Anybody regret going red?

[GoldenX]

And I will not forgive them for promising Vulkan and DX12 on Fermi and retracting at the last moment.

 

[Totally]

OP, your post makes no sense. Did a 1080 exist at the time you made your purchase? You say that you are regretting the purchase of your Nano because feel like the 1080 is putting it to shame but then later alternative you were considering was a 980 ti? Well guess what a 1080 also craps on too since that is the card that it is replacing? I don't feel out of line saying this thread is merely bait.

 

[ivan375]

Real regret would be spending $700 for the gtx 1080 reference/founders that struggles to hold a factory boost without throttling. But even with a real 1080, wouldn't you just end up regretting that when Gp102 or vega comes out?

 

[Absolution]

I dont regret but I do want to keep an eye out on game titles being overtaken by vendors. I thought AMD backed GCN chips in consoles was going to change things, but nvidia who always has more cash manages to get games looking good for their cards through GameWorks. My next card will be a 1070 depending on benchmarks and the Polaris.

 

[GhostRyder]

Regret going red? No, personally this is the second generation of cards I have owned from the red team (I have had only 1 other ATI card that I purchased and it was not my main machine) and still have not regretted it. Love my Freesync monitor (though that was something I would refer to as a gift), still like my 290X's which have served me for quite some time now without any hiccups. I guess my only regret would be buying the third one as I have basically decided 2 cards is the best power case now since 3 and 4 card support seems to be getting more and more meh but Idont regret the decision to purchase an AMD card.

Purchased my twin HD 6990's for dirt cheap, loved them both. Purcahsed the 290X trio because they matched the 780ti and came with an extra 1gb of ram which to me meant better. Right now, I will still wait a bit for Vega just to see what the big chips are (Unless I decide to get 1080's and a ultra wide G-Sync Monitor) like but for now I am still happy.

 

[JrockTech]

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.

Just wanted to let you know I had that issue with my R9 380. Always downclocking in games and benchmarking apps. I use MSI afterburner with PowerPlay support and it forces a nice stable clock . Great card for the money when that issue is not getting in it's way.

 

[Caring1]

Real regret would be spending $700 for the gtx 1080 reference/founders that struggles to hold a factory boost without throttling. But even with a real 1080, wouldn't you just end up regretting that when Gp102 or vega comes out?

Proof?
I haven't seen signs in reviews or benchmarks of throttling, unless you mean the CPU being the bottleneck.

 

[RejZoR]

R9 Fury is still a very capable card even though it's slower than GTX 980Ti or GTX 1080. Going Nano, you should know it's very power conservative card. But you can OC the normal Fury's nicely. It has some gains at very small clocks. I wonder how Polaris will end up...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Proof?
I haven't seen signs in reviews or benchmarks of throttling, unless you mean the CPU being the bottleneck.

I think he's talking about this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/29.html
Founders Edition settles at around 1.7 GHz.

 

[HumanSmoke]

Proof?
I haven't seen signs in reviews or benchmarks of throttling, unless you mean the CPU being the bottleneck.

The poster is referring to some of the testing done. Basically, sites reviewed the card at stock fan profile and at default max temp setting of 83C ( 92C is the maximum thermal limit) - card utilities not being ready for primetime probably didn't help. It is similar (but not as serious as the issues that plagued the reference 290/290X at launch).
Some of the temp torture testing seemed to be a bit OTT. Gamersnexus for instance disabled airflow across the test system:

This test was conducted over a 2-hour period (~8000 seconds). Rather than Kombustor, we used a real-world game to analyze performance and throttles in gaming scenarios. DiRT Rally was used at its maxed-out settings (4K, 8-tap MSAA, advanced blending, Ultra settings) to torture the card. To further amplify the thermal torture and create somewhat of a worst-case scenario, we also disabled all three front intake fans. This left the GPU entirely to its own devices – mostly the VRM blower fan and alloy heatsink / vapor chambers – to cool itself.

Probably not the best indicator of real world usage.

I'll show you when Polaris comes out.

So that's AMD's cunning plan - delay Polaris until the majority of games in benchmark suites are DX12. Truly masterful - Presumably, RTG stands for Rollin' Tokin' Ganja

 

[FordGT90Concept]

No, no, Polaris cards should be arriving either in late June or July and the cards should do as well or better at DX12/Vulkan than GTX 1080 but they'll be a ways behind GTX 1080 at DX11/OpenGL. Buying Polaris would mean buying a card for better aggregate performance a year or two down the road where buying Pascal would be for better performance now. I'd argue people like me (who only upgrades graphics cards every 3-5 years) are better off with a Polaris card than a Pascal card.


I'm not convinced Volta will be any better than Pascal at DX12/Vulkan. Volta is to Pascal as Fiji was to Grenada. If NVIDIA fixes it, it's not coming until after Volta.

 

[RejZoR]

AMD being late again to the party is really not helping. They were late with R9 300/Fury series and they are late again with Polaris. Don't they get it that everyone into higher end graphic cards is going to be rocking GTX 1000 series from NVIDIA before their Polaris gets released, everyone will already forget about Polaris as they'll already have the latest card. We know that lower end cards is what makes the revenue, but you can't sell those either no matter what if your top end is inferior. People, even total noobs only hear X brand has the fastest card on market and they want stuff from that company for money they can afford, even if those cards don't even virtually compare to the high end. It's how people think.

If AMD sped up the release to be around the same time as NVIDIA's, even if their cards are slightly slower, but they can convience people their features or power efficiency is better, there are people who will consider those despite cards being slower or whatever.

I really hope Polaris will work out well for AMD, but being slow again is not doing in their favor at all...

 

[Kanan]

AMD being late again to the party is really not helping.

1 month after is hardly "late", I remember GTX 680 was released 3 months after HD 7970, that is "late" (and Nvidia still had no problems). AMD will be just doing fine I think.

 

[RejZoR]

Paper launch, sure. And cards available when? In autumn?

 

[Kanan]

Paper launch, sure. And cards available when? In autumn?

I thought paper launch is supposed to be in the next days? Well, in my books even 2 months isn't really late, but depends really if the GPUs are good or not. The GTX 680 was late but it was very good, that made more than up for it being late.

 

[Hokum]

Having just bought a Fury X for less than a 970 I can honestly say no, no regrets...

 

[5DVX0130]

7

I thought paper launch is supposed to be in the next days? Well, in my books even 2 months isn't really late, but depends really if the GPUs are good or not. The GTX 680 was late but it was very good, that made more than up for it being late.

Let’s see…

At CES 2016 we got a confirmation of Polaris releasing before the "back to school" season (mid-July through early/mid-September).

The “Radeon Polaris Tech Day” event has the NDA expiry date set on the June 29.

Seeing as there are still no “leaks” for Computex it’s not looking good. Which means we will most likely get more slides and nothing else.


So at the moment it looks like a paper launch at the end of June, and release late July – August.

 

[vega22]

so champ is this whole thread just so you can cry about your buyers remorse now a newer product has comer out?

welcome to the real world

edit

other than the couple of issues i have had with the 16.x family of drivers my exp of the red team has been great since i got a 7950 4 years ago. during this same time i have lost count of the times a driver that worked great on my fermi would be a dog on my maxwell or kepler powered system or vice versa.

people bang on about how nv are doing the right thing by not bothering with dx12/vulcan but what about the fact most games are still dx9? nv performance tanks older games too :|

 

[SonicZap]

I don't at all regret buying a HD 7850 for 150€ back in late 2013. The green alternative would've been a GTX 660 for 200€, which would've been as expensive as the more powerful HD 7870.

GCN has simply aged far better than Kepler. Back when I bought the HD 7850, the GTX 660 was generally 5-15% ahead in games. However, 2½ years later, in TPU's GTX 1080 review, we see the R7 370 (= HD 7850 re-brand) doing better than a GTX 760, which is significantly faster than the GTX 660. Which means that within 2½ years, the initially slower and 25% cheaper HD 7850 has surpassed the GTX 660 in performance by a good margin

I'm looking forward to upgrading to either a Polaris-based card or a GTX 1060. The biggest risk I see with going AMD again is that their financial situation looks very bad. If AMD dies, it's likely that driver support for my valuable GPUs will come to an end.

As for my Phenom II, the alternative for the same price when I bought it would've been a Sandy Bridge Core i3. Which would've had just slightly better single-threaded performance, but far worse multithreaded performance. So I'm happy with the Phenom II as well.

 

[the54thvoid]

GCN has simply aged far better than Kepler. Back when I bought the HD 7850, the GTX 660 was generally 5-15% ahead in games. However, 2½ years later, in TPU's GTX 1080 review, we see the R7 370 (= HD 7850 re-brand) doing better than a GTX 760, which is significantly faster than the GTX 660. Which means that within 2½ years, the initially slower and 25% cheaper HD 7850 has surpassed the GTX 660 in performance by a good margin

It's quite unscientific to compare cards that are 2 years apart when the gaming suite has also changed. AMD has got better at the developer relations such that the horrendous bias (WoW) of certain games becomes less obvious. But as a nod to the topic, if the card you bought for that purpose there and then still performs as it did - no regrets.

Further, if people keep saying that AMD get it right 2 years later you need to realise that is a bad thing for the company. The GTX660 held it's own for a year, that's all it needed to do. Two years on it's getting beaten by a card it beat on release - that has no relevance. If you buy a card today that performs worse than a competitor right now because in two years it will be better - you have some pretty off base buying habits. Given that in 2 years time a similarly priced card will wipe the floor with your initially under performing card, the initial decision is illogical.

You don't buy a tech piece because in two years time it will out perform the other card you could have bought. You might do that with shares but not technology.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I'm looking forward to upgrading to either a Polaris-based card or a GTX 1060. The biggest risk I see with going AMD again is that their financial situation looks very bad. If AMD dies, it's likely that driver support for my valuable GPUs will come to an end.

AMD will likely sell off the Radeon Technologies Group before it comes to that.

 

[the54thvoid]

AMD will likely sell off the Radeon Technologies Group before it comes to that.

To Intel.... (courtesy of reading @HumanSmoke's link).

 

[SonicZap]

Further, if people keep saying that AMD get it right 2 years later you need to realise that is a bad thing for the company. The GTX660 held it's own for a year, that's all it needed to do. Two years on it's getting beaten by a card it beat on release - that has no relevance. If you buy a card today that performs worse than a competitor right now because in two years it will be better - you have some pretty off base buying habits. Given that in 2 years time a similarly priced card will wipe the floor with your initially under performing card, the initial decision is illogical.

True, buying a graphics card expecting performance gains in the future would be dumb. Getting increased performance relative to the competition over time is a nice bonus though - but you shouldn't expect it when buying a card.

However, even with the performance at the time, a GTX 660 wouldn't have been a good buy. It was as expensive as the even back then higher performing HD 7870, which now appears to be quite close to the GTX 770 in the latest games (based on the same TPU review that I linked to earlier).

About the HardOCP article, the author seems quite bitter so I'd take it with a good deal of salt. Considering that the author has participated in lots of AMD-hosted GPU events before, the information he has could be correct. But the bitter and unprofessional journalism gives the impression that part of the negativity could have something to do with the author's personal emotions towards AMD rather than actual information. In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Aquinus]

I like my 390, no complaints or regrets from me... granted, I spend most of my time on my tower working, not gaming. However when I do game, nothing happens that makes me want to tweak anything. When I overclock, it's because I want to, not because I need it. The only exception to that statement might be Eyefinity as it is a little bit of a push for the 390 but, it's not like I'm doing that often. The 3 monitors is more for work than play so I end up gaming at 1080p most of the time. When your GPU isn't running full tilt, there is almost never a reason to complain about it unless there are graphical glitches which I only encounter when I overclock the piss out of it.

AMD has its strong points just as nVidia does. I just think that AMD GPUs are better at compute and have a better lifespan and longevity. nVidia tends to drop driver support earlier than AMD but, that may just be hardware changes. Most GCN based GPUs still have driver support, even GCN 1.0 cards. My aging 6870s just had driver support dropped after 6 years of service. That's not too shabby. So, as someone who can no longer upgrade his machine often due to fiscal constraints due to life (having a family,) makes how much I get out of my hardware far more important than it used to be.

tl;dr: No regrets. What AMD has to offer appeals to me even if it's not always the fastest GPU you can buy.

 

[the54thvoid]

True, buying a graphics card expecting performance gains in the future would be dumb. Getting increased performance relative to the competition over time is a nice bonus though - but you shouldn't expect it when buying a card.

However, even with the performance at the time, a GTX 660 wouldn't have been a good buy. It was as expensive as the even back then higher performing HD 7870, which now appears to be quite close to the GTX 770 in the latest games (based on the same TPU review that I linked to earlier).

About the HardOCP article, the author seems quite bitter so I'd take it with a good deal of salt. Considering that the author has participated in lots of AMD-hosted GPU events before, the information he has could be correct. But the bitter and unprofessional journalism gives the impression that part of the negativity could have something to do with the author's personal emotions towards AMD rather than actual information. In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.

It didn't sound bitter to me. Given he states very clearly

Full disclosure - HardOCP was not invited to this weekend’s launch in Macau as AMD PR has made a decision to no longer brief this site with the rest of the industry. That’s well within AMD’s rights to do, but that is telling as well.

he's simply letting rip because when a tech company shuts the door on you - you can say what you want. AMD are doing what Nvidia did for ages and basically cutting off those that don't tow their party line. They are also entitled to do that. Tech sites are free PR to AMD and Nvidia so if someone doesn't play ball - you stop throwing it their way.

It's also an editorial and as such can have emotion in it. You call it unprofessional but is it? Editorial's by nature are sided with the editors leanings so he is able to speak freely. And if AMD are in internal dispute (from his sources) he's free to talk about it.

Anyway, I agree with you that time will tell.