Now We All See the Genius of AMD Going Lowend First

[Thinker_145]

Sure, if you want something faster than a 480 I guess nvdia is the obvious choice.

But if you don't the 480 is the better buy since amd is selling them for prices that are competitive in dx11 games, while having a big bonus in some dx12/vulkan games.

AMD did get spanked in rise of the tomb raider so let's not assume every DX12 game will favour them.

 

[stuff_me_good]

To me investing DX12/vulkan capable hardware at this point is no brainer.

I'll ask you, how many of you are still playing those single player DX11 games through that you did once or twice when they came to the market? For me personally, I play mostly one time and only second time if it is really good. The rest I forget and move on.

Obviously multiplayer games are different matter and I play them daily if I play some MP games.

But how many of you thing that you don't get enough FPS on you MP or SP games today and you need to make your purchase choice solely based on DX11 performance in one or two beloved titles? Even I some times get to the mood thinking some good old game I like to play with new HW, but when I get the new HW, the game I loved and waited to be able to play with the new HW is never really that good anymore at that point and I feel bit let down. I already had great game play experience when the game was new and fresh but after time passes on, new and better games come along and swipe your legs under you. Just like I loved those old firaxis civilizations, but I just can't play any of those that are older than civ 5. Even though you get some major GFX overhaul mod to some old game I liked, the experience is not nearly as good and usually it feels a let down.


Clearly nvidia policy is to live in the moment and bit of past because it's the easiest way in the computer industry when you already have the software support and get the quick buck and leave you dry unless you give them more money and buy again from them. It's always hard to make major changes in this industry when your forward thinking gadgets don't have the proper support and HW comes always before SW and in the beginning the product probably does not looks so great, but it's only because not proper SW support.

 

[96Firebird]

AMD is doing what Nvidia did with Maxwell. GTX 750 Ti was huge hit.

RX 480 and especially RX 470 are phenomenal value for what they offer in price/performance.

Did I miss RX 470 reviews?

 

[Dygaza]

Well certainly it was genius to go low end first, but it was almost must to do. HBM2 wasn't ready yet, and GDDR5x availability would have been very limited. And another high end card with just GDDR5 memory would have been waste.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Did I miss RX 470 reviews?

No, but it'll have only 11% disabled. Probably clocked lower given the 110W tdp, but you can overclock that back.

 

[Dygaza]

The real surprise here to me is 1070 vs R9 Nano in Doom Vulkan, a 16nmFF chip being so close in power efficiency to a 28nm chip.

AMD has something wrong in their dx11 power efficiency generally. Cards ain't running at full capacity, yet they consume power like they would be.

 

[AtenRa]

AMD did get spanked in rise of the tomb raider so let's not assume every DX12 game will favour them.

Not with the new Asunc Compute patch. When the game is properly coded for DX-12, GCN gains tremendously.

 

[Madpacket]

No, I don't.

It's giving me pause. In fact I'm 90% sure I'll just send back or refuse shipment of the 1070 tomorrow. The 480 will be good enough for Doom 1440 which is what I impulse bought the 1070 for in the first place (before Vulcan results released).

 

[Thinker_145]

Not with the new Asunc Compute patch. When the game is properly coded for DX-12, GCN gains tremendously.

Benchmarks?

 

[Thinker_145]

Yes this whole thing is giving me a pause as well. The 1070 won't be worth it if it's advantage over the 480 will gradually reduce over time.

 

[guskline]

@guskline

AMD doesn't need to win on the PC. They just need to be competitive. Without Vega that just isn't happening at the high end for them, yet.

But if AMD is competitive on the PC, with their domination of consoles, it's a good position to be in. Certainly Zen and Polaris/Vega could be much better than the years prior on Faildozer and Hawaii/Fiji.

I agree with you. Perhaps my comment "wither away" was directed to the RTG division.

Dr. Lisa Su should get some credit here also. Her "Zen-like (no pun intended) focus on making better product with simpler product lines and, perhaps her ability to rein in a poor marketing department seems to be paying off.

The most recent example is the quick fix for the RX480 reference. AMD of old would belly ache, cry foul, blame Nvidia etc.

I saw no such thing. RTG got to work and fixed it. THAT speaks volumns in my book.

Late this year into next year I contemplate building a third rig using a Zen processor. As a result of the RX 480 performance, I have no hesitation on using AMD for BOTH the cpu and gpu. :thumbsup:

 

[linkgoron]

Benchmarks?

oc3d

The fury x still loses at 1080p but edges the 980Ti at 1440p and 4k (on dx12)

 

[Krteq]

Wow, that's completely different from the the test in the rest of the world.

What's the build of the game? Is this for the patch 7?

 

[linkgoron]

Wow, that's completely different from the the test in the rest of the world.

What's the build of the game? Is this for the patch 7?

Yes. The review is from the 10th of July.

From the review:

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the first patch that provided support for DirextX 12 was not that well received, it was unstable, lacked support for Asynchronous Compute and more often than not provided less performance than the games DirectX 11 counterpart.

Now the game has been updated with a lot of DirectX 12 specific optimisation, support for Asynchronous Compute and even support for DirectX 12 Multi-GPU, which will hopefully allow the game to finally deliver greater performance under the new DirectX 12 graphical API.

 

[sweetusernames]

AMD did get spanked in rise of the tomb raider so let's not assume every DX12 game will favour them.

well the 480 does beat the 970 in Rise of the Tomb Raider, it's just that the AMD performance curve seems to be compressed in RotTR, you see the 390 and 480 perform right where they should be, but Fiji / 390x barely perform any better.

 

[nerp]

Will never understand this strange compulsion by hardware enthusiasts to choose sides when it comes to brands. I'm probably going to buy a 1060 because it will be fast and relatively inexpensive. I like NVIDIA's drivers. I've had plenty of AMD cards over the years. I'll probably buy another someday. Or, if when the time comes for me to buy a 1060, there is something with better price/perf. available. Why is this so hard for some people?

 

[Kallogan]

People like underdogs

 

[realibrad]

Will never understand this strange compulsion by hardware enthusiasts to choose sides when it comes to brands. I'm probably going to buy a 1060 because it will be fast and relatively inexpensive. I like NVIDIA's drivers. I've had plenty of AMD cards over the years. I'll probably buy another someday. Or, if when the time comes for me to buy a 1060, there is something with better price/perf. available. Why is this so hard for some people?

You just answered your own question. You have not see the stability of the drives for the 1060. You think that the drivers for the 1060 will be good, because of past drivers. That is to say, that you think Nvidia creates better drivers for their card. What is funny to me, is that if you look at AMD driver updates, they have kept improving them to make their cards faster. If you look at a gtx 680 and a 7970, the AMD drivers have made their card much faster. Really, it looks to be that AMD have kept improving their drivers whereas Nvidia has not once they launch a new card.

So, it sure looks like what you are doing is the very thing you seem to question in others.

 

[Shivansps]

Fair enough, you may be right. Every IRL gamer I know is infatuated with the 1080 (that none of them can afford to own). It could be the halo effect is a bigger deal with gamers in general than I am giving credit for, which would mean AMDs strategy will backfire.

I even had one friend (who again doesn't own the card) go on a rant of how awesome the 1080 was when I was talking about how I like my new 480. He will almost certainly be a 1060 customer just because that card is in the same "family" as the card he worships, my 480 didn't even register to him as an option. Hell it didn't even register to him it was a game GPU until I put it in the terms of "the new PS4K guts but clocked faster." AMD isn't on his map- gaming is Sony and Nvidia to him.

I guess we will see. I just don't what AMD can do about the halo effect though, they did their best with Fiji and it wasn't good enough. Seems like this is their only choice for 2016.

To be fair, Doom on OpenGL was running horrible on AMD, some tests where showing a 970 around 390X/Nano levels, the 960 4GB was better than 380, and even matching or over 380X perf, that was no normal.

Now with Vulkan its more where it supposed to be, with maybe a small plus on AMD side, i think that was more horrible AMD OpenGL drivers than anything else, thought im sure shader intrisic (with GCN extension on Vulkan) and async are helping AMD as well.

And Kepler was performing badly on OpenGL already, i think its the worse game ever for Kepler, and this is no a gameworks title, people has been claiming gameworks was doing this in order to force people intro buying new cards.
And what happens with Kepler in Vulkan its on the devs hands, if they dont take the time and money to optimise for it, there is no much that can be done.

 

[pj-]

oc3d

The fury x still loses at 1080p but edges the 980Ti at 1440p and 4k (on dx12)

This is AMD's problem on the high end.

Who the hell buys a high end card for performance 1+ years away, on what is still a tiny minority of games?

I held off building my computer for months in anticipation of the fury x. I ended up going with a 980ti and don't regret it. Would I buy a 980ti over a fury x now? No, I wouldn't buy either of them.

The second AMD has a card in the $600-800 tier that is faster (on release) than the comparable nvidia card, I will switch. Until then nvidia will remain the only option in the high end single GPU market.

 

[garagisti]

I've been contemplating a upgrade for a few months now. As one of my 460's recently blew, bad fan but after 5 years of hard use I can't complain.

After some quick research I decided on a 1070. I wanted vr capable high end gpu to play some newer games and be a solid performer for years, as you can probably tell I don't upgrade often anymore.

Now however after doing alot of reading on gsync/free sync I've decided this should probably be a priority for me and paying a extra $150-200 for gsync over free sync, not to mention the very small number of available g sync monitors have me second guessing my plan to get a 1070. Combine this with nvidias very weak dx12 performance, and I'm now finding myself considering buying a Rx480 as a stopgap, get a free sync monitor. And seeing if nvidia turns around its dx 12 performance with the 1080ti(or whatever is after 1080), or if the high end amd gpu next year crush it.

I believe dx12 will be the way of the future, and nvidia needs to pick it up big time on this front. And loose the gsync tax.

So I'm worried especially about the weak dx12 performance if a 1070 will be a good well supported card for many years to come.

Gsync tax needs to go away, but it won't for another couple of years, as there are people who keep buying into the eco-system. Slowly, but surely there won't be many who would sustain that ecosystem, and that may force Nvidia into using the industry standards.

1070 is a mainstream card, which replaces the 970, only with higher performance & price. If you want to buy something Nvidia, and wouldn't consider any AMD option, then it is best to wait for the damned 1080ti.

The DX12 problem is here to stay for Maxwell & Pascal (tweaked Maxwell), and there were people who were suggesting this since the 970. It is something that is a constraint on an architectural level, if you would believe bits&chips guys, so nothing before Volta would fix it.

 

[Newbian]

It's not the release price. It's the price they both are currently selling for. You can currently buy Fury X for $400. It's $420 for a 1070. The Fury X is cooler and quieter thanks to it's AIO liquid cooling (Or doesn't that matter anymore?).

We start seeing more results like this and the 1070 could be in trouble.

The thing is I was talking about release cost as it's had awhile to get improvements in the way of drivers and now this.

Yes they can be comparative in price now but again this is for such a limited market and the 1070 beats it in 99.999% of the rest of the games out there very badly and again you are comparing their top of the line card to the 1070 that's the issue here as the 1070 is not that on nvidias end right now.

 

[HiroThreading]

To be fair, Doom on OpenGL was running horrible on AMD, some tests where showing a 970 around 390X/Nano levels, the 960 4GB was better than 380, and even matching or over 380X perf, that was no normal.

Now with Vulkan its more where it supposed to be, with maybe a small plus on AMD side, i think that was more horrible AMD OpenGL drivers than anything else, thought im sure shader intrisic (with GCN extension on Vulkan) and async are helping AMD as well.

And Kepler was performing badly on OpenGL already, i think its the worse game ever for Kepler, and this is no a gameworks title, people has been claiming gameworks was doing this in order to force people intro buying new cards.
And what happens with Kepler in Vulkan its on the devs hands, if they dont take the time and money to optimise for it, there is no much that can be done.

You've missed his point completely.

Most PC gamers don't care -- not comprehend -- anything you just said.
They just see the GTX 1080 dominate on some weak benchmark done by PC Magazine, NCIX YouTube or whatever, and then start drooling over anything associated with Nvidia. Repeat this for a few generations -- 980 Ti, 980, 780 Ti, Titan and so on, and eventually enough people believe that anything Nvidia = fast.

Much like how many people believe that Ferrari make the fastest cars in the world, or Hermes makes the most luxurious handbags in the world. Actual enthusiasts know better and are generally unaffected, however they're a tiny minority of the market.

This is why many fans of RTG would like to see them compete on the high end, so that they can capture some of that "Halo effect" back. Like as it was during the DX9 era, say.

 

[antihelten]

Who the hell buys a high end card for performance 1+ years away

Who the hell doesn't?

I would dare argue that the vast majority of people who buy high end cards, do so both with an expectation of better performance at the time of purchase but also with an expectation of more longevity than they would get from a mid range card, so in other words plenty of people buy high end cards for performance 1+ year away.

The problem is that trying to predict which card will necessarily perform best 1+ year from now, is an imprecise science to say the least.

 

[thilanliyan]

I like NVIDIA's drivers.

No offense to you but these days that is not a great reason to go nV as the drivers are pretty much on par, and actually are sometimes worse than AMD drivers. There are much better reasons to buy nV if you choose to do so.