Questions about Directx 11 and current gen gfx cards

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kageryu

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I am considering building a new computer next month and I have a BUNCH of questions.

Is the radeon 5770 is worth the purchase or should I just buy a radeon 4890 or GTX 275 instead? I'm considering getting a 1920 x 1080 resolution monitor and I want to play Crysis, GTA IV, Need for Speed SHIFT.

Is Directx 11 going to be a big deal soon?

Also, if Directx 11 becomes mainstream, does it mean that current gen cards like the 4890 and the GTX 275, 285 will not be able to play Directx 11 games like Dirt2?

Finally, I have read that just like how Vista was coupled with Directx 10, Windows 7 will be coupled with Directx 11, so people who want to use Windows 7 should get a Directx 11-compatible card?

Sorry for all these questions but I feel that I am lacking info regarding Directx 11 and how it will affect gfx cards.
 
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gamerk316

gamerk316

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1: 5770 ~ 4870
2: Games that use DX11 will still run, just in either DX10 or DX9 mode (depending on what features are avaliable). You won't have to worry about any GPU being able to run a game for quite some time.
3: I still doubt DX11 pickup will be any faster then DX10 was. Thats another debate though...
 
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JackNaylorPE

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Well you been around since November or so 2006, what impact do you think DX10 has had ?

Also, if Directx 11 becomes mainstream, does it mean that current gen cards like the 4890 and the GTX 275, 285 will not be able to play Directx 11 games like Dirt2?
Click to expand...

No. DX11 will support all DX10/10.1 features

We just don't know how bigga deal DX11 will be....DX10 was certainly a huge yawn. We aren't likely to be in a position to judge for about 2 years.

The smart advice is sit tight and see how things shake out ..... Unless you have a failed GFX card or a game that just is unplayable on your current card, what's the rush ? Worse case if you wait, and Nvidia's next gen cards are a flop, you wind up with a better ATI card than you can buy today. The cards will have progressed from Rev A Hardware to Rev C hardware, the drivers will be more mature, the manufacturers will have moved past reference designs to tweaked ones gaining better performance, new models will be out and prices on today's models will have dropped.

If ya can't wait, or if you keep your graphics cards more than 2 years, I think the best choice is twin 5850's or a single 5870. Throw a PhysX card in if ya fancy that kinda thing.

If ya upgrade GFX cards very 18-24 months, then a 4xxx ATI or nVidia card that stacks up well gainst it's ATI cousin is a perfectly valid choice.

You specifically asked about the 5770. See these for further reading:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=14

"The value of the 5770 in particular is clearly not going to be in its performance. Compared to AMD’s 4870, it loses well more than it wins, and if we throw out Far Cry 2, it’s around 10% slower overall. It also spends most of its time losing to NVIDIA’s GTX 260, which unfortunately the 4870 didn’t have so much trouble with. AMD clearly has put themselves in to a hole with memory bandwidth, and the 5770 doesn’t have enough of it to reach the performance it needs to be at.

If you value solely performance in today’s games, we can’t recommend the 5770. Either the 4870 1GB or the GTX 260 would be the better buy.

So here’s the bottom line for the 5770: Unless you absolutely need to take advantage of the lower power requirements of the 40nm process (e.g. you pay a ton for power) or you strongly believe that DirectX 11 will have a developer adoption rate faster than anything we’ve seen before for DirectX, the 1GB 4870 or GTX 260 is still the way to go. "
 
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TheGreatGrapeApe

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DX11 =/= DX10, sofar we have game demos at the card's launch, we didn't have that for the DX10 generation until months later. Also DX10 itself launched month after the cards, and was also a bigger implementation shift than DX11. And no you don't need it for Win7, or Win 7 for it, Vista is fine, and really for Vista you only needed DX9 for it to work at a general level, and that's the same as Win7.

You will likely be able to play any game in the near future be it DX11 or not, it will only beomce a restriction when that's the base and that's a ways off.

However, there are nice features of DX11 which may or may not be usable soon, and also direct compute also has better supoort for the HD5K than previous generations, and HD4K higher than the GTX series. Also you have more IQ options as well, so it's not just limited to DX11 alone persay.
What will/won't be important has yet to be seen, but many of the new features are already showing noticeable benefit;

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=2

The main thing to consider is if you're buying for last year's games or for next year's games & features?

If you want to see more of what the DX11 cards bring to the table look at the HD5870 reviews.

-Edit to correct link to proper page.-
 
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ovaltineplease

ovaltineplease

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wait for a price drop, the technology isn't getting 100% utilized yet anyways.

When a few more dx11 games come out which actually utilize some of the new features well, that'll be the time to get it.

If you're really hard pressed on building a new pc in the next month, get a cheap video card to hold you over. It never hurts to have a backup card in case of a hardware failure anyways, I have a couple 8800gt's and a 4850 radeon from previous builds which I use for this purpose in my home because we have 3 pcs.
 
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mactronix

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I wouldnt want to try playing those games at that resolution with a 5770 the 128 bit bus will restrict the performance, so if you decide on a DX11 card then the 5850 is where i would be looking.

Most probably not . Main thing is we dont really know what the image quality/differance side of things is going to be like so from that point of view its all guess work for now.

No the cards wont be able to play DX11 only games but thats years off so not to worry as said they will just play the games in DX10/10.1

W7 will have DX11 and Vista will get it sooner or later but you dont have to have a DX11 card just because the OS is running DX11.

Mactronix
 
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K

kageryu

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If the price of the 5850 drops enough by Black Friday or Cyber Monday, I will buy it. Otherwise, should I buy a 5770 or a 4890? I know that the 5770 performs about 10% less than the 4870 but it supports Dx 11.
 
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Ehsan w

Ehsan w

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I am with you
100 %

ok...maybe not the twin 5850's since he didn't even ask that
but one should be enough if you can afford it.

5770/ 4890
definitely the HD 4890 (even though I hate the card)
you get better performance
and it's 10 dollars more than the 5770 with the mail in rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131167
 
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mactronix

mactronix

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If you use AA then both cards are about the same. If you dont use AA then the 4890 has a handy advantage over the 5770. If you plan this card to last a while, over a year then get a 5770 but if you plan to get a newer card within that time frame, up to a year, then i would get the 4890 personally.
I dont see DX11 being that prevelant in games before then but i could be wrong. Just my opinion.

Mactronix
 
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The_Blood_Raven

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Umm.... But I like it...

I think the 4890 is a great card and all, but if there is anyway you can afford it, get the 5850. If not I would still go with the 5770 or wait awhile.
 
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gamerk316

gamerk316

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I'm still wondering why AMD decided to go with a 128-bit bus. I mean seriously, how did they not see how big a bottleneck that was going to be?

Considering teh x770 is generally the top mainstream card of a generation, AMD may have backed themselves into a corner by making the 5770 so broken. You simply can not recommend buying them at their price point.
 
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dougie_boy

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in benchmarks the 128bit bus does not seem to be a bottleneck. a number of benchmarks have shown the cards perform admirably.

i think from a business perspective they made the right call. AMD has played a very good hand with this round of GPUs.

all the 5xxx family are faster than the last gen, while giving the silicone room for movement in a few months time while nvidia shows its hand. im sure the product line will echo the events of the last. the 4870 -> moved to the 4890. bit of tweaking and they had a small, power efficient wafer with was cost effective.

amd seems to be more concerned with forcing nvidias hand at the moment, for nvidia to have to drop prices on the 2xx range which is a huge die must be hurting them.
 
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F

fwgx

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I've just ordered a 5770 for a few reasons:
1) I don't plan on changing it anytime soon so the DX11 compatibility is welcome for when it starts getting used as I don't want to buy something that will limit me in 24 months time.
2) I think when DX11 is used that this card has a lot more to offer and will perform better than we've seen so far.
3) The low power consumption means that I will save a big wad of cash a year that I can use for other things, like saving for another 5770 in 2-3 years time.
 
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mactronix

mactronix

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+1

The value, Price /perf seekers would agree with you but people are still buying them. They are meant for mainstream but even so its a bit contradictory to say "hey its on a 128 bit bus because its meant for main stream and these guys don't use high resolutions usually" Then they put Eye-finity on it for multiple monitors ? Now it could be me but in the same way mainstream users don't tend to use higher resolutions, I'm fairly sure one monitor would be the norm as well.

As you say at the price point it really is a no brainer. If we had a couple of really good DX11 games that proved DX11's worth(which i think we will get fairly soon) then the card may make some sense. However at my UK price point of around £125 for a 5770 it just personally doesn't make sense at all, I'm lucky enough to have a Crossfire board with a spare slot sitting there and so if i did need more graphics power i would just slot another 4770 in at £ 70. This pairing wipes the floor with a 5770 and is very close to a 5850, driver and game issue aside obviously.

Mactronix
 
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daedalus685

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The 5770 is a tad too expensive right now.. unless you are in love with dx11 a bit too much.. However, they went 128bit on the bus to save money. It may seem like a silly idea for now.. but this wil allow them to eventually sell it for much much less and not bleed money, probably still even make a profit. From a corperate perspecetive it makes a lot of sense. When teh time comes to cut the price to $100 I'm sure they will be glad they can still make a good profit on it. I'd have to think the only reason it is so expensive now is due to relatively poor yields out of the gate.

They need something to fill the hole between 5770 and 5850 though and I was a bit surprised they made the 5770 as slow as they did.. I'd expect they have the 5770 where it is so that when the 5850's that dont pass the mustard (5830, 5790, whatever they call it) start coming out it actually has a logical place in the lineup to fall.

Anyway, to the OP.. I'd go with the 5770 myself (the power requirements are too sexy to mee, but I'm sure others have higher priorities), though I would strongly suggest that you work towards a 5850... But if cash and raw perforamance are your thing, then dx11 really is not something you have to worry about for some time to come. Though you certainly will miss out on some features in a few games that won't be song long from now.
 
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mactronix

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Got to agree with you on the performance, i know these things dont always pan out but based on the hardware specs of the card it should be faster anyway in my opinion.

Mactronix
 
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duzcizgi

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These cards will show what they can do, when the new titles employing DirectCompute will emerge.
You know, for PhysX you need nVidia only GPU/PPU.
DC is harder to use than PhysX, but hardware independent. If you were to write a new game which one would you choose? Especially if you tend to use even some DX11 features and want to add some physics capabilities there?
And, creating quality graphics with DX11 requires less detailed meshes, thanks to tesselation unit.
So, for DX11, in fact the GPU memory bandwidth isn't a big deal. Less triangles are fetched from memory, anyway.

The situation here is exactly the same as the one at launch of Vista. nVidia had the cards ready for DX10 while ATi was 6 months behind. Now just the table's reversed.

Wait for the new titles employing DX11 stuff to emerge.
 
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mactronix

mactronix

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Mostly true, but then again it dosent alter the fact ( If the charts in the reviews are accurate) that the 5770 is basically a 40nm 4890 and as such should be faster, which it isnt.
DX11 really isnt relevant to this, even though it is probably true that when compared to older DX version GPU's the 5770 will get faster when DX11 is used.

Mactronix
 
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godbrother

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If you are really worried about DX11, I would suggest going onto ebay and getting a GTS250 (9800GTX+) for like... 70 bucks and laying low for a year to see what DX11 has to offer. (GTS250 should do you till then.) If you think its not worth it, or to overpriced, then you can pick between any card you had hoped for. Plus, more mature benchmarks will apear with them cards.

Also, by then the card you was hoping for will most probbally have more then $70 bucks knocked of its start price so you won't loose anything in the long run. Plus, you win a free GPU, and still pay the same price.
 
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daedalus685

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There isn't a meaningful difference. I'm not sure what duzcizgi is on about, but the only "changes" should make the card faster clock for clock (and will in dx11 games). However, that drop in memory bandwidth is where the performance drop is coming from. I do not understand why they did it except to allow for much lower prices when they feel like it. It leaves too large of a hole in the product lineup I can't see them designing for which has me assuming that either another card that will fall between the 5770 and 5850 is coming relatively soon, or there are driver issues.
 
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gamerk316

gamerk316

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^^ The problem with that, is it more or less indicates that performance for the low end cards will be far lower then initally expected. And if NVIDIA chooses to engage in a price war (they CAN afford it...), AMD, which still has not turned a profit, could really get hurt.

All AMD needed was for the 5770 to be as good as the 4870, something which is not always the case. From a performance standpoint, its an idiotic decision. If this is an indication of where the rest of the lineup will be, then AMD may have given its competiiton an opening to grab the Price/Performance crown, as the 5770 is clearly overpriced for its performance levels.

And I STILL have serious questions about the FPS cost of tesselation; If its as high as I expect, then this card in particular may come crashing down to earth in a hurry...we'll see in a few months. (Where exactly is the swarm of DX11 titles again?)
 
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F

fwgx

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I'm not so sure. I reckon there's a big amount of hardware on that card that's just there for the new DX11 that noone has tested yet. I doubt that it will be a big performance hit.
 
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