Why you should wait for AMD.

[Autoimmunity]

As we are all well aware (unless you live under a rock) Nvidia will soon be launching the GTX 1080 and 1070 GPUs.  Both will be large jumps in performance over the previous generation, and already gamers everywhere are salivating at the prospect of owning one.

 

As a PC hardware enthusiast who has owned both AMD and Nvidia cards in the past, I implore you all: WAIT FOR AMD!!!

 

Below is a chart, representing the performance of assorted AMD vs assorted Nvidia cards overtime.  As you can see, the results are not what Nvidia owners would like to see.

 

Original Source: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1220928

 

As the owner of a GTX 780, this chart makes me sigh.  The 290x was obviously a far better choice in the long run, especially since it was only $50 more expensive.  This trend is consistent across the board, Nvidia cards perform worse and worse against their AMD counterparts as time goes on.  

 

For those of you interested in the new Nvidia cards, please take this trend into account.  If you are someone (like me) who only wants to upgrade every 2-3 years but still wants the best performance possible, it may be worth it to wait for AMD's response to Nvidia.  When I bought my 780 2.5 years ago it was FIVE HUNDRED dollars, and it can now no longer run new games at high 60fps, while the 290x has no problem pushing Ultra.

[themctipers]

One time, I had to choose between a GTX 760 and a R9 290.

My how I was dumb.

Even a R9 270x was BETTER and was CHEAPER.

By $75.

[ivan134]

Oh shit. You are one brave person. Send a postcard and lemme know what heaven is like. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Why are you comparing the $330 970 to the $430 390x? 

[Autoimmunity]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Why are you comparing the $330 970 to the $430 390x? 

Price is irrelevant in this comparison, because it is comparing the performance differences at launch vs today. But then again, I didn't make the chart.  Not sure why he's using the 390x and not the 390.

[AlwaysFSX]

You're phrasing this as if Nvidia is nerfing performance over time when in reality it's AMD improving performance on their cards. No one is losing out here. These are also more likely than not cherry picked best-case scenario numbers. Show me performance in many games across the same time period on the same cards. Actual numbers, not just a percentage with no meaning.

[Sakkura]

3 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Why are you comparing the $330 970 to the $430 390x? 

He's also comparing the 390X to the more expensive 980 and 980 Ti. What's wrong with that?

[SteveGrabowski0]

AMD really made balls to the wall hardware with Hawaii and Tahiti, and then kept rebranding them, so having lots of improvement via drivers was critical for their success. I wonder if this will change though with these 28 nm cards all likely retired and their focus on efficiency over raw power this generation.

[Sakkura]

2 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

You're phrasing this as if Nvidia is nerfing performance over time when in reality it's AMD improving performance on their cards. No one is losing out here. These are also more likely than not cherry picked best-case scenario numbers. Show me performance in many games across the same time period on the same cards. Actual numbers, not just a percentage with no meaning.

The GTX 780 owners who see a GTX 960 perform better are kinda losing out. And the source is in there, with all the benchmark data publicly available for a wide range of not cherrypicked games.

[Autoimmunity]

1 minute ago, AlwaysFSX said:

You're phrasing this as if Nvidia is nerfing performance over time when in reality it's AMD improving performance on their cards. No one is losing out here. These are also more likely than not cherry picked best-case scenario numbers. Show me performance in many games across the same time period on the same cards. Actual numbers, not just a percentage with no meaning.

You're more than welcome to go look at the source, and see that the comparison is taken from techpowerup.com's performance graphs.  The results are not cherry-picked. It's simply a fact that in newer games, last-generation AMD cards perform better than Nvidia cards.

[The Flying Sloth]

I'm surprised you haven't received any hate-mail yet, this forum is usually full of people blindly following Nvidia (not that there's anything wrong with Nvidia)

[SteveGrabowski0]

But I imagine Vega will be balls to the wall hardware again and get rebranded at least one more generation, so it could be a pretty compelling buy for the long term. I'm definitely waiting for Vega, especially seeing how disappointing the scaling via OC looks on Pascal so far.

[Autoimmunity]

Just now, The Flying Sloth said:

I'm surprised you haven't received any hate-mail yet, this forum is usually full of people blindly following Nvidia (not that there's anything wrong with Nvidia)

People tend to hold their tongue when confronted with facts.  I am one of the most affected by this, as my 780 is getting beat by a 960 in some cases.

[The Flying Sloth]

6 minutes ago, Autoimmunity said:

People tend to hold their tongue when confronted with facts.  I am one of the most affected by this, as my 780 is getting beat by a 960 in some cases.

And I'm still running 6950's in all my rigs  best p/p at $30

[ivan134]

10 minutes ago, Autoimmunity said:

People tend to hold their tongue when confronted with facts.  I am one of the most affected by this, as my 780 is getting beat by a 960 in some cases.

You'll get used to the hate anyway. I've only ever owned Nvidia products and people still call me an AMD fanboy. 

[Big-G]

42 minutes ago, Autoimmunity said:

<snip>

You do realize the improvements on AMD is only due to them getting their drivers sorted out... not hardware being better...

 

Nvidia still the better hardware in most cases according to my view...

31 minutes ago, Autoimmunity said:

You're more than welcome to go look at the source, and see that the comparison is taken from techpowerup.com's performance graphs.  The results are not cherry-picked. It's simply a fact that in newer games, last-generation AMD cards perform better than Nvidia cards.

Have you actually compared performances on Nvidia GPU's at launch and today with themselves? That will show you there's little change indeed... Nvidia doesn't nerf... it reaches a performance plateau and then stays there. Only AMD have recently pulled their fingers out of their arse and started giving the performance they should have had earlier.

 

 

[RaceOfAce]

I really hate fanboy-ism in all ways, because objective benchmarking can illustrate clear winners at all price points. I have only owned one PC, the rest I've made for friends and so on, due to being poor AF.

 

I have some examples of AMD vs Nvidia in the previous generation where most people agree AMD was caught with its pants down:

• The GTX970 was a generally better card in performance than the R9 390, and crushed the R9 in heat and power tests.
• In contrast, the GTX960 wasn't as good as the R9 280X in performance (similar pricing), but still crushes in heat and power testing.
• Fury X costs around the same amount as the 980 Ti, and is slightly worse in performance and power consumption.

What's my point? You need to compare the different cards at each price point to work out the best. I'm around 99% sure Polaris will be superior to cards like the GTX1060 with a similar price point, due to AMDs focus on that price point at the moment. The GTX 1070 and 1080 will be more expensive cards and Polaris won't even have anything to compete with that, AMD just aren't focused on $300+ cards right now (Vega will likely be more powerful than Pascal due to 14nm and HBM2 memory, but that is further down the line). It's not a bad strategy given most people and OEMs buy <$300 cards.

 

edit: My post was only for one gen of hardware.

Consider the GTX780 vs the R9 290(X). NVIDIA was way more expensive for no reason, the cards performance was worse than the R9 290 in many cases. AMD simply won in this case.

[BrightCandle]

Performance over time also caters to different gamers. If you are the sort of gamer that plays a game on day 1 then the poor initial performance of AMDs cards is a problem, you would on average see more performance from Nvidia and 3 years later you will have moved on to a more modern GPU. On the other hand if you are the sort of gamer that picks up games in the sales and plays games 6+ months after they are released or plays games where AMD heavily optimises for the long term (the sort that show up in benchmarks often) then the slowly steady progress will mean in the end you'll get better performance.

 

But its not like a 3 year old card finally getting the performance it could have had at release and hence beating its main rival card is a good thing, because most of its utility comes in the first year or two and most games are played for a few days and then dumped. This is a part of AMDs strategy that has never made sense to me, they need to extract that performance a lot earlier in the cards life. For a decade or more they have by and large been putting out more hardware for the money by the raw specs but never do the card live up to it, what you are seeing is eventually they do finally get to that performance level.

 

Different folks are going to find different vendors give them better value depending on how they tend to game.

[Energycore]

51 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

I'm surprised you haven't received any hate-mail yet, this forum is usually full of people blindly following Nvidia (not that there's anything wrong with Nvidia)

Just because it's the common doesn't meant it's cool!

[LooneyJuice]

I will agree to this, but to an extent. There are definitely certain issues and analogies that need to be taken into account as well though.

 

As is stated above, it's more of a case of AMD supporting especially older products better than NV, rather than NV nerfing theirs. I will also attest to the fact that even my old 7850s did benefit from recent driver releases, even though they're at the very tail-end of the current support spectrum.

 

I personally had to go for a 970 out of necessity (EDIT: Instead of the Sapphire Nitro R9 390 rev 2 I was planning on buying) after the failure of one of my 2 7850s, due to my PSU. The R9 390s base performance is better than most 970s, and the frame buffer is insane, not to mention the greater bandwidth, but the R9 390 has a greater TDP than even the 980ti, and we're not even close to the same price range or performance. Don't care about perf/watt, but my poor old PSU had to settle for a 970, because it's the most I wanted to risk. On the other hand though, most results don't factor in OC potential, which nowadays has such a negligible lifespan cost, cards will still outlast their usefulness, so it's a selling point. Case in point, Sapphire R9 390 rev2 vs my own G1 970 which overclocked was about 5% faster than even the 390s max OC on a lot of scenarios and synthetic benchmarks. Not to mention it didn't even dent my temps.

 

Additionally though, this coincides with AMD's driver release recovery after an abysmal three quarters of 2015. After the release of the Omega drivers (14.12) their release schedule/support was so poor, especially in many of my scenarios, that I was considering grabbing an NV card just to alleviate a massive array of issues. I won't even mention Xfire, but I put the blame squarely on myself for even believing I could live with multi-gpu.

 

So, basically R9 200s weren't abysmal, but were definitely not up to par with NV stuff due to the usual issues with thermals, driver support and all that. the R9 300s came along, (which I regard as more of a refresh than a rebrand) which admittedly due to higher clockspeeds and slightly more OC potential, kinda proved that there was at least some streamlining or fabrication refinements. That also coincided with the formation of the Radeon Technologies Group as a much needed acknowledgement of AMD's - up until then - poor support for their desktop graphics products, which promptly revised their dated Catalyst platform, and came out with the Crimsons. And teething issues aside with the first couple of releases, they have been pumping out releases with every batch of game releases since last autumn, have provided excellent support for the most part, and even before the death of one of my 7850s (which tbh I regarded as a legacy product regardless of the explicit support), I greatly benefited in a lot of titles by way of performance and stability, and even better crossfire support which I never thought I'd say.

 

So, TL;DR, the premise of this thread is true, but it's more in favor of AMD instead of against NV. BUT, there have been many changes in the industry meanwhile that have to be taken into account, all this is still subject to change. Although AMD hands down has better support for older products, I'll give them that much, and even though I have 0 loyalty to any brand (it's not like loyalty ever gave you free GPUs), I have to give them a cookie for that one.

[Humbug]

don't think Nvidia is actively nerfing.

just that AMD may have better designed their hardware for the longterm. The original GCN 1.0 cards like the 7970 are still doing well in 2016 AAA games which is probably a testament to both the hardware and the longterm driver support. If you go back and benchmark old games you will find that the Nvidia cards will still do ok. E.g. In year 2012 games a GTX 680 will still probably hang with a 7970 even with new drivers. It's when you benchmark fancy newer AAA games on the old hardware that you see AMD pull ahead.

[ivan134]

3 hours ago, RaceOfAce said:

 

• The GTX970 was a generally better card in performance than the R9 390, and crushed the R9 in heat and power tests.

False and irrelevant.

• False: In what universe is the 970 a better card? The 970 only trades blows with a 390 in GameWorks games. In non GameWorks games and at 1440p, the 390 leaves the 970 in the dust and competes with a 980. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_390_Nitro/
• Irrelevant: The 390 is GCN 1.1 which means it's a refresh of a card that was released in 2013 to compete with big Kepler, so no shit it uses more power than a 970. It's hilarious hearing people talk about Nvidia's efficiency when Hawaii and big Kepler used consumed approximately the same amount of power. AMD's efficiency improvement came at approximately the same time as Maxwell with GCN 1.2 in the R9 285. The reason it consumes more than a 960 is because AMD didn't ditch ACEs which you need for asynchronous compute. Maxwell's "efficiency" also comes from Nvidia not having ACEs and being bad at double precision. This is the equivalent of praising a car manufacturer for making their car lighter and more fuel efficient by tossing out the backseat. Go look at Ashes of the Singularity benchmarks where a 390x is faster than a 980 ti to know why performance does not come for free.

3 hours ago, RaceOfAce said:

 

• In contrast, the GTX960 wasn't as good as the R9 280X in performance (similar pricing), but still crushes in heat and power testing.

This is a factoid. The 280x is faster than a 960 because it's a more powerful chip so I'm not sure why you think the 960 should be faster. The 960 competes with the 760, 7950/280 and 285/380. I'm also not sure why you're comparing a Maxwell card to something that was made to compete with Kepler. Did Nvidia catch themselves with their pants down when the 960 was more efficient than a 670 and 760?

[Big-G]

13 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

How's this relevant to a 970?

[ivan134]

1 minute ago, GidonsClaw said:

How's this relevant to a 970?

Go back and read.

[Big-G]

3 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Go back and read.

Read it, the graph still doesn't make sense in your comment... still no relevance.