Am I crazy? Possible sidegrade

[kiddagoat]

So looking at my specs you can see that I have an ACER XG270HU Monitor... When I originally got this monitor I also purchased a Fury X.... well I had some issues with my Fury X and returned it for a 980 Ti......

As some have mentioned and there were a few different hardware revisions for the Fury X's... I was getting some bad distortion randomly with my Fury X be it idling the desktop, watching a movie, playing a game, etc and to resolve the issue I had to either power cycle the monitor and/or unplug and replug in the DisplayPort cable.... I believed this to be due to a power state issue where the Fury X wasn't switching smoothly between power states...

So now I am seeing these new cards about to be released and with AMD in particular they are going to release Polaris and then Vega within 12 months of Polaris if I seen the last road map properly....

I was contemplating pulling my 980Ti and getting 2 Nanos.... I can just swap my card out at my local store due to their "upgrade" plan and the prices of the Nanos have dropped quite a bit since launch....

The reason I am contemplating this is that I have this FreeSync Monitor and am not using an AMD GPU with it.... so the premise of me owning this monitor is pretty null and void without the AMD GPU.....

Am I crazy in wanting to swap the video cards??

 

[Ferrum Master]

Yes you are crazy. Not worth it.

 

[Fouquin]

Hard judgement to make. On the one hand you would be taking a step back in DX11 performance, which is still basically 100% of the market. Yet on the other hand, you would be setting yourself up to take advantage of your FreeSync screen, DX12 performance increases, and the potential of having a bit of a jumpstart into VR capabilites (though there is very very little to go on there, best to ignore it until the hardware is on the market and has content.)

I would see the overall increase in features and future performance as a reason to do it. I think the 980 Ti is a killer card, but it's scary to think about it possibly going the way of Kepler before the year is out.

 

[kiddagoat]

So I bit the bullet, took my 980Ti in for two Nanos.... I paid almost $850 for it at release..... I picked up two Nanos for $900.....

Though apparently with my motherboard, Gigabyte decided that PCIE_1 and PCIE_4 would be the ones that go 8x 8x when both are used....... PCIE_3 is 4x...... whoops...... mATX and mid tower...... yeah wtf Gigabyte....

I have one in now and I am enjoying it the same as I did my Fury X. So far so good and I got my FreeSync back. Probably going to take the other Nano back.

 

[Caring1]

Get a bigger case.

 

[overclocking101]

Though apparently with my motherboard, Gigabyte decided that PCIE_1 and PCIE_4 would be the ones that go 8x 8x when both are used....... PCIE_3 is 4x...... whoops...... mATX and mid tower...... yeah wtf Gigabyte....

this is the same reason I cant do crossfire. matx mid tower cube case and the fans would hit the bottom.

 

[kiddagoat]

I have an 800D here bare as can be..... hmmmm...... you might be on to something @Caring1

 

[hat]

Not crazy, just unfortunate. It's too bad your original Fury X gave you problems and made you switch to a 980Ti in the first place. Now you're back on the AMD side with your Freesync monitor, which makes more sense than having a Freesync monitor and a 980Ti. It seems you only paid $50 to go from a 980Ti to two Nanos, which isn't a bad deal at all... the Nano is a really nice card.

 

[chuck216]

If money is no object just get a single Radeon Pro Duo... from what I hear it's basically 2 Nanos on the same PCB sharing an AiO Cooler.

PS: I'm not being serious about that.

One thing that does confuse me though is the new trend to want to buy g-sync/freesync monitors and use them I always thought the reason you buy higher end cards like the Fury(x) is to get the highest FPS possible at the best quality settings. just seems to me limiting one of those cards to the refresh rate of the monitor would limit performance. Especially with a 60 or 75hz monitor, 144 not as much.

 

[kiddagoat]

Highers FPS does not necessarily always mean smoother gameplay. I mean sure I can run CS:GO at 500+FPS but you can and will see screen tearing.... it is not as bad on a 144Hz monitor but you will see it from time to time. I have noticed with that game in particular if you crank up the settings, the game gets weird hitches in it that I cannot explain but will go away once AA and AF are turned off. I have noticed weird hitching in other games too where the FPS says it is fine but just sitting there playing it, something feels off or delayed.

FreeSync/G-Sync keeps the frames consistent without locking to the refresh rate to the monitor, it is a variable refresh rate. With vertical sync if anyone has used it for a duration there is obvious input lag between the mouse and keyboard. The two remove the input lag. The two technologies allow for a much clearer and smoother experience.

Even on my Nano now, I keep the target FPS at 200 because FreeSync goes up to 240Hz. It is one of those things that is very hard to explain and were seeing it in person helps a lot. At Microcenter before I left, we had a G-Sync and FreeSync display setup so people could try it out.

 

[Kaynar]

Since you have a FreeSync monitor, buying an AMD card once again was a must for you. I have GSync for a year now and I think this feature is a MUST for every gamer.

However, if you ended up with a single Nano, I think you should have simply bought a new screen (with gsync i mean)