Replace 295x2 with Titan X?

[Ramses]

I think if the media was a little more honest and vocal about the situation it might calm itself down sooner too. I wonder if journalistic integrity crosses over into the computer hardware realm sometimes.


I don't blame the kids that just want to game a particular game and buy whatever it takes to make that happen. And I don't expect everyone to be bright or shrewd enough to look at two comparable games and give some thought to why one runs ok on both cards and the other only runs ok on one card. But I do blame professionals that make it their life's work to report on such not calling a spade a spade for the benefit of the masses.

 

[RussianSensation]

Wow, this thread sure got sabotaged.

The thread has all possible good advice there for the OP to make his own decision. Also, your example of various APIs, I presume you are referring to OpenGL vs. DX hardly applies as almost all games supported both iterations. It was not vendor locked in any way. Outside of SM2.0 limitation of X800 and below cards, I can hardly think of any AAA game that was vendor locked on ATI/NV from each other or was purposely sabotaged like GW titles are. Therefore, your statement that things were worse in the past is an opinion with little to no justification. Under GE/TWIMTP, neither AMD nor NV purposely locked vendor optimization. That's why GW is completely different and we should have full rights to criticize it publicly. This would be similar if MS paid millions of dollars to developers to purposely cripple/close source specific optimizations for PC gaming performance on Linux to stop Linux from taking off for gaming.

The advice in this thread provides the OP with various perspectives, but unlike what you have suggested in your post, in no way is given to the OP in a "do this or take the highway" kind of way. Until your post, the discussion centered around pros and cons of buying the Titan X or waiting for better price/performing cards and/or buying GW titles at launch and/or skipping them until drivers/patches improve their performance and/or waiting until they drop in price as a matter of principle to support open standards for PC gaming. At no point in time in this thread was the OP told specifically to boycott GW titles just to keep his R9 295X2. You seem to have consistently shown in various threads that you read someone's reply and then you add your own spin on things that aren't actually being stated. A mere discussion of points around the topic only provides more information to the OP but in no way does it hurt the OP's decision.

As I said before -- anyone who can easily afford the Titan X and will not regret future cards demolishing the Titan X in price/performance, has no interest in GM200 6GB/390 CF/SLI should get the Titan X as the performance in GW titles is superior to an R9 295X2. If the OP primarily plays GW games and is willing to pay $1000 today for a Titan X, he should sell his R9 295X2.

 

[3DVagabond]

What NV is doing hasn't killed PC gaming at all. Why do you think if AMD did it as well would kill PC gaming?

Why is it NV can do that, crippling AMD performance and forcing developers to not share source code so AMD can optimize GameWorks games.. but as soon as AMD joins onboard, they're gonna kill PC gaming?

As it is, there's zero incentive for me to pay extra for AMD GPUs.

But I enjoy games like GTA V & Witcher 3, there's a LOT of incentive for me to pay extra for an NV GPU.

Fair? No. That's why AMD is losing the longer this goes on. Take a look at the [H] review recently of 980 vs R290X. The performance gap? 25-50%!! OMFG pwned. Why? A bunch of neutral (AMD GE like Crysis 3 & BF4, where NV runs very well) titles and mostly GameWorks titles in their tests.

Just look at OP, he's complaining about bad CF for a bunch of games, particularly GameWorks titles that he enjoys. There's no way you can recommend he gets AMD GPUs.

There's no way I'd recommend what you are doing either.

It's more like 10% faster than the 290X overall if you use a fairly decent selection of games. Which happens to be right about where the 780ti sat too when it came out (Things that make you go hmmm?). You'll never get your money's worth from nVidia.

You go ahead and cherry pick your info and pay extra for your card, for variable refresh, and anything else nVidia can lock into their little ecosystem then convince you it's better than anything else that's out there. You'll never get your money's worth from nVidia. It's called drinking the Koolaid, mate.

 

[Vesku]

Even with Nvidia's behavior AMD holds up well in certain price brackets. But this person is asking about top end GPU and Nvidia is mostly a better choice even if it is due to consumer unfriendly behavior.

 

[Ramses]

Telling these people to boycott games because of AMD????.
that just sounds really really silly to me

Technically it'd be because of NV, but who's counting..


I have the luxury of indulging my whims that I label principles, but given that
most folks knowingly buy things made in sweatshops in the 3rd world and don't give it a second thought, I surely don't expect them to care about some moderately esoteric gaming software BS, no. But it's still my belief and I am honor bound to point out the situation as I see it if I think it might do some good.

 

[RussianSensation]

Even with Nvidia's behavior AMD holds up well in certain price brackets. But this person is asking about top end GPU and Nvidia is mostly a better choice even if it is due to consumer unfriendly behavior.

Technically speaking the reviews already have answered the OP's question. The Titan X OC is more or less ~ R9 295X2, minus the CF scaling issues.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9059/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-x-review/17

Therefore, this thread is an odd one to say the least because if you can afford the Titan X and are willing to OC, especially get a waterblock/after-market cooler, the product is very good. Titan X's problem is not performance, but price. If price is a non-factor, there is little to think about -- sell the 295X2 and get the Titan X. Again, if price is a non-factor, why bother waiting for an R9 390X?

 

[digitaldurandal]

Technically it'd be because of NV, but who's counting..

I disagree with both of you. I boycott the games because the publisher/devloper agreed to the practice and voluntarily signed up for GW. It is the behavior of the company that creates/publishes the game that made that bed.

 

[Ramses]

I disagree with both of you. I boycott the games because the publisher/devloper agreed to the practice and voluntarily signed up for GW. It is the behavior of the company that creates/publishes the game that made that bed.

I'd imagine the hardware and the software side are to blame, no?

 

[ZGR]

If you are obsessed with these particular titles favoring nVidia but don't want to spend 1k, you could buy a used GTX 980. Then in a few months, your options will be a lot friendlier for your wallet.

 

[Stormflux]

I disagree with both of you. I boycott the games because the publisher/devloper agreed to the practice and voluntarily signed up for GW. It is the behavior of the company that creates/publishes the game that made that bed.

That whole gamedev.net post on Driver Blackboxes really was an eye opener. Who knows what shady stuff can be coerced at that stage by any company. My hope is that Vulkan/DX12 takes away that opportunity. I do agree with the recent discussion in that Gameworks being a detriment to the glory of the PC Master race who has long been about open and even choices.

 

[3DVagabond]

Technically it'd be because of NV, but who's counting..


I have the luxury of indulging my whims that I label principles, but given that
most folks knowingly buy things made in sweatshops in the 3rd world and don't give it a second thought, I surely don't expect them to care about some moderately esoteric gaming software BS, no. But it's still my belief and I am honor bound to point out the situation as I see it if I think it might do some good.

Too true. :thumbsup:

This sure puts a lot into perspective.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Op wait for a better and cheaper Titan X (980TI) or a potentially even faster 390X

 

[Silverforce11]

Why wouldn't you want to own a $500 NV + $500 AMD card in your rig? Sounds awesome. I remember how no NV owners cried foul over this....

If this happened consistently in nearly every GE title, there would be outrage.

That's the point of AMD - they aren't willing to get down to NV's unethical/dirty business practices to gain market share. I remember how HardOCP and many other sites would later exclude Dirt Showdown in GPU testing as they felt it wasn't a fair game to test a game blatantly optimized for GCN. Yet, NV had full access to Dirt Showdown source code and optimization but yet most sites today, including HardOCP, have their their test suite filled with locked source code GW titles. Double standards FTW (or NV marketing ad dollar revenue).

It's interesting you brought up Global Illum in Dirt Showdown, on release it ran like crap on NV, but the source code is available, AMD GE devs don't have to hide it from NV like the reverse, so not long after launch, NV was able to catch up & exceed AMD performance in that GE title.

Also very true with shill sites that diss AMD GE but now are all aboard the GameWorks train. To me, [H] has been the ultimate hypocrite site, because they actually claim to be non-biased and represent enthusiasts, now embracing many GameWorks title (after repeatedly bashing how broken they are even!). Their excuse that they play whatever is recent, GPU intensive and popular doesn't fly. A quick look at steam gaming charts show none of the GameWorks title they test are popular. Yet, we see the clear bias when we compare performance reading their reviews. It's representative of GameWorks in general, as such, the 980 is 25-50% faster than the R290X. This is FACT. Now if more review sites take onboard GameWorks title, which we can bet they will once GTA V & Witcher 3 is out... it's going to make AMD GPUs look very bad compared to NV GPUs.

Now, if OP enjoys mostly GameWorks titles, we cannot be serious to recommend him buy AMD GPUs. We would be giving bad advice. Especially if we tell him to boycott GameWorks titles just because they run like crap on AMD.

"That's the point of AMD - they aren't willing to get down to NV's unethical/dirty business practices to gain market share." - That's why they are approaching 20% marketshare and fast becoming irrelevant. Get their game on or go bankrupt.

 

[Silverforce11]

There's no way I'd recommend what you are doing either.

It's more like 10% faster than the 290X overall if you use a fairly decent selection of games. Which happens to be right about where the 780ti sat too when it came out (Things that make you go hmmm?). You'll never get your money's worth from nVidia.

You go ahead and cherry pick your info and pay extra for your card, for variable refresh, and anything else nVidia can lock into their little ecosystem then convince you it's better than anything else that's out there. You'll never get your money's worth from nVidia. It's called drinking the Koolaid, mate.

I'm not cherry picking for the sake of it. I am doing so in response to OP's statement on the games he plays and his complaint of the lack of CF support.

If he plays GameWorks titles, expect it to run bad on AMD and have broken CF. As such, why would we tell him to buy any AMD GPU??

 

[desprado]

I'm not cherry picking for the sake of it. I am doing so in response to OP's statement on the games he plays and his complaint of the lack of CF support.

If he plays GameWorks titles, expect it to run bad on AMD and have broken CF. As such, why would we tell him to buy any AMD GPU??

That is the point and many here dont understand this simple logic.

People suggesting to buy AMD because bang of buck and and boycotting gamework titles is no logic and baseless because he is buying GPU to play games not for troubleshooting.

 

[digitaldurandal]

That is the point and many here dont understand this simple logic.

People suggesting to buy AMD because bang of buck and and boycotting gamework titles is no logic and baseless because he is buying GPU to play games not for troubleshooting.

I don't think anyone told him to boycott gameworks titles. Users stated that they did and why. I also said if they play Gameworks titles specifically to buy the NV product.

I am not sure what, "buying GPU to play games not for troubleshooting," means. I don't recall anyone saying he should buy a card for troubleshooting, i'm not even sure what buying a GPU for troubleshooting would be.

 

[RussianSensation]

"That's the point of AMD - they aren't willing to get down to NV's unethical/dirty business practices to gain market share." - That's why they are approaching 20% marketshare and fast becoming irrelevant. Get their game on or go bankrupt.

That's straight up FUD right there and you know it. AMD makes 11X the cash flow from embedded semi-custom products than the combined desktop and mobile discrete GPUs. AMD can sell 0 mobile & desktop GPUs from now until the end of Q4 2016 and survive. Looks like the negative anti-AMD PR spin and vitriol on this forum has caught up to you and is starting to affect your normally unbiased judgement.

Also, if you paid attention, GPU demand is projected to decline 20-25% in Q1 2015.
http://digitimes.com/news/a20150319PD219.html

If we look at declines in GPU market share for AMD, A LOT of that has to do because AMD has not shipped any additional GPUs to AIBs/OEMs. If we look at NV's GPU sales from Q1' 2013 to Q4 2013 and compare them to last quarter, they are mostly flat! What's happening is AMD has stopped shipping all old R9 200/7000 products because they need to clear existing inventory and replace all of it with new R9 300 parts. For that reason AMD's market share has declined and could even drop to just 15-20% but that is no indication whatsoever that the actual demand for AMD's products is just 15-20%. This is simply inventory management at work here. I can't believe that a poster as knowledgeable and as detailed as you are in your research is believe the FUD that AMD's erosion of market share is 100% related to NV's Maxwell execution.

Notice how the entire discrete GPU market has dropped from 15-18 million to just 12 million!
If we look at NV, their quarterly sales hovered at 9-11 million units, while AMD's hovered at 5-7 million. As early as Q2 2014, AMD started shipping less of its products into the market channels. It's not as if NV picked up the slack and is suddenly shipping 13-14 million.

"Digitimes report that AMD add-in board partners (AIBs) have reduced their orders of AMD GPUs to prevent inventory build-up. "

As far as AMD jumping on-board and closing source code to cripple NV's cards' performance in AAA titles, if that happens, I will ditch PC gaming and buy consoles only. I will not support PC gaming if it implies supporting closed/proprietary standards only and 2 GPU vendors engaged in winning based on "who throws more $ at developers to purposely cripple the competition." That would no longer be fair market competition but a situation where whichever firm has more $ wins. Why would I be interested in such market economics? It goes against everything I was taught in business school.

If AMD survives with 10-15% GPU market share but remains open standards/fair, I could care less that NV has 90% market share that they achieved by slimy marketing and less than stellar business practices (bumpgate, 970 lies/showing no remorse for early adopters).

I don't think anyone told him to boycott gameworks titles.

Exactly. A certain member came in when we had a civilized discussion and tried to bait by spinning information that wasn't there. No one told the OP specifically that he should never buy GW titles especially since in the OP he mentioned 3 GW titles he specifically wants improved performance in:

Dying Light has no profile, Far Cry 4 has a shocking profile, Attila only just got Crossfire support etc etc.

In FC4, Titan X OC is 92% faster than an R9 290X OC. If you have the means, Titan X OC would be a huge upgrade for those titles for you.
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_x/8.htm

Also very true with shill sites that diss AMD GE but now are all aboard the GameWorks train. To me, [H] has been the ultimate hypocrite site, because they actually claim to be non-biased and represent enthusiasts, now embracing many GameWorks title (after repeatedly bashing how broken they are even!).

It's obvious over the years TPU, TR, PCPer, HardOCP, HardwareCanucks just swing towards what's the most popular GPU series/ad revenue/market share. Not 1 of those sites stands for any particular metric (not perf/watt, perf/mm2, price/performance, VRAM, frame times/FCAT). Every single one of those sites has flip-flopped on what metric is "key" depending on a particular generation. HardOCP first stated that CF was smoother than SLI then they started recommending 980 SLI over 290X CF due to excessive power usage of the latter. HWC/TR/PC Pers wouldn't stop talking about frame times/FCAT during HD7000 era but when AMD caught up and beat NV, all 3 of those sites stopped using FCAT/talking about it. All 3 ignored horrible frame times of Fermi generation even though it was right there in their own graphs!

The performance data can be used in those sites but the conclusions in the reviews have no consistency whatsoever. European sites like Hardware.fr, Sweclockers or Computerbase.de seem to be the most unbiased/consistent sites over the years but since they aren't published in English, unfortunately they are largely ignored. In the past, price/performance was a key metric since it's 100% free of bias. If you have $X to spend, you get Y% performance. There is no need for opinions on price/performance (i.e., if someone wants specific features, they ignore price/performance and move on to a GPU that provides those features), but since NV raised prices and bombed in this metric, a lot of those sites largely ignore price/performance, but of course price/performance was brought up randomly again when GTX970 launched at $330 despite R9 290 offering 95% of the performance for $399 for 10 months! The fact that almost all of those sites think 2GB of VRAM is not a major limitation for a 960, while their own reviews/reviews over the net show otherwise, and they even manage to give Gold Awards to a 960 after ripping a 285 2GB a new one, shows the majority of these unbiased sites are either clueless or their conclusions are not unbiased.

 

[Silverforce11]

That's straight up FUD right there and you know it. AMD makes 11X the cash flow from embedded semi-custom products than the combined desktop and mobile discrete GPUs. AMD can sell 0 mobile & desktop GPUs from now until the end of Q4 2016 and survive. Looks like the negative anti-AMD PR spin and vitriol on this forum has caught up to you and is starting to affect your normally unbiased judgement.

If AMD wants to take the approach of NV with their GE program, it takes time for it to mature into fully released games. So start doing it or years later become bankrupt as the GameWorks program steams along. 20% marketshare is dire.

But its true AMD can sell nothing at all and still live on life-support from consoles and custom products, they'll probably have to fire a lot of staff to survive though. But it's just prolonging the death rather than thriving without their main business of CPU & GPUs being vibrant, or as I said, being irrelevant.

GameWorks is the final nail in AMD's coffin if they choose to ignore it and continue their "open source" GE program. Once the next wave of GameWorks come out and included in review sites, its going to skew in NV's advantage big time, making the average consumer extremely warry of buying anything AMD related when they see horrible performance or non-functional CF (reinforcing the "AMD drivers suck" mantra). No really, go read a few [H] reviews of late and note how much crap they give AMD for their "bad CF drivers" in GameWorks titles. That is a sign of things to come for more review sites when more GW titles are due this year! This IS unbiased judgement.

 

[RussianSensation]

No really, go read a few [H] reviews of late and note how much crap they give AMD for their "bad CF drivers" in GameWorks titles. That is a sign of things to come for more review sites when more GW titles are due this year! This IS unbiased judgement.

I did read 2-3 of their last reviews. I use HardOCP's data as a point of reference but the editor's opinions are worthless on there. When a site recommends $1100 980 SLI over $600 290X CF to save 300W of power, or blames AMD's lack of CF support in black box GW titles, their opinion has 0 merit. They still haven't addressed many gamer's criticism of using 4-5 games in reviews to draw final conclusions. Clueless with such a small sample size.

I just don't know why there are almost no credible North American professional reviewers left. To me AT is the closest to the least biased today from the big NA ones but their refusal to use after-market R9 290/X cards in reviews is mind-boggling. If a site can't spend $1000 to acquire a couple of after-market GPUs to provide a good/honest review of what gamers actually buy, it's hard to call them professional either. I am pretty much finding myself turning to European reviews sites in the last 2-3 years if I want opinions or better yet take the performance data in reviews and make your own judgement.

I think either way AMD is not going to lock GE source code. I think they need to work more closely with developers to optimize GPU performance for post-GCN architecture to take full advantage of areas where it performs better than NV's. I am still against code vendor locking.

 

[nvgpu]

Sabotage Evolve cripples performance on Nvidia GPUs, we've seen it in Dirt Showdown, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and many other Sabotage Evolved games.

AMD does much more nefarious things with their Sabotage Evolved program.

Please refrain from using "sabotage evolved." If you want to debate the merits of a company's products and features then do it in a civil way. Turning a feature's name into a pejorative only causes negative responses. -Subyman

 

[iiiankiii]

Sabotage Evolve cripples performance on Nvidia GPUs, we've seen it in Dirt Showdown, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and many other Sabotage Evolved games.

AMD does much more nefarious things with their Sabotage Evolved program.

WTH is Sabotage Evolved Program?

 

[Silverforce11]

Sabotage Evolve cripples performance on Nvidia GPUs, we've seen it in Dirt Showdown, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and many other Sabotage Evolved games.

AMD does much more nefarious things with their Sabotage Evolved program.

Yes that's true, when "Sabotage Evolve" implements a new feature, it runs worse on NV. But does AMD make it compulsory for developers to hide source code from NV? Nope. In fact, AMD even go out of their way to publish presentations of how to optimize their features, with full source code provided, so that NV can easily optimize via a driver update.

Now if NV did the same with GameWorks, CF would have been working in Dying Light by now, as well as the shoddy performance in other titles would have been much improved, so that the R290X is within 10% of the 980 as it is when many games are tested.

But NV doesn't want that. They are not in the business of enabling their competitors. It therefore only leads us to one conclusion when people ask for GPU advice: If they play a lot of GameWorks title, go NV and avoid AMD.

The same will not apply in the reverse. If they play lots of AMD GE games (Dragon Age Iq, Civ BE & titles you mentioned), they will be fine with NV.

This is a huge advantage for NV. Why shouldn't it be? They spend money on GameWorks, it should benefit them!

 

[3DVagabond]

Sabotage Evolve cripples performance on Nvidia GPUs, we've seen it in Dirt Showdown, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and many other Sabotage Evolved games.

AMD does much more nefarious things with their Sabotage Evolved program.

Like release the source code for their effects so other IHV's can optimize their drivers.

 

[AtenRa]

Why people say that GameWorks titles run horrible on AMD GPUs ???

From GTX960 reviews,

Assassins creed Unity, R9 290 faster than GTX780 and very close to the more expensive GTX970.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_960_G1_Gaming/7.html

FarCry 4,

HD7970 and R9 290 faster than GTX780 and very close to the more expensive GTX970.

Watch Dogs,

Thinks are as it should be,

BoarderLands : The Pre-Eequel

Heh, R9 290 is faster than GTX970

http://techreport.com/review/27702/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960-graphics-card-reviewed/8

Just a GE game with Mantle for those that say NV GPUs are faster.

Civilization Beyond Earth,

R9 290 is faster than GTX970, rest of the cards performance are as it should.

There may be one or two months that AMD needs to get a new driver and the game needs a couple of patches after the first release date but performance in GameWorks titles are as it should with the AMD cards.

 

[5150Joker]

OP: Yes, despite the slightly lower performance, the Titan X will give you consistent performance and broader game support and features. You'll also benefit from frequent driver updates as NVIDIA is very consistent with that, especially when it comes to AAA game support.