Can't think of any logical reason to go Nvidia now.

[Cheddle]

Which games do you play? and what AMD products did you own?

Ive been using Radeon 7950, then recently a 295x2, and ive been using Radeon products since 2012. So when did you actually last use a AMD product? Because anything after 2012, ive been able to play the games i want, at 60 or higher FPS (i do not own a monitor with more then 60Hz, so its useless for me to run anything HIGHER then 60FPS, it just doesnt help much).

Quite honestly, to this day, the only two games i struggle with AMD drivers is Age of Empires 2 and Firefly Studios Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader. And my issue there is that the water turns from blue to pink. That is a driver error that hasnt been fixed in the soon 3 years ive used Radeon products.

I cannot vouch for PRE 2012, but any Radeon driver released since October 2012 has given me NO NOTABLE PROBLEMS. Yes i did have some minor issues with CFX from time to time, but Nvidia to this day still struggles immensely with SLI and getting that to work well, so all in all - i wont count CFX issues as a real game changing issue when the competitor isnt even remotely better at getting it right. Even when SLI works, SLI has loads of issues in terms of scaling and sometimes even fram pacing (you know that thing Nvidia used to harp on AMD for being bad at, the thing they made a benchmarking tool to measure just to make fun of AMD).

 

ugh, I wrote a huge reply that listed the seven largest problems I have had with AMD cards, but I accidentally mouse-backed... gg - I play heaps of games, from racing sims to mmorpgs to moba's to fps and rts... all dem games

 

Basically i've owned 10 AMD cards, from an x1900 to a 280x and a crossfire 290 setup. I have had two computers that needed OS reinstalled thanks to AMD drivers TOTALLY fucking them, a driver issue cause all 3d to stop working (ULPS bug), a bad time with crossfire (read this thread) and the driver updates are sparse. plus hot.

 

The only game that I had an "Nvidia" level experience with when using AMD cards was Tomb Raider... I understand Battlefield 483 and hitman as well as sniper elite are also great on AMD cards. and that's it. most of the titles I play now have some kind of Nvidia feature set, M:LL, GTA5, FC4, TW3 and soon to be batman.

 

But don't get me wrong, ive had some bad Nvidia times as well, i've had 11 Nvidia cards, two of them I bought second hand, both dead, I had my Laptops gtx270m die on me, GPUboost2.0 is too conservative for my liking, AMDs powertune is a better approach, and Nvidias most recent driver has caused issues for 980 and older card owners, that said its the first time in a long time that they have had driver issues.

 

Lastly my beef with both companies is that they are both riding the VR hype train and announcing magical unicorn VR tech that creates dream dust pulled from the space time continuum yet neither company actually have anything in place that does anyhting.

 

Nvidia are the bigger offender of this, spouting the 9xx series as "VR ready" with VR features, then releasing nothing and now spouting the Titan X as "VR ready" with VR features, again, nothing released... I hope AMD dont make the same mistake, though Mantle makes me feel more confident AMD will come thru with this VR dream promise.

 

I just want Intel to pop-up, make a dedicated PCIe slot GPU based on 14nm arch and shame both Nvidia and AMD... Intels iGPU stuff is impressive

[Aphala]

Like wise with AMD, just go with what you want or is the highest performing

 

AMD has good features, Nvidia has good features don't let fanboys bog you down with all this HURRDY FLURR AYY LAMO EMM DEE or NVIDIDIDIDIDYA U BEST! just go with what packs the most punch and/or fits your gaming/workstation needs

[RinnyDinDin]

 

Having a brain.

 

The Fury's clock speed is very similar to the 290X so I doubt AMD created a revolutionary more efficient architecture. 

Furthermore the water-cooled Fury X has more stream processors - probably Fiji runs hot.

 

http://wccftech.com/amd-fiji-die-reconstructed-hbms-huge-gpu-uncovered/

it appears that Fiji is just an oversized Hawaii. 

 

 

From what I've read the Fury X runs at 50°C under load consuming ~250 watts with a water cooler designed to dissipate 500 watts.  Implies significant overclocking headroom.  Who knows until they're officially out and benched but I'm optimistic.

[Hieb]

I have had two computers that needed OS reinstalled thanks to AMD drivers TOTALLY fucking them

 

That happened to me with Nvidia drivers in late 2014... corrupted my registry to the point that I couldn't even do a system restore or repair

[NInety]

I agree kinda. But those things are not required!

Yeah, but they're cool.

[VagabondWraith]

I've owned 3 NV products and all have suited my needs. I have no use in switching to AMD when NV is perfect for me. I applaud AMD for the Fury but the performance gain is negligible against my 980 Ti.

On to Pascal.

[jelko]

The best thing of all about the fiji benchmarks you say?

Amd r and d'd the hell out of this move.. The cards will perform BETTER(albeit slightly) than the already posted benchmarks.

 

THEN WHAT?!?

[Prysin]

i honestly do not think the fury will bench much better after its launched. AMDs benchmarks are probably best case scenario with some alpha drivers in place

[Pcgeekbrain]

And had the same story last year. Amazing cards, mantle... I personally got the 270 myself. But I can tell you from experience that the quality of the products do not come near nvidia. The drivers are a buggy mess regardless of what the advertising says. For example, when I got this "amazing mid-range card" and I fired up some older titles like rct, all the colors were off. And it took them over 6 months to fix. This year I bought 4 "low end" nvidia cards for a schools game room and none of them has failed me yet.

So while and might make cards that are better on paper, and even for fps is NEW games, nvidia is making a smarter move to invest in making the card quality. Enough quality to justify a few fps. That is why you should at least consider them.

[FLUFFYJELLO]

I just wanna bring up the whole silence under low load thing: the 300 series cards have that now. Look at the product detail pages, people. Sapphire's 390(x) has 0db fan under 50c (which can be adjusted).

[bomerr]

From what I've read the Fury X runs at 50°C under load consuming ~250 watts with a water cooler designed to dissipate 500 watts.  Implies significant overclocking headroom.  Who knows until they're officially out and benched but I'm optimistic.

The 980 runs at around 50C too with an acatek watercolor. But that doesn't mean you can push it to 2Ghz and 80C. 

[ANN1H1L1ST]

Lol you're going off of benchmarks that AMD released? It's far from destroying the 980ti. The fact that had to liquid cool it just to compete with a reference air cooled 980ti tells you all you need to know. AMD then had to under price their product yet again just to get people to buy it. Which they will lose money on it and fall deeper into the financial disaster that company is already until they will become bankrupt.

[Prysin]

I think some people may misunderstand the position companies are in.

A common way to price products is to double the price of the production and distribution cost.

AMD could price this card at 849$, sell very very few, but made great headroom on the production and distribution cost.

Or they could reduce their headroom, make 10-15% headroom, sell loads of units and still make money. No sane company would price a product in a way that they did not get money back for it. You only do that if you desperately need to get rid of a product.

AMD also wont go bankrupt anytime soon, because they hold too many IPs for it to go down without causing a massive legal mess. Who owns the right to 64bit computing, AMD does. What happens to 64bit computing if AMD goes down? It either dies, rights are sold, which if intel got the rights would absolutely cement their monopoly forever since neither ARM, qualcomm nor samsung is big enough in the CPU market to just pick up a massive IP like that and start making CPUs for desktops and servers.

People also forget that AMD has large business deals. Apparently they secured a deal with loads of hollywood movie studios and sold a metric tonn of Firepro cards. These are cards that are simply EXPENSIVE. Even a generation and a half outdated and super cheap Firepro costs as much as a 390X.... Now, they make headroom on those cards for sure, because Nvidia Tesla cards are a lot more expensive, but also targets a slightly different type of workloads then AMDs Firepro does.

Now, AMD also got consoles, namely WiiU, XBONE and PS4.... They got ALL the consoles, which means they got an estimated 42 million+ customers or so in total around the world right at their feet. They make a profit on every PS4, every XBONE and every WiiU sold. So they make money there too.

Then there is the server market, Opterons may not be the best choice with intels new Xeons on the market, but they cost less and unless you need extreme performance, is both cheaper and more efficient then the competitions offering. So they probably make a bit of money there too.

Now add in all the normal desktop CPUs, APUs, and dGPUs they sell, and they probably keep their head above the water these days but not much more then that. They wont go down unless the global economy takes another plunge, as investors will keep their money in the company for as long as it remains profitable.

AMD is not going bankrupt this year, nor the next, nor the one after that. And Nvidia and Intel has nothing to benefit from them going down. Worst case, Intel and Nvidia being US companies would be forced to sell off parts of their buisnisses to other smaller competitors to prevent monopoly. Such a thing would devastate the computer market. If AMD goes down, the ultimate loser is YOU, the consumer. Be it Nvidia, Intel or AMD user. YOU AND I lose. These companies would rather ruin us all financially and leave us homeless before they would drop their prices just to be nice.

[TheMcSame]

No sane company would price a product in a way that they did not get money back for it. 

Unless that company is Sony

[Prysin]

Unless that company is Sony

they made the money back later on, but the first PS3 was sold with losses. The second gen PS3 was cheaper to make and in the end they recovered by sheer volume sale

[Chiobe]

1 thing that can make a difference: Gsync seems to be a better technology then Freesync atm.

But that is more an issue for the Premium users, so who knows how it will effect things.

[Prysin]

Gsync had what? 3 years head start and AMDs Freesync technology is already breathing down Nvidias neck with their most recent screen being released by BenQ.

Which i may add is gonna cost you less then the equivalent Gsync monitor.

[Chiobe]

Gsync had what? 3 years head start and AMDs Freesync technology is already breathing down Nvidias neck with their most recent screen being released by BenQ.

Which i may add is gonna cost you less then the equivalent Gsync monitor.

"It's worth noting that while AMD is pitching 9-240Hz refresh rates for Freesync, they're only the possible extremes; it's up to individual monitor makers to implement them."

Thats one of the reasons Gsync is better, its a standard, so you know what you get and dont have to dig into the manual to check what you end up with.

[whitedragon101]

the Fury X is destroying the 980 Ti

 

We don't know that and we don't have any independent benchmarks.  

 

The only benchmarks out there are the ones AMD released and several websites have put a note on them pointing out that some of the scores on some nVidia cards including the 980ti are flat wrong.

 

We need to wait for the independent benchmarks.

[unholy_walrus]

The fanboyism is strong in this thread. It seems like normally smart individuals lose all ability to think logically when it comes to this pointless debate, and discussion is reduced to fanboys screaming at eachother. Weird shit.

 

Get whatever GPU fits your build and budget. At least in Finland the 290/x is very cheap at the moment for the performance it offers. The GTX 970 is ~50-100€ more. I recently ended up choosing a 290 Tri-X for 260€ instead of a 290x for 310€ or a GTX 970 for 390€. I figured the R9 300 cards would perform basically the same as an overclocked 290/x at a significantly higher price and chose not to wait. Now I'm not sure if I chose the right thing to do, does the 390 non-x really beat a GTX 970 by a clear margin?

 

The R9 Fury/x and Nano seem very exciting, and if the 390/x beat the GTX 970/980 it'll be good for AMD yeah - however saying there's no logical reason to buy Nvidia is just not true. 970/980 Ti are still fantastic cards for the price and the Nvidia-exclusive features are still there.

[sgloux3470]

Unless that company is Sony

They often sell hardware at a loss, but then take a cut of licensing and software sales. They make their money from building the install base.

[orcinhell]

The 390X has me scratching my head. After comparing benchmarks of the MSI it fails to really standout or clearly mark its territory. The 970 when comparing msi to msi (no OC as 390X is yet to have OC benchmarks afak) is far too close to justify the extra cost. The 390 is at the same price point but I am wondering why they failed to bring out benchmarks for it. Wouldn’t AMD be posting that left right and center, that they have a card that costs the same and performs the same or better compared to the 970… it’s a super popular card for many reasons. Seems odd... The 390X would be a good card for 1440p 60hz but that is still a pretty niche market in terms of the percentage of gamers using 1440p.

 

Seems like all the real interest is in the fury series… It will be cool if they beat Nvidia at the high end, but from a consumer standpoint little has seemed to of changed. until the 390 benchmarks come out the 970 is still king for the consumer its more then fast enough and has a better price to performance coming in at 100 dollars less then the 390X... 150 difference here in Australia.

 

I really hope the 390 is as good as the 970 or better... if not it seems ATI has left their consumer fanbase behind as they prove to the world they are now a performance company not a budget.

 

(feel free to correct me if I am wrong, as I really hope AMD pull this off).

[maizenblue]

The 390X has me scratching my head. After comparing benchmarks of the MSI it fails to really standout or clearly mark its territory. The 970 when comparing msi to msi (no OC as 390X is yet to have OC benchmarks afak) is far too close to justify the extra cost. The 390 is at the same price point but I am wondering why they failed to bring out benchmarks for it. Wouldn’t AMD be posting that left right and center, that they have a card that costs the same and performs the same or better compared to the 970… it’s a super popular card for many reasons. Seems odd... The 390X would be a good card for 1440p 60hz but that is still a pretty niche market in terms of the percentage of gamers using 1440p.

 

Seems like all the real interest is in the fury series… It will be cool if they beat Nvidia at the high end, but from a consumer standpoint little has seemed to of changed. until the 390 benchmarks come out the 970 is still king for the consumer its more then fast enough and has a better price to performance coming in at 100 dollars less then the 390X... 150 difference here in Australia.

 

I really hope the 390 is as good as the 970 or better... if not it seems ATI has left their consumer fanbase behind as they prove to the world they are now a performance company not a budget.

 

(feel free to correct me if I am wrong, as I really hope AMD pull this off).

 

I just read Guru3d's 390x review. The 390x pretty much destroyed the 970, and the 390x equaled or outperformed the 980 in most benchmarks and games. I was really surprised. I cant wait to see what a 390x does with a vapor X cooler or MSI lightning, or better yet water cooled.

 

At 1440p a 970 and 980 no longer make sense. A 390x easily beats the 970 and equals the 980, and a single radeon fury X pretty much equals 970s in SLI while giving lower temps and lower power consumption for the same price.

[orcinhell]

I just read Guru3d's 390x review. The 390x pretty much destroyed the 970, and the 390x equaled or outperformed the 980 in most benchmarks and games. I was really surprised. I cant wait to see what a 390x does with a vapor X cooler or MSI lightning, or better yet water cooled.

 

At 1440p a 970 and 980 no longer make sense. A 390x easily beats the 970 and equals the 980, and a single radeon fury X pretty much equals 970s in SLI while giving lower temps and lower power consumption for the same price.

 

 

Remember that off those charts its comparing a MSI 390X to reference gforce/AMD cards... for some reason. Compare that too the MSI 970 review also by guru3d that used the same games and settings.... AMD favored titles can have a massive 15fps gain on a 970. But on other tittles it can be as low as a few... The card can be up to 22% faster or as low as 8%... That is at a cost of 23% more. The 980 falls into the same boat and why it is also less favored, to some degree, the performance it offers is not relative to the extra cost.

 

This is without considering overclocking which could make or brake the value of the 390X... the 970 has a rep of being a beast at overclocking 20% increase is not unheard of, if the 390X cannot muster 10% its in real trouble.

 

Comparing the tittles and cards MSI 970 and MSI 390X

 

Theif - 22% gain.

 

Tomb Raider - 10.45% gain

 

Bioshock 3 - 8% gain

 

All other tests too much was changed for a direct comparison.

 

that is at a extra cost of 23% based on newegg prices.

 

So my point is.... if the 980 was seen as not being optimal at 1080p because you only get 20% extra performance for 30% cost... what makes the 390X any different... and again unless the card can overclock at least 10% its not really a smart choice for 1080P which is what most gamer game on.

 

The 390X is a great card, But I am yet to see a card that challenges the 970... brands aside, the 970 is great for many reasons, price vs performance while also offering more than enough grunt to max almost every single game at 1080P... Its a very popular buy for that reason. AMD has released a card that is more powerful but also more costly, putting it a tier above that 970/1080P  "sweet spot" and not in direct competition in my eyes... That leaves the 390 but its lack of information so close to release compared to the 370, 380 and 390X has me wondering if it comes even close to a 970 considering they are the same price.

[Profoundsoup]

People like GeForce Experience? It always suggests ridiculous settings for my games that make them run about 45 fps.

Optimized settings try to get 40-55 fps. Not 60 an NVIDIA employee told me last year.