900 series video cards

[MadManCK]

ATI has always been behind with driver development. But i preferred ATI for my HTPC because of the better image quality back than. Right now there is very little difference in video performance between the big guns. It is the Nvidia drivers that are so much better than ATI. You can make custom profiles for each game and can download optimized settings for each game, if you don't know how to setup yourself. And the support from the gaming industry for Nvidia is still bigger, despite the current dominance from ATI/AMD in the consoles.

Intel is closing in with a different approach. They have been working on GFX technology that will be able to render real time ray tracing in games. This is the same technology that is used in Hollywood productions with CGI.

But it has been silent or a while now. Fact remains, that some games can be played just fine with Intel onboard graphics. But TBH i don't want Intel to take the crown in GFX. Leave that to the specialists, lol.

They did buy clever with Havok, where most of my favorite games are based on (Skyrim, TDU)
And companies like that are known to play unfair to others, like MS did with Soundblaster.
Havok was developing Physx support before Intel took over and cancelled that. Just an example. But future versions will without any doubt support DX12 and everything that comes with that.

But we will see how development will go. Larger textures with tiles and UHD pre rendering are very interesting developments that will make games a lot better and more real to look at in the distance.

[Joocyfroot]

ATI has always been behind with driver development.

I see people say this alot but is it really true? I mean Nvidia has released drivers that have melted GPUs.

I've been using AMD for probably about 5 years now with 0 issues with drivers. Had Nvidia before that and I did have issues with drivers for Nvidia.

Really though we can say that Nvidia is actually behind in driver development considering their history of piss poor support for linux and total lack of interest in making a driver for mantle. To me it seems like they both leapfrog in driver development just like they leapfrog in performance, provided that we are talking only about Directx Windows drivers.

I think if anything Nvidia is ahead in proprietary middleware such as Gameworks libraries since AMD basically doesn't have any proprietary middleware outside of Mantle which they've claimed that they will make it open to all hardware vendors that want to make the API work on their products.

Intel is interesting though. I'm honestly surprised that the Chipzilla hasn't made a push yet to compete with mainstream (100-300$) GPUs. Maybe if AMD manages to get more performance off their APUs that will change though. Interesting times ahead form the looks of it.

Pretty sure Havok never planned on Physx support. Intel dropped the GPU physics support that was meant to run Havok itself on the GPU when it bought Havok from what I understand.

You can make custom profiles for each game and can download optimized settings for each game

You can also do that with AMD cards. THe craptastic gaming evolved raptr thingie has preset "optimized" settings for alot of games and the CCC has the ability to set custom profiles for each game.

[MadManCK]

I know about those issues, but they were with Beta drivers if i recall corectly. But due to a policy biased to silent operations to get good scores in tests, some cards overheated. I almost fried one of mine as well. But that was a GTX280 and is a long time ago.

I have had lots of issues with ATI drivers. Sometimes forcing me to play windowed, or not even be able to start a game at all. Or return to the desktop in a different resolution. Etc etc. And that was with a more recent 6950 card, that was in my HTPC.
After switching to my current GTX670 mini, i never had any issues with games again.

Support is simply better with Nvidia drivers. Same for SLI vs CF.
And if the rumors of the layoffs are true, it is very well possible ATI/AMD is shooting themselves in the foot, as their cards are very good and in a lot of cases more value for money.

But the fact remains that a lot of devs favor Nvidia. Even if they don't admit it officially.

Pretty sure Havok never planned on Physx support.

They were working on a version that could make use of the separate physx cards, but that project was dropped. Just like the Physx competitor Havok FX project later.

All obsolete as GPU acceleration is common good now.

[Beardroid91]

I have had lots of issues with ATI drivers. Sometimes forcing me to play windowed

And if the rumors of the layoffs are true, it is very well possible ATI/AMD is shooting themselves in the foot, as their cards are very good and in a lot of cases more value for money.

But the fact remains that a lot of devs favor Nvidia. Even if they don't admit it officially.

Yeah, sometimes the drivers an't the best, but never i've never had a game that i couldn't start

Really hope not, but lol that would explain why Radeon is so lazy about releasing their drivers - i think it's once every 3 months or so they release one...

And yes and that's the thing the dev. think Nvidia first and Radeon as an after thought, just like Ivory Tower did on the The Crew the Nvidia ran flawless, while Radeon cards suffer some image stutterings
_

And FYI. 'AMD's Gaming Evolved' game optimization is in my case default max settings even when the game will lag running maximum settings... so to sum it up - it sucks
_

So it would in all fairness make more sense to shift to Nvidia IF NOT for the fact that Nvidia sells their cards at a premium price

So IF my HD 7950 suffers image stutters in The Crew then i guess i'll have to bite the bullet and buy a GTX 970... which hopefully i won't have to provided the french frogs do their jobs right
_

btw Mad
Have you heard Nvidia made DSR (dynamic super res.) available one the GTX 780 card .. have you tried it yet? Or is the hand still limiting you to Skyrim

[MadManCK]

I have seen the added functionality in the new driver update yesterday. But i did not know the 780Ti was also supported. Good to know.

I will try to do some simple races or challenges this weekend. Maybe with auto gears. Hand is healing nicely, but the grip is not there yet.

[Joocyfroot]

I know about those issues, but they were with Beta drivers if i recall corectly.

It happened on multiple driver versions and they were WHQL drivers, meaning not beta unless I'm mistaken.

But due to a policy biased to silent operations to get good scores in tests, some cards overheated.

That wasn't the issue, maybe Nvidia's PR machine made that claim at one point but the actual issue was that the driver borked the fan speeds and made the fan run too slow thus peoples cards were overheating and for some unlucky people it resulted in total hardware failure.

There's been several other issues with Nvidia drivers as well, I just figured that your card melting was one of the most relevant ones to bring up since it kind of shows that they're drivers are likely not so superior to AMDs.

There's no rumours for layoffs, AMD officially announced cutting back staff by 7%. How that affects the GPU side of AMD remains to be seen, since they didn't specifically state what part of teh corporation is going to be seeing the layoffs from waht I know. I don't think the 7% will be much of an issue, I think what will be more concerning is if becomes a trend going into 2016.

But the fact remains that a lot of devs favor Nvidia. Even if they don't admit it officially.

I really doubt that most game devs themselves favor either company over the other until money/partnerships/branding/marketing becomes involved. If anything, in regards to software development in general (not just limited to game development), I think devs aren't too fond of Nvidia due to their aggressive competitive nature and proprietary middleware. Either way, AMD has been getting alot more support from game devs compared to say 5 years ago when they basically didn't care about directly marketing their brand in game titles. Which is good, because AMDs survival is crucial for gamers, since without AMD we are probably looking at forking over 500$ for a mainstream GPU whereas currently they're marketed at about 200-250$ or so to get something that will run most stuff decently. Of course there's alot of other reasons as well why AMDs survival in teh GPu market is crucial.

[MadManCK]

Sounds like a true AMD fanboy to me.

I try to be more objective.
My personal experience with Nvidia is a lot better than ATI/AMD. Especially lately.

Competition is always good. Without it, development would go much slower and prices would be higher.
But the release pace of new models has been too high in recent times because of it. And that makes it hard for vendors, retailers and card manufacturers to keep up with the pace. Some models with aftermarket coolers are just released or the next line-up is already there.

Good example is the latest Mars twin 290 card, that is ridiculously expensive, but also pretty much obsolete.
Still cool Asus made that possible.

Only thing holding things back is the new 20nm TSMC technology that is either delayed, or capacity has been bought by another party. Or they use it as an excuse to slow things down a bit and make some money from the current generation.

AMD biggest issue has been power consumption. That will be dealt with in the next gen. We'll see.

As this topic is about the new Nvidia 900 series:

[Beardroid91]

Heard Nvidia countered AMD's attempt by upping the Vram to 8 GB to sell more R9 290's. And Nvidia matched that, so the GTX 970 and 980 will come with 8 GB Vram versions as well, pretty insane

Hmm guess you'd only need one card to play Shadows of Mordor on Ultra now

[MadManCK]

It sounds insane, but when you want to pre render UHD frames, it makes sense to place 8 gig on a card.

20nm and 8 gig. Maybe wait for the 16 gig version instead

[Bez]

Just in case anyone is thinking of getting a new video card, take a look at this first.
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