cool but any larger retailer is probably running something a bit more complicated than that.

They have the e-commerce storefront itself but then other stuff connecting to their inventory management system (probably a different one) and their customer data management system (again, probably a different one). Everything has to work together like clockwork and it's not always a case of "oh yeah plonk this new module in, just like that". As anyone who works in software (I do indirectly) knows, it's often the case that changing one little bit of code can completely fuck the entire system.

So yeah... as I said.. all well and good for AMD to sit in their high tower and proclaim that it's better to have XYZ system in place without actively doing anything to actually help. They're just "leaking" this so that when the scalper shit hits the fan (which it inevitably will), they can say "well we did tell them" despite knowing full well nothing much is going to change in the space of a month.

 

[waylo]

Not to sound cynical but AMD simply putting out these guidelines is a meaningless gesture.

Doesn't sound like they are providing/sponsoring any technical help whatsoever. If a website doesn't already have some of these measures in place, I highly doubt they will do it just because AMD asked them to. Especially if AMD isn't footing the bill.

As someone involved in running an ecommerce site (not selling PC stuff though, so no I cannot get you a Big Navi lol), I'm well aware of the cycle that exists when you ask your IT services provider(s) to implement new features. If you're running some barebones Shopify site or something then yeah cool but any larger retailer is probably running something a bit more complicated than that.

They have the e-commerce storefront itself but then other stuff connecting to their inventory management system (probably a different one) and their customer data management system (again, probably a different one). Everything has to work together like clockwork and it's not always a case of "oh yeah plonk this new module in, just like that". As anyone who works in software (I do indirectly) knows, it's often the case that changing one little bit of code can completely fuck the entire system.

So yeah... as I said.. all well and good for AMD to sit in their high tower and proclaim that it's better to have XYZ system in place without actively doing anything to actually help. They're just "leaking" this so that when the scalper shit hits the fan (which it inevitably will), they can say "well we did tell them" despite knowing full well nothing much is going to change in the space of a month.

Ditto. These guidelines are all fine and well, but it's just a PR stunt. Mere suggestions that should be obvious to anyone after the Nvidia fiasco. But if AMD isn't actively enforcing this, then who cares? Also, none of this means anything if they don't have enough supply to go around.

 

[GHG]

The reality is that AMD need to be better prepared and have more stock than Nvidia for their GPU launch.

The lack of stock at launch and now for the RTX 3000 series cards is scandalous, they would have been better off delaying the launch for a couple of months.

 

[Black_Stride]

I wish we had benchmarks already though. Legit ones, before anyone jumps on me. Would love to see the GPU's go head to head and see if AMD can hold a candle to DLSS and RTX.

I think you already know the answer to that.

Competing with DLSS is going to be a minute before AMD have a solution that rivals it.

RT on Compute Units is totally doable, the question is whether turning on DXR in games tanks performance worse than even on a 2060?
And without some sort of DLSS-esc technology it would make the experience much much worse.
AMD could surprise us though, maybe they have something to take advantage of DirectML as they have been working with Microsoft.

 

[AquaticSquirrel]

I think you already know the answer to that.

Competing with DLSS is going to be a minute before AMD have a solution that rivals it.

RT on Compute Units is totally doable, the question is whether turning on DXR in games tanks performance worse than even on a 2060?
And without some sort of DLSS-esc technology it would make the experience much much worse.
AMD could surprise us though, maybe they have something to take advantage of DirectML as they have been working with Microsoft.

Regarding DLSS/Upscaling/Reconstruction tech we really haven't heard anything from AMD so far so we can only assume that they don't have an equivalent for the moment. Of course us not hearing about it if they did have something is not exactly strange as companies don't normally unveil or leak their software solutions/features ahead of announcement the way hardware normally does (due to so many hands in the hardware pie). But until AMD say something, let's assume they don't have anything for this right now, it is the safest assumption.

Regarding Ray Tracing, current rumours indicate better than Turing but worse than Ampere. How much better or worse? No idea, but seeing as Ampere's RT performance was kind of a let down based on the hype and ended up being something like 10% more performant than Turing in actual games then maybe AMD could actually be pretty close? Hard to say exactly. Something to also take into account going forward is that future Ray Tracing games that come from consoles will be optimized for AMD's RT solution rather than RTX so that could be a card that plays in AMD's favour with future games. How much that might matter in the end when they should all probably be calling DXR API anyway? Who knows.

But I would seriously doubt that AMD's RT performance is worse than a 2060, that would be silly. They do have custom hardware for Ray Tracing built into their CUs, this is not simply running RT on an otherwise normal not-RT CU and hoping for the best.

 

[Black_Stride]

Regarding DLSS/Upscaling/Reconstruction tech we really haven't heard anything from AMD so far so we can only assume that they don't have an equivalent for the moment. Of course us not hearing about it if they did have something is not exactly strange as companies don't normally unveil or leak their software solutions/features ahead of announcement the way hardware normally does (due to so many hands in the hardware pie). But until AMD say something, let's assume they don't have anything for this right now, it is the safest assumption.

Regarding Ray Tracing, current rumours indicate better than Turing but worse than Ampere. How much better or worse? No idea, but seeing as Ampere's RT performance was kind of a let down based on the hype and ended up being something like 10% more performant than Turing in actual games then maybe AMD could actually be pretty close? Hard to say exactly. Something to also take into account going forward is that future Ray Tracing games that come from consoles will be optimized for AMD's RT solution rather than RTX so that could be a card that plays in AMD's favour with future games. How much that might matter in the end when they should all probably be calling DXR API anyway? Who knows.

But I would seriously doubt that AMD's RT performance is worse than a 2060, that would be silly. They do have custom hardware for Ray Tracing built into their CUs, this is not simply running RT on an otherwise normal not-RT CU and hoping for the best.

Optimized for AMDs RT solution isnt a thing.
Raytracing is Raytracing.
DXR is DXR.....all RTX titles are using DXR right now, Intels DXR capable card will be able to run DXR features, AMDs DXR capable cards will run DXR features.

Fundamentally the only difference between the manufacturers so far is that Nvidia have hardware on the die dedicated to handling Raytracing thats it.
Its why DXR works on GTX series cards as well.....they dont have dedicated hardware so they effectively brute force the Raytracing but they arent powerful enough to raster + rt at a reasonable level.

Consoles use Compute Units to do it, and im assuming AMDs new cards also us CUs to handle Raytracing.
Im guessing the AMD cards have some software that tells them how many CUs to dedicate towards RT.
The real question is will the hit from activating DXR take up too many CUs that rasterization is hindered and performance tanks anyway or the opposite too few CUs are used for RT so the GPU still has to wait for them to complete their calculations.

Consoles have it easy here because devs can on a title by title basis tell the console how many CUs are needed to do RT and how many will do rasterization so hitting 30/60fps is totally doable.

 

[Boss Mog]

AMD cards always get scooped up by miners. If they really want to stop scalpers and miners, they should integrate some form of anti-mining into their chips.

 

[AquaticSquirrel]

Optimized for AMDs RT solution isnt a thing.
Raytracing is Raytracing.
DXR is DXR.....all RTX titles are using DXR right now, Intels DXR capable card will be able to run DXR features, AMDs DXR capable cards will run DXR features.

Fundamentally the only difference between the manufacturers so far is that Nvidia have hardware on the die dedicated to handling Raytracing thats it.
Its why DXR works on GTX series cards as well.....they dont have dedicated hardware so they effectively brute force the Raytracing but they arent powerful enough to raster + rt at a reasonable level.

Consoles use Compute Units to do it, and im assuming AMDs new cards also us CUs to handle Raytracing.
Im guessing the AMD cards have some software that tells them how many CUs to dedicate towards RT.
The real question is will the hit from activating DXR take up too many CUs that rasterization is hindered and performance tanks anyway or the opposite too few CUs are used for RT so the GPU still has to wait for them to complete their calculations.

Consoles have it easy here because devs can on a title by title basis tell the console how many CUs are needed to do RT and how many will do rasterization so hitting 30/60fps is totally doable.

While it is true that all cards will use the same API, due to different hardware implementations there are always going to be different ways to optimize performance depending on the target architecture/hardware. This is the same with current game engines and APIs such as DX11, DX12, Vulkan, OpenGL etc... Of course it should all still work on any card regardless, but in terms of optimizing the API for best performance on particular hardware, that is definitely going to be a thing as it always has been. How much will it make a difference? Depends on the API, hardware architecture and the operation you are trying to run, maybe it won't make much difference at all at the end of the day but there are definitely ways to optimize API calls etc... for different hardware.

You also seem to be under the misconception that AMD has no hardware RT built into their cards. This is incorrect, they have hardware built into their TMUs specifically for RT. They also don't have to dedicate an entire core/CU for just RT, their cores can perform parallel operations.

 

[Alexios]

DLSS is irrelevant to me as long as it requires specific support by the developer/game (and collab with Nvidia for them to train their ai to that game?) and isn't just a driver/resolution setting you can apply to any.

As long as it works in this way there will always be games that don't implement it so you'll suffer through worse performance or settings/need to upgrade for this or that game same as before it was a thing.

Other companies are working on their own AI enhancement crap, from facebook to whoever, we'll see if some middleware solution or whatever comes along to make it widespread and make it matter.

As for RT, we'll see how they do. Nothing is free, but that goes for NV cards as well, if they didn't have the RT cores on them they'd be using that space/cost for something else presumably.

Anyway, just interested in a CPU/mobo/ram upgrade at the moment over the next year or even much sooner than that hopefully. Even got a new PSU already cos my last died.

 

[Black_Stride]

You also seem to be under the misconception that AMD has no hardware RT built into their cards. This is incorrect, they have hardware built into their TMUs specifically for RT. They also don't have to dedicate an entire core/CU for just RT, their cores can perform parallel operations.

Nothing is free.
Whether its an entire CU or part of a CU going towards RT that has a cost and in AMDs case its a cost thats directly taken from Rasterization performance.

I am hoping their cards will finally be supported by the likes of Octane and Redshift....hell all the renderers that are "RTX accelerated" it should broaden the options people have.

Im still optimistic about their RT performance, but the realist in me doesnt think it will be anything to write home about.

 

[thelastword]

Regardless of anything that happens, these cards will sell. Money in AMD's pocket and the RTG. I am happy that AMD is making it easy for gamers to get a hold of 6000 series cards and Ryzen 5000 as well, because the performance they are pushing is going to uptide the market.....Yet, it's bittersweet, because AMD has had some stellar products that gamer's have not supported, but these same gamers become so cocky thinking AMD should give them these wares for peanuts, whilst they open their eyes with glee with the price gouging rimming they receive from Nvidia.

AMD is no longer in the business of trying to please gamers. They have two solid and performant products in RDNA 2 and Ryzen 5000, their products are doing the talking even beyond just gaming, let the gamers choose what is more important to them, brand loyalty or performance per watt. AMD should charge the most that they can irrespective of Nvidia's current market share....Nvidia had a paper launch anyway and have been talking up RT and DLSS in just a handful of games for years now as their primary advantage, yet Raytracing in most games is only going to start now, as I said long ago, Raytracing is only going to be viable when AMD and the consoles are ready for it, and lo and behold.....

Nvidia rushed up to Ampere, cards which consumes lots of power, low vram counts and not much in overclocking headroom, people justify why they should buy this and expect AMD to sell a card that's competitive with the 3080/3090 for $500, perhaps these people should continue to support Nvidia, because clearly, if it was up to them, AMD would not get 1 cent towards the R&D of the stellar products they have coming in November......

Lots of innovations in tech (infinity fabric, infinity cache and a robust software suite of features, pioneers of HBCC, first to 7nm and still the only GPU at 7nm, better performance per watt), lots of R&D and money invested to achieve all that, both on the CPU and GPU side and AMD should just give cards away to gamers who never supported their product, yet would pay more for less performance on the green team. AMD should start pricing their products how the market dictates, through performance and features, don't undersell themselves, the market will buy it's products easily with the imminent influx of very positive benchmarks for them in games and pro software.....They need the money to keep making innovations and evolving the tech in this industry, moreso than others tbh...They are in a good position to, because NV and it's 8nm is proving to be more problematic to produce in volume as opposed to AMD's TSMC 7nm process, which is mature at this point....AMD has several advantages here, all they have to do is bring the performance and produce enough product for launch.....and going by the looks of it. I think they have both of these areas covered...