PCFormat Forum Archive

I was going to comment that earlier on I was amazed that there's a forum member from 2004 around still (Jane,) and then I checked my join date and saw that I joined in 2005. Then there's ol' Hman who joined before either of us did: in 2003!

Yeah, the good old days. It's 10 years ago, time goes by so quickly.

Shadowplay and twitch support is somewhat of a game changer but now add gsync and your changing the playing field once more. I like the idea of the technology but I'm wondering about the inconsistancies. If the tech work like it says it does then SLI might just become something I will look at again in the future.

StarBound wrote:Shadowplay and twitch support is somewhat of a game changer but now add gsync and your changing the playing field once more. I like the idea of the technology but I'm wondering about the inconsistancies. If the tech work like it says it does then SLI might just become something I will look at again in the future.

And SLI has what to do with G-Sync?

If the frames are output as its done it might also remove the micro stutter effect.

StarBound wrote:If the frames are output as its done it might also remove the micro stutter effect.

Perhaps. What I'd really like to see nVidia implement is SLI directly over PCI-E. That really helped improve AMD's micro-stuttering. I think a combination of the two would really do wonders for frame latency.

Or it might have the opposite effect since in most cases the primary card renders in about say 8ms and the secondary in 18ms. You would have a really bad time when looking at it.

AMD Demonstrates "FreeSync", Free G-Sync Alternative, at CES 2014
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7641/amd- ... t-ces-2014

Anand Lal Shimpi wrote:There’s apparently already a VESA standard for controlling VBLANK intervals.
...
AMD isn’t ready to productize this nor does it have a public go to market strategy, but my guess is we’ll see more panel vendors encouraged to include support for variable VBLANK and perhaps an eventual AMD driver update that enables control over this function.

In our review I was pretty pleased with G-Sync. I’d be even more pleased if all panels/systems supported it. AMD’s “FreeSync” seems like a step in that direction (and a sensible one too that doesn’t require any additional hardware). If variable VBLANK control is indeed integrated into all modern AMD GPUs, that means the Xbox One and PS4 should also have support for this. Given G-Sync’s sweet spot at between 40 - 60 fps, I feel like “FreeSync” would be a big win for AMD’s APUs.

Not to diss AMD but they aren't entirely on the same level when they compare to nvidia for graphics. I've had the here and there better ATI experience in the past and when you look at the highest level of cards nvidia has a bit more to offer.

StarBound wrote:Not to diss AMD but they aren't entirely on the same level when they compare to nvidia for graphics. I've had the here and there better ATI experience in the past and when you look at the highest level of cards nvidia has a bit more to offer.

This has got nothing to do with graphics cards. AMD is supporting a product very similar to G-Sync that requires no add-on modules and costs nothing. I'd say that's a very good move on their part. The only question is whether this actually gets developed further.

Mystical_Titan wrote:This has got nothing to do with graphics cards. AMD is supporting a product very similar to G-Sync that requires no add-on modules and costs nothing. I'd say that's a very good move on their part. The only question is whether this actually gets developed further.

And that is where the problem lies. What happened to the tri-def 3D and the other 3D that AMD supported? The other question would be what is the cost and will the target market accept it with a price premium or will they just go for the normal screens?

StarBound wrote:

Mystical_Titan wrote:This has got nothing to do with graphics cards. AMD is supporting a product very similar to G-Sync that requires no add-on modules and costs nothing. I'd say that's a very good move on their part. The only question is whether this actually gets developed further.

And that is where the problem lies. What happened to the tri-def 3D and the other 3D that AMD supported? The other question would be what is the cost and will the target market accept it with a price premium or will they just go for the normal screens?

Um... did you see the part where I said it won't cost anything? Some displays support it already and as long as your graphics card does too (which only requires a driver update), you don't pay anything.

Geforce 750Ti review out:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gef ... ,3750.html

I want one, just for the hell of it.

*drool*

And our pricing is out of whack. Seriously a $150/R1650 is only worth that price at that price. For its current R2600 price tag a 660 is better. Remember the 8800GT? That card was awesome because it was priced right for the performance it gave.

Yeah, I know! It might just be cheaper for you to grab it from Amazon AND pay for the next day priority shipping!

Amazon won't let me order hardware. How'd you do it?

Uh, I just went to amazon.com (US site,) ordered the 6670 and paid for it with a voucher and a card.

Crytek Adopts AMD's Mantle API for CRYENGINE
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ma ... 26357.html

EDIT:
Also, Microsoft Announces DirectX 12 at GDC [Looks like MS absorbed Mantle]
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/micros ... 26360.html

So a new SLI titan, the Titan Z, is set for release with everything the titan had but doubled. 12GB of ram, more cuda cores, the works. A steal at $3000.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/geforc ... 26391.html

I'm actually interested in the pascal gpus but 2 years is a long long wait.

Yeah, the Titan Z looks NICE SB (said as an AMD fan!), but one single gaming card at the price of a used car?

Having said that, AMD just announced a new FirePro workstation card - at ten thousand rand more than the Titan Z:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7901/amd- ... epro-w9100

The article is more than just an announcement, it goes into a (tiny) little bit of depth about some of AMD's plans.

Pascal looks interesting from a multi-card setup point of view. As an aside, I saw this tweet from Intel's lead performance architect:

[img]https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3389403130/170995734322092efc307818ce45251c_normal.jpeg[/img]Francois Piednoel ([url=https://twitter.com/FPiednoel]@FPiednoel[/url]) [url=https://twitter.com/FPiednoel/statuses/448497347819876352]March 25, 2014[/url] wrote: #nv #pascal is a nice "copy" of intel Iris Pro memory architecture, the table has turn, innovation is on intel side on #GPU

MAN it was a schlep to convert Twitter's "Embed Tweet" HTML into BB Code!!!

GDI_Lord wrote:Having said that, AMD just announced a new FirePro workstation card - at ten thousand rand more than the Titan Z

That's a rather invalid comparison as workstation GPUs have always been INSANELY expensive. Here's a link to nVidia's cream of the crop workstation GPU on Newegg:

nvidia Quadro K6000

Work station GPUs has always been priced much much higher than the gaming graphics cards we use. I remember the radeon 9700pro price vs that of the wildcat card. The price difference was enormous and gaming performance in favour of the 9700.

That said the top end workstation gpus can hold up in gaming performance against the second from top GPUs but there is no value on a gpu to me outside gaming.

Intel can say what they want on the gpu front, they are the worst of the 3. But maybe all that is needed is something with the grunt to put that memory architecture to good use.

I know Mystical_Titan, I said that because there's been mention of more people using a Titan for compute than for gaming because of the not-as-crippled double (or was it single?) precision performance compared to the 780 series of cards.

But yes, I agree, workstation cards are different to gaming cards for a reason (even if it's just the drivers and a BIOS identifier that make them different )

Edit 1:
Intel have always been the worst of the gfx makers IMHO, even when there were more than three players around. Well, there are at least four right now if one includes Imagination Technologies. But give them time. They have a lot of oomph and I honestly don't see what will be holding them back in the future.

Edit 2:
Oooh, lookey! http://www.anandtech.com/show/7881/amd- ... -once-more
I really agree with Mondozai:

Mondozai wrote:This is a very cheesy campaign, but at least it's different from the usual Dual Extreme Shadow Killer Military Grade GPU Power ads.

And any marketing campaign has to be measured by its success in terms of increasing mindshare, and in this sense, the campaign has been successful.

And yes, it's been sticking in my mind! I even dreamt that I owned 4x dual-Hawaii boards this morning!

I'm now stuck on this,
I have only owned NVIDIA cards,
but on price I can get a better RADEON card, or better according to benchmark and test scores.
They do run hotter on the test too.

So I could go for GFX770 or Radeon9290.