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[JEMC]

Alby_da_Wolf said:

JEMC said:

^I would refrain my enthusiasm. After what AMD said and the rumors we have, it seems clear that AMD is focusing on mainstream products, not high end, but will they be able to deliver Fury X/980Ti performance at less than 175W for $300-350?

Or to put it another way, AMD has always talked about 2 or 2.5x performance/watts improvement from the current gen of cards to Polaris, and the 390X is a 275W card, so half of that is 138W. Will those extra 35W and the newer architecture make up for the roughly 35% performance advantage the 980Ti has over the 390X?

I know, that's why I'm lucky to be able to wait, I'm late in playing my backlog as AMD is usually late in delivering what it promises.    Also, when AMD scales down its chips it usually gets better results per watt and per dollar than when it scales them up, and another positive factor is that although CPU performance, once it's high enough to not be a bottleneck, doesn't provide big graphics performance boosts if it increases further, the new CPU architecture and its switch to smaller process too should contribute to a large improvement in overall system power consumption and efficiency even if it won't be as large as promised.  Systems with new ZEN CPUs and Polaris GPUs or APUs using both a ZEN CPU and a Polaris GPU, and DDR4 main RAM and latest GDDR5 or HBM graphics RAM, should help AMD delivering a real boost per watt not too far behind the ideal one.

I started to look for a GPU replacement three years ago. I'm tired of waiting.

The performance/watt/dollar at the mid-low end is always better not just for AMD but also Nvidia. They don't have to push for the performance crow and can keep voltages a bit lower than its higher end cards, improving their efficiency.

Tom's Hardware had an article about that undervolting a Fury card, with surprising results: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msi-afterburner-undervolt-radeon-r9-fury,4425.html

As for their Zen CPU, I hope they deliver not only for our own sake (more competition, better prices), but also for the best of the industry.