Why you should wait for AMD.

[ivan134]

1 minute ago, GidonsClaw said:

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

This sounds like a personal issue and I'm not going to hold your hand.

[ivan134]

1 hour ago, Humbug said:

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.

Yea, the correct term is "driver neglect" and not nerfing, which implies making the cards perform worse in games that they used to do well in.

[Big-G]

20 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

which implies making the cards perform worse in games that they used to do well in.

No implies leaving them at the last improved state they where.... not worse...

[ivan134]

9 minutes ago, GidonsClaw said:

No implies leaving them at the last improved state they where.... not worse...

That's is exactly what I said.

[Big-G]

worse != same

[App4that]

Nvidia hasn't nerfed their older architecture, they've ignored it in the drivers they release. AMD hasn't improved the performance of their older cards, they've improved the performance on an architecture they keep rebranding. Polaris will decide how AMD treats it's older architecture. I honestly hope they do a better job than Nvidia, might place pressure on Nvidia to step up their support for older architecture, but with the level of hype over Pascal I'm not convinced anyone cares.

 

That said **** that. The reason we look to fps in games is higher fps should make the game run smoother, but AMD has a stuttering issue regardless of the fps present. AMD fans don't care and will lose their shit if you bring that up just like Nvidia fans lose their shit if you bring up the lack of driver support on older architectures. But AMD has this problem, and I didn't spend over 2 grand on a PC to have it stutter. As a consumer I have a choice, know my card will most likely not have driver support in less than a year or spend my limited funds on hardware that doesn't provide as smooth of an experience.

 

I'm not making friends with the people who sold me a graphics card, I don't care what kind of people they are, and I could give a **** what they think about me.

 

I want to turn on my computer, load a game, and have it ****ing work. Not be told a fix is "on the way" That's why I have the money to replace my graphics card sitting in the bank waiting for the 1080ti and I own a G-SYNC monitor.

 

 

[ybriK]

LOL no thx I want to be on the winning team.

[Humbug]

10 minutes ago, App4that said:

The reason we look to fps in games is higher fps should make the game run smoother, but AMD has a stuttering issue regardless of the fps present

nope

[App4that]

6 minutes ago, Humbug said:

nope

I have to ask for clarification, sorry. Nope that fps isn't highly prized because it make games run smoother, or nope that AMD has a problem with stuttering with the 300 series that just about every non biased reviewer and myself have experienced?

[Humbug]

1 hour ago, App4that said:

I have to ask for clarification, sorry. Nope that fps isn't highly prized because it make games run smoother, or nope that AMD has a problem with stuttering with the 300 series that just about every non biased reviewer and myself have experienced?

Nope to the claim that AMD has a general stuttering problem. I don't know if the 3xx series had some launch time driver issue which led to stuttering.

 

I see occasional complaints of stuttering both Nvidia and AMD users.

 

But I believe they both (in general deliver) silky smooth frame delivery. I use an R9 290 btw, my experience has been stellar. However I can't speak for people with dual GPU setups.

 

Stuttering is easily testable by plotting frametimes. You can nail it down when you do benchmarks as long as you don't rely on frames per second as the only metric.

[App4that]

1 minute ago, Humbug said:

Nope to the claim that AMD has a general stuttering problem.

 

I see occasional complaints of stuttering both Nvidia and AMD users.

 

But I believe they both (in general deliver) silky smooth frame delivery. I use an R9 290 btw, my experience has been stellar. However I can't speak for people with dual GPU setups.

My 290 was fine as well, I made sure to clarify in my question that I speak of the 300 series. The Fury and it's siblings have the same issue. I'm not going to spam videos, so the video I'm posting is not the only evidence, just one of the more recent.

 

It's there, and it's not the only shortcoming AMD suffers from. Look at Doom, look at the performance of the Fury X in Homefront. And in every case the "fix is coming"

 

 

[Humbug]

26 minutes ago, App4that said:

It's there, and it's not the only shortcoming AMD suffers from. Look at Doom, look at the performance of the Fury X in Homefront. And in every case the "fix is coming"

Doom was already fixed via drivers, compared to what it was at launch. And that issue has nothing to do with stuttering, it's to do with average framerate. The issue there is AMD's neglect of openGL.

 

26 minutes ago, App4that said:

 

I meant a general issue?

 

Stuttering can be measured by plotting frametimes.

Normally you see both AMD and Nvidia are similarly smooth.

e.g.

 

 

When it comes to dual GPU solutions though I know that AMD was as recently as end 2015 trying to do frame pacing improvements to improve the R9 295 x2 smoothness. For dual GPU solutions they did have recent frame pacing issues.

 

[ch0g0nda]

I read the OP only, so excuse me if my reply seems ignorant...

 

AMD has tonnes of overhead in their drivers and never (evidently) taps their cards' full potential? How do we spin that as a good thing when videos from DigitalFoundry show the frame lag you get with red team cards to be real. If you're a hardcore benchmark guy, then AMD is for you? I just want the smoothest gaming experience which seems to be Nvidia - which I'm not happy with for other reasons.

[RaceOfAce]

3 hours ago, ivan134 said:

False: In what universe is the 970 a better card?

Classic internet though, I was attempting to say a few thoughts that were relevant to "comparing cards and making a decision" and therefore agreeing with you that people should wait for Polaris to come out, but the entire tone of your response seems to attack my post for bothering to compare cards.

 

Actually there are quite a few games where the GTX970 does better (especially at lower res.) and a few where it does worse, and just giving a reason for it doesn't change the fact that the 970 uses less power than the R9 390. At the same time, double precision performance is irrelevant to gaming, and I wouldn't buy a GTX or R7/9 card for computing on (you might though).

 

I could attack the GTX 970 also if I wanted (NVIDIA you can't just round 3.5 to 4 lol), but I was just saying that it's performance was typically better.

 

3 hours ago, ivan134 said:

Irrelevant

Hey, if I wanted a card around that price at the time, it would have been relevant that AMD only had a GCN 1.1 GPU at that price. I would just want a fast/cool/quiet card, since I'm trying not to fan boy.

 

3 hours ago, ivan134 said:

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

Price point. And yes I made a huge boo-boo here, because the R9 285 was already out before the GTX 960 and was winning at this price point from the start. 

 

My point is still solid though, as these were just examples that happened to go NVIDIA's way, I was trying to say that people should look at all the cards available and make a decision, not just buy whatever they think is important. More importantly, I mentioned Polaris sounds like its going to win the mainstream sub-$300 market at release, so yes it is worth waiting to see.

 

I'm agreeing with you on like 80% of what you said.

 

[Prysin]

9 hours 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.

honestly, its a bit of both.

 

AMD is drastically improving drivers over time. Whilst Nvidia isnt exactly putting their back into it when it comes to optimizing over time.

Nvidias drivers are good, but they still have some overhead they could remove. Or optimizations they could implement.

[AlwaysFSX]

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

honestly, its a bit of both.

 

AMD is drastically improving drivers over time. Whilst Nvidia isnt exactly putting their back into it when it comes to optimizing over time.

Nvidias drivers are good, but they still have some overhead they could remove. Or optimizations they could implement.

Agreed.

[BrightCandle]

pcper.com were testing the pro duo card and found once again that crossfire was stuttering in a lot of circumstances, again the cause was runt frames. In addition it seemed to be delivering frames in the wrong order and between other frames! You would have thought after they got caught with the 7970/280 crossfire mess that they would have got this part of QA fixed, but they haven't.

 

Objectively its true to say that AMD has a stutter issue, the original break of this story was about AMD and its been happening now for 6 years this story just keeps coming back. Stutter and microstutter keep appearing in games on a regular basis. Look at this in GTA V:

 

 

The full review http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-Pro-Duo-Review

 

We know they are capable of fixing this. It is really anti customer of AMD and its QA to again be failing to ensure the quality of the experience for their highest paying customers.

[App4that]

7 hours ago, Prysin said:

honestly, its a bit of both.

 

AMD is drastically improving drivers over time. Whilst Nvidia isnt exactly putting their back into it when it comes to optimizing over time.

Nvidias drivers are good, but they still have some overhead they could remove. Or optimizations they could implement.

NVidia drivers are good for the current cards, AMD drivers are OK for all of them. That's my personal experience owning both. I'm horribly disappointed that one doesn't use this as an opportunity to offer support better than the other. Nvidia is more interested in pushing new hardware and AMD is more concerned with what Nvidia is doing. How ether manages to hold onto a rabid fan base is beyond me.