Is now a really bad time to buy Nvidia?

[HitAnyKey]

You could for Black Friday or Xmas sales and watch the card you want go from being slightly discounted to out of stock or completely replaced with a higher priced one. Waiting is a bit silly nowadays unless you are 100% sure.

 

[wand3r3r]

You could for Black Friday or Xmas sales and watch the card you want go from being slightly discounted to out of stock or completely replaced with a higher priced one. Waiting is a bit silly nowadays unless you are 100% sure.

Buying a 780 (or you name it) a couple weeks before a competing card is coming out is even sillier. Once the cards are all out you can debate which one you want but with an imminent release it would be unwise to buy now.

 

[Lonyo]

It's a bad time to buy AMD or NV on the basis that there are price drop rumours going around which will probably occur in the next 2 weeks or so.

 

[Teizo]

RK - [/B]I think you may see more around developer summit. Mantle for us is a very developer driven effort, when they are ready they'll say it. Johan was ready he said it. It is not like we came up with Mantle then we kind of want to push it, it is not AMD's CUDA.

Awww. How thoughtful of him/them. Actually, if it was something more 'developer' driven they would have made it so any gpu hardware could benefit from Mantle. It's not like AMD is the only player in the pc arena.

 

[Jacky60]

I'm not going to buy now but a clearer understanding of the implications of the PS4/Xbox1 and Mantle's potential influence on the future of games and hardware is telling. If it wasn't for PS4/Xbox1 wins for AMD, Mantle probably wouldn't have any traction at all, same goes if new consoles had Haswell E 8 cores CPUs and 2xTitan GPU's instead of the rudimentary hardware developers now have to play with. For those reasons I think Mantle may do well especially because using it would allow developers to satisfy console gamers cheaply first and foremost. It could well shake up gaming more than has happened for a long time. I hope AMD don't sew up the market because competition is essential to keeping things progressing.

 

[Kenmitch]

Awww. How thoughtful of him/them. Actually, if it was something more 'developer' driven they would have made it so any gpu hardware could benefit from Mantle. It's not like AMD is the only player in the pc arena.

This go around being the only player in the console market is going to have more advantages than in the past like it or not. Why be bitter with AMD/Developers for taking advantage of GCN capabilities.

If anything you should be bitter with NVidia for not looking far enough into the future....The shift to all things mobile is were GCN is going. Both Mantle and GCN will be very mature when the SOC war is in full swing!

AMD got the PS4 and Xbone for a reason and it wasn't what it looked like on the surface.

NVidia got shield which is exactly what it looks like on the surface.

I'm not going to buy now but a clearer understanding of the implications of the PS4/Xbox1 and Mantle's potential influence on the future of games and hardware is telling. If it wasn't for PS4/Xbox1 wins for AMD, Mantle probably wouldn't have any traction at all, same goes if new consoles had Haswell E 8 cores CPUs and 2xTitan GPU's instead of the rudimentary hardware developers now have to play with. For those reasons I think Mantle may do well especially because using it would allow developers to satisfy console gamers cheaply first and foremost. It could well shake up gaming more than has happened for a long time. I hope AMD don't sew up the market because competition is essential to keeping things progressing.

Best choice currently is to wait and see....Unless you really need a gpu now.

 

[bystander36]

I personally don't expect a lot out of mantle. It'll likely be more like PhysX in its use.

Most dev's are not going to want to write their code twice, once for AMD and once for Nvidia. That is a big cost most dev's will not spend, but there will be a few, I'm sure.

The next question is just how much will Mantle actually improve things? It may only help on CPU bottlenecked problems. How many games are CPU bottlenecked?

It is also going to be a few years before we start seeing these changes anyways and which point we'll be better informed on what it actually will do for us.

 

[nenforcer]

I personally don't expect a lot out of mantle. It'll likely be more like PhysX in its use.

Most dev's are not going to want to write their code twice, once for AMD and once for Nvidia. That is a big cost most dev's will not spend, but there will be a few, I'm sure.

The next question is just how much will Mantle actually improve things? It may only help on CPU bottlenecked problems. How many games are CPU bottlenecked?

It is also going to be a few years before we start seeing these changes anyways and which point we'll be better informed on what it actually will do for us.

Now they can write for XBOX ONE, PS4 and PC using some form of Mantle and that is 3/5 (OpenGL / DirectX) being the others. That's a pretty big coup for AMD.

 

[Attic]

Love the easy ones.

Yes.

 

[poohbear]

I'm not so sure Mantle is going to be a game changer. There have been so many promised optimizations in the PC industry that usually don't make a noticeable difference.

this.

these software optimizations that have constantly been promised over the past 10 years have always been in the 5%-10% region.

 

[bystander36]

Now they can write for XBOX ONE, PS4 and PC using some form of Mantle and that is 3/5 (OpenGL / DirectX) being the others. That's a pretty big coup for AMD.

We'll have to wait and see, but you have to realize they will still have to use DirectX or OpenGl and pretty much rewrite everything anyways. They may get a few optimizations, but I wouldn't hold my breath on any game changing improvements.

 

[geokilla]

NVIDIA price drops incoming on October 07. They should be reflected by retailers shortly after. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news...rices-of-gtx-660-gtx-650-ti-boost-gtx-650-ti/

 

[tential]

I'd say at this point, it's a bad time to buy anything expensive. I'd rather get a nice HD7950 and then wait and see what the new generation of games brings in. HD7950 should tide you over until the big performance increases come next year (You could probably pick up 2 and get way past a single Titan performance for much cheaper), then when next generation Video Cards are on, pick then.

Next generation video cards, combined with the fact that these next gen consoles aren't really upping graphics too much, those new cards coming in 2014 will probably be overkill.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'd say at this point, it's a bad time to buy anything expensive. I'd rather get a nice HD7950 and then wait and see what the new generation of games brings in. HD7950 should tide you over until the big performance increases come next year (You could probably pick up 2 and get way past a single Titan performance for much cheaper), then when next generation Video Cards are on, pick then.

Next generation video cards, combined with the fact that these next gen consoles aren't really upping graphics too much, those new cards coming in 2014 will probably be overkill.

The 7950 is likely the only card worth buying right now. From what we've seen the 280 (7950 equivalent) is going to be 256bit bus w/2gig ram and the same price.

 

[badb0y]

I would wait but not for mantle but hopefully some price drops after AMD drops new cards.

 

[hawtdawg]

I wouldn't buy until AMD releases their cards, just to see if prices drop. Im waiting on this before I get a 2nd 780.

 

[CakeMonster]

I'm worried that if I buy now in three months the game may have completely changed!

It better! 3 months is a long time. You could have enjoyed a lot of games in that time, and the product will be 3 months closer to obsoleteness if you wait 3 months. You get what you pay for.

 

[Warsam71]

Personally, I buy/upgrade during the holiday season as most companies offer better prices and/or more incentives to buy existing products - and normally to keep anything I buy for at least a year or two.

@OP - I'd say wait a couple of weeks if you can.

 

[Z15CAM]

Definitely - Now is the time NOT to buy a $680+ nVidia 384 Bit 3 Gb vRam GTX 780 OC when you can buy the worlds fastest Single Card GNU Dual GPU 768 Bit 6 GB (effective 3GB) vRam AMD Radeon HD 7990 for $650 that supports Mantle or a 512 Bit 4GB R9 290X Single GPU Card for $600.

Just wait it out for a few more days and you will probably get a nVidia GTX 780 for $550 and a Titan 384 bit 6 GB for $650.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Now they can write for XBOX ONE, PS4 and PC using some form of Mantle and that is 3/5 (OpenGL / DirectX) being the others. That's a pretty big coup for AMD.

Consoles have their own API and it's not Mantle. Mantle is extra and only DICE is using it at all.

 

[sm625]

One thing to watch with mantle is how AMD profiles their cpu instruction load. As I been saying for a long time they need to add specific functional units to their cpu cores that are specifically designed to accelerate graphics/gaming oriented assembly code. And then actually add new codepaths in their drivers to make use of those instructions. I am rather shocked that they havent even so much as moved in this direction yet. But if they do, and take it seriously, then yes it is a very bad time for nvidia. It just bugs me that AMD has had this secret weapon in their hand for 5 years yet they've been too dumb to even realize what it is.

 

[Maximilian]

I cant remember the last time it was a good time to buy nvidia :\ GTX460 i guess.

Gonna snag a used 7970 soon and finally upgrade from my old 5850, its served me well :'(

 

[Z15CAM]

It just bugs me that AMD has had this secret weapon in their hand for 5 years yet they've been too dumb to even realize what it is.

What GCN architecture and the Mantle Gaming Software Engine?

All this Hype only applies to Gaming and not specifically for Big-Res Hi-Bitrate Video Rendering like 4100x2300 Res 35 Mbps 4k flics that can be rendered with a 512 Bit 1GB GTX 280 on a 2560x1440 PLS display.

Finally, thanks to the AMD GCN architecture and Mantle Engine, I'm really considering about getting back into gaming ;o)

PS: I would not use Haswell if you intend to Overclock (Let the MB BIOS control it) so stick with SB or IB 4 core i7 with Hyper threading or a multi-core AMD CPU for Hi-End 1440p/1600p Gaming. I'm no Fan-Boy but that's just the facts from what I read.