Polaris 10 benchmarks...

[Thinker_145]

Why not? People have had zero issue comparing 970 vs 390 even though the 970 has gimped 4gb of ram vs full 8gb on the other

The 8GB cards are there for going for dual card setup for the higher performance.

The 970 was launched in 2014, now it's 2016. Secondly I have personally ALWAYS recommended the 390 over 970.

Didn't someone already mention that the highest settings in DOOM require 5GB minimum? Why is it falling on deaf ears?

I remember same thing regarding Tom Raider highest settings. Are you guys living in a cave or something?

 

[Thinker_145]

I think at $380, the GTX 1070 is fine card. I wouldn't let these guys talk you out of it. Having said that, the launch date of the GTX 1070 is June 10th. Plus, the chances of you being able to grab one at $380 instead of the $450 FE card is pretty low at launch date. I'm willing to bet that a AIB GTX1070 will be available a lot closer to the RX480 launch than you think. Probably within a week of the RX480 release. It doesn't hurt to wait just a bit longer to get a much, much clearer picture. My 2 cents.

Yes I have a similar feeling and the more I think about it the more sense it makes to get a complete picture before buying.

 

[Bacon1]

The 970 was launched in 2014, now it's 2016. Secondly I have personally ALWAYS recommended the 390 over 970.

Didn't someone already mention that the highest settings in DOOM require 5GB minimum? Why is it falling on deaf ears?

I remember same thing regarding Tom Raider highest settings. Are you guys living in a cave or something?

Yes Doom, where according to the only review I could find that used Nightmare:

In case of Radeon R9 390, the frame rate decreases to such an extent that the game is barely usable; a GTX 980 Ti has grown much better setting. We always recommend to make the shadows are not higher than Ultra

They recommend to not use it because it tanks framerates.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Doom-2016-Spiel-56369/Specials/Benchmark-Test-1195242/

Rise of the Tomb Raider - The Fury X scales just as well as the Titan X even 4k w/SSAA

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/02/29/rise_tomb_raider_graphics_features_performance/12

 

[Thinker_145]

So the argument is card is not powerful enough? That's not really the same thing as "no game will need more than 4GB for this console generation".

And this is for 390, the GTX 1070 does max it out.

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

 

[Final8ty]

SLI and xfire suck. Suck suck suck. I've ran one or the other since the early aught's. Because there wasn't a single card solution to max out games. Basically I fell for it. First off, just about every AAA game ever never supported either very well on release. had to wait for a fix. Second, it is crap technology poorly implemented with an inadequate bus (both! xfire and sli). They just threw this together to get people to buy another card and then forgot about it.

I currently have 2 7970's in xfire. The last 3 games I've played have yet to support xfire still. Tomb raider, the division and Elder scrolls online. The last one has been out for over 2 years now. And guess what. If you can get it to work by forcing a mode, it sucks. Micro stutter all the time. 40 fps in single card feels way smoother than 80 fps in xfire.

Ima buy a 1080 and never ever go multi gpu again. even this new sli bus is still a stupid solution. Think about it. why in the hell aren't they designed to pool resources, like behave like a 5280 thread 16gb ram single unit? Instead you have each card holding identical resources and just trading odd frames, over a shitty bus.

Grah, my second rant today. I haven't upgraded in like 3 years, used to jones for the latest tech and every 6 months something new would come that I just had to have. The 1080 is the first thing to come along in that time that I really want. Too bad the displays these days are crap, see my other rant.

Edit: Why are people stuck thinking that vram is only for the frame buffer and base their calcs off that? Your card holds geometry and textures and all kinds of stuff in memory.

+1

 

[MTDEW]

Yes Doom, where according to the only review I could find that used Nightmare:

In case of Radeon R9 390, the frame rate decreases to such an extent that the game is barely usable; a GTX 980 Ti has grown much better setting. We always recommend to make the shadows are not higher than Ultra

They recommend to not use it because it tanks framerates.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Doom-2016-Spiel-56369/Specials/Benchmark-Test-1195242/

They were using the AMD 16.5.2 driver, it has since been fixed with the AMD 16.5.2.1 driver version and Nightmare settings are fully playable on an R9 390.

Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.5.2.1 Highlights

* Performance increase by up to 35% on AMD Radeon R9 390 series products in Doom™ versus Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.5.2

 

[Final8ty]

AMD likes to play their cards close to their chest, for better or for worse, and usually reveal peformance and/or features at launch date. Remember 480 vs 800sp final RV770 (4870) that made a joke out of GT200 (GTX 280) at half the die size and 90-100% the performance while consuming the same or less?

Yep and NV dropped the price hard and retailers were giving rebates to 280 owners who had purchased before the price drop because of the outcry.

 

[Thinker_145]

They were using the AMD 16.5.2 driver, it has since been fixed with the AMD 16.5.2.1 driver version and Nightmare settings are fully playable on an R9 390.

So it settles it then 8GB absolutely matters even for a card of a calibre of 480. If a game RIGHT NOW benefits from it just imagine what's gonna happen down the line.

 

[Erenhardt]

So it settles it then 8GB absolutely matters even for a card of a calibre of 480. If a game RIGHT NOW benefits from it just imagine what's gonna happen down the line.

Nope.
390 is an 8gb card.

 

[Thinker_145]

Nope.
390 is an 8gb card.

I don't understand how that is in disagreement with what I said??

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

 

[boozzer]

what he is saying the performance issues with doom and 390 wasn't because of the vram issue.

 

[sirmo]

About SLI/Crossfire. I've been shying away from it as well in my builds. I usually buy the single most powerful card that makes sense. However big GPUs aren't sustainable.

The process will continue to shrink (albeit at reduced cadence) but the yields will also get worse. The performance per dollar curve is already heavily in favor of smaller chips, and it's only going to get worse.

The only solution going forward will be multi GPU. We're not there yet, but I think 14nm is the last generation of GPUs where big dies still make sense.

Multi GPU is a hardware problem with a software solution, and I think DX12/Vulkan adoption comes at the right time to start pulling this bandage.

 

[richaron]

So it settles it then 8GB absolutely matters even for a card of a calibre of 480. If a game RIGHT NOW benefits from it just imagine what's gonna happen down the line.

No, it doesn't "absolutely matter".

It would "absolutely matter" if I couldn't change the quality down from "Nightmare" to "Ultra" quality (or whatever the next down is).

And yes, many gamers happily reduce quality settings from some completely arbitrary maximum. Especially with FPS.

 

[mohit9206]

Can't believe some people still saying 4gb will be enough at 1080p this console generation.
Its already not enough for a lot of games. For example i was playing ROTR and it gives a warning that enabling very high settings requires more than 4gb vram. Whether or not RX480 class card is capable of providing playable performance at such settings which requires such high vram doesn't really matter. Point is games can use more than 4gb at 1080p since the last 2 years so i expect games to use full 8gb this console generation. Maybe by the end of this console generation some games might even use more than 8gb so i cannot imagine someone saying 4gb is enough this console generation.
Ofcourse you can turn down the settings all the way and in that case even 2gb graphics cards should be enough this console generation lol. I mean i did manage to complete ROTR on a 1gb graphics card on medium settings. Lots of stuttering and low fps but playable.

 

[Yakk]

And yes, many gamers happily reduce quality settings from some completely arbitrary maximum. Especially with FPS.

I like this term "arbitrary maximum", because it really is arbitrary by the developers.

 

[Vesku]

Can't believe some people still saying 4gb will be enough at 1080p this console generation.
Its already not enough for a lot of games. For example i was playing ROTR and it gives a warning that enabling very high settings requires more than 4gb vram. Whether or not RX480 class card is capable of providing playable performance at such settings which requires such high vram doesn't really matter. Point is games can use more than 4gb at 1080p since the last 2 years so i expect games to use full 8gb this console generation. Maybe by the end of this console generation some games might even use more than 8gb so i cannot imagine someone saying 4gb is enough this console generation.
Ofcourse you can turn down the settings all the way and in that case even 2gb graphics cards should be enough this console generation lol. I mean i did manage to complete ROTR on a 1gb graphics card on medium settings. Lots of stuttering and low fps but playable.

Unless the 480 surprises us with Fury X/980 TI levels of performance 4GB should be alright. I'd recommend 8GB for those interested in "Ultra" texture options and 3rd party graphical mods, as long as that version is no more than $239.

 

[Thinker_145]

what he is saying the performance issues with doom and 390 wasn't because of the vram issue.

And why would a VRAM issue cause performance issues? What I said was that the 390 is a fast enough card to take advantage of its VRAM since it can max out a game that needs more than 4GB at max settings.

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[Thinker_145]

Console generation is never a great argument. I remember it was said that a high end core 2 duo would last the Xbox 360 generation since it had more absolute power than both the console CPUs. But that clearly didn't happen in many games down the road core 2 duo became a stutter fest.

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[Thala]

I like this term "arbitrary maximum", because it really is arbitrary by the developers.

Indeed it is rather arbitrary.
In addition, Ultra texture options are intended for higher resolution displays, because if you go from 1080p to 1440p you would need double resolution textures in order to maintain the same relative quality.

 

[Thinker_145]

Indeed it is rather arbitrary.
In addition, Ultra texture options are intended for higher resolution displays, because if you go from 1080p to 1440p you would need double resolution textures in order to maintain the same relative quality.

This makes no sense. By that logic the lower resolution screen would always show better quality textures as long as both are running the same settings?

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[xthetenth]

This makes no sense. By that logic the lower resolution screen would always show better quality textures as long as both are running the same settings?

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A texture is a source that the game samples from to fill a poly. If the same poly is mapped to twice the pixels on screen, then it needs a higher quality texture to make an equally good use of the pixels.

 

[swilli89]

You know Video Card VRAM has been argued since the turn of the century. Literally every single generation has usually had multiple levels of available VRAM and looking back, it has NEVER really mattered to the extent of what you see on online forums.

Sure there are outliers with some high resolution and stupid high rendering method. Its happened at 512mb vs 1gb, 1gb vs 2gb, 2gb vs 4gb, etc etc. 4GB is absolutely enough for 95% of gamers at 1080p. Just because you can link some crazy outlier set where a drop in frames MAY point to insufficient VRAM, I can point out several cases of the same game and same card at the same resolution with imperceptibly different settings where it runs fine. Some kid buying a card @ $199 doesn't need to be convinced to pay another $50 (price of a brand new game) just because you can't run some ultra extreme preset on a select handful of games.

I've seen this exact, identical conversation play out for the last 15 years and its amazing people still fight over it. How does a FuryX w/ 4GB performing equal to a 980ti @ 4K NOT convince you that 4GB's enough for 1080P for the next few years to come?

 

[Topweasel]

You know Video Card VRAM has been argued since the turn of the century. Literally every single generation has usually had multiple levels of available VRAM and looking back, it has NEVER really mattered to the extent of what you see on online forums.

Sure there are outliers with some high resolution and stupid high rendering method. Its happened at 512mb vs 1gb, 1gb vs 2gb, 2gb vs 4gb, etc etc. 4GB is absolutely enough for 95% of gamers at 1080p. Just because you can link some crazy outlier set where a drop in frames MAY point to insufficient VRAM, I can point out several cases of the same game and same card at the same resolution with imperceptibly different settings where it runs fine. Some kid buying a card @ $199 doesn't need to be convinced to pay another $50 (price of a brand new game) just because you can't run some ultra extreme preset on a select handful of games.

I've seen this exact, identical conversation play out for the last 15 years and its amazing people still fight over it. How does a FuryX w/ 4GB performing equal to a 980ti @ 4K NOT convince you that 4GB's enough for 1080P for the next few years to come?

Straight performance none. But texture popin is a thing. Several games are coming out with HD texture packs. Not only that but the consoles now have 8GB where probably 6GB can be dedicated to the GPU at a given time. Which means that we could easily see more utilization of GPU memory other than a frame buffer as time goes on.

Games are made for the common denominator. For the last 10 years that has been consoles. Since from 06-14 most games have been developed for systems restricted to between 256-480MB of GPU memory. So while I agree it will be a while before GPU memory usage is large enough to worry about, now would be a good time to start looking at having a GPU that would match or exceed the amount that is available on the primary development systems.

 

[Silverforce11]

For 1080p gaming, the common performance GPUs are 3/4GB. A developer is going to look at hardware surveys and see a ton of older high performance cards: 780/Ti, 970, 980, 7970/280X, 290/X, their games has to run well on these GPUs.

Now, that's not going to stop NV partnering with a game studio to add an exclusive setting, like Mirror's Edge, for 8GB GPUs. So this is a factor.

Prior to this, I would have said 4GB is enough for 1080p gaming for the next few years. But seeing NV's tactic with Mirror's Edge, I have to say go for 8GB. Since Pascal is so similar to Maxwell, the best way to obsolete it is via vram requirements. Special modes for 8GB cards. Bye bye 960, 970, 980 and 980Ti. Better upgrade to the 1070 8GB. It's a clever tactic too.

 

[Dribble]

For 1080p gaming, the common performance GPUs are 3/4GB. A developer is going to look at hardware surveys and see a ton of older high performance cards: 780/Ti, 970, 980, 7970/280X, 290/X, their games has to run well on these GPUs.

Now, that's not going to stop NV partnering with a game studio to add an exclusive setting, like Mirror's Edge, for 8GB GPUs. So this is a factor.

Prior to this, I would have said 4GB is enough for 1080p gaming for the next few years. But seeing NV's tactic with Mirror's Edge, I have to say go for 8GB. Since Pascal is so similar to Maxwell, the best way to obsolete it is via vram requirements. Special modes for 8GB cards. Bye bye 960, 970, 980 and 980Ti. Better upgrade to the 1070 8GB. It's a clever tactic too.

It's not a tactic, and the new setting isn't there because cards have more ram, it's there because cards are faster (in particular 1080) so they add a setting to fully utilise those faster cards. That doesn't mean a much slower card (Polaris) has any hope of running those settings even if you give it 32GB of ram.

Equally that higher setting will look practically identical to the slightly lower setting that works fine with 4GB, it's just there to give someone with 1080's something to boast about. 4GB Polaris seems just about the right balance of memory/performance. The only reason you'd go 8GB is if you wanted to Xfire as you increase your performance sufficiently that it's worth it.