AMD needs to step up its game

[smeezekitty]

With the launch of the GTX970 and GTX970 AMD clearly needs to step up its game.
From the early benches (still waiting for Tom's benches) it appears the 980 claims top
performance spot of all single cards.

Now they are not on sale yet so the actual in practice prices have yet to be seen.
But it looks like it is might be priced fairly reasonably. *jaw drop* from NVidia.
-edit-
I just found a reference model GTX980 for $560!
(And this is why buying overpriced cards like the Titan for gaming was never a good investment)
I have to give them credit from what I have seen so far.

AMD will probably need to quickly drop the price of the 290/290X
and hopefully their next gen is in the works.

For now it looks like NVidia took the performance crown again for the high end segment.

 

[Mousemonkey]

With the launch of the GTX970 and GTX970 AMD clearly needs to step up its game.
From the early benches (still waiting for Tom's benches) it appears the 980 claims top
performance spot of all single cards.

Now they are not on sale yet so the actual in practice prices have yet to be seen.
But it looks like it is might be priced fairly reasonably. *jaw drop* from NVidia.
-edit-
I just found a reference model GTX980 for $560!
(And this is why buying overpriced cards like the Titan for gaming was never a good investment)
I have to give them credit from what I have seen so far.

AMD will probably need to quickly drop the price of the 290/290X
and hopefully their next gen is in the works.

For now it looks like NVidia took the performance crown again for the high end segment.

At the time you posted this there were some of both showing as in stock at Scan.co.uk. You may not like the choice but technically they are on sale right now.

 

[clueless77]

With the launch of the GTX970 and GTX970 AMD clearly needs to step up its game.
From the early benches (still waiting for Tom's benches) it appears the 980 claims top
performance spot of all single cards.

Now they are not on sale yet so the actual in practice prices have yet to be seen.
But it looks like it is might be priced fairly reasonably. *jaw drop* from NVidia.
-edit-
I just found a reference model GTX980 for $560!
(And this is why buying overpriced cards like the Titan for gaming was never a good investment)
I have to give them credit from what I have seen so far.

AMD will probably need to quickly drop the price of the 290/290X
and hopefully their next gen is in the works.

For now it looks like NVidia took the performance crown again for the high end segment.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're actually being sold at sites like Newegg and Amazon right now at the lowest price points that were leaked within the mass of speculation. Like $329 for a reference 970 or something? I'm thinking about getting a couple for SLI while keeping my AMD cards for Mantle games. 2 should handle everything thrown at it in ultra (ubersampling or equivalent on) at 1080p/60fps, right?

And you're right, at these price points, if you're just building a PC or wanting to upgrade from older AMD cards the choice is fairly obvious.

 

[smeezekitty]

Hence the edit. They are on sale now although reference models only.
The early adopters will probably buy them up quick

 

[clueless77]

Ahh yeah, my bad, just caught that.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Hence the edit. They are on sale now although reference models only.
The early adopters will probably buy them up quick

And they are welcome to them as I am going to wait for 20nm, go small or go home! :lol:

 

[smeezekitty]

Well at least NVidia priced them fairly reasonably.
I think launching the 9xx series at 22nm is about the best thing they could have done to go up against the R9 series.

I am guessing 20nm has lower yields (= higher price)

Then again that yields the possibility of AMD beating NV to the first 20nm card

 

[Mousemonkey]

Well at least NVidia priced them fairly reasonably.
I think launching the 9xx series at 22nm is about the best thing they could have done to go up against the R9 series.

I am guessing 20nm has lower yields (= higher price)

Then again that yields the possibility of AMD beating NV to the first 20nm card

Long ago TSMC were saying that they were having issues making GPU's @20nm, so I don't think the R9 series had anything to do with Maxwell being on 28nm.

I still hope it refreshes on 20nm and I really don't care if AMD release a 20nm card first as it would still require stable drivers in order to be used.

 

[smeezekitty]

It appears (cr)Apple has first dibs on 20nm from TSMC

There is a rumor that NVida might skip 20nm
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-may-skip-20nm-process-technology-jump-straight-to-16nm/

I don't know how true that is (I am not usually one to believe speculation). In fact it would really make little sense since 20nm is already late and who knows when 16nm will be ready

 

[nikoli707]

flagship maxwell gm210 should be on 20nm. i would expect that in the next year and three months.

 

[Mousemonkey]

It appears (cr)Apple has first dibs on 20nm from TSMC

There is a rumor that NVida might skip 20nm
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-may-skip-20nm-process-technology-jump-straight-to-16nm/

I don't know how true that is (I am not usually one to believe speculation). In fact it would really make little sense since 20nm is already late and who knows when 16nm will be ready

Any rumours that are started by Charlie are not worth a toss IMHO.

 

[smeezekitty]

LOL As I said. I don't generally believe speculation. It wouldn't make any sense to skip 20nm

 

[Mousemonkey]

LOL As I said. I don't generally believe speculation. It wouldn't make any sense to skip 20nm

It might not make sense to the likes of you and I but the corporate mind is a different beastie.

 

[clueless77]

AMD needs to implement downsampling for current users or gtfo, it's one of the many reasons why I'm going to get these new cards.

 

[smeezekitty]

AMD needs to implement downsampling for current users or gtfo, it's one of the many reasons why I'm going to get these new cards.

If it becomes popular chances are they will implement something similar. I am personally skeptical of it
until I see more

 

[clueless77]

I like downsampling because it improves the graphical quality of older games (e.g Dark Souls, Bioshock, etc) that I still have yet to play or finish but would like to, and I'm not going to buy anything that displays in 1440p or 4k until either they're sold in larger than 40" televisions or when 4k actually becomes practical through dual card configurations. Reading through threads at Neogaf and other places, the suits at AMD have been asked about and asked to implement downsampling into CCC, who told the inquirers that they were "looking into it" or something.

Downsampling is already possible in emulators, some games where you can manually adjust the resolution in the game config file with fixes, or through software hacks, but an integrated software solution would be much more convenient. If downsampling weren't more popular than maybe what some people think, I doubt Nvidia would have expended the necessary amount of resources to develop an improved version of it beyond just setting higher than supported display resolutions.