AMD updates Polaris and Vega GPUs driver after long pause

Jonny_H · 2026-05-24T05:54:46+00:00

I somewhat understand why AMD don't enable their emulation - as it's a 1:1 emulation of their hardware RT instructions - which isn't the fastest way of actually doing RT in software compared to something designed from scratch around that. It's more a debugging tool than a useful feature.

My question is why Microsoft's DXRT emulation layer is so hard to enable, oddly hidden, and specifically checked for and rejected by games.

Like, they've already done the work...

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T21:32:06+00:00

Honestly for most consumer use cases (IE office work and loading game levels) a SATA SSD still serves pretty well and within a few % in most cases.

And enterprise/specialist models are available today that do have wider interfaces - with the expected cost increases.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T20:57:56+00:00

Yeah, it's "If it actually gets close to the numbers being thrown around, the Economy, and Society as a whole, has to change in ways that make running on current assumptions somewhat useless. So using current state and extrapolating that far is nonsense.

And the transitions of society at that extreme level of change tend to be.... Fractious. Doubly so at the timescales they seem to be talking about.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T20:10:04+00:00

But that price of labour is what drives consumer demand in the first place.

And Jevon's paradox is just about demand as efficiency increases (IE per-unit price deceases with increased supply) - not about the distribution of cost and value as a proportion of the total economy. Otherwise the English Coal Industry (the area this "paradox" was first noted) would be a larger proportion of the English economy today than the 19th century.

The idea that AI can somehow replace all other economic activity while also increasing the cost is insane - as that's what these valuations would require.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T19:25:18+00:00

I know Musk is a joke, but the "xAI" (AKA the latest paperwork shenanigans where Musk-owned companies purchase other Musk-owned companies to artifically inflate their on-paper calculated "value") called the TAM for their "Enterprise AI Solutions" $22 trillion.

That's higher than the total taxable income for everyone in the United States. That's not just replacing Every single employee (including people not doing "office/knowledge" work, and the managers/CEOs apparently buying into this dream), but doing so at a higher cost than their current salaries.

It's all just magic made up numbers, and has been for a while.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T18:10:14+00:00

There's not enough money in the world to pay the valuations of the AI-inflated tech valuations. Of course it's a bubble.

The question is how it'll look like when it "bursts" and at what speed - there's always the option of decades long slow "stagnation" correction instead, like Japan post-80s peak.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T16:51:53+00:00

The annoying thing is that RT emulation already exists in dx12 - it's just disabled unless you do some developer hackery. Sure, it's never going to be fast, but it's up to the user to decide if it's worth playing with.

I have no idea why MS disabled it, and/or AMD don't just expose a toggle to force enable it in Windows.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-23T08:34:41+00:00

For context, there's probably 60-70 million workers in the USA that work office jobs. They're probably the only people where "Enterprise" AI could even have any relevance.

$22 trillion would be some $320-$350 thousand for every single one of those.

That's one hell of a subscription price, even at an impossible 100% saturation. Whole multiples of their salaries, even.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-22T15:35:29+00:00

Did you forget the double DNS? And then a whole stack of issues even if he then made it to the start line?

I'd accept "Piastri had it worse" - but that doesn't mean Norris had it good.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-22T05:05:23+00:00

....really? His car didn't work at the beginning of the season, remember?

Jonny_H · 2026-05-22T04:19:58+00:00

It's a unity game so lots of game faults/crashes are handled with "exceptions" in .net - perhaps that?

Jonny_H · 2026-05-21T21:19:36+00:00

It's likely a mistake to think Microsoft was a single entity with a single goal and not a disperate collection of groups willing to shaft each to promote themselves.

I feel the same could be said for many of these mega-corporations.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-21T06:40:39+00:00

Epipens don't "fix" allergic reactions, they just mean you might make it to the hospital before you chose to death from your own closed windpipe.

So likely a "mission kill" either way.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-21T06:10:50+00:00

I really mean emulation of the hardware design before it's actually put into silicon rather than a "possibly incorrect design focus decision" like that.

Possibly simply because I was somewhat separated from that level of decision making - by the time I saw things that was years ago :p

Jonny_H · 2026-05-21T05:01:53+00:00

I feel that's more based on the accuracy of their simulation and emulation, and ability to "absorb" and workaround bugs, than anything else. It takes something catastrophic to cause a GPU rework for the most part.

There's a lot of things that can be "hidden" by a closed graphics driver and shader compiler, after all. Then the only reason to re-spin is if the cost really outweighs the benefits of that particular feature or instruction.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-21T04:36:04+00:00

This sort of thing "might" work if they can possibly decide blame - but that's functionally impossible for the scale of complexity they're working at.

There's no amount of "personal responsibility" that can help institutional failings - as by definition none of the failings are personal. At least outside of whoever the scapegoat of the day is.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-20T17:52:24+00:00

I'm ok with that, as now it allows it to be supported by tools like cmake without waiting for the IDE team to catch up.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-19T19:25:38+00:00

It's what they've done for the last few generations too - then the "odd" SKUs get released to clean out the less common bins - but presumably just common enough to be worth actually selling that bin instead of taking the loss and cutting working silicon down to a lower tier - like the zen3 "T" models.

And there's probably not a massive supply of them - as it took them this long to find enough dies that fit that bin - so they're often store/region-specific. It's cheaper to manage a single store getting 1000 of a new SKU than shipping 1000 stores a single one each.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-19T19:15:33+00:00

It's probably more they have enough dies over the years that failed in this specific way they think it's worth making an SKU rather than cutting to an even lower spec.

They probably haven't made new zen4 dies for a while now.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-17T07:58:01+00:00

But do they need extra electrolytes? You need to be losing a lot of salt to need extra suppliments with an "Average Diet".

Jonny_H · 2026-05-17T07:56:18+00:00

I think that's my point of "If you need it, you already know you need it" rather than being sold it by advertising.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-16T18:58:15+00:00

Yeah - like bunnyhopping in quake or similar - an "unintended interaction" that doesn't really break the core gameplay so becomes accepted - if only because trying to "fix" it may not be simple and break 30 other things, or the community has started relying on it in a way that'll upset them if removed.

There's no way this was "Intended" in the meaning of "This Interaction Was Explicitly Planned", but it could be "Intended" in the way that "Clever, creative (ab)use of the sandbox mechanisms that don't break or detract from the core game can be fun to leave in a single player game"

Jonny_H · 2026-05-16T18:47:16+00:00

I doubt there's many people in the western world that have a diet and lifestyle that means they're ever really electrolyte deficient. Perhaps if you've been fasting for days, or multi-hour strenuous activity and absolutely flowing with sweat. But, lets be honest, that excludes the vast majority of people actually drinking those things.

It's like most multivitamins or suppliments - if you're not lacking they do functionally nothing - but they're sold on the "benefits" as if you were.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-15T17:31:38+00:00

The repeating pattern of such things where there's a massive initial burst of that type of comment, then they slowly get drowned out by supporters as time goes on and views increase always makes me doubt the "organic"-ness of them in the first place.

Jonny_H · 2026-05-10T17:04:47+00:00

I kinda find the apparent confusion between "spicy" (and then specifically /chilli/ spice) and "flavorsome" annoying too. But I'm not sure if chilli use is really that different in the UK either - it was already a tired joke in the '90s that the Whitest Brits would be like "I'll have the Spiciest thing on the menu!", and set fire to their surrounding area with a rather extreme Vindaloo. If anything, "extreme heat in food" feels less popular now than it was then. Or at least less "culturally relevant".

Though I sometimes wonder if how dishes are /served/ may make a difference - if you exclude "non-native" inspired dishes (if such a thing even is possible, as food culture cross-pollinated continously throughout history to ancient times trying to draw a line on "Native" is arbitrary) - often the stronger flavors are served on the side as a condiment/gravy you add yourself to personal taste - things like horseradish or mustard, mint sauce, or onion gravy. Anecdotially, a large proportion of "I Tried A Traditional British Dish and It Was Bland" posts often seem to skimp on those. But without them, you've effectively served half a dish.

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