780/770 sales appear slow

[SolMiester]

snip

Mate, you have been a member here long enough to use the search function, I'm not going looking for "a" list of driver issues, I read this forum everyday, I have seen the threads, and watched the discussions.
Perhaps you are a lucky AMD buyer, I'm really happy for you, but that doesn't invalidate my opinion.
I havent bought ANY video card for myself in years, I dont play modern games anymore as I have a young family, however as a technician I have supported many who have and some with 7xxx, hence my continued use of this forum.

And while I may bag AMD drivers, your exaggeration of my opinion is absurd. There is a big difference between broken, problematic and confusing. If my opinions offend you, perhaps you should invest less emotion in your hardware.

 

[2is]

For single card solutions I wouldn't hesitate to go with either brand personally. Before my 680 I had a 5870 and it was a great card. Still is actually, and being used along side my 2500k as a second gaming machine. That said, if I wanted to go multi-GPU I would most certainly favor NVidia at the moment.

That said, I reciently purchased a 2nd used 680 for SLI and have been very happy with the performance gain. I'm outperforming a Titan and it only cost me a fraction of what a Titan would have cost. This upgrade method will likely be the norm for me moving forward. Buy one high end card, and about a year or so later, buy a 2nd used one, and with that in mind, it would be very difficult for me to purchase an AMD card unless it was something really special and/or AMD shows a consistent track record of getting their multi-gpu configurations on par with NVidia.

 

[thilanliyan]

And while I may bag AMD drivers, your exaggeration of my opinion is absurd. There is a big difference between broken, problematic and confusing. If my opinions offend you, perhaps you should invest less emotion in your hardware.

You specifically said the 7 series drivers have had and continue to have issues. Well guess what, nVidia has had and still do have driver bugs. And both camps will continue to do so.

The way you worded your opinion made it sound as if the 7 series cards were unusable on launch and continue to have bad bugs, and I am not the only one who thought you said as much given the responses to you so sorry I don't think I exaggerated your opinion. In fact, in my first post to you, I nicely said I have not had any issues and asked for a list of ones you have heard of. I never dismissed your opinion. Your response to my experience was "LOL", which is when I dismissed what you originally said as a generalization, much like a lot of people do on this forum about AMD's drivers, incorrectly IMO.

I don't particularly care either way (as in I respect that you have your own opinion on the subject and would not try to change it), but I would respond and provide another side to the story, especially if I have some experience with what is being discussed. The "AMD drivers suck" line is perpetuated over and over on this forum, and in my experience it is not true, which is why I respond when it is posted (sometimes).

 

[Elfear]

You specifically said the 7 series drivers have had and continue to have issues. Well guess what, nVidia has had and still do have driver bugs. And both camps will continue to do so.

The way you worded your opinion made it sound as if the 7 series cards were unusable on launch and continue to have bad bugs, and I am not the only one who thought you said as much given the responses to you so sorry I don't think I exaggerated your opinion. In fact, in my first post to you, I nicely said I have not had any issues and asked for a list of ones you have heard of. I never dismissed your opinion. Your response to my experience was "LOL", which is when I dismissed what you originally said as a generalization, much like a lot of people do on this forum about AMD's drivers, incorrectly IMO.

I don't particularly care either way (as in I respect that you have your own opinion on the subject and would not try to change it), but I would respond and provide another side to the story, especially if I have some experience with what is being discussed. The "AMD drivers suck" line is perpetuated over and over on this forum, and in my experience it is not true, which is why I respond when it is posted (sometimes).

+1

Many 7000 series owners politely replied to SolMeisters blanket statement that AMD drivers suck with a request to list the specific issues. Hard to take him seriously when those requests are met with mocking and more blanket statements.

 

[Will Robinson]

+1

Many 7000 series owners politely replied to SolMeisters blanket statement that AMD drivers suck with a request to list the specific issues. Hard to take him seriously when those requests are met with mocking and more blanket statements.

Solmeister:

I havent bought ANY video card for myself in years, I dont play modern games anymore

 

[wand3r3r]

Mate, you have been a member here long enough to use the search function, I'm not going looking for "a" list of driver issues, I read this forum everyday, I have seen the threads, and watched the discussions.
Perhaps you are a lucky AMD buyer, I'm really happy for you, but that doesn't invalidate my opinion.
I havent bought ANY video card for myself in years, I dont play modern games anymore as I have a young family, however as a technician I have supported many who have and some with 7xxx, hence my continued use of this forum.

And while I may bag AMD drivers, your exaggeration of my opinion is absurd. There is a big difference between broken, problematic and confusing. If my opinions offend you, perhaps you should invest less emotion in your hardware.

In your words: LOL, are you serious?

You don't even game, haven't owned AMD hardware (in years if ever), but your in here to inform us about the driver bugs? You have no evidence except what you've "read" and cannot even back that up.

I'm going to assume you inform everyone about the NV driver bugs you've read about too? Oh wait, you don't.

If you had a spec of credibility or experience it'd be different, but as a NV cheerleader it's just spreading more fud. Some of us have had both camps cards this gen and haven't seen these breaking bugs you claim exist and make the experience miserable.

/OT

 

[SlowSpyder]

GTX680 was also a luck-luster improvement over 580. I'm talking about high-end cards because you picked on 7970 for delivering little improvement over previous generation.
Yeah, NV is miles ahead in product delivery, AMD had the whole line-up released when NV released GTX680, the same holds true for AMD's 5series and NV's 4series, NV is always late to adopt a new process node, in the past they at least brought great performance improvements but now it took them 1.5 year to bring a high-end card to the market. Also I couldn't care less about marketing. You specifically picked on 7970 and its drivers and then backtracked that you were talking about other things. If someone was expecting mature drivers for a whole new architecture like GCN over previous VLIW 5/4 then he was clearly delusional. When NV released 8800GTX they also had many issues with the drivers especially in Vista. It'd say it was worse then 7970.

Don't use all those silly facts to back up your position! He's read posts on forums that say AMD has driver bugs, so that's all I need. I'm putting my 7970 up for sale!

 

[Lepton87]

For single card solutions I wouldn't hesitate to go with either brand personally. Before my 680 I had a 5870 and it was a great card. Still is actually, and being used along side my 2500k as a second gaming machine. That said, if I wanted to go multi-GPU I would most certainly favor NVidia at the moment.

That said, I reciently purchased a 2nd used 680 for SLI and have been very happy with the performance gain. I'm outperforming a Titan and it only cost me a fraction of what a Titan would have cost. This upgrade method will likely be the norm for me moving forward. Buy one high end card, and about a year or so later, buy a 2nd used one, and with that in mind, it would be very difficult for me to purchase an AMD card unless it was something really special and/or AMD shows a consistent track record of getting their multi-gpu configurations on par with NVidia.

That 2GB might bite you in the ass in the future tough. Most people seem to prefer a Titan over a GTX690 which is essentially 680 in SLI, but with chips binned for lower power consumption and maybe 5% lower performance.
http://forums.anandtech.com/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=4043
87.5% Titan/12.5% 690
Numbers of cards sold also reflect this.
But right now I think both of those cards don't make much sense for gaming, GTX780 is a much better value, for example I would only need to pay 25% more to have GTX780SLI than a single Titan in my country, but I should have seen it coming, uncapped FP64 is very unusual by NV standards for a supposedly gaming card.

 

[SirPauly]

I dont think anyone would disagree that the 7970 is a fine bit of kit and still is, however the fact remains, its taken god knows how many driver releases to get there and it still has issues. It was faster than the 580 at release, but not that much for the premium AMD laid on it IMO, and it should of been faster at the new node.
I just wish AMD had a better software team, so they could deliver a product with aplomb.
AMD is lucky to have such enthusiasts who dont mind spending time to get the right drivers for their game\configuration.
just my 2c

This was the original view to me. The major criticism to me was the amount of HD 7970 performance and how many drivers releases to get it there!

Is this unfair?

2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review

In 2012, AMD had a rough time developing performance drivers and making them available to the public in a reasonable amount of time. It was evident that AMD was having problems during the first few months of the year. The performance we were receiving was still a lot better than the GeForce GTX 500 series video cards, and the Radeon HD 6000 series video cards, but we did not know how slow AMD's video cards were performing until the GeForce GTX 680 was released and AMD had to deal with serious competition again.

After NVIDIA launched the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 video card AMD fell very far behind in performance for two or three months. To combat this, AMD retired its former policy of releasing a new WHQL driver every month. Now AMD is more focused on adding the necessary profiles to beta drivers, and releasing updated versions of the new beta drivers to the public. Once AMD feels that the beta drivers are ready for WHQL certification, it will publish the driver and start working on the next beta driver.

We here at HardOCP commend AMD on turning its year around. What started out extremely rough turned around in the second half of 2012. The drivers started having large improvements on performance, and the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition meant that AMD had a video card that was competing with and sometimes beating a GeForce GTX 680.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...iver_performance_summary_review/#.UbB_PpwUbd0


Some or many enthusiasts understand the logic behind driver maturity, specifically with a new arch but some or many may also appreciate a more consistent driver out-of-the box!

This is my view of the HD 7950:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35097285&postcount=87

 

[wand3r3r]

This was the original view to me. The major criticism to me was the amount of HD 7970 performance and how many drivers releases to get it there!

Is this unfair?

2012 AMD and NVIDIA Driver Performance Summary Review




http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...iver_performance_summary_review/#.UbB_PpwUbd0


Some or many enthusiasts understand the logic behind driver maturity, specifically with a new arch but some or many may also appreciate a more consistent driver out-of-the box!

This is my view of the HD 7950:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35097285&postcount=87

NV pulled out some driver improvements over the year, especially after AMD started ramping up the gains last fall. Did they just suck a little less as they could only get smaller gains?

Anyways, people bought the cards without expecting performance gains. It just turned out there were massive gains over the course of the year. I don't think it's anything to complain about and say the drivers were crap. Yeah they could have spent more time initially to get more gains, no doubt about that, but more importantly is whether games have worked and you can use the card without issues. If there were serious issues the forum would be full of people complaining non stop, not just NV fans claiming AMD drivers suck.

tldr; Performance increases were unexpected, therefore not a broken driver per say. An issue would be problems gaming etc. imo. solMisers claim was that AMD drivers have problems, not that they took long to enhance the performance.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I bought my cards expecting a memory rewrite and CF fix, perhaps a bit naive, but I was itching to put something with AMD's branding back in my system and it sure wasn't going to be bulldozer!

I've had more quarks with CF in a few short months than I ever did with SLI, but I haven't run into a Dragon Age 2 yet on CF either.

Some DX9 artifacting, having to induce input lag through vsync, nothing deal breaking but you'd have to be crazy not to want a more refined experience for $620.

Though I did purchase my card(s) well after the single card issue was addressed, thankfully.


Ironically I never planned to go CF, but deep down it's always been something I've enjoyed.

 

[Granseth]

I don't know why so many threads changes from nVidia has an issue, to AMD sucks, and then it becomes an AMD discussion.
But anyway, I think one of the bigger changes I've seen with the AMD is that they have got a much better relationship with developers and are much more up to date with game releases. And this might be because they are much more involved with games developers because the next gen consoles are using GCN, and thereby needed to work with AMD. I think that might be one of the better effects of next gen console games that get ported to windows, and hopefully not something that will affect nVidias relationship with game-developers negatively.

 

[96Firebird]

Anyways, people bought the cards without expecting performance gains.

I disagree. Countless posters here claimed there would be improvements through drivers because GCN was a new architecture. And they were right.

Just like many claim the crossfire fix will be here soon. How soon "soon" is, nobody knows.

 

[SirPauly]

not that they took long to enhance the performance.

That was probably the biggest nit-pick I did get from Sol's view. Agree to disagree!

 

[SirPauly]

but I should have seen it coming, uncapped FP64 is very unusual by NV standards for a supposedly gaming card.

Because it is not strictly a gaming card and also being sold as a lower cost entry compute card and why it was named Titan.

 

[wand3r3r]

That was probably the biggest nit-pick I did get from Sol's view. Agree to disagree!

No I think he flipped it to that being he knew he was talking fud and that's easy to pick up.

Anyways I agree on crossfire, people are waiting and still waiting for fixes.

 

[Subyman]

I noticed that the 770 club on various forums have been pretty silent. The 780 clubs are getting action, but the 770 clubs are like the thing hasn't been released. OCN only has around 10 people that have purchased one so far.

Personally, I'm kind of bummed most vendors are strapping on last year's coolers to the 770 instead of giving us the Titan cooler.

 

[bystander36]

I noticed that the 770 club on various forums have been pretty silent. The 780 clubs are getting action, but the 770 clubs are like the thing hasn't been released. OCN only has around 10 people that have purchased one so far.

Personally, I'm kind of bummed most vendors are strapping on last year's coolers to the 770 instead of giving us the Titan cooler.

That may be because the 770 really isn't anything new, while the 780 is, at least in the realm of reasonably priced. That and people may be leery of 2gb's on the 770.

 

[blastingcap]

As Anandtech pointed out, those on longer upgrade schedules may like the GTX 7xx cards, but those with stronger GPUs (like the hardcore folks on forums) are likely already on 6xx/HD7xxx cards and aren't likely to be interested in GTX 7xx.

 

[Subyman]

I've wondered who these "long upgrade cycle" people are, especially when we are talking about a $399 GPU. I'd think the amount of people that twiddle their thumbs for 3-5 years and then suddenly drop $2000+ on a high end gaming rig only to let it rot again for 5 years are rather rare.

 

[chimaxi83]

Mate, you have been a member here long enough to use the search function, I'm not going looking for "a" list of driver issues, I read this forum everyday, I have seen the threads, and watched the discussions.
Perhaps you are a lucky AMD buyer, I'm really happy for you, but that doesn't invalidate my opinion.
I havent bought ANY video card for myself in years, I dont play modern games anymore as I have a young family, however as a technician I have supported many who have and some with 7xxx, hence my continued use of this forum.

And while I may bag AMD drivers, your exaggeration of my opinion is absurd. There is a big difference between broken, problematic and confusing. If my opinions offend you, perhaps you should invest less emotion in your hardware.

So you have zero actual experience with any modern card, AMD or Nvidia? Makes sense. I guess a lot of us AMD users are "lucky".

 

[SolMiester]

So you have zero actual experience with any modern card, AMD or Nvidia? Makes sense. I guess a lot of us AMD users are "lucky".

LOL, NO, where did I say that, I said I haven't bought any personally, as I dont play modern games...That doesn't mean I dont support or haven't used those of users\family\friends that have...
People do seem to put words in others mouths on these forums....I dont list the issues, as I'm not anal enough like some on these forum to keep time-line lists of such.

 

[Stuka87]

Mate, you have been a member here long enough to use the search function, I'm not going looking for "a" list of driver issues, I read this forum everyday, I have seen the threads, and watched the discussions.
Perhaps you are a lucky AMD buyer, I'm really happy for you, but that doesn't invalidate my opinion.
I havent bought ANY video card for myself in years, I dont play modern games anymore as I have a young family, however as a technician I have supported many who have and some with 7xxx, hence my continued use of this forum.

And while I may bag AMD drivers, your exaggeration of my opinion is absurd. There is a big difference between broken, problematic and confusing. If my opinions offend you, perhaps you should invest less emotion in your hardware.

LOL, so somebody that doesn't game, and doesn't even own a GPU made in the last few years is trying to tell those of us that do that we are wrong.

 

[SirPauly]

I've wondered who these "long upgrade cycle" people are, especially when we are talking about a $399 GPU.

Potentially, one may feel HD 6970, HD 5870, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 480 and GTX 470 owners --- potential customers or gamers that may find the HD 7970, HD 7970ghz edition and the GTX 770 as compelling choices to consider -- some may not!

 

[SolMiester]

LOL, so somebody that doesn't game, and doesn't even own a GPU made in the last few years is trying to tell those of us that do that we are wrong.

great, another twit who cant read....