AMD Radeon R9 300 Series MegaThread: FAQ and Resources

[fudgecakes99]

The 380X may cost 1/3 more of the price for a little performance difference, and the R9 290 is at it's best price range. Power consumption is another aspect however. I would wait, but I would opt that the R9 290 would be the better option for the price.

Did you wait? lol Seems like the 290x is still better than the 380x....

If we look at pure performance figures i would say 290x then 970 then 390. Their is a difference but it isn't massive. Also personally over the years i've noticed that Amd usually has a better price v performance as compared to nvidia.

 

[renz496]

When it comes to price vs performance AMD have no choice to play that game or else they will have much more difficulty to sell their stuff. In case of Fury X the cost most likely high for AMD to make one hence they did not undercut nvidia 980ti pricing.

Btw what happen to nano? I thought the card was supposed to launch this month?

 

[fudgecakes99]

i thought it was releasing in the "summer" with the fury x2.

 

[-Fran-]

Singulatrity DX11 Vs DX12:

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/212314-directx-12-arrives-at-last-with-ashes-of-the-singularity-amd-and-nvidia-go-head-to-head

Found these two interesting:

What we see is most interesting. While DX12 allows AMD to close the performance gap, note the performance ceiling for both APIs lies in about the same spot NVIDIA was already at using DX11 [NVIDIA is a little lower probably due to lack of optimizations in driver]. I suspect DX12 is allowing the weaker AMD GPU to close the gap and reach performance parity, but neither GPU is able to surpass NVIDIA's DX11 performance, likely because there's a hard CPU bottleneck at about that position which DX12 didn't do away with (Which is something I would like to point out I predicted. Just saying 😀 ).

(And I put this in the WRONG AMD thread initially; It just won't die!!)

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/212314-directx-12-arrives-at-last-with-ashes-of-the-singularity-amd-and-nvidia-go-head-to-head/2

Ashes of the Singularity DX12 review. That is the Oxide games RTS title...so...looks like AMD Fury X is quite comepetitive...especially when you look at the MSAA numbers.

EDIT: Scooped!

So, basing thoughts on what we see here....essentially...it seems that DX12 allows the AMD GPU to increase draw calls to match/exceed NVidia's capabilities...like Mantle...

It is almost like...NVidia has been optimizing for DX11 for 2+ years, and AMD has been optimizing for what would become DX12 for 2+ years...(mantle)

Either way...it does come out to be a tight race in WinX...so that should keep things interesting.

These 2 were a second or two apart, so both deserve credit 😛

Ok I read a few more articles on the Oxide demo and found this which is more interesting imo:
http://wccftech.com/ashes-singularity-alpha-dx12-benchmark/

Essentially this looks at DX11 -> DX12 on a range of systems. The biggest winner of these configurations is a GTX 770 + i5 3570K, which jumps from around 20 fps, to 55 fps! Also the combo of Fury Air + E3 1230 nets a nice 20 fps boost. I think the complete picture is more complex than just focusing on top end hardware. Lots of people with more moderate rigs could do very well out of DX12

I don't know why these guys used the AMD CPU and SoCs thread, but I won't take credit for their work, haha.

Interesting conversation going on over there, but I will still put the links here.

This is the AMD thread in the CPU section: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2699237/amd-cpus-soc-rumors-speculations-temp-thread/page-6.html#16479926

Cheers!

 

[renz496]

Looking at the bench it made me thinking. 980ti and Fury X was supposed to head to head in general. Then why there is significant gap between Fury X and 980ti in DX11? Did AMD really neglect DX11 optimization that bad? Then what about 5k and 6k series that have no access to DX12 at all?

 

[cdrkf]

Looking at the bench it made me thinking. 980ti and Fury X was supposed to head to head in general. Then why there is significant gap between Fury X and 980ti in DX11? Did AMD really neglect DX11 optimization that bad? Then what about 5k and 6k series that have no access to DX12 at all?

Well if you look at the Fury X vs 980Ti it isn't the black and white wash that everyone makes it out to be even in DX11. Titles that push heavy draw calls (the 'medium' and 'high' batch counts in Ashes benchmark) put the 980ti ahead, however most games don't fall into that category which is why the Fury X (especially at higher resolutions) keeps up better.

It certainly has the raw hardware to keep up with the Ti, just looks like there is a specific deficiency in AMD's DX11 driver vs nVidia, although the same could be said for nVidias Msaa performance.

What I do think tough is this doesn't outright say 'win' for AMD here to me, but more 'win' for people like myself with less exotic setups. The tech press love to focus on *the best*, which is nice and all that, but those of us with bills to pay and so on can't always justify the expense of £400+ on a single component it's not all that relevant. The fact an i5 3570k (still a good gaming cpu imo) and a GTX770 combo get boosted from 25 fps to 55fps is really significant as that is the difference between not being able to play a game and playing it super smoothly on the same hardware I'd like to see more benchmarks looking at more modest systems.

I'm thinking this effect should hopefully apply to other mid range configurations as well (e.g. like my R9 280 + FX 8320 rig) 😛

 

[renz496]

Looking at the bench it made me thinking. 980ti and Fury X was supposed to head to head in general. Then why there is significant gap between Fury X and 980ti in DX11? Did AMD really neglect DX11 optimization that bad? Then what about 5k and 6k series that have no access to DX12 at all?

Well if you look at the Fury X vs 980Ti it isn't the black and white wash that everyone makes it out to be even in DX11. Titles that push heavy draw calls (the 'medium' and 'high' batch counts in Ashes benchmark) put the 980ti ahead, however most games don't fall into that category which is why the Fury X (especially at higher resolutions) keeps up better.

It certainly has the raw hardware to keep up with the Ti, just looks like there is a specific deficiency in AMD's DX11 driver vs nVidia, although the same could be said for nVidias Msaa performance.

What I do think tough is this doesn't outright say 'win' for AMD here to me, but more 'win' for people like myself with less exotic setups. The tech press love to focus on *the best*, which is nice and all that, but those of us with bills to pay and so on can't always justify the expense of £400+ on a single component it's not all that relevant. The fact an i5 3570k (still a good gaming cpu imo) and a GTX770 combo get boosted from 25 fps to 55fps is really significant as that is the difference between not being able to play a game and playing it super smoothly on the same hardware I'd like to see more benchmarks looking at more modest systems.

I'm thinking this effect should hopefully apply to other mid range configurations as well (e.g. like my R9 280 + FX 8320 rig) 😛

the way i heard about it AMD simply does not like some of Dx11 features like DCL and decides not to support it at all. hence they try to push low level stuff with Mantle. funny thing is people said AMD like open standard (not to be confused with Open source stuff) and nvidia like to push proprietary but when you look at DirectX (standard that can be used by everyone) it is nvidia that committed to support all the feature of DX11 unlike AMD. and when it comes to OpenGL we often see nvidia have their drivers ready by the time new specification get announced (sometimes even much earlier like OGL 4.5) but the same cannot be said with AMD.

as for MSAA i'm not really sure about maxwell but when it comes to kepler vs GCN, GCN will win. it is simply GCN hardware are much better in handling MSAA compared to kepler.

 

[juanrga]

This pair of figures give a better picture of what is happening with the benchmark

At medium and normal loads AMD is face-to-face or even slightly ahead of Nvidia under Dx11, and under DX12 things don't change much. The only change is on the heavy workload but this is possibly explained by AMD Dx11 driver overhead.

 

[fudgecakes99]

I dunno a lot of benchmarks show the fury x doing significantly worse at 1080p resolutions then the 980 ti.

 

[Eggz]

I dunno a lot of benchmarks show the fury x doing significantly worse at 1080p resolutions then the 980 ti.

Link

 

[fudgecakes99]

I dunno a lot of benchmarks show the fury x doing significantly worse at 1080p resolutions then the 980 ti.

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM 😛

 

[Eggz]

I dunno a lot of benchmarks show the fury x doing significantly worse at 1080p resolutions then the 980 ti.

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM 😛

Ha, good clip! I watched it then another that was okay but still not better than yours. :lol:

 

[loki1944]

I dunno a lot of benchmarks show the fury x doing significantly worse at 1080p resolutions then the 980 ti.

I'd get a Fury X over a GTX 980, but definitely not over a 980Ti. 390X vs 980 is interesting at 1440p though; seems to be a draw for the most part.

 

[fudgecakes99]

I dunno a lot of benchmarks show the fury x doing significantly worse at 1080p resolutions then the 980 ti.

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM 😛

Ha, good clip! I watched it then another that was okay but still not better than yours. :lol:

Touche, Touche.

 

[fudgecakes99]

I'd get a Fury X over a GTX 980, but definitely not over a 980Ti. 390X vs 980 is interesting at 1440p though; seems to be a draw for the most part.

I'd compare a gtx 980 more the fury then a fury x. That would have some interesting results, i would hope. I haven't seen any 390x benchmarks, just 390 and from what i've seen a 390 is a bit better then a 970 i doubt it'd beat a 980.

 

[loki1944]

I'd get a Fury X over a GTX 980, but definitely not over a 980Ti. 390X vs 980 is interesting at 1440p though; seems to be a draw for the most part.

I'd compare a gtx 980 more the fury then a fury x. That would have some interesting results, i would hope. I haven't seen any 390x benchmarks, just 390 and from what i've seen a 390 is a bit better then a 970 i doubt it'd beat a 980.

I may pull the trigger on an R9 Fury Strix for my i7 960 rig; got two 980Ti Strix ordered for my main rig (for like a month now, amazon is killing me). I looked at seven different games on guru3d benchmarks, Fury Strix vs 980 Strix wins hands down in 6/7 games @1440p http://s1068.photobucket.com/user/loki1944/media/AMD%20VS%20NVIDA_zpszmsk5jfx.png.html. The one game where it doesn't is TW3, which, I mean with that game is just the way it's gonna be.

 

[fudgecakes99]

I may pull the trigger on an R9 Fury Strix for my i7 960 rig; got two 980Ti Strix ordered for my main rig (for like a month now, amazon is killing me). I looked at seven different games on guru3d benchmarks, Fury Strix vs 980 Strix wins hands down in 6/7 games @1440p http://s1068.photobucket.com/user/loki1944/media/AMD%20VS%20NVIDA_zpszmsk5jfx.png.html. The one game where it doesn't is TW3, which, I mean with that game is just the way it's gonna be.

Why not just buy a g1 or msi card? Unless you're going for a specific color scheme in my opinion those are just as good if not better then the strix.

 

[juanrga]

I'd get a Fury X over a GTX 980, but definitely not over a 980Ti. 390X vs 980 is interesting at 1440p though; seems to be a draw for the most part.

I'd compare a gtx 980 more the fury then a fury x. That would have some interesting results, i would hope. I haven't seen any 390x benchmarks

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_390X_Gaming/

 

[fudgecakes99]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_390X_Gaming/

Seems almost identical as a 980. Save a few nvidia optimized games. Couple in the price difference, man that things a bargain. What is it 400 bucks? And the 980' still in the 500's? Nvidia needs to step their game up.

 

[renz496]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_390X_Gaming/

Seems almost identical as a 980. Save a few nvidia optimized games. Couple in the price difference, man that things a bargain. What is it 400 bucks? And the 980' still in the 500's? Nvidia needs to step their game up.

it seems like that until you actually able to buy 290X 8GB for less than what AMD sell 390X for. 980 still overpriced even after the price reduction but seeing how they still can get 82% market share despite being overprice they have no reason to drop their price further than it already is.

 

[fudgecakes99]

it seems like that until you actually able to buy 290X 8GB for less than what AMD sell 390X for. 980 still overpriced even after the price reduction but seeing how they still can get 82% market share despite being overprice they have no reason to drop their price further than it already is.

The problem is if both companies released quality products that actually had massive improvements over their predecessors it would alienate a large amount of their market base. Besides if you can undercut someone by selling them slightly better goods at inflated prices why wouldn't you? It's not like people by gpu's that often to begin with. I guess it kinda directly represents the market.

 

[renz496]

Why they would alienate their customer when they bring big improvement faster?

 

[loki1944]

I may pull the trigger on an R9 Fury Strix for my i7 960 rig; got two 980Ti Strix ordered for my main rig (for like a month now, amazon is killing me). I looked at seven different games on guru3d benchmarks, Fury Strix vs 980 Strix wins hands down in 6/7 games @1440p http://s1068.photobucket.com/user/loki1944/media/AMD%20VS%20NVIDA_zpszmsk5jfx.png.html. The one game where it doesn't is TW3, which, I mean with that game is just the way it's gonna be.

Why not just buy a g1 or msi card? Unless you're going for a specific color scheme in my opinion those are just as good if not better then the strix.

G1 I'm reading too many QC issues, had bad experience with MSI motherboard and GPU as well; 5 Asus monitors, 1 Asus SSD, 3 Asus motherboards, 4 top end Asus cards; I'd rather stick with them

 

[fudgecakes99]

Why they would alienate their customer when they bring big improvement faster?

Well if they constantly put out new tech that actually had drastic improvements, it would cause massive shifts in the entire industry. Doing so would force people with legacy tech to upgrade.

 

[renz496]

Well isn't that in their best interest for people keep buying their new product? 😀

But when it comes to legacy support nvidia was quite good in this regard despite they were accuse gimping kepler performance in favor of maxwell. Even right now their 8k series that launch in 2007-2008 time frame still have proper driver for win 10. For AMD the 4k series does not even have official support in win 8.1 forcing people to use hack driver or registery hack to make it work.