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Alereon posted:I keep hearing that Sleeping Dogs is amazing, and the Radeon HD 7870 looks like a compelling deal at $249, especially if you were planning on buying the game anyway at $50. ... if you don't mind buying from PNY or other questionable makers. They're doing the "MSRP starts at" for a reason. I think it'll be a bit before this change makes its way to the mainstream "good" vendors, I don't think AMD's cards can possibly be as profitable to sell given their hardware configurations on all SKUs above the 7700 series.
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Aug 21, 2012 05:59
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Agreed posted:... if you don't mind buying from PNY or other questionable makers. They're doing the "MSRP starts at" for a reason. I think it'll be a bit before this change makes its way to the mainstream "good" vendors, I don't think AMD's cards can possibly be as profitable to sell given their hardware configurations on all SKUs above the 7700 series. The MSI Twin Frozr 7950 is already $330 on Newegg, and it has hit $310 a couple weeks ago. That card is the one that is tempting me. Throw in Sleeping Dogs and I go crazy.
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Aug 21, 2012 06:35
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Endymion FRS MK1 posted:The MSI Twin Frozr 7950 is already $330 on Newegg, and it has hit $310 a couple weeks ago. That card is the one that is tempting me. Throw in Sleeping Dogs and I go crazy. Yeah, actually, now that you mention it, MSI seems to be getting pretty aggressive on both sides, and their cooling solution kicks major rear end. That'd be the one to go for if you decided to go for one, I think, given present likely pricing. Although there comes a point when retailers will slink back to the "starts at" MSRP just to move the damned product, though that doesn't make anyone selling AMD cards particularly happy. But it has to happen. Maybe with that rather large memory bus they're using they could afford to drop down to some cheaper GDDR5? But, no, it's already bandwidth limited and they can't afford to give up a damned thing to nVidia. I love my card but I hate how this generation is playing out. AMD's in enough deep poo poo as it is, I don't want their GOOD products to suffer just because they pulled a Fermi and don't have the brand power to make people buy their highest-performer (in some stuff) hybrid rendering/GPGPU card even though it isn't the best bang for the buck. So they keep sliding the buck down and it must be choking them. Kind of dreading quarterlies, worried the graphics division of AMD is going to post a loss severe enough to shake them.
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Aug 21, 2012 06:43
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Counterpoint: VisionTek is selling a custom-cooled 7970 GHz Edition (as in, the card that trades blows with the 680 on gaming performance) for $429 straight up. Sapphire and Gigabyte sell the same card (also custom cooled) at $470, and XFX at $470 with a $30 rebate, all of which undercut the 680. They're not giving up without a fight, at least.
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Aug 21, 2012 06:54
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I agree, I don't want to see AMD lose so badly that it cripples them. They already got a deadly enough dose of that from their battle with Intel, which once they begun losing things only got worse with fewer and fewer resources working on prototypes.
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Aug 21, 2012 06:54
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I really do hope AMD gets their act together, at least with GPUs. Ever since I bought a Rage, I've stuck with ATI (minus the 260 before my current card) and I intend to keep it that way. If the 780 or 770 blow the 8970 or 8950 out of the water, I'll go Geforce. But given equal performance, I will always go Radeon.
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Aug 21, 2012 06:56
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Alereon posted:I keep hearing that Sleeping Dogs is amazing, and the Radeon HD 7870 looks like a compelling deal at $249, especially if you were planning on buying the game anyway at $50. You can get the game for $36 at green man right now, but yeah this is still a pretty good deal.
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Aug 21, 2012 18:55
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Even though I'm a huge nvidia fan, it sucks there's really only two competitors and I'd hate to see AMD get gutted or fold. As such I also hope this generation isn't going to sink them.
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Aug 21, 2012 23:52
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Boten Anna posted:Even though I'm a huge nvidia fan, it sucks there's really only two competitors and I'd hate to see AMD get gutted or fold. As such I also hope this generation isn't going to sink them. Is it really that bad? I know AMD pretty much dropped the ball hard on their CPU business side with Bulldozer but I thought they where keeping up pretty well to Nvidia, at least as far as performance/price was concerned. Are they in peril of simply dropping ball again with the next gen as Nvidia advances Kepler and Kepler++?
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Aug 22, 2012 00:34
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Is this the thread where I ask whether these Catalyst 12.8 drivers are any good? Seems like hardly a month since I installed the 12.7 beta. I'm running 7850s in Crossfire, a notoriously driver capricious setup, so I'm always apprehensive about this stuff.
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Aug 22, 2012 01:05
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Berk Berkly posted:Is it really that bad? I know AMD pretty much dropped the ball hard on their CPU business side with Bulldozer but I thought they where keeping up pretty well to Nvidia, at least as far as performance/price was concerned. Are they in peril of simply dropping ball again with the next gen as Nvidia advances Kepler and Kepler++? They've cut their losses in the desktop market (more like they've undergone drastic and invasive surgery to try to stem the tide of a horrible disease, and now they have one leg and severely impaired renal function but at least they're not dead). The GPU division, as I recall has been barely profitable despite strong performers and respectable sales in the last few generations. This generation, their problem is not that their cards are poor performers. In the LAST generation that wasn't the problem, either, their cards perform really well. Cost is the issue. nVidia managed to trim back everything that isn't needed to make games run like a bat outta hell, took an engineering-bean-counter approach to transistor budget and hardware needs, and then put that card to market. Hence the lower memory bandwidth and smaller amount of VRAM in the top-end cards, as well as being a contributing factor to the drastically reduced per-core compute performance. The GTX 680 on down, the whole consumer lineup, are only good at playing videogames, and they're carefully built and budgeted for that purpose. AMD, on the other hand, took an approach that basically mirrors what nVidia did with Fermi, creating a highly integrated design that is very good at both graphics for games and compute operations. As a result it runs hotter, requiring more aggressive cooling... They also went whole-hog with a 3GB GDDR5 design, and while the moderately slower GDDR5 chips they're using may not cost as much per chip as nVidia's Hynix modules, there are more of them per card and the memory bus is more complex and expensive as well. Compare die sizes and transistor count (remember, both companies use the same fab, TSMC, which sort of threw a wrench into the last generation because they canceled their 32nm process entirely, having barely worked out issues in their 40nm process in time for the Fermi GTX 500 series to go up against the rather more re-worked, "more new stuff" Cayman Islands Radeon HD cards): Last Generation nVidia GTX 580, the fully realized Fermi consumer chip: 520mm2 die, 3 billion 40nm transistors AMD Radeon HD 6970, the fully realized Cayman Islands consumer chip: 389mm2 die, 2.64 billion 40nm transistors This Generation nVidia GTX 680, the fully realized Kepler consumer chip: 294mm2 die, 3.5 billion 28nm transistors AMD Radeon HD 7970, the fully realized Southern Islands (Tahiti) consumer chip: 352mm2 die, 4.313 billion 28nm transistors Now let's be as charitable as possible and compare relatively mature drivers, throw the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition up against a GTX 680 which, to my knowledge, was benched with initial drivers, though that may not be accurate - in any case, we're putting top of the line against top of the line, here: It's mid-2012, and nVidia's lean graphics machine goes up against AMD's up-clocked powerhouse, and the two trade blows - often in unexpected places, with AMD's larger 3GB framebuffer showing a lot less benefit than you'd expect at very high resolutions Last generation, for reference, while the disparities in performance tend to be larger in favor of the admittedly very powerful (and DirectX 11 optimized) GTX 580... Still, the 6970 gives a good showing, and harvested HD 6950 cards set the price-to-performance curve for quite a while last generation: The GTX 580 is generally the winner, but not always, and when it is, not necessarily by the margin you might expect considering the gigantic surface area disparity ------ So what does it all mean? Well, with the GTX 680, nVidia pushed a welterweight card that performs like a heavyweight; meanwhile, AMD's played the "how close to the bone can we get before we hit it" game with their relative behemoth (and several price tiers down, to around the $300 area), reducing prices every time nVidia comes out with yet another card that puts up a helluva fight and reorganizes the price:performance curve for this generation. So is it that bad? Did AMD's graphics division drop the ball? Not really; nVidia and AMD just demonstrate very different approaches, and it seems nVidia is coming out ahead so far thanks to exceptional price:performance, forcing AMD into a narrower and narrower profit margin on what is unarguably a more expensive chip - and more expensive card - to manufacture. Edit: Plus nVidia has major sweetheart deals going on with various retailers to be packaged with Intel CPUs and used for gaming in the lower end range, an area where ATI would surely love to compete more strongly - but it's kinda hard to step up with someone's boot on your head. Agreed fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 01:38
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Jan posted:Is this the thread where I ask whether these Catalyst 12.8 drivers are any good? Seems like hardly a month since I installed the 12.7 beta. Well, they aren't any worse. I upgraded from 12.7 to 12.8, they feel the same I suppose. I've heard it fixes the Skyrim UI bug, if you suffered from that.
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Aug 22, 2012 01:52
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Looks like newegg already dropped the price of the AMD lineup, including the 7870 (there is a Sapphire 7870 for $250 + a $20 MIR so $230). Seems like it has been a very long time since there has been good value in the videocard market. Sadly I am not going to bite yet just because the Sleeping Dogs promotion hasn't started yet, I actually wonder why they announced that if it doesn't go in effect for weeks. I don't want to buy a card now and get Dirt Showdown if I can get Sleeping Dogs in a couple weeks.
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Aug 22, 2012 05:48
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Yeah I saw the price drops too and I would like to get a second HD7850 this one for my i3-2120 rig that's hooked up to my HDTV for console ports. The HD6850 I have in there now is starting to show its age at 1080p compared to the 7850 in my main 2500K rig. Is it worth waiting for the Sleeping Dogs promotion?
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Aug 22, 2012 06:12
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Okay I'm posting in this thread too. I posted earlier in the hardware upgrade thread since at a quick glance I didn't notice this thread(was on my phone at the time). Here is my issue. My 580 GTX that I bought last October seems to be running like poo poo. Today I confirmed it. I'm not sure how long it's been going on, but I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while now that it's not running up to par. Today during the guild wars 2 stress test, my frame rates were lower than my friend running a 550 Ti. We both have the same processor, which is an Intel i5 3570k(his is stock, mine is OC'd to 4.3ghz). He has 4gb of ram, I have 16gb. I see no way that his rig should be running more frames than mine is, but it is. My idle temperature for my 580 GTX is at around 73 degrees. My room is roughly at the same temperature, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. While my GPU is at 73 degrees, my processor idle is around 35 degrees. Under load, my 580 GTX gets around 89 degrees or so. What really threw me off about my performance is that I ran MSI's Kombustor program with default 1920x1080 settings and my performance was DRASTICALLY worse than someone with a very similar system. Here are two pictures of what I'm talking about. Mine: http://www.ozone3d.net/msi_kombustor/score_200.php?id=75565 Random guys: http://www.ozone3d.net/msi_kombustor/score_200.php?id=49702 As you can see, my scores are 40% or so lower than his. This is with my CPU OC'd to 4.3ghz. Even if his Sandy Bridge i7 is OC'd as well, that shouldn't account for a 40% performance difference. There has to be something wrong with my card, right? I'm not sure if it's the heating issue, or if there is something else wrong with the card completely. Should I RMA it? What would be the next step? Edit: I just threw my old 260 GTX in, and idle I'm at 54 degrees. Almost 20 degrees lower than the 580 GTX at idle. Zotix fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 07:52
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Geforce GTX 660 Vanilla specs are revealed. Seems that the card is "properly disabled" GK104 with 1.5 or 3 gb of memory. 1152 cores seem to lower the power demand enough that the card is satisfied with one 6-pin plug. Naturally, the chips won't be seen in retail market as long as GTX 560 Ti sells well enough. I'm interested in getting one as I only have 500W power and plenty of peripherals. Should be a nice boost from underclocked 9800GT and high-resolution gameplay isn't a problem as I'm still using a CRT monitor. Hopefully refresh rate forcing still works on DX11 titles! Rosoboronexport fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 08:28
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These are actually the GTX 660 OEM specs and in NVIDIA-land OEM parts and retail parts sometimes have the same name, completely different innards and wildly different performance. I pretty sure we will soon see the the retail GTX 660 based on an new chip, as I can't believe they'll release another retail card with yet another GK104 binning.
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Aug 22, 2012 10:39
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Zotix posted:Okay I'm posting in this thread too. I posted earlier in the hardware upgrade thread since at a quick glance I didn't notice this thread(was on my phone at the time). Here is my issue. My 580 GTX that I bought last October seems to be running like poo poo. Today I confirmed it. I'm not sure how long it's been going on, but I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while now that it's not running up to par. Today during the guild wars 2 stress test, my frame rates were lower than my friend running a 550 Ti. We both have the same processor, which is an Intel i5 3570k(his is stock, mine is OC'd to 4.3ghz). He has 4gb of ram, I have 16gb. I see no way that his rig should be running more frames than mine is, but it is. My idle temperature for my 580 GTX is at around 73 degrees. My room is roughly at the same temperature, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. While my GPU is at 73 degrees, my processor idle is around 35 degrees. Under load, my 580 GTX gets around 89 degrees or so. What really threw me off about my performance is that I ran MSI's Kombustor program with default 1920x1080 settings and my performance was DRASTICALLY worse than someone with a very similar system. I don't know what temperature is normal for that card, but there's no way your card is 73 degrees F and no way your room in 73 degrees C
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Aug 22, 2012 12:20
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Zotix posted:Okay I'm posting in this thread too. I posted earlier in the hardware upgrade thread since at a quick glance I didn't notice this thread(was on my phone at the time). Here is my issue. My 580 GTX that I bought last October seems to be running like poo poo. Today I confirmed it. I'm not sure how long it's been going on, but I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while now that it's not running up to par. Today during the guild wars 2 stress test, my frame rates were lower than my friend running a 550 Ti. We both have the same processor, which is an Intel i5 3570k(his is stock, mine is OC'd to 4.3ghz). He has 4gb of ram, I have 16gb. I see no way that his rig should be running more frames than mine is, but it is. My idle temperature for my 580 GTX is at around 73 degrees. My room is roughly at the same temperature, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. While my GPU is at 73 degrees, my processor idle is around 35 degrees. Under load, my 580 GTX gets around 89 degrees or so. What really threw me off about my performance is that I ran MSI's Kombustor program with default 1920x1080 settings and my performance was DRASTICALLY worse than someone with a very similar system. Make sure your card doesn't have gunk in the fan. Try using a more aggressive custom fan profile in Afterburner. If that fails, how's your warranty?
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Aug 22, 2012 12:50
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Grim Up North posted:These are actually the GTX 660 OEM specs and in NVIDIA-land OEM parts and retail parts sometimes have the same name, completely different innards and wildly different performance. I pretty sure we will soon see the the retail GTX 660 based on an new chip, as I can't believe they'll release another retail card with yet another GK104 binning. Ahaha if it's ANOTHER GK104 binning, they're just being assholes at this point. I mean, it's not like they have a ton of the things - although maybe that's sort of the point, fabricate the poo poo out of them and don't worry too much about the wafers that could have been contenders, just build the whole damned "proper gaming lineup" out of one chip.
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Aug 22, 2012 14:09
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Grim Up North posted:These are actually the GTX 660 OEM specs and in NVIDIA-land OEM parts and retail parts sometimes have the same name, completely different innards and wildly different performance. I pretty sure we will soon see the the retail GTX 660 based on an new chip, as I can't believe they'll release another retail card with yet another GK104 binning. Well if the release is going to be in two months, they should have the chip ready (taped-out) soon for that case. I haven't seen any nvidia roadmap, should they have a chip between 104 and 107? Do they even have any other 28 nm chip than GK104/7? They could drop 1 more SMX for 650 Ti. 2004 Nvidia did the 6x00 series with two chips -- NV40(6800) and NV43 (6600->), maybe they are doing the same now? Rosoboronexport fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Aug 22, 2012 |
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Aug 22, 2012 15:13
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The only 28nm chips they have are GK104 and GK107 right now. We know GK110 is in the works, destined for Tesla at least, but beyond that  .I guess if harvesting is working out that well, they don't really need more chips. But at the same time, I imagine that will increase pressure on the lower-end bins/harvests as the 28nm manufacturing process gets better, as there will be fewer flawed chips.
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Aug 22, 2012 15:18
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Cavauro posted:Make sure your card doesn't have gunk in the fan. Try using a more aggressive custom fan profile in Afterburner. If that fails, how's your warranty? I have adjusted the fan. 75 helps at idle. Only 100 helps the temp at full load. Performance seems to be sub par still.
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Aug 22, 2012 17:01
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Rosoboronexport posted:Well if the release is going to be in two months, they should have the chip ready (taped-out) soon for that case. I haven't seen any nvidia roadmap, should they have a chip between 104 and 107? Do they even have any other 28 nm chip than GK104/7? They could drop 1 more SMX for 650 Ti. If that's how it plays out, it's weird but another point of analogy between the GeForce 6000-series and the GTX 600-series. Least performance parity between top end and second best (and you could easily BIOS flash to clock it to Ultra specs, they were segmenting for the sake of it for most of that generation since the 6800GT was so in-demand), 'til now anyway. And, hey, 6800, 680. 
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Aug 22, 2012 17:37
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I'm putting together a mITX building using this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112348 I'm trying to decide what video card to put in it. The 660 Ti has captured my heart for various reasons, so now it's just a matter of choosing a manufacturer, and I'm torn between MSI's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127696) and Gigabyte's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125440). Since it's such a small case, obviously cooling is a pretty big issue. MSI's 660 Ti sounds like it outperforms Gigabyte's slightly and runs a bit cooler. It also has that dust removal thing where it runs the fans backwards briefly at startup, which could be good. On the other hand, Gigabyte's card is a bit less bulky and apparently runs very quietly, which is another not-insignificant advantage. There's also Zotac's 660 Ti (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500268) — a bit of a wildcard, apparently performing at least as well as those two, while also being significantly smaller, a big advantage for an mITX case. The main problem is I haven't bought myself a video card since back when nVidia and ATI were making the things themselves — I have no idea of the reputation any of these companies have, or what their cooler designs perform like in the real world. I've done a lot of builds for friends, but I've never had to live with any of them. I've also never gone mITX before. Any thoughts?
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Aug 22, 2012 22:31
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MSI - good brand reputation, positive Goon experiences, reviews well Gigabyte - good brand reputation, awful Goon experiences, reviews well Zotac - Newer but good brand reputation, not many Goon experiences, reviews well
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Aug 22, 2012 22:37
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Zotix posted:I have adjusted the fan. 75 helps at idle. Only 100 helps the temp at full load. Performance seems to be sub par still. There isn't a lot you can do aside from trying different drivers or getting a replacement.
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Aug 22, 2012 22:53
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I've got a P8Z77-V pro mobo with a radeon 6950 as the primary video card. I have another monitor I want to connect to run 3 (not worried about being able to do eyefinity...for now) but it won't allow me to do so unless there is display port on the third monitor, which I don't have. I have an old geforce 7600 kicking around I know I can use to plug in the third display but was wondering if anyone could tell me if this would slow down the performance of the 6950 in graphic intensive situations or cause any other possible issues. the psu can definitely take the extra load.
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Aug 22, 2012 23:39
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Skip the old card, get an active DisplayPort->DVI adapter for $30.
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Aug 22, 2012 23:42
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The Consultant posted:I've got a P8Z77-V pro mobo with a radeon 6950 as the primary video card. I have another monitor I want to connect to run 3 (not worried about being able to do eyefinity...for now) but it won't allow me to do so unless there is display port on the third monitor, which I don't have. I have an old geforce 7600 kicking around I know I can use to plug in the third display but was wondering if anyone could tell me if this would slow down the performance of the 6950 in graphic intensive situations or cause any other possible issues. the psu can definitely take the extra load. If you don't care about eyefinity, why don't you just run the third off your IGP?
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Aug 22, 2012 23:45
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unpronounceable posted:If you don't care about eyefinity, why don't you just run the third off your IGP? I can't seem to get that to work, windows isn't seeing the device at all, when I try to install the driver it tells me that I don't meet the "minimum requirements" to install quote:Skip the old card, get an active DisplayPort->DVI adapter for $30. The Consultant fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Aug 23, 2012 |
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Aug 23, 2012 05:20
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The Consultant posted:This is tempting. Are they dual link dvi, typically?
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Aug 23, 2012 05:57
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The Consultant posted:I can't seem to get that to work, windows isn't seeing the device at all, when I try to install the driver it tells me that I don't meet the "minimum requirements" to install That's odd. Did you make sure to enable the IGP in the BIOS? I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be working if that's not the case.
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Aug 23, 2012 06:11
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gently caress it, when Amazon eventually matches neweggs prices on the 7870s I am going to bite, with or without Sleeping Dogs. I'll just pick that game up in the Steam xmas sale for $10 or whatever it is by then.
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Aug 23, 2012 06:14
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Portfolio posted:I'm putting together a mITX building using this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112348 Are you sure any of these videocards are going to fit in that case? Looking at the layout I think any of the 660tis are going to be a squeeze at best.
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Aug 23, 2012 07:08
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FamDav posted:Are you sure any of these videocards are going to fit in that case? Looking at the layout I think any of the 660tis are going to be a squeeze at best. I don't think it will. With the drive trays and other innards I think it will be too small to get it all in there.
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Aug 23, 2012 07:19
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Reposting here since it's a more appropriate thread: How will a GIGABYTE AMD HD6970 PCI-E 2.0 2GB handle a 27" @ 2560x1440 IPS?
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Aug 23, 2012 07:20
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Factory Factory posted:MSI - good brand reputation, positive Goon experiences, reviews well I owned cards of many brands but my MSI 5770 Hawk is the only card that really pissed me off with the awful quality control. For all their talk of military class hardware(tm) the fan bracket rusted like hell after mere 1 year of use that I have to shave off the second hand selling price quite a bit.
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Aug 23, 2012 07:51
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Factory Factory posted:Zotac - Newer but good brand reputation, not many Goon experiences, reviews well Just one data point, but I have a Zotac 8800 GTS 512 which is still going strong after god knows how many years.
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Aug 23, 2012 08:02
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Endymion FRS MK1 posted:I really do hope AMD gets their act together, at least with GPUs. Ever since I bought a Rage, I've stuck with ATI (minus the 260 before my current card) and I intend to keep it that way. If the 780 or 770 blow the 8970 or 8950 out of the water, I'll go Geforce. But given equal performance, I will always go Radeon. IMO that has less to do with their GPUs and more to do with their lackluster marketing. Since the 4870 debut AMD has always provided a better deal till 7xxx series yet somehow they are constantly outsold by Nvidia, and the success of the Kepler is another kick to AMD's rear end.
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Aug 23, 2012 08:19
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