Anybody regret going red?

[Champ]

So it wasn't until I saw Jayz 2 Cent recent aftermarket 1080 vid, that I realized I made a huge mistake. I need to stop trying to go against the grain and support the underdog. Nvidia is dominating for a reason and I saw it. I regret paying almost 500 for my nano months ago and I'm definitely regretting getting a freesync monitor now. We gotta be realistic. AMD will probably never catch Intel/Nvidia. Processor or graphics wise.

 

[Kursah]

No but for what you got for the money at the time the R9 Nano was a good deal I'm sure, it's still no slouch now. Plus hindsight is always 20/20. I go for what works in my budget at that time...this last run the deal I got on a 980 Ti from a friend was the only thing stopping me from getting an R9 Nano around New Year's.

NV is the big dog....but AMD has some tricks up their sleeves coming into the future. NV also knows they can charge a hefty premium...so it depends on what performance you feel you need and how much you are willing to pay for it. You have a nice build and I'm sure it games like a beast.

 

[AsRock]

Should of waited is all, and as seen as you have a nano i think that you should just wait for what AMD release as lets face it what you have now is pretty dam good anyways.

You can just send me your $$$ instead of just wasting it.

 

[tabascosauz]

The appeal of the Nano wasn't even its performance; it was the performance for its 750 Ti size, so why it is of any surprise to you that Nvidia offers superior performance is something I don't understand.

You put the Nano in an ATX midtower. There were plenty of compelling options from AMD, some faster, some cheaper but you chose to spend more money on a niche card meant for <20L SFF.

I'd kill to have a Nano at my disposal; it's not a slow card.

If more raw performance is what you want, Nvidia had and still has what you need. AMD has not produced a single product in the past 5 years aside from the 7970 that had actually taken the crown in high end single GPU gaming.

That said, we're on the cusp of another huge new GPU season, so maybe you should wait it out. It's not like you're sitting on a 550 Ti, desperate to play games at decent fps.

I regretted going red, but for the reason that AMD completely lacked a directly comparable counterpart to the GTX 750 Ti, forcing me to choose a poorly built Club3D R7 265 that could not withstand the rigors of travelling across the Atlantic upwards of 5 times a year. Now, my GTX 750 Ti does most of what the R7 265 could, with no need for external power, less noise and lower temperatures, and much stronger construction with the help of a shorter PCB and a solid backplate.

 

[GLD]

Champ, you have some great gear there, nothing to be bummed about. That kit makes some others jealous (like me). So fire that up on some triple A title's and be happy.

Do I regret my "red" rig? Not one bit. I may even upgrade my cpu to a 8350/8370 Wraith before ZEN. I will be going ZEN when it's that time. I like my pc's, and feel the need to have two at all times. A gamer and a lower powered daily driver, both 100% AMD of course. I don't throw a lot of money at my rigs though because I have other hobbies, as can be seen in my avatar. I have two of those also, but want to upgrade to a third, but that will be about a $13k purchase. Anyway... I am 100% happy with my red components.

 

[Kursah]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the 290X took the crown for a little bit?

Beyond size, having a full Fury X in a micro package where you could significantly reduce power consumption and use air cooling I feel were good points as well. Or increase power consumption adjustments and achieve Fury X performance or damn close seems like a solid move in my eyes.

Granted I didn't get to enjoy one in my personal build as I said before. I hope AMD continues to push that trend and I'm hoping to see them make more waves in higher performance categories while allowing more budget limited gamers to enjoy competitive products.

 

[Disparia]

No, I don't. Mostly because who is ahead doesn't matter much when you buy mid-range. When I upgraded about 8 months ago I got the wife a GTX 960/4GB and myself a 380X. Practically identical with a few games favoring one or the other.

 

[tabascosauz]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the 290X took the crown for a little bit?

Beyond size, having a full Fury X in a micro package where you could significantly reduce power consumption and use air cooling I feel were good points as well. Or increase power consumption adjustments and achieve Fury X performance or damn close seems like a solid move in my eyes.

Granted I didn't get to enjoy one in my personal build as I said before. I hope AMD continues to push that trend and I'm hoping to see them make more waves in higher performance categories while allowing more budget limited gamers to enjoy competitive products.

On very literal grounds, that is true. But when most (less experienced) reviewers were hesitant to offer the clearly superior 290X on the basis that it sounded like a jet engine and was as hot as an oven, it clearly wasn't the champ that it could have perhaps been. Its time as #1 was very short-lived too.

I'm not saying that those aren't valid reasons for buyign the Nano. However, if you do, you also pay more for what is essentially a niche card. It doesn't matter what you use it for; at the end of the day, it doesn't change the fact that you paid for a product with a poorer performance to price ratio than its siblings, and it would seem a little bit odd to complain about "regretting paying 500 for the nano" as there were clearly other viable choices, OP just didn't choose to take them.

Not so doom-and-gloom though. As I said, we have a lot to look forward to this summer and fall. Now's not the time to make impulsive buying decisions on last-generation tech.

 

[MrGenius]

I never intended on ever going red. Until I went searching for the fastest AGP card ever made. Which turned out to be the HD 3850 AGP. I was so impressed with that card mainly because of how well it overclocked. Which compared to my previous green cards was mind boggling(not to mention being cheaper than the nearest green competition). It made such a good impression on me I decided to stay red until given a good reason not to. I want a card that's fast enough and cheap enough. I'm not interested in something too expensive or too fast. I just want to play games at what I consider good framerates as cheaply as possible. My budget is typically no more than $300 or so. But if Nvidia wants to play ball at $380 for the GTX 1070. Game ON!! That gives me very good reason to switch back to green. And so I shall.

EDIT: What are we calling Intel? Blue? I finally went blue there because it's just stupid not too. In the beginning I was all about red there. I never even considered blue until Core 2 Duo. And I won't consider red there again unless they pull some pretty amazing trick out of their bag to take a step ahead of Intel. Yeah right. Like that's ever going to happen. Money is not an object for me there so much. I know AMD will always be cheaper. But will always be weaker. There's no probably about it.

 

[the54thvoid]

Plus hindsight is always 20/20. I go for what works in my budget at that time...

Ding dong - right answer right there - close thread.

But seriously, you cannot live in the IT age and hold off until the next thing. As @Kursah says, you budget for your hardware and (you research your hardware) and you buy your hardware. No regrets. My Kingpin 980ti is now slower than an overclocked 1080. I spent >£800 on card plus imported water block. I budgeted and I bought the fastest thing (and the sexiest hardware thing) that I wanted. Happy.

Is you Nano shit? No. Is it good - yes. Does it do what you want it to do? Yes, I imagine.

Tech hardware becomes old real fast - don't regret what you buy unless you bought it for weird brand loyalty reasons (that's the real mistake).

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Nvidia is dominating for a reason and I saw it.

Only one reason: TSMC 16nm. All AMD cards available now are still on TSMC 28nm. This is literally the only reason why GTX 1080 looks good. It's going to largely vanish when Polaris launches on Samsung 14nm.

I regret paying almost 500 for my nano months ago and I'm definitely regretting getting a freesync monitor now.

The former, well yeah.
The latter, well no. Adaptive sync (which FreeSync is an implementation of) is the future. Intel's going to start supporting adaptive sync soon which means G-Sync's days are numbered. Hell, GTX 1080 should be able to support adaptive sync monitors if NVIDIA got off their asses and added support for it in their drivers.

Considering my monitors are over five years old and still running strong. That Freesync monitor should be a good investment unless you've already made up your mind to go back to G-Sync.

AMD will probably never catch Intel/Nvidia.

GCN is vastly superior to Pascal at DX12 and Vulkan (the present and future). Where Pascal falls in FPS switching off of DX11, GCN gains FPS. AMD is in a very good position right now because of their close relationship with Microsoft, Sony, and (to a lesser extent) Nintendo.

Processor or graphics wise.

The jury is still out on Zen.

On the graphics side, GCN is undeniably the best architecture out there; the problem is was that developers were coding for GeForce so they didn't put GCN to work. That's changing and Pascal looks like a dinosaur because of it. The only thing going for Pascal is the ridiculously high clock speeds (1.8 GHz) compensating for the lackluster architecture.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

in honesty, it's very hard for most of us to catch up with what Intel, AMD & Nvidia are pushing out of the factory... With Computex coming close, I think the new bloods will find the latest offering from both major & minor vendors to build their desktop rigs an interesting thing to do OR buy one from reputable PC builders from names like OCUK or CyberPowerPC.

 

[P4-630]

In the past I started with Ati x300, then x1600pro, GeForce 6800xxx and back to Ati x1950Pro, HD3870, HD4870, at that time I never regret that I bought Ati.
After those Ati cards I didn't had a desktop anymore for several years. I had Nvidia laptops. Years ago in my opinion Ati had better image quality than Nvidia in gaming,
nowadays it all looks good to me for both brands, I prefer Nvidia now, also Nvidia had a better record for better drivers. I will be buying a GTX1070 soon.

 

[Frick]

I go for what works in my budget at that time...

Aye this! The Nano was a great deal, and they've always had good stuff at various prices. Nvidia rule at the high end, but that's about it. Personally I've mostly been with AMD because they've offered the best bang for the buck I'm willing to spend (my current GPU was a gift).

The CPU bit is correct though. The only marketable AMD CPUs these days are some FM2+ stuff and AM1.

 

[EntropyZ]

I feel similarly when I bought the R9 380 for 230 euros (new) from my local hardware retailer, when I got it it had fan issues for a month before AMD fixed it in the drivers, and even then the thing would downclock like crazy all the time and made some poorly optimized games macro-stutter. I thought the raw power of Red team was going to win over the GTX 960 which was cheaper and ran all games smooth at my monitors resolution.

I was always running an nVidia card since the Geforce 2 MX, from there it goes to 7200GS and then finally I got a good mid-range card for the first time in my whole life, it was the GTX 460 768MB in 2011 (for 100 pounds) which pretty was solid for 3 years before I sold it off and went looking for my next big jump in performance. (Most people probably think the GTX 460 is a damn dinosaur now, but hey it plays some recent ports from Square Enix at 1080p60FPS! Namely FFXIII)

Found a Gigabyte GTX 660 2GB last year for (for 100 euros) which doubled the performance in most games and I could finally play Skyrim w/ heavy graphical mods, but it it didn't have enough power even when OC'd to GTX 660Ti levels.

So in my mind the logical choice was which mid-range GPU to pick for 2016, should I keep the GPU that I spent money well on for once, or try to find an upgrade that might satisfy the ability to play heavily modded games without frame drops. I researched quite a bit before making the conclusion that on average the Red team was faster in most games so I began using the R9 380. Which is... decent, but for 230 euros a 20% FPS increase was worth it? Hell no.

But with AMD making their drivers really awesome nowadays (and they better keep at it) I think their cards hold up longer ever since the 7000 series came out. 28nm had a good run but overstayed it's welcome IMO.

I want to address something though, there's some FUD going around that nVidia is either dropping support for their GPU's really fast once a new generation comes out, or they deliberately are gimping their own GPU's since Maxwell architecture came out. The R9 280X/380 are now gnawing at GTX 780's heels in certain games, AMD hasn't made big changes since Pitcairn I think.

Though most GPU's start to really shine when OC'd. You can gain about 10 extra FPS from OC'ing a 750Ti. Which is impressive by my standards.

Anyway, I think the Nano really good, but for that kind of money... Ehhh. It seems like the software/games don't really take advantage of AMD GPU's. I still wish my old DX9 and DX11 titles had multi-thread for AMD GPU's, but Red team wussed out on better DX11 support for some reason, don't remember why.

Maybe I should try and sell the R9 380 and get the R9 480 which will have DX12_1 support when current Tonga GPU's have only 12_0. But the prices in my country are scary. You're expected to pay over 250 euros for a brand new mid-range GPU. Though in general the prices of newly released GPU's have been rising have they not?

There's just something about Radeon GPU's that makes me think they are being held back! I hate this feeling. It's the first time I've ever owned a Radeon card, and the experience in the beginning wasn't the best, but now I am enjoying the gaming bliss after a sequence of entry and mid-range cards not being able to run at 60 FPS for a modded game.

All in all, I believe I made the right choice in the end. I can OC my Gigabyte R9 380 G1 Gaming to 1200MHz rock-solid. Which brings it in terms of performance to about R9 380X levels. Which quite frankly should make this card last another 2-3 years before being replaced. Let's be fair, it is going to happen because I'm waiting for Elder Scrolls VI, Skywind, FF7 Remake and Resident Evil 2 Remake.

Sorry for not having tl;dr, I suck at making concise sentences. human.exe stopped responding.

 

[PLAfiller]

@Champ , does your PC do what you want it to do ? Don't compare with others - it destroys the joy in anything you do.

If you do animation and it renders as fast as you want it - what's the problem then ?

I see elder people publish 3 books per year writing on a 15-year-old laptops with Windows XP and I have SSD's, 2nd monitors and can't get myself to finish a master thesis.....

Just focus on the purpose and enjoy your rig in my opinion.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Wow, so this thread brought some good conversation but zero revelations...... sorry to be such an ass but lets be honest and not some touchy lovey feely bullshit for once. The OP gave zero reasons for feeling like they were let down. If your purchase left you wanting in any way, maybe you should have researched it yourself a bit better.

 

[MrGenius]

GCN is vastly superior to Pascal at DX12 and Vulkan (the present and future). Where Pascal falls in FPS switching off of DX11, GCN gains FPS. AMD is in a very good position right now because of their close relationship with Microsoft, Sony, and (to a lesser extent) Nintendo.

All of which are the reasons I won't be getting rid of my 280X. It's just about to become the card it was really meant to be. And with DX12 my GTX 1070 will complement it nicely in a dual card configuration.

 

[the54thvoid]

Only one reason: TSMC 14nm. All AMD cards available now are still on TSMC 28nm. This is literally the only reason why GTX 1080 looks good. It's going to largely vanish when Polaris launches on Samsung 16nm.

On the graphics side, GCN is undeniably the best architecture out there; the problem is was that developers were coding for GeForce so they didn't put GCN to work. That's changing and Pascal looks like a dinosaur because of it. The only thing going for Pascal is the ridiculously high clock speeds (1.8 GHz) compensating for the lackluster architecture.

Man, you usually seem so reasonable. Listen to what you just wrote. Pascal is so good because of how high it clocks. So if Nvidia make an architecture that can run such high clocks, it's NOT good? WTF? Read it again man. What are you saying? If Nvidia made the shittest most basic arch but it clocked at 4Ghz and blew the competition away, it would still be the fastest.

Also, Pascal is not a dinosaur - you seem to be coming at this from an AMD will save the day standpoint. They wont. GP 104 is not the top offering. It's all Nvidia needed to take the high ground again - until AMD release Vega. Then Nvidia release GP102. Also, if the custom cards crank up the power and GP104 hits the mid 2000's (who knows but rumours suggest it can) then Pascal's equivalent of 980 is going to be about 40% faster than a 980ti. That's about 60% faster than Fury X in DX11 and 40% faster in DX12.

This is the GTX680 all over again. And GCN is not the be all and end all. If Pascal can beat GCN (Fiji) in a heavily Async game when Nvidia apparently can't do Async.... what does that say about GCN? Use some logic. AMD have said that Polaris is not about the high end. So Nvidia have months and months of Pascal now before Vega hits. Then it'll be GP102's turn. I don't think Pascal will vanish at all when Polaris appears. Remember as well that when they were both on 28nm, Nvidia had clocks at 1500 against AMD's 1200. So we'll need to see how fast AMD can go at the lower size lithography.

Wow, so this thread brought some good conversation but zero revelations...... sorry to be such an ass but lets be honest and not some touchy lovey feely bullshit for once. The OP gave zero reasons for feeling like they were let down. If your purchase left you wanting in any way, maybe you should have researched it yourself a bit better.

Ah - was it you that suggested Sam Adams Rebel IPA? If so, my local store sells it - it's awesome...... Drinking some right now.

 

[jboydgolfer]

ive never regretted my AMD gpu's, and regarding theyre CPU's, I only stay away from theyre Desktop CPU's.buy what u need , not what u want. it takes control, but it works.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

Ah - was it you that suggested Sam Adams Rebel IPA? If so, my local store sells it - it's awesome...... Drinking some right now.

It's a good possibility. Sam Adams also has Rebel Rouser at 8.4%. Another good punch to sobriety is Rampant by New Belgium. Another strong IPA @ 8.5%.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

If Pascal can beat GCN (Fiji) in a heavily Async game when Nvidia apparently can't do Async.... what does that say about GCN?

Fiji is on 28nm and Pascal is on 16nm. The fact Pascal doesn't do better in DX12 exposes Pascal's vulnerability.

There's also the distinct possibility that AMD could move some orders to TSMC 16nm. If they do, it could largely (if not completely) erase the NVIDIA clock speed advantage.

So Nvidia have months and months of Pascal now before Vega hits.

NVIDIA needs a new architecture that's fully compliant with the paradigm shift (many commands in the processor simutaneously) caused by DX12, Mantle, and Vulkan. Maxwell and Pascal are achitectures designed for DX11/OpenGL (one command at a time).

 

[EntropyZ]

NVIDIA needs a new architecture that's fully compliant with the paradigm shift (asynchronous multithreading) caused by DX12, Mantle, and Vulkan. Maxwell and Pascal are achitectures designed for DX11/OpenGL.

Which makes sense to NVIDIA for now because, seriously how many DX12 capable titles there will be released this year. And other loved games won't even get a half-assed DX12 patch.

Most of their cards still perform well enough anyway, so they're going to keep that full async for when they need the boost in performance. Sounds just like them to do it this way.

Edit: I am sitting at tech forum for hours again, that's not healthy is it? Or has the thread run it's course and I can go back to stalking TPU veterans? Joking, but seriously.

 

[gasolina]

from my pov i don't think the 1080 is really much of a big step since the max overclock of a 980TI < 1080 about 15% and the 1080Ti is confirm, i go with the 1070 SLI but i will change to red team if they offer me smth interesting and a bit realistic

 

[Champ]

Main reason I brought it was because a guy in my town had it and I could physically look at it and try it in case any issues arise. I was gonna go 980 TI or dual 980s, but didn't. It works well, don't get me wrong. I also have a 4K monitor on deck and the review I saw had the 1080 hold a steady 70ish fps maxed. SLI 1080s would probably hold anyone over for years to come. And the rumors of around 980 TI aren't too thrilling to me either. Their best efforts are NV last effort if true. Maybe I'm just rambling, but the performance of NVs cards are nothing short of amazing.