Nice if the information holds up. Although for the power they have games consoles generally get better games optimisation compared to the pc. I like to think of the pc as a muscle car and consoles more akin to a small sports car. I like both platforms for their merits as both play video games. I'm not really for one camp over the other. I just like video games.

Relatively sure that most people would suggest that PS4/XBone performs at a similar level to the 750ti / 270(:laughing: GPUs....and this is a significant bump up from those. New generation and higher tier.

That is not to say that this is not an excellent deal, it mirrors the MSI offer available from CCL and offers you a choice of manufacturer and retailer which is always welcome.

expired?

I think we both agree Vulkan isn't ready yet and not for quite some time.

I was reading this review and that's what they suggested a 380 would do techpowerup mixed GPU review from re-reading the article they set the visuals to "crazy" I suppose that would do it. Serves me right for posting at night.

While it is great to get a free game with any purchase isn't this one an odd choice? When I seen benchmarks with this card it looks like it would average 10 fps. That might make the game unplayable. Still a good deal though.

I can only draw conclusions from the evidence that's provided, the only game benchmarked so far performs dreadfully on Vulkan.

Khronos would say that they make the API. Even if Vulkan API is fully ready and wasting DX12 it will still take a long time to come to market. It won't have any significant impact for quite some time.

Why would you think a graphics card would cost more to utilise Vulkan API? The latest Nvidia drivers have Vulkan API support, Retroarch now supports it and the Nvidia Shield range of devices.

Kronos reckon that Vulkan is ready.

OpenGL has been cross platform forever, yet the only platform it "really" gets used on is Linux and inherently Android. Apart from the up to date specs, what will make Vulkan different in this regard?

I'm not saying I don't like the idea from an idealistic point of view, as long as performance is at least on a par with DX; however, my idealism doesn't stretch to paying more for a graphics card to get the same performance I was getting before.

Ordered one of these the other day straight after I saw this post, but Novatech seem to be messing me about. Have paid for the item via PayPal but after chasing up the order they responded to my email by tell me about another similar product they have, and completely avoided the fact that I'd already purchased the card in question. So now I'm worried.

What use is Vulkan API? Not much use yet.

Let's talk hypothetically if Vulkan API was ready and games were using it, considering it can work on any platform what use do you think it would be versus Direct X 12 which only allows gaming on Windows 10 and Xbox One?

Another question, is a single API solely available on Microsoft platforms a good or bad thing for gaming?

So if the other platforms are dying what use is an under optimized cross platform API?

Exactly what I'm saying. The politics of gaming won't always work in the favour of AMD. As you say we need more DX12 games to see the results.

Gaming doesn't need DX12 and Gameworks. DX12 obviously is beneficial but it keeps every one on Microsofts side Windows 10/Xbox One and Gameworks unfavourably for the consumer favours Nvidia. We need open source. Which is why I hope one day Vulkan API can take off, it's not ready for prime time and it will take a long time to come to fruition. It offers theoretically the best of everything but it doesn't work in reality yet. I'm happy to see Vulkan API support in latest Nvidia drivers. Vulkan if they wanted could even work on XP, it's open, it's platform independent. It's good for gaming where as ultimately Gameworks and DX12 are not consumer oriented.

I accept DX12 offers a lot of benefit for gaming and is the best API for PC gaming that exists for the conceivable future. We can always hope that something open and not restricted to one brand becomes dominant though.

We can't be sure at all. GameWorks will still exist even in DX12 games. I doubt they'll support Async Compute if it hurts their performance.

Yes I know as I've tested a GTX 970 versus a Radeon R9 290X and the CPU overhead ruined the AMD card, it needed more than dual Xeons (circa 2009) to get the best out of it. DX12 will change this. I currently have an AMD R9 270 2GB so maybe I'll get a bit more use out of that card.

Async Compute matters where it matters, which means in theory it absolutely bests Nvidia, in practice the real world comes in to play and games will be optimised for Nvidia rather than AMD, we can't be sure yet that every DX12 game will play nicely for AMD due to the politics of gaming.

AMD benefits from DX12 mainly because of the low CPU overhead. Their DX11 drivers are almost twice as inefficient at it compared to NVIDIA. In the future I think when games become a lot more GPU dependent, because they can be, that would be when Async Compute could make a difference but right now, the DX12 games we have apart from say AosT, are just "ports" to it.

Ah you quite obviously missed the bit where I said "this is a long way off yet."

PC Gaming is booming, console gaming has waned, this is the current truth. I want Vulkan to succeed,and so should everyone else if they've a vested interest in gaming. I've in no way said it's ready for prime time. Anyway "this is a long way off yet" exactly states where I think Vulkan API is currently.

Exactly game dependent. So to solely decide on AMD just because it has Async Compute does not take in to consideration all the games you're likely to be playing. Ferrari100 is saying AMD will be better in every game on DX12, there's no real world evidence of that yet as it doesn't exist.

Great find OP, paid the same for an R7 370 2GB when they first came out.

Nope.

Who did that? All fishmaster said was:

That pretty much all there is right now, we'll have to see how things pan out later. In the meantime, It's just wrong for people to go around evangelising that Vulkan is going to change the world until we have something other than slides to suggest it's even any good. Especially considering OpenGL has always been cross platform and that didn't set the world on fire either, for a multitude of reasons.

In addition, I'm sure you know this but I forgot to mention it earlier; Vulkan, like OpenGL is only a graphics API. Game developers will still need to use DirectX on Windows to get low level access to input, sound, networking etc. So it's can't replace DirectX anyway.

I really fear for AMD over the next few years. Console sales will slow, they're playing catchup in the GPU market, they've already lost the high end CPU market with no real hope in current road map of matching performance per watt, so it leaves them fighting for scraps in the budget and entry level end where profit margin is slimmer albeit with higher volume.

They need more people like Ferrari, even though its like a villa fan trying to convince you that they're the best team in the league.

so far 2 games have async computing.. 2 games.. more are being developed but nvidia cards have best dx11 performance and other dx (so better performance in those 1 million other games) plus they have confirmed they just need to unlock async on there cards at a driver level as its locked right now only at driver level. Nobody knows why it's locked bot people speculate its down to them wanting to perfect it before release whereas AMD right now is more of A BETA driver for async.

There's really nothing to benchmark to say Vulkan is much worse than DX12. Talos is using it more like a wrapper, with poor performance as last I knew it was single threaded submissions holding it back. Is there anything else?

Anyone know if this will be a upgrade from my R290 Oc, I have the opportunity to by a friends GTX970 for £160 but I'm only running a AMD 860k for raving games.

Available power is not the same as harnessed power. IE an f1 driver can get round a track quicker in a mini than I can in an f1 car.

Ah the Vulkan bandwagon... It's kind of reminds me of Linux, you know... next year will be the year of Vulkan. Except, like Linux, it runs games like **** compared to DX, and consumers will reject it if it doesn't improve significantly.

​thats cos xbox 360 plays at like 480p

​this gpu is miles more powerfull than a ps4 what you on about

This is just nonsense. Ill deal with it in parts.

Part 1 - Yes, back in the day it was difficult to compare consoles to PC in terms of how raw hardware specs translated into available power. This was for a variety of reasons; not least that PCs, for the most part, have been multitasking for well over 2 decades now whilst consoles, for the most part until this last gen, were single task systems. Architecturally there were differences too; RISC versus CISC does not allow for an easy clock to clock comparison, especially when using bespoke operating systems over the top etc.

This completely changed when the core architecture (hardware and software) of the last gen console were finalized, coupled with both systems offering multitasking. Whilst the console platforms are still not directly offered within the PC market (ie you cant go out and buy a Jaguar SoC) it is possible to measure the raw performance of the custom SoC and compare it to PC part equivalents in a more direct way without the need to understand the impact of instruction set variances or kernal/OS impact on performance - this is largely because all the gaming platforms share a common GPU architecture. During the PS4 introduction it was even described as " a super charged PC" because of the architecture similarities.

To explain why an xbox 360 can run GTA V whilst a GTX 7800 struggles you need to understand the maximal benefit brought by maintaining a platform architecture for an extended length of time. Yes the "raw performance" of a GTX 7800 is around the "raw performance" of a R520 based GPU however the iterative nature of the PC landscape allows developers only a short period of time to develop code for it before the next improvement comes along resulting in them having to learn additional operations or functions etc In other words, because there are constant updates, limitations in hardware performance that could be overcome through extended exposure to the system architecture doesnt happen because the Gcard manufacturers release cards that negate the need for a developer to "find ways around hardware limitations" by offering more horsepower. This increase in horsepower plus additional feature sets require developers to spend more time learning the new platform and less time worrying about performance problems. You have to remember this is a business, software houses invest resource into what will sell games; graphics, like it or not, sell games. Larger worlds, sell games. Improvements of these things (graphics and larger worlds) are driven by advancements in GPU hardware hence why PC gamers buy new GPUs every year.

Let it be clear, turning on or off features within a game engine is not the same thing as optimizing the underlying game engine - think of it like this, with a Mitsubishi lancer you have a 2 litre engine. Race engineers (xbox 360 developers) at the start when its delivered are fooling around with the car putting out 300 BHP. Knowing that the lancer is their platform for a number of years spend effort and time to work out how the engine works, how to eek every ounce of power out of it in such a way as to ensure maximum efficiency of the power. This results in a 2 litre lancer engine putting our 400 BHP in a couple of years.

On the other hand you have another set of race engineers (PC software house) that is constantly being given new more powerful cars with bigger and bigger engines. Last year you had the Suburu WRX that was putting out the same 300 BHP the lancer was. However, instead of having to spend time and effort to get to 400BHP you just need to wait till the new car is dropped off at the door; you dont need to worry about creating maximal efficiency in order to compete because instead of a 2 litre Suburu WRX this year, youve now got a 3 litre nissan 370z with 450 BHP..... etc etc etc.



. To a development house, there is little point spending resource into getting GTA V working on a 7800 if the market for the 7800 platform is next to nothing - which is the case given that the PC master race replace their GPU as per the yearly update cycle. This is the fault of the PC Master race for expecting, AND demanding, hardware improvements year on year causing a de-stable platform foundation.

You also need to consider that "minimal improvements" take a lots of power these days. Back in the day you only needed to have small inexpensive elements to drastically change the look of a game. For example, bump mapping of trilinear texture filtering would make significant difference to the look of a game but would cost relatively little. These days such things are pretty much standard across the board so to make significant difference that is noticeable requires A LOT of power. Increasing texture detail to a significant level enquires nor just more ram but also memory bandwidth. Higher resolution eats up gpu cycles and memory bandwidth. Draw distance, the same..... gone are the days that to get things looking a lot different you need only double the poly count. These days you ciuld quadruple it anf barely change a character wireframe..... increase in visual fidelity is incredibly expensive these days; exponentially so. Double the gpu horsepower does not double the visual fidelity.

So for all the reasons above - different architecture, different kernal/os, update cycles, resources in development, etc. made it MORE dificult in the past to compare performance - due to similarities now however and the difficulty is significantly less. This does not mean that a 750ti in 2019 when GTAVI is released will be able to run it; as explained before, the iterative nature of PC development will preclude resource enabling this to happen - this doesnt mean that it COULDNT happen, the hardware may be capable of it .

Part 2 - There is no conspiracy to make anyone buy graphics cards. Consumers drive demand, not the other way around - unless you are in a socialist/communist country.

lol, was just a FYI (and a chance to give Dabs a kick) but the irony that a lot of people here would need a time machine to go back 30 years to understand your reference is hillarious. :laughing:

​PC Gaming was dying 5 years ago, now it's come in to its own, massively turned the corner. It's consoles that are on the wane most definitely. PC gaming is booming. I should know as I sell the hardware, I see so many ppl wanting gaming PCs built. There's absolutely no doubt PC gaming is in its prime, helped by Steam. I hope to see, although it's wishful thinking, the death of DX12 and the emergence of open source with Vulkan API, this is a long way off yet.

​It's theory yes because there's no spread spectrum of DX12 titles to properly assess the situation.

If they're not cheaper than equivalent Intel that won't end well for them, I don't imagine Intel will be that worried think their last graphics was better than AMD apu

4GB version was £13 more expensive 3 months ago, £8 had Dabs honoured cashback.

You are 100% right there with the PC graphics card advances no one would need to upgrade for years.
I do try telling people this myself but I get fan boys just not understanding.
I remember when PC games use to be optimised in the 90's and early 2000's then came the Xbox 360 and PC losing its exclusive titles which are now console ports. Then came gameworks to cripple things further and the rest is history.
Well done as not many people can understand what you have just said :wink:
PC gaming has well and truly gone to the dogs in the last 5 or so years....

There's nothing stopping AMD creating an APU with more compute units, assuming that's what Bristol Ridge is. After all, that's exactly what AMD has already done for Sony and Microsoft. However, even the GPUs in the current APUs are under-utilised, explaining how the cut-down A8 offers GPU power close to the A10. Moving to DDR4 will help, but even 16 compute units will be heavily bottlenecked by lack of memory bandwidth. Who's going to buy a cheapo APU then invest in ultra high-end DDR4?

I wouldn't fancy their chances much compared to Xbox One (leaner API, fixed platform advantage, ESRAM).

Zen with HBM will be interesting but could be very expensive, by which time 7850-level cards with GDDR5 will be dirt cheap.

This card is faster than anything Nvidia has for sale below 970GTX.

Ah another Async Compute theory thread. Hurrah :/

This is all irrelevant to the actual discussion. People are talking about the actual performance of the hardware, not what software runs on it. The initial comment was that Zen APUs will have about the power of a PS4. Bringing up how developers of games might support 6 year old consoles but not 6 year old graphics cards is irrelevant.
I'm not saying anyone's wrong. I'm saying when comparing hardware and future hardware in terms of mathematical on-paper specs and capabilities, it's irrelevant.

I wouldn't bother. Ferrari100 is like one of those sophisticated fanboys who try to be intelligent about their work who then resort to pettiness when they haven't got an answer to give (hence comment #16). The trolls aren't worth it.

I'm not sure you quite worded your sentence correctly there :smile: but if you don't know about copy/paste and you're an incredibly slow typist, I could understand why you might think four sentences and three copy/pastes would take "so much time".

AMD fans, you mean? It's possible to be a fan of a company without lying about them to make them sound better, or making pathetic attempts to make their competitors sound worse.

By the way, what did I miss at the GDC conference last month? You told us all that there would be big announcements and the market would be flooded with Nvidia cards! There wasn't anything from the trusted tech websites, or the mediocre tech websites, or your affiliated WCCFTech, or any of the trashy clickbait sites - not even that horrible little amateur Lee Duncan penned anything about it, and he eats, sleeps and breathes AMD! What did we miss?

Thats why Nvidia fail badly with Async compute.

Still, they should be fully testing their drivers before releasing them.
They have the money to get it right first time, so why don't they?

Software is a great deal easier to retrospectively fix than hardware......

Flattered you have to waste so much time on me.

Have a cookie:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/927078/geforce-drivers/official-364-72-game-ready-whql-display-driver-feedback-thread-released-3-28-16-/


Yet another |Nvidia driver set not fit for purpose, Nvidia continue to mess up this year. Fans like you don't help their cause much either.

Unfortunately, information from Ferrari100 has less than a 10% chance of holding up. (I'm not just pulling numbers out of nowhere there, we've done the maths!)


Of course, that last one could just be a jab at the 380, saying it's less powerful than even a vanilla 750 (which is technically true in Linux, where even a Fury is floored by a 750), but in my opinion the 380 is a decent Windows card for the price... although now is a terrible time to buy! Hold out if you possibly can! :wink:

But believing performance numbers about tech that's still a year away...? That's a sign that someone's drinking the Kool-aid.

Yes but compared with current gen like an xbox one a 750ti will match/beat it

Yes this is an excellent deal.

Zen APU's will not be cheap. You will pay for that extra performance when they arrive I am sure.

When the PS3 and Xbox 360 was released the equivalent GPU was 7800 GTX / 2600 PRO.

Have you tried running GTA V on these cards? Its hilarious!, you cant even get it to run at a playable rate with super low end hacks that disable almost everything.

GTA V's minimum spec GFX card wise to get it to xbox 360 standard is ATI 6750, which is 4 times more powerful. The moral of the story is "dont trust the equivalent pc specs of a console until at least six years in to it's lifetime"

This doesn't just apply to GTA V, PC ports are awful for a reason, to sell more graphics cards. If PC games were constantly optimised like console ones, the graphics card industry would collapse and PC gaming would be dead.

Nice if the information holds up. Although for the power they have games consoles generally get better games optimisation compared to the pc. I like to think of the pc as a muscle car and consoles more akin to a small sports car. I like both platforms for their merits as both play video games. I'm not really for one camp over the other. I just like video games.

Relatively sure that most people would suggest that PS4/XBone performs at a similar level to the 750ti / 270(:laughing: GPUs....and this is a significant bump up from those. New generation and higher tier.

That is not to say that this is not an excellent deal, it mirrors the MSI offer available from CCL and offers you a choice of manufacturer and retailer which is always welcome.

Not officially but reports suggest that Bristol Ridge will mimick the power of XBOX one this year (this summer) and Zen APU's will perform on par with PS4, the graphical power of which is similar to what this GPU offers (maybe a little more).

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-launch-q4-2016/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/apu-components/matthew-wilson/amd-said-to-be-working-on-zen-apu-with-hbm/

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/50722/amds-upcoming-bristol-ridge-apu-faster-xbox-one/index.html

Great price.

Crazy to think from around this time next year you will have this level of performance inside an AMD ZEN APU.