RTG3rd March – Will Discuss Polaris, Fury X2, VR, DirectX 12 and More

[MrTeal]

What do you reckon your upgrade cycle will be, as you switch over? To put things into perspective, would you be using Kepler cards right now?

It seems to me that both brands have good value propositions for their customers, but that value implies certain consuming habits in order to shine.

It'll depend on what's available around launch. Hopefully there's something in a single card that gives me similar performance to my 290CF, or at least in the same ballpark. If not, I might just wait for the bigger dies. Based on history, nVidia is likely to launch the bigger die first, but we'll see how it goes.

we havent seen anything related to gw on dx12 and if a small example of what is coming on vulkan is the locked down demo of nvidia well things are going to be interesting:sneaky:

No doubt. The first crop of actual DX12 games should be pretty very interesting. There's obviously going to be some teething issues, but hopefully games like GoW end up being few and far between.

 

[xthetenth]

Barring other incentives, I'll probably be buying an nVidia GPU despite my pretty much exclusive track record of AMD GPUs since Geforce 2. I've spent close to 5 figures on AMD GPUs over the years (obviously not just for gaming), but if for gaming an nVidia GPU gives 10 % lower FPS on average at the same price point but doesn't suffer random -50% GW related drops, that's a pretty compelling argument.

Funny. That's exactly the reason I won't buy NV unless I have no compelling AMD alternative.

Also do you mind if I bookmark this post in case I get in an argument with somebody who talks about the free market discouraging unethical practices?

 

[boozzer]

Funny. That's exactly the reason I won't buy NV unless I have no compelling AMD alternative.

Also do you mind if I bookmark this post in case I get in an argument with somebody who talks about the free market discouraging unethical practices?

I am pretty sure he can't stop your quoting as long as his post isn't misrepresented there is an even better one here that thinks"monopoly" is good for consumers and innovation, now there is food for thought, hahahaa.

 

[crisium]

Good idea, buying Nvidia for their robust Gameworks performance advantage:

Oh wait. No, terrible idea.

I'm not defending the program, because the Witcher 3 GW for example was deliberate sabotage. But some implementations of GW are very light and there's no reason AMD cards cannot perform better. Or equal, see Just Cause 3, Fallout 4 after optimizations. Heck, even the POS Batman AK has parity.

That is not a wise decision to make. You're turning a blind eye to when they do sabotage performance, and absentmindedly ignoring when GW titles are still AMD favored, and also ignoring the many, many neutral games that swing to AMD. When AMD suffers in Gameworks there's a strong chance Kepler does too, so you are also supporting that debacle.

You should probably buy based on price-to-performance, realistic common sense indicators of which card will age better, and business ethics.

 

[xthetenth]

Or if you're having a hard time caring about business ethics, remember the considerable overlap between them and long term self-interest.

 

[Samwell]

You should probably buy based on price-to-performance, realistic common sense indicators of which card will age better, and business ethics.

There are no common sense indicators for cards maybe beside of ram and business ethics also makes no sense. Amd and Nvidia both just want our money. That's all the ethic they have. People should just buy on Perf/$ maybe with additional features they want which might tend to one or the other.

 

[MrTeal]

Or if you're having a hard time caring about business ethics, remember the considerable overlap between them and long term self-interest.

No thanks. I'll buy whatever happens to give the best performance at the time. AMD has done a good job in the past earning my dollars, at least in the GPU space. I hope they continue to do so, though I'm less budget constrained now than I have been in the past and will choose whatever solution gives the best and most consistent performance.

If you want to prop up AMD as part of a brand preference, feel free to do so.

 

[crisium]

There are no common sense indicators for cards maybe beside of ram and business ethics also makes no sense. Amd and Nvidia both just want our money. That's all the ethic they have. People should just buy on Perf/$ maybe with additional features they want which might tend to one or the other.

VRAM, theoretical FLOPs which begin to show at higher resolutions and can likely be better manifest in DX12, A Sync Compute, and the history and lessons learned from the 2-year Nvidia cadence.

No thanks. I'll buy whatever happens to give the best performance at the time. AMD has done a good job in the past earning my dollars, at least in the GPU space. I hope they continue to do so, though I'm less budget constrained now than I have been in the past and will choose whatever solution gives the best and most consistent performance.

Reread what he said, and reread what you typed, specifically the bold parts.

Or if you're having a hard time caring about business ethics, remember the considerable overlap between them and long term self-interest.

Anyone who disputes than an AMD card from January 2012 to September 2014 performs better than the once Nvidia equivalent at this point, just stop reading and go back to your comfort posts.

Ignoring the ethics of the 2-year cadence, means you suffer early and often as soon as that company pushes their next product. Far Cry 4 was 2 months after the 980 launched, and that was the first major game to showcase Kepler failing while Maxwell did not proportionally. Witcher 3 was just a few months after that. It is not difficult to understand Nvidia Kepler cards (pushed at higher prices to all AMD counterparts) are the definition of inconsistent performance.

Also, ethically, when a company lies about the configuration of their GPU you can expect this to have real actual long term consequences. JHH himself (in a post that itself I have many other issues with) admitted that for the 970 "software engineers can keep less frequently used data in the 512MB segment". Are you really confident after the way Kepler has been treated, basically becoming a coin flip whether it properly performs with what were once GCN or Maxwell equivalents, that Nvidia will continue to manage the memory properly months after Pascal is here? And how do you know the next Nvidia card you buy isn't sold as a lie (ROPs, Bandwidth) and doesn't have a secret caveat (3.5+0.5) to its performance?

And a company that lies about how driver dependent their card is, and only comes clean months later after exposure, how can you ignore this? Thousands bought the 970 before it became apparent that it is a driver dependent card. Ignore this lying, ignore the history of Kepler if you want. Both companies want your money, obviously. Please find someone ever saying AMD is a charity. But there is a clear difference in how the ethics play out for the consumer.

 

[xthetenth]

There are no common sense indicators for cards maybe beside of ram and business ethics also makes no sense. Amd and Nvidia both just want our money. That's all the ethic they have. People should just buy on Perf/$ maybe with additional features they want which might tend to one or the other.

Companies get money by creating the perception of value. It's in the customer's best interest that the company creates the perception of value by creating actual value. Rewarding a competitor for making value that fades quickly and is reduced because reducing it reduces the other company's value more is a really awful, short-sighted idea and is yet another example of disinterested cynicism being an utterly terrible belief system for getting what you actually want (see also "they're all bad so I'm not going to vote for the vastly less bad one").

Never mind that going for the short lived value means any value you're getting is short-lived and worse in the long term. That's also really important because video cards are basically a rental, and the price paid divided by the longevity of the card is much better for telling how much you pay for performance in the long run, as well as the effect that the lower the frame rate the more a difference makes so performance degrading more slowly means you get more when it really counts.

 

[3DVagabond]

There are no common sense indicators for cards maybe beside of ram and business ethics also makes no sense. Amd and Nvidia both just want our money. That's all the ethic they have. People should just buy on Perf/$ maybe with additional features they want which might tend to one or the other.

You can earn money without compromising ethics. It's a myth that's perpetuated by those with a guilty conscience that you can't.

I like progress and new technology. I like open standards. I know what will happen if we end up with a monopoly. If I can help what I believe in without compromising, why wouldn't I?

 

[Mahigan]

Funny. That's exactly the reason I won't buy NV unless I have no compelling AMD alternative.

Also do you mind if I bookmark this post in case I get in an argument with somebody who talks about the free market discouraging unethical practices?

There's no free market, try this next time as an argument of you want to win:

"Do you support IP/Patent enforcement by a State?"
He replies yes.

"Then how can there be more than only a few market competitors in the long run if market saturation is reached and growth is no longer possible unless market competitors end up being required to buy themselves off in order to grow their potential cusumer base?"
He replies that new competitors can arise in the market..

" You hit back with, but IP/Patent enforcements end up leading to oligarchies. How can new competitors rise if the act of competitors acquiring one another also leads to them acquiring massive IP/Patent portfolios making it damn near impossible for new competition to rise in the market"
He replies with, Oh wow I'man idiot

"You push it further, the only way a free market could come into being is if IP/Patents, which are intangible property rights in the first place, end up off the list of State enforcement of property rights"
He replies with, I never thought of it that way...

"You then make your final argument, Either way IP/Patents aren't private property if the ideas are marketed and shared through a public medium such as a market. Since the concept of intellectual property is based on ideas, and ideas reside in the mind, then they're only private property if they are not shared publicly. Once shared publicly, the ideas then reside within the minds of anyone to whom the idea is communicated too. That means anything who comes in contact with products based on the idea(s). At this point the idea(s) reside within the private property of a multitude of individuals by residing in their minds. To attempt to use the state to stop these folks from using their own property, their minds, to they themselves create competing alternatives is an infringement on their private property rights."

Congrats, you've won the argument.

 

[Mahigan]

Of course you also end up proving that state enforcements lead to oligarchies, monopolies etc (which they do).

Free markets can only exist if:
1. There is no state.
2. The State has a very limited role and its role as a "private property enforcement unit" is seriously curtailed.

Big Governments lead to market monopolization.

Small Governments with IP/Patent enforcement lead to market oligarchies.

Honest people turn to Mutualist market principles. Meaning "Anarchism". But honest people are rare. Most humans are selfish creatures whose greed can be amplified over 9000 fold through the use of hierarchical state granted privileges.

 

[railven]

Barring other incentives, I'll probably be buying an nVidia GPU despite my pretty much exclusive track record of AMD GPUs since Geforce 2. I've spent close to 5 figures on AMD GPUs over the years (obviously not just for gaming), but if for gaming an nVidia GPU gives 10 % lower FPS on average at the same price point but doesn't suffer random -50% GW related drops, that's a pretty compelling argument.

Read this and just predicted the forth coming responses. I was not wrong.

When I went form Red to Green a few long time posters here that never noticed me suddenly didn't like me. The brand fights here are serious business. Welcome to the unwashed neutral party heads up, you will be catching a lot of flack.

My years of own AMD/ATI cards meant nothing when my sig got updated.

 

[Madpacket]

From what I've learned of Gameworks I won't be buying another Nvidia card for quite some time. I've sold off all my existing Nvidia cards except for an ITX sized Asus Geforce 970 (due to a custom case that won't allow for higher TDP cards) but will sell that shortly before the mid range Polaris cards are released.

Nvidia's business practices are becoming a huge turn-off and I won't be recommending them or using them for any new builds going forward unless needed for a specific reason (CUDA development being the only thing I can think of).

I suggest everyone watch this video on the issue if you're unclear (like I was) about Gameworks. It gives a good summary of the issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7fA_JC_R5s

It's pretty short sighted to just say "screw it, I only care about immediate gratification or performance now" that Nvidia offers in *select* games. If a company is willing to pay off (let's call it what it is) developers to sabotage performance of a competitor or even their own past "and still supported" products, what else are they willing to do? By supporting Nvidia you're taking a greater risk of eventually getting screwed over.

Now this behavior shouldn't surprise anyone. When a company monopolizes a market it sometimes abuses the position and cause great harm. There are many examples throughout history that prove this (just read up on the Union Carbide Bopal disaster) and if the roles were reversed I would have no doubt AMD would be pulling off similar tactics to keep their position. And if this were the case I would treat them the same way.

Now obviously Nvidia is no Union Carbide (this is an extreme case) but it's really up to us, the educated consumer to try and keep balance in a capitalistic society, we can't rely on eventual lawsuits or government to step in to stop unethical behaviour. By then it's too late, the damage is already done and often the company in question becomes large enough to supply large amounts of campaign dollars to continue skirting the legal system.

tldr;

Don't reward companies for unethical behaviour.

 

[xthetenth]

Read this and just predicted the forth coming responses. I was not wrong.

When I went form Red to Green a few long time posters here that never noticed me suddenly didn't like me. The brand fights here are serious business. Welcome to the unwashed neutral party heads up, you will be catching a lot of flack.

My years of own AMD/ATI cards meant nothing when my sig got updated.

It's almost as hard telling you're a longtime red owner who went green as it is telling that I'm a longtime green owner who went red. Buy what you want, but if you want to rationalize it in public, don't feel entitled to a receptive audience.

 

[railven]

tldr;

Don't reward companies for unethical behaviour.

Too late. But I guess the inverse of this statement would be: reward the company offering less for the same money.

Seems like shooting myself in the foot would be your solution. Nah, I'll stick to whomever gives me the most for my dollar day I'm at the register!

EDIT:

It's almost as hard telling you're a longtime red owner who went green as it is telling that I'm a longtime green owner who went red. Buy what you want, but if you want to rationalize it in public, don't feel entitled to a receptive audience.

Yerp, I agree. And I don't post here seeking an audience,

 

[LTC8K6]

I will just wait and see which of the new cards actually do the best in DX12 and not play all the conspiracy theory games about who is manipulating what...

 

[Madpacket]

Too late. But I guess the inverse of this statement would be: reward the company offering less for the same money.

Seems like shooting myself in the foot would be your solution. Nah, I'll stick to whomever gives me the most for my dollar day I'm at the register!

I understand your position and realize being short-sighted can be hard to overcome. I recommend you read the following if you have a few minutes.

http://psycheducation.org/treatment...sual-rap/human-decision-making-a-scary-thing/

 

[Samwell]

VRAM, theoretical FLOPs which begin to show at higher resolutions and can likely be better manifest in DX12, A Sync Compute, and the history and lessons learned from the 2-year Nvidia cadence.

Against better Geometry rate, Tesselation, DX12_1 features. You never know what really matters. Kepler was a shitty architecture and the games changed in favour of gcn because of the console wins. But will it go on? I'm not so sure. Anyway it's not only about longterm. I'm happy i missed Kepler but instead i got a 7970 which needed 1 year to get acceptable drivers and gave me the biggest driver problems i ever had.

You can earn money without compromising ethics. It's a myth that's perpetuated by those with a guilty conscience that you can't.

I like progress and new technology. I like open standards. I know what will happen if we end up with a monopoly. If I can help what I believe in without compromising, why wouldn't I?

I like new technology too, which is given to me by both companies. Sometimes more open, sometimes more closed. It's always the case, that the underdog tries to accomplish more by pushing open standards because he has no possibility of pushing stuff differently. I don't care for this, i just want the hardware which gives me the best experience. Actually it's even annoying me that amd and it's fans are always whining and it's pushing me more into buying Nv than the other way around. But i will look into the new generation and buy what gives me best value.

 

[xthetenth]

Yerp, I agree. And I don't post here seeking an audience,

That bit was more about what you were responding to.

 

[Magee_MC]

Too late. But I guess the inverse of this statement would be: reward the company offering less for the same money.

Seems like shooting myself in the foot would be your solution. Nah, I'll stick to whomever gives me the most for my dollar day I'm at the register!

I don't think that's quite accurate. AMD could only be considered to be offering less if and only if you look day one performance on Gameworks games. On Gaming Evolved or neutral games the performance is pretty much equal for equivalent cards. Other things that it could be said that AMD offers with its cards are better long term performance compared to equivalent NV cards at launch, comparable game performance some time after a Gameworks game launches (weeks to a month or two), and a better long term PC gaming ecosystem by way of open source effects and tools.

One of the advantages that NV has had for a while now is a better resale value, because of the perception of better performance. However, now with the broader knowledge that older AMD cards tend to get better with age while older NV cards comparatively do worse, that seems to be changing.

 

[monstercameron]

I don't think that's quite accurate. AMD could only be considered to be offering less if and only if you look day one performance on Gameworks games. On Gaming Evolved or neutral games the performance is pretty much equal for equivalent cards. Other things that it could be said that AMD offers with its cards are better long term performance compared to equivalent NV cards at launch, comparable game performance some time after a Gameworks game launches (weeks to a month or two), and a better long term PC gaming ecosystem by way of open source effects and tools.

One of the advantages that NV has had for a while now is a better resale value, because of the perception of better performance. However, now with the broader knowledge that older AMD cards tend to get better with age while older NV cards comparatively do worse, that seems to be changing.

It is interesting to witness public perception changing as you watch a specific industry, what will be the next meme a year from now...or 5?

 

[sontin]

I don't think that's quite accurate. AMD could only be considered to be offering less if and only if you look day one performance on Gameworks games. On Gaming Evolved or neutral games the performance is pretty much equal for equivalent cards. Other things that it could be said that AMD offers with its cards are better long term performance compared to equivalent NV cards at launch, comparable game performance some time after a Gameworks game launches (weeks to a month or two), and a better long term PC gaming ecosystem by way of open source effects and tools.

One of the advantages that NV has had for a while now is a better resale value, because of the perception of better performance. However, now with the broader knowledge that older AMD cards tend to get better with age while older NV cards comparatively do worse, that seems to be changing.

Gears of War is neutral and look how this plays out for AMD.

 

[Bacon1]

Gears of War is neutral and look how this plays out for AMD.

No its not, it uses Gameworks HBAO+ which is completely broken on AMD cards.

 

[Osjur]

Gears of War is neutral and look how this plays out for AMD.

Yep, so neutral that it has HBAO+, which afaik is a gameworks feature

Also for some reason, enabling that feature on AMD hardware makes the game a graphics glitch fest.

Edit, blah Bacon1 beat me :'(