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adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

HalloKitty posted:

Let me guess. 5.9. I'm pretty sure mechanical disks are capped there.
That said, Vista and 7 WEI are not comparable.

You should get the same score with the same hardware, the scale just goes higher in 7.

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Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

SRQ posted:

Does it work on a wacky logarithmic warp scale or is it just linear?

I don't think they have officially said, but they did state when Vista came out that the expect to add a number every 12 to 18 months but that's to account for new hardware and does not mean that your numbers will eventually lower to 1.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Ryokurin posted:

I don't think they have officially said, but they did state when Vista came out that the expect to add a number every 12 to 18 months but that's to account for new hardware and does not mean that your numbers will eventually lower to 1.

Yeah, they also said that a 4 will always be a four. So in theory someday we'll have scores in the hundreds (yeah, like this will last that long)

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

adorai posted:

You should get the same score with the same hardware, the scale just goes higher in 7.

I don't think this is the case.

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/windows-7-feature-focus-windows-experience-index posted:


Microsoft has actually changed how it rates hardware since Windows Vista, so identical hardware components could actually receive different subscores on each OS, making Vista-to-Windows 7 comparisons impossible.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/achieving-a-perfect-windows-experience-index-score-in-windows-7#section_3 posted:


People running Windows Vista who earned high scores under the 5.9 index were often surprised when their scores went down after they upgraded to Windows 7. The Windows Experience Index is calibrated to measure the latest technology. So a machine rated as fast a few years ago will fall in ranking as new and faster hardware becomes available.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
AMD has launched 7 new Llano mobile CPUs. Six of them are just 100Mhz speed bumps on core/turbo clocks, one for each segment at 35W and 45W TDPs. There's also the A4-3305M, which has a weirdly reconfigured GPU. Not really a big deal, but I'd like to see the A8-3550MX in the wild.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

The 7970 is now set to launch on December 22, with the 7950 on January 9 if leaked slides are to be believed.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

The leaked specs look phenomenal, but the 7970 is expected to launch north of $400.

I'm still really tempted to grab one as my Christmas present to myself.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Yeah I might get that and write it off for multi-monitor use, those are some ridiculous specs.

Edit: It's either that or 580s in SLI, same price, just dunno. More CUDA (with more monitors, cough) or a single better badass card, gently caress the high end, if you make the mistake of buying once it's impossible to upgrade within a reasonable price range for 2-3 years. :argh:

Idles at 3W, going to have to see that to believe it but if so holy poo poo awesome.

Fatal
Jul 29, 2004

I'm gunna kill you BITCH!!!
Definitely getting either 1 of the 7970s or dual 7950s, whatever ends up being the best price point below $600, can't wait!

Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom
loving hell I wish AMD could license CUDA from Nvidia.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Gunjin posted:

loving hell I wish AMD could license CUDA from Nvidia.

They don't even need to, their GPGPU is great with OpenCL (better than nVidia's). Though the real problem is api penetration, nVidia's pushed into that market with a lot of money that AMD/ATI can't match.

Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom

Agreed posted:

They don't even need to, their GPGPU is great with OpenCL (better than nVidia's). Though the real problem is api penetration, nVidia's pushed into that market with a lot of money that AMD/ATI can't match.

That's the rub, their stuff might be better, but everything I need uses CUDA. Adobe Creative Suite, DaVinci Resolve.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Gunjin posted:

That's the rub, their stuff might be better, but everything I need uses CUDA. Adobe Creative Suite, DaVinci Resolve.

Same here, but I hold out hope.

Gorilla Salsa
Dec 4, 2007

Post Post Post.
My budget for a new graphics card was going to be $350-ish, so if the 7970 is within $75 or so of that, I suppose I could justify it to myself.

That is, of course, assuming that the image leaked is actually real and the reviews come out well. It'll be a while before I have the cash, so I get to wait. :)

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

Gorilla Salsa posted:

My budget for a new graphics card was going to be $350-ish, so if the 7970 is within $75 or so of that, I suppose I could justify it to myself.
You'll be waiting for the 7950. 7970 will most likely be $450-500.

Amcoti
Apr 7, 2004

Sing for the flames that will rip through here
Are these likely to bring down prices on current AMD cards in the near future? I could stand to upgrade but don't need a $400+ card.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

Atomicated posted:

Are these likely to bring down prices on current AMD cards in the near future?
Not really, no.

Q_res
Oct 29, 2005

We're fucking built for this shit!
On the subject of Video card suffix horseshit, I think the XT suffix has to be my hands down favorite. ATI brings out the XT label for its high-end Radeons, nVidia turns around an slaps XT on it's low-end poo poo cards. Such a fantastic rear end in a top hat move, you almost have to admire it.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
That's just part of the manufacturing codename, it won't actually be part of the name for the card.

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

I miss the days when you could figure out how powerful a card was just by looking at the model number. Only 2-3 suffixes, and a higher number was almost always better.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
AMD has been pretty good about that within HD 5000 and HD 6000, as long as you don't try to compare them to each other. The gradations aren't regular, but a higher number does indeed mean it is better.

Q_res
Oct 29, 2005

We're fucking built for this shit!

Alereon posted:

That's just part of the manufacturing codename, it won't actually be part of the name for the card.

I'm a little confused, is this supposed to be addressed at my post? Because I wasn't referring to current cards, just what I consider the real launching point of suffix fuckery. Radeon 9800 XT vs Geforce 5600 XT, very different sorts of cards. It was just meant to be an aside, because the discussion reminded me of how amused I was by nVidia taking ATIs top-end card designation and slapping it on one of the worst pieces of poo poo they produced at the time.

~Coxy
Dec 9, 2003

R.I.P. Inter-OS Sass - b.2000AD d.2003AD
It looks like a good upgrade from my 5870, I hope we get Mac drivers for it in reasonable time.

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

Q_res posted:

On the subject of Video card suffix horseshit, I think the XT suffix has to be my hands down favorite. ATI brings out the XT label for its high-end Radeons, nVidia turns around an slaps XT on it's low-end poo poo cards. Such a fantastic rear end in a top hat move, you almost have to admire it.

ATI doesn't actually advertise the cards with alphabet soup after the names any more. They made a decision not to in more recent years.
I see your point though, in the past that's exactly what happened.

On the topic of Southern Islands, though, look at that thing! 3GB VRAM. People running eyefinity setups are probably getting a little bit too excited at the moment, since there's nothing else to compete with that.

That said, most people at the moment probably don't need more than 1.5~2, depending on their monitor resolution and the games they play. Maybe we could have socketable video RAM in future, as needs will differ massively from 3x 2560x1600 to the guy with a single cheap 1920x1080 screen.

HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Dec 16, 2011

dud root
Mar 30, 2008
Does this MS patch for Bulldozers scheduling differ from the one AMD released?

edit: post now with link technology http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2592546/

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

HalloKitty posted:

ATI doesn't actually advertise the cards with alphabet soup after the names any more. They made a decision not to in more recent years.
I see your point though, in the past that's exactly what happened.

On the topic of Southern Islands, though, look at that thing! 3GB VRAM. People running eyefinity setups are probably getting a little bit too excited at the moment, since there's nothing else to compete with that.

That said, most people at the moment probably don't need more than 1.5~2, depending on their monitor resolution and the games they play. Maybe we could have socketable video RAM in future, as needs will differ massively from 3x 2560x1600 to the guy with a single cheap 1920x1080 screen.

That would help fight market segmentation I guess, but for games it's a little more stark than "larger framebuffer, problem solved" since anything but top-end cards are going to get eaten alive in the GPU department trying to feed that resolution graphically (and for desktop users, well, desktop doesn't require hardly any resources for multi-monitor, even at high resolutions).

texting my ex
Nov 15, 2008

I am no one
I cannot squat
It's in my blood
Do you guys think the 7970 will outperform a 5970? I'm really eager to max out Crysis 2 (I still play this online), it's somewhat playable on max settings with a 5970, but if I increase the FOV to 90, it chugs horribly.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

dud root posted:

Does this MS patch for Bulldozers scheduling differ from the one AMD released?

edit: post now with link technology http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2592546/

If this was going to be a problem, why didn't AMD get MS to push this out -before- the cpu launched?

necrobobsledder
Mar 21, 2005
Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll
Nap Ghost

Star War Sex Parrot posted:


Jesus, 3w at idle? That's some serious power gating happening, you'd think they're more power efficient at desktop 2D than integrated chips from Intel are by now.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

necrobobsledder posted:

Jesus, 3w at idle? That's some serious power gating happening, you'd think they're more power efficient at desktop 2D than integrated chips from Intel are by now.

It's like someone decided to drop in ClkEns everywhere in the design and actually properly partition it! Could be a big selling point over nvidia's entry if they can't pull of the same. (I will buy green no matter what anyways, though)

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

dud root posted:

Does this MS patch for Bulldozers scheduling differ from the one AMD released?

edit: post now with link technology http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2592546/
This has been pulled due to unexpected performance drops.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Alereon posted:

This has been pulled due to unexpected performance drops.

Given how cool the 7900 cards look, I hate to be reminded that OH YEAH, AMD is in the shitter right now with nearly everything else :smith:

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
I'm really pretty excited about the Radeon 7800-series myself. While the 7900-series looks cool, it's a brand new architecture so I'd rather wait until the kinks get ironed out. The leaked specs for the 7800-series seem to be exactly what I was hoping for, a die-shrunk 6900-series with much lower power consumption (and hopefully great overclocking!).

Alereon fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Dec 16, 2011

Autarch Kade
May 6, 2008
I'm really interested in some actual benchmarks of the 7970 on the 22nd. It should be interesting to see how it performs compared to a GTX 590, or AMD 6990. If it is significantly faster than those cards, say 15-25%, it'd be hard for me not to pick one up. I'm also particularly interested in the benchmarks at eyefinity resolutions due to my monitor setup.

In any event, the 3GB of video memory alone is probably reason enough for me to upgrade from dual 1GB 5870s.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

Alereon posted:

The leaked specs for the 7800-series seem to be exactly what I was hoping for, a die-shrunk 6900-series with much lower power consumption (and hopefully great overclocking!).
So it's a shrink of Cayman, not Barts?

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

Autarch Kade posted:

I'm really interested in some actual benchmarks of the 7970 on the 22nd. It should be interesting to see how it performs compared to a GTX 590, or AMD 6990. If it is significantly faster than those cards, say 15-25%, it'd be hard for me not to pick one up. I'm also particularly interested in the benchmarks at eyefinity resolutions due to my monitor setup.

In any event, the 3GB of video memory alone is probably reason enough for me to upgrade from dual 1GB 5870s.

If one card for ~$500 outperforms current top-of-the-line SLI/Crossfire by 15%-25% (and doesn't have power requirements in excess of current single GPU setups), they're not going to be able to make them fast enough to keep up with demand, but that seems almost impossible, how would they make that huge of a leap in processing power in a generation?

Autarch Kade
May 6, 2008

Agreed posted:

If one card for ~$500 outperforms current top-of-the-line SLI/Crossfire by 15%-25% (and doesn't have power requirements in excess of current single GPU setups), they're not going to be able to make them fast enough to keep up with demand, but that seems almost impossible, how would they make that huge of a leap in processing power in a generation?

Yeah, it's pretty unrealistic. A guy can dream though eh?

One website was claiming that the 7970 would be 30% faster than the 6970, putting it near the performance of a 6990. It's of course all speculation until the benchmarks are shown on the 22nd.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
A 6990 is essentially two core-unlocked 6950s in SLI. It's quite a bit more quick than 30% faster than a 6970. So a 7970 is still not going to directly compete with that monster even if the 30% faster thing is accurate.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

Shaocaholica posted:

If this was going to be a problem, why didn't AMD get MS to push this out -before- the cpu launched?

[marketing paranoia]Because if it had been out when the CPU launched, they wouldn't have been able to try to downplay the lovely benchmark results with promises of a future patch making things better[/marketing paranoia]. That or they just didn't have the weight to convince MS to push through a patch to treat their processor as a quad core with hyperthreading while simultaneously talking all about how their processor isn't just a quad core with hyperthreading.

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unpronounceable
Apr 4, 2010

You mean we still have another game to go through?!
Fallen Rib
Just got wind of some Black edition APUs. I'm not really sure what to make of it though. As I recall, you could technically overclock the CPU of the normal ones, but it limited the GPU's allotted portion of the TDP. Overclocking the GPU was weird, and didn't seem to show improvements. Fake edit: found the Anandtech link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4478/asrock-a75-extreme6-review-and-desktop-llano-overclocking/4. If these work differently, and you can overclock the CPU and GPU, without sacrificing one or the other, they might be worth considering for very low budget systems.

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