Nvidia Maxwell-based 900 series cards now going into legacy support

[digitaldurandal]

By the way, when was GTX580 launched? 2010?
Don't you think that by the time the Fermi DX12 support announcement you mentioned, that all the people that would have bought a Fermi GPU, already bought them? Safe to say that nobody based their Fermi purchase iin 2010 on the 2014 promise of DX12 support.

I understand the argument you are making here but it does not stop the fact if the statement was made. I don't care personally as I sold my Fermi based GPU years ago by now but there is someone out there who was affected by the statement, surely. Edit: Someone who sees that statement thinks to themselves that Nvidia has a habit of supporting 4+ year old cards when they make their next purchase. So it impacts current buyers who do not realize the statement is not even possible.

Since the thread is actually about Maxwell going into legacy; I will assume the mention of Fermi DX12 support has been with the intent to show that Nvidia has stated they will continue to support older products and then has not followed through. In this case I do not see a "reality" (as you put it earlier in the thread) where this is not indicative of that. ::cracks-whip::

I don't really understand why so many are engaging you on this topic over the life of the thread. It is clear as day no matter the spin on it. I would also be curious how your affiliation has affected your view of the situation. You asked others to ignore their fanboyism earlier in the thread so I think some self-reflection could be warranted. Do you think you would feel the same if AMD had made an equivalent statement about a card that was not DX12 compatible? One step further, would you bother to defend them on it?

Now, I cannot know your motivations and thoughts but, I have a very difficult time seeing both of those answers being, "yes."

 

[OatisCampbell]

Do you think you would feel the same if AMD had made an equivalent statement about a card that was not DX12 compatible? One step further, would you bother to defend them on it?

Have you ever been on a forum for other things?

Any hobby item, whether it's golf clubs, TVs, guns, boats, cars - all the
same thing. Fans of products defending the "logic" of their choices, "pro staff"/employees defending their brand.

"Curse you, a Beretta once jammed on me on a frosty morning just as my springer flushed a bird . Never again! It's Benelli for life!"

OR

"In year X GM revised and lowered the tow ratings of their vehicles, I will never trust them again!"

 

[Keysplayr]

I understand the argument you are making here but it does not stop the fact if the statement was made. I don't care personally as I sold my Fermi based GPU years ago by now but there is someone out there who was affected by the statement, surely. Edit: Someone who sees that statement thinks to themselves that Nvidia has a habit of supporting 4+ year old cards when they make their next purchase. So it impacts current buyers who do not realize the statement is not even possible.

Since the thread is actually about Maxwell going into legacy; I will assume the mention of Fermi DX12 support has been with the intent to show that Nvidia has stated they will continue to support older products and then has not followed through. In this case I do not see a "reality" (as you put it earlier in the thread) where this is not indicative of that. ::cracks-whip::

I don't really understand why so many are engaging you on this topic over the life of the thread. It is clear as day no matter the spin on it. I would also be curious how your affiliation has affected your view of the situation. You asked others to ignore their fanboyism earlier in the thread so I think some self-reflection could be warranted. Do you think you would feel the same if AMD had made an equivalent statement about a card that was not DX12 compatible? One step further, would you bother to defend them on it?

Now, I cannot know your motivations and thoughts but, I have a very difficult time seeing both of those answers being, "yes."

You will notice, hopefully, that I do not go out of my way to attck, nor defend AMD. Mostly because I rarely think about them other than a blip. I do see, however, almost every AMD fan attacking Nvidia on everything they possibly can. Its more about the fans than the companies.
To offer argumenrs, I'll draw parallels or differences between companies.

But, you saw for yourself the drool and ravenous behavior right from the OP with an incorrect inflammatory thread tittle and still, after being corrected and shown the true meaning of legacy in this case, still attacked.

Doesnt that bother you? I cant imagibe why it wouldnt.
This thread has long run its course. Answers have been acquired and accepted by those that will acept them, and utterly refused by those holdig pitchforks and torches.

Gone as far as ever needed. Should be closed IMHO.

 

[coercitiv]

I would also be curious how your affiliation has affected your view of the situation.

Indeed, no matter how good his arguments are, his affiliation will cloud your judgement. See what happened there?

Being a fan of a brand may warrant more careful scrutiny of one's arguments, but in no way does it invalidate logic and common sense.

 

[Headfoot]

There is zero indication putting a card on that particular webpage means it no longer gets driver support. That is a massive leap of logic with zero evidence to back it up. This is pure FUD from a nobody publication with no credibility.

Reading the page it seems like its a list of GPUs which are not the latest generation -- regardless of driver support level...

 

[moonbogg]

This story is great forum fodder. The drama is fun. Admit it, you guys like the drama almost half as much as I do. Sadly, there isn't much weight behind this one. Measuring relative performance over time is the only way to check for GPU performance decay. It would be cool if Nvidia came out and admitted to being absolutely evil with a mission to wreck the lives of all gamers, but this isn't any such admission. I know, its disappointing.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Of course NVIDIA will focus less on Maxwell cards.
And so does AMD and any company that has a new product on the market.
2 years is par for technology support.

This has never been a problem because when NVIDIA stopped allocating resources to their previous gen, so did AMD, and the performance balance between the previous generation was maintained (with some variance for brute force vs more optimized drivers).

It is only now (last couple gens) that by some combination of factors (that we can deduce/speculate), AMD old gen graphic cards perform above their tier compared to NVIDIA old gen cards when both companies stop focusing on that gen.

Will this happen again with the Maxwell gen?
We will see soon.

 

[bystander36]

Of course NVIDIA will focus less on Maxwell cards.
And so does AMD and any company that has a new product on the market.
2 years is par for technology support.

This has never been a problem because when NVIDIA stopped allocating resources to their previous gen, so did AMD, and the performance balance between the previous generation was maintained (with some variance for brute force vs more optimized drivers).

It is only now (last couple gens) that by some combination of factors (that we can deduce/speculate), AMD old gen graphic cards perform above their tier compared to NVIDIA old gen cards when both companies stop focusing on that gen.

Will this happen again with the Maxwell gen?
We will see soon.

My guess is that AMD has fared better here due to consoles being built on a similar arch, and they simply have been fortunate that all these games are being built more and more for their GCN technology. At the same time Nvidia has had to redirect their technology to work with this new direction of games.

So I expect Maxwell will suffer some of what Fermi did, but not as bad and Pascal will also not fair as well as AMD, but not as bad as Maxwell. As they get closer to meeting the needs of the new console inspired game engines, the better they will age.

 

[Yakk]

It is only now (last couple gens) that by some combination of factors (that we can deduce/speculate), AMD old gen graphic cards perform above their tier compared to NVIDIA old gen cards when both companies stop focusing on that gen.

Will this happen again with the Maxwell gen?
We will see soon.

Looks like just two different approaches, not necessarily good or bad for either approach.

By radically changing architectures with each generation it gives nvidia more immediate access to new features they want to use without having to worry about implementing it into their older products. This is great for their new products, but more or less translates to the performance issues they seem to be developing on their non-current products.

Whereas AMD continues to evolve their GCN architecture instead of replacing it. This allows the oldest 7950/7970 cards to still massively benefit from the latest software developements. The cost for AMD looks to be slightly longer developement time needed. IE: I never dreamed my old 280x would be running 85-100+ FPS in DOOM under Vulkan. Or running Warhammer DX12 so smoothly.

 

[Caveman]

So... Does anyone have a best driver to recommend in light of the announcement if one owns a GTX 970?

Assumption is "last official release" from Nvidia prior to their announcement???

 

[DaveSimmons]

So... Does anyone have a best driver to recommend in light of the announcement if one owns a GTX 970?

Assumption is "last official release" from Nvidia prior to their announcement???

As pointed out earlier in this year-old thread, nvidia just stopped making new chips, they have continued to update the drivers. I'd recommend the latest WHQL driver from the nvidia downloads page.

 

[tviceman]

As pointed out earlier in this year-old thread, nvidia just stopped making new chips, they have continued to update the drivers. I'd recommend the latest WHQL driver from the nvidia downloads page.

Exactly. The thread title, although correct, is misleading. If it was titled "Maxwell GPU's discontinued" then mass confusion would have been avoided.

 

[Shivansps]

My guess is that AMD has fared better here due to consoles being built on a similar arch, and they simply have been fortunate that all these games are being built more and more for their GCN technology. At the same time Nvidia has had to redirect their technology to work with this new direction of games.

So I expect Maxwell will suffer some of what Fermi did, but not as bad and Pascal will also not fair as well as AMD, but not as bad as Maxwell. As they get closer to meeting the needs of the new console inspired game engines, the better they will age.

AMD fared better because Fermi, Kepler, and now Maxwell are out of market products. AMD GCN 1.0 (HD7xxx 2012), was in place as a first line product all the way until July 2016 (R7 370), is clear that driver support in those cases is not the same.

AMD is generally far worse on this, they completely abandoned VLIW cards and they did nto even cared that they are still selling them. Today, Radeon HD5000/6000 does not have a proper Windows 10 driver, Fermi 400/500 they are now getting DX12 support. That is actually good because they rebranded Fermi gpus as GT610-630 and those were sold until not that long ago.

Actually loocking at the steam HW survey, there is still A LOT of Fermi cards with considerable market quota.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

 

[Headfoot]

Heck, when Mantle launched I thought it was "game over" for NVIDIA and that I would be in some new golden era of 3DFX like glory with my 290. Imagine my surprise when it basically got scrapped.

What? "Mantle got scrapped" is totally incorrect. It got adopted verbatim, and patched, and then called "Vulkan" and it also became the foundation of DX12. "Rebranded" or "Transferred" are accurate. "Scrapped" is intentionally misleading.

 

[OatisCampbell]

What? "Mantle got scrapped" is totally incorrect. It got adopted verbatim, and patched, and then called "Vulkan" and it also became the foundation of DX12. "Rebranded" or "Transferred" are accurate. "Scrapped" is intentionally misleading.

Holy post necro!
When did I say this? A year ago?!

http://wccftech.com/amd-ends-revolu...page-programming-guide-developers-public-sdk/

I didn't mean to be "intentionally misleading". What I thought Mantle would be, a Glide like proprietary API offering levels of performance competitors couldn't touch, was scrapped.

OTOH, what I thought it would be was nowhere close to reality, which was probably my fault for jumping on that year's hype train.

 

[stahlhart]

Closing necro thread.
-- stahlhart