AMD launches, always so much fun! Everything that follows is meant to be read with a **** eating grin, not out of true anger or frustration:
First and foremost, the launch was good in the sense that this is a respectable showing in metrics (Performance/Power) at the worst case scenario we're going to get for the Navi arch and we have nowhere to go up but up.
On the other hand, I completely agree with Railven: WTF is AMD doing with its launches. Who handles these things, a pack of mentally challenged clowns? Again we're dealing with garbage tier blowers (I actually bought the AMD line regarding the dent and better airflow and lower noise and blah blah blah). Do *I* care, personally? No, I'm never going to buy a card with a blower and there will be options down the line. However, AMD is just 290x'ing itself again here and all anyone is going to remember is that the 5700 series runs hot and loud even after AIBs bring it under control. Some QC in this department would be greatly appreciated.
Conspiracy theorist time: AMD's AIB's are on lifesupport after the last couple years of AMD launches and they're pushing for crap cooling on launch cards to make their options look better by comparison
And then the drivers. A couple of the reviews I read hit on the shoddy driver point, and it was apparently bad enough that some like TPU and Anandtech went out of their way to dedicate a couple paragraphs to the issues. I mean, are you ****ing me? While it doesn't sound like the drivers really affecting the games much (although there were some mentions of weirdness in some games) maybe It would have been better for AMD to just flat out disable overclocking in the launch drivers (with a blurb about the uncapped boost) and include some notes about drivers not being ready for compute (with some blurb about Navi being a gaming focused arch) than launch the drivers with portions being unstable. Might have been the result of new drivers dropping right in the middle of the launch testing, resulting in some rushing on the part of the testers, but still you never hear about that kind of thing during NV launches.
Overall, looks like we got some good cards and a solid new arch out of AMD... if you sift past the SOP crapfest launch that AMD is so fond (I guess?) of putting on at this point.
I eagerly await the upcoming AIB launches, as well as small Navi and the further on "big" Navi. Exciting times.
First and foremost, the launch was good in the sense that this is a respectable showing in metrics (Performance/Power) at the worst case scenario we're going to get for the Navi arch and we have nowhere to go up but up.
On the other hand, I completely agree with Railven: WTF is AMD doing with its launches. Who handles these things, a pack of mentally challenged clowns? Again we're dealing with garbage tier blowers (I actually bought the AMD line regarding the dent and better airflow and lower noise and blah blah blah). Do *I* care, personally? No, I'm never going to buy a card with a blower and there will be options down the line. However, AMD is just 290x'ing itself again here and all anyone is going to remember is that the 5700 series runs hot and loud even after AIBs bring it under control. Some QC in this department would be greatly appreciated.
Conspiracy theorist time: AMD's AIB's are on lifesupport after the last couple years of AMD launches and they're pushing for crap cooling on launch cards to make their options look better by comparison
And then the drivers. A couple of the reviews I read hit on the shoddy driver point, and it was apparently bad enough that some like TPU and Anandtech went out of their way to dedicate a couple paragraphs to the issues. I mean, are you ****ing me? While it doesn't sound like the drivers really affecting the games much (although there were some mentions of weirdness in some games) maybe It would have been better for AMD to just flat out disable overclocking in the launch drivers (with a blurb about the uncapped boost) and include some notes about drivers not being ready for compute (with some blurb about Navi being a gaming focused arch) than launch the drivers with portions being unstable. Might have been the result of new drivers dropping right in the middle of the launch testing, resulting in some rushing on the part of the testers, but still you never hear about that kind of thing during NV launches.
Overall, looks like we got some good cards and a solid new arch out of AMD... if you sift past the SOP crapfest launch that AMD is so fond (I guess?) of putting on at this point.
I eagerly await the upcoming AIB launches, as well as small Navi and the further on "big" Navi. Exciting times.