Few Questions for Radeon Users

[Hieb]

Pretty soon I'm looking to upgrade my GPU and I'm really thinking about going AMD for this one... partly just to try the water and partly because there are some real nice FreeSync monitors that cost barely more than a non-freeync one. For example where I live a standard 2560x1440 60Hz monitor is about $450-500, while I can get the Acer 2560x1440 144Hz FreeSync monitor for $600, so it's kind of a no brainer. But there are a few things I wanna clear up first.

 

1. DRIVERS

 

I don't have extensive experience with AMD drivers, I've only briefly dealt with them on my friend's system. I built his using an R9 270... he had a driver issue pretty quickly after getting his computer. Within the first 2 months or so (even though he never updated them) suddenly performance across a lot of his games was pretty bad... although a pretty straight forward uninstall and clean install resolved this issue, and I haven't heard any complaints since.

 

However on the internet people are always talking about AMD's drivers. Hoping someone with first hand experience can talk me through what the driver experience has been like. Do you have small issues frequently? Do you have big issues on rare occasions? So far with Nvidia's drivers I've had a few MASSIVE issues but they happen on a very rare basis... I've had their drivers corrupt my registry twice which is something I really don't want to ever deal with again. However I also don't want to frequently uninstall and clean install drivers or fiddle around with them to get them working as intended. So any jumping through hoops or anything?

 

 

2. RECORDING

 

How are things on the gameplay recording side of things? I quite like Shadowplay and want to make sure that I can achieve virtually the same results (good quality recordings @ 60 FPS without hitting my performance) and save the last X minute(s) of gameplay with a hotkey. Is this a simple thing to accomplish with Raptr, OBS or any other free recording softwares?

 

 

3. VALUE

 

And finally... do you think it's worth it to get an R9 Fury over an R9 390? I'm really itching to take advantage of that 144Hz on the 1440P monitor I'm eyeing, however the R9 Fury doesn't seem worth it to me... I'm worried the R9 390 won't be enough to make great use out of the 144Hz refresh rate at 1440P but I also don't like the idea of spending almost twice as much for the Fury when benchmarks only show about a 15% performance gain.

 

The R9 390 costs about $480 here while the Fury costs about $900... doesn't seem worth the massive price increase to me. Saving the extra $450 would mean sticking around at this terrible overnight stocking position at Walmart for another month or two

[ZetZet]

1. Same shit at the moment, both have issues. I don't even want to upgrade my nvidia drivers because whenever I try and do so I get some bug and have to reroll.

 

2. Shadowplay sucks dick if you want quality, the shadow recording is nice, but I have only used it one time.

 

3. Yes fury is worth it over 390, with normal prices, since your prices are not normal probably not.

[Opeth747]

1. Never really had any problems.

2. Never really recorded anything.

3. Yes, the Fury is worth it.

[OAcesync]

AMD drivers are pretty solid, biggest problem I've ever had is a temporary black screens while installing new drivers but it's only when I install a new driver other than that I've never had a single hick with AMD drivers. 

 

Pretty sure OBS or Raptr should be fine for 60fps recording(I would prefer using OBS)

 

And for 1440p and 144hz I would get a Fury Tri X

[Sauron]

1) my experience has been the same as what I had with nvidia drivers - in fact I had less crashes.

2) raptr is not up to snuff atm. If you have a good cpu that won't be a big problem though

3) yes, the fury is very well priced imo - especially compared to the 980.

[GzeroD]

1) Drivers have not been an issue for me since before the eternal beta driver. last notable issue for me was pre 14.1 catalyst so its been a while

2)Raptr's quality is spastic. in some games its great and in others it is overcompressed. OBS will give you consistent recordings that look good/great

3) I'm not sold on the Fury, I would get the 390(x) and perhaps another one down the line to crossfire instead of investing in the Fury.

[PlayStation 2]

As a laptop user, I might as well chime in.

1. Drivers have never been an issue on me besides memory leaking on Windows Server 2008 R2 with CCC

2. Raptr can do the same thing, but I can't say much about it since, oddly enough, my laptop doesn't want to use the Gaming Evolved package.

3. YES GET THE FURY IF YOU CAN GET IT FOR A DECENT PRICE

[SkilledRebuilds]

I heard Raptr does not support everything, like Shadowplay often does...

 

Plus, MOST PEOPLE, are happy with the Shadowplay quality (for uploading to youtube), the no performance loss for 60fps capture works wonders!!

I use it EVERYDAY.

 

As far as drivers go, both companies are good and bad...

 

Price>Performance I'd not buy the Fury over the 390.

[Hieb]

1) my experience has been the same as what I had with nvidia drivers - in fact I had less crashes.

2) raptr is not up to snuff atm. If you have a good cpu that won't be a big problem though

3) yes, the fury is very well priced imo - especially compared to the 980.

 

What's wrong with Raptr specifically? And are there any alternatives... like do you know if OBS or MSI Afterburner or something can give me what Shadowplay does but on AMD cards? And the Fury costs almost double the R9 390 in Canada... $900 vs $480 (after tax), not sure if it's worth it at that point

 

~15-20% perfomrnace improvement for 87% price increase

[SkilledRebuilds]

What's wrong with Raptr specifically? And are there any alternatives... like do you know if OBS or MSI Afterburner or something can give me what Shadowplay does but on AMD cards? And the Fury costs almost double the R9 390 in Canada... $900 vs $480 (after tax), not sure if it's worth it at that point

 

~15-20% perfomrnace improvement for 87% price increase

Does Raptr support/record every single game you have installed? Or is it still limited to what AMD-GE says it can record?

This was always my issue with it..

 

Oh, and there ARE codecs you can use for OBS/MSI that use the AMD GPU VCE to do the work, just have to google/source them out.

Some are not 100% efficient, and perform okay>well but not substantially awesome....  problems such as dropped GPU usage in game, when recording could happen... Depending on the game.

[GzeroD]

What's wrong with Raptr specifically? And are there any alternatives... like do you know if OBS or MSI Afterburner or something can give me what Shadowplay does but on AMD cards? And the Fury costs almost double the R9 390 in Canada... $900 vs $480 (after tax), not sure if it's worth it at that point

 

~15-20% perfomrnace improvement for 87% price increase

There is a build of OBS with AMD VCE support. I use it when i stream it works well and the local files look great. there is little to no effect on frame rate.

 

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-branch-with-amd-vce-support.13996/

 

Like I said, Crossfire the 390's IMo is the best choice if you have room for 2 gpu's and are going amd

[Masada02]

1. I have not had many issues with drivers. The only issue I've had in the last 2 years has to do with Crossfire + V-Sync + 2 monitors with the game only on the first monitor. Needless to say, it's a pretty specific issue.

 

2. I have not tried to use Raptr or OBS

 

3. In my mind, the Fury is definitely worth it over the 390.

[Sauron]

What's wrong with Raptr specifically? And are there any alternatives... like do you know if OBS or MSI Afterburner or something can give me what Shadowplay does but on AMD cards? And the Fury costs almost double the R9 390 in Canada... $900 vs $480 (after tax), not sure if it's worth it at that point

 

~15-20% perfomrnace improvement for 87% price increase

 

the raptr recording software is still in beta and doesn't work very well (although I haven't tried it in a while, maybe it's better now). msi afterburner can do it, sure, but it does have more cpu overhead.

 

If the price difference is that high go for the 390

[harrynowl]

I'm running Win10 on the 15.7.1 drivers without any problems, HD7950.

 

I did some recording with OBS using OpenCL I believe. Fine. Although I play CSGO so it's not exactly intensive.

 

Yeah I feel the fury is worth it.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

1. AMD's driver experience is nothing stellar. Its a very normal experience. Gives you nothing more, nothing less. No driver related crashes. As stable as a tank but the UI looks really old. 

 

2.Quality looks alright with raptr I guess?. Recorded a few footages for a mini project. Captured footage looked alright. OBS didn't work with all of my game unfortunately. Raptr did. There's that Highlight Clips feature that allows you to record up to 20mins@720p.

 

3.How much does a 980 cost? 

[Hieb]

3.How much does a 980 cost? 

 

about $750

[PlayStation 2]

about $750

$750 CAD or USD?

edit im a fucking idiot

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

about $750

 

I'd probably go for the 980 at that price point. 

[Mikjul]

Never had a problem to be honest between my 6870 and now my 390 which is all but 3 days old..

 

Had NVIDIA cards too without any problems, though once i had issues with a pair of 9800 GTX's, SLi would cause artifacts in a lot of the games i tried... very old drivers by now.

 

No issues recording anything, this relies on HDD/SSD speeds mostly and a good CODEC.

[Prysin]

@Hieb

 

1 - Drivers has been a non issue, mostly, for the past 3+ years ive used AMD GFX cards... Hell ive used CF for all that time, and ive never had any issues. I do not know how all these people seem to have issues with AMD. But either they are spewing bullshit, or my cards magically work with every driver.......

I do not know how AMD is doing in Win10

 

2 - Raptr is pretty ok at recording, the program annoys me because i have little or no need to record... so i just keep disabling it... but the few times ive recorded shit (on accident) my FPS hasnt really taken a hit enough for me to notice...

 

3 - Fury is certainly worth buying over the 390. I mean, its a great card, and price to performance wise, it IS a good one..... BTW, do get the sapphire Fury. It may cost more, but its cooler is ACTUALLY GOOD... the STRIX one performs worse, is louder when under load.... in general, Asus is a no-go for AMD cards anyway...

[GzeroD]

2.Quality looks alright with raptr I guess?. Recorded a few footages for a mini project. Captured footage looked alright. OBS didn't work with all of my game unfortunately. Raptr did. There's that Highlight Clips feature that allows you to record up to 20mins@720p.

 

What games did you have issues with OBS in?

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

What games did you have issues with OBS in?

 

Skyrim, there was an issue with the ENB injector thing. Didn't bother too much with it so I just switched back to raptr.  

[Hieb]

I'd probably go for the 980 at that price point. 

 

@Hieb

 

1 - Drivers has been a non issue, mostly, for the past 3+ years ive used AMD GFX cards... Hell ive used CF for all that time, and ive never had any issues. I do not know how all these people seem to have issues with AMD. But either they are spewing bullshit, or my cards magically work with every driver.......

I do not know how AMD is doing in Win10

 

2 - Raptr is pretty ok at recording, the program annoys me because i have little or no need to record... so i just keep disabling it... but the few times ive recorded shit (on accident) my FPS hasnt really taken a hit enough for me to notice...

 

3 - Fury is certainly worth buying over the 390. I mean, its a great card, and price to performance wise, it IS a good one..... BTW, do get the sapphire Fury. It may cost more, but its cooler is ACTUALLY GOOD... the STRIX one performs worse, is louder when under load.... in general, Asus is a no-go for AMD cards anyway...

 

GTX 980 and Fury both have the same problem for me... they're like 15% faster than the tier below but cost like 60-90% more. Difference between GTX 970 and GTX 980 is only like 15% but while the 980 is $750 the 970 is like $470. And then with the Radeon the 390 is about $480 while the Fury is $900.

 

As for the GTX 980 I'm really digging a FreeSync monitor. Like I said the freesync 144Hz 1440P monitor only costs like $150 more than the plain jane 1440P 60Hz monitor so it's super enticing.

 

You really think it's worth saving almost double for a relatively minor performance gain? IDK I really want a Fury but it's so hard to justify spending $900 on it... might just go for the R9 390 and then in a year or two upgrade to Greenland GPU.

 

And yeah I wouldn't go Asus... in general I think they're really overrated. The cards I'm most interested in are the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro, Gigabyte R9 390 Gaming SOC, and Sapphire R9 Fury Tri-X

[Prysin]

GTX 980 and Fury both have the same problem for me... they're like 15% faster than the tier below but cost like 60-90% more. Difference between GTX 970 and GTX 980 is only like 15% but while the 980 is $750 the 970 is like $470. And then with the Radeon the 390 is about $480 while the Fury is $900.

 

As for the GTX 980 I'm really digging a FreeSync monitor. Like I said the freesync 144Hz 1440P monitor only costs like $150 more than the plain jane 1440P 60Hz monitor so it's super enticing.

 

You really think it's worth saving almost double for a relatively minor performance gain? IDK I really want a Fury but it's so hard to justify spending $900 on it... might just go for the R9 390 and then in a year or two upgrade to Greenland GPU.

 

And yeah I wouldn't go Asus... in general I think they're really overrated. The cards I'm most interested in are the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro, Gigabyte R9 390 Gaming SOC, and Sapphire R9 Fury Tri-X

get a R9 390X .... smack in hte middle of the R9 390 amd R9 Fury, price wise and performance wise

[GzeroD]

get a R9 390X .... smack in hte middle of the R9 390 amd R9 Fury, price wise and performance wise

I wouldn't spend $120 (CAD) more for a 390x over a 390 especially with them being so close in performance. with that being nearly 1/3 the price of getting another card for crossfire.