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AMD's New Radeon HD 7950 Tested

Posted by Soulskill on from the showing-those-pixels-who's-boss dept.

MojoKid writes "When AMD announced the high-end Radeon HD 7970, a lower cost Radeon HD 7950 based on the same GPU was planned to arrive a few weeks later. The GPU, which is based on AMD's new architecture dubbed Graphics Core Next, is manufactured using TSMC's 28nm process and features a whopping 4.31 billion transistors. In its full configuration, found on the Radeon HD 7970, the Tahiti GPU sports 2,048 stream processors with 128 texture units and 32 ROPs. On the Radeon HD 7950, however, a few segments of the GPU have been disabled, resulting in a total of 1,792 active stream processors, with 112 texture units and 32 ROPs. The Radeon HD 7950 is also clocked somewhat lower at 800MHz, although AMD has claimed the cards are highly overclockable. Performance-wise, though the card isn't AMD's fastest, pricing is more palatable and the new card actually beats NVIDIA's high-end GeForce GTX 580 by just a hair."

120 comments

  1. Faster video card, huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Welcome to 2005. Yawn.

    1. Re:Faster video card, huh? by baka_toroi · · Score: 0

      Oh, a new cellphone? Welcome to 1986. Yawn.

    2. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 1

      That's me 40 years ago, but you wouldn't know it today, eh? I was in high school, I was a football star. All the girls wanted to dance with me. And I had a Diamond Viper. It was the fastest on the block.

    3. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      (not the GP) You wouldn't like it. Seriously. Speaking truthfully, my senior year in high school (25 years ago) I -was- a football star at a large Texas school, and drove an older corvette with a big-block. I -also- was a grade-A, unadulterated, shallow, ass-blossom douchebag with absolutely no values worth speaking well of. It's an over-rated experience that set me back years growing up and becoming an actual person. If I had to do it over once again and given a choice, I'd rather lose an arm.

    4. Re:Faster video card, huh? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You should probably still be cheering because that means the last gen stuff will drop like crazy! Hell the HD4850 I've got in here now retailed for $240 at release, know how much i paid for it a year and a half ago? $60. And frankly it still cranks out the purty on my 1600x900 monitor.

      Of course that gets to the heart of the matter and why they are having to push 3D and GP-GPU and Eyefinity, simply because games don't keep up anymore. With the exception of a few games i call "benchmark bait" like Crysis frankly most of the games are console ports and all that extra power is sitting there twiddling its thumbs.

      So while i'm hoping this will mean I'll find a steal on a 5850 or 6850 just because they crank out less heat honestly I doubt I really NEED it for any of the games i'm playing. What you'd actually use this card for except for winning benches and showing you have the biggest epeen is beyond me, is there even a game that would stress this bitch?

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Faster video card, huh? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Try a flight simulator like DCS:Black Shark 2 or DCS:A-10C. They will work out any video card pretty hard. So while you may play first person shooters with 300 meter horizons that don't stress your card out, when you get up in the air and have a 20 km horizon your card will be working its guts out.

    6. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Sir_Sri · · Score: 1

      That's what happens though. Expect that the Xbox 3, PS4 will have something on par with a 7000 series Radeon or 600 series (not yet commercial) nvidia card, at which point, to keep up with a console you'll need something new ( I don't have any insider information here, but that would be consistent with the projected timelines and everything that has happened in the past).

      That's how the market has worked for a long time. The consoles come in and converge performance parity to PC's by being sold at a loss for a while, then the price of parts drop, the PC moves on technology wise, but only a few titles that are really invested in the PC take advantage of it, eventually enough stuff comes out on the PC that makes the tech in consoles show its limitations (and this is where GPGPU comes in handy, for things like cloth and smoke it's much easier to do gpgpu than to do cell work) and then the console guys have to play catch up for a while.

      Off the top of my head nothing jumps out at me that's mainstream that you just could not do on a console right now (performance wise). Some of the more complex strategy games, and obviously the controls for MMO's that kind of thing, but I could pretty easily spit out a demo on a 7000 series GPU that just plain could not be done on consoles, AMD actually has a professional quality demo, called "leo.mov" (which I seem to have lost the link for) that's about 400 mb that shows of stuff you can't do on a console but it's more of a marketing tool for the 7000 series than a great tech demo. The problem is, that wouldn't work on just about anything else on the market either.

      Steams hardware survey is illustrative of the market. About 48% of gaming pc's have dual core, another 43% quad core, and then 'other' (which are probably going to be largely developers or people with rigs for something else that happen to also be used for gaming at 6 and 8 core, and the 5% of the market on single core are likely laptops or people with old and broken pcs). So we're a long ways off from the 'mainstream' PC market being way better than a console. Which is why all you get are console ports.

      Well that and AMD nVIDIA and Intel have been working on more cores and not radically new tech lately. Sure, you could, for not a lot of money, easily get a card 4x the performance of your 4850 (a decent 6000 series) or better, but there's only so much visual fidelity to be added compared to being able to supply your little display vs a 2560x1600 (or triple monitor or the like).

    7. Re:Faster video card, huh? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      With the plummeting prices on monitors(at least for those of us blessed enough to have undemanding taste for the finer details of color reproduction and perfectly uniform luminosity, I can't speak for the poor fellows who have to buy the good stuff), I am appreciating the increasing number of video outputs that some of AMD's newer cards offer. When you can get a 1920 x 1080 panel in the 21ish inch range for ~$120, more video outputs means more sweet, sweet, screen area without the hassle of accommodating multiple video cards or the substantial expense and lousy performance of specialty Matrox gear.

      My graphical demands go about as far as Oblivion(mid 2006, nothing exciting) at 1920x1080, draw distances maxed; but the fact that I can buy enough monitors to cover central and peripheral vision, and a card to drive them, for what a single top-of-range card would cost, makes day to day computing very much more pleasant(on the minus side, it has utterly spoiled me for mobile computing, as I've become used to having a massive work area; but so it goes...)

    8. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are console first person shooters, and then there are PC first person shooters.

      Try running BF3 on high/ultra in high resolution. My reasonably overclocked GTX 560Ti can just barely handle high in 1080p, ultra utterly murders it with clear jerkiness present in many situations. On the other hand, it eats MW3 for breakfast in pretty much any resolution/quality I could throw at it. You don't need to crank out a "20 km horizon" to overload a modern card.

      And frankly, if a game makes your card render 20km of ground in level of detail that actually affects it, of which you will literally see only a few hundred meters, it's doing it wrong. Badly wrong.

    9. Re:Faster video card, huh? by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      You want distance pal try Just cause II. You can climb on top of a mountain and....wow, the view is just stunning, with the snow whipping, and you can then jump and free fall alllllll the way through the different climate zones all the way down to the jungle floor. I actually tied a bike to the back of a 707, let the 707 pull me up to about 25,000 feet and then cut the line and did the wickedest free fall bike stunt you'd ever seen...played just fine on my HD4850 BTW.

      Now as for the poster thinking the next consoles with be 7000 series? Sorry to burst your bubble but from reports they've already been in development for over a year, more likely a year and a half, so you are looking at a mid 5xxx series card MAX. See that is the problem, it takes such a long turnaround because these things are so complex now that there are probably 4 generations of GPU out by the time the thing hits the market. the ONLY reason it will look better initially is because of heavier optimization, with only one CPU and GPU to write for they optimize the hell out of it whereas I've noticed with PC games they tend to be of the "Meh we'll throw more cycles at it" mindset. Frankly if they did half the optimization on the PC they did on the consoles we'd have smoked the X360 a year after it came out.

      In the end I can't complain TOO much about the consoles, after all they have helped to usher in what I call a "golden age" of PC gaming. Why is that? Simple because I can build a $550 PC for a customer that hooks right into his 1080P set and gives him sweet graphics and he'll be able to play for fricking years. Later on he can slap a $100 GPU upgrade and get even more years out of that same system. When i first started PC gaming you were damned lucky and had probably bought state of the art if you got a year and a half out of the system, then you had to chunk and start all over. The PC I'm typing this on cost $800 if you count the upgrades but the actual cost would be more like $600 since i was able to use the quad and motherboard in a new Xmas PC for my GF. This PC has 6 cores, 8Gb of RAM, 3Tb HDD, and an HD4850. When the price drops I can just swap that HD4850 for a new 5xxx or 6xxx and get another 2 or 3 years out of that GPU and frankly I'd be amazed if I need to build another PC for the rest of the decade as I don't see games hitting 6 cores for several years yet.

      SO I say enjoy it, my kids have been gaming on HD4850s and Pentium Ds and just now am I needing to upgrade their systems, I'll slap them an AMD quad and 4Gb of RAM and they'll get another 2 years out of those HD4850s I paid a whole $60 for, just you watch. In the old days you were lucky if a card even lasted a year before there were games that wouldn't run, now a $100 card can play damned near everything without chugging. Good times friends, good times.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    10. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean the horrible digusting view because they locked off a certain view distance and applied a nauseating blur despite the fact my machine should decimate the graphics.

      All in the name of consoles... 360 was crap before it came out.

      I'm tired of having my experience dumbed down and made uglier than the previous generation of games all so they can pander to the idiots like you. Not just equal to the previous two generations, but actually worse. They are taking away options from the graphics screens, giving pc's the console texture packs.

    11. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      when the the 5xxx series came out, i thought about the getting the 4xxx series at the discount. In looking at the IDLE POWER, the price difference (over a couple years expected life) made the 5xxx series cheaper

      Having said that, the 5xxx series is when they started tackling the idle power issues a bit better.

    12. Re:Faster video card, huh? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 2

      Actually, when at altitude the horizon is far more than 20 km distant. Of course it is not rendered at the same level of detail as the close terrain, but the polygons etc for mountains, lakes etc do need to be processed as you can see them 50 nautical miles away from 50 thousand feet. Also remember that the rendering area goes as the square of the distance: double the range means four times the rendering area (yes, you often look behind you when in an aircraft - TrackIR is wonderful). Incidentally, what is probably causing your stuttering is not the processing power of your card, it is the amount of video memory. When textures need to be swapped between main memory and video memory you can see stuttering. Higher levels of anti-aliasing and an-isotropic filtering also gobble memory (in addition to the texture size/quality). GPUZ is a free tool that has graphs/plots that can help diagnose when you run out of video memory. My point still stands, even if the original poster doesn't need a more powerful card for his uses, some of is do.

    13. Re:Faster video card, huh? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 1

      Actually, what really matters to performance these days is the amount of video ram you have. It is good you are content with low-end graphics. Many of us are not (if you get the right game it is easy to tell the difference between a low end and high end performing PC gaming system).

    14. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Again, if your game renders background the way you suggest it does, it does it TERRIBLY WRONG. I once again present the case study, battlefield 3. It often renders huge backgrounds without the catastrophically increasing impact on either video memory or GPU load (i.e. view from a plane looking over entire map vs view of a foot soldier looking at his spawn).

      This is done using various LOD techniques and is called "optimization". Notably end result looks worlds better then any of the games you presented as examples.

    15. Re:Faster video card, huh? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 1

      lol. The maps in BF3 are *tiny*, just a few km by a few km. The backgrounds are merely animated 'sky domes'.

      The equivalent sky dome in a flight simulation is much much more distant than that. nb: BF3 is a 'game', and doesn't cut the mustard in *simulation* terms (that's ok, it's not trying to be a sim, but let's call it what it is). Even Arma2, which is a vastly better in terms of simulation than BF3 of ground combat (which is ok, since Arma2 is a sim and BF3 is merely a game) is weak when it comes to aircraft, the maps are around 10 km by 10 km. In LockOn:Flaming Cliffs 2 the maps span the Black Sea from the Ukraine to Turkey. A game that handles several hundred kilometers in width and length, and it works on machines with as little as 0.5 GB memory, so the developers do know what they are doing in regard to this.

      I know *exactly* what LOD is (having written graphics optimization algorithms like this myself, and are in the process of writing my own cross-platform flight simulator for commercial release). That still doesn't address my original response, some of us simply need more GPU horsepower and old cards don't have the memory or bandwidth to handle our needs. Even Battlefield 3 with textures on Ultra requires more than 1 GB of video memory or it will start stuttering after 15 minutes (swapping textures between RAM and VRAM) - I know, since my Radeon 5970 (2 GPU each with 1GB VRAM) does exactly this and I have profiled it with GPUZ. An older card simply can't cope at anti-aliased 1920x1080 ("1080p") or higher resolutions (which is a minimum for the majority of PC gamers these days), mostly because they have such little VRAM compared to newer cards.

    16. Re:Faster video card, huh? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      No offence, but the way graphics are handled in most simulators nowadays is afterthought at best. And it shows. BF3 can produce a beautiful scenery for several kilometers, while utterly ugly (both aesthetically and graphically) simulator graphics in most modern simulators can eat almost as much of both GPU and memory and end result will look like something utterly horrible in comparison to BF3.

      Has it ever occurred to you that most of graphics engine design is not about looking as realistic as possible, but about making the result as good as possible while cutting as many corners as possible? BF3, as you yourself admit, has been very successful in this endeavour.

      Finally, 1080p as a "minimum" for PC users shows your utter ignorance in the subject. 1080p is a reasonable maximum at the moment, with less then 5% of users actually having a higher resolution (if you count its 16:10 big brother, 1920:1200 in the same category). Source: steam hardware survey.

    17. Re:Faster video card, huh? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Uhhh...I didn't say there wouldn't be ANY guys that could use this, I'd said there would be very little because frankly most are playing BF3 and not a hardcore FS. Have you LOOKED at the Steam hardware survey lately? I mean you may have triple 2500 resolution monitors but that just makes you 0.01 percent of the population. The biggest settings are 12x10, 16x9, and 16x10 last i checked, the majority were dual cores but quads were climbing while we 6 core players are still a tiny minority (which when you can get a full AMD 6 core barebone for $299 at tiger i have no idea why more don't jump on, but that's another story) and the VAST majority are on single cards in the $100-$150 range.

      So while you might want to spend the bones on a card that fast because you have a niche case, just like those guys that buy triple 5xxx cards for bitcoin mining that doesn't change the fact its a niche case. Frankly at the resolutions the majority of gamers (myself included at 1600x900) are playing at even my $60 HD4850 can go high to max on most games and not stutter.

      BTW if you are doing a commercial FS on your own do me a favor, could you add the armed version of the Loach chopper? you never see anybody do those cool fast and light choppers, always the big bitches that are complex as fuck like the Blackshark or Hind or Apache, but there is something to be said about a fast and light run and gun that's just plain fun. Oh and if you can have an arcade mode for those of us that don't have time to go to virtual flight school that would be nice, thanks.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    18. Re:Faster video card, huh? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 1

      > No offence, but the way graphics are handled in most simulators nowadays is afterthought at best. And it shows.
      No offense taken. You are wrong, however. Graphics are not an afterthought at all in sims (assuming you have actually used anything modern - oops that's right, your card can't handle them, which was my point). Go and check out the in-cockpit shadows on the A-10C or the Ka-50. BF3's cockpits are lame in comparison (they have nice textures but are essentially static). The soldiers, foliage and environment on BF3 is awesome, but it is still postage stamp sized.

      > Has it ever occurred to you that most of graphics engine design is not about looking as realistic as possible, but about making the result as good as possible while cutting as many corners as possible? BF3, as you yourself admit, has been very successful in this endeavour.
      Actually this has occurred to me. In case you didn't read my previous post, I'm not just talking about this stuff, I'm implementing it myself. Is this debate theory or practice for you?

      > Finally, 1080p as a "minimum" for PC users shows your utter ignorance in the subject. 1080p is a reasonable maximum at the moment, with less then 5% of users actually having a higher resolution (if you count its 16:10 big brother, 1920:1200 in the same category). Source: steam hardware survey.
      Fair call. I was going to use the words "hardcore gamers" but I thought it too wanky - so wanted to avoid it. Yes, there are a lot of laptop weenies out there. They are not a factor in my calculations. I care about the people who actually have decent hardware and want a decent experience (eg. the same strategy Apple uses: don't aim for the masses, cherry-pick the high value customers). Many of the people in my circle of gamers have multiple monitors, only a few have less than 1080p. This may not be representative of the gamer population as a whole, but is very representative of my segment (just as you could say that small VGA-like resolutions is typical of the handheld/phone market). We need the power of decent video cards to drive all those pixels (the 'fill rate' becomes even more important than the processing rate with multi-monitors). This was my original point. *You* may not need a decent graphics card, *joe iPad(tm)* doesn't need a decent graphics card, but there are some of *us* out there who do. Hear us roar (meow! :) ).

    19. Re:Faster video card, huh? by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 1

      These are the circles I move in, here is someone talking about their setup:
      http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1390782#post1390782
      It is good lots of people like BF3, it is a good game. However, the original argument was not a lame "Is BF3 the bestest game out there" debate but was an assertion that an old video card is good enough. I said that there are people out there (eg. myself and the other folks playing in my genre, as with the person listed above) for which video cards can't ever have enough power. I never said we were the majority of gamers, I simply said that we have needs that an old video card simply cannot meet - which mean I considered the original post about old video cards being good enough as bunk for some of us.

      For your loach fix try Armed Assault II (btw, you'll need a decent video card for the post-processing effects and push visibility out to 10 km :) ). The DCS:Ka-50 is a light attack chopper with full realism (it is derived from a simulator delivered to the Russian Air Force to train their pilots). Oh, and check out IL-2 Cliffs of Dover sometime - the graphics and sim are fantastic, but again you need a good rig to run it well.

  2. How is it at mining BitCoins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's the calculations per watt? Will I be able to put them in a crossfire frankenbox to make my fortune?

    1. Re:How is it at mining BitCoins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the 7970 is any indication, it's actually slower than the high-end 5000 series.

    2. Re:How is it at mining BitCoins? by Baloroth · · Score: 0

      IDK what you're smoking, because you are just plain wrong. The benchmarks show the 7950 as faster than the 6970, the fastest last-gen AMD card (except for the dual-GPU monstrosity that is the 6990, of course). Unless you actually meant the dual-GPU card, of course, which is not in any way shape or form a fair comparison.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:How is it at mining BitCoins? by mattventura · · Score: 1

      The 5000 series was better in some regards than the 6000 series, so it is entirely possible that it is worse than the 5000 series yet better than the 6000 series.

    4. Re:How is it at mining BitCoins? by Squiddie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He meant at mining bitcoins, you dolt. These new cards just don't perform well in that area.

    5. Re:How is it at mining BitCoins? by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      The 6000 series mostly was the 5000 series. The high end may be a bit different, but the upper-midrange (6770, 6870 stuff) was literally the same chips with some minor stuff tacked on. 3D and some more advanced video support mainly, IIRC.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    6. Re:How is it at mining BitCoins? by BlackSnake112 · · Score: 1

      More RAM too. There were not too many 2GB models in the 5000 series. There are a bunch of 2GB or 3GB models in the 6000 series. Nvidia did the same thing with the 8000 series and the 9000 series. The 9000 series was the 8000 series with a few more features. I have a 8800GT 512 MB card and a 9800GT 1GB card. The 9800GT card does not take any extra power while the 8800GT needed a 6 pin power plug to function correctly. The difference nothing that I can see. The 8800GT is actually 'faster' according to tests. But with the larger amount of memory, the 9800GT plays games the same or better. Since the games I play have huge maps, the larger memory helps a lot. I am looking at a 6950 2GB model. The price has yet to drop with the release of the 7000 series. I am just waiting.

  3. So when will there be affordable cards by afidel · · Score: 2

    So when will there be cards affordable by normal people? Also for me the biggest thing to come out of the new design is that we should be able to get a passively cooled card with more performance than the HD5750.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    1. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Xanny · · Score: 4, Informative

      When Kepler comes out expect all these cards to significantly drop in price.

      GCN was a huge cost on AMDs part, and Kepler will be a refinement of Fermi, so Nvidia will aggressively price the 600 series (especially since they won't launch for another 2 months) and make profit on them. And expect AMD to take a loss on the investment but not on the returns from fabrication on the 7900 series (assuming they fab the 7800 and lower cards on their old VLIW architecture like the roadmap from last years aid they would).

      So when Kepler comes out, it will probably be aggressively priced, and AMD will drop prices to match. For now they are exclusively the only maker of "next gen" gpus after 2010s 500 and 6000 series, and Kepler is 2 months away, so AMD is milking it.

    2. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Kjella · · Score: 2

      According to MSI via Fudzilla, the 77xx series will launch in two weeks at $139/$149 and the 78xx series in March at $249/$299. After that the ball is in nVidia's court, but the current guesses are they're not ready until April, sometime around Intel's Ivy Bridge processors. I think it's working, I've looked at the 7950s and is tempted but will probably wait until then and see if they bring better performance or lower prices, if nothing else to get a better price from AMD. Currently the 7950 costs about double (in NOK at least) what I paid for my 5850 in 2009, which is rather disappointing - then again that was a steal I got before the MSRP price hike.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      So when will there be cards affordable by normal people?

      Well the sweet spot is usually about 8-9mo after the release of a new card. That gets all the major bugs out of the manufacturing, and all the driver issues hammered out. And the prices have pretty much bottomed out too.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    4. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      we should be able to get a passively cooled card with more performance than the HD5750

      But, but, the number is so cool that I'm gonna come!

      HD!!! And 75O!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuckin' eh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      ATI? I'd rather give up computers.

    5. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Squiddie · · Score: 1

      Yes, but at that point these cards will be old and busted and the new hotness will have been announced. It does backfire sometimes, though, you know Fermi and all.

    6. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait till the entry-level 7570, 7650 and 7970 come out. Or if you don't want to wait, get one of the lower end cards from the 6000 series. There is an entire range of cards which are affordable by normal people. If you want to game on three-monitor setup on max resolution, FX AA and want 60 fps, then you are not normal and shouldn't expect affordable cards.

      I consider myself as normal but want to run all the games at 1080p on a single monitor with maxed out settings and great FPS. So I went ahead and ordered the 7970. Was it an overkill? Most probably. Will a 7950 have sufficed? Yes. Is the 7970 more future proof than 7950?

    7. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by afidel · · Score: 1

      Bah, the 7700 series is only going to have ~10% more memory bandwidth than the 30 month old HD5700 series, this is supposed to be progress?

      That aside I'll be looking for benchmarks since it might have a bit more DX11 oomph in the same ~85W max TDP envelope.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    8. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by afidel · · Score: 1

      No, I want to game at 1080p without needing a fan and for less than $150. Basically I'm hoping for a 28nm version of the HD5750 where the process shrink can gain me a bit more DX11 performance.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    9. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Wait. New hardware is old and busted? Okay. I mean it's not like the new stuff based on the old stuff, doesn't support current generation tech or anything. Like it did last time.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    10. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Sir_Sri · · Score: 1

      Game what at 1080p? 4 year old games? 1080p is a resolution (1920x1080) and a frequency, it says nothing about the quality of the image being drawn, it just clearly defines the size and refresh of the image. You could run the original Xcom at 1080p on a 25 dollar air cooled card, but that's not what you mean is it?

      If you want to play Arkam city with something close to max settings at 1080p you need a better card than the 5750. If you're willing to take crappy settings then it *might* be possible for an air cooled 7000 series card to do that, barely. But don't expect an air cooled card anytime soon.

      The way this works is every chip is a 7970 to start, and then the not perfect ones are 7950's, the ok ones will be 7800's the crappy ones 7500's the horrible ones 7200's (air cooled), and they won't ship those in volume any time soon, and even then you're not really looking at the right product. Air cooled cards are for really really really basic machines and they only sell air cooled cards to avoid junking those parts, they aren't intended for anything 3d let alone gaming.

    11. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Squiddie · · Score: 1

      I was mostly making a joke, but it is true that eight months from now some will start to wait for next gen rather than buy current gen at a good price. The way I do it is to just buy whenever I think I need it. Like that there is no remorse.

    12. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by nzac · · Score: 1

      I thought they added 100 to the version numbers for the 6000 series.
      You should compare to the HD5600s.

    13. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by bemymonkey · · Score: 1

      Well, the 6870/6850 was pretty much the bang-for-your-buck card in the last gen, with the 6770/6670/6570 being really affordable for most any aspiring gamer - so I'd assume you'll need to wait for a 7870/7770/7670... shouldn't be all too long now. I'm waiting for the 7770 (or the 7 series equivalent of the 6770) myself - should be a nice reduction in power consumption and noise, coming from an 8800GT.

    14. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by dadioflex · · Score: 1

      People waiting for the latest next gen card are lucky. They never have to buy anything. Just wait.

    15. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Not very likely to happen. Most modern games do put a lot of stress on GPU, which means that you either forego quality, fps, or you install a proper active cooling solution.

      Market for functional "silent" solutions is generally an expensive one as it either uses expensive fans with high end bearings and bigger blades (allowing for slower rotation speeds for same air flow), or liquid cooling in high end. You're not going to enter it with a sub-150USD card with passive cooling - these cards are notorious for both having atrocious performance and actually crashing under heavy load due to overheating (as they are usually put into equally "silent" cases with no proper air flow).

    16. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      You could have one for a while now, Gigabyte HD5770 Silent Cell.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    17. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by afidel · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the 5770 is a whole what 100MHz faster on the core clock and maybe a smidge more on the memory clock than my 5750, certainly not worth spending another $150 to "upgrade".

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    18. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      I was just nitpicking.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    19. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      The 7700 series will definitely be interesting, if you want to build a quiet computer that still can handle most games (albeit not at the highest graphics settings).
      My latest PC upgrade a few months ago used 6770, and so far it has handled all I've thrown at it.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    20. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by ericartman · · Score: 1

      Quiet computer? Well I bought a 4870, which just burned up, thank god. I got tired of leaving my computer on all night because I couldn't go through boot up without my computer sounding like a jet plane taking off and waking the whole house. At least I could control the fan in Windows for gaming but in Linux it just sat there at 5k rpm. Well at my old age I went back to school and gave up gaming, no time or money for a video card that costs as much as a console. BTW playing even WoW, or Rift at ultimate caused the card to run at 100c, scared me, probably explained the burned up board. So its win win I get to play with Linux again, and I have my day for me. No more ATI for me, second expensive card I bought from them and both didn't work out so well.

    21. Re:So when will there be affordable cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AMD started getting really aggressive about power consumption/temps and noise after the 4xxx series. The 7970 cards have some of the lowest "idle" power draw of any discrete graphics card on the market these days, even compared to low-end, low-power cards from previous generations.

  4. Disabled? by schitso · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "a few segments of the GPU have been disabled"

    As in, can be re-enabled with a custom BIOS or something?

    1. Re:Disabled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same question here.
      I noticed there is a switch on the reference design, so we can hope an "unlocked" bios will be released to re-enable those inactive segments.

    2. Re:Disabled? by Moheeheeko · · Score: 1

      Yes. I bought a first run 6950 and with a bios flash i now have a 6970 for $80 less.

    3. Re:Disabled? by Squiddie · · Score: 1

      I sure hope so. I have a 6950 that I flashed. I wanted to get another, but I could not find any more. Still, I might just get the normal 7970 because it just overclocks so well. Still waiting on nvidia so that we can get some price drops, though.

    4. Re:Disabled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. AMD has stated that the extra compute units (shader units in the case of the 6950->6970 unlock) have been laser-cut.

      Additionally, as there are some indications that the 7970 itself has extra, cut-off compute units, it's likely that the cut parts don't work properly this time, and were disabled like buggy processor cores are, in order to improve yields. BIOS flashing thus far has only seemed to give improvements from better memory timings (and clock speeds, obviously).

    5. Re:Disabled? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      As in, can be re-enabled with a custom BIOS or something?

      Probably. Though since the cards have a very uniform architecture, with many repeats of the same thing, my guess is that they bin the chips according to the number of stream processors which are defective. This allows them to fab nothing but top end cards and get good yields of slightly off the top end cards.

      GPU manufacturers certainly used to sidable non-"pro" level features in cheaper cards (which could be re-enabled by various hacks) though the cards usually weren't quite as fast (though 90% of the speed for half the price was a great deal).

      Also, mods: WTF? Why is this post marked redundant.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    6. Re:Disabled? by schitso · · Score: 1

      Also, mods: WTF? Why is this post marked redundant.

      I was curious about that myself.

    7. Re:Disabled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An official AMD statement claims that softmodding will be impossible. Multiple bios flashers have already confirmed that flashing to the 7970 didn't enable the extras.

  5. But... by goldaryn · · Score: 3, Informative

    But does it run Linux?

    No, seriously... last time I tried to install Ubuntu with an ATI card (a few months ago), I couldn't get dual monitors to work correctly.

    The restricted drivers exist, but are unstable, awkward and painful. Linux and Nvidia - a bit better in my experience..

    1. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I've been running a dual-monitor setup since Ubuntu 8.04 with a radeon 4850 + proprietary drivers without any troubles.

    2. Re:But... by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 2

      Really? Because getting the nv drivers to work correctly with a 1440x900 monitor was like pulling teeth, which is why I abandoned my brand of choice for an ATI card this latest go 'round.

      --
      while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
    3. Re:But... by chromas · · Score: 2

      In my experience (OpenSuse, though, not Ubuntu), install first, add extra monitors later, especially if they run at different resolutions. If you use the official/proprietary drivers, be sure the open drivers are completely removed from your system or you'll have a conflict.

    4. Re:But... by Kjella · · Score: 1

      The Catalyst drivers just landed on the 27th of Januray I think, before that there was a hotfix release for real enthusiasts. Open source support is as far as I know still missing, but basic support should not be far away. They've consistently come closer to release date with each release, last it took 2.5 months and I expect less this time. If you want it the moment it's released expect to compile your own kernel/xorg/driver though. Don't expect any miracles from the OSS drivers though, as I understand it there's some major rework going on because of the architecture changes.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I added "Virtual" in "Display" subsection to my xorg.conf, and used xrandr.

    6. Re:But... by secretsquirel · · Score: -1

      like duh

      3 linux

    7. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I run 3 monitor on a HD5450 with OSS drivers. It work, but the card buffer is too small to run them all at full resolution, it is an hardware limitation, I should have checked before buying. The software run fine (but of course, this card is crap, so I can't get game to run on it, it is why I have a NVIDIA 8800GT as back up GPU to crunch the 3D stuff)

    8. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's why the driver is called 'nvidia' not 'nv'. 'nv' is the incomplete, OSS driver. 'nvidia' is the driver supported by nVidia. At its core, it's the same driver as on Windows.

    9. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I haven't had any trouble on Ubuntu with my HD6850 and two displays, running the latest version of Catalyst. I had some initial issues with lingering parts of the open, built-in drivers conflicting with those of ATI, but it took less than half an hour to resolve everything.

    10. Re:But... by PixetaledPikachu · · Score: 1

      But does it run Linux? No, seriously... last time I tried to install Ubuntu with an ATI card (a few months ago), I couldn't get dual monitors to work correctly. The restricted drivers exist, but are unstable, awkward and painful. Linux and Nvidia - a bit better in my experience..

      I have been doing dual monitor with ATI/AMD X300 (Benq Joybook 5200G), HD3470 (Toshiba Satelite M300), and HD5650 (Sony Vaio VPCEA36FG). The only time that dual monitor failed me is when I'm using Ubuntu 8.10. Currently I'm using 10.10, with a Samsung 43' LCD tv as secondary monitor via HDMI. Mirror and splitscreen works

    11. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got a 5570, and performance is noticeably lower under linux. I've tried open and closed source drivers. I find the closed to be slightly higher performing, but have frequent artifacting when pushed.

    12. Re:But... by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      well I have an older ATI card in a linux box in the other room, if I load the propitary drivers as soon as X loads the screen shuts off, so I agree ATI+Linux = worthless

      always has been, probably always will be

    13. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Beat me to the post. The nVidia blob has been a beautiful, painless experience for me, for ten years - full 3D acceleration on every single card I've run, every time, and vdpau playback on anything that supported it. ATI drivers blew long before AMD snarfed them down, and I had held my breath waiting for AMD to fix that problem. I exhaled long ago. It's unfortunate, because there are a couple of E350/450-6310/20 boards with the kind of specs I could use, but I'll be damned if I ever waste another hour of my time trying to make ATI's shit work. They should just toss cash at the open source community to maintain their drivers/modules.
      No, the VESA driver doesn't cut it, in this case.

    14. Re:But... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Hate to break the news to ya but the E350 has been supported OOTB by Ubuntu since 10.04 so i'm sure the others are up and running as well. you seem to forget AMD actually hired coders for the free FOSS drivers as well as handed out the specs, go look that chip up on Phoronix, they say it works just fine.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    15. Re:But... by JonJ · · Score: 1

      However, the open source drivers give generally poorer performance because there are some bits and pieces AMD/ATi won't tell you, because it's "not their technology".

      --
      -- Linux user #369862
    16. Re:But... by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It has nothing to do with AMD and frankly you will NEVER get those bits because it would be illegal to give them to you. AMD has already said there is nothing they can do over HDCP and protected path as that technology is owned by the HDMI consortium and to give out that information would be breaking DMCA as well as get every AMD card blacklisted. If you want those bits you can use the blob which again Phoronix ran full tests and found it runs just fine on Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 11 runs OOTB, it also smokes Atom + ION on their benches. For a board that costs just $142 for the barebone kit complete with PSU and case that makes it a hell of a cheap Linux box, especially when you figure in the fact you are getting dual core plus Radeon plus the ability to run 8Gb of RAM.

      But FOSS users are simply gonna have to accept the fact unless you wanna do like RMS and hop on chinamart for some funky ass Loongson MIPS netbook there are NO machines that you are gonna have complete access to, because if it has even slightly modern video output it'll have protected path and if it has wireless it'll have non FOSS firmware. Hell even the Raspberry Pi has broadcom binary blobs, welcome to reality. in the end what should matter is "does it work" and as phoronix shows yes it does, and it beats Atom + ION while having better graphics and often a lower price. Seems like a win/win to me but if you really have your heart set on Nvidia they have a PCIe slot, and there is an open box GT210 on Newegg for less than $20, knock yourself out. Even with the discrete card it'll still be cheaper than an Atom + ION board.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    17. Re:But... by webheaded · · Score: 1

      Actually the OSS ATI drivers aren't too bad on Linux. I hadn't really messed with any of that stuff before in KDE so when I did my new Arch install, I was surprised by how easy it was to configure all that. I was kind of irritated that hitting apply didn't save my settings and it took me quite some time to figure out there was a separate "save" button somewhere in the display dialogs, but other than that...it's not bad. The only thing that's kind of annoying is the power control. You have to manually set that and the fan up because whatever it has built in is worthless.

      --
      "Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
  6. Is the price really that horrible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When Nvidia puts out a $500 card, it's attractively priced.

    When AMD puts out a faster card for 10% less, it draws complaints about the price from the same reviewer. What gives?

    1. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Dyinobal · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nvidia pays better, and sends better swag I'd guess.

    2. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Baloroth · · Score: 2

      People expect AMD to be cheaper, even when they are competitive on a performance standpoint. AMD usually aims for the mid-range market more, so I expect seeing a top-end card from them (at top-end prices) is a little surprising.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by goldaryn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When Nvidia puts out a $500 card, it's attractively priced. When AMD puts out a faster card for 10% less, it draws complaints about the price from the same reviewer. What gives?

      To be fair, that review you linked is from November 2010. Perhaps second-hand 580s are better value or something.

    4. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Maybe that the first of the 28nm process generation costs about the same as the last of the 40nm process generation released a year and a half ago? Currently the effect on the price/performance ratio has been almost nothing, they've offered higher performance at a higher price. Yes, the 7950 is now beating the GTX 580 in most ways but it's not exactly a massively better deal. Hopefully nVidia will be a bit more aggressive but if they're both held back by TSMC's delivery capacity the duel can get a bit lame.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's because Nvidia is higher quality. The user experience with Nvidia is always much smoother and better.

    6. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pay no mind. This AMD bashing is just the never-ending media onslaught against the underdog.

      If AMD put out a brand new card next week whose performance smashes every other card in existence, and at half the price, it'd still get panned by every blogger, and known tech site.

      At this point, it's just expected. They'll catch on at some point, but by then everyone will be ignoring them.

    7. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you can actually use an nVidia card. Unlike an ATI/AMD whose drivers suck so bad you'll be lucky if you can even boot your OS.

      Ever try to write an OpenGL app for ATI? Fun, fun stuff.

      Ever wonder why so many reviews with benchmarks have empty spots for the ATI card because they couldn't get it to work?

      I believe they have superior hardware to nVidia but without drivers there just isn't any way to take advantage of it. They need to stop letting engineers design and write their drivers. Get some software people in there you morons!

    8. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You might not be joking.

    9. Re:Is the price really that horrible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because AMD just released a card 1 year behind nVidia, offering about the same performance as a 1 year old card, and charging about the same price... does that sound like a good value to you?

  7. Re:But... what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a low-end AMD card running 3 monitors right in front of me (Radeon HD 3450) . Must've been user error. ;)

    I kid I kid... =P It was actually a huge PITA to set up 3 monitors, but before that I had been running two monitors very nicely for a very long time. It's incredibly easy in my opinion.

    This is the card I used for the 3 monitors: http://www.jaton.com/VGA/graphics_card_detail.php?pid=138

  8. I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by Tastecicles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...well, let's clear things up: I was always an AMD fan. Their CPUs rocked. I had a seriously great time overclocking my SS7 gear until it boiled.

    The graphics cards sucked though. I'm talking about the old Radeon AGP cards. Put down your paddles, lads, 2006 was the last time I bought an ATI branded card (an X1800) and IMHO it sucked monkey balls. I couldn't even get it to perform at low resolution on Unreal 2002. That's why I went straight back to the store and swapped it for an NVidia 7600GT. Oh, yeah, life was sweet after that.

    A couple weeks ago I bought a secondhand Sapphire HD3650 with 512MB DDR2. OK, it's a bloody old and very low spec card by tech standards, but it blows my GF 7600GT right out of the water - even on a slower, single core 64-bit processor running 32-bit platform. That made me a fan of ATI/AMD graphics right there. The old machine (Core Duo) with the NVidia is now collecting dust.

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
    1. Re:I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 2

      Lol. You replaced one old outdated card with another :) My personal experience has been that NVidia has excellent drivers. ATI/AMD have better hardware and better visual quality (NVidia often as strange visual artifacts). Downside of ATI is their drivers are dodgy. It is always a risk upgrading an ATI driver. Sometimes new drivers can break your favourite game until a hotfix comes out (usually takes a fortnight or so). So, whether you go NVidia or AMD depends on what you want (NVidia ease of use) or ATI (more power, better value).

    2. Re:I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      yea my 9600GT kicked my 7600GT right square in the nuts, actually just about any card after the 7600GT would have rocked it, your comparing a sports car to a yugo. The 7600GT was the absolute worst waste of money I have ever spent on a video card as my 6600GT actually performed just as well

    3. Re:I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      ATI have a better hardware, but their drivers are pure, total crap. It's like buying a Ferrari and put a mediocre pilot to drive. After many problems with drivers I gave up buying a new Radeon and now I use a GTX580

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    4. Re:I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I had a seriously great time overclocking my SS7 gear ...

      I think you need to get out more
      (yes I deserve to burn in moderation hell for this, but I really couldn't resist.)

    5. Re:I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by webheaded · · Score: 1

      ATi drivers aren't just dodgy...they are awful. I've had a 4870x2 for a while now and I've seen issues ranging from buggy games, to crashing video drivers playing flash, and green video for flash. I did a completely clean install for the last release and got about 2 days of being able to use Youtube before it started green videoing again. It is truly incredible that they can make a video driver that can't properly play fucking YOUTUBE VIDEOS with hardware acceleration while at the same time being able to play Rage properly (same release...broke Flash and fixed Rage...wtf?).

      I'm never buying ATi again. The hardware is great but the drivers are atrocious. I've never experienced the same level of bugginess from an nVidia card. ATi drivers ruin some really beautifully priced hardware and that's really sad. About the only thing they completely kick nVidia's ass at is overscan. I sorely miss having an ATi card on my media center because nVidia's overscan options are fucked. ATi? Drag a slider and the screen moves bigger or smaller...done. NVidia...drag a slider left, right, up, down, etc...sets a custom resolution. Sets normal resolutions to actually go to the custom one. Looks blurry as hell. I end up having to use a resolution that my card considers technically 1080 when I want to play a game on it because that card sure as hell can't handle games at 1080 but if I go to ACTUAL 720 (1280x720)...the screen is stretched off to where I can't see it. Awesome.

      This certainly isn't going to make people want to PC game dealing with this kind of bullshit.

      --
      "Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
    6. Re:I wasn't an ATI/AMD fan until... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This right here is pretty much what has kept me on the Nvidia train since Voodoo/Diamond/Monster died off. Nvidia apparently has a tendency to send out larger teams to dev houses working on titles, and the drivers are usually pretty solid. Whenever I hear of a driver issue with a game, it is almost always related to ATI/AMD drivers...

  9. You fail 3it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    numbers. The loss racist? How is FreeBSD went out another charnel despite the from w1thin. perform keeping obsessed - give a sad world. At

  10. X950s are overclockable like hell by unity100 · · Score: 1

    im on a 6950, it is clocked at 810 mhz, but it can do 910 mhz by just using the ati catalyst slider. no fancy stuff. if you go into serious overclocking, you can approach 1000 mhz easily, if you play with the voltages and stuff.

    moreover, X950s are generally unlockable. for example i unlocked the 6950 im sitting on, unlocking 24-30 or so shaders, basically making it a 6950. i could also flash a 6970 bios and make it a full 6970, but that's totally unnecessary, since i can get more than that by overclocking.

    a good deal.

    --
    Read radical news here
  11. Really? by TheRedShirt · · Score: 1

    "Beats NVIDIA's high-end GeForce GTX 580 by just a hair."

    You don't say. Must not have factored in Nvidia's history of selling and shipping GPUs that were known to be defective and then conspiring with the purchasers to hide this fact from the users until after their warranties ran out.

    If they had, this new GPU would out perform Nvidia's by huge leaps and bounds.

    6150 Go. Look it up.

  12. But also to be fair... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In the interest of fairness, I'd also like to point out that the 580 still costs more than the faster 7950. And yet the reviewer still gripes.

    1. Re:But also to be fair... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 1

      The market is changing, and the reviewer is reflecting that. People don't want to spend 600 dollars on a top end card, even if 5 years ago the 'top end' cost 800 dollars (or whatever it was).

      The perception is (rightly or wrongly) that all of these things should be getting faster and cheaper at the same time. That's not entirely wrong, but it's not entirely right either. A die shrink should mean lower cost for the chip itself, depending on yields but has nothing to do with any of the other parts on the PCB, market pressures or the like. (And the reviewer probably knows AMD has the price jacked up a bit because they probably haven't moved more than 10k units of the top end card right now and are trying to get as much money as they can from them before launching other things at a lower price).

  13. Who gives a shit? by Luke727 · · Score: -1

    My dick won't get hard until video cards take up 4 expansion slots and require 2 kW power supplies. Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.

    --
    If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
  14. um yea that shit better come with a Asain hooker by Osgeld · · Score: 1, Insightful

    really what is the point of this any more? 90+ % of your games are optimised for consoles first giving you at best a geforce8800GT, computer monitors are not getting any higher resolution and they still have not come up with a cooling system that doesnt clog with dust in a month!

    nevermind the absolute shit drivers ati ships

  15. AMD/ATI still have scheissy Linux support by TheGoodNamesWereGone · · Score: 1

    I won't buy an ATI card until the Linux driver situation is fixed.

    1. Re:AMD/ATI still have scheissy Linux support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My 5770 works fine on my current KDE desktop, multiple monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates. The gpu acceleration in Blender's new rendering engine is a lot of fun to mess about with.

    2. Re:AMD/ATI still have scheissy Linux support by JonJ · · Score: 1

      Lucky you. On my box, regardless of distro, kernel, and catalyst drivers, VLC always segfaults when trying to play accelerated video. It works fine with nvidia, so I have to conclude that the drivers for the AMD card are worthless.

      --
      -- Linux user #369862
  16. Never again, ATI by Sniper061 · · Score: 0

    The last ATI card I bought was an HD5970 shortly after it was released. The card worked... fairly well... Performance on some games was pretty good but others were full of artifacts and/or crashed outright. Various driver releases alleviated some problems but not nearly all of them. Most problems required some "creative" solutions on my part to get my programs to work correctly. After finally getting fed up with the whole situation, I finally caved in and bought an NVidia card. Performance increased and I never had any problems with it. As long as both card companies stay roughly on par, I'll stick with NVidia.

    1. Re:Never again, ATI by unity100 · · Score: 1

      you should have bought a card from a proper manufacturer. 5970s are still monster cards.

      --
      Read radical news here
    2. Re:Never again, ATI by Ironhandx · · Score: 1

      Proper manufacturer wouldn't even matter.

      Unless he's running Linux, for which I will admit ATI/AMDs driver support has been nearly or completely non-existant for quite some time, he's totally full of shit.

      I have never gone more than a total of two weeks with a driver-related problem on an ATI card on a windows based system for any game. As opposed to NVidia from whom I haven't purchased a card since the debacle where I couldn't play SW:KotoR for over a month due to their problems.

      To be fair, if he's running Linux, he shouldn't really have purchased that card anyways since its a huge waste of money.

    3. Re:Never again, ATI by unity100 · · Score: 1

      Unless he's running Linux, for which I will admit ATI/AMDs driver support has been nearly or completely non-existant for quite some time, he's totally full of shit.

      i am able to easily play games like mount and blade warband under wine in ubuntu.

      I have never gone more than a total of two weeks with a driver-related problem on an ATI card on a windows based system for any game

      further, i havent had ANY problems with any games until this date. and im no usual gamer - i game on 3 monitor eyefinity resolution.

      --
      Read radical news here
    4. Re:Never again, ATI by Ironhandx · · Score: 1

      I meant ever. There was a problem with SW:KotoR 2 with it crashing like clockwork after an hour playing that took 13 days to resolve. Other than that, and one 6 hour period where there was a conflict with WoW on my 4890, which I heard about after it was fixed already, there haven't been any major problems that I know about that could possibly have effected me.

  17. Stuff that might NOT run on current consoles by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

    Take any shooter or MMO with really large maps and corresponding memory requirements.

    For instance, "All Points Bulletin" comes to mind. After a few minutes, it always brought my PC (AMD dual core, 2GByte RAM, NVidia 8600 GT) to its knees due to requiring 2GByte of memory or more for itself.
    CPU and GPU seemed to have no problem, as the game ran fine until the memory limitation kicked in. So I guess the CPU and GPU in current-gen consoles might be able to handle the load as well. But memory-wise, they would run into problems even sooner.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
    1. Re:Stuff that might NOT run on current consoles by Sir_Sri · · Score: 2

      Memory on consoles is a different baby completely than on PC. On a console you know exactly how quickly you can pull data in from the optical drive, and have a good idea about the hard drive. On the PC you figure most people have a couple of gigs of RAM, so you may as well use it, and you have no control over what else is using those resources on the system, so you're better to use RAM than to rely on disk access. You also have very different memory space requirements with the GPU (you might be mirroring your data between GPU and CPU memory, that sort of thing).

      And yes, memory can matter a lot, that's usually textures. I always figured the easiest thing sony could have done to make the PS3 better was to swap the notebook hard drives for a desktop drive, and use the cost difference to put in 1 gig of memory rather than 512, which would have made developers have something they could point to as much easier to manage than the xbox.

      But when you're actually developing on a console, you absolutely have to keep track of everything going into memory, and you are damn sure why it's there, but you also are 100% sure what every PS3 or Xbox2 will have for memory. On PC you have so much memory, and you might have been a nub and not set the right compiler options etc. but you just use the memory because it's there.

    2. Re:Stuff that might NOT run on current consoles by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Dude you ought to snatch one of the Thubans while tiger has them so cheap. Hell they have the 1035T for $105 bucks after rebate and you can get the full kit for less than $300, its sweet dude, real sweet. if your board can't take the Thuban and you have DDR 2 i'd get the Asrock A770DE+, that's what i picked up since i had 8gb of DDR 2 from my ECS quad (damned lying ECS bastards saying their board would take a Thuban when it wouldn't) or if you've only got 2gb you can get an Asrock DDR 3 board for like $30 and 4gb of RAM at Newegg is like $20.

      As for your post the reason why the consoles don't struggle is not only is the code a LOT more heavily optimized (since they know EXACTLY how much and what kind they have of CPU, RAM, GPU, etc) but the OS is practically non existent, its pretty much there to enforce DRM and that's about it. My Win 7 HP X64 takes about 800Mb with all the bling turned on but since I have 8Gb I don't give a crap but on a console frankly if it takes up 80Mb for the OS during gameplay it'd be considered bloated. Its a hell of a lot closer to running bare metal than a PC.

      BTW you didn't hear this from me but if you have an older system you want to game on and need to squeeze every watt of power out of it? Look up on TPB or the Mule or P2P of your choice "Windows 7 Tiny edition" and give it a try, you are talking a version of Win 7 that takes less than 200Mb of RAM running while having Windows 7's better memory management. Add a cheap fast 4Gb flash stick (for Readyboost which will make it act similar to a hybrid) and you have a stripped to the bone system that is great for gaming. Frankly I don't know why MSFT don't hire that tiny guy because I've tried every tiny version as well as WinFLP and winEmbedded and the tiny guy stomps the dogshit out of both WinFLP and Embedded while being compatible with more apps.

      But if you can scrape up the cash dude i'd snatch one of those Thubans while you can, AMD has stopped making all AM3 chips and the Thubans frankly stomp bulldozer on most benches. If nothing else snatch the CPU and you can always buy a part here and a part there to finish her out, but believe me those 1035T chips? Man i loooove mine, sweet performance and with a good aircooler you can easily OC up to around 3.5GHz-3.6GHz if you want, but having Turbocore ramp up to 3.1GHz on games is good enough for me. Peace out.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    3. Re:Stuff that might NOT run on current consoles by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the hint, but that was several months ago and I have since upgraded one of my other computers (an old P4).
      The upgrade consists of a new AM3 board, a Phenom II 910e quad core, 4GByte of DDR3 ECC Ram, a Radeon HD6670 and a new harddisk. While not the very fastest, this system is easy on the electricity bill (only about 80 watt when doing light duty) and should last me a few more years.

      The ex-P4 is now my primary PC, and the dual core I tried APB on has been demoted to secondary.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    4. Re:Stuff that might NOT run on current consoles by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Okay I gotta ask.....why? The E series is a horrible chip, loses in every metric and you could have simply underclocked a standard chip and not only would it have been cheaper you would have saved on electricity while having the ability to ramp up if needed. Frankly the only E series i touch is when a customer has a socket AM2 board and they want a cheap upgrade as Starmicro has some E series quads dirt cheap and if the customer just wants a render box or video converter better to have 4 slower cores than 3 faster for that use case. But that is a truly awful chip for gaming, gets awful scores and frankly doesn't save as much power as an underclocked Athlon or Deneb Phenom II.

      But if you are truly concerned about your electric bill (one thing I don't have to worry about thank goodness as its thrown in along with water and garbage with my apt) then the Thuban and the Asrock would be the better choice and in fact I'd take the Pepsi challenge against your 910e and i'm confident I'd win, how? Because Asrock has ACC and an OC dashboard that lets me not only OC but to UC and turn off cores at will. my 6 can be anything from a single to a 6 core, and any speed from 1.6Ghz-3.5GHz simply by using ACC. The only place you'd beat me is in the GPU power dept but then again my HD4850 is more powerful by a good 50% while only costing $51 at geeks new.

      So I just don't get why you'd have chosen THAT chip of all things, you'll probably start hitting bottlenecks on the CPU pretty quick and the lack of headroom for OCing means there simply won't be any place to go. I just hope you got a steal on the chip because like the first gen Phenoms they really don't fit any niche well, too much power to be considered truly low power but not enough headroom to be considered mainstream. BTW if you need cheap chips for upgrades i've been shopping with the Starmicro guys for years, they are a great bunch and I've never had a bit of trouble with their chips. they were even nice enough to call when the chip I had ordered was sold out and offered me a more expensive chip for the same price and just wanted to make sure it would fit, that's nice. Plus you gotta love a place with $15 Pentium Ds and $20 Athlon Mobiles. You can drop them socket 754 athlon mobiles in just about any socket 754 system and get a REALLY low power nettop out of it, very nice.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Stuff that might NOT run on current consoles by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      Did you mean the 9100e, as in this link: http://www.starmicroinc.net/product/HD9100OBJ4BGD/-AMD-Phenom-X4-9100e-AM2-18GHZ-4MB-3200MHZ-HD9100OBJ4BGD-CPU-OEM/?

      I mean this one:http://products.amd.com/pages/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=623
      The 910e is a "Deneb" core. At 2.6 GHz, it is not that bad in performance, and the official TDP is half that of most standard AMD quad cores at the time I bought it (65 W vs. 125 W). You may get lucky with a standard chip that happens to be close to the 910e in power consumption, but that is not certain. Also, the new FX processors are a questionable upgrade over the Phenom II ;-)
      Note 1)
      In the meantime, the 1045T has appeared in shops. With 6 cores, 2.7 GHz and 95W TDP it looks very nice too, and today I'd be tempted to get that one instead of the 910e.
      Note 2)
      If Intel would support ECC RAM in their desktop chips, I might have bought an Intel Core i5-2400S instead. Same TDP in the specs and superior performance (even if Intel cheats a bit with the TDP, I'd consider the difference an acceptable tradeoff).

      Considering the GPU, I wanted to keep things in the max. 70 W range. Not only because of power consumption, but also because of noise (70W can, in my experience, still be handled by a not too noisy air cooler).

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
  18. HDCP and protected path is only one aspect by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

    So far, 3D acceleration is also significantly slower than in the closed sorce Catalyst driver. Some of that technology may also be owned by 3rd parties, but it is not as clear-cut as in the case of HDCP.

    I suspect AMD's reasons for not releasing that stuff are part legal and part not wanting to give away the latest know-how.
    But the latter seems a bit silly, as NVidia drivers already have the better reputation and probably the better code. AMDs advantage seems to be on the hardware side, with their chips cranking out more (theoretical) GFlops/watt.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
    1. Re:HDCP and protected path is only one aspect by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      But its not like you have an either or choice here friend, if you want Nvidia graphics you can slap a $17 Nvidia discrete and it'll still stomp Aton + ION because the Zacate chip is simply the better CPU. But considering how fast the open team is catching up and the fact that AMD is paying extra coders to help them I'd say the safe bet is to use the closed now and the open in a year, maybe less. After all with each release they are closing the gap and now that even Nvidia is going OpenCL which AMD fully supports pretty much everything will end up being OpenCL accelerated.

      I can tell you that as someone that owns an E350 EEE I wouldn't have any problem with putting the E350 as the center of a low cost PC, be it Linux or Windows. Its quiet, low power, has great performance, and if Asus can make it fly like an eagle under Expressgate which is a custom Android like Linux frankly i don't see why the distro guys would have any worse time of it. Frankly I don't know why the community isn't pushing Expressgate/Splashtop because its bloody brilliant. 6 second cold starts, really nice slick task based UI, app store, its just a really nice experience. Oh and on mobile it'll give me an extra hour and a half on the battery, what's not to like?

      but considering you can often find E350 boards starting at $80 I'd say its a no brainer for a low cost Linux box, dirt cheap to buy, crazy cheap on power, nice performance, quiet as a churchmouse. Hell you can even go full fanless and with a SSD have a completely silent PC that'll do any basic office or web task you can dream up. I've actually used a couple of E350 boards as cheap upgrades for a local office building and they just love the things, you can't even hear the machine and doesn't put out any heat. Its just a really nice little unit and you can't beat a dual core that cheap.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re:HDCP and protected path is only one aspect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AMD's drivers perform significant JIT optimization of shaders. Their architecture is VLIW and they have a lot of money invested in their shader-to-VLIW compilers. OSS won't ever catch up with that speed because of that.

  19. Unfortunately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    5 years of GPU development hasn't been nearly enough; this thing still gets like 20 fps in Crysis.

  20. Which APU family is this in? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Which APU platform is this a part of?

  21. Re:um yea that shit better come with a Asain hooke by karnal · · Score: 1

    I know my basement isn't that clean - I hardly sweep my office room; but clogging with dust in a month? Holy hell.

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    Karnal