Is Pascal going to be as amazing as everyone says?

[eravate]

I am trying to determine if I should get 2 980ti's now or wait till pascal. The only reason I am worried about getting the 980ti's now is because the hype of pascal makes it seem like all cards are going to be obsolete when pascal comes out.

 

[AdmiralDonut]

You may as well just wait. The first Pascal cards will be released in June/July, so we'll find out more then, and unless you are SUPER desperate for some bizarre reason then you should just be patient.

 

[thor220]

I am trying to determine if I should get 2 980ti's now or wait till pascal. The only reason I am worried about getting the 980ti's now is because the hype of pascal makes it seem like all cards are going to be obsolete when pascal comes out.

Pascal is pretty much just going to be a die shrink. They aren't doing any major architecture changes.

Polaris, on the other hand, is a Major architecture change and is going to a smaller 14nm node vs 16nm for Pascal.

I'd put my money on Polaris being the better this upcoming gen.

 

[dudmont]

Did intel take a major performance leap when skylake came out vs Haswell(skipping Broadwell, it's just not relevant)? Two 980tis are going to be kick butt graphics no matter how you look at it. The other issue, is when they're going to release the top-end pascal card. It took more than a year for the 980ti to come out, after they had released the 2nd gen maxwell, so there's no guarantee that the initial pascal cards are going to be better than 980tis.

 

[InvalidError]

Did intel take a major performance leap when skylake came out vs Haswell(skipping Broadwell, it's just not relevant)?

Yes and no. While the CPU side did not get much significant improvement, Intel did throw the bulk of their spare transistor budget at the IGP and Skylake's IGP is substantially faster than Haswell's. If Intel had wanted to, they could have blown that transistor budget at extra CPU cores but most mainstream software hardly ever makes use of more than two threads.

GPUs on the other hand are all about massive parallelism. Going from 28nm to 14-16nm allows AMD/Nvidia to put 3-4X more compute power in the same die space. You can bet your shorts that they will both launch GPUs with 75-100% more processing power crammed in half the die space as soon as their confidence in the manufacturing process will allow them to.

 

[dudmont]

Did intel take a major performance leap when skylake came out vs Haswell(skipping Broadwell, it's just not relevant)?

Yes and no. While the CPU side did not get much significant improvement, Intel did throw the bulk of their spare transistor budget at the IGP and Skylake's IGP is substantially faster than Haswell's. If Intel had wanted to, they could have blown that transistor budget at extra CPU cores but most mainstream software hardly ever makes use of more than two threads.

GPUs on the other hand are all about massive parallelism. Going from 28nm to 14-16nm allows AMD/Nvidia to put 3-4X more compute power in the same die space. You can bet your shorts that they will both launch GPUs with 75-100% more processing power crammed in half the die space as soon as their confidence in the manufacturing process will allow them to.

I don't disagree with any of this. But I don't think they'll do what people think. I think they'll take the power and heat advantages, rather than add substantially more compute units. What's the future of gaming? 4K and VR. We have hardware that will already do good VR, 4k monitors(and the interfaces) still need to catch up. Fast 980tis can already handle the best 4k monitors, for the most part.

 

[InvalidError]

What's the future of gaming? 4K and VR. We have hardware that will already do good VR, 4k monitors(and the interfaces) still need to catch up.

For 4k and VR gaming to have a chance of catching on in the more cost-sensitive mainstream segment, you also need affordable GPUs to drive them. Most people are going to pass on 4k and VR if they need $600 worth of GPUs to make it barely bearable.

For the rest of people, it should still spell a drastic increase in performance per watt and per buck.

 

[thor220]

Um, why was my comment deleted?

 

[InvalidError]

Um, why was my comment deleted?

May have been an accident.

 

[thor220]

Um, why was my comment deleted?

May have been an accident.

Well, that's a bit of a downer.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Or because 14nm and 16nm seem to be the same thing according to some meaning less or no advantage to Polaris over Pascal.

 

[thor220]

Or because 14nm and 16nm seem to be the same thing according to some meaning less or no advantage to Polaris over Pascal.

I see that you are the one who deleted my comment. The process Samsung uses to make 14nm and TSMC's 16nm are completely different. Samsung is using 2nd gen 14nm.

Either way, whether it was right or wrong, that doesn't give you the right to delete the comment without notice.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Or because 14nm and 16nm seem to be the same thing according to some meaning less or no advantage to Polaris over Pascal.

I see that you are the one who deleted my comment. The process Samsung uses to make 14nm and TSMC's 16nm are completely different. Samsung is using 2nd gen 14nm.

Either way, whether it was right or wrong, that doesn't give you the right to delete the comment without notice.

Ten out of ten for being wrong, I was not the Mod who deleted your comment! :lol:

My comment was because of a post in this thread :- http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2992150/realities-390x-980ti-390-980-970.html

 

[thor220]

Or because 14nm and 16nm seem to be the same thing according to some meaning less or no advantage to Polaris over Pascal.

I see that you are the one who deleted my comment. The process Samsung uses to make 14nm and TSMC's 16nm are completely different. Samsung is using 2nd gen 14nm.

Either way, whether it was right or wrong, that doesn't give you the right to delete the comment without notice.

Ten out of ten for being wrong, I was not the Mod who deleted your comment! :lol:

My comment was because of a post in this thread :- http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2992150/realities-390x-980ti-390-980-970.html

1, that doesn't make any sense. You didn't post in that thread. That's one that I had posted in. You are saying that you didn't delete my comment yet you had the time to find another thread that I posted in with a similar comment to the one that was deleted.

For that matter, how did you even know to look for 14nm vs 16nm if you hadn't deleted the comment in the first place? Are you implying that you simply "found" a comment similar to the one deleted on mere happenstance?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Or because 14nm and 16nm seem to be the same thing according to some meaning less or no advantage to Polaris over Pascal.

I see that you are the one who deleted my comment. The process Samsung uses to make 14nm and TSMC's 16nm are completely different. Samsung is using 2nd gen 14nm.

Either way, whether it was right or wrong, that doesn't give you the right to delete the comment without notice.

Ten out of ten for being wrong, I was not the Mod who deleted your comment! :lol:

My comment was because of a post in this thread :- http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2992150/realities-390x-980ti-390-980-970.html

1, that doesn't make any sense. You didn't post in that thread. That's one that I had posted in. You are saying that you didn't delete my comment yet you had the time to find another thread that I posted in with a similar comment to the one that was deleted.

For that matter, how did you even know to look for 14nm vs 16nm if you hadn't deleted the comment in the first place? Are you implying that you simply "found" a comment similar to the one deleted on mere happenstance?

I see more than you could ever comprehend. 😉

Feel free to believe that I was the one who deleted your post, call in the Admins if wish, it won't change the facts. :lol:

 

[thor220]

Or because 14nm and 16nm seem to be the same thing according to some meaning less or no advantage to Polaris over Pascal.

I see that you are the one who deleted my comment. The process Samsung uses to make 14nm and TSMC's 16nm are completely different. Samsung is using 2nd gen 14nm.

Either way, whether it was right or wrong, that doesn't give you the right to delete the comment without notice.

Ten out of ten for being wrong, I was not the Mod who deleted your comment! :lol:

My comment was because of a post in this thread :- http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2992150/realities-390x-980ti-390-980-970.html

1, that doesn't make any sense. You didn't post in that thread. That's one that I had posted in. You are saying that you didn't delete my comment yet you had the time to find another thread that I posted in with a similar comment to the one that was deleted.

For that matter, how did you even know to look for 14nm vs 16nm if you hadn't deleted the comment in the first place? Are you implying that you simply "found" a comment similar to the one deleted on mere happenstance?

I see more than you could ever comprehend. 😉

Feel free to believe that I was the one who deleted your post, call in the Admins if wish, it won't change the facts. :lol:

You aren't the one who deleted my post but I just wanted an explanation as to why you said what you did.

I apologize for jumping to conclusions.