Purchasing a 380X or waiting for Polaris

[xthetenth]

Total War Warhammer so far looks like optimisation crap. I heard from person testing pre-sale version that in 1080p, i7-4790K @4500 MHz, GTX 1080, during 4x4 battle when fight beigns framerate drops to 20 FPS...
It looks that this game will be able to eat any CPU, I doubt that DX12 version will help much.

A CPU bottleneck is precisely, exactly the sort of thing that DX 12 exists to help.

 

[sirmo]

A CPU bottleneck is precisely, exactly the sort of thing that DX 12 exists to help.

Exactly, this is why Async Compute is so important. It allows the developer to offload many of the traditionally CPU tasks onto the GPU without sacrificing graphics shader execution.

 

[tential]

Total War Warhammer so far looks like optimisation crap. I heard from person testing pre-sale version that in 1080p, i7-4790K @4500 MHz, GTX 1080, during 4x4 battle when fight beigns framerate drops to 20 FPS...
It looks that this game will be able to eat any CPU, I doubt that DX12 version will help much.

You can't port a game to dx12. It doesn't work like that. Any game ported to dx 12 has not reflected the vast majority of of dx12 improvements they should.

Unless a game is dx12 only I really don't care about the dx12 performance.

Using games like Hitman or rise of tomb raider or whatever game was ported to dx12 to show how great your favorite vendor is useless

 

[RussianSensation]

Total War Warhammer so far looks like optimisation crap. I heard from person testing pre-sale version that in 1080p, i7-4790K @4500 MHz, GTX 1080, during 4x4 battle when fight beigns framerate drops to 20 FPS...
It looks that this game will be able to eat any CPU, I doubt that DX12 version will help much.

Let's wait for final game's released benchmarks. Look at the performance R9 390 series experienced in Doom after 5 days.

28 fps -> 77 fps in the same scene on the same card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvWaE-3Aseg

We also need to wait until DX12 patch. TW games are notoriously CPU bound/limited. DX12 could help tremendously here for GCN, not so much for Maxwell since Maxwell cannot perform ASync Compute properly.

Even in DX11 games, 960 is still a horrible videocard. Barely faster than an R9 270X.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/26.html

A CPU bottleneck is precisely, exactly the sort of thing that DX 12 exists to help.

:thumbsup: Bingo

FX8370 DX11 + Fury X = 26.3 fps
FX8370 DX12 + Fury X = 51.9 fps (97% faster)

i7 6700K DX11 + Fury X = 47.8 fps
i7 6700K DX12 + Fury X = 67.9 fps (42% faster)

http://www.computerbase.de/2016-02/ashes-of-the-singularity-directx-12-amd-nvidia/5/

DX12 implemented properly is a major win for PC gaming.

 

[xthetenth]

You can't port a game to dx12. It doesn't work like that. Any game ported to dx 12 has not reflected the vast majority of of dx12 improvements they should.

Unless a game is dx12 only I really don't care about the dx12 performance.

Using games like Hitman or rise of tomb raider or whatever game was ported to dx12 to show how great your favorite vendor is useless

Ashes has a DX11 path. A DX11 path doesn't preclude a good DX12 path, although it may mean a truly great one is impossible.

 

[Pneumothorax]

AMD released 3 consecutive drivers. The latest fix boosts Doom performance even more using 16.5.2.1

960 4GB still wins but 960 2GB is completely destroyed by Doom due to VRAM limitations. Overall, the difference in performance between a 280X/380X and 960 4GB for this game are hardly worth talking about. 290/290X completely destroy these 380/380X/960 level cards. The OP didn't want to wait for any deals or buy a used after-market 290/290X/970.

Doom is actually a good showing for 960 but what about other games in 2016? Watch, once Total War Warhammer gets the DX12 patch, 960 will get destroyed by a barely more expensive used R9 290.

Amazing! It wasn't that long ago that 960 supporters were claiming that 2gb was 'enough' for 2-3 years at 1080p when it the 960 first came out... For the OP, don't make the mistake that I did when I paid $600 for a 780ti right before the 970/980 were released.... AMD is going to put some downward price pressure on the pre-existing mid-range cards...

 

[tential]

Amazing! It wasn't that long ago that 960 supporters were claiming that 2gb was 'enough' for 2-3 years at 1080p when it the 960 first came out... For the OP, don't make the mistake that I did when I paid $600 for a 780ti right before the 970/980 were released.... AMD is going to put some downward price pressure on the pre-existing mid-range cards...

The 960 2gb was bad for the money.
Those using a 960 have 0 intention of using high quality textures. I see a lot of my gtx owner friends run on high anyway and not ultra.

2gb sucks but they'll turn their settings down and they'll never even notice how the card doesn't work on ultra textures

 

[SimianR]

To me using high/ultra textures can be one of the biggest IQ improvements compared to other settings. 2GB cards haven't made sense for a very long time.

 

[RussianSensation]

Amazing! It wasn't that long ago that 960 supporters were claiming that 2gb was 'enough' for 2-3 years at 1080p when it the 960 first came out... For the OP, don't make the mistake that I did when I paid $600 for a 780ti right before the 970/980 were released.... AMD is going to put some downward price pressure on the pre-existing mid-range cards...

I know, ironically the same users attacked 285's 2GB reduction over 7950 and Fury X's 4GB over 980Ti's 6GB. It was never about 2GB vs. 4GB for them. If they were objective, they would have never recommended 960 2GB in the first place as sites continued to show 2GB cards struggling in many games prior to Doom. All of this was ignored on purpose because then NV had nothing worth buying between $140-280 price levels. Some people on here would rather recommend a crippled NV card over any AMD card; it's just how it is. Now they are all quiet, not coming out and admitting that 2GB cards to keep over 2-3 years were dead on arrival, regardless if there were AMD or NV cards.

The 960 2gb was bad for the money.
Those using a 960 have 0 intention of using high quality textures. I see a lot of my gtx owner friends run on high anyway and not ultra.

These consumers put themselves into that situation themselves. AMD had R9 280 3GB, R9 280X 3GB, R9 380 4GB, R9 380X 4GB and R9 290 4GB for not much more $ in North America. Now what's going to happen is the 950/960 users will once again pony up another $200 US to upgrade to get $250-270 after-market 290 level of performance that was available November 2014. Alternatively, they could have purchased a GTX970 instead.

Don't forget that FreeSync monitors continue flooding the market.

LG now has a sub-$500 USD 4K IPS 27" monitor!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CH9ZTI4...UTF8&colid=B7IJ7GEXZML5&coliid=I210UMBTX0Y656

NV eco-system is now a double hit on the GPU and monitor side.

 

[nenforcer]

I bought my dual HIS Radeon R9 285 2GB in October of 2014 used for $300 combined. They ran Star Wars:Battlefront just fine on ULTRA but with Doom OpenGL 4.3 along with a AMD FX-8350 I have to drop settings to Medium in order to get a higher FPS. In hindsight a single non-Reference Radeon R9 290 but I liked the fact that the Tonga was GCN 1.3 and had the newer Delta Color Compression along with the Crossfire XDMA.

I'm looking forward to this Polaris 10 release as the R9 390 and Fury cards should come down in price depending on where they slot/price the Polaris 10.

 

[grimpr]

To me using high/ultra textures can be one of the biggest IQ improvements compared to other settings. 2GB cards haven't made sense for a very long time.

Medium/High on 1440p is superior than Ultra on 1080, the 380/380x are capable of 1440p gaming with medium/high settings.

 

[mohit9206]

To me using high/ultra textures can be one of the biggest IQ improvements compared to other settings. 2GB cards haven't made sense for a very long time.

If by very long time, you mean 2 years then yes i agree with you.

 

[escrow4]

Ended up waiting, completely out of character for me.

I was looking at the 390 non X which is $485 here (Australia, $350 US roughly) but then Doom came out and AMD was meh, so by the time the drivers were released fixing performance, a whole stack of 1070 info came out.

With pricing here that 1070 will likely be 500 local so this time it really is actually worth waiting. Plus that 1070 has proper HEVC support. I could do it in software easily, but if I'm spending that much I'll buy a new chip. 970s here are dead on $500 too.

 

[mohit9206]

Actually 1070 will be closer to 600 AUD not 500 that too those USD380 models. Founder's aka suckers edition will be closer to 700 AUD. But yeah either the 1070 or R9 490 are the best options.