Weekend Open Forum: AMD or Nvidia?

Which kind of proves my point... PROFITS are what is keeping tech advancement back - NOT actual scientific innovation.

We're not (at least, I'm not) making judgement calls on whether it's right or wrong... simply that Nvidia (and possibly AMD) COULD be making better cards... of course, it isn't financially beneficial to them... so the consumers suffer!

Take a look at the Canadian telecom market - Is it possible for our major providers to give us better rates/speed? Of course! Will they do so? NO! Not until they are forced to... why spend more when margins dictate that increased performance only means less profit?!!?

This is a problem with our market economy perhaps, not the individual companies at play... Regardless, it's the consumers who suffer - and have a right to be a little peeved...
 
"can't keep up" is ridiculous. the Fury against the 980ti/Titan, the 390x against the 980 and so forth are a few frames/percentage.
And as far as being an ultra enthusiast, AMD scales better after the second card and including the fourth card as I am doing, built and benching right now.

It's between 4-10% slower than the 980ti, and the Ti is about 8% slower than the TitanX - it may seem marginal on paper, but it DOES make a difference as single games are sometimes barely playable at the highest resolutions on 1 card - that extra few FPS can make all the difference.

Also, you have to realize that if 2 cards are sold at the same price (Ti vs FuryX), very few people are going to select the inferior card - even if it's only inferior by a "little bit"!!

As for scaling - I once again would like to see your proof...Yes, AMD USED to rule the scaling world - up to around 2011....
http://www.pcgamer.com/benchmarks-gtx-titan-x-in-sli/
Check out the DUAL TitanXs scaling surpassing the Quad-CrossfireX R9 295x2....

And let's not forget AMD's driver shortcomings - which seem to leave certain games virtually unplayable....
 
It's between 4-10% slower than the 980ti, and the Ti is about 8% slower than the TitanX - it may seem marginal on paper, but it DOES make a difference as single games are sometimes barely playable at the highest resolutions on 1 card - that extra few FPS can make all the difference.

Also, you have to realize that if 2 cards are sold at the same price (Ti vs FuryX), very few people are going to select the inferior card - even if it's only inferior by a "little bit"!!

As for scaling - I once again would like to see your proof...Yes, AMD USED to rule the scaling world - up to around 2011....
http://www.pcgamer.com/benchmarks-gtx-titan-x-in-sli/
Check out the DUAL TitanXs scaling surpassing the Quad-CrossfireX R9 295x2....

And let's not forget AMD's driver shortcomings - which seem to leave certain games virtually unplayable....
Firstly the driver shortcomings are BS. I build both brand machines and have no more problems with AMD than do I Nvidia.
Secondly your numbers are off, it is not 10%. I don't care about your link, I do my own partly for that reason as well as simply building high end machines. the majority of that figure comes from a very few games that are not AMD friendly. if I was so inclined I could put up a game lineup that would have the AMD's up by 10% as well, however I do not as I actually bench for accuracy. BY the way, why not TS's review of the Fury?....because you don't like the very close results. PC gamer is not gospel, so don't link me there like you just empirically proved anything.
Thirdly ( and I have already carried this out) and as I stated, when running 4 GPU's as I do and have every generation since the 4000 series. AMD out-scales Nvidia ..period.
not to mention AMD gets stronger as the res go up. And leave us not forget that mature drivers historically will lift performance 2%-5% not to mention DX12/Mantle effects on draw call.
Fourthly, "prove It" you say?
Well now that I am out of the Hospital I am doing just that.
Soooo...coming your way on at 5760 x 1080 and HD monitor set ups with this for the AMD side.


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Which kind of proves my point... PROFITS are what is keeping tech advancement back - NOT actual scientific innovation.
If something isn't financially viable then what incentive is there for companies to pursue it?

Both AMD and Nvidia are constrained by the fabrication process. Both IHV's only option has been to increase the GPU die package up to the present limits of manufacturing.

TSMC is the only present option for performance GPUs (Intel aside). Every other foundry left the market because of the technical hurdles imposed and financial viability nearly a decade ago, with the exception of UMC and Chartered acting as second source for TSMC on rare occasions.

TSMC, as with every other foundry, has technical hurdles to overcome with smaller process nodes- both lithography tool availability (ASML has a backlog stretching years), and the fact that transistor viability is still a stumbling block in commercial production.
We're not (at least, I'm not) making judgement calls on whether it's right or wrong... simply that Nvidia (and possibly AMD) COULD be making better cards... of course, it isn't financially beneficial to them... so the consumers suffer!
And just where do you propose they build these GPUs? Stark Industries isn't a real company.
In what world does jamming every feature into a GPU bloating its size, blowing its power budget, and abrogating the ATX spec make even the slightest amount of sense when pleasing a fraction of the gaming fraternity simultaneously alienating OEMs and destroying markets where performance needs to balanced against power draw.

By all means tilt at windmills, but in the real world, R&D needs to be balanced by practicality - and while the enthusiast in us is disappointed that practicality trumps endeavour, what you are advocating is for companies to emulate Xerox's PARC - R&D and bringing projects to fruition without financial consideration, as this brief article outlines.
There is a wide difference between completing an invention and putting the manufactured article on the market.” — Thomas Alva Edison

As for scaling - I once again would like to see your proof...Yes, AMD USED to rule the scaling world - up to around 2011....
On balance, when it works, Crossfire scaling is better (from a raw f.p.s. PoV) than SLI at the present time with the implementation of XDMA. That isn't an opinion but fact.
I wouldn't hold up the quadfire 295X2 as indicative of overall performance simply because the cards suffer issues, not least of which is CPU/system memory limitation, and poor driver support. Quad multi-GPU suffers with both vendors as a general rule.
Firstly the driver shortcomings are BS. I build both brand machines and have no more problems with AMD than do I Nvidia.
Secondly your numbers are off, it is not 10%. I don't care about your link, I do my own partly for that reason as well as simply building high end machines. the majority of that figure comes from a very few games that are not AMD friendly. if I was so inclined I could put up a game lineup that would have the AMD's up by 10% as well, however I do not as I actually bench for accuracy. BY the way, why not TS's review of the Fury?....because you don't like the very close results. PC gamer is not gospel, so don't link me there like you just empirically proved anything.

I'm inclined to agree...mostly. Depending on the benchmark suite you can make a case for either card (Fury X or 980 Ti).
But for me personally as a tinkerer, the 980 Ti gets the nod. Fury X's overclocking is limited at present aside from third party tools and what seems a bug in CCC. AMD advertised the card as an overclockers dream yet voltage locked the card. That was done for a reason, and I suspect that reason is adverse effects - power draw, needing to ramp that Gentle Typhoon fan past the 1500 rpm and into noisy territory, localized heat generation and the PCB acting as an unwelcome heatsink (as per the 295X2).
Nearly every AIB custom 980 Ti clocks to 1500-1550 core / 8000-8400 effective memory on air, with at least one vendor (GALAX) offing a fully voltage unlocked card, with the probability that EVGA's Classy KPE will do the same. GM 200 I think has more in reserve than Fiji, and for me that offsets the AIO and promises of better drivers sometime in the future ( I suspect that AMD's driver team are fully engaged with Win10 at the moment).
 
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Again, I feel that proof needs to be provided.... I said 4-10% as pretty much every review had the Ti ahead in that range.... Pro AMD reviews had it losing by 4% and pro Nvidia ones had it losing by 10%... On average, probably somewhere in the middle....

I haven't seen ANY reviews showing the Fury even or ahead - feel free to post something to prove me wrong... Don't like my proof? Fine, provide another... But your own opinion hardly qualifies as a "fact".

I compare the 295x2 simply because it's AMD's top card... If you are comparing scaling to a TitanX, it's only fair to compare flagship vs flagship....

I will be interested to see scaling with 2 fury cards - does the water block mean you can only use 2? Or will quad-crossfire be an option as well.... If someone can provide some links to reviews showing that, I bet they'd make great reading...

Oops.... Editing, as I just realized my brother's Facebook was signed into my iPad.... This is actually Squid Surprise....
 
I compare the 295x2 simply because it's AMD's top card... If you are comparing scaling to a TitanX, it's only fair to compare flagship vs flagship....
That is fair, but you weren't using a single card vs single card as "proof", rather you were comparing SLI to quadfire. The Titan X vs the 295X2 debate is easily comparable, either with Steve's own review numbers, or any number of reviews.
I will be interested to see scaling with 2 fury cards
Hardware France - amongst the most respected review sites around, has a Fury X Crossfire (w/SLI'ed GTX 980 Ti as comparison)
Tweaktown has a Fury X Crossfire review ( w/ SLI'ed GTX 980 Ti as comparison)
The OEM Digital Storm has a Fury X Crossfire review ( w/ SLI'ed GTX Titan X's as comparison).
eTeknix also has a Crossfire review
- does the water block mean you can only use 2? Or will quad-crossfire be an option as well....
Fury X quadfire.
 
Again, I feel that proof needs to be provided.... I said 4-10% as pretty much every review had the Ti ahead in that range.... Pro AMD reviews had it losing by 4% and pro Nvidia ones had it losing by 10%... On average, probably somewhere in the middle....

I haven't seen ANY reviews showing the Fury even or ahead - feel free to post something to prove me wrong... Don't like my proof? Fine, provide another... But your own opinion hardly qualifies as a "fact".

I compare the 295x2 simply because it's AMD's top card... If you are comparing scaling to a TitanX, it's only fair to compare flagship vs flagship....

I will be interested to see scaling with 2 fury cards - does the water block mean you can only use 2? Or will quad-crossfire be an option as well.... If someone can provide some links to reviews showing that, I bet they'd make great reading...

Oops.... Editing, as I just realized my brother's Facebook was signed into my iPad.... This is actually Squid Surprise....

Well thats fine of course, just giving my response from my considerable experience with multiple GPU builds.

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But whatever you like. The 295 x 2 is last gen so Fury is the flagship and fair has nothing to do with anything. the Fury is AMD answer to the 980ti.
anywhoooo... :p
 
After some more research, it looks like scaling is actually almost the same with 2 cards for Nvidia and AMD... almost at 100% for both... on BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE, they seem to scale well at 3 and 4 cards, although realworld results tend to cripple scaling at after the 3rd card... and especially the 4th...

I noticed a few benchmarks with 4 FuryX cards - but if you'll notice, they all stem from 1 PC owner... who is an AMD employee!! While very interesting reading, I have to take his results with a teency weency bit of skepticism... They seem to slightly outperform 4 Titans - but only in the ONE GAME he published... I'd like to see an independent review with 10+ games... The flaw of course being that we're talking about $2500 for 4 FuryX or 980Ti cards... and $4000 for 4 Titans... Need some really rich company to do the review please :)

Probably not very relevant to many, but I'm sure there are a few people triple and quad carding out there - I personally have 3 TitanX cards going - they actually perform quite nicely - but I'm overclocking them which tends to make multi-card setups work much nicer then at reference - and sorry, busted the bank for this PC, not going out and buying a bunch of FuryX cards to run comparison tests (anyone wants to donate me some, I'm all ears though!)...

Which leads to the next complaint with the Fury - it can't really be overclocked... so why would I pay the same amount of money for something NOT QUITE AS GOOD as the 980Ti? I can overclock the Ti, and it is ALREADY BETTER AT REFERENCE than the Fury!

So even if we're talking 3 or 4 cards.... I'm thinking the Ti is the way to go for the money - Yes, I know I said I have 3 Titans - I bought them RIGHT BEFORE the Ti came out - and as I removed the reference coolers for EKWB coolers, I'm totally stuck with them!

Hopefully this doesn't ruin AMD, and gives us some more competition at the top level of GPU...

I suspect the Ti only exists because of AMD - otherwise, Nvidia would have probably been content to stick with the 980 at that range, and the TitanX at $1000.... After all, the Ti is basically just a cut down Titan with half the RAM...
 
I started with a 9800 pro, which took a week to use because ATI installed a pci driver alongside the AGP driver, and guess which one windows 2000 thought would be the one to use? Had to take a crash course in disabling hardware through device manager to make it boot right. great card though, lasted for years. still have it, and the machine it was bought for (tualatin FTW) and both still run.

2600xt after that. another driver nightmare. ATI's AGP drivers at the time didn't like XP SP3, and I had to revert to SP2 to get the drivers installed, then reinstall SP3.

When I actually built a big pc, I went with dual 550ti GPUs. Great cards, which then got the boot for a 770 when I got tired of making BF3 run right with 1GB of vram.

Tempted to get a fury non-x when they come out, as I've always had luck with ATI once the driver actually worked. Not sure if I want to fiddle with another ATI card. OTOH, nvidia has been doing some not-so-good things (alleged kepler performance crippling, lying about the 970 config, and the constant crashing issues that the latest batch of drivers has had) so I might take the plunge once more into the red camp.
 
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