[Tom's Hardware's] AMA With AMD, In Its Entirety

[Final8ty]

After being live for a full 24 hours, the AMD Radeon “Ask Me Anything” has officially concluded!

Major kudos to the AMD representatives who took the time out of their schedule to come and answer all the great questions our community had for them.We know this was a bit of work on their end, and we and our users are deeply appreciative of the time taken to engage with the community here at Tom’s Hardware.

For answering questions, our gratitude goes out to Robert “Thracks” Hallock for responding to users and relaying the answers of his team at AMD.An epic thanks to the AMD team for helping put this together on their end and securing the time and info required to make this happen. We're grateful for all the great answers, and our community really appreciated this opportunity to engage with you.

Q. GSync got tongues wagging in spite of the fact that people wouldn't be able to see the difference on a compressed Youtube video. Is AMD considering a similar solution, or working towards one that's more open than GSync? Also, AMD still does not support PLP (portrait-landscape-portrait) monitor setups for gamers - will that ever change?

A. You'll hear more from us on G-Sync soon. Bezel compensation is designed to treat the bezels of matched-sized/resolution displays as an object game content passes behind, rather than an object that chops game content in half. The feature is not intended to support for mixed-sized or mixed-resolution configurations. With respect to PLP, that is a feature we have in development, but I don't have an ETA at this time.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ama-toms-hardware,3672.html

From my discussions with them, it should be free, they have being and are looking at options.

But lets wait and see.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25482564&postcount=19

 

[Zanovar]

Cheers:thumbsup:,interesting time indeed.looking forward to what they have to say about gsync.

 

[Spjut]

I like seeing AMD answering questions, but they should be called out when telling an obvious lie.
AMD's Windows 8.1 support is NOT on the same level as Nvidia's, Nvidia is supporting it even on their Geforce 8 series (from 2006), whereas AMD only supports it on the HD 5000 series (2009) and later

 

[blastingcap]

I think this is a repost, someone else posted it in the Mantle thread a while back...

 

[f1sherman]

I like seeing AMD answering questions, but they should be called out when telling an obvious lie.
AMD's Windows 8.1 support is NOT on the same level as Nvidia's, Nvidia is supporting it even on their Geforce 8 series (from 2006), whereas AMD only supports it on the HD 5000 series (2009) and later

AMD has perf./$
Anything else, and especially software wise aka Catalyst is a freaking joke compared to competition. I'm too pissed off to write down all the cra p I have to endure.

That being said, I am really impressed by raw power of their Hawaii core.
The thing is a bloody monster. It runs through NV games, and really shines in AMD titles. But that Catlyst $(*#@(*$
I am exaggerating??? Am I???
Little test for yall.
How do I turn on super-sampling in Call of Pripyat? How do I downsample?
BTW I have several tabs missing in my Cata. Application Settings for one.
Lets see how many posts tll I get an answer, if any.

 

[Obsoleet]

I like seeing AMD answering questions, but they should be called out when telling an obvious lie.
AMD's Windows 8.1 support is NOT on the same level as Nvidia's, Nvidia is supporting it even on their Geforce 8 series (from 2006), whereas AMD only supports it on the HD 5000 series (2009) and later

Big deal, I won't even upgrade my 5870 powered machine to Windows 8.. I certainly wouldn't update any older machine to it. Sounds like wasted effort to support that far back to me.

 

[Spjut]

Big deal, I won't even upgrade my 5870 powered machine to Windows 8.. I certainly wouldn't update any older machine to it. Sounds like wasted effort to support that far back to me.

If we disregard the UI, Windows 8.x is better than 7 under the hood.
Older machines get a little speed bump as well, and a DX10/10.1 card should at the very least be supported as well as in Windows 7.

I guess it won't matter much to users on a forum geared towards enthusiasts though.
But still having some older PCs around, it feels great knowing Nvidia supported Windows 8.0 all the way back to the Geforce 6 series, and supports their DX10 cards in 8.1. AMD's lacking support really stands out as a sore thumb.

 

[Keysplayr]

Big deal, I won't even upgrade my 5870 powered machine to Windows 8.. I certainly wouldn't update any older machine to it. Sounds like wasted effort to support that far back to me.

That's probably the exact attitude AMD has toward it.

 

[Onox]

I like seeing AMD answering questions, but they should be called out when telling an obvious lie.
AMD's Windows 8.1 support is NOT on the same level as Nvidia's, Nvidia is supporting it even on their Geforce 8 series (from 2006), whereas AMD only supports it on the HD 5000 series (2009) and later

Officially nvidia still supports the GeForce 8 series, but in practice... Try installing recent drivers on a GeForce 8/9, I doubt you won't have problems. Seeing how for many people the drivers were broken for eight months this year for GeForce 400/500 series, this is not a suprise. Everytime I have owned an nvidia card I have had to stop upgrading the drivers after a few years. Do you sometimes visit nvidia's forums ? There are interesting topics on that subject.

 

[desprado]

Officially nvidia still supports the GeForce 8 series, but in practice... Try installing recent drivers on a GeForce 8/9, I doubt you won't have problems. Seeing how for many people the drivers were broken for eight months this year for GeForce 400/500 series, this is not a suprise. Everytime I have owned an nvidia card I have had to stop upgrading the drivers after a few years. Do you sometimes visit nvidia's forums ? There are interesting topics on that subject.

Yes we do but more interesting topic and funny are found on AMD forum. If u are really interested i can few for u as an example.

NO.
-- stahlhart

 

[YBS1]

Big deal, I won't even upgrade my 5870 powered machine to Windows 8.. I certainly wouldn't update any older machine to it. Sounds like wasted effort to support that far back to me.

I recently was able to relive some of the experience that drove me away from AMD to begin with. I'd sold off most of my more modern cards, leaving myself my two 780 Classifieds (main) and a Radeon HD4890 for use in my X58/w3520/Win8.1 pc. I bought Lego Marvel Super Heroes on Steam for my son to play, I thought certainly it would be fast enough for this title. I was correct as for the speed part, the game ran well enough...as long as you don't mind playing for 2-4 minutes at a time between each crash. Better get to those auto save points quick if you want to make any progress that way. Assuming (correctly) this would solve itself just by using an nVidia card I borrowed a friend's GTX 460, plays fine now. Oddly, I was really looking forward to trying out a custom R9 290X once they arrived in a mini-itx build. Chalk up another lost future sale for AMD due to continuing sub par software support.

 

[3DVagabond]

I recently was able to relive some of the experience that drove me away from AMD to begin with. I'd sold off most of my more modern cards, leaving myself my two 780 Classifieds (main) and a Radeon HD4890 for use in my X58/w3520/Win8.1 pc. I bought Lego Marvel Super Heroes on Steam for my son to play, I thought certainly it would be fast enough for this title. I was correct as for the speed part, the game ran well enough...as long as you don't mind playing for 2-4 minutes at a time between each crash. Better get to those auto save points quick if you want to make any progress that way. Assuming (correctly) this would solve itself just by using an nVidia card I borrowed a friend's GTX 460, plays fine now. Oddly, I was really looking forward to trying out a custom R9 290X once they arrived in a mini-itx build. Chalk up another lost future sale for AMD due to continuing sub par software support.

Do you have a GTX-270 lying around? That would be a more similar comparison to the 4890. IIRC the 4890 is ~2yrs older than the GTX-460. It still might be fine with the 200 series, but it would be a more reasonable comparison.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Do you have a GTX-270 lying around? That would be a more similar comparison to the 4890. IIRC the 4890 is ~2yrs older than the GTX-460. It still might be fine with the 200 series, but it would be a more reasonable comparison.

Nvidia has unified drivers all the way back past the GT200 series, it's highly unlikely one would have an issue when anther didn't. Not to say it doesn't happen but my 9800 GT hasn't had a single problem since I sold my 7950s and I don't even needed to turn the display on and off every time I turn on the PC or reboot it :awe:

 

[YBS1]

No, but I have a sneaking suspicion it would work just fine with nVidia cards as old as the 8xxx series seeing as how those cards have official Win 8.1 driver support. You have to go back as far as the 7xxx series before they don't offer a supported 8.1 driver.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

I know that amd has it's driver issues, but I have honestly never had one besides the black screen from sleep bug. (That C-A-Ds out) I've had a 7770, a 5770 and a 4820 (I think, long time ago.) and also used the integrated on an a4 and never had an issue, in any game, on xp or 7. :/ Also had an old GeForce 6 something that I never had an issue with on xp. All except the integrated have died or are dying. :awe: I'm good at computering.