Graphics Card suggestions ~

[Luc2k]

snip

To be fair, I was a bit hasty that I included the code part as I can't support that, but I still stand by it as far as features and performance are concerned.

 

The Samsung buyout rumours are fairy tales that pop up every couple of months because a move like that would complicate AMDs CPU side and Intel's as well.

 

You can claim Nvidia has deeper reach all you want, but right now Kepler owners are up in arms over driver support or lack thereof. A card that was top end and 600 pounds barely approaches one that is 270 in the most hyped game of the year, a game that they sponsored. And who cares about Windows 10? It's not finished, stuff breaks and works again from one build to the next. Latest one had Nvidia owners complaining in the comments on Neowin.

 

Let's face it, AMD's marketing is pretty crappy overall and has always been. Behind the name though, Omega bought some nice boosts across the board to the GCN cards (7870/270/270X was over 15% overall if I remember correctly). Same with TressFX, even if I found it lacking, it was a new(ish) feature at the time (something similar existed in Alice: Madness Returns). And Mantle, with all its problems: bugs, slow development, lack of support for anything but the top end, kicked off DirectX 12 and Vulkan. So you have a very good driver performance boost, a great feature and a meh feature as examples so I won't back down on calling you out.

 

Never heard of Tiger Team, but it seems to be Linux enterprise focused. Not my area of expertise. Also, I'm not familiar with the other issues you've mentioned and I don't deny their existence, but try and stick to the ones that are relevant to finished operating systems for the sake of this discussion.

 

As for WHQL, I don't care for it, seeing as AMD's beta drivers have been very stable for me and many others, while MS's own updates cause bootloops to some people every other month. Also, doesn't that sticker cost money? Money that AMD would better spend on driver development instead.

 

P.S. I shall be more precise next time I'll have to call you a liar.

[FunkyMike]

 

 

Do not fret ... I left performance issues for this post.

 

Firstly to address your points:

 

On the whole AMD / Intel CPU story .. there are more ways than one to slice up a company. There is a reason MS didn't buy all of Nokia just because they wanted the phones ; ).

 

Nvidia and reach isn't a claim: DX12 is supported from Fermi upwards (2010) and with CGN from around 2011 (AMD).

 

Whilst bugs are certainly expected on a new OS I am inclined to stress again that I addressed support and bugs in general. i.e. Not just Windows 10.

So whilst Nvidia will tidy up their act with Windows 10 you can be assured that AMD will take much longer.

All in all, Nvidia and marketing is another devil. Like you mentioned with the 600 pounds card example ...

 

Are the Keplar card at least working for the users with the latest Nvidia drivers?

 

Omega didn't bring any boost if you had been following driver releases. Matter of fact the performance improvements happened much much earlier and only gradually.

This "15%" magic improvement was the comparison of 14.12 vs 13.12. One year difference in drivers. Neither was it across the whole board but in 1 game. (Bioshock as far as I recall). Again .. marketing.

The actual kernel code was freshened up after 14.4. 

 

Mantle and TressFX was nice for the 4 games that had it (Let us not divulge into the issues with Mantle and the different CGN versions)

No AMD didn't "kick off" DirectX 12 development after MS "saw" Mantle.

 

Check the news on AMD's "Tiger Team". It is the latest initiative to repair the stains done to their image + hiring new talent. Nothing to do with Linux ... marketing.

 

As far as WHQL is concerned: People have not seen any major releases from AMD since "Omega". The last 3 drivers had minimal improvements because they are all on the same old branch.

The last WHQL driver came out last year and these new Beta drivers are all following that old branch.

 

AMD stopped releasing new branch drivers to Win 7 and 8.1 because their whole team is working on Windows 10. ( Being as small as it is)

 

Users are now modding Windows 10 AMD drivers to run on older OSes to see the changes in performance. ( Check the guru links)

 

As far as performance goes:

 

AMD has had a major bottleneck when it comes to DX11 CPU overheads & drawcalls:

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=398858

 

A 28 page long thread but I salute if you get through the main post.

 

When you are done with that check out the latest benchmarks:

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5077851&postcount=4

 

There is a reason only 28% use AMD cards according to the Steam Survey...

[Luc2k]

snip

I don't see how AMD/Intel licensing deal is comparable to MS/Nokia.. Are you saying they're going to sell to Samsung everything unrelated to x86-64?

 

There's no DX12 game, performance is hypothetical. I'm not sure what DX12 support has to do with what I said though.

 

I didn't say you addressed only W10 issues, but you've brought it up a couple of time. There are sufficient issues without the need to bring a buggy unfinished OS into the mix which changes often.

 

There were more games like Rise from a quick look at TechPowerUp which isn't a pro AMD site. I'll dig more once I have the time. Also "across the board was the wrong expression", meant averaged.

 

AMD doesn't have Nvidia's money to pay off so there's your reason for fewer games, and unlike Nvidia though they don't actually aim to cripple their competition.

 

I seriously doubt MS would have taken the closer-to-the-metal approach hadn't it been for Mantle.

 

I'll research Tiger Team when I have the time. First googled article said what I mentioned. Same thing goes for the guru thread, but "latest benchmarks" post doesn't show anything compelling for me.

 

There are many reasons for their market share (no particular order: many rebrands, poor performance of reference coolers, word of mouth, high initial prices due to mining, overestimating demand, power consumption, the 970, features locked to NV cards, etc.). Doubt DX11 CPU overhead & drawcalls make top 10.

 

Satisfied with their drivers so.. and the next beta will not be W10 specific.

[FunkyMike]

I don't see how AMD/Intel licensing deal is comparable to MS/Nokia.. Are you saying they're going to sell to Samsung everything unrelated to x86-64?

 

There's no DX12 game, performance is hypothetical. I'm not sure what DX12 support has to do with what I said though.

 

I didn't say you addressed only W10 issues, but you've brought it up a couple of time. There are sufficient issues without the need to bring a buggy unfinished OS into the mix which changes often.

 

There were more games like Rise from a quick look at TechPowerUp which isn't a pro AMD site. I'll dig more once I have the time. Also "across the board was the wrong expression", meant averaged.

 

AMD doesn't have Nvidia's money to pay off so there's your reason for fewer games, and unlike Nvidia though they don't actually aim to cripple their competition.

 

I seriously doubt MS would have taken the closer-to-the-metal approach hadn't it been for Mantle.

 

I'll research Tiger Team when I have the time. First googled article said what I mentioned. Same thing goes for the guru thread, but "latest benchmarks" post doesn't show anything compelling for me.

 

There are many reasons for their market share (no particular order: many rebrands, poor performance of reference coolers, word of mouth, high initial prices due to mining, overestimating demand, power consumption, the 970, features locked to NV cards, etc.). Doubt DX11 CPU overhead & drawcalls make top 10.

 

Satisfied with their drivers so.. and the next beta will not be W10 specific.

 

What I am saying is that the type of convo about buyout rumours shouldn't be taken word for word. What if Samsung was only interested in a specific part of the business? Lawyers and management should worry about this.

 

Sure there are no DX12 games but people didn't just magically create DX12 benchmarks that you just saw.....there are DX12 benchmarking tools...... Recheck my links.

 

You mentioned users with Kepler having issues. How severe? FPS in a few games or are we talking "cannot boot/ use windows" severe?

 

"across the board was the wrong expression", meant averaged."

 

Let us not twist things. It was 13.12 vs 14.12 and as a test they took 1 game.. Bioshock

You are right that AMD doesn't have the funds. Their share price has dropped by a third since 14.12. It is literally in the basement. Frankly I am surprised that no one has picked them up.

 

There is nothing to doubt about DX12 and Mantle. You don't seriously think that the MS techs woke up one morning .. saw Mantel and started work on DX12 ?! Regardless this is all documented.

We have a pretty huge thread in the forum about this too.

 

The guru thread on the DX11 issue is a pretty serious issue but it underlines AMDs general lack of resources.

 

Like the guru thread mentioned 

 

 

 

You might say that with that advertisment for the CPU/GPU optimization guy some months ago, something might happen. Well, I have news for you. The advertisment is still up which means that most likely they haven't hired anybody yet. Unfortunately, not being able to find someone to hire is almost expected, especially if you read this blog post from Valve's Rich Geldreich. Although he refers to the state of the OpenGL driver stack, he gives insights about situations in both companies. He says about "Vendor B" (which is AMD):

Quote:

[...]This vendor can't get key stuff like queries or syncs to work reliably. So any extension that relies on syncs for CPU/GPU synchronization aren't workable. The driver devs remaining at this vendor pine to work at Vendor A.[...]

where Vendor A = NVIDIA.

And this leaves us to today. The main reason for this post is that I don't want everybody to forget the importance of a good DX11 driver stack, amidst the enthusiasm for DX12/Vulkan.

 

There are indeed many reasons for small market share itself. 

 

Simply put .. the company is nearing bankruptcy. The employees have been jumping ship for some time.

 

Who knows if it will get better. Apparently they made 4% revenue last year .. the first time in 4 years.

[Luc2k]

What I am saying is that the type of convo about buyout rumours shouldn't be taken word for word. What if Samsung was only interested in a specific part of the business? Lawyers and management should worry about this.

 

Sure there are no DX12 games but people didn't just magically create DX12 benchmarks that you just saw.....there are DX12 benchmarking tools...... Recheck my links.

 

You mentioned users with Kepler having issues. How severe? FPS in a few games or are we talking "cannot boot/ use windows" severe?

 

"across the board was the wrong expression", meant averaged."

 

Let us not twist things. It was 13.12 vs 14.12 and as a test they took 1 game.. Bioshock

 

There is nothing to doubt about DX12 and Mantle. You don't seriously think that the MS techs woke up one morning .. saw Mantel and started work on DX12 ?! Regardless this is all documented.

We have a pretty huge thread in the forum about this too.

 

The guru thread on the DX11 issue is a pretty serious issue but it underlines AMDs general lack of resources.

All I know about the AMD/Samsung rumours is that it's not the first time they pop up and, same as last time, nothing happened.

 

I guess I just don't care for benchmarks unless it's an actual game running it. I've been skipping the pages featuring synthetics when reading reviews for years now.

 

With Kepler, I was still referring to lower than expected performance in new games with recent drivers. I've skimmed through this topic 2 days ago after it was linked from somewhere else.

 

I wasn't trying to twist anything. It was late and I've posted without thinking about the actual meaning. If you're talking about marketing slides, know that I care just as much as I care for synthetic benchmarks. Here's the spartan TechPowerUp review showing some gain in Ryse (14.12 v 14.11.2).

 

Without Mantle out, DX12 would have been to DX11 what DX11 is to DX10. And I've never said they started working on it when Mantle came about, just that Mantle played a very heavy role in shaping its current direction. My reasoning for this is simple: MS hasn't given a crap about PC gaming for a very long time because it competes with their Xbox. They're now half assedly trying to get back into PC gamers' good graces after they got pounded by Sony. I hope Vulkan wins this one.

 

I do plan on reading that guru topic eventually.

[n_K]

Say what you will about AMD, but they support their old cards.

 

Haha, now that's funny. Have AMD finally managed to release a driver that supports the current X11 driver version or is that still too much effort for them?

EDIT: *checks arch wiki*; 'Catalyst does not support xorg-server 1.17' - LOL! 'Catalyst packages are no longer offered in the official repositories. In the past, Catalyst has been dropped from official Arch support because of dissatisfaction with the quality and speed of development. After a brief return they were dropped again in April 2013 and they have not returned since.' - DOUBLE LOL!

[Elliot B.]

I've just had my XFX R7850 begun showing up artefacts and crashing the computer, it's over two years old and out of warranty so I'm reluctantly left with no choice to stump up for a new card.

 

Ive paid no attention to the current range and so would just like some advice on choosing please.

I have a Gigabyte mobo.

 

Budget is around

[Kerm]

Cheers Elliot, that's brilliant mate. I've found an R9 285 at