AMD Radeon Live Blog - AMD Presents: The New Era of PC Gaming

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• Gigaplex - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

  A CPU pulls much more than 85W when overclocked. At stock, you don't need the fancy CPU heatsinks.

• chizow - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

  Definitely not easy, they're already effectively "overclocking" the chip to compete with 980Ti/Titan X so they needed the WCE to accomplish that. Similarly, the NVTTM cooler is basically at its thermal limits at around 275W, it can't overclock much at all and Nvidia has already acknowledged they are evaluating better reference coolers for their top end flagships.

• mrdude - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

  Don't confuse watercooling with excessive TDP and difficulty with aircooling. We've seen horrible cooling solutions on the 290 and 290X from AMD themselves, but their partners also made some really good solutions as well.
  
  The Fury X likely has watercooling for two reasons:
  1 - Yes, one is the high TDP. WC helps in that respect tremendously, even if it can be cooled with a rather large air cooler (and it can)
  2 - The density of HBM + GPU on the same package allows for a significantly decreased PCB, which can also cut costs -- trace, GDDR5 dies, and bus width all increases size and cost of a GPU. Watercooling the entire die, memory and all, is *way* easier than on a traditional GDDR5 GPU.
  
  David Kanter spoke about this in some detail on TR's podcast with Scott Wasson.

• chizow - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

  @mrdude, I think the point stands honestly, 275W stated typical power draw is extremely high for a single GPU and would erase much of the benefit of some of the bulky custom coolers. I do agree the solution makes sense and I'm using AIO myself on my Titan X's and the difference is tremendous, 40C delta between ref air cooler and AIO. But the point is Titan X and 980Ti didn't "need" the AIO, the can use that thermal headroom for bigger gains, while the Fury X is starting there. We'll see how perf shapes up in the end.

• mrdude - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

  Watercooled Fiji doesn't "need" the AIO either.
  
  This argument makes no sense when the Titan X has a 250W TDP and uses an air cooler. And 275W is very easily chewed up by a slight overclock on the Titan X, yet it still doesn't require a watercooler.
  
  Look at the watercooled Fiji PCB and notice how much smaller it is than your Titan X. If you take apart the HSF on your Titan X, you'll also notice that the VRAM and the traces make it impossible to make a smaller PCB while still utilizing regular air-cooling.
  
  The watercooler on Fiji has nothing to do with an extra 25W TDP. That's just plain ol' idiotic. It's to do with the shorter PCB and the HBM being on-package right beside the die.
  
  Your point doesn't "stand." At all. Here's the video to David Kanter's and Scott Wasson's discussion on the matter:
  http://techreport.com/review/28246/the-tr-podcast-...

• chizow - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

  250W is typical for stock Titan X yes, and when you increase power target to 275W you quickly saturate the capability of the stock cooler which quickly raises temperatures to the temp limit of ~85C where the GPU begins to throttle and downclock. Running at these higher temps also increases power consumption due to leakage, I can see this with my 2 cards (one AIO, one Aircooled) that the Aircooled Titan X hits the power limit (1/0) while the AIO cooled one stays at 0 on power limit while running just 43C under load.
  
  What does PCB size have to do with power consumption again? I am not even sure what your point is here. The watercooler on the Fiji DOES have a significant impact on total power consumption, did you not see that the aircooled version not only has fewer SP enabled, but it still runs at the same 275W typical board power as the Fury X? Again, we will see quite clearly, that leakage and operating temps are going to play a significant role in how all of these cards behave.
  
  The point is, that without the AIO cooler, Fury X may have only achieved maybe 950MHz if it had to operate at 250W limit using an aircooler, and it most certainly "stands" if you just look at how the non-Fury X behaves. The same behavior was mentioned with 290/X when custom coolers came out, the very high power consumption of the reference blower came down with these custom coolers that kept the GPU at lower operating temps.

• mrdude - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

  Size has quite a bit to do with power consumption. But that wasn't my point. I was referring to the size of the PCB and the cooling required. Fiji doesn't need a large PCB, thus it can decrease the PCB and allow for smaller form factors. In order to do so, AMD had to utilize a watercooler because a smaller PCB wouldn't allow for a heatsink large enough to dissipate the required heat. This is a choice AMD made that nVidia doesn't have, at least with GPUs that are roughly the same TDP. nVidia can't fit a Titan X or 980Ti into a form factor that's the size of Fiji. The 970 was possible, sure, but not even the 980 isn't available in that size.
  
  As to your other point regarding the HSFs being ineffective at 275W TDP -- that, too, is nonsense. The R9 290X non-reference cards dissipate even more heat than Fiji and Titan X and do so with an air cooler. The limiting factor for Titan X is the blower design and not the TDP. Non-reference 290X coolers with triple or double-fans dissipate more heat and tend to do so more quietly than the Titan X's blower style cooler. And, again, AMD could have opted for that once more but instead chose to decrease the size of the GPU which meant they required watercooling.
  
  The one argument you can make regarding the use of watercooling is maybe the inconvenience factor, but it also allows for smaller form factors that would otherwise be impossible. The one aspect AMD overdid was the cooling capacity of their watercooling solution. 500W for a GPU that at max power can only consume 375W seems more than a bit excessive.

• chizow - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

  Again, how is size an important factor when the much larger PCB on the Titan X/980Ti are rated for 250W while the tiny Fiji board rates 275W? Oh right, because the GPU is the primary determinant factor, not size. The PCB size has NOTHING to do with the need to use watercooling, they can and will be using an air cooler on the Fury, if they are worried about size, they can just use a blank PCB extension like many of the 970 OEMS did. Sure, Nvidia can't use a smaller PCB until they move to HBM but that's a non-issue when it comes to using standard air cooling or an AIO, if anything Nvidia has MORE options. And Nvidia can't fit the Titan X or 980Ti into the same form factor? Proprietary, maybe, but most if not all mini-ITX SFF can fit the NVTTM ref dual-slot design, but not the Fury X due to no room for the rad.
  
  I said the NVTTM ref design tops out at 275W, why are you comparing to the 290X non-ref and not the reference that showed the exact same problems? Was I talking about the same 3-fan open faced coolers that are on the 980Ti? No, I wasn't. But my point stands there as well as I've already acknowledged the custom coolers and AIOs do a better job of cooling and reducing power consumption in the form of leakage and fan power draw, which brings me back to the point a reference cooler on the Fury X might have very well failed at 275W making it a 300W monster, while the reference blower IS sufficient at 250W and up to 275W for Titan X. Obviously both the 980Ti and the Titan X would benefit immensely from an AIO as well, but I think many buyers already understand this.
  
  The form factor won't be an issue for towers, but it will be for SFF designs that don't have a place to hang or wedge the radiator. And the 500W max is not overkill, because again, the extra cooling capacity will be used to keep the operating temps lower, thereby reducing power consumption from leakage.

• mrdude - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

  Once more, but this time in comprehensible English.

• chizow - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

  Read it again, or work on your English reading comprehension, it makes perfect sense to someone that knows what they are talking about.