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Forums - Gaming Discussion - I think the R9 290X doom was premature.

Captain_Tom on 22 October 2014
Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:

Well, I bought myself a 970 mostly cause my 7850 is getting pretty old and I wanted to be ready for the Witcher 3 so I think the 900 series are mainly for the people that are looking to upgrade but can't really wait for the stacked ram gpu... Also, if you look at a lot of benchmarks for the 970 vs 290x

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1355?vs=1059

You can see that they perform very competitively but with the added advantage of Nvidia having better Driver support and some new features and atm, the 970 and r9 290x cost about the same

Now, as for the 980, granted its not the zomg killer considering it costs $500+ vs $350 for the 290x, but it does still perform faster in many/most cases so I think for the people that want to upgrade to the best of the best without going into dual gpu level, the 980 will be their choice

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1351?vs=1059

Now obviously, if you are upgrading for a 780 or a 290x, you wont receive zomfg benefits when going upto a 980 but if you are one of those people who are just upgrading, a 970 or a 980 might be a great choice none the less

And many people get an ultra high end gpu for 1080p cause many games require them to play them at max (a lot due to terrible optomization while others just due to pretty graphix)

No offense but after reading though your comment all you actually said is:  "The 980 costs an extra $200 for driver support and 10% better performance."

This driver support myth has got to die people.  Google Nvidia driver issues, and then AMD driver issues.  They will both get plenty of hits... Actually Nvidia has 50% more google hits lol.



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Captain_Tom on 22 October 2014
Mummelmann said:
I'm always happy when new GPU's are released; that means massive price cuts for the 1 year-old chipsets!
CPU's are a different beast though, prices here are still ridiculous if you want any kind of bang.

Yeah it really is stagnating.  At this point it looks like Intel is happy to just focus on mobile while they wait for AMD to catch up.  The new AMD Zen architecture comes out in 2016...Ughhhhhh



Jizz_Beard_thePirate on 22 October 2014
Captain_Tom said:
Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:

Well, I bought myself a 970 mostly cause my 7850 is getting pretty old and I wanted to be ready for the Witcher 3 so I think the 900 series are mainly for the people that are looking to upgrade but can't really wait for the stacked ram gpu... Also, if you look at a lot of benchmarks for the 970 vs 290x

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1355?vs=1059

You can see that they perform very competitively but with the added advantage of Nvidia having better Driver support and some new features and atm, the 970 and r9 290x cost about the same

Now, as for the 980, granted its not the zomg killer considering it costs $500+ vs $350 for the 290x, but it does still perform faster in many/most cases so I think for the people that want to upgrade to the best of the best without going into dual gpu level, the 980 will be their choice

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1351?vs=1059

Now obviously, if you are upgrading for a 780 or a 290x, you wont receive zomfg benefits when going upto a 980 but if you are one of those people who are just upgrading, a 970 or a 980 might be a great choice none the less

And many people get an ultra high end gpu for 1080p cause many games require them to play them at max (a lot due to terrible optomization while others just due to pretty graphix)

No offense but after reading though your comment all you actually said is:  "The 980 costs an extra $200 for driver support and 10% better performance."

This driver support myth has got to die people.  Google Nvidia driver issues, and then AMD driver issues.  They will both get plenty of hits... Actually Nvidia has 50% more google hits lol.

Well... I never said it was a great deal loll... All I said was that for those that just want the best of the best, they will get a 980, even if the price/performance isnt there

And I have had better driver support from Nvidia than amd, specially considering how often Nvidia updates their drivers with new profiles by comparison



                  

PC Specs: CPU: 7800X3D || GPU: Strix 4090 || RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000 || Main SSD: WD 2TB SN850

Captain_Tom on 22 October 2014
Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:
Captain_Tom said:

No offense but after reading though your comment all you actually said is:  "The 980 costs an extra $200 for driver support and 10% better performance."

This driver support myth has got to die people.  Google Nvidia driver issues, and then AMD driver issues.  They will both get plenty of hits... Actually Nvidia has 50% more google hits lol.

Well... I never said it was a great deal loll... All I said was that for those that just want the best of the best, they will get a 980, even if the price/performance isnt there

And I have had better driver support from Nvidia than amd, specially considering how often Nvidia updates their drivers with new profiles by comparison


I got better driver support from Nvidia.  I know people who will say one way or the other as well.  My point is that clearly there really is no difference.



Captain_Tom on 22 October 2014
the-pi-guy said:
-The 290 series did see a price drop (after a severe price increase).
-Glad to know I'm not in my right mind. Thinking about getting a 970 for 1080p gaming. I love looking at the benchmarks and seeing that I'd be able to play X game at Y framerate. Especially considering the fact that I've never been able to do so. My current computer for example runs Skyrim @ 1024x768 at a frame rate of 30 fps. Which is awesome for me, but comparatively to the 970, that's sad.

I do agree with the point of this thread, AMD is definitely competitive and after the new 900 series was such a small jump over the 700 series, they could very well jump ahead. Though they usually close or even ahead in 4K benchmarks, they could so even more.


My honest to god advice is to not get a new GPU for another half year at least.  4K, 5K (LOL 8K too), Display port 1.3, FreeSync, OLED displays, and 20nm/16nm are all on the horizon.  I personally want to see how some of these play out/be supported before I upgrade.



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Scoobes on 22 October 2014
torok said:
Well, I'm not that much in that discussion because I'm mainly a NVidia guy (better hardware drivers). Anyway, I don't see a 970 as a bad thing even if you want just 1080p. Games requirements are getting higher after the new gen and having a little extra fat available for that price so you can keep going in 1080p at high settings for some years is a sweet deal for the price. I wouldn't buy a weaker and cheaper GPU simply because I would have to replace it way sooner than a 970.

The only strange thing here is that I think that the 900 series can really take some market from the Titans and looking at profit margins it can be a hard deal for NVidia.

Is that really the case anymore? It's been a long time since I've had any problems with driver support on the AMD side.




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Jizz_Beard_thePirate on 22 October 2014
Captain_Tom said:
Jizz_Beard_thePirate said:

Well... I never said it was a great deal loll... All I said was that for those that just want the best of the best, they will get a 980, even if the price/performance isnt there

And I have had better driver support from Nvidia than amd, specially considering how often Nvidia updates their drivers with new profiles by comparison


I got better driver support from Nvidia.  I know people who will say one way or the other as well.  My point is that clearly there really is no difference.

Well... The thing is, Driver support from Nvidia does "enhance" the experience a bit more than amd does. And what I mean by that is that in some situtions that me and my friends have come across, both having used amd and nvidia cards, having a bit better driver support would have been great for some situtions.

For example, when Crysis 2 came out, it had tons of issues with SLI/Crossfire configurations. The game had tons of graphical glitches and it was virtually unplayable but Nvidia rolled out the lastest profiles faster than amd in which case, the Nvidia users with SLI got to experience the game a lot faster than the amd users did. Another example was when cod ghosts came out, it was poorly optomized as hell but Nvidia's driver updates helped with the issues a lot sooner than amd did.

Now, I am not saying that if the Nvidia card costs like $200 more and its only slightly better than the amd card, you should get it cause of driver support but if the cards are similary priced with similar performance, people should go for the Nvidia card or at least consider the driver support as an option



                  

PC Specs: CPU: 7800X3D || GPU: Strix 4090 || RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000 || Main SSD: WD 2TB SN850

vivster on 22 October 2014
Captain_Tom said:
vivster said:
I don't get what all that 4k is all about. Neither 290X nor 980 are powerfull enough to properly run games in 4K. Maybe if you reduce the details to nothing. The successors won't fair much better. Current gen GPUs can barely handle 1080p for current games on ultra and proper AA. Until single GPUs are properly beefed up 4K will be for dual GPUs only. And if you're going dual GPU, the vendor or price doesn't really matter anyway.

AMD petty much had and will probably always have the edge when it comes to price/performance and fast memory speeds. Until Nvidia realizes that you actually need high memory bandwidth for high resolutions.

I will look forward to the 390X vs 980ti duel.


1) LOL current gen GPU's can more than just "handle" 1080p.  My 3 year old 7970 can handle BL2 ar 120 FPS (Absolutily no drops) with x8 Supersampling enabled.  No this is not a hard to run game, but my 7970 can also max out litterally every game I have ever played in 1080p (Including Crysis 3).  At this point even $180 cards are maxing out 1080p with a little overclocking.

2) It is not at all impossible to run games in 4K on one GPU either.  Anything as strong as a 7970/780 or better can easily power though without AA and at medium settings.  However half the time they can handle Ultra too, because some games like Skyrim, Titanfall, and Borderlands aren't too hard to run.

3) I am looking forward to the duel as well!  However I think it is gonna be more of a bloodbath than a fight.  All rumors point to the 390X being about twice as strong as the 290X.  Goodluck catching that on 28nm.

Maybe I have to elaborate a bit. With "current games" I mean actual current games from this gen which utilize the latest graphics technologies. BL2 might just be one of the least taxing game of last gen. I know this because I can run it with my 680 perfectly and the 680 wasn't even high end when it launched.

And with "handling" I mean highest settings at 60fps minimum, not average. And not just cherry picked game but pretty much every game except the most badly coded ones.

A little example from my most trusted PC blog which just tested the 980. It's in German but you will get the gist from the diagrams.

http://www.computerbase.de/2014-09/geforce-gtx-980-970-test-sli-nvidia/7/#diagramm-tomb-raider-1920-1080

This is not what I would call handling well. And remember, what you are seeing are average FPS, which means the game will dip even lower than that.

As long as single GPUs stay that weak, there is not much reason to even go 4k. And if you don't think high end cards can be maxed out at 1080p, try downsampling.



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JEMC on 22 October 2014
the-pi-guy said:
-The 290 series did see a price drop (after a severe price increase).
-Glad to know I'm not in my right mind. Thinking about getting a 970 for 1080p gaming. I love looking at the benchmarks and seeing that I'd be able to play X game at Y framerate. Especially considering the fact that I've never been able to do so. My current computer for example runs Skyrim @ 1024x768 at a frame rate of 30 fps. Which is awesome for me, but comparatively to the 970, that's sad.

I do agree with the point of this thread, AMD is definitely competitive and after the new 900 series was such a small jump over the 700 series, they could very well jump ahead. Though they usually close or even ahead in 4K benchmarks, they could so even more.

You have a 1024x768 monitor?

If that's the case, forget everything else and first get a 1080p monitor (24" or smaller) and then go for whatever you budget allows you, any R or 7xx series cards can play Skyrim at 1080p at >40fps.

An the 9xx series isn't worth an upgrade for anyone with a 290 or 780 card.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

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Kirin_gaming on 22 October 2014

No single gpu on the market right now, possibly not even next series cards for both manufactures will be able to run 4k, we have to remember that 4k is aimed at enthusiasts no enthusiast has only one gpu in their system,also probably gpus are not really optimized for 4k gaming yet.Also regarding drivers I have two systems with cards from both companies and both provide decent driver support, AMD is better for multiple monitors setups, while NV provides many kinds of aa such as sgssaa which is my favorite kind of aa.
In conclusion while I do agree the R290x it's an amazing card for its price I don't think anyone looking for 4k gaming right now would get it considering both manufactures will be releasing more powerful cards in a close future.