AMD Catalyst 13.8 BETA “Frame Pacing Fix” Drivers Finally Released/REVIEW

[Youbetternot]

I use this http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

[Youbetternot]

This is true its on the amd website http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

[mr moose]

It's great news but its just too bad that AMD cards are still way to expensive here in Aus.  The 7990 is a $1100 card, it's $400 more than what I paid for my entire PC and it's only $200 more to get the titan.

Even getting some lower end cards and going crossfire still doesn't get the same $performance as Nvidia. 

 

I want to try out AMD but they are not selling themselves too well at the moment.

[Frix]

It's great news but its just too bad that AMD cards are still way to expensive here in Aus.  The 7990 is a $1100 card, it's $400 more than what I paid for my entire PC and it's only $200 more to get the titan.

Even getting some lower end cards and going crossfire still doesn't get the same $performance as Nvidia. 

 

I want to try out AMD but they are not selling themselves too well at the moment.

Why would you get a Titan over a 7990 anyway?

[mr moose]

Why would you get a Titan over a 7990 anyway?

wank factor :P

[Nicktrance]

downloading, even though I don't have crossfire.

 

same here... MUST.HAVE.THE.LATEST.VERSION!!!

[Nicktrance]

Why would you get a Titan over a 7990 anyway?

 

I definitely would... Although if it were my money I'd get a 780 of course :p

[Frix]

I definitely would... Although if it were my money I'd get a 780 of course :P

Why?

[ExDreamer]

It's great news but its just too bad that AMD cards are still way to expensive here in Aus.  The 7990 is a $1100 card, it's $400 more than what I paid for my entire PC and it's only $200 more to get the titan.

Even getting some lower end cards and going crossfire still doesn't get the same $performance as Nvidia. 

 

I want to try out AMD but they are not selling themselves too well at the moment.

I don't think crossfiring dual 7970 is consider a low end card.You can get dual 7970 for cheaper price than a single 7990 or a titan. I don't think that is bad price to performance at all

[Nicktrance]

Why?

 

It looks better, runs cooler and quieter more future expandability and I always like to get the best single GPU card I can. The difference in performance isn't really that large and 6GB would be nice for triple monitor gaming. 

[Frix]

It looks better, runs cooler and quieter more future expandability and I always like to get the best single GPU card I can. The difference in performance isn't really that large and 6GB would be nice for triple monitor gaming. 

Fair enough I like the looks of both of them personally, and if I had the money to get a gpu like that I would get the 7990 slap a waterblock on that to be quiet and perform the best.

[mr moose]

I don't think crossfiring dual 7970 is consider a low end card.You can get dual 7970 for cheaper price than a single 7990 or a titan. I don't think that is bad price to performance at all

The 7970 have only just started to drop in price here they are now $480 so crossfire 7970 is about $100 cheaper than 1 7990.  I don't know about you but when if I spend 1 grand on video I want to see a huge difference, not 5-10 frames.

 

EDIT: add to that that now AMD have fixed their drivers we might see more crossfire benchmarks. when that happens we can better compare crossfire to something from Nvidia. Remember here in Aus. a GTX780 is significantly cheaper than both the 7970 in cross and the 7990.

[Nicktrance]

Fair enough I like the looks of both of them personally, and if I had the money to get a gpu like that I would get the 7990 slap a waterblock on that to be quiet and perform the best.

To be completely honest, if I had that money I'd get a 780 and keep the rest until I can afford another one or spend it on something else.

[ExDreamer]

The 7970 have only just started to drop in price here they are now $480 so crossfire 7970 is about $100 cheaper than 1 7990.  I don't know about you but when if I spend 1 grand on video I want to see a huge difference, not 5-10 frames.

 

EDIT: add to that that now AMD have fixed their drivers we might see more crossfire benchmarks. when that happens we can better compare crossfire to something from Nvidia. Remember here in Aus. a GTX780 is significantly cheaper than both the 7970 in cross and the 7990.

Yeah i agree with you that 780 is cheaper than dual 7970 but if we look at benchmark,a 7990 or dual 7970 will beat titan,780 and 690 on benchmark.

[mr moose]

Yeah i agree with you that 780 is cheaper than dual 7970 but if we look at benchmark,a 7990 or dual 7970 will beat titan,780 and 690 on benchmark.

Yes,  but will it beat it by enough to justify the extra $? Even two GTX680's in sli will perform on par with a 7990 but be about $150 cheaper.

Until the new drivers came out, I would not have considered amd at all, But now that crossfire is looking better (assuming it all works fine in the long run) the only consideration left is if the extra $100 -$200 is worth it for the performance.  If the Australian prices for AMD were cheaper then I would be flipping a coin.

 

To put things into perspective, I am still using a GTX570, and I haven't encountered a game I can't play sufficiently. So dropping that much coin on a gpu setup, for me, I will need to see huge improvements.

[JaeDee884]

The 7970 have only just started to drop in price here they are now $480 so crossfire 7970 is about $100 cheaper than 1 7990.  I don't know about you but when if I spend 1 grand on video I want to see a huge difference, not 5-10 frames.

 

EDIT: add to that that now AMD have fixed their drivers we might see more crossfire benchmarks. when that happens we can better compare crossfire to something from Nvidia. Remember here in Aus. a GTX780 is significantly cheaper than both the 7970 in cross and the 7990.

try 429 for a Sapphire 7970 on PCCG and 419 a HIS 7970 on mwave. and they were this price six months ago when I bought mine. PCCG used to have the HIS for 399. for literally an extra 50-100 bucks over a 780 you can have a shit load more performance now we've got the CF fix.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1483

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1309

 

Yes a single card is a better solution. but you sure have your pricings wrong. and a 780 isn't double the performance so isn't work its cost.

[ExDreamer]

Yes,  but will it beat it by enough to justify the extra $? Even two GTX680's in sli will perform on par with a 7990 but be about $150 cheaper.

Until the new drivers came out, I would not have considered amd at all, But now that crossfire is looking better (assuming it all works fine in the long run) the only consideration left is if the extra $100 -$200 is worth it for the performance.  If the Australian prices for AMD were cheaper then I would be flipping a coin.

 

To put things into perspective, I am still using a GTX570, and I haven't encountered a game I can't play sufficiently. So dropping that much coin on a gpu setup, for me, I will need to see huge improvements.

Yes but you are saying that for $200 more,you could get a titan which offer bad price to performance ratio compare to 7990.

 

Here 7970 cost about the same as 680 but offer better performance,not to mention you would get higher memory bus and 3GB Vram.

 

http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--413892_Gigabyte_AMD_HD7970_PCI_E_3GB_Graphics_Card

http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--420748_Gigabyte_GeForce_GTX680_2GB_N680OC_2GD_N680SO_2GD

[TechFan@ic]

I think I might just order my second card now, thanks AMD.

[mr moose]

Yes but you are saying that for $200 more,you could get a titan which offer bad price to performance ratio compare to 7990.

 

Here 7970 cost about the same as 680 but offer better performance,not to mention you would get higher memory bus and 3GB Vram.

 

http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--413892_Gigabyte_AMD_HD7970_PCI_E_3GB_Graphics_Card

http://www.myshopping.com.au/PR--420748_Gigabyte_GeForce_GTX680_2GB_N680OC_2GD_N680SO_2GD

 

 

try 429 for a Sapphire 7970 on PCCG and 419 a HIS 7970 on mwave. and they were this price six months ago when I bought mine. PCCG used to have the HIS for 399. for literally an extra 50-100 bucks over a 780 you can have a shit load more performance now we've got the CF fix.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1483

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1309

 

Yes a single card is a better solution. but you sure have your pricings wrong. and a 780 isn't double the performance so isn't work its cost.

The titan remark was tongue in cheek, poorly implemented sarcasm.  I never said the 780 is double the performance.

 

 

The difference between two 7970's and two 680's is about a $100 (which is significant to me) and I was comparing them to a 7990 ($300 more).

I like to buy from a reputable retailer with a shop front and great aftersales service. So I tend to use only CPL.

 

I did the basic comparisons using the anandtech benchmark comparison tool. According to that two 680's will perform roughly on par with a 7990, Other than DIRT most of the results are within 3-10 frames.

 

I am not knocking AMD, I can't wait to see how these updates effect performance benchmarks long term. 

[Fetzie]

I think if you are going for crossfire for the best performance per dollar, you're better off getting two 7950s for ~500 dollars total.

[Helltech]

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-Catalyst-138-Brings-Frame-Pacing-AMD-Radeon

 

Lovely. So since this is all driver side with no hardware implementation it looks like we will always (for now) have to rely on new drivers for ANY kind of benefit from Crossfire on newer released games. Here is to hope for the series after 9000, but I'm glad I still suggest CF setups to people. Though I would still advise (after reading the article) that if you KNOW you will be going dual card setup nVidia is still the best option. 

[Fetzie]

Lovely. So since this is all driver side with no hardware implementation it looks like we will always (for now) have to rely on new drivers for ANY kind of benefit from Crossfire on newer released games. Here is to hope for the series after 9000, but I'm glad I still suggest CF setups to people. Though I would still advise (after reading the article) that if you KNOW you will be going dual card setup nVidia is still the best option. 

 

With the 9000 series coming out in October there is no time to change the PCB blueprint to include a new chip. Given that this is just the first beta revision of 13.8, I think they're right on track. We'll likely be seeing at least another 4 beta builds before it gets its certification. And if they went for a hardware implementation, it would leave their existing HD7000 customers (of which there are many) standing around with shitty performance, which could cost them sales when those people go to buy a new card and remember how AMD screwed them over with the frame latency fix.

[TERAFLOP]

Lovely. So since this is all driver side with no hardware implementation it looks like we will always (for now) have to rely on new drivers for ANY kind of benefit from Crossfire on newer released games. Here is to hope for the series after 9000, but I'm glad I still suggest CF setups to people. Though I would still advise (after reading the article) that if you KNOW you will be going dual card setup nVidia is still the best option. 

No I think you misread, it was clearly stated in the article that the frame-pacing feature is game independent & will work on all DX11 & DX10 games, DX9 support is next, because according to AMD they wanted to have the driver out the door as soon as possible, so they did not have enough development time to do DX9.

I also really dislike how self-serving that article was, in every single page Ryan goes about himself and what he did and how he "showed AMD up" , really unprofessional.

[TechFan@ic]

Lovely. So since this is all driver side with no hardware implementation it looks like we will always (for now) have to rely on new drivers for ANY kind of benefit from Crossfire on newer released games.

No sir, specific implementations for newer games is not required, the algorithm is game independent and will work on all DX11 & DX10 based games, current titles & future ones alike.

 

This fix is generic meaning it is not tied to any specific game and doesn't require profiles like CrossFire can from time to time.  The current implementation will work with DX10 and DX11 based titles

AMD claims this was simply a development time issue and since most modern GPU-bound titles are DX10/11 based they focused on that area first.  In phase 2 of the frame pacing implementation AMD will add in DX9 and OpenGL support.

[Helltech]

No sir, specific implementations for newer games is not required, the algorithm is game independent and will work on all DX11 & DX10 based games, current titles & future ones alike.

 

Oh ok, misread. Well that's good. But it still said in the article that there are problems / issues with certain games (that you don't see on SLI setups). 

 

With the 9000 series coming out in October there is no time to change the PCB blueprint to include a new chip. Given that this is just the first beta revision of 13.8, I think they're right on track. We'll likely be seeing at least another 4 beta builds before it gets its certification. And if they went for a hardware implementation, it would leave their existing HD7000 customers (of which there are many) standing around with shitty performance, which could cost them sales when those people go to buy a new card and remember how AMD screwed them over with the frame latency fix.

 

I said series AFTER 9000.