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AMD Radeon HD 7990 Released: Dual GPUs and 6G of Memory for $1000

An anonymous reader writes "Today AMD has officially unveiled its long-awaited dual-GPU Tahiti-based card. Codenamed Malta, the $1,000 Radeon HD 7990 is positioned directly against Nvidia's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690. Tom's Hardware posted the performance data. Because Fraps measures data at a stage in the pipeline before what is actually seen on-screen, they employed Nvidia's FCAT (Frame Capture Analysis Tools). ... The 690 is beating AMD's new flagship in six out of eight titles. ... AMD is bundling eight titles with every 7990, including: BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution." OpenGL performance doesn't seem too off from the competing Nvidia card, but the 7990 dominates when using OpenCL. Power management looks decent: ~375W at full load, but a nice 20W at idle (it can turn the second chip off entirely when unneeded). PC Perspective claims there are issues with Crossfire and an un-synchronized rendering pipeline that leads to a slight decrease in the actual frame rate, but that should be fixed by an updated Catalyst this summer.

122 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. The real questions is... by Jedi+Holocron · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...how fast can it mine Bitcoins.

    1. Re:The real questions is... by tokencode · · Score: 1

      Not as fast as the ASIC cards...

    2. Re:The real questions is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The ones that haven't shipped yet, or the ones that are wildly backordered?

    3. Re:The real questions is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The ASIC population is rapidly increasing with about 12,000 TH/s added in the last few weeks. Once we hit around 1500 ASICs @ 60GH/s (total network around 102TH/s) it will no longer be economically viable to mine using GPUs at all. At this point rational GPU operators will drop out. We're on target to reach this point in around June, depending on the output of the ASIC producers.

    4. Re:The real questions is... by Joce640k · · Score: 1, Troll

      At this point rational GPU operators will drop out.

      There's rational bitcoin miners?

      --
      No sig today...
    5. Re:The real questions is... by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Sounds silly but it probably wouldn't have been that hard to throw in some bitcoin optimizations, resulting in some easy sales.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    6. Re:The real questions is... by dubdays · · Score: 1

      ...how fast can it mine Bitcoins.

      For that price, it had better hash at 1 GH/s! Money, money, money, money! ....MONEY! (at least until the next crash in what will probably be--at the rate that shit is happening--the very near future :-/ )

    7. Re:The real questions is... by Spy+Handler · · Score: 2

      sure, just as there are rational people who pump-and-dump penny stocks. They don't necessarily have to have faith the product they're pumping.

  2. Oh yeah! by Krojack · · Score: 1

    I'm going to rush out and buy four of them right away.

  3. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    As long as this card will mine bitcoins and play Crysis 9 or whatever (for which they will put effort into the Windows driver) it'll sell like hotcakes.

    nVidia's drivers have gone downhill of late and they're still better than AMD's.

    --
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  4. Is it worth it? by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That card has quite impressive specs and frankly has as much horsepower as a fair number of computers that were being produced as recently as - yesterday. Trickle down tech works wonders and we will see something like this that is affordable for the masses within a few years. For that reason alone I can't knock the card and it's feature set.

    The price on this is through the roof and it makes me think that this is a waste of money for 99.9999% of gamers. If you were put in a blind test with this card and a 'mere' $500 card how many people would even be able to notice the difference? This isn't a CAD card meant for workstations and it makes me wonder what the real world benefits of the card are other than bragging rights?

    1. Re:Is it worth it? by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      This isn't a CAD card meant for workstations and it makes me wonder what the real world benefits of the card are other than bragging rights?
      Well, you are correct there. A CAD card would cost five times what this little glorified VGA adapter does.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    2. Re:Is it worth it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      As they mentioned, it can run all top games in 4k+ resolutions (either a dedicated 4k display or eyefinity configuration), something that your $500 card can't do. But yes, you don't need it to run Crysis 3 at 1920x1080

    3. Re:Is it worth it? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      True, true. These kind if deluxe GPUs (and the Intel Extreme CPU line, or the discontinued Nokia Vertu phones, for example) always have a bad value. They are a "stupid money" purchase: when you have a lot of money to burn and want to just get the best bling and be done with it. Hey, at least it keeps the economy running. ;)

    4. Re:Is it worth it? by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

      Short of using it for OpenCL at lower rates than FirePro cards or gaming across multiple high-res monitors or a numbingly high-res projector, I've got to agree. But if its generous margins help subsidize ongoing research into cards mortal humans can use and appreciate, I can't complain either.

    5. Re:Is it worth it? by Nidi62 · · Score: 2

      The price on this is through the roof and it makes me think that this is a waste of money for 99.9999% of gamers. If you were put in a blind test with this card and a 'mere' $500 card how many people would even be able to notice the difference? This isn't a CAD card meant for workstations and it makes me wonder what the real world benefits of the card are other than bragging rights?

      It essentially IS a $500 card, considering it comes with almost $500 worth of games.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    6. Re:Is it worth it? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      Is it worth it?

      Honestly? No. My personal experience has shown that dual GPUs do not pay in the end. Many problems (microstutter, needs compatible games) and performance gains are questionable (performance gain versus cost). Is better, at least to me, to buy a single-GPU card

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    7. Re:Is it worth it? by chispito · · Score: 2

      It essentially IS a $500 card, considering it comes with almost $500 worth of games.

      I can't find where TFA lists the bundled games, but I imagine if I were the target market for this card, I'd already own them. And since I'm not the target market, I'll probably buy those $500 worth of games for $50 during the next Steam blowout (and then suffer through the crappy framerate).

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    8. Re:Is it worth it? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Essentially all 'dual GPUs on a single card' products are mostly for e-peen(because of their relatively low production volume, it's pretty common to find 2x of the single GPU equivalents for rather less than the price within a short time, so they only really make sense if you are doing some absolutely nutty 4+ GPU configuration).

      However, given the ability to ('eyefinity', I think they call it) aggregate multiple monitors into one virtual monitor(to allow you to paint applications that don't understand multiple monitors natively across multiple monitors), a 6-headed card could well end up pushing some serious pixels even if you go with cheapy 1920x1080 screens. That's certainly a niche case; but you could easily be running 3 of those for only 3-$400, so it isn't really crazy money these days.

    9. Re:Is it worth it? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      I would agree a $1K GPU is largely a waste for the majority however you are missing WHY someone would even spend $1,000 on a GPU in the first place.

      Namely, I recently picked up a GTX Titan for a couple of reasons:

      * I run all* my games at 120 Hz** so I can use LightBoost*** on my Asus VG248QE monitor. (I don't care about triple monitor 5760x1080)
      * Since it is a single GPU chip I don't have to worry about microstuttering**** issues plague that ALL SLI / XFIRE cards.
      * It only uses 250W***** under full load
      * It is quiet even under full load
      * It supports CUDA 5
      * I've been tracking GPU performance & prices since 2000. GPU cards depreciate about $100/year. I expect my Titan to last 5 to 10 years before shitty mobile & laptop GPUs catch up. For my game dev I am NOT targeting the high end BUT the LOW end. I need the lowest common denominator to significantly rise.

      So before your smug comments you might actually want to TALK to a gamer and find out their _reasons_ instead of just dissing everything as some epeen -- those losers are the posers / fanbois.

      Footnotes / References:

      * Except for Path of Exile which crashes if you have LightBoost turned on !
      ** Anyone who says the human eye can't see more then 30 frames per second is full of shit -- they most likely have never even USED a 120 Hz monitor. There IS a difference between rendering at 30 Hz, 60 Hz, and 120 Hz.
      *** Asus VG278H High Speed LightBoost Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD5gjAs1A2s
      **** GPU stuttering
      http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/amd-stuttering-issues-driver-roadmap-fraps
      http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-New-Graphics-Performance-Metric
      http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-Part-3-First-Results-New-GPU-Performance-Tools
      ***** http://www.anandtech.com/show/6774/nvidias-geforce-gtx-titan-part-2-titans-performance-unveiled/15

    10. Re:Is it worth it? by onyxruby · · Score: 1

      So before your smug comments you might actually want to TALK to a gamer and find out their _reasons_ instead of just dissing everything as some epeen -- those losers are the posers / fanbois.

      Who's being smug about anything? I never criticized gamers or spending money on it as a hobby. I've certainly spent a decent chunk over the years for my own gaming. I have no issue with that and your effectively putting words in my mouth. As for talking to gamers, I think it's a safe bet that Slashdot has many gamers who will and have more than happily share their opinion.

      My issue is with the price, it isn't a CAD card you can easily spend several times that cost for work. My point is that unless your in a very rare configuration (such configurations were suggested by other gamers that responded to me) you simply wont benefit from this card at that price. My issue is with with wasting money for no return (this is well beyond the point of diminishing returns for double the cost), not with gaming.

    11. Re:Is it worth it? by belatucadros3918 · · Score: 1

      a card with 1gb of RAM is generally good enough for CAD, it's the system processor and RAM that really make the difference, in my autocad and solid works experience

      solidworks is highly CPU bound, yeah.

    12. Re:Is it worth it? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      Titan is a good choice, but way to expensive on my country. Mind you, here he costs almost $2,000!

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    13. Re:Is it worth it? by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      Thank you... I would love to get a dedicated 4K display, but the cost is still a bit prohibitive.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  5. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by tstrunk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since AMD drivers are total garbage, why bother?
    Might as well stick with a card I can actually use.

    Yeah, shill on.
    Windows Drivers are decent nowadays. OpenCL works better on AMD in my experience (some __constant memory bugs were just fixed recently for nvidia, see here: http://bloerg.net/2012/07/19/heterogenous-computing.html ). The Tomb Raider hair benchmark, which worked with DirectCompute better on AMD than nvidia also shows that for nvidia only CUDA is the prime citizen ( http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/3/6/tomb-raider-amd-touts-tressfx-hair-as-nvidia-apologizes-for-poor-experience.aspx ).
    FGLRX is ok too, but lags behind nvidia, when looking at the support for new xorgs.
    If you consider that AMD also provides some open source support, while nvidia provides none, for me the choice between them is a clear one.

    Even if it's not clear for you "Might as well stick with a card I can actually use" is a clear flame.

  6. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I cannot believe people still complain about this. In the last five years I've built many a system, some with Nvidia cards and some with AMD cards and frankly I've never seen any serious graphics issues with either brand. The biggest issue I've seen has actually been overheating and that has far more to do with standard case design and default fan settings on the cards...

    --
    we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
  7. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Baloroth · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since AMD drivers are total garbage, why bother? Might as well stick with a card I can actually use.

    You know, I keep seeing people say this, yet the only manufacturer I've ever had driver trouble with was Nvidia, on both Linux and Windows. So, you know, YMMV.

    --
    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  8. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    Even run them in linux?
    The AMD drivers are crashy crap last I tried.

  9. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    Shill?
    The same rig that has the Nvidia card is running an AMD cpu. I would love to make it all AMD, but their linux drivers blow last I tried.

  10. Re:$1000 for a video card? by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I doubt many people living in "mom's basement" have $1000 to put into a video card. Realistically the people that grew up playing games has continued to go up, and in particular a lot of people who want a video card like this are going to be older (30-45) anyways as a lot of the younger crowd is trending more towards tablet and mobile games.

    To a lot of people in that 30 to 45 age bracket $1,000 isn't a whole heck of a lot to spend on a hobby.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  11. GPGPU by godrik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    many slashdotters points to the extreme price of that graphic card for gamers. I am more interested in the GPGU performance. The comparison uses OpenCL to be able to compare against nvidia's hardware. But I feel like OpenCL is a second class citizen for nvidia. How much the performance difference would be using a carefully crafted CUDA implementation on the nvidia hardware?

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

      Try googling your question. It has been shown, several times, that if you don't care about portability you can write OpenCL programs that are as fast as CUDA programs on nVidia cards. The perceived benefits of CUDA are due to the fact that you know your target hardware and can optimize for that - there is no other "magic" behind it. If an OpenCL application has carefully optimized code for each possible hardware it will be as fast as CUDA. It is just that OpenCL gives you the option not to do that.

    2. Re:GPGPU by Shinobi · · Score: 1

      AMD is decent if you fit into some very specific memory access patterns... If you don't, they slow down to a crawl.

      Nvidia with CUDA is far more versatile, and not to mention MUCH more solid drivers(and don't need X under Linux, unlike AMD....)

  12. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Xest · · Score: 1

    That's a small scale personal anecdote though.

    I can't speak for ATI in recent years, but certainly between 2000 and 2007 when I worked for an organisation with over 6,000 systems, ATI drivers were a consistent pain in the arse and consistently caused support headaches. Perhaps surprisingly, the only other driver issues that came close were HP printer drivers, which for some time would commonly cause Word to crash in print preview. ATI was definitely a major outlier in terms of high number of support issues caused on this pretty large sample size of systems (that were actually split pretty evenly in terms of graphics between ATI, nVidia, and Intel).

    We did have nVidia issues too, but they weren't anything out of the ordinary relative to faults with Intel graphics and other hardware.

    Maybe things have changed since then, but certainly in that era there seemed little question that ATI had major quality control issues with it's drivers and those issues persisted for at least the full 7 years I worked at that organisation.

  13. opencl performance and the future of AMD by chevelleSS · · Score: 2

    The opencl performance really speaks for the direction AMD is going with their APU's in the future. The design of this chip will be directly imbedded into AMD's next generation Kaveri APU where the GPU and CPU share the same cache, which should allow all sorts of crazy performance optimizations in everything from Programming languages http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-and-Oracle-Team-Up-for-Heterogeneous-Computing-on-Java-295882.shtml and databases: http://pbbakkum.com/db/ I know the database link deals with sqlite and CUDA, but that should be SLOW compared to what an AMD Kaveri APU will be able to perform as the latency from a CPU operation to a GPU operation should next to nothing.

  14. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by FreonTrip · · Score: 2

    The only issue I've run into with the Radeon 7750 I snagged last year for my home theater PC has nothing to do with 3D rendering. For some reason, there is a very occasional glitch with the card's HDMI audio during video playback that causes a weird, harsh, and intermittent kind of sound artifacting, and after a couple of seconds the audio rolls off into silence... and then goes back to normal. If the problem persists after a fresh install onto mostly new hardware (goodbye Athlon X2 5050e, hello Ivy Bridge Celeron), I'm just giving up on the HDMI audio altogether and going back to a mini-stereo cable. Overall I'm pretty happy, but that's an irritating unpolished edge on what's otherwise been a terrific bargain and a reliable performer. It sure as hell didn't make me eager to grab a Radeon for my Linux workstation...

  15. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

    Well, intel drivers are stable but crappy too. As example, I can even set gamma to a value less than 1 on my netbook, forcing me to use the gamma correction from Windows (with some problems)

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  16. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 1

    Actually I have, and the Nvidia drivers did just as bad in my experience. Neither set of binary blob drivers wanted to install and function in 3D. Having said that I haven't used anything newer than a Radeon HD 6970. Maybe it's not true for some newer cards, but my linux 3D experience was a non starter.

    --
    we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
  17. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

    You can run the open source AMD drivers, they lag behind somewhat in 3d performance (and i dont believe they have opencl support at all) but they are a lot more stable, probably still outperform intel, and continue to support older cards which the binary drivers have dropped support for.

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  18. Re:$1000 for a video card? by EmagGeek · · Score: 2

    >> To a lot of people in that 30 to 45 age bracket $1,000 isn't a whole heck of a lot to spend on a hobby.

    Never been married, have you?

  19. Re:For What? by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    You don't really need this card for anything, but I would assume that 1920x1080@120Hz gaming with full framerate needs a lot of muscle.

  20. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    I have not had problems with the Nvidia blobs in a long time.

    I can't wait until intel graphics is good enough, too bad that will mean I stop buying AMD cpus, but that is life.

  21. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by poetmatt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    so last you tried was 3 years ago?

    they've improved drastically, even if most linux graphic drivers are far from perfect in wine (but pretty good overall).

  22. Re:$1000 for a video card? by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Of course if you want to be this much on the bleeding edge it's not $1000 once every five years, it's every time there's something a little bit better and sell the old one. You pay a huge premium for getting *the best* of anything simply because it's the best. It is a lot of chest thumping and boasting that you have the most powerful graphics card around, both by the producers and the buyers. There's a certain "Why?" factor if the person doesn't match the equipment, like the 50yos riding carbon bikes to save one pound while they're twenty pounds overweight.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  23. Re:$1000 for a video card? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Never been married, have you?

    Don't assume that everyone else chooses a life partner as poorly as you. It's entirely possible to be married to a partner who (a) won't resent your hobbies ans (b) has his/her own too.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  24. Re:Multi-gpu scaling is a farse. by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

    I'm thinking the same thing as you. It's too much work to do to get a game running on multi GPU and still there are problems there is no way to solve (microstutter between them).

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  25. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

    nVidia's drivers have gone downhill of late and they're still better than AMD's.

    Does anyone other than Intel actually have stable graphics card drivers? Is there a way to get drivers from AMD or nVidia which turn off the hackish "optimizations" and accept slightly lower FPS in exchange for more stability?

    Sure!

    Step 1. Choose the AMD or Nvidia card you want.

    Step 2. Take the price of that card and add ~$1000.

    Step 3. Consult list of 'FirePro'(AMD) or 'Quadro'(Nvidia) cards.

    Step 4. Purchase the card whose price most closely matches the result you calculated in Step 2.

    Congratulations, you now have access to drivers compiled without the -who-gives-a-fuck-about-artefacts-this-is-worth-150-3dmarks and -crashes-under-edge-cases-but-those-overclocker-kiddies-with-bargain-RAM-won't-know-the-difference flags enabled!

  26. 375W is good power management? by DarthVain · · Score: 2, Insightful

    LOL, so at full load you will need pretty much a secondary PSU to run the damn thing... really decent power management I guess! Though I guess considering the stupid 1000$ price tag, you probably don't care about buying a 200$ 1200-1500W PSU I suppose.

    Then again if you want to run a crossfire configuration, that's a 750W under load minimum. As a few HD and a high end processor, well you are hitting some PSU limits!

    That said if I had unlimited money I might buy it, though even then probably not as it is such a waste.

    Also htf did they pick the name "Malta"? I mean at least nVidia had the good sense to call their penis "Titan" for gods sake!

    1. Re:375W is good power management? by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

      LOL, so at full load you will need pretty much a secondary PSU to run the damn thing... really decent power management I guess! Though I guess considering the stupid 1000$ price tag, you probably don't care about buying a 200$ 1200-1500W PSU I suppose.

      For $1000 they should throw in a new power supply as part of the package.

      But seriously, there are stories all over the place about PC sales declining and AMD is losing money --- and this is what they do? A $1000 video card? Even if there's a huge profit margin on this thing, how many of them are they really going to sell?

    2. Re:375W is good power management? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      Ummm.... the 7990 is already a crossfire GPU. In case you weren't paying attention, this is a DUAL-GPU card, which means while its single-GPU counterparts might use ~270w (7970 GPU) this one ends up being more efficient since everything is on the same board, whereas you could just CrossFire two 7970 cards and end up with over 500w max load power consumption.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    3. Re:375W is good power management? by armanox · · Score: 1

      While they won't sell many, they won't produce too many either.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    4. Re:375W is good power management? by DarthVain · · Score: 1

      Ah, I guess that would make sense, sorta, insomuch as a 1000$ video card makes sense. Though at the same time if what you say is true (and I didn't RTFA), then really this is more like bulk buying two 500$ video cards, which realistically have been around for long time as a "reasonable" price point. I think the old nVidia Geforce 500TI started at 500$ and that was like 13 years ago or something.

      Anyway there will be fools who want to "quad" these things out, so 750W would still apply. Regardless 375W is still stupid. Maybe not as stupid as 270Wx2, but still stupid.

    5. Re:375W is good power management? by DarthVain · · Score: 1

      Someone mentioned to me that these are already crossfire, so you are really buying two 500$ cards, which isn't as crazy really.

      That said, these things were never meant to generate sales, only media and "prestige".

      I liken it to car companies making racing cars, even those they only sell a few and loose money on everyone. However for the rest of us shmucks that buy the 30,000$ car that has that race car pedigree... i.e. AMD or nVidia want to prove them against each other at the very highest end, hoping that people will buy into the idea that, because my 200$ card might use some vaguely similar technology that their's might be somehow more powerful than the others.

      What most people don't seem to get is that video cards are produced in such a way as to limit their functionality and features purposefully for the only reason of hitting different markets and price points. The same way CPU's are/were binned, and OC born. Disconnecting stuff simply to disable it to make it not compete with a more expensive version. Other than is certain extreem examples, the manufacturing costs differences are likely pretty minimal (modified by RAM size, but usually only 1-2GB anyway, or a high bin rate of a certain die size perhaps).

      Anyway, as alluded to, it is penis waving to generate sales of shittier cards.

    6. Re:375W is good power management? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "I think the old nVidia Geforce 500TI started at 500$ and that was like 13 years ago or something."

      Back in 2000, nVidia was on GeForce 2 (right after the GeForce 256.)

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    7. Re:375W is good power management? by Iniamyen · · Score: 1

      Good point here, I wonder when they'll start shipping video card with external power supplies...

      Wouldn't they basically be selling a game console at that point?

    8. Re:375W is good power management? by JDG1980 · · Score: 1

      Good point here, I wonder when they'll start shipping video card with external power supplies...

      In their last days, 3DFX actually had a product which was going to do this, the Voodoo5 6000 with a "Voodoo Volts" external power supply. This 4-GPU card was never released because the company went broke first.

    9. Re:375W is good power management? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 1

      You do realise that this is already a Crossfire card? It has two GPUs, so that's 187.5w per GPU + 3GB memory.

      --
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  27. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by JDG1980 · · Score: 1

    I did a Google search and it appears that the AMD open-source video drivers are only available for Linux and for an obscure "embedded" version of Windows. Is there a version for standard Windows 7 that I'm overlooking?

  28. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    I can even set gamma to a value less than 1 on my netbook, forcing me to use the gamma correction from Windows (with some problems)

    What happens when you don't do that?

    (Do user-choosable errors even count as problems?)

    --
    No sig today...
  29. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Bigbutt · · Score: 2

    Still complaining about my AMD cards. The drivers cause the system to bluescreen and boot several times before the system steadies down enough to come up. Once up it seems to be good, although enabling crossfire causes the system to crash and I can't even get into single user mode without opening the box and removing the ribbon cables.

    So yea, AMD drivers still suck.

    (and you can flamebait it as much as you like, it doesn't change the fact that it does blue screen).

    [John]

    --
    Shit better not happen!
  30. Re:$1000 for a video card? by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 1

    Never been married, have you?

    Don't assume that everyone else chooses a life partner as poorly as you. It's entirely possible to be married to a partner who (a) won't resent your hobbies ans (b) has his/her own too.

    I can't say that my experiences are typical, but among people I know, I don't know any married people who are hardcore gamers. The only people I know who play games a lot are unmarried. Anyway, what are we talking about here? It's one thing to have a spouse who doesn't care if you play 1 or 2 hours a week (especially if you're not telling us that you play while that spouse is gone) and something else entirely to find the 1 in 1000 or fewer who don't care if you play 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week.

  31. Re:$1000 for a video card? by chispito · · Score: 1

    >> To a lot of people in that 30 to 45 age bracket $1,000 isn't a whole heck of a lot to spend on a hobby.

    Never been married, have you?

    I'll one-up you: my wife and I have a four-month-old son. A $3 Android game feels like splurging! But articles like this remind me that the only things I've had to give up are just "stuff," and I don't miss them.

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  32. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    You can always force the correct mode, assuming you are not running windows.

    Modifying xorg to deal with lack of DID is pretty normal.

  33. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Khyber · · Score: 2

    "The only issue I have with Radeon drivers is their inability to deal with unusual monitor situations, especially HDTVs."

    In my experience, both nVidia and AMD suck at their HDMI output to HDTVs. Even after you disable overscan and adjust other crap, the image is still off by a couple of pixels.

    Never a problem with VGA, though.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  34. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You might check if it's a known issue with your 'downstream' devices, since HDMI has all sorts of potential gotchas, especiall if it's using HDCP.

    Just my 2 cents though.

  35. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by armanox · · Score: 1

    What games are you playing that don't support multi-GPU and multi-CPU? Most newer games that I've played support both.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  36. Re:Multi-gpu scaling is a farse. by Khyber · · Score: 1

    Gee, if only 3Dfx were still around, since their multi-GPU configs didn't give a fuck which game you ran, as long as the engine supported 3Dfx GLide, you were golden to use multiple GPUs.

    And no microstutter.

    And an actual 100% increase in frame rates if you added another card.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  37. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

    Okay, more details. The standard gamma is "1", I like to use "0.75" on my desktop (which uses a Nvidia GPU). But on the netbook - which uses Intel GPU - the gamma can only be set above 1 (eg: 1.5, 1.8) and never below 1 as I can do on the desktop.

    As gamma "1" is too much bright and washed for my liking so I have to get around using the gamma control from Windows, but it has some problems.

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  38. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I've been wondering about that. The configuration's pretty vanilla: the Radeon uses an HDMI cable to connect to a late 2011-era Philips HDTV that hasn't given a pinch of trouble otherwise, and there aren't amps or optical audio to complicate the pipeline any at this point. While the glitch appears during video playback, it's surfaced in both Netflix (where I'd expect Silverlight to be a possible culprit of a DRM snafu) and VLC (where I definitely wouldn't). Fingers crossed hoping the issue disappears going into a clean install, and fingers crossed extra-hard that AMD finally releases the first official, non-beta driver in months soon...

  39. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Synerg1y · · Score: 1

    Right, the people that are complaining aren't the brightest tools in the shed if you catch my drift... what i've come across is sometimes a version of a driver will be less than stable on either OEM, but so far I've been able to switch between 1 version back stable & beta and find a compromise where the card is stable. My experience is from using the cards for gaming, I've never had any issues running the basic OS on any driver from either OEM. And of course, you never know when a game update can introduce an incompatibility or bug, so even then it's not always the graphics card's fault for a crash.

    In regards to heat, I used to fix this with a little $10 PCI turbo fan from newegg that pushed out the hot air I can't find a link to anymore, as with all things that actually work and are cost effective, it's been replaced by a bunch of flimsy fans that doesn't look like it will work nearly as well on the site.

  40. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Applekid · · Score: 1

    I can even set gamma to a value less than 1 on my netbook, forcing me to use the gamma correction from Windows (with some problems)

    What happens when you don't do that?

    (Do user-choosable errors even count as problems?)

    Why offer the feature if it's stripped, gimped, and only partially functional? Unless it's ammunition for the Feature Checkbox Wars.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  41. Re:Does it run on free software? by TWiTfan · · Score: 1

    Well what video card do you use then? Please, do share.

    --
    The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
  42. Re:$1000 for a video card? by Bigbutt · · Score: 1

    Anything's possible. It does seem harder to locate a life partner that doesn't resent your hobbies though, especially as hobbies aren't static and interests change.

    [John]

    --
    Shit better not happen!
  43. Re:$1000 for a video card? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Anyway, what are we talking about here?

    I assumed were talking about spending $1000 on a hobby.

    fewer who don't care if you play 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week.

    Well yeah. I think spending that much time on any hobby would mean spending not all that much with your spouse. I suppose it would raise the question as to why you don't want to spend the time with them.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  44. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But he said most games, since that literally covers every game from Pong to Defiance, he can safely say that it is true.

  45. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    Steam is available on Linux. Wine works fairly well also.

    Believe it or not, some folks do game on Linux.

  46. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Osiris+Ani · · Score: 1

    (Do user-choosable errors even count as problems?)

    Of course they do. There's even a specific category for that.

  47. Re:$1000 for a video card? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    It does seem harder to locate a life partner that doesn't resent your hobbies though, especially as hobbies aren't static and interests change.

    Do you resent your partner's hobbies?

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  48. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Thor+Ablestar · · Score: 1

    I just had enough good experience with ATI long time ago in a galaxy far away that has ossified my upper hemispheres to extrapolate that Radeons will be good forever. I couldn't imagine that one team (X) will just require KMS without any consultation with other team (FreeBSD) that should implement it.

  49. Re:frap frap frap by Applekid · · Score: 1

    Who cares about the performance of the card BEFORE it hits the screen? If it is faster on-screen than the competitor, then it should be considered faster, because what other judgement could be made by the user?

    Because it tells you how much extra headroom is available in rendering that screen, and if all the cards render current games at monitor refresh speeds, you can't really gauge how fast they are with respect to each other. Think of it as futureproofing.

    Then consider futureproofing as a scam anyway, because no matter how "futureproof" it is, some new feature or extension will come out that won't be supported, even if it required no extra silicon.

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
  50. How are the drivers? by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 1

    When I was looking for a new computer, I was between the NVidia 680 and the AMD 7950. People were having horrendous problems with 7950 performance on some popular games. It was bad enough that the choice was a no-brainer for me. I'd be interested to see what any current owners might say.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
  51. The PC market collapses as... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The PC market collapses as the major players charge more for PC parts than ever before. For instance, Nvidia and AMD both act as if they are trying their best to kill the discrete GPU market.

    This 'new' (actually available for many months already from OEMs) 7990 card is massively overpriced, for instance. It uses two mid-end sized graphics chips and a bunch of GDDR memory that costs a fraction of what it once did when first introduced. It uses a truly horrific method to combine the rendering of two separate subsystems to one output, requiring constant driver updates to function reasonably with new games.

    AMD will drop driver support of this card once their new chips are out at the end of this year. Sure, they'll CLAIM the new drivers work, but AMD will no longer be fixing 7990 crossfire performance for games released after 2013. For these games, the 7990 will act like a single chip part.

    With less than a year of useful life (if you intend to continue playing newly released games), the desirability of this card is lower than most of you realise. Even at 500 dollars, the card would be badly over-priced against where prices should be, given the real cost of the build. Sadly, Nvidia and AMD have worked in combination to drive prices to an historic high. This in turn has created a collapse of demand, made worse by the fact that most PC games are efficient ports from now obsolete consoles, and run well on even old/low-end graphics hardware.

    When Sony's super-idealised PC based console arrives later this year, even die-hard PC-gaming fans will consider switching to the PS4. When coded to the metal, the PS4 will run far better than any current high-end windows based PC which uses a SINGLE chip GPU solution. This for a console Sony will be selling for less (probably much less) than 450 dollars.

    AMD is in the Sony too, but certainly can't get even a tiny fraction of the margin it so greedily makes with the 7990. There is a middle-ground between these two extremes of margin and profit per GPU, but neither AMD nor Nvidia seems to wish to find it.

    1. Re:The PC market collapses as... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      No one will switch to PS4 for graphics, but only because PC games have functionally dried up, with most major games recently being console-oriented shit (two weapons at once, squeese trigger fast to break free, etc.) like Diablo III, Star Wars The Old Republic, and Dragon Age II.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:The PC market collapses as... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Oh and the "new" Duke Nukem, said bastardization christening this modern era of former PC franchises being raped into console markets, with limited console-style gameplay, then backported to the PC to suck up nostalgia dollars from suckers.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  52. Re:Come again? by The+Pea! · · Score: 1

    There are many more cheaper cards than expensive cards. It's nice to have the choice, yes?

  53. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

    What games are you playing that don't support multi-GPU and multi-CPU? Most newer games that I've played support both.

    There are a few exceptions that outright keel over and die(Looking at you, Fallout 3, why would a game ever have to not hard-lock every few minutes on machines with more than two cores?); but the real issue is not 'support' in the strict 'is compatible, won't crash horribly' sense; but the 'actually achieves meaningful speedup if you throw more cores at the problem' sense.

    Most anything gets a small boost from the second core; because that at least leaves room for everything that isn't the game to stop contending for the same core that the game is hammering on; but the list of games that continue to gain as you add cores(and the degree of performance increase per additional core) is shorter and less exciting.

    Multi GPU, similarly, has mostly outgrown the bad old days where it was substantially more likely to crash to desktop if the driver didn't have special shims for the exact game you were playing; but the linearity of the performance scaling as you add GPUs often leaves something to be desired.

  54. Re:$1000 for a video card? by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

    *whoosh*

  55. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by BlackSnake112 · · Score: 1

    And 2007 was 6 years ago now. The newest cards have always had issues with Linux. It did not matter who they were from. I usually go by the second newest generation of cards for Linux. Actually I look at last gen for my gaming use as well. Usually the last generation (6000 series for AMD in this case) has been out. The drivers have ha the bugs worked out. The cards are more stable for any OS use. I do not game on my Linux systems. The AMD 6670 I have works fine for what I am doing with it. I am not taxing the Linux system. It is basically a regular desktop with a little coding use and DVD ripping. The second account is used when people visit and they want a computer to use. The Linux machine is the one that is connected to the TV. I can't speak for sound over the HDMI cable. I have the computer's sound go straight to the surround sound system. The picture is fine. I have all my movies ripped and we watch them using the Linux system. I never get tired of the look on people's faces when I tell them the computer is running Linux not windows or OSX. I have had a few converts to Linux since for most of their needs Linux works fine.

    On a side note I need to check on blue ray on Linux again. Be good to watch/rip blue ray movies. I do have all the movies that I rip. I just happen to have friends with little kids. They like to throw the disks around when we are not looking. I have picked up the pieces of a disk a number of times. Ripping the movies saves me from having to buy the movie again.

  56. Re:Multi-gpu scaling is a farse. by 0123456 · · Score: 1

    Gee, if only 3Dfx were still around, since their multi-GPU configs didn't give a fuck which game you ran, as long as the engine supported 3Dfx GLide, you were golden to use multiple GPUs.

    Gee, if you ran an antiquated, crippled API like Glide on a modern GPU, they'd perform just as well.

    I worked on dual-GPU drivers years ago and the render performance was roughly 2x over a single GPU. The problem was, as soon as the game did anything complex which required one GPU to read data from the other, the performance dropped to 0.002X as we had to stall the pipeline so it could read that data. The end result was that we added a huge amount of complexity to the driver for a small performance increase.

    Glide doesn't let a game do those things, so it's never a problem.

  57. Re:Multi-gpu scaling is a farse. by Khyber · · Score: 1

    I understand very well, and quite honestly, all of what's being done today could've been done ten years ago if people knew how to efficiently program and we didn't have shit like software patents.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  58. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

    Because the feature works on Nvidia and ATI, and works well? And, because is usefull for me (standard 2.2 gamma is too washed to me)? Well, I learned my lesson. The next time I buy a netbook, I will only buy if the gpu is Nvidia or ATI.

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  59. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds like your PSU is inadequate or you have some other kind of hardware issue.

    If you are running Vista/7/8 then the graphics drivers crashing should not blue-screen your machine. They run in user space now for that very reason. Blue screens are an indicate that something else is wrong, most likely with your hardware.

    In fact even before Vista in my experience most blue screens were due to hardware problems. Back in the 98 days drivers were terrible, but when Microsoft introduced their certification scheme things really did get a lot better.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  60. Price/performance isn't there by Control-Z · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cutting edge is cool but I always go for the best $150 card I can buy. That gets you a good last-gen card that will still be good for years of service.

  61. 'Declining PC sales' == half-myth by DrYak · · Score: 1

    But seriously, there are stories all over the place about PC sales declining and AMD is losing money --- and this is what they do? A $1000 video card? Even if there's a huge profit margin on this thing, how many of them are they really going to sell?

    That's what they are actually going to sell the best.

    PC sales aren't declining because suddenly the public has decided to massively run away from PCs.
    PC sales are declining simply because what people have is "good enough". They has an old PC or laptop, and they aren't going to buy a new one anytime soon because it still does the work. They prefere to concentrate their money on other stuff (buying portable devices like phone and tablet, which get completely obsolete very quickly, in fact sometimes even before the expiration of the plan they were bought with).

    If you create just mid-range graphic cards you are targeting a very vast market, but you're aren't going to sell much of them, because that vast market isn't interested in upgrading, its needs are already fulfilled by the previous mid-range you sold to them.

    If you create ultra-high-end graphics cards, you're targetting a much smaller niche (hardcore gamers who ask to crazy insane resolutions and framrates, and scientists wanting to do number crunching. And bitcoin miners, too), but this smaller niche market is pretty well motivated to upgrade their hardware on a regular basis.
    And AMD covers pretty well these use-cases. They hardware is more-or-less equivalent game-wise (well you could spend a long time arguing frame fluidity, "hardware-vs-practical fps", "runts and drops", etc... Or whether it is completely idiotic to run with Vsync disabled, or whether all this debate about 'frame-pacing' will still matter now that Carmack and other are pressuring 'conditionnal Vsync' into standards)
    And due to the shift from VLIW MIMD to RISC SIMD architecture, the number-crunching scientific (and bitcoin mining) communities are more that satisfied.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  62. Warning by puddingebola · · Score: 1

    Warning: if the cooling system fails, the cores may burn a hole through the chassis as well as the floor and all the way to the center of the earth.

  63. Re:$1000 for a video card? by znanue · · Score: 1

    agreed!

    I think of that crowd as weekend gamers, and they can spend more on it than teenagers and unemployed or poorly employed twenty somethings! I'm really in the metamorphosis stage from the first group to the second. I can increasingly afford more, increasingly spend more, and yet have less time to play.

  64. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by 0123456 · · Score: 1

    Bizarre. I just run the latest driver and... games just work.

  65. Re:$1000 for a video card? by Cormacus · · Score: 1

    For the sake of anecdotal breadth I will volunteer that I know two married couples, one in the 30-35 age bracket and another in the 50-55 age bracket, who both play a lot of WoW. You may not consider WoW to be 'hardcore' gaming, but they do spend a lot of time doing it and one of the reasons that works for those couples is that both people enjoy logging those hours.

    --
    Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
  66. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by FreonTrip · · Score: 1

    The problem isn't just surfacing for DTS Master HD films - my Blu-ray player connected via HDMI to the same TV grunts through everything fine, and the audio problems have happened with AAC and Dolby Digital from Netflix streaming as well. We'll see what happens after I rebuild the system.

  67. Re:$1000 for a video card? by dywolf · · Score: 1

    Who are you to judge how I spend my money?
    You're just jealous of the level of my disposal income.

    (That said, I wouldnt buy this card at 1K, because I already have those games...so at ~55$ a game, this card is overpriced by about $440)

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  68. Bundled games by dywolf · · Score: 1

    Since I already have 6 of those games, and don't want the other 2, I wouldn't pay 1k$ for this card.
    By my math (~55$ per game), that's 440$ of games I don't need. $352 if assume a 25% markup.
    Thus, I would buy an OEM bundle of the card, for between $550 - $650.
    Makes sense to me.

    (Ya, I know they get paid to include the games in the bundle...that's not my point)

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  69. Re:7 Titles. by Salamande · · Score: 2

    It actually is a standalone title.

  70. Skip this one by __aardcx5948 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Massive coil whine issues. No matter of HSF replacement or chassis sound proofing/dampening will get rid of it, the coil whine will be the loudest part of your computer when you're playing a game.

    How can AMD release a 1000 dollar card that has such a massive issue? The dual GPU ASUS card did not have this problem.

  71. Re:$1000 for a video card? by MBGMorden · · Score: 1

    Exactly. I'm 31 myself. I still enjoy gaming - quite a bit when I get a chance, but realistically I can only play very occasionally on weekends and I might play through 3-4 games per year. I don't personally buy $1000 graphics cards, but I have several other hobbies (I shoot a lot of competitive pistol matches, and I'm a private pilot) where dropping $1,000 every other year or so would seem pretty cheap in comparison.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  72. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Mike+Frett · · Score: 1

    I only use AMD GFX in my Linux boxes. Can't say I've had a single issue using the stable branch. Nvidia on the other hand, I've had too many issues. I'm guessing it all depends on what other components are in your box, not everything works in perfect harmony together. My best luck is with Asus and AMD 6670, compared with the almost impossible to use GT240 on Linux. Both of those cards have similar performance by the way and are from some of my comparisons.

  73. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by TJamieson · · Score: 1

    FWIW, while FreeBSD does not yet have KMS, it is definitely being worked on. I think the goal is to have KMS entirely running on BSD so all these video drivers can work there too. It's unfortunate that the BSDs are effectively held back now by this, but the driver model did necessitate a change. Devs had wrung out all they could out of the old-style drivers.

    --
    For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
  74. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by TJamieson · · Score: 1

    Isn't that more of a problem with the circuitry inside the TV? I remember reading a bunch of stuff by mjg about how the EDID and such inside TVs are a complete joke, if present at all. One anecdote he listed was a 32" 720p-class TV with a Thinkpad (yes, Thinkpad) 4:3 EDID.

    --
    For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
  75. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Bigbutt · · Score: 1

    Corsair 750W CMPSU-750TX power supply. In monitoring the system using the UPS software, it never gets much above 200W power usage even when gaming (can't speak to boot up though). I've sent the cards back and they've been returned as not having a problem. I've gone through various driver versions, some of which don't let the system come up at all and I have to downrev using ccleaner and other tools to completely wipe out the ati drivers. This has been happening on XP Pro and then Windows 7. The bluescreen does occur and shows the ati driver as being at fault, not to say it's not blowing chunks because of something else of course.

    I recently came into a different system and intend on putting the ATI cards in it to see if it has problems as well. Different motherboard, etc just the video cards to be swapped out.

    [John]

    --
    Shit better not happen!
  76. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 1

    They don't; they dual boot. Means they tinker with Linux and use Windows when they need to get anything done (or play games).

    Which then leads to the question: why do they care of the 3D performance under Linux sucks? If you're tinkering with Linux -- or using it as a server, dev platform, etc. -- and not using it for Linux gaming, it's kinda irrelevant. Use the bundled 2D drivers and be done with it.

    --
    In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  77. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 1

    Believe it or not, some folks do game on Linux.

    Here's the results of a recent Steam hardware survey from December 2012:

    Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit - 0.29%
    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 64 bit - 0.26%
    Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS - 0.13%
    Ubuntu 12.10 - 0.12%

    So all in all, the Steam Linux usage is just at about 1% with Windows platforms dominating about 95% of this gaming platform. It takes considerable expense for AMD and nVidia to crank out drivers for these platforms. The economic rewards for satisfying the needs of less than 1% of the gaming market simply don't make any sense. If you want to game in Linux, don't blame the hardware companies for ignoring you and the other five or six people in the world gaming with you.

    --
    In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  78. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

    Even 1 percent of steam is a lot more than 5 or 6 folks.

    The steam console will change these numbers considerably.

  79. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Khyber · · Score: 1

    I have zero issues getting a proper EDID off of my Samsung 1080p TV in either Windows or Linux. It's a problem directly with the firmware or software of the GPUs. The PS3 uses the HDMI flawlessly, as does my prosumer camera.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  80. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Yeah... To be honest if you are using ccleaner and other unspecified tools to uninstall the drivers it's no wonder your system is unstable.

    Look, most people don't have this problem, so you need to figure out why you do. It must be something about the systems you are trying. Faulty RAM? Some common bit of "system cleaner" software breaking things? Crap anti-virus software?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  81. Re:$1000 for a video card? by vux984 · · Score: 2

    Of course if you want to be this much on the bleeding edge it's not $1000 once every five years, it's every time there's something a little bit better and sell the old one

    typically, something like that is going to be annual, and not much more often than that. Plus they can recoup a decent amount reselling it. A gtx590 will still go for $350-450 on ebay.

  82. Re:Does it run on free software? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Who needs a video card? He just needs something simple that runs emacs, which can then run any liberated software he needs.

  83. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by TJamieson · · Score: 1

    http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/8705.html

    That's the link I was thinking of. I was slightly off too; a commenter had the Thinkpad EDID issue, and it was set to a 5:4 resolution on a 720p display.

    --
    For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
  84. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    well I have been MR NVIDIA since the rivaTNT2, and my machines currently run a AMD6870 and a AMD7950, they offered more bang for the buck and I am very happy with their respective performances.

    Drivers? I have had no issues with windows, linux? dont care, dont use it anymore, besides whats linux going to use it for? semi transparent widgets? freeciv and frozen bubble dont even tax a 10 year old intel card.

  85. Wow, 1,000 dollars? by Zencyde · · Score: 1

    I got a 3 gig Direct CU II, 7970 (7890? I don't remember, doesn't matter) that's running on 5 screens. I bought this thing almost a year ago for a little over 400 dollars. I can't see 1,000 dollars justifying it. Wouldn't that 6 gigs be split to an effective 2 gigs? Isn't this essentially just SLI? Either way, at over 10 million pixels I get by without an issue. I leave anti-aliasing off (who would need it? unless it's FXAA, which I leave on) and, again, I don't get any serious slowdown from it. This card seems like it's designed for a crowd with more money than sense.

    --
    What day is it? Could you please tell me?
  86. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by Khyber · · Score: 1

    They might want to check their systems themselves if they have any SecuROM shit installed.

    That happened when I got Spore Creature Creator. As soon as it was installed, my display shit itself and went to 1600x1200 (it's a native 1920x1080) and refused to work properly until I wiped the system clean and re-installed Windows.

    This is in fact listed in my old lawsuit against Electronic Arts.

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    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  87. Re:$1000 for a video card? by dwywit · · Score: 1

    There's more to graphics processing than games, you know....
     
    I'll wait to see if Adobe certifies this card for Premiere Pro/After Effects. The difference between software rendering (i.e. not having a decent/certified GPU) and hardware rendering (a certified card with CUDA, memory and bandwidth) means that a card like this could pay for itself in a short period - maybe two or three projects.

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    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  88. Re:$1000 for a video card? by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

    No, target demographic for this is late teens, early 20s: people with more money than sense, an expendable income and few actual expenses.

    Sorry, $1000 will buy a lot, still. I'm at the lower end of that demographic and make really good money. I used to spend a fair amount - a decade ago - on stuff like this. But today? No way, I'm too busy. And as an investment, unless I can make, oh, $3 a day bitcoin mining with it, there's absolutely no point - because that's about how fast it depreciates in resale value, if not faster.

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    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  89. Re:The drivers still suck, so why bother? by cas2000 · · Score: 1

    nvidia and amd don't release linux drivers for gamers.

    they release them for video production companies (who almost exclusively use linux render farms) and for high-end massively parallel number-crunching / research applications that use CUDA or OpenCL.

    enabling gaming on linux is just a side-effect.

    (this may change with steambox or android game consoles, but even so it's still very much a seconday purpose)