AMD Continues To Pressure NVIDIA With Lower Cost Radeon R9 270 and BF4 Bundle

MojoKid writes "The seemingly never-ending onslaught of new graphics cards as of late continues today with the official release of the AMD Radeon R9 270. This mainstream graphics card actually leverages the same GPU that powered last-year's Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition. AMD, however, has tweaked the clocks and through software and board level revisions updated the card to allow for more flexible use of its display outputs (using Eyefinity no longer requires the use of a DisplayPort). Versus the 1GHz (GPU) and 4.8Gbps (memory) of the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, the Radeon R9 270 offers slightly lower compute performance (2.37 TFLOPS vs. 2.56 TFLOPS), but much more memory bandwidth--179.2GB/s vs. 153.6GB/s to be exact. AMD and its add in board partners are launching the Radeon R9 270 today, with prices starting at $179. The Radeon R9 270's starting price is somewhat aggressive and once again puts pressure on NVIDIA. GeForce GTX 660 cards, which typically performed lower than the Radeon R9 270 are priced right around the $190 mark. Along with this card, AMD is also announcing an update to its game bundle, and beginning November 13 Radeon R9 270 – R9 290X cards will include a free copy of Battlefield 4. NVIDIA, on the other hand, is offering Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Assassins Creed – Black Flag, plus $50 off a SHIELD portable gaming device with GTX 660 and 760 cards."

Comments

Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping Intel and Nvidia honest since.... wow, 1969?

Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seems

[Virtucon]

Time to get the shopping done.. These bundles are getting sweeter and sweeter.

Fresh as always...

[mythosaz]

Along with this card, AMD is also announcing an update to its game bundle, and beginning November 13 Radeon R9 270 – R9 290X cards will include a free copy of Battlefield 4.

Beginning November 13th, you say....

Unfortunate Card Naming

[mythosaz]

Maybe someone else has a decoder ring, but it's alphabet soup trying to figure out what video card one should get.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#Comparison_tables:_Desktop_GPUs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Comparison_table:_Desktop_GPUs

If you stare at the article above, it's a blob of numbers worthy of A Simple Mind.

I left the PC gaming rat-race a while back, and I've never been happier -- the only real downside is that I can't possibly suggest to people what video card to buy beyond saying, "meh. Go spend $200 on Newegg."

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[supremebob]

You're right... after looking at the numbers long enough, you start to see a pattern!

Oh my God... the Russians! :)

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Picardo85]

Well if your computer isn't complete crap that's about the information they will need.

But tbh, I built an A10 APU-machine for a friend recently and you can get a GPU matching the performance of that machine for $100 and that will basically run any game out today at decent quality. Add another $50 or so to that and you'll be up in the performance of nextgen console hardware and beyond that you're leaving them well behind.

Generally speaking though, as you said, people will do more than well with a $200 GPU today.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[OverlordQ]

Chart for the lazy.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The thing that gets really annoying is what crops up (usually a bit later in a given chipset's lifetime) where the various models simply become impossible to rank in order (without thorough benchmarking), rather than merely needing a lookup table to translate between model numbers and actual specs.

Model numbers, unfortunately, are garbage through and through, but once you get into the realm of "Well, this one has 1GB of RAM; but it's DDR3 on a 64-bit interface, while the other one only has 512; but it's GDDR5, except that this one has 256 shader units at 1.2GHz, and the other one has 300 shader units; but at 900MHz....." it just isn't pretty.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[mythosaz]

If you have no idea what the numbers mean, then perhaps you should leave analysis of the numbers to someone with the requisite basic computer hardware knowledge. This isn't challenging stuff. Perhaps you'd be best just leaving the computer alone completely. Really, what are you doing on the internet?

Did someone forget to take their meds?

Unless you follow these like some sort of religion, there's no way for the average bear to know if they should get an R7 260X or an HD8730, or an HD8760, or a HD7730, or what the difference between the -30 and -60 are.

What do those numbers mean?

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[mythosaz]

For the enthusiast, the multitude of options are welcome, but for everyone else... ...not so much.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[gman003]

AMD's scheme right now is actually pretty easy.

The first number is the generation. We're on "2", even though they just started this new numbering scheme this year, but that's fine.

The next number is the "category". Best way to think of it is monitor resolution: _70 is for 1080p - you'll get 60FPS+ on most games at max settings, real killers may need a settings drop but you'll generally be fine. _80 is for 120Hz or 1440p monitors, and the _90 is for tri-monitor 1080p, 4K, or obscene multi-GPU rigs. And an _60 part is a lower-quality 1080p - think "high" or "medium", not "max".

An X suffix means it's the "full" part, the lack of an X means it's been binned in some way (reduced clockspeeds and/or some cores disabled). For example, the 290X has 44 "compute units", while the 290 has 40 at a slightly lower clockspeed. On the 270s, they're both 20 compute units, but the 270X is clocked about 10% higher.

Since both new consoles use AMD chips, it's worthwhile to compare to them. The PS4 is a bit weaker version of the 270, and the Xbox One is a slightly underclocked 260.

Nvidia's scheme is similar (add another 0 on the end for no reason, swap "Ti" for "X", and be generation 7 instead of 2), but they've complicated it right now by not rebadging old chips as new names. AMD's recent launches were basically "launch a new 9-tier chip, take all the old ones, up the clockspeeds, bump them down a tier and cut their prices accordingly". The 270s that just launched are essentially overclocked 7870s (think "180X").

Right now, Nvidia's lineup starts at the 650 and 650 Ti Boost (medium-end 1080p), 660 and 760 (high-end 1080p), 770 and 780 (1440p), and the 780 Ti (4K). Nobody's really sure whether they're going to launch more low-end 700-series parts. They're also looser with which ones are low bins of what - the 780 is a binned 780 Ti, but the 760 is a binned 770.

PS: Ignore the Titan. It's no longer a gaming card - the 780 Ti outperforms it (the Titan is a binned 780 Ti), at $300 less.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[savuporo]

Nothing. They are completely random marketing labels, and often designed to be misleading. So the commenter above has no clue. This is not T-34 to T-54 "new tank is better than old tank" series here.

If graphics chip marketing guys would have had their say made soviet tanks then T-34 would have been something like CrossFire DUAL 54200 Extreme Edition and T-54 something like 6700 HDD RXX 2GB Edition.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[khellendros1984]

Obviously, the model numbers are keys in a database; meaningless except that they have unique values. Comparison graphs of performance in applications similar to what you're interested in running are the only way to actually judge the performance...then you use the "database key" to purchase the card at your favorite retailer once you've identified the appropriate balance of features, price, and performance.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[asmkm22]

Which is probably why the average user has long since moved to consoles. The last 15 years of crappy naming conventions and standards changes across the computer (PC-133, DDR1, GDDR, ATX, BTX, USB1.1, Firewire, CD-R, CD-RAM, AGP, PCI, PCIe, SATA, ATA, PATA, etc, etc) have acted as a form of natural selection for consumers. Those that were interested and capable of keeping up with the various options, and those that went with Apple because "it just works."

I almost think hardware manufacturers should move to a year-name-convention, like car manufacturers, with maybe 3 categories per year (mid, high, and CAD).

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[mrchaotica]

I hope you realize that you just wrote EIGHT paragraphs to describe two naming conventions. It's kind of absurd that such a thing is required.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[I'm New Around Here]

Does anyone still use dual video cards anymore? Are SLI or Crossfire still in use?

I don't build systems, but I haven't heard anything about them for a while and am just wondering if NVidia and ATI/AMD still run those lines.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to like being able to choose a video card based on specs. I can find what I want at the price I want.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

He was being thorough. It's generation number (which resets every few years, just about the only confusing bit actually), part level (7 is better than 6 and so on), then a garbage number for marketing (since "270" sounds better than "27") and then a suffix (sometimes) that indicates some small differences that only enthusiasts care about.

Posted AC to preserve moderation.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[UnknownSoldier]

It's real easy ... pick your budget and your tier will follow.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[gman003]

Try coming up with a better one. Invent a new naming convention that still hits all the same price points (let's say $150, $170, $200, $250, $300, $350, $450, and $600). And also accounts for releasing a new batch every year, maybe every other year.

Seriously, I tried once. I ended up in about the same place AMD is right now. Nvidia's naming is a bit wonky, partially because they've never been the clearest, partially because AMD just forced them to drop prices VERY abruptly, and partially because they're in the middle of a transition. AMD's is actually very clear, at least through the gaming card range (the 250 and below are odd, but they're also basically useless for gaming).

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the marketing geniuses at both AMD and nVidia are a bunch of obfuscators.

For example the R9 280X is NOT a new card. It's identical parts wise to a HD 7970 and so on for many other cards in the R? 2?? series.
The ONLY cards with new GPUSs for 2013 in the line up are the R9 290 and R9 290X. All the other cards are built with previously released GPUs.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

I agree that the model number apparently does convey ALOT of information. The guy still did spend 8 paragraphs explaining it, and lost me somewhat along the way (how can something be said to be universally 60fps on "max settings" when there are so many games out there??). The model numbers can be well constructed and yet completely arcane to a once-every-few-years purchaser. And that's to someone who has been gaming since the voodoo2 (many video card generations of knowledge). I can only imagine what the layman would do.

Personally, as someone who buys a new video card every 3 years or so (have 6850 now, performs great), I find the following website invaluable: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html . You can see an entire history of all cards. It may not have the subtle nuances of a professional industry explanation, but it will tell me what card to buy when I am comparing whatever random letters and numbers the company has chosen to assemble in this years fashionable order.

There is no other way. Unless you have the time to trawl forums and do literally days worth of research. Which of course will be completely obsolete when you make your next purchase 3 years down the line.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that the model number apparently does convey ALOT of information. The guy still did spend 8 paragraphs explaining it, and lost me somewhat along the way (how can something be said to be universally 60fps on "max settings" when there are so many games out there??). The model numbers can be well constructed and yet completely arcane to a once-every-few-years purchaser. And that's to someone who has been gaming since the voodoo2 (many video card generations of knowledge). I can only imagine what the layman would do.

Personally, as someone who buys a new video card every 3 years or so (have 6850 now, performs great), I find the following website invaluable: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

So you want to know what card fits your wallet the best without any research? That does not work with anything tech-related, no matter how the manufacturer chose to name their devices.
Half an hour of online research per $100 to spend seems reasonable, unless you really want to trust your local salesmen (which you shouldn't).

Regarding 'max settings', it usually refers to the time the card was released. Which can be looked up pretty easily if you are able to use a search engine.
videocardbenchmark.net ranks cards by its own synthetic test suite, which does not translate 1:1 to gaming performance. Again, using a search engine uncovers many professional reviews with balanced-load benchmarks, which represent normal useage far better.

You can pray to get lucky with a randomly chosen product, or you invest a sliver of time researching what fits your needs. There is no way to further condense essential information without sacrifice.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Xest]

If you have to use more than a paragraph to explain it, it's certainly not simple. So the first number is generation but how do we know what generation we're on? You say we're on generation 2 and that's fine, but there's more than 2 generations of graphics card. Is this 2nd generation card better than the 5th or whatever generation card I bought last year before the new naming scheme?

What relation does _70 have to 1080p, 60fps exactly? I get that

Why would you have full part and half part cards, what exactly is the fucking point of that? If I want something cheaper wouldn't I want a full part card albeit at a lower spec?

Simple would be something along the lines of:

AMD 2013 Edition Budget graphics card
AMD 2013 Edition Standard graphics card
AMD 2013 Edition High End graphics card

You know what level you're buying in at, and you know how new it is. If you want detailed specs, you can get them off the box. I go into the shop, and buy the latest edition that fits into my budget. Really not difficult. If enthusiasts still want their buzzwords they can just abbreviate to AMD '13B for budget, AMD '13S for standard, AMD '13H for high end or whatever.

The bonus part is that you don't have to keep changing your naming system every few years either (which is the reason it's stupid that my GeForce 280 was higher specced than my GeForce 7950 - why would a lower number be better, except when it's not because a 680 or whatever is better than both even though it's a lower number than one, and higher than the other)

If you still want to sell those that haven't passed quality control (presumably the binned ones you refer to then) just suffix the names with "substandard" or whatever or just make those the budget pile.

Really, graphics card naming is either a complete and utter marketing failure, or a clever ploy into tricking people into spending more money by buying the wrong thing. I'm really not sure which, but it's certainly not sensible, sane, smart, or helpful to the consumer.

PC hardware is one of the only things I have to genuinely research for quite some time to figure out what the fuck I'm buying or need to buy when I do buy it every few years. It's fine if you're constantly upgrading your PC but I grew out of that. If I'm buying a washing machine or TV I may lookup reviews, but that's about it - I certainly don't need in depth comparisons that show contradictions between even a company's own products (why is a high end last gen often better than a new low end next gen, but still cheaper? why not just make the new low end next gen the old high end last gen in the first place?).

I notice in another post btw, you said to someone else to come up with a naming convention that covers 7 cards or whatever every year but that's part the problem - they don't need 7 cards every year.

I'm sure most people could memorise all the different naming conventions - as you say it's not difficult when you've done so, but to an outsider who hasn't spent hours learning about it all the fact is most people also have better things to do with their lives.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Gravis Zero]

Maybe someone else has a decoder ring, but it's alphabet soup trying to figure out what video card one should get.

Drink your Ovaltine. :)

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[L4t3r4lu5]

Yes, though there are no specific cards; All are "SLI" or "CrossfireX" parts. You used to need a special "Master" card and a Y-connector for the DVI ports for CrossFire; That was abandoned. CrossFireX, as it is now known, is all internal connections. SLI is as it's always been.

Cards featuring two GPUs are just SLI / CrossfireX parts skipping the PCIe bus for communication.

There's now "Hybrid" CrossfireX which allows use of integrated graphics (AMD Fusion chips) as well as discrete video cards to increase performance.

Most recent news has been in massively parallel computing, e.g. bitcoin mining, hash computation etc. These systems will make big use of SLI / CrossfireX. Current gen cards are just too powerful to be taxed by gaming workloads alone for regular gamers; My GTX 670 runs every game around on max settings at 1920x1200. Unless you're running triple-head gaming displays, or are going into 4K territory, SLI / CrossfireX at the moment is a waste.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

"I left the PC gaming rat-race a while back, and I've never been happier"

The rat race stopped a long time ago because of consoles. Many of us have videocards that last a whole console generation (5 years), so considering all the controllers + memory cards + all the console peripherals. The cost of one average video card is actually lower then a console with all peripherals and games.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[I'm New Around Here]

Thanks for the info.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the days of

"Extreme" = $$$
  = $$
"Value Edition" = $

Seemed to work pretty well. e.g.

GFORCE 2013 EXTREME
GFORCE 2013
GFORCE 2013 VALUE EDITION

If you must release multiple products in the same year (say quarterly)

GFORCE 2013...R2... R3...

I know when I look at it I just want to what the most current card I can afford on my budget is. Don't release a newer card unless it is better than the previous card on the same tier. Yank the previous cards from market so people aren't looking at R2 and R3 on the shelf next to each other.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

2013.A
2013.B
2013.C
and so on.

Year, category (top end, high, med-high, med, low, entry) maybe a modifier at the end if there's an errata or board revision (eg, 2013.A2).
As long as the categories are consistent from one year to the next, it shouldn't be a problem.

If you need to complicate it by marking up dual-gpu cards separately (probably wise in nVidias case), you can add a dual modifier after the model number (eg, 2013.B Dual). To avoid confusion, you'd use the model number equivalent for one of the 2 on board GPUs (Not all games support SLI or use it effectively, so lowballing the performance bracket avoids setting false expectations for end users while still letting the enthusiasts know there's more power under the hood).

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[manicb]

I happen to like being able to choose a video card based on specs. I can find what I want at the price I want.

The difficulty is in understanding what you want. If I sometimes get choppy performance in a game, does that mean I want faster memory or more memory? If I want good rendering performance in Blender using OpenCL, what is the break-even ratio of core clock speed/core number?

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

For the enthusiast, the multitude of options are welcome, but for everyone else... ...not so much.

Choice is good, what I dislike is the fragmentation-into-meaninglessness (and sometimes outright intent to deceive, like the cards that take a bottom-of-barrel GPU and throw in an impressive-sounding amount of RAM, albeit pitifully slow DDR on a narrow bus, then slap a big model number and a picture of a CGI chick riding a dragon or something on the box). Right now, the main contenders appear to be HD5450s on the AMD side and GT610s on the Nvidia side, with 2GB of DDR3. On the plus side, the whole damn card sells for just over twice what the RAM alone would cost, so there are worse ways to add video outputs to a computer that doesn't have enough; but those things get pushed, particularly at retail, on the rubes with the 'OMG 2GB!!!!' sell all the time. For the moment, 3GB and higher don't seem to have any such cards)

The cards (especially common in OEM gear and laptops) that have a model number that implies that they are chipset generation N; but are actually slightly upclocked generation N-1 chips, are also a scam.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[gman003]

Seems a bit information-inefficient. Four characters for the year, but only one for the model specifier? That's the inverse of what's needed - there's a 60-100% improvement in performance per year, but the range between the lowest-end GPU and highest-end GPU is closer to 10,000%.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[Anonymous Coward]

The price point is $250, and has been since around 2009. It will go up again soon. Otherwise, your advice is spot-on.

For reference, that $250 +/- $50 will get you one of:
- AMD Radeon R9 270X
- Nvidia GTX 660
- AMD Radeon HD 7870
- Nvidia GTX 760
- Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
- Nvidia GTX 670
- AMD Radeon R9 280X

That's roughly in order from cheapest to most expensive.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[chihowa]

maybe 3 categories per year (mid, high, and CAD).

That's more marketing garbage, though. Why no "low"? Will the average Joe know what "CAD" means? Will they assume it's "low" because otherwise there is no low and the salesweasel can use the confusion to sell them the most expensive card for solitaire? Your solution involves more of the crappy naming conventions that you just complained about!

"We don't have a 'small' order of fries. We have Extra-large, Extreme, and Super-mega sizes."

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[jma05]

Or this...
Chart to sort by Passmark rank
and check the CPU one as well.

Re:Unfortunate Card Naming

[asmkm22]

I'd say no to a low end label because the niche is sort of filled with integrated graphics these days. Even still, a new "last years" mid range card would fit the low end price point just fine. Having said that, those example names were just that: examples. Call them whatever else you want if it makes you feel better. All I'm trying to do is point out that for most people there are only mid range ($200-399) and high end ($400+) cards to consider when it comes to playing games, and the "Pro" line of cards that are more geared toward high-end workstations.

I don't really get how that would make it easier than it currently is for a salesman to recommend the wrong product...

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[binarylarry]

I doubt it.

An AMD GPU is unsafe at any speed (shitty drivers).

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be $150 just after the first of the year. Looks like my new card is comming early!

No 4k numbers?

[Overzeetop]

How many 4k monitors can it simultaneously drive? If I want a 2x or 3x 4k setup, will it drive it? I see a Dual DVI, an HDMI and a DP (so max of 2 for Seiki 39" 4k unless the D-DVI and HDMI share a channel...but it doesn't say).

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're splurging, why settle for a budget card?

The cost of dual top-of-the-line cards with aftermarket cooling is still going to be unimportant compared to the price of the monitors you're planning to use.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[TheRealMindChild]

If you are springing for multiple 4k monitors, I don't see why you would be going for a value video card

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"this doesn't say exactly what I'm asking, but I haven't checked elsewhere apparently" http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/62213-nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-vs-amd-radeon-r9-290x-4k/?page=6

Spoiler : they tied essentially

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Overzeetop]

Why would I spend more than I have to on a rig that will never see gaming? I need (okay, want) pixels for photo editing and 2D CAD work / large format PDF review. No amount of money will speed up any of those operations as there are no 2D accelerators or GPU-bound functions in the programs I use. I just want a large canvas, which means pushing lots of pixels.

And, let's face it, if I'm considering $500 Seiki's, it's not exactly an enormous amount of money.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[drinkypoo]

No amount of money will speed up any of those operations as there are no 2D accelerators or GPU-bound functions in the programs I use.

Welcome to the 1990s, I guess?

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Overzeetop]

I run $3000 in monitors in a 4960x1600, three-head display. I use a 3+ year old Radeon 5750 card to drive them and it works exceptionally well. Which card would you recommend to accelerate 2D photo display and 2D bitmapped and vector PDF files? There aren't any because none of the software supports it so no graphics card companies make them. To get a multi-thousand dollar "pro" card would simply be throwing money away.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Trogre]

I suspect he means that if his graphics-drawing functions were sped up massively, it would have no noticeable benefit to him since they are already effectively instantaneous.

That's how I read it anyway.

Unless he has 3D functions that are CPU-bound. In which case, what you said.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Overzeetop]

You have a GPU solution to speed up Photoshop and Lightroom? How about PDF rendering? More than 99% of all construction projects in the world are designed and printed in 2D format -most are too small to justify the cost of the least expensive 3D modeling option. I do more than 200 small construction projects a year - which means I have, on average, 8-10 billable hours from the time the client calls me to say they need drawings to the time I finish designing, drawing, reviewing, printing, and shipping out the plans. In fact, most jobs have less than 6 hours, with a few large projects which take 30-100 hours.

And, yes, it is like the 1990s. The building industry CAD work is actually BEHIND where aerospace 3D work was back in the early 90s. Most architectural offices still use CAD as if it's just a digital version of pencil and paper. And they do so because it's faster than 3D with the tools we have.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a GPU solution to speed up Photoshop and Lightroom?

Yes? For a couple years now Photoshop has used GPU acceleration of various functions.

How about PDF rendering?

Yes? For example, Adobe Acrobat has used GPU acceleration for more than half a decade at this point.

2D CAD tools can benefit from GPU acceleration too, especially for composting or moving around complex objects. I've still seen CAD software that struggles to let you move around a set of objects without struggling to redraw or without just giving up on trying to let you see positioning in real time.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop and Acrobat are GPU accelerated. There are lots of 3D accelerated image/photo tools. You seem to be stuck in the past.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[drinkypoo]

You have a GPU solution to speed up Photoshop and Lightroom? How about PDF rendering?

I know an AC has already addressed these points, but I feel like addressing them again, and I have time.

Not only is at least Photoshop already GPU-accelerated, but PDF rendering is also 2d-accelerated. Things like drawing lines have been accelerated by video cards Since Windows 3.1 or thereabouts. That's when the first consumer-level PC 2d accelerators started to come out, from names like ATI and Radius. They had bigger, more special video drivers than did earlier video cards, because they performed 2d acceleration of things like drawing primitives and even text. By the end of the Windows 3.1 era, 2d-accelerated video cards were the norm rather than the exception, and $40 Trident ISA cards had acceleration, not just $200 Radius cards.

You may also not remember when Macs got Color Quickdraw, in the Macintosh II era. The Macintosh had always been sort of an odd fish in that it was a graphics-only OS designed for a system with no graphics acceleration whatsoever. It had a dumb framebuffer, and clever software routines for drawing primitives. This situation persisted until the Macintosh II series, when Apple brought out the 8*24 GC, not to be confused with the 8*24 which was non-accelerated. I believe the 8*24 was around $200 and the 8*24 GC was about $500. I only mention this because it was going on around the same time.

Video cards even used to be designed to accelerated Autocad for DOS, and had special drivers for this purpose.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 7870 ghz edition that can run two (maybe 3) 4k monitors for what it's worth. I've currently got 3 1080p monitors hooked to it. I'm not so sure which cards can do it, (never cared to look) but I'm pretty sure that my old GTX 260 could do two 4k displays if you didn't want to run games. I'm pretty sure good gaming cards have been capable of pushing a pair of 4k displays for years now.

In your specific scenario though I've seen the price conscious go with 2 or 3 low cost (like $60 cards) and then just run a single 4k display (dual link dvi) off each card. You end up spending a bit extra on the nice motherboard, but at the end of the day $200 (+$20 for the better motherboard +$180 for 3 cheap cards) will save you some cash and might (not always though) be more energy efficient than getting the beeftastic gaming card.

Re:No 4k numbers?

[0123456]

Video cards even used to be designed to accelerated Autocad for DOS, and had special drivers for this purpose.

Oh God, I think I remember writing some of those :).

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

PEBKAC. The drivers are fine. You're just a shitty user.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

What fucked up edge case are you trying to do that you actually have stability problems with AMD/ATI.

Maybe you're just stupid. Since i have played just about every game that came out this year without a single graphic related problem just fine on AMD/ATI cards and drivers. And paid less than you did for the nvidia shit.

Re:What about

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Braille displays are comparatively low resolution, and can be driven in software over serial, USB, or Bluetooth without specialized hardware. (The exception might be older TTY/TDD systems, which use some...eccentric encoding schemes that are of very limited compatibility with many computer modems)

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI drivers are notorious for dying and, often unsuccessfully, trying to restart. It happens on all AMD/ATI cards because it's not a hardware issue, it's the driver. That's aside from all of the incompatibilities and visual artefacts.

Basically, you're a liar and/or an AMD shill. Enjoy your crashes.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

The drivers work great actually but you sound like someone who overpaid and got a space heater anyway.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

man, amd drivers are not "shitty" but geforce drivers ARE better hands down.
nvidia is larger than ati and amd combined, they have way more R and D.

i myself always buy nvidia because they are more efficiant and stable, you pay a bit more but you get what you pay for.
I'm however glad ati is around, as competition is a good thing, and wish them the best.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[binarylarry]

Oh really? I assume you've never had to write software for these electronic pintos

Re:What about

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a touch screen, then you can feel the pixels!!

Yeah, that retinal display feels almost just like a real retina!

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

PEBKAC. The drivers are fine. You're just a shitty user.

i suppose he's holding it wrong?

no

[Anonymous Coward]

What if i just want a fucking card on the cheap without any extra crap?

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

its not the only card available you ignorant retard

Final Fantasy XIV

[ArcadeMan]

Best card for Final Fantasy XIV at 1920x1080 with maximum settings, taking into account they announced a DX11 update in 2014?

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[binarylarry]

Yeah and some poor bastards probably had to work 90 hour weeks to make the AMD GPU work enough to ship.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

Crashes? I havent seen a crash in years, not since vista.
Thousands of games. Pirated and paid. Free to abandonware. And a 7 month uptime currently.

Not one crash.

And if that's the price for paying less for my card. Fuck yeah. I'm gonna keep doin this.

Your shit is just fucked up or you don't know what you are doing.

I almost feel bad for you. Fucked up shit and you're blaming random drivers.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[epyT-R]

Nope.. unless of course you define 'shitty user' as someone who chooses to run something besides the latest 3 games the installed drivers were 'optimized' for, at the expense of compatibility with everything else.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD doesn't support BSD. Regardless of how much they beat NVIDIA, I'm not going to buy one of their cards.

In Soviet Russia, FreeBSD serves YOU!

[Thor Ablestar]

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I was a longtime fan of Radeons, and I bought me a new shiny Radeon+Phenom notebook - just to find that the Radeon X-Windows drivers don't support FreeBSD anymore. They need a Kernel Mode Switch that is obviously absent. Now the FreeBSD team implements it while my book collects dust. The Nvidia drivers are closed-source and glitchy - but at least they exist and they work.

Re:In Soviet Russia, FreeBSD serves YOU!

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you manage that? Phenom notebooks haven't been "new" on the market for 2 years going on 3. Does AMD even support the windows drivers from that era anymore?

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[drinkypoo]

AMD drivers are shitty, and before that ATI drivers were shitty, even before ATI made 3d cards. I've been watching ATI drivers cause Windows to crash since Windows 3.1.

It's broadly believed that ATI's hardware is as good as or better than nVidia, but their drivers hold them back.

I'm still glad ATI is around, just to keep nVidia scared

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[epyT-R]

Hmm lets see..

1. demoscene - breakage everywhere
2. game titles a few years old
3. anything that's not a game, even things like game map editors, tends to break, especially in opengl land. nvidia handles them fine, on geforce or quadro.
4. video playback causing bsods..
5. shitty linux support, though it's nice they're opening up the specs.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[ifiwereasculptor]

For what I have experienced, that perception is a bit outdated. AMD's drivers have been as good as NVIDIA's for about one or two years. On Windows. On Linux, NVIDIA is still way, way better. For newer cards. If you can use the proprietary driver at all.

An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia actually plays PR companies to soak forums like these with such anti-AMD sentiment. Keeps thousands of Indians gainfully employed, I guess. The State of NY actually busted several PR agencies based there for engaging in similar practises, but sadly for us, Nvidia paying trolls to say generic bad things about their competitors remains legal under US law.

Anyway, in general, AMD (ATI) cards have a history of slightly lower hardware problems (whole families of Nvidia chips failed due to faulty soldering resulting in Nvidia having to pay a fortune in compensation) and a history of slightly greater software issues. Today, on Windows, products from Nvidia and AMD can largely be trusted to be 'flawless'. The same is most certainly NOT true of Intel's integrated GPU solutions.

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at ATI, and they used to tell us all the time about NVIDIA's scummy and dirty marketing tricks. Liked the job, so drank that koolaid. But honestly, AMD/ATI plays the same games... And worse, they basically are constantly shilling to employees... Project WIN... The AMD way... That Rory Read cube thing (that was sad). Oh, and those awesome "crush the force t-shirts". Guess what, none of their competitors spend so much effort marketing internally to employees...

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well market internally, why bother spending too much effort flooding forums? A small number of fanboys can do more than any marketing campaign can. Won't work for most fields, but for things related to video game branding, some people get emotionally invested in their decisions.

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, suppose so... Thing is, I don't think the employees of most tech companies care that much. It's a job, they get paid, and go home. Probably would get more by buying the employees donuts than ugly t-shirts. And calling the competition cheats and liars... Employees are adults, and generally, not so easily fooled. Most internal marketing is just sad. Spin, spin, spin... Next quarter is going to rock! Sorry, though, can't afford milk for coffee... Sigh...

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

I always liked the internal posters... The low power one, I guess, with the douchy guy playing an acoustic guitar: "the opposite of cranking it to eleven...".

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

"The future is fusion."

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

I never worked for ATI directly, but I have fucked a disproportionately high number of women who did. I guess lots of sluts work there.

Re: An example of a Nvidia-paid PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't comment on the last part, but in the Markham office(s) especially, there were quite a few women working there in general. Way more than in any of the US engineering offices I've been in. And quite a few were like supermodel-hot. I always liked going to Canada.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, you're a liar and/or an AMD shill. Enjoy your crashes.

Or maybe you are a nVidia shill?

I'm not the same AC you replied to, but I've also had no problems with the last two AMD/ATI cards. Definitely not with restarting/crashing problems, like those from several years ago when Windows hid BSOD by just restarting, or when they graphics card drivers introduced the ability to restart the card to try to recover from a problem but it never worked. I've seen those issues come up with both ATI and nVidia cards of yore.

I don't care what brand you or others buy. Might as well buy which ever gives you the most sense of value, as that is probably far more important than arbitrary benchmarks. At least some people have managed to not have problems with AMD/ATI, but YMMV.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD doesn't support BSD. Regardless of how much they beat NVIDIA, I'm not going to buy one of their cards.

Don't worry BSD is dead. No one gives a flying fuck mate.

Cost doesn't matter when...

[Overzeetop]

Cost is only unimportant when you're spending someone else's money.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

The last few AMD cards I've had have been great. The only complaints about the drivers I've had are:

1. The Catalyst control panel's dependency on .Net that made it bloated and slow to load.
2. Lack of a working "maintain aspect ratio" mode for older games that were meant for 4:3 screens. The driver won't let you enable this option unless your desktop is set to a non-native resolution for some reason.

Seems most of the driver problems I've read about are with crossfire, which I don't use.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[robthebloke]

Nvidia drivers are shittier than AMD. End of story. AMD drivers implement the graphics API's to the letter. Nvidia lets any old crap through. The result, is that apps developed on Nvidia GPUs, rarely conform to the target graphics API, and as a result end up failing on AMD/Intel hardware (although admittedly Intel can also fail due to either a lack of resources, or the occasional bug). If an app fails on AMD, blame the shitty software you're running, not the drivers. AMD releasing mantle would appear to me to be nothing more than a way of forcing Nvidia to adhere to an API spec for a change, rather than routinely ignoring it (as they do now)

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[robthebloke]

I have written the 3D renderers for a number of commercial software packages for the film VFX and games industries. The parent is right. PEBKAC. The drivers are fine. You are a shitty developer (who needs to make sure your code conforms to the GL/D3D spec properly).

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[binarylarry]

That's complete bullshit. Nvidia does indeed make their drivers very flexible, but it's trivial to force AMD's products into software mode (or black screen, blue screen of death/kernel panic, system freeze, trippy display noise, etc.) with totally valid state configuration.

Google it you fuck up.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

I write a lot of OpenCL code at my job. I also mess around with OpenGL stuff in my free time, usually just screwing around with procedurally generated scenes and shaders (so no where near a full game engine, but hitting a lot of aspects of the modern pipeline). I haven't had any problems programming for the AMD card in my home desktop, whether for OpenGL, or for OpenCL when I was too lazy to log into a workstation in my office to run tests on small datasets. I've just gone off the specs as far as documentation.

I'm guessing you can just move the goal posts and say "I assume anyone not having issue with AMD never had to write software... that uses specific function XYZ." Of course, you could have said that in the first place and have been much more informative instead of making a post indistinguishable from a content-less fanboy rant.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as non-game software, CAD and 3D data visualization programs haven't caused any problems for me. I have had problems with demoscene stuff, but half the time they seem to assume you have some specific extension or brand of video card and don't gracefully let you know when a needed feature is missing.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The Catalyst control panel's dependency on .Net that made it bloated and slow to load.

The dependency on .Net doesn't make it "bloated", in fact if anything it offloads more functionality to the installed .Net libraries making it less "bloated". Also there is nothing inherent in .Net (or Java for that matter) that would make it take significantly longer to load, if it is taking a long time to load then writing it in a native language won't change that.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

A REAL BSD user could make his own drivers... just sayin noob.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

The dependency on .Net doesn't make it "bloated"

it might make the installation package larger if it comes with an offline installation of the .net runtime. but most use a web install for the few cases where the system doesnt already have it installed anyway.

if it is taking a long time to load then writing it in a native language won't change that.

the problem is more likely to be loading external resources than loading the runtime and yeah writing a native version wont help you.

Re: Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? I've had to fix two "bugs" on NVidia hardwre in the middleware I wirk on as a job. Both were caused by AMD not enforcing the proverbial "letter of the law" vis-a-vis Direct3D and NVidia drivers correctly rejecting the relevant calls.

You've got it upside down, bro !

[Anonymous Coward]

For what I have experienced, that perception is a bit outdated. AMD's drivers have been as good as NVIDIA's for about one or two years

Umm... Instead of the quality of AMD's drivers has improved drastically to Nvidia's level, it's more like the quality of Nvidia's drivers has plunged to AMD's shitty level.

1650 Rocked

[rsilvergun]

The driver on the 1650 was rock solid. It was like having an Nvidia card but without the crummy color quality (which even I, with my lousy color vision can see).

That said, the 4350 I tried to replace it with was junk. Nice card, good performance, dirt cheap, drivers crashed on everything but Call of Duty. I've heard that if you spend the big bucks ($400) you do alright, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't trust even $190 ranged cards. Which is sad, because $190 for what the R9 270 does is ridiculous...

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh. People like to have their baseless preconceptions. Especially when there were reports of frame-skipping or whatever in a driver recently. And especially because nVidia is the Apple of the video card world - they can do no wrong to their fans, and their fans will poo-poo anything else simply because that's what it means to be a fan. It helps pass the time.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Nvidia sponsored trollish cowardly punkass. Throw it on the garbage pile.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hairyfeet, the AMD shill and shameless self promoter.

Re: Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it see

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked at both companies, and a few others, I assure you that all he issues and you really don't want to see what goes into that sausage. Just eat and enjoy and don't ask questions... BIA... HierBuilder... VIVA... Yummy!

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

If an app fails on AMD, blame the shitty software you're running, not the drivers.

Yes AMD are perfect, they always do everything perfectly and so when something goes wrong it is always somebody elses fault. Obvious shill is obvious.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Trueaudio is a mostly useless thing that won't ever really catch on.
Space is cheap. And it wont be 'required' for at least 5-10 years. If ever.
Very few people even use the audio features of their current video hardware.
You'd be nuts to require TA for your new game/app/whatever. Cuts out too many customers.
Even then you need pretty hefty and expensive speakers/headset that also supports it for it to actually 'improve' anything.

It's a marketing buzzword that doesn't justify the price to get better than 'good enough' that we have now.

Altho the gold plated monster cable crowd will disagree i'm sure. But hey. lol

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people are going to be so likely to believe "All AMD cards crash" and the implications that not only must anyone claiming they didn't have problems must be a shill, that they must be one specific shill? As opposed to maybe it depends on what you use it for and maybe some people get by without the problems other have? If you aren't trolling, you've got some serious psychological issues that can't be fixed by a graphics card brand.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, shill.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

The posts in this story are hilarious, its just douchebags calling eachother shit and claiming they are superior and/or their choice of graphics card brand is superior.

Oh I write these things for a living and so I know the problem is never the driver, so you are shit.

Oh but I worked for both companies so I know brand X is better and you are shit.

Oh yeah well I have some anecdotal evidence one way so if you think differently then you are just a shitty user.

You people are fucking pathetic, no evidence, no specificity, just bullshit claims and unsubstantiated dick measuring.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I previously didn't realize what you were doing. I now see you found a way to convince people you are not a shill yourself: show such a complete lack of persuasive argument and general lack of communication ability, such that it would be inconceivable for anyone to think someone would hire you to defend a product.

No problems here

[Rakhar]

Despite the massive amount of bashing going back and forth here, I feel compelled to point out that I've swapped back and forth between both AMD/ATI and NVidia over the years and I've run into problems with brand new games having glitches with one or the other on both sides. Even having said that, I'm talking two or three times in over a decade. Aside from that I've had fans go out on one card, and it still lasted long enough after that that I didn't feel bad when it came time to buy a new one.

For most people it really doesn't matter what card you get as long as it isn't ancient. For enthusiasts, compare specs and get what you need. If the specs look like they're in Klingon to you, take the time to learn what's what. If you can't be arsed to do that, then you aren't an enthusiast in the first place.

This isn't like rooting for your home sports team. There is no justifiable reason to give complete loyalty to any company when weighing your purchases.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[Rockoon]

I'm a converted NVidia user that would only recommend AMD right now, but even I will readily admit that "Trueaudio" is stupid marketing crap that isnt even close to passing the bullshit test.

There is a reason that hardware accelerated audio died 15 years ago. Its because CPUs from that era were so powerful that many-channel realtime software mixing wouldnt use even a fraction of a percent of CPU time.

The best way to keep this in perspective is to realize that the number of samples per second for audio is less than the number of pixels wolfenstein3d, released in 1992, rendered per frame. 20 year old hardware could do realtime many-channel CD quality audio software mixing, and in fact there were more than a few programs that did exactly that (scream tracker, impulse tracker, ...)

Hardware audio acceleration is was on its last legs 20 years ago.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you are a convert, are their linux drivers still garbage? I've only had two ATi parts, the 9600 and 9800XT back in the day. 9800XT was a great card at the time, especially in windows or in a Mac, but they were absolute garbage in Linux.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it doesn't actually hurt anything else to optimize for the latest games, sorry you can't get exclusive rights to them for $1000 anyway... sucker.

Re:Are ATI drivers still garbage?

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

At least AMD didnt have several years where solder reflowing cards and laptops was standard troubleshooting practice.

Sadness...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a developer for one of the companies you fanbois either love or rail against it makes me sad to see these dogma wars continue. I respect my competitor in the marketplace and I am glad to have them as a counterpoint to the inane management directives that make my life tedious unless a competitive threat needs to be addressed. With competition in the marketplace everyone wins. You rabid fanbois aren't doing shiate for the stock price I need to stabilize to fund my childrens college education. Vote with your wallet or STFU.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the one promoting a brand here, shill.

Re:Christmas is coming earlier and earlier it seem

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying a particular brand didn't fail basic functionality for a particular person, but you should buy which ever gets you what you want is promoting a brand? Are there people getting paid to say "My LG phone has speakers that produce audible sounds," or, "my Ford car hasn't burst into flames yet?" If that is the best your money can get for shilling, why fret?

And besides, if you were actually correct, and keep responding to a shill, are you not helping them shill more? Giving them more chances to shill their brand, more chances to get paid for shill posting? Sounds like you would make a great plant in the days of traveling snake-oil salesmen, "Gee, your product couldn't do all that, why don't you tell us more?"

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funny is there seems to be a mixture of people saying absolutes and those saying much narrower specifics. "Brand X crashes for everyone," and, "Brand Y is fine, all problems are the user," are rather different than, "product XYZ crashed for me when I used to certain tasks," and, "I used product ABC for these things and did not experience any crashes." It isn't just a clash between two brand's fanboys, but between those saying it must be the same for everyone and those that are just giving their one-off experience. The former seem particularly insistent that the latter must be lying or shills. And while anecdotal evidence "X doesn't work for me" is not proof that "X never works", it does cause problems for "X always works"

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Xest]

The problem is when do you give them the benefit of the doubt?

I've used AMD cards on and off over the years for well over a decade and the problem has always been that each time I've heard someone say what you just did and tried them it's simply not been true.

Maybe you're right this time, but given how many times I've been bitten it's hard to have any faith in such statements.

My friend uses AMD and is always whining about problems with his cards, especially when it comes to Eyefinity stuff so I'm loathe to believe what you say is true even now, especially when we've also had numerous reports and news stories of frame dropping issues also.

FWIW I first came to realise there was a general and wide ranging issue with AMD drivers back in about 2003 when I was still doing some tech support on a network of over 5000 systems with a wide ranging set of graphics cards between Intel, AMD, and nVidia. That's a pretty large sample size and AMD graphics issues were a couple of orders of magnitude more prominent than any of the others so there has definitely historically been an issue. When I've always had more issues with AMD cards at home (i.e. when laptops I've bought have come with AMD cards) I've just found it difficult to lose that perception - my personal sample sizes haven't of course been as large, so maybe me and my friends have just been insanely unlucky in picking the odd cards with bad drivers but I'm more prone to believing that it's just that AMD has never really got to grips with it's drivers, even now.

But even if they have sorted their fundamental issues with their driver development regime, it's going to take quite some time for them to regain the trust of many people like me - at least a few years without any reports of widespread driver issues.

hardly news, still not open source

[Gravis Zero]

when they release a fully enabled GPL driver, i'll be happy to rip out my Nvidia card and buy AMD's card. in the meantime, i'll stick with my Nvidia card and the ever improving Nouveau driver.

Re:hardly news, still not open source

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD's Open Source driver is miles better than Nvidia. Heck Nvidia doesn't even have one! Some guys had to reverse engineer one. The Open Source Radeon driver is almost on par with the flgrx. Try doing some research.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[osu-neko]

Nvidia drivers are shittier than AMD. End of story. AMD drivers implement the graphics API's to the letter.

Yeah, my personal experience is that that's completely bullshit you're slewing there. AMD drivers fail to implement graphics API's properly, and thus are more fragile when something unexpected happens, like a call to a deprecated OpenGL function, and when you point out to AMD that their driver is breaking, they point out that the function is deprecated, failing utterly to grasp the meaning of the term -- yes, new software is not supposed to call it anymore, but it's supposed to continue working anyway until it's dropped from the spec completely. "Your software is old" is not an excuse for violating the API.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

But then AMD video cards don't break after a year.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[jakobX]

TrueAudio is an interesting technology IMO. While graphics improved every year the sound is actually worse now than in the XP era. Im kinda optimistic that games will use this technology, since its pretty much the same chip as in PS4. If this was an AMD only technology then i would expect it to be used in as many titles as GPU physx is used in. Pretty much useless. But since its also in PS4 im looking forward to games with better sound.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[jakobX]

If you compare the quality of 3d audio before vista and compare it with current games its obvious something went wrong. Sure we have a lot more CPU power but games dont use it for sound.

Re: Are ATI drivers still garbage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably. Seems like many companies had that solder problem at one point. Xbox360 RRoD?

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[fast turtle]

Yep. Those Nvidia drivers are really nice since they caused a Low Profile GT210 to overheat, forcing a replacement by them under warranty. Sure I'll continue using the replacement where it is but I've restricted the drivers to the 296 series as this isn't a gaming build so there's no need for all the god damn updates to benefit games.

What I'd like to see both AMD and Nvidia tell the game devs is "Fuck Off" and use the god damn windows DX as you're supposed to and bitch to Microsoft about crap performance from theirDirectX system.

If they both did that and worked on getting power consumption down while keeping the performance - I'd live to see an R9-290X with the same performance that runs strictly off bus power (75w max). It's doable but they need to take the fucking time to refine the chips and get their power demands down far enough to not require an external connector unless runing multiple cards.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Mashdar]

I was just getting ready to say that AMD's drivers are terrible.
But I'm primarily a Linux user. Nvidia binary blob drivers are on-par with (better than?) Windows drivers, while AMD binary and open drivers are both 3-10 times slower in games.

As for Windows, all I know is that AMD seems to release game-breaking updates from time to time. Remember when Diablo III came out? Blizzard was warning everyone not to update their drivers.

Finally, while I think OpenCL is the future, CUDA is the only game in town for deployed GPU compute at the moment. And coming from a hardware-oriented background, CUDA is actually a pleasure to work with.

Re:Nvidia feeling the heat? XD

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people overthink this. If you worry one brand is going to give you trouble, especially if friends tell you they have trouble with recent products, then just go with the other brand unless it has complaints that are just as bad. What if you were wrong and the brand you avoided fixed itself? The competitors are not that big of a difference, so it is not like you would lose much if anything. As long as you do what you can to check that the product you do buy doesn't have any on going issues, it meets your budget and has a vaguely reasonable performance/price figure, who cares if there is a competing product that works or not? Does it matter if you might have gotten 10% more performance or saved 10% of the price?

It won't make that much difference if you stick with one brand or the other you trust, as long as you don't do what some other people seem to, and insist your original problems that you had with the opposing brand many, many years ago must still apply to those that now use those brands, without any provision for mileage varying.

Proprietary vs Opensource

[DrYak]

On Linux, NVIDIA is still way, way better. For newer cards. If you can use the proprietary driver at all.

Although Catalyst is subpar(2) compared to nvidia's proprietary driver, AMD's opensource driver is quite good and its performance has nicely catched up for all the previous generation hardware(1). Of course that comes from the fact that AMD has actively helping the development almost since the days of the ATI acquisition, releasing docs, source code, and even having developpers on their own payroll. Meanwhile Nvidia only recently started announcing that they will be open to answer specific questions to help developers (until then, they were completely incomunicando with Nouveau opensource project which was 100% reverse engineering).

Opensource drivers are so good, that AMD has phased out their older drivers and r300 is their official driver for Radeon X cards (Their are good, stable and fast enough and relying on them relieves AMD from the burden of maintaining an older branch of catalyst for the older drivers).

(1): the r600 drivers, for VLIWx architecture, up to HD 6x00 serie. The HD 7x00 and R9 2x0 use GCN architecture and are covered by RadeonSI, which is still lagging behind for now, though progress is happenning there too, and AMD is publishing docs and code.

(2): on the other hand, Catalyst tend to be a much better Linux citizen and play nicely with Linux standard and implement them early, instead of going the "Fuck, this, we'll just recompile the same stuff as under Windows and be damned if it doesn't work the same way under Linux" (cf. all the "missing" features like optimus, and the whole Linus' "Fuck you, Nvidia!" Finger-flip).

Re:Proprietary vs Opensource

[ifiwereasculptor]

Yeah. Legacy support is also a huge plus for AMD. Try to make either nouveau or NV's blob work on a GeForce FX or 6 series. Unity, Gnome and Cinnamon are terribly broken and NVIDIA said it's a won'tfix. The computer I'm typing this on has a Radeon HD5570 and an integrated GeForce 7025. The latter is useless due to faulty legacy drivers under Linux, failing to render the desktop. On an integrated card from 2006. AMD's open driver, meanwhile, properly supports even the 9000 series, from 2003. Given the current slow pace of noticeable hardware improvement, legacy support is more important than ever, and NVIDIA is leaving a lot to be desired on that front. As for AMD, the only annoyance I've been through was fglrx not supporting newer kernel or xorg releases fast enough, so I'd have to revert to the open driver for a while. Since the last time I had to do that, though, I installed Linux 3.11 and haven't bothered with fglrx since.

Re:To those thinking of buying

[Trogre]

While I don't disagree with your post, and you made me more than a little nostalgic at the mention of Scream Tracker, I feel I should point out that CPUs in that era were running ONLY your code, and in a deterministic manner. It was comparatively easy to ensure your mixed sound made it to the DMA buffer before it emptied.

In this era of pre-emptive multi-tasking operating systems, unless you're running a realtime kernel there is no longer a guarantee that your multi-channel rendered audio will be ready in time before the DMA buffer starves. Multi-core CPUs have helped this a bit, so you can have a separate audio thread that stands a better chance of getting more CPU time if not its own core.

I have yet to see a program made in the last ten years run with as much real-time, stutter-free simultaneous sound and visuals as the likes of Scream Tracker on a 486.

Further, the A3d hardware spatial audio acceleration from Aureal (before they were bought out by Creative) was most impressive.