AMD real talk

[don_svetlio]

13 minutes ago, Enderman said:

well its 5 now since its 2016

Vishera was decent tho. 6300 was the low-end king for over a year

[typographie]

1 hour ago, Flowey said:

Still, if their architecture is so old, how can it still keep up with Nvidia's? 

When you say "keep up," what you're really talking about is performance per dollar. AMD has reused some chips in a lot of different products, but they also push them down the pricing ladder when they do it. In this way, they only ever really need new chips at the high end (currently Fury X/Fury/Nano). AMD's $550 card from 2013 can compete with Nvidia's $350 card from 2014, so they just re-name it, re-price it, and it competes pretty well.

 

It's almost completely beside the point that AMD's architectures are "old," because the only area where it actually shows is in comparative power efficiency. And frankly they just aren't inefficient enough that most reasonable gaming PCs today have trouble powering or cooling them. And really they're only about a generation behind in efficiency, and no one complained about the efficiency of Nvidia's Kepler products.

 

My concern with AMD is not their hardware, it's their software and their support from game developers. It is not difficult today to find games that perform poorer (either in actual framerates or in frame latency) on AMD hardware than they should, especially immediately after launch. Many blame Nvidia for that, but I don't actually think it should matter to the consumer whose fault it is.

[Dabombinable]

2 hours ago, ivan134 said:

Nope, they're not lagging behind in any way at all. The people who think efficiency is the only thing that matters tend to not know what they're talking about, especially if they don't know how Maxwell's efficiency as achieved. The only place that Nvidia beats AMD right now is tessellation performance.

 

CPUs are definitely far behind though. We'll have to wait and see what Zen has in store.

With GPUs the performance is there, that's for sure, but remember that for AMD it comes at a cost, power consumption, heat output and tessellation (AMD were trailing with that even when Fermi was around).

[don_svetlio]

5 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

With GPUs the performance is there, that's for sure, but remember that for AMD it comes at a cost, power consumption, heat output and tessellation (AMD were trailing with that even when Fermi was around).

Nah, AMD were the ones who introduced Tessellation to begin with. Nvidia simply abuse it

[Dabombinable]

2 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

Nah, AMD were the ones who introduced Tessellation to begin with. Nvidia simply abuse it

This is what I mean, DirectX 11 Tessellation, even if AMD introduced it, their cards can struggle with higher levels.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476340(v=vs.85).aspx

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

[ivan134]

Just now, Dabombinable said:

With GPUs the performance is there, that's for sure, but remember that for AMD it comes at a cost, power consumption, heat output and tessellation (AMD were trailing with that even when Fermi was around).

That's only a cost with dx 11. AMD made the architecture with the vision that one day we would move to a an API that leverages their architecture. They started with Mantle and now we have dx 12, and preliminary benchmarks are showing they were right. I don't see how any would care about Maxwell's "efficiency" (achieved by essentially throwing out the back seat and telling people how fast and light their car is) if the result is this:

 

Fable Legends

 

Ashes

 

[don_svetlio]

Just now, Dabombinable said:

This is what I mean, DirectX 11 Tessellation, even if AMD introduced it, their cards can struggle with higher levels.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

All cards struggle with 64x Tess mainly because it's pointless. Drop it down to 16x and it's perfectly fine on even a 270X

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

That's only a cost with dx 11. AMD made the architecture with the vision that one day we would move to a an API that leverages their architecture. They started with Mantle and now we have dx 12, and preliminary benchmarks are showing they were right. I don't see how any would care about Maxwell's "efficiency" (achieved by essentially throwing out the back seat and telling people how fast and light their car is) if the result is this:

 

Fable Legends

 

Ashes

 

Fable Legends and AOS aren't even finished games, and to top that all off, look at the performance variations across DirrectX11 games. Until we see a lot more, we don't actually know which manufacturer's cards benefits most from DirectX 12 (and BTW, not talking Async Compute, which Nvidia already has sorted out, but Tessellation).

[Nena Trinity]

AMDs CPUs & GPUs runs much better in DX12 than DX11 so there is hope!

[ivan134]

5 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Fable Legends and AOS aren't even finished games, and to top that all off, look at the performance variations across DirrectX11 games. Until we see a lot more, we don't actually know which manufacturer's cards benefits most from DirectX 12 (and BTW, not talking Async Compute, which Nvidia already has sorted out, but Tessellation).

No, actually we do know.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/223567-amd-clobbers-nvidia-in-updated-ashes-of-the-singularity-directx-12-benchmark

Quote

 

AMD, Nvidia, and asynchronous compute

Ashes of the Singularity isn’t just the first DirectX 12 game — it’s also the first PC title to make extensive use of asynchronous computing. Support for this capability is a major difference between AMD and Nvidia hardware, and it has a significant impact on game performance.

A GPU that supports asynchronous compute can use multiple command queues and execute these queues simultaneously, rather than switching between graphics and compute workloads. AMD supports this functionality via its Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE) and HWS blocks on Fiji.

Asynchronous computing is, in a very real sense, GCN’s secret weapon. While every GCN-class GPU since the original HD 7970 can use it, AMD quadrupled the number of ACEs per GPU when it built Hawaii, then modified the design again with Fiji. Where the R9 290 and 290X use eight ACEs, Fiji has four ACEs and two HWS units. Each HWS can perform the work of two ACEs and they appear to be capable of additional (but as-yet unknown) work as well.

The exact state and nature of Nvidia’s asynchronous compute capabilities is still unclear. We know that Nvidia’s Maxwell can’t perform anything like the concurrent execution that AMD GPUs can manage. Maxwell can benefit from some light asynchronous compute workloads, as it does in Fable, but the benefits on Team Green hardware are small.

The Nitrous Engine that powers Ashes of the Singularity makes extensive use of asynchronous compute and uses it for up to 30% of a given frame’s workload. Oxide has stated that they believe this will be a common approach in future games and game engines, since DirectX 12 encourages the use of multiple engines to execute commands from separate queues in parallel.

 

http://ext3h.makegames.de/DX12_Compute.html

 

Quote

 

For the future, I hope that Nvidia will get on par with AMD regarding multi engine support. AMD is currently providing a far more intuitive approach which aids developers directly.

This will come at an increased power consumption as the flexibility naturally requires more redundancy in hardware, but will most likely increase GPU utilization throughout the industry while accelerating development. The ultimate goal is still a common standard where you don't have to care much about hardware implementation details, the same way as x86 CPUs have matured over the course of the past 25 years.

 

http://wccftech.com/directx-12-async-compute-nvidia-amd/

 

Nvidia sold people a fairy tale with Maxwell and people keep gobbling up this nonsense about efficiency.

 

 

[Prysin]

2 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Nvidia sold people a fairy tale with Maxwell and people keep gobbling up this nonsense about efficiency.

true dat.....

 

20-60w less power does not produce more FPS.

[Flowey]

7 hours ago, Prysin said:

true dat.....

 

20-60w less power does not produce more FPS.

hahahaha. I,m sure AMD did that kind of thing at one point, but Nvidia lately has not been high ranking in my list of trustable companies

[ivan134]

5 minutes ago, Prysin said:

true dat.....

 

20-60w less power does not produce more FPS.

For all the shit that GCN 1.1 gets for power consumption, it isa fucking insane architecture. When GameWorks (or lesser implementation) is not in the equation, a 390 leaves the 970 in the dust and competes with a 980. SW Battlefront and these:

 

This architecture competed with 2 different ones from Nvidia and beat both of them. Why would anyone give a shit about power consumption? Fucking legendary architecture.

[Prysin]

8 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

 

snip

Yes, hawaii/grenada (polished hawaii) is badass...

This is why i am seriously questioning whether to buy a Fury X2, or wait for Polaris + Pascal and get a 490X + GTX 1080 and hope for multi-GPU to be good... although, i might get 2x 490X too... CF hasnt really let me down thus far.

 

I plan on upgrading my monitor within 2 years to a 3440x1440p 10bit 75-100Hz Freesync model... Aslong as any affordable GPU configuration can power it.

 

But until then. my R9 295x2 will do the trick.

The fact that it is STILL wrecking every other non-OCd single card solutions there is speaks for itself.

 

And yes, if i had a full cover waterblock to help watercool my VRMs, i can push this card to 1125-1150 on the core (ive tried each GPU separatly)....

 

[ivan134]

3 minutes ago, Prysin said:

Yes, hawaii/grenada (polished hawaii) is badass...

This is why i am seriously questioning whether to buy a Fury X2, or wait for Polaris + Pascal and get a 490X + GTX 1080 and hope for multi-GPU to be good... although, i might get 2x 490X too... CF hasnt really let me down thus far.

 

I plan on upgrading my monitor within 2 years to a 3440x1440p 10bit 75-100Hz Freesync model... Aslong as any affordable GPU configuration can power it.

 

But until then. my R9 295x2 will do the trick.

The fact that it is STILL wrecking every other non-OCd single card solutions there is speaks for itself.

 

And yes, if i had a full cover waterblock to help watercool my VRMs, i can push this card to 1125-1150 on the core (ive tried each GPU separatly)....

 

Imo, the Fury X2 should be scrapped because it's too late in the game for it. Polaris and Pascal are right around the corner. As for dual GPUs from diff manufacturers, I'm waiting to see what happens in the new Hitman and Deus Ex Mankind Divided and whether they will support it like AotS does. That should give us a better indication of how easy that functionality is to implement and that will tell us whether it's something worth investing in.

[Prysin]

2 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Imo, the Fury X2 should be scrapped because it's too late in the game for it. Polaris and Pascal are right around the corner. As for dual GPUs from diff manufacturers, I'm waiting to see what happens in the new Hitman and Deus Ex Mankind Divided and whether they will support it like AotS does. That should give us a better indication of how easy that functionality is to implement and that will tell us whether it's something worth investing in.

thing is though, even if multi vendor GPU doesnt work. i can just do like linus did with his "NVIDIA and AMD in same system video". and just shut down NVCP or Crimson in task manager, connect display to the GPU i want to use and still enjoy whatever game with whatever feature i want. Sadly, if running with a GTX, i wouldnt be able to use Freesync.

 

Granted. ill only try out multi vendor GPU IF, and ONLY IF Pascal supports 10bit HDR.

 

If pascal doesnt support HDR, it is dead to me from launch. No matter the performance, it is DEAD.

 

10Bit HDR will look crisper, richer and better then todays technology. Doesnt matter if i have 5FPS less, if the image i view is simply prettier.

[ivan134]

2 minutes ago, Prysin said:

thing is though, even if multi vendor GPU doesnt work. i can just do like linus did with his "NVIDIA and AMD in same system video". and just shut down NVCP or Crimson in task manager, connect display to the GPU i want to use and still enjoy whatever game with whatever feature i want. Sadly, if running with a GTX, i wouldnt be able to use Freesync.

Can games still talk to the GPU when those are shut off?

[Ryoutarou97]

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

a co-processor is NOT a feature, it is just a co-processor.

However the True Audio API and SDK exposes said co-processor to a developer.

 

-Snip-

 

you are not wrong. But you are not correct either.

I've been off this thread for a while, but some of the responses have been pretty enlightening (thank you). What I mean about trueaudio is that it's unused on PC. When is the last time you played a game that supported it?

[Flowey]

7 hours ago, Ryoutarou97 said:

I've been off this thread for a while, but some of the responses have been pretty enlightening (thank you). What I mean about trueaudio is that it's unused on PC. When is the last time you played a game that supported it?

Ummmmmmmmmm.... Long ass time ago I guess

[Ryoutarou97]

17 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Imo, the Fury X2 should be scrapped because it's too late in the game for it. Polaris and Pascal are right around the corner. As for dual GPUs from diff manufacturers, I'm waiting to see what happens in the new Hitman and Deus Ex Mankind Divided and whether they will support it like AotS does. That should give us a better indication of how easy that functionality is to implement and that will tell us whether it's something worth investing in.

I would rather it stay if it will drop in price like the 295x2 did. Hell, the thing is like a 980ti for $100 less as long as you only use one card.

[Prysin]

1 minute ago, Ryoutarou97 said:

I've been off this thread for a while, but some of the responses have been pretty enlightening (thank you). What I mean about trueaudio is that it's unused on PC. When is the last time you played a game that supported it?

i think it is unused, because the "conditions" arent met.

 

there are A LOT who use 5.1 or 7.1 surround systems in their living room, hooked up with their TV. True Audio ONLY works through the HDMI/DP output on the AMD GPU. It doesnt get parced through to your front audio/mobo (atleast not when i tested Thief on desktop, which DO have True Audio).

It can get parced through to a headset using a 3,5mm Jack on the revieving monitor though.

 

So yeah, on desktop PC settings, there isnt a whole lot who have surround capable audio systems... most headsets with multiple drivers arent even good enough to tell you where things are coming from. Mostly because the software drivers arent in sync with the audio drivers in the headset itself. Causing mismatched balance during positionally dependent audio.

 

So ask yourself. How many people do YOU know, or have you heard of from your friends, that have a 5.1 or 7.1 surround system connected to their main gaming PC?

I know one friend of mine has a 5.1 system connected to his media PC, which do have a decent GPU, but he still doesnt use that one for gaming

Also, his media PC has a GTX 670.... so, not exactly great anyway

[Prysin]

15 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Can games still talk to the GPU when those are shut off?

in theory yes. The hardware is there, and would be detectable and operable by the OS. But how this would actually impact performance (meaning whether driver based optimizations are removed, or is still there) i dunno.

 

it would most likely not output any signals on its display outputs. But it could, in theory, be a secondary GPU.

However, i dunno

[ivan134]

1 minute ago, Ryoutarou97 said:

I would rather it stay if it will drop in price like the 295x2 did. Hell, the thing is like a 980ti for $100 less as long as you only use one card.

The reason why I say it should be scrapped is because it doesn't make sense from a business perspective. It just doesn't make sense to launch it anymore since there won't be much of a profit to be made from it.

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, Flowey said:

Alright so I'm tired of hearing either Nvidia's or Intel's fan swearing by their products and how much AMD are 2-3 years behind everybody. I myself opted for the R9 390, not because I'm a fanboy, but because for the sake of future proofing my build. So, my question is, are AMD really that far behing in GPU/CPU technology? I know for sure that their GPU's are lacking in the efficiency departement but otherwise I cannot find any explanation of how AMD are lacking behing their competitors. So yeah, thanks for your time!

I feel AMD's failures in the CPU market came from the fact they bought ATI and got in to the GPU game. Now they were in two highly competitive markets. AMD has never had the R&D budget of Intel, Im not sure how they thought that was a good idea. Plus if I remember correctly AMD bought a lot of Fab's back in the day, which cost them a shit ton of money. Which they had to spin off in to Global Foundries, which they sold off all of their stake in. AMD has not manufacturing arm to build CPU's, so now they are at the mercy of other companies like GF or Samsung. 

 

That would mean cost of building their CPU's would be more. The fact they tend to sell them at a lower price means they have no margin. They will have a hard time raseing prices because their products dont perform. They are in a catch 22. I hope that ZEN is successful, I really do. Id love to see AMD become competitive again.

 

However, Intel stated they can get the manufacturing process down to 7nm. But what after that? Is it going to be who has the most cores? Who's CPU's are more efficient? AMD might have a chance to catch up. Im just wondering about the future. 

 

 

[Prysin]

Just now, ivan134 said:

The reason why I say it should be scrapped is because it doesn't make sense from a business perspective. It just doesn't make sense to launch it anymore since there won't be much of a profit to be made from it.

it will. OEM VR systems would boom with that thing. "Most powerful VR machine on the market" "unrivaled VR performance for the price"...

 

it would be true though....

 

however the standalone cards...enthusiasts would shun them like the plague.