AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[tracker45]

Is this the best they can do ? Compete with mid level i5 ?

If the prices are low I suppose it's okay.

 

[-Fran-]

AMD needs market share. With that the money will start flowing into their R&D (i hope) and the CEO yatches and beach houses, haha. Probably a big chunk will go to the later, lol.

Market share measures past sales. Its nothing more then an indication of how competitive ones products are. Gaining share at the expense of profit is pointless, however. No profit = No money to go into R&D, which leads to no product and less market share in the future.

Get it?

Not really. Market share vs sales estimates affect exchange stock value. That is real-time money based on sales data. You can make a profit out of having a bigger market share because of how the market works: estimates.

Companies not only work on a product-sale approach, they are very versed (specially big ones) in different areas to make money. That's their objective at the end, right?

I know this because my mother was a Financial Manager (or whatever its called) for Mitsubishi in the 90's (she's retired now) and she had to "play" with stock value and monetization (making money out of whatever she could within the company). Very different from selling cars, parts and service, don't you think?

Sorry for not explaining it in a deeper way, but you can research other ways companies make money out of their on value, haha. So, in short, market share by itself does help a company get more R&D, and that's not even getting into account the fact that a bigger chunk of the pie gives you a better hold for keeping clients. I don't remember who told me this (University teacher), but for a company is way more expensive to get out and get new customers than keep the ones it already has and keep them happy. So, having a bigger market share can lower "penetration" money investments and blah blah blah.

Cheers!

 

[8350rocks]

Spoiler

look at slide 13 more closely, the title is MORE performance with MORE cores. AMD is still advertising that more performance = more cores. A 8 or 10 core steamroller is still very possible.

Thanks by being the first that comment on AMD last material.

Look at the benchmark. Approx.

A10-6970K: 53 FPS
FX-6350: 55 FPS
FX-8350: 57 FPS

Do you really believe that slide means that AMD will be releasing new 8 and 10-cores?

10-core makes no sense, therefore I am ignore this. New 8-core and 6-core CPU are still possible... as a Piledriver refresh a la Warsaw, but if that is the plan you dont give a talk that basically says: hey don't buy an 'expensive' FX-8350, because a cheap A10 makes almost the same work. You can obtain about a 92% of the gaming performance with half the money.

Please note that slide considers 1080p. At higher resolutions the differences will be small.

For me that slide solves the question made here about what will be AMD promoting for pairing with the new R9 Radeons. I said that AMD was migrating to APUs and several people here complained that AMD did need new CPUs for the new R9 Radeon.

Look at the slide. They are pairing the new R9 280X with the new A10-6970K APU. My bet is that during Kaveri presentation AMD will show benchmarks of the new Steamroller A10-7x00 APU with the R9 290X.

In a game that uses a GPU demanding engine...sure. Go ahead and benchmark Crysis 3 or BF4 multiplayer and see what it looks like.

8350 > APU

When the 8350 did suffer with older games you typical answer was benchmark newest games like crysis 3. Now your answer is benchmark older games like crysis 3... LOL

I am rather sure that AMD is relying heavily on BF4 lately, because it is the 'prototype' of next gen games. Next consoles having weak cores forces developers to offload heavy stuff to the GPU.

The slide shows the APU giving ~92% of the FX-8350 performance in that gaming test. Say us which will be the performance in "multiplayer"?

My last post was in response to your request for proof that SOI is that much better than bulk.

Since you clearly were unable to find the information on your own...(or didn't bother to look at every article comparing the 2 substrates)...I posted it for you, from multiple sources.

EDIT: This bodes well for GF:

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/10/29/ana-hunter-leaves-samsung-global-foundries/

There was no such request. My only request was to know if you are a GF PR or something because you look like one.

The rest of my post was a demonstration of how the 100MHz delta in OC between FX-6 and i5 destroy your 'theory' about how bad Intel chips OC due to choosing bulk.

I want to add that Kaveri ES clocked at 3.5GHz have been showed.

Crysis 3 and BF4 are not older games...are you feeling well?

Do you read? Because I have said you that BF4 is a new game. I have said more: I have said that it must be the prototype of the next gen games.

92% Performance in what? League of Legends? StarCraft? Diablo 2? Bioshock Infinite? MS Office? None of those is particularly demanding and falls directly in line with what I would expect. Let's talk about the examples where it's not 92%, and reality sets in and you realize it's really closer to 60% of the performance of the 8350, when the core counts matter.

Do you read? 92% of the performance in the BF4 benchmark given before.

Also, if you read the post I made before, the data was extremely relevant, Intel has had to tweak the process for the bulk wafers they use with tons of process advancements to the FinFET structures in order to compete in performance. Even then, when they try to aim for lower power, they end up sacrificing performance. All industry experts say FD-SOI will allow you to have both. So why not use it?

Contrary to your marketing, there is no expert agreement on that FD-SOI is better than bulk FinFET. In fact, the industry is moving towards FinFETs: Samsung, TMSC...

I am not GF PR, quite the opposite in fact. They have blundered things many times, however, they are AMD's last hope for a decent process for HEDT. So, like it or not, we have to hope that they get their act together to ensure that AMD does well in HEDT.

AMD returning ot SOI and Glofo is a secure way to suicide.

The simple fact of the matter is this...bulk provides no benefits, and many drawbacks. While FD-SOI provides many benefits, and virtually no drawbacks.

This explains why GloFO is #1 foundry in the world with hundred of customers waiting to use their SOI process production lines. whereas nobody uses bulk. GlofO 28nm SOI line is a complete success and is working at full production rate... no, wait, they have no customers still.

I said Crysis 3 and BF4 are new games before, and you said they were old...now you say they're new? Make up your mind already.

Single Player BF4 != Multiplayer BF4

FD-SOI vs. Bulk from industry professionals:

http://www.advancedsubstratenews.com/2013/07/globalfoundries-on-cost-vs-performance-for-fd-soi-bulk-and-finfet/

http://www.advancedsubstratenews.com/2013/04/ibm-finfet-isolation-considerations-and-ramifications-bulk-vs-soi/

http://www.soiconsortium.org/pdf/Comparison%20study%20of%20FinFETs%20-%20SOI%20versus%20Bulk.pdf

http://www.future-fab.com/documents.asp?d_ID=4973

http://www.goldstandardsimulations.com/index.php/news/blog_search/fd-soi-finfets-can-offer-better-performance-than-bulk-finfets/

http://www.techdesignforums.com/practice/guides/fd-soi/

http://www.st.com/web/en/about_st/fd-soi.html

http://semimd.com/blog/2013/09/30/fd-soi-targets-mobile-applications/

That's just the first page of the google results...they all say roughly the same thing. FD-SOI > Bulk.

I suppose you want to tell me that they're lying?

Also, FinFETs can be put on FD-SOI or bulk...so your assertion about FinFETs, while not exactly accurate, isn't exactly off base either. FinFETs are an architecture structure design, similar to the way a planar design is, though far more complex. FinFET is not a substrate in and of itself, but a design which goes onto substrate. For example, the only company using FinFETs in production level quantities happens to be Intel, but they put their FinFETs on bulk substrate, they could use FD-SOI and gain a performance advantage over bulk.

Speculate all you want about it, though the conversation is over. FD-SOI is AMD's only hope in HEDT...bulk will not allow the performance that FD-SOI will, and it will also not allow the power consumption combined with higher performance of FD-SOI.

/conversation

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

The slide shows the APU giving ~92% of the FX-8350 performance in that gaming test. Say us which will be the performance in "multiplayer"?

athlon x4 750k = trinity. its found at the bottom by the pentium g's, overclocked to 4.5 ghz and still getting beat by 4350 @ 4.2 ghz and completely obliterated by the 8350.

you really need to quit trying to live by marketing slides. best case scenario != all cases.

While (Juanrga = wrong) {printf("JUANRGA IS NEVER WRONG")};

Let us forget that pclab is not neutral regarding AMD vs Intel, even accepting your non-marketing benchmark

trinity != richland

athlon != APU

GTX 780 != R9 280X

...

I would like to see multiplayer benchmarks in the same conditions that the benchmark in the slide #13. That is, I would like to see benchmarks of the new APU with the new APU drivers, the new APU optimized Windows, 2133 MHz ram, and paired with a R9 280X...

I estimate it would obtain ~70% of the performance of 8350.

so basically what your getting at is you only want to see kaveri running highly specialized software to take advantage of HSA and ignore any programs that are in the market today.

This is because in the programs of today, Kaveri will suck hind teat.

HSA was not even mentioned

 

[8350rocks]

8350 and juanrga just agree to disagree as both of you are just posturing with veiled insults being tossed in.

Just saw this post...for the sake of the thread I will stop...though I think it's safe to say some in here are not as thoroughly knowledgeable about substrates as they pretend to be. Not knowing that a FinFET is not a substrate is a huge indicator of that...at least in my mind.

 

[8350rocks]

Is this the best they can do ? Compete with mid level i5 ?

If the prices are low I suppose it's okay.

That's discussing the low end APU parts...what they're going to do for HEDT/gaming desktops has not been announced. Need to be patient.

 

[juanrga]

Just in time to cite this
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/11/4/what-to-expect-from-kaveri-a-detailed-predictive-analysis.aspx

congratulations, juanrga. however, this event only raises my expectation of you being able to properly interpret marketing, promotions, speculations, rumors, benchmarketing, benchmarks and common industry practices. and to be able to correctly distinguish them. i wish you good luck.

Thanks!

 

[8350rocks]

In a completely unrelated topic, this thread is a year old today so cheers

Just in time to cite this

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/11/4/what-to-expect-from-kaveri-a-detailed-predictive-analysis.aspx

Well, we will see how accurate this turns out to be...for your sake I hope it's close. Your credibility will be shot if you're off by much...

Congratulations anyway on getting your blog on a reputable website. BSN is atypically impartial comparative to other sites...

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

Spoiler

look at slide 13 more closely, the title is MORE performance with MORE cores. AMD is still advertising that more performance = more cores. A 8 or 10 core steamroller is still very possible.

Thanks by being the first that comment on AMD last material.

Look at the benchmark. Approx.

A10-6970K: 53 FPS
FX-6350: 55 FPS
FX-8350: 57 FPS

Do you really believe that slide means that AMD will be releasing new 8 and 10-cores?

10-core makes no sense, therefore I am ignore this. New 8-core and 6-core CPU are still possible... as a Piledriver refresh a la Warsaw, but if that is the plan you dont give a talk that basically says: hey don't buy an 'expensive' FX-8350, because a cheap A10 makes almost the same work. You can obtain about a 92% of the gaming performance with half the money.

Please note that slide considers 1080p. At higher resolutions the differences will be small.

For me that slide solves the question made here about what will be AMD promoting for pairing with the new R9 Radeons. I said that AMD was migrating to APUs and several people here complained that AMD did need new CPUs for the new R9 Radeon.

Look at the slide. They are pairing the new R9 280X with the new A10-6970K APU. My bet is that during Kaveri presentation AMD will show benchmarks of the new Steamroller A10-7x00 APU with the R9 290X.

In a game that uses a GPU demanding engine...sure. Go ahead and benchmark Crysis 3 or BF4 multiplayer and see what it looks like.

8350 > APU

When the 8350 did suffer with older games you typical answer was benchmark newest games like crysis 3. Now your answer is benchmark older games like crysis 3... LOL

I am rather sure that AMD is relying heavily on BF4 lately, because it is the 'prototype' of next gen games. Next consoles having weak cores forces developers to offload heavy stuff to the GPU.

The slide shows the APU giving ~92% of the FX-8350 performance in that gaming test. Say us which will be the performance in "multiplayer"?

My last post was in response to your request for proof that SOI is that much better than bulk.

Since you clearly were unable to find the information on your own...(or didn't bother to look at every article comparing the 2 substrates)...I posted it for you, from multiple sources.

EDIT: This bodes well for GF:

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/10/29/ana-hunter-leaves-samsung-global-foundries/

There was no such request. My only request was to know if you are a GF PR or something because you look like one.

The rest of my post was a demonstration of how the 100MHz delta in OC between FX-6 and i5 destroy your 'theory' about how bad Intel chips OC due to choosing bulk.

I want to add that Kaveri ES clocked at 3.5GHz have been showed.

Crysis 3 and BF4 are not older games...are you feeling well?

Do you read? Because I have said you that BF4 is a new game. I have said more: I have said that it must be the prototype of the next gen games.

92% Performance in what? League of Legends? StarCraft? Diablo 2? Bioshock Infinite? MS Office? None of those is particularly demanding and falls directly in line with what I would expect. Let's talk about the examples where it's not 92%, and reality sets in and you realize it's really closer to 60% of the performance of the 8350, when the core counts matter.

Do you read? 92% of the performance in the BF4 benchmark given before.

Also, if you read the post I made before, the data was extremely relevant, Intel has had to tweak the process for the bulk wafers they use with tons of process advancements to the FinFET structures in order to compete in performance. Even then, when they try to aim for lower power, they end up sacrificing performance. All industry experts say FD-SOI will allow you to have both. So why not use it?

Contrary to your marketing, there is no expert agreement on that FD-SOI is better than bulk FinFET. In fact, the industry is moving towards FinFETs: Samsung, TMSC...

I am not GF PR, quite the opposite in fact. They have blundered things many times, however, they are AMD's last hope for a decent process for HEDT. So, like it or not, we have to hope that they get their act together to ensure that AMD does well in HEDT.

AMD returning ot SOI and Glofo is a secure way to suicide.

The simple fact of the matter is this...bulk provides no benefits, and many drawbacks. While FD-SOI provides many benefits, and virtually no drawbacks.

This explains why GloFO is #1 foundry in the world with hundred of customers waiting to use their SOI process production lines. whereas nobody uses bulk. GlofO 28nm SOI line is a complete success and is working at full production rate... no, wait, they have no customers still.

I said Crysis 3 and BF4 are new games before, and you said they were old...now you say they're new? Make up your mind already.

Nobody said you that BF4 is old. It was said to you that probably BF4 is the prototype of the next gen games. Do you read?

Single Player BF4 != Multiplayer BF4

92% != 70%

FD-SOI vs. Bulk from industry professionals:

http://www.advancedsubstratenews.com/2013/07/globalfoundries-on-cost-vs-performance-for-fd-soi-bulk-and-finfet/

http://www.advancedsubstratenews.com/2013/04/ibm-finfet-isolation-considerations-and-ramifications-bulk-vs-soi/

http://www.soiconsortium.org/pdf/Comparison%20study%20of%20FinFETs%20-%20SOI%20versus%20Bulk.pdf

http://www.future-fab.com/documents.asp?d_ID=4973

http://www.goldstandardsimulations.com/index.php/news/blog_search/fd-soi-finfets-can-offer-better-performance-than-bulk-finfets/

http://www.techdesignforums.com/practice/guides/fd-soi/

http://www.st.com/web/en/about_st/fd-soi.html

http://semimd.com/blog/2013/09/30/fd-soi-targets-mobile-applications/

That's just the first page of the google results...they all say roughly the same thing. FD-SOI > Bulk.

I suppose you want to tell me that they're lying?

We already knew that FD-SOI > bulk regarding performance. But whereas you repeat what is already known you ignore what is saying said.

Two things were said to you: first that Glofo had been tweaking its 28nm bulk during an entire year to close the gap between bulk and SOI. Second, that FD-SOI ~ bulk FinFET. Do you read?

Also, FinFETs can be put on FD-SOI or bulk...so your assertion about FinFETs, while not exactly accurate, isn't exactly off base either. FinFETs are an architecture structure design, similar to the way a planar design is, though far more complex. FinFET is not a substrate in and of itself, but a design which goes onto substrate. For example, the only company using FinFETs in production level quantities happens to be Intel, but they put their FinFETs on bulk substrate, they could use FD-SOI and gain a performance advantage over bulk.

Sure you can do FinFETs over SOI substratum but by combining both you are adding extra complexity layers on the whole manufacturing process, without a comparable benefit: that is the reason why the real competition between foundries is SOI vs bulk FinFETs. The real winner seems to be FinFETs. In fact, whereas GloFo has still to deliver 28nm SOI, competitors are already testing chips on 10nm bulk FinFET. TMSC and Samsung have ready 16nm and 14nm FinFET, respectively, for volume production.

Speculate all you want about it, though the conversation is over. FD-SOI is AMD's only hope in HEDT...bulk will not allow the performance that FD-SOI will, and it will also not allow the power consumption combined with higher performance of FD-SOI.
/conversation

As said before AMD hypothetical return to SOI would be a route to economic suicide. Luckily the new head/management are not repeating the same mistakes than before.

 

[8350rocks]

@juanrga:

Do some research, read the links I posted, I am not rehashing this. However, Bulk FinFETs are trying to keep up with FD-SOI, not the other way around.

Also, STMicro is who you want to look at for FD-SOI. They are a partner of GF, and I would imagine AMD could easily get in with them...they already have production samples of 28nm SHP FD-SOI.

 

[tracker45]

Is this the best they can do ? Compete with mid level i5 ?

If the prices are low I suppose it's okay.

That's discussing the low end APU parts...what they're going to do for HEDT/gaming desktops has not been announced. Need to be patient.

They are not going to do anything.

For desktop PCs, which is all we are interested in, they are making some APUs.

 

[juanrga]

In a completely unrelated topic, this thread is a year old today so cheers

Just in time to cite this

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/11/4/what-to-expect-from-kaveri-a-detailed-predictive-analysis.aspx

Well, we will see how accurate this turns out to be...for your sake I hope it's close. Your credibility will be shot if you're off by much...

Congratulations anyway on getting your blog on a reputable website. BSN is atypically impartial comparative to other sites...

Thanks by the congratulations.

Regarding your worries if Kaveri/Steamroller cannot provide a 25% IPC gain over BD using the same software, then my credibility is the last thing that you would be worried. Luckily, recent ES benchmarks suggest the sample was able to obtain 34%. Also for all those that predicted that clocks would suffer a lot from transition SOI --> bulk, last ES die shot reveals it is clocked at 3.5GHz base clock. I am still confident final silicon will be clocked a bit higher.

My credibility is in a safe status...

@juanrga:

Do some research, read the links I posted, I am not rehashing this. However, Bulk FinFETs are trying to keep up with FD-SOI, not the other way around.

Also, STMicro is who you want to look at for FD-SOI. They are a partner of GF, and I would imagine AMD could easily get in with them...they already have production samples of 28nm SHP FD-SOI.

I know SOI marketing. They claim they have the best. I also know FinFET marketing, they claim the same in their side. The truth is in the middle between both extremes: Bulk FinFET ~ FD-SOI

However, most foundries and chip-makers are investing heavily on bulk FInFET.

 

[blackkstar]

About a 3m APU.

Maybe AMD is switching from making things and waiting for people to buy them to making things to order? I mean if Valve or a big customer showed up and said they wanted a solid APU with 3m/6c and a big GPU, what's stopping AMD from doing it?

Anyways, this thread is getting out of hand. Everyone needs to take a step back and think about things a little more.

I'm quite curious about WHY there is not HEDT SR chips. I know it's been tossed around that there is no reason to make them anymore, but what if that's not the case?

Thinking of reasons why there are no HEDT SR chips, I can think of a few different ones than the ones I mentioned before in regards to AMD needing a new platform and now being a horrible time to launch.

As for 290 and 290x performance and heat and noise, the problem is not with the chip, but with AMD's reference cooling design. If you lurk some other forums people are putting $40 aftermarket coolers on their 290(x)s and not breaking 65c under full load.

AMD skimped out on the cooler, that's the biggest problem with 290 series. All of it is irrelevant for me though, after putting my GPU under water there's no way I'd ever go back to anything else. 45c at 1.3ghz on a 7970 with 1.3v and the loudest fans being the b-gears blasters on my radiator makes a lot of this seem trivial. I would expect that if you're really going to spend all this money on a high end GPU, you could afford $80 more for a GPU block. You'd still end up spending less than an Nvidia product, you'd be able to OC more, and you'd have less noise and heat.

One of those cheap XSPC kits with a GPU block is pretty much unbeatable.

 

[-Fran-]

I would add that the ref boards or cheap 290(x)s being sold have the crappiest of crappiest hardware (VRMs, capacitors and RAM modules) and crappiest of crappiest thermal paste/grease on them.

Like you said, I'm sure those cards are a beast in sheep clothing and with just a little investment (wait for the MARS or Toxic versions) will blow our minds.

And maybe AMD thinks its not worth chasing the Server market with how the current design stands (could have been a call from Jim Keller, lol), so I would totally expect their FX (or whatever they'll be called) to be on hold if that rumor holds water. Remember that first and foremost, they are Server oriented chips, so if they're not good enough, they won't re-take market and be with a chunk of useless inventory trying to sell it as FX chips (FX9xxx? 😛).

Cheers!

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

I would add that the ref boards or cheap 290(x)s being sold have the crappiest of crappiest hardware (VRMs, capacitors and RAM modules) and crappiest of crappiest thermal paste/grease on them.

Like you said, I'm sure those cards are a beast in sheep clothing and with just a little investment (wait for the MARS or Toxic versions) will blow our minds.

And maybe AMD thinks its not worth chasing the Server market with how the current design stands (could have been a call from Jim Keller, lol), so I would totally expect their FX (or whatever they'll be called) to be on hold if that rumor holds water. Remember that first and foremost, they are Server oriented chips, so if they're not good enough, they won't re-take market and be with a chunk of useless inventory trying to sell it as FX chips (FX9xxx? 😛).

Cheers!

MARS, you mean MATRIX?
INB4MATRIX290
INB4TOXIC290
INB4MSIVRMBEEXPLODING290
INB4POWERCOLORERMEHGAWDYOUSTILEXIST290
INB4DIAMOND290

 

[noob2222]

Spoiler

The slide shows the APU giving ~92% of the FX-8350 performance in that gaming test. Say us which will be the performance in "multiplayer"?

athlon x4 750k = trinity. its found at the bottom by the pentium g's, overclocked to 4.5 ghz and still getting beat by 4350 @ 4.2 ghz and completely obliterated by the 8350.

you really need to quit trying to live by marketing slides. best case scenario != all cases.

While (Juanrga = wrong) {printf("JUANRGA IS NEVER WRONG")};

Let us forget that pclab is not neutral regarding AMD vs Intel, even accepting your non-marketing benchmark

trinity != richland

athlon != APU

GTX 780 != R9 280X

...

I would like to see multiplayer benchmarks in the same conditions that the benchmark in the slide #13. That is, I would like to see benchmarks of the new APU with the new APU drivers, the new APU optimized Windows, 2133 MHz ram, and paired with a R9 280X...

I estimate it would obtain ~70% of the performance of 8350.

so basically what your getting at is you only want to see kaveri running highly specialized software to take advantage of HSA and ignore any programs that are in the market today.

This is because in the programs of today, Kaveri will suck hind teat.

HSA was not even mentioned

HSA is the only way kaveri will even remotely come close to the 8350.

As for clock speeds, 3.5 ghz sounds about right, look at all of Intel's cpus on bulk.

20% ipc gain -17% clock speed = a massive 3% gain over richland, and still behind the 4350.

 

[noob2222]

AMD skimped out on the cooler, that's the biggest problem with 290 series. All of it is irrelevant for me though, after putting my GPU under water there's no way I'd ever go back to anything else. 45c at 1.3ghz on a 7970 with 1.3v and the loudest fans being the b-gears blasters on my radiator makes a lot of this seem trivial. I would expect that if you're really going to spend all this money on a high end GPU, you could afford $80 more for a GPU block. You'd still end up spending less than an Nvidia product, you'd be able to OC more, and you'd have less noise and heat.

One of those cheap XSPC kits with a GPU block is pretty much unbeatable.

AMD hasn't change the cooler since the hd 4xxx's

I never did like that cooler. On the 5870, id have to vacuum the thing out at least once every 2 months.

Water blocks ... haven't had to clean them out yet.

 

[-Fran-]

MARS, you mean MATRIX?
INB4MATRIX290
INB4TOXIC290
INB4MSIVRMBEEXPLODING290
INB4POWERCOLORERMEHGAWDYOUSTILEXIST290
INB4DIAMOND290

Ah, yes. You're correct. See, that's why marketing works fellas, hahaha.

Cheers! 😛

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

AMD skimped out on the cooler, that's the biggest problem with 290 series. All of it is irrelevant for me though, after putting my GPU under water there's no way I'd ever go back to anything else. 45c at 1.3ghz on a 7970 with 1.3v and the loudest fans being the b-gears blasters on my radiator makes a lot of this seem trivial. I would expect that if you're really going to spend all this money on a high end GPU, you could afford $80 more for a GPU block. You'd still end up spending less than an Nvidia product, you'd be able to OC more, and you'd have less noise and heat.

One of those cheap XSPC kits with a GPU block is pretty much unbeatable.

AMD hasn't change the cooler since the hd 4xxx's

I never did like that cooler. On the 5870, id have to vacuum the thing out at least once every 2 months.

Water blocks ... haven't had to clean them out yet.

The 5870 looked so da*n cool with the batmobile cooler got it instead of the 480 for that (and EYEFINITY).

 

[-Fran-]

Cheers! xD!

 

[griptwister]

@The Q6660 Inside, If you look closely... You'll see that the picture is Photo shopped. Haha!

 

[kansasboy001]

Amd really needs to come up with a titan like cooler for their high end cards.

 

[jdwii]

What did i say for 400$ you can get a 290 that performs the same as a 780 and the standard quiet mode on the 290x. 290 Seems like the best price/Performance card out their for the high-end

 

[8350rocks]

What did i say for 400$ you can get a 290 that performs the same as a 780 and the standard quiet mode on the 290x. 290 Seems like the best price/Performance card out their for the high-end

Indeed... @ $400 it's a steal. The 290X Toxic Edition should be something awe inspiring to behold when it launches though, as well as the DCUII.

 

[The Q6660 Inside]

Amd really needs to come up with a titan like cooler for their high end cards.

Why not a two-fan version of their 7990 cooler?