Now We All See the Genius of AMD Going Lowend First

[Sweepr]

Nobody forced you to wait for the AIBs, reference models at MSRP prices (not FE prices) were available day 1.

Nowhere to be found in US today.

www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/amd/rx480

I'll take your posts more credibly when we get that 90% of GTX 1080 on the RX 480. So at the current rate, maybe in 2017

 

[AtenRa]

Yeah, like that DX12 list of games you recited to me before? Which seems to always change in the worse possible way.

getting worse like the new DOOM Vulkan you mean ??? :whiste:

I'll take your posts more credibly when we get that 90% of GTX 1080 on the RX 480. So at the current rate, maybe in 2017

Yea that evaluation was for higher Transistor count(higher density), unfortunately for everyone didnt happen.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Get over myself? Is this like the go to for people when they can't think of something better? What does that even entail? I'll never understand some English idioms.

I'd rather wait for the AIBs. But I'm use to waiting with AMD lately :/

I doubt you waiting for AMD since you got a GTX 980TI last time. How about us NV users waiting for proper DX12 implementation?

 

[AtenRa]

Nowhere to be found in US today.

www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/amd/rx480

Microcenter has it and im sure you can find them at smaller retailers around the US.

Sapphire RX-480

2 in stock at Denver/Denver Tech Center Micro Center
6 in stock at Greater Atlanta/Marietta Micro Center
2 in stock at St. Louis/Brentwood Micro Center
3 in stock at Long Island/Westbury Micro Center

Also they are available in EU.

 

[railven]

getting worse like the new DOOM Vulkan you mean ??? :whiste:

DOOM was a great game. I defended it from the onslaught of accusations of NV money hatting by the resident AMD guys. Glad to see you guys finally accept DOOM as a good game.

Unfortunately, I already beat it - even got all the achievements. Just more reinforcement of the AMD "Wait for it" defense. But I guess I can replay it again...months after I beat it.

Yea that evaluation was for higher Transistor count(higher density), unfortunately for everyone didnt happen.

Welp, you got those nice Zen predictions to fall back on too.

So another ad hominem? Gotcha.


[EDIT: In my rush to get to the cafe I attributed the quote to the wrong poster, so I'm removing that part from my post. Sorry about that.]

Anyways, I'm done. Have fun

 

[AtenRa]

DOOM was a great game. I defended it from the onslaught of accusations of NV money hatting by the resident AMD guys. Glad to see you guys finally accept DOOM as a good game.

Unfortunately, I already beat it - even got all the achievements. Just more reinforcement of the AMD "Wait for it" defense. But I guess I can replay it again...months after I beat it.

Dont believe everyone plays new games at day 1.

Also, next month we have Deus Ex coming and then Civilization Vi, BF 1 and Watch Dogs 2. Lets see how RX-480 will do against GTX 1060 (price competitor) in those

 

[railven]

Dont believe everyone plays new games at day 1.

Also, next month we have Deus Ex coming and then Civilization Vi, BF 1 and Watch Dogs 2. Lets see how RX-480 will do against GTX 1060 (price competitor) in those

If you're predicting AMD will have superior performance, then I will safely bet it will after a few weeks/months and patches/driver updates.

 

[coercitiv]

Dont believe everyone plays new games at day 1.

Wait, the best case for AMDs GPUs is new DX12/Vulkan games, but not everyone plays new games as they come in?

Did you just hint people with brand new RX 480 cards are still discovering DX11 games?

 

[AtenRa]

Wait, the best case for AMDs GPUs is new DX12/Vulkan games, but not everyone plays new games as they come in?

Did you just hint people with brand new RX 480 cards are still discovering DX11 games?

I dont believe I have ever said that people will not play older or new DX-11 games after new DX-12/Vulkan games have been released.
But not everyone is playing new games on day 1, I havent played DOOM, Total War warhammer and many more to this day but they are in my list. Im still playing older DX-11 games like Civilization V or BF 4 but i will not recommend GPUs with low DX-12/Vulkan performance in the second half of 2016.

 

[Rifter]

I really don't even see why we are arguing about this. It's very simple.

If you play mostly older games and also upgrade at least every year or two nvidia is probably the way to go, they are focused on dx11 performance and do it well, better than amd right now there is no argument there.

If you like to play new games with cutting edge features(dx12) and want a card that will continue to get better and perform well for years as more dx12 games come to market then the Rx480 starts to look really good. As amd is focused on dx12 performance and implementation of new dx12 features.

Basically you like to live in past buy nvidia, you want new features and a card that will stay competitive for years buy amd.

 

[coercitiv]

I dont believe I have ever said that people will not play older or new DX-11 games after new DX-12/Vulkan games have been released.

The problem with your argument is it can be perfectly twisted to match your opponent's point: in the next 6-12 months, not everyone using GCN cards will play DX12 games even if several titles are about to launch. It falls perfectly within the "it's just one game" discourse we've seen on this very forum.

These are transitional times, from one platform to another, with games launching using old APIs and getting patched for the next ones. It will end soon, new titles will get first day support for new APIs, and this should have been the argument of choice against what railven said.

Instead you chose to project customer behavior in a way that is at least strange, as many of these AAA titles spread like wildfire in young gaming communities. Ironically this same projection comes as a counter argument against the GCN low API advantage, as I've already explained above.

Want an even more piercing argument? If 1st day experience is what gamers really appreciate, how does the landscape change once titles become reliant on their low level API implemenation, and Nvidia finds itself scrambling to "help" game developers optimize their render path while AMD benefits from developer default expertise as the go to training platform (consoles, MS DX12 documentation)? We've already seen this happen, with some forumites claiming it is the developer's duty to code better for the Nvidia path, while others chuckle as their old GCN cards are cruising.

I believe railven is right, 1st day experience will be the deciding factor.

If you play mostly older games and also upgrade at least every year or two

Play old games and upgrade often. I can only smile.

 

[Erenhardt]

Basically you like to live in past buy nvidia, you want new features and a card that will stay competitive for years buy amd.

amd should hire you.
Have a cookie.

 

[sirmo]

I really don't even see why we are arguing about this. It's very simple.

If you play mostly older games and also upgrade at least every year or two nvidia is probably the way to go, they are focused on dx11 performance and do it well, better than amd right now there is no argument there.

If you like to play new games with cutting edge features(dx12) and want a card that will continue to get better and perform well for years as more dx12 games come to market then the Rx480 starts to look really good. As amd is focused on dx12 performance and implementation of new dx12 features.

Basically you like to live in past buy nvidia, you want new features and a card that will stay competitive for years buy amd.

Except rx480 has great frame/dollar on dx11 as well. For anyone on any sort of budget rx480 is an amazing card.

For anyone just getting into PC master race rx480 is perfect.

One of the biggest reasons why folks stuck to consoles over the PCs is because a.) they didn't know any better b.) they don't want to spend thousands on a gaming PC c.) they were afraid of having to upgrade their GPUs every two years or so in order to play latest games.

rx480's great value today and the forward looking architecture which is already being tapped into by developers means rx480 will likely remain a solid gaming card for a foreseeable future.

Power consumption issue is also overstated. rx480 under Vulkan or DX12 titles has great perf/power.. certainly a huge improvement over their last gen.

 

[krumme]

I will not be one of those whiners that complain about crappy bf1 full of bugs.
Therefore i am not going to buy bf1 until after one month or until 80% bugs is filtered out.

Its not only about performance but many games is simply far to buggy from day one because of the TTM pressure on the devs.

Playing from day one gives a crappy experience that kind of last. Not a smart move imo.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Playing from day one gives a crappy experience that kind of last. Not a smart move imo.

:thumbsup:
Fully agree

EDIT: It's not even about GPU manufacturers not supporting as you will be able to play with any card fast enough. It's about games being released with lots of bugs.

 

[zinfamous]

Now, 480 could be bought day 1, much better availability than other launches but i guess you missed that somehow. :whiste:

nah bro, here's how it works around here:

a few hundred 1070/1080s bought day 1 and being sold out for a month + at gauging prices from nVidia and further gauging from sellers = look how popular they are! Everyone wants one!

Several thousand 480s selling out day one and trickling out here in thereat now 20x+ the sales volume of 1070/1080, at AMD's MSRP with a handful of sellers price gauging: Failure from AMD! No one really wants one because I can't get one and clearly AMD couldn't handle this launch!

This is basically what I am seeing from the usual suspects around here.

Don't know why people care about this part of the industry.

 

[Gikaseixas]

If you're predicting AMD will have superior performance, then I will safely bet it will after a few weeks/months and patches/driver updates.

To be fair RTG is being very aggressive sorting their drivers lately. I'm seeing great effort by team AMD to mirror Nvidia's day 1 support efforts

 

[Layer8]

Nowhere to be found in US today.
www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/amd/rx480

That is comparing just 4 shops!
Don't you have a site in the US with a more useable number of shops?
In the EU we have this for example:
skinflint.co.uk RX480

 

[Gikaseixas]

nah bro, here's how it works around here:

a few hundred 1070/1080s bought day 1 and being sold out for a month + at gauging prices from nVidia and further gauging from sellers = look how popular they are! Everyone wants one!

Several thousand 480s selling out day one and trickling out here in thereat now 20x+ the sales volume of 1070/1080, at AMD's MSRP with a handful of sellers price gauging: Failure from AMD! No one really wants one because I can't get one and clearly AMD couldn't handle this launch!

This is basically what I am seeing from the usual suspects around here.

Don't know why people care about this part of the industry.

:biggrin: Good post

Perhaps there's incentive to brag about sales...

 

[zinfamous]

I will not be one of those whiners that complain about crappy bf1 full of bugs.
Therefore i am not going to buy bf1 until after one month or until 80% bugs is filtered out.

Its not only about performance but many games is simply far to buggy from day one because of the TTM pressure on the devs.

Playing from day one gives a crappy experience that kind of last. Not a smart move imo.

agreed, and it seems weird to me that so many experienced gamers here with a decade or more of experience here still tolerate these kind of releases.

But, to be fair, a lot of them probably just shrug off the issues and chalk it up to growing pains with new games. It seems to me that these releases are getting a bit better over recent years--against my better judgement I did pick up Witcher 3 in advance (never pre-ordered a game before that) and because that was released so well, I did something completely absurd and bought a Bethesda game--FO4--the day it released...maybe a few days before. I forgot. I was shocked how playable and relatively free of game-breaking bugs a TES/FO game from Bethesda was on release.

I chalk it up to better optimization through what is more and more becoming console ports, without really knowing what that means.

Still, I'm never going to pay to play an early release/unfinished game. I'm not going to dump a pile of money on pre-ordering something from a company that has no reputation or one that has quite the reputation of releasing broken games and leaving them in that state just because they are already focused on releasing the next broken re-skinned version of the game they just released (Ubisoft).

 

[railven]

To be fair RTG is being very aggressive sorting their drivers lately. I'm seeing great effort by team AMD to mirror Nvidia's day 1 support efforts

agreed, and it seems weird to me that so many experienced gamers here with a decade or more of experience here still tolerate these kind of releases.

But, to be fair, a lot of them probably just shrug off the issues and chalk it up to growing pains with new games. It seems to me that these releases are getting a bit better over recent years--against my better judgement I did pick up Witcher 3 in advance (never pre-ordered a game before that) and because that was released so well, I did something completely absurd and bought a Bethesda game--FO4--the day it released...maybe a few days before. I forgot. I was shocked how playable and relatively free of game-breaking bugs a TES/FO game from Bethesda was on release.

I chalk it up to better optimization through what is more and more becoming console ports, without really knowing what that means.

Still, I'm never going to pay to play an early release/unfinished game. I'm not going to dump a pile of money on pre-ordering something from a company that has no reputation or one that has quite the reputation of releasing broken games and leaving them in that state just because they are already focused on releasing the next broken re-skinned version of the game they just released (Ubisoft).

These two posts sort of tie together. I don't run out and buy games day1. For starters, it's cheaper to wait just a few weeks (especially for PC.) I didn't post on forums about driver issues when I had my Radeons. I had no reason to. I've noticed since buying a GeForce, when I do get that itch the game either works better or is already in NV's pocket.

However, what I did find were driver issues on games months almost years old. Because for whatever reason AMD didn't seem to put as much focus on non-AAA games, especially if they weren't flat out sponsoring them. I don't play shooters MP, but I do play MMOs, lots of them. It wasn't until what 2 months ago that AMD finally fixed DX11 in FFXIV, a expansion nearing a years old.

I do give credit to RTG for their improved turn around time. While I don't like how they fixed Fallout 4's performance, I will credit them to actually fixing it while the game was still fresh. Same for the DOOM issue.

But I'm willing to bet money non-AAA titles will continue to experience more issues with Radeons vs GeForces. And I attribute this to resources. So when people act coy about NV making 4-5 times more than AMD only selling what 20%, I don't get why they act like that isn't important.

Rewind to 2012-2013 when AMD was going into HD 7970 with amazing market share on the heels of a successful HD5K (and somewhat 6K) series.

Did everyone forget the issues with 7970 drivers? Or with DX9 titles and HD 7800 cards? These issues were with AMD having close to 40% of market share but still barely making profits. So excuse me if I don't get all giddy when AMD might reclaim market share but it only brings peanuts into the bank.

It's just amazing to see AMD supporters sometimes. They don't support AMD when it charges fair market value and they get upset when the people that did start to feel their investment is no longer worth it because "OMG, look 390 performance for $240" I bought a 290X for $165 just a few months ago. Tons of people here got 290/290X for <$250 almost a year go. WTH has AMD been doing this whole time?

If small Vega is only as fast as Fury for $400-450, consider me completely out of ideas/hope for AMD. Zen is right around the corner and all that positive hype/jive fizzle once Polaris hit the scene.

 

[sirmo]

@railraven

I've been using AMD and Nvidia cards since the 2000s I had my share of both.. probably about 50-50. Currently I am using an rx480 but I came from a gtx780.

The only time I had an issue with AMD drivers was the cursor corruption bug playing Starcraft, which had an easy workaround. For some reason having the windows magnifier up fixed it. So all you had to do is launch the magnifier app.

My gtx780 on the other hand has an artifacting bug in Total War: Warhammer. And with the card already being relegated to legacy by Nvidia I am not holding my breath that it will be fixed.

Historically speaking AMD has always been on the backfoot when it comes to game support because frankly most game developers used Nvidia cards. I know a few game developers who tell me they've always used Nvidia cards to actually develop on. Also they praised Nvidia because Nvidia would send folks to help them troubleshoot issues when they ran into any.

So before a game even comes out it's already been thoroughly tested for Nvidia hardware. How hard is it to have day one driver support when the game you're supporting is already developed and tested on your hardware? The answer is not very hard.

However for the first time since forever this developer hold Nvidia has had for eons is shifting. For multiple reasons. But the main reason being consoles. AMD owns consoles. Any AAA developer will develop on AMD hardware now, as developing Console titles on Nvidia cards simply makes no sense.

Will be interesting to see how Nvidia will cope being in that position now, since we already know they have an abysmal record supporting their legacy hardware.

 

[zinfamous]

So when people act coy about NV making 4-5 times more than AMD only selling what 20%, I don't get why they act like that isn't important.

Just this point. It is important but I think you are missing the forest for the trees here. (When I said "why are we caring about this here" I guess I am referring to this forum being more focused on topics within threads--seems different rules than OT, to me :\)

Anyway, forest for the trees: I think what you are missing here (unless I am misunderstanding your intent) is that nVidia's much greater profit on selling 20% less to AMD isn't a real concern for AMD right now. It can't be. Profit does matter to AMD, but it isn't tied to nVidia's profit. Comparing these two values holds no meaningful data.

What AMD needs is market share, and selling 20% more volume than nVidia is all that matter right now, for AMD. and it does matter for nVidia, as we saw with their coy announcement which turned out to be a "Release date announcement" (come on--everyone knows this was a delay) for the 1060--the only competitor for nVidia in the sector of this market that really matters--with some bungling here and there with this 3gb nonsense.

I think it's pretty clear than nVidia is handling the 1060 release (2 week delay of shipment and NDA tells me that they really want to ramp up stock to make sure they don't stumble out the door with another disaster of 1070/1080 stock. perception is everything) as a complete response to how 480 launched. I think it is going to be a great card and I would be surprised if it doesn't outsell the 480 by the end of the year (the only reason they wouldn't, imo, is stock issues. While that is possible, we are only speculating on what is going on there).

Anyway, all that to say that 20% more volume of sales is in line with AMD's actual goal. This is exactly why they went mainstream first. 480 is in no real way a competitor to 1070/1080 but we see this argument trying to made again and again for no real reason. Of course those high end cards come out at lower volume and yes, I am making that comparison in a way, but it is not about performance/$. It is about a strategy that is directed at the market, nothing more, and regaining market share is vastly more important than comparing profit margins on incomparable product classes. Gaining marketshare gives them more leverage in the industry and it puts further pressure on nVidia to respond honestly and, hopefully, to the benefit of their customers for once.

I think that after market vendors have had their hands on 480s for a time now and we will see those in great supply just ahead of the 1060 launch--probably equal to the initial 480 reference launch and with better-binned chips? I dunno, that is obviously speculation. So, here we will have solid-performing, designed for 2016 and beyond piece of hardware running 8gb going against a reference "FE" 6gb card stuck on a c. 2009 API and asking a ~$30+ premium for the privilege to own it.

I'm jaded enough to understand that the old hardware will still sell well if not better because it is green and resembles the prospective buyer's highly-caffeinated and sugared energy drink beverage, but the point is that AMD is already winning because they are succeeding in their current strategy.

Plus, they are actually going to turn a profit this year, so at least that's a bonus.

 

[railven]

Will be interesting to see how Nvidia will cope being in that position now, since we already know they have an abysmal record supporting their legacy hardware.

Multi-platform are still crafted on a PC based SDK before finalizing code on consoles. The most advance console games are PS4 exclusive (God of War/Uncharted) and won't see a PC version, unlike XBone games which are now switching to PC focus and Xbone porting (I haven't heard what their SDKs will be, most likely Radeon based but won't be surprised if they aren't.)

Dark Souls uses an engine that was designed on PS4 (Bloodborne being PS4 exclusive) which was later ported to Xbone/PC for Dark Souls 3. This engine was a mess on Radeon hardware at launch. Thankfully that got resolved (it wasn't AMD's issue, it was a game issue - but considering the engine started on PS4 with "Radeon" based hardware, makes you think what happened between PS4 to PC).

EDIT: Because this at one point is what people were seeing:

Dark Souls 3 PC
Minimum:
Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 / AMD® FX-6300
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 750 Ti / ATI Radeon HD 7950
Storage: 25 GB available space
Recommended:
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD® FX-8350
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 970 / ATI Radeon R9 series
Storage: 25 GB available space
These are different from the Japanese dark souls website's requirements

An HD 7950!? MINIMUM!? Where as NV side, lowly GTX 750 Ti. For a game who's engine was born on Playstation 4.

Shall I list other titles that started on Playstation hardware and got a PC port? These games are getting horrendous support on Radeon based hardware. Unfortunately for what you and many others think, AMD having Radeons in all the consoles doesn't implicitly imply that all the games will use the Radeon specific benefits. They'll most likely use the generic DX implementation that connects PC/Xbone/PS4 and end of the day whatever NV is doing they end up on top when the games are benched on the PC side.

However, because these games don't get picked up in review sites, barely anyone in tech forums discuss them. Go to Gaming forums and suddenly AMD owning the console marketing isn't transferring 1:1 to their PC hardware.

And I'm sure a lot of posters here won't even care. Because it isn't DOOM Vulkan or a AAA-title that sells millions and pushes their hardware, but end of the day when Radeons only really shine in perhaps a handful of games versus GeForces walking away with a win more often than lost - perceptions are made. And in my opinion AMD is yet again relying too much on others to get them the win, ie waiting for the console investment to pay off. GPU Open is a damn good start, though. Feels super late, but better late than never. (And then posters start acting like Radeon 290 over GeForce 960 is a serious win for AMD ignoring AMD had to basically bargain price their card. The two aren't even in the same league!)

Will be interesting to see how Nvidia will cope being in that position now, since we already know they have an abysmal record supporting their legacy hardware.

Judging by current sales trends, I don't think they have to. As much as that bugs people here, NV isn't hurting one bit with AMD controlling the console market.

 

[sirmo]

Multi-platform are still crafted on a PC based SDK before finalizing code on consoles. The most advance console games are PS4 exclusive (God of War/Uncharted) and won't see a PC version, unlike XBone games which are now switching to PC focus and Xbone porting (I haven't heard what their SDKs will be, most likely Radeon based but won't be surprised if they aren't.)

Dark Souls uses an engine that was designed on PS4 (Bloodborne being PS4 exclusive) which was later ported to Xbone/PC for Dark Souls 3. This engine was a mess on Radeon hardware at launch. Thankfully that got resolved (it wasn't AMD's issue, it was a game issue - but considering the engine started on PS4 with "Radeon" based hardware, makes you think what happened between PS4 to PC).

Shall I list other titles that started on Playstation hardware and got a PC port? These games are getting horrendous support on Radeon based hardware.

Did you also forget that Dark Souls III ran like crap on consoles as well? Particularly on Xbox One a lot of people complained of 25fps or lower. It wasn't that great on Nvidia hardware either.

Inertia is a powerful thing, and it takes time to overcome, also game development cycles are long, sometimes 3+ years long. A game like Dark Souls started their development on Nvidia but seeing how many issues they had with developing on Nvidia hardware I would be surprised if their next title is done on Nvidia.

Unfortunately for what you and many others think, AMD having Radeons in all the consoles doesn't implicitly imply that all the games will use the Radeon specific benefits. They'll most likely use the generic DX implementation that connects PC/Xbone/PS4 and end of the day whatever NV is doing they end up on top when the games are benched on the PC side.

We're already seen the proof to the contrary. BF1 will probably be the biggest game release of the year and it also appears to be developed using all the latest technologies AMD introduced.

Judging by current sales trends, I don't think they have to. As much as that bugs people here, NV isn't hurting one bit with AMD controlling the console market.

PC market is tiny compared to consoles. Nvidia also counts on people to not notice how poorly Kepler aged. rx480 is selling like hotcakes.. rx470 and rx460 will upgrade many people to the latest tech.

Polaris gives AMD the opportunity to take over the mainstream. If they manage to pull it off, than what I am saying is a foregone conclusion. I do think that Nvidia got caught off guard personally. Enthusiast community is blindsided by the 1080/1070, but 1080/1070 don't matter when it comes to install base discussions, and what hardware a developer is more likely to target.

To a developer only thing that matters is how many people can play their game (market opportunity).. not how much faster 1080 is than an rx480.