lucas_7_94 :
In one of the comments, an user request the benchmarks of the 480, and Tech Of Tomorrow responses: "480 is almost the same as a 980 at least the 8GB version will be".
What a time [strike]to be alive[/strike] to pick a GPU.
Will be ? Since these guys can read the future, can you have these guys tell me what the outcome of the Belmont Stakes will be ... throw in a few other sports events too ?
I'll make a appointment with the local bookie right after. Last few years we have seen "The AMD [insert upcoming technology here ... i.e. mantle, 2xx, 3xx] is gonna change everything" and it has not come to pass. In the meantime, AMD's market share has slipped to 20% and the 970 outsold all 25 or so AMD 2xx and 3xx cards combined. And while I do hope that AMD hits a home run with the 480, I do hope that (in CF) it is competitive with NVidia's top cards. But here's the thing ...
nVidia has been working real hard the last few generations to make SLI less attractive cause it hurts sales of the top tier cards. They crippled the 970 by nerfing the throttling point and this time around they dropped **support** (you can do it by getting a key, but don't call for support) for 3 or more cards and scaling on the 1xxx series is way down from 9xx series.
a) Is this because, as some writes have suggested, CPU bottlenecking ? Have we finally reached the point after several consecutive years of 20+% generation to generation GPU improvements, while CPU performance has remained relatively flat, that the GPUs has outpaced the CPU so much that this is now our limiting factor ? Seems a reasonable possibility (too early to tell as yet) since scaling continues to be very good at 4k but that at 1440p its less and 1080p even less.... or
b) Is nVidia purposely being a bit slow in driver development because 1) AMD has nothing on the table and 2) the 1080s only competition is two 1070s and they make more money selling 1080s ?
If you look at the numbers for the 970 @ 1440p for example, using numbers curtailed from tech sites like techpowerup and results from their large game suite testing, we find the following
-Out of 27 games tested, two 970s were faster than the 980 in 26.
-Out of 27 games tested, the one instance where the 980 was faster it took you from 56 to 61 fps.
-That one game was Wolfenstein: New Order ... not exactly a widely popular title. Did many folks make the buy choice to spend twice as much because "they wanted that 5 fps in WNO" ?
-On average over the 27 games, the 970 was 40% faster
-The key issue however, was that in AAA titles which really push the GFX cards, the scaling was 92-96% bringing the 970s performance in the 60 fps range while leaving the single 980 at 35 - 40 fps. So for the same price, where is the advantage of the single 980 performance wise ? ... You get 5 fps advantage in a single unpopular title out of 27 games, meanwhile every other titles are on average 40% faster and the high load, and where it really matters .... popular AAA are up around 60 fps while the 980 languishes at 35 - 40.
So ... regarding the previous "home run" reference on the 2 x 480s, will it be enough ?.... While the anticipated price / performance of the 480 is very appealing, it still has two hurdles to pass...
1. We will still see the same protestations about single vs two cards even tho the test data doesn't support those claims. It must be said however that AMD has historically struggled a bit on timely driver releases.
2. The media will continue to write about "the top dog". Even tho the 380 outperforms the 960, the 960 still outsells the 380 because every magazine and web site headlines with the fastest card (1080) on the market. For many, the performance of the two cards in the price range they can afford, is not investigated before purchase, all they do remember however that "nVidia make the fastest card" so thay want a card w/ an nVidia logo on it.
So. to my eyes, AMD also needs to make a splash at the top end to gain mindshare ... and not like the last two generations where they got embarrassed from running a big ad campaign, only to have nVidia drop the 780 Ti / 980 Ti just as the cards were coming out.
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