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AMD's Radeon R9 290X Review
Billly Gates writes "AMD may have trouble in their CPU department with Intel having superior fabrication plants. However, in the graphics market with GPU chips AMD is doing well. AMD earned a very rare Elite reward from Tomshardware as the fastest GPU available with its fastest r9 for as little as $550 each. NVidia has its top end GPU cards going for $1,000 as it had little competition to worry about. Maximum PC also included some benchmarks and crowned ATI as the fastest and best value card available. AMD/ATI also has introduced MANTLE Api for lower level access than DirectX which is cross platform. This may turn into a very important API as AMD/ATI have their GPUs in the next generation Sony and Xbox consoles as well with a large marketshare for game developers to target"
I installed fresh ATI graphics drivers today. 90MB for a driver. .Net 4.5 needed to be installed. GTFO.
After seeing AMD bet the farm on Athlon and beat a company with 10x the r&d budget, I cannot help but be a fan. The biggest reason for AMD being behind in CPUs today is lack of r&d budget based on unfair duopoly competition from Intel during the years where AMD was superior. Hopefully, AMD can make up for this missing r&d money by being superior with graphics for a while.
I do not believe there is a tech company pushing more innovation with less resources..
--- We need more Ron Paul!
There were actually good games to play on the PC. But $550 for a pixel pumper just to play another CoD game. Not worth it.
"fastest GPU available with its fastest r9 for as little as $550 each" Well, I am glad that they are available for as little as that.
It doesn't matter much on linux which manufacturer is better. There is almost no need for GPU acceleration. Even if the GPUs accelerates anything, how important is it to you, personally? Most linux users are better off with a good quad core CPU and >=4 GB RAM.
We've also come to learn that AMD changed the double-precision rate from 1/4 to 1/8 on the R9 290X, yielding a maximum .7 TFLOPS. The FirePro version of this configuration will support full-speed (1/2 rate) DP compute, giving professional users an incentive to spring for Hawaii's professional implementation.
Lots of folks use ggpu but don't have a "professional" budget to pay the extortion fee to have artificial limits lifted from the hardware they purchase.
...this will be short lived as the performance crown item. nVidia will trounce them again shortly, as Intel always does.
The drivers do NOT need .Net, or 90Mb. The extremely crappy control panel, which has NOTHING to do with the drivers, uses the dreadful .Net API, and thusly needs loads of HDD space. People in-the-know install third-party front-ends like 'Tray Tools' or the like.
Sadly, ATI loves to take significant pay-offs from companies like MS, acting if THEY are the customer, not the person who purchased the graphics card. This, we can truly describe as ATI/AMD endlessly shooting themselves in the foot. Using .Net for the official control panel was a disgusting and despicable act, and was a great example of the contempt the older version of ATI had for its users.
AMD/ATI is a much better company today- it was either improve or die, and after the longest possible time, AMD finally made the right choice. However, we get glimpses of the bad old ATI with issues like the fiasco over the recent release of 'new' GPU cards that are almost all just re-brands of older cards, with the free games removed (AND higher prices). This kick-in-the-teeth for customers was done simply so AMD can make a song and dance about free games with all their cards AFTER they finish releasing the new 290 family (the 290X is just the first of three 290 cards- the 'free' games won't be announced until after AMD launches all of them).
In truth, ATI/AMD customers need to be smarter than customers of Nvidia products. Nvidia prides itself on cards that 'just work'. With AMD, you frequently need to know what you are doing, at which point AMD rivals Nvidia- but 'out of the box' the AMD experience is usually worse. Nvidia supports its older graphics cards MUCH better than AMD, but older graphics cards from AMD tend to get faster with time as newer games exploit the more forward looking architecture of ATI designs.
People have more problems with ATI cards in games, but this happens because uncommon settings in ATI's control panel (like the number of frames being rendered ahead) can cause terrible game problems if not adjusted per game on the desktop. Again, informed ATI owners KNOW which settings to tweak, but for the average user, the ATI experience can be frustrating. This is entirely ATI's fault, because a PC game, with a tiny amount of code, can programmatically set the correct options, but many game developers do not know how to do this. Nvidia does a much better job helping developers set-up their game code correctly for all usable generations of Nvidia graphics cards.
ATI has a nasty habit, as well, of disowning very recent cards that, on paper, had the features to support current games. ATI likes its shills to say ('jeez, your 4 year old card is out-of-date junk') whereas Nvidia happily ensures every generation of its cards that support DX9 work as well as their hardware allows. In reality, ATI cards from the 2000, 3000 and 4000 series are effectively the same as everything up to the 6000 series (excluding the orphan architecture of the 6900 VLIW4 oddities). However, ATI pays technical sites to state the cards from the 5000 series and earlier are obsolete (technically this is completely untrue). In contrast, Nvidia is proud to support cards from the 8000 series and onwards, which is a similar timeframe to the 2000 series from ATI.
While it is true that 'cheap' current gen cards destroy premium cards from that far back, it is the principle that matters.
> AMD/ATI also has introduced MANTLE Api for lower level access than DirectX which is cross platform. This may turn into a very important API as AMD/ATI have their GPUs in the next generation Sony and Xbox consoles as well with a large marketshare for game developers to target
I read somewhere that that's unfortunately not true; Mantle will not be available for the new Xbox or Playstation. My speculation is that Microsoft and Sony don't actually want to be THAT compatible as it would make porting too easy...
...but "for as little as $550 each" just blows my mind.
I thought I was crazy when I spent $400 on a graphics card once, but I (and I understand it's subjective) was perfectly happy with the performance on any game I played for the next 2 years. $500-$1000 (x2) Crossfire/SLI setups just seem to me to be about people with too much money and not enough creativity as to how to spend it...
Right. Cross platform would be important, especially if the API appeared on the next-gen consoles.
However, I can't really see Microsoft implementing this API on their console. And I don't think Sony will do that either.
And then there's the fact that a game developer now needs to implement two APIs - and if "Mantle" is actually closer to the hardware then there won't be much portability between the two. Which makes this somewhat dead in the water.
You, sir, are a liar. XP support ended four and half years ago unless you're a corporate customer with an extended support contract. You even asked to have your lie modded up. If only there were ratings farther into the negative...
"only" 550 dollars. Most people spend less than that on a whole computer, or don't HAVE 550 dollars.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-support-help
Seems to be april of 2014 to me.
Has anyone else noticed that despite the endless 4K resolution marketing being put out there by AMD, there is not a peep on the specific type of HDMI port the card has?
There is a HUGE difference between HDMI 2.0 and 1.4, but it's always specified as just "HDMI" with no version number. No review mentions the HDMI version, even though one would think that a real journalist would put in some effort to research this and find out.
I suppose it's easier to run the card through a bunch of automated benchmarks, cut & paste 15 pages of results to maximise ad impressions, and call it a "review".
There's really no reason not to offer them for xp.. The code is already written, so why not keep support in until xp really drops off the radar?
Do they actually draw every frame yet? Can't exactly call it the fastest if they're still cheating. I'm looking forward to the pcper dot com review to see if they're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing yet. But only out of curiosity, as their track record means I'll continue buying NVidia. Go to the pcper website and look for the "Frame Rating: Eyefinity vs Surround in Single and Multi-GPU Configurations" article.
Read the first article on tomshardware. Yes they tested framepacing and latency
http://saveie6.com/
xp is fucking obsolete. modern new games require more than dx9. Which was the last thing xp really supported well.
Just go get win7 already. Turn all the useless shit off. Set it to windows classic theme. There. xp 2.0. works like xp. but better. looks like xp. but more customizable. Clean 7 out and it's better than xp ever was. By far.
xp is a decade old. if you're into games.. which is what video cards DO.... you're not using xp. or you're not a gamer and this entire article is irrevelant to you.
You'll always have the right to pay more for less.
I installed fresh ATI graphics drivers today. 90MB for a driver. .Net 4.5 needed to be installed. GTFO.
You didn't download a 90MB driver. You downloaded a 90MB package which includes all drivers for all versions of windows, for all architectures, for all ATI cards, and it came with a utility that automatically installs the correct thing for your situation.
I wish more companies did this. Take the guess work out of the download screen. NVIDIA does it too.
Also what's wrong with .NET 4.5? Do you regularly judge applications solely by the framework their developers chose?
I've always had the notion that if you just wait a year, you can get yesterday's models for a great price and instead play the games that now have been out long enough to be properly patched. This has the bonus effect of weeding out a lot of crap games.
Which of course comes with some downsides.
This was covered last spring my friend.
XP is dead, gone, kaput! The only remaining corporations are in the process of switching this year and will be done by next. It is time to let that old system go away with the Windows 95 and Dos in garbage or garage and join everyone else.
Change is part of life and fearing it does not mean people wont all the sudden ignore the best and latest to subsidize your needs. XP and IE 6 were the exception when maximum marketshare means everyone but that is done with.
Lots has changed since XP eol for ATI. This is a new chipset totally. The bios is different, the trueAudio is new, the framepacing routines and tools are new, and it does not make economic sense to backport this all for a dead platform that less than 10% of americans use according to gs.statcounter.com.
Do not look to Nvidia either. If you have an ancient app there is always virtualbox and the pro version of Windows 7 has a free add-on with an XP virtualizer built inside.
Good review
AMD/ATI also has introduced MANTLE Api for lower level access than DirectX which is cross platform. This may turn into a very important API as AMD/ATI have their GPUs in the next generation Sony and Xbox consoles as well with a large marketshare for game developers to target
MANTLE is not on any of the consoles. This articles mentions only the lack of Mantle on the Xbone, but since the PS4 GPU is the same architecture with bigger numbers, it's safe to say it's not on the PS4 either.
Anyway, the problem with Mantle is not mantle it self, but the lack of games that will actually make good and innovative use of that tech. Sure, FrostByte 3 games will support Mantle but for what? So that you can play console games with better graphics? Sorry, good graphics are a great but after a certain point unless you do something never done before, just bigger textures/resolutions/etc hardly improve a game and thus hardly the extra money to keep a high-end pc. The same could be said of many graphics and physics APIs on the PC. I guess it may be worth it if you have the money and really like to invest in eye-candy. For the PC crowd that may sound stupid and kind of a asshole thing to do, but given how the consumer electronics market works, if AMD really wants Mantle to be a truly game changing tech, they could use some of the profits they'll get from the hype to invest on an high-quality exclusive title that does what noone else can do. AMD knows better than anyone else that just releasing good products doesn't guarantee you sales...
You can turn recent Nvidia Geforce cards into Quadros by removing and adding 1 or 2 resistors.
The resistors simply encode the PCI device ID.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-professional-counterparts/
Has ATI fixed the micro stutter of their cards?
ATI always seems to have a high framerate, but when you compare it to nvidia, there's more stutter and lag.. i.e.: http://www.techpowerup.com/177173/hd-7950-may-give-higher-framerates-but-gtx-660-ti-still-smoother-report.html - has this been fixed?
They couldn't test for dropped and runt frames, and said so. So, the tests tell me nothing I want to know, other than I'll still be sticking with NVidia. ;)
"That leaves us with Fraps. And of course, there’s no way for us to pick up dropped and runt frame using Fraps. So, we immediately shed the dual-GPU solutions from our charts."
Please stop talking about ATI.
AMD bought ATI in 2006, and the ATI brand hasn't been used since 2010.
An human orchestra is more in-sync with BPM, compared to my AMD card and FPS.
I regret buying my HD7770, really do.
The most inconsistent frame render of any card in my lifetime.
1...2.....345.6...7.89, awesome, even shows up on a bloody fraps video lol.
Averages average. Also, today you can buy add-in cards that do a million IOPS, workstations that support over 1TB of RAM and 32TB of disk. The nodes that made up that supercomputer wouldn't even make a decent phone.
Help stamp out iliturcy.