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Why no older cards used in reviews?

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I've noticed this trend and I don't like it. For example, the Fury reviews don't even include R9-280X or if we go further back HD7970. I don't need several of them, just 1 card from the old-old generation. If you're upgrading here and ther, it's good to know what are the performance jumps between generations. I know Fury is faster than R9-390X, but looking at the review, I have no reference point to relate it to my card. If there was at least R9-280X which is basicaly what I have (a rebranded HD7970) I'd have a better feel for what I'm expecting.

I know it would bring extra work, but I think many would greatly appreciate "reference points" with older cards so you instantly know the performance increases between generations and if its worth investing now or you're gonan wait some more...
 

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the 280x is included in the summaries, in order to keep the individual game graphs at reasonable lengths i picked cards that are not too different from the tested card in performance
 

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Is it possible to include every card tested (reference at least) on that system in some sort of riot of graphs?
 
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the 280x is included in the summaries, in order to keep the individual game graphs at reasonable lengths i picked cards that are not too different from the tested card in performance

But having 10 cards that behave the same kinda ruins the point of tests. We already know that cards from same era perform roughly the same. It's always few frames difference to one or another side. What we don't know from this test is how much owners of old gen high ends would benefit. Owners of R9-280X (HD7970) and lets say HD6970. Just 1 high end from that gen. No ned to do HD7950 and HD7970. We know they are very similar, but they present a great reference point for users of cards from that era.

I mean, we essentially have 3 same cards in the review, taking space that could be used for older gens as reference. R9-290, R9-290X and R9-390X. You could just test R9-390X and make a foot note saying "R9-290's are basically the same, few frames slower than R9-390X." Btw, I was unable to find the R8-280X mentioned anywhere in the Fury X review. If you mean the relative performance chart, that's totally useless. % tells NOTHING to me. Sometimes you have 20% difference and when you convert that into frames it turns out to be 5fps difference. Sounds huge in %, but turns out to be tiny in fps. That's why I want to see frames side by side even for older gens.
 

W1zzard

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In that case you have to pick an older review that's reviewing a card with similar performance, wait for my 380X review
 
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But you'd have R9-380X already tested if you'd test older cards in Fury X test. They are just rebranded cards...
 
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But you'd have R9-380X already tested if you'd test older cards in Fury X test. They are just rebranded cards...

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. I don't think he can test a 7970/280X and then label it a 380X. Plus at stock the cards are not identical. It may be the same chip, but everything else is mildly different, including base and boost clocks and memory configuration.
 
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I never said relable them as such, only said you can just add a note below graph that they are nearly identical. Because they are.
 

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I never said relable them as such, only said you can just add a note below graph that they are nearly identical. Because they are.
I get your point, but a significant percentage of our readers won't, and the same people usually dont read little * notes
 
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Could you imagine the nightmare of attempting to unify the FPS results. You'll have driver variations, Test system variations, Revision variations.

Added to that you then have to work out a way to make the tables work, have a search or highlight feature and possibly a compare feature!

Looking at W1zzards last review of the Fury X I can only assume he put at least a full week of work into that article. Like every W1zzard review it was by for the most comprehensive on the net at the time of publish. Even Tomshardware who have made a business out of card comparison struggle to make a unified card comparison that includes everything and is fair, And the community generally understand that Tomshardware is only useful for getting a base line for comparison. You have to dig and read to get an honest comparison.

In addition to the above no single game as a baseline can ever be fair. We see constant improvements from 1 team or the other in specific titles, If you start to make a chart of 2-3 games comparing everything then one corner start to shout bias, As some games respond to some cards significantly better.

I come here for many reasons but the reason I stay is I like the way reviews are conducted, and for the most part how the community will deal with the people willing to ask questions. Once you start to remove the questions and give people a tool that gives all the answers then that becomes law and in it's own right that is a very wrong situation to be in. We all know not all cards are equal and fitting a budget to a forum specific person at the time of posting can change a whole rig just for a weekly offer.
 
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Well, worse than what I've seen was Guru3D testing just R9-390X, R9 Fury X and GTX 980Ti. like WTF!? The most pointless test ever. We already know they are neck to neck, why do you need to point it out? People are interested how they compare, but also how they compare to older generations. Otherwise it's pointless to even make a test if it tells you nothing to base a purchase on.
 
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You already have the card you wanna compare the Fury to, and chances are, the games you're more interested in terms of performance already are installed in your hardrive, with all due respect, why don't you run the benchmarks yourself and compare your results to W1zzard's results?

I know, different system configurations and whatnot, but honestly, you cannot expect every reviewer to carry the burden of comparing each card available on earth on each game, especially with the cheer amount of games TPU uses for each card review, this site already has some of the most comprehensive review suites on the whole internet.

Unfortunately, old cards lose relevancy as they age, but for your convenience, performance charts going back several generations are included at the end of each review, or as pointed out, you can always refer to the plethora of archived reviews containing the results you're looking for with a simple search.

I tell you this not with the intention of making you feel like your system is obsolete, but as an analogy, what you're asking for is akin to having road and track magazine include the results of lap times in every car review going back to the 1982 mustang, not only irrelevant when reviewing new cars, but also a nightmare in terms of logistics.

Such magazines conveniently include a table in the last pages comparing the results of reviews done in previous issues, just as W1zzard includes the performance summary at the end of each review, hope this helps :)
 
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If you assume everyone already has everything latest, then why anyone even bothers to do reviews? It's a silly assertion.
 
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If you assume everyone already has everything latest, then why anyone even bothers to do reviews? It's a silly assertion.

Once again, with all due respect, exactly in what part of my post did you see me make such an assertion?
 
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I don't buy graphic cards for specific titles, I buy them for overall performance. That's why, what I have already installed doesn't matter.
 

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@RejZoR

This is making my head hurt.

Look, if you want some sort of league table comparing multiple generations of card performance, here it is from Tom's Hardware: www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32899-7.html

It compares all the way back to the NVIDIA TNT from 1999 or whenever and no, it hasn't been updated for the Fury X yet. You'll have to wait until next month for that.
 
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I don't like your tone there... I'm not asking for 50 generations back, I'm asking for perfectly reasonable 2-3 (especially with all these shitty rebrands).
 
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i'm a fan of anandtech's bench tool, but it needs to list driver versions

apparently some numbers show up here that are NOT in the reviews, & they need to slowly add cards every year as more tests are done (that's why there are yearly versions)

i noticed in TPU's review, the 290x is much worse than 390x, they are using different drivers, meanwhile guru3d users have modded 3 series drivers to run on their 2 series... basically, now is a bad time to have benchmarks, it would be nice if various sites repeat the tests after a couple unified driver releases (i guess we'll see them for fury non x & nano)
 

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I don't like your tone there... I'm not asking for 50 generations back, I'm asking for perfectly reasonable 2-3 (especially with all these shitty rebrands).
What's wrong with my tone then? Sounds fine to me.

Look, you want to compare generations here and for various reasons, as others have explained, including W1z, it's somewhat impractical. That chart is the closest you'll get and gives a reasonable idea of what to expect. It actually gives you more than you asked for since it goes back to the year dot, so I don't understand what you're unhappy about. Surely I've answered your question in the OP?
 
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i agree with OP, but i have never done a massive review myself so i don't know the difficulties. However i agree because i upgrade every 2-4 years so i always have to compared current card to a previous gen, then google that card's review and hope my card is in there somewhere, then use some simple math to figure out the scale/differnce over the 2-4 generations.
 
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I just found a receipt of my HD7950. It will be 3 years old in August. Meaning it served me for 3 years before I kinda felt it needs replacing even though majority of games that I play run fine. By the intel I've managed to find scattered around, GTX 980 should be roughly 80-100% faster than my HD7950. But I can't really tell for sure since no one compared them directly. I usually buy new graphic card when performance of my existing one is doubled in the new one. Seems the most economic way with very little compromise.
 

Frick

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I just found a receipt of my HD7950. It will be 3 years old in August. Meaning it served me for 3 years before I kinda felt it needs replacing even though majority of games that I play run fine. By the intel I've managed to find scattered around, GTX 980 should be roughly 80-100% faster than my HD7950. But I can't really tell for sure since no one compared them directly. I usually buy new graphic card when performance of my existing one is doubled in the new one. Seems the most economic way with very little compromise.

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1495?vs=1442

That's 7970 vs 980. Subtract about 15% or so from the 7970 and you have your 7950. Or you can take the 580 vs the 980 as the 580 is about the same as a 7950 +- 5%.
 
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I think my HD7950 is around as fast if not tiny bit faster than vanilla HD7970 so that's quite comparable directly. I guess I was reading the graphs correctly after all, GTX 980 is basically 100% faster than HD7970.
 

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I think OP has a point. Just recently the 780 stopped being in the comparison list. There is no way such a massively popular card suddenly has no one using it. So now, I have look at the 780Ti and guesstimate where my card is by subtracting approximately 10% worse fps. Still not really a good method though.
 
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