Has the gulf in technological progress between Nvidia and AMD ever been this wide?

Blackjack Davy · 30 Jun 2016 at 01:00

Jono8 said:
You have to remember there will be two vega chips. I think it is quite feasible that one is at 1070 perf or more and one might be close to gp102 levels.

I find it more likely that a 490 will be a replacement for its namesake the 390 but with a performance boost, round about where the Fury's are but at a better price point.

Even if they were on a level pegging head to head performance with the 1070 nine out of ten people would still buy Nvidia anyway so what would be the point? There is however a performance gap between the 480 and 1070 that looks pretty tempting, at the right price, which will probably what they'll be targetting. Not that anyone will take any notice so...

Be prepared for the hype train to take off full steam ahead only to hit the buffers when the reality sinks in, again.

Dave2150 · 30 Jun 2016 at 01:01

Confused Stu said:
If we're comparing the 480 with the 390, it's done a lot better than "mildly improves" the power usage - it's slashed it by a third for close to the same gaming performance: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,review-33587-9.html

The problem is that even with these perf/watt increases, they still only barely matched a two year old 970, it's just not good enough IMO. The 1070 consumes less power than the 480, while proving much greater performance.

Dave2150 · 30 Jun 2016 at 01:03

Kaapstad said:
The reason I brought it up is this thread is about the tech gulf between NVidia and AMD. The thing I find amusing is Maxwell is better than Pascal clock for clock.

I suspect that this thread was started as an AMD bashing exercise but have NVidia really made that much progress anyway ?

99% of gamers use air cooled GPU's. the 1070 and 1080 series enable extremely high clock speeds, providing large performance increases over their 900 series counterparts, hence why they are selling so very well.

Who cares if these chips don't perform well under LN2? Everyone would prefer they clock better under air, which they do.

chaparral · 30 Jun 2016 at 01:47

Catanonia said:
I personally think AMD has given up on competing with nVidia on high end cards and are aiming for the much more lucrative lower spec market. That much was clear on the 480 launch and all the VR hype..

If that is true i feel sorry for gamers that bought a 1440p or higher Resolution FREESYNC monitor instead of a G-Sync one..

Kaapstad · 30 Jun 2016 at 05:21

Gerard said:
The people in that list would-be the ones you'd expect to be using a 1080 in these benchmarks as it's the faster card but they're not. I think that's the point, it doesn't have much headroom compared to Maxwell.

Exactly.

Kaapstad · 30 Jun 2016 at 05:23

Dave2150 said:
99% of gamers use air cooled GPU's. the 1070 and 1080 series enable extremely high clock speeds, providing large performance increases over their 900 series counterparts, hence why they are selling so very well.

Who cares if these chips don't perform well under LN2? Everyone would prefer they clock better under air, which they do.

You have totally missed the point.

See my post above.

Toss3 · 30 Jun 2016 at 05:36

Shouldn't this be a TSMC vs GF thread instead of an nvidia vs amd one? Really doubt the inefficient 14nm FinFet GPU is AMD's fault. They had to license it from Samsung because they couldn't make it work on their own - that alone should tell you something. Luckily Zen is going to be manufactured by TSMC.

RavenXXX2 · 30 Jun 2016 at 05:38

Toss3 said:
Shouldn't this be a TSMC vs GF thread instead of an nvidia vs amd one? Really doubt the inefficient 14nm FinFet GPU is AMD's fault. They had to license it from Samsung because they couldn't make it work on their own - that alone should tell you something. Luckily Zen is going to be manufactured by TSMC.

Did AMD do any better at TSMC compared to Nvdia? more AMD design.

Lokken86 · 30 Jun 2016 at 05:44

I shall wait for Vega before I pass judgement on this round.

Toss3 · 30 Jun 2016 at 05:52

RavenXXX2 said:
Did AMD do any better at TSMC compared to Nvdia? more AMD design.

Only thing we do know is that TSMC's process worked better than GF's for the A9 in the iPhone 6S (different process for Polaris though). Pretty sure they could have achieved higher clocks on TSMC's process.

MooMoo444 · 30 Jun 2016 at 06:47

Competition from AMD drives development, if nvidia are not threatened, then what incentive do they have to release a card with 50% gains?

They might as well just drip feed small upgrades like the 1080. If there was competition, nvidia could probably release a monster. I wouldn't be surprised if they have the 1080Ti pretty much ready.

AMD are letting the whole high end PC market down. We are slaves to nvidia.

whyscotty · 30 Jun 2016 at 07:48

Smurfin said:
Is it really that small a difference? I must admit I saw some comparison gaming benches on youtube last week that made me think "something must be wrong, the 1080 is only 10% better than the 980Ti".

It really is only 10-15% difference.

Gregster · 30 Jun 2016 at 08:17

CrispyXUK said:
Why? Can't you just buy nVidia's absurdly expensive card?

Gregster said:
I am more disappointed that AMD hasn't launched a bigger sized chip to compete and give NVidia a run at the top. I know Vega is coming, but Winter is Coming (or so they say) and I wanted to do a side by side comparison of the two big cards.

I take it you didn't read the whole post, you got as far as you quoted and went with that?

Chipper500 · 30 Jun 2016 at 08:22

Gregster said:
I am more disappointed that AMD hasn't launched a bigger sized chip to compete and give NVidia a run at the top. I know Vega is coming, but Winter is Coming (or so they say) and I wanted to do a side by side comparison of the two big cards. I understand AMD's reasonings though and they have to go for the mass market and Gibbo did say that they had shifted 700+ in a couple of hours, so good news for AMD there at least.

I feel for AMD but they haven't really helped themselves over the years. They have made some decent CPUs but sat back and the same with GPUs and now they play second fiddle to Intel and NVidia. Hopefully they can turn it around though and give both a decent fight.

There was a white raven from Oldtown, Winter has come

flopper · 30 Jun 2016 at 15:53

Mayh3M said:
Let's be clear on what's just happened. The RX 480 offers the same performance per watt as the 2 years old 28 nm GTX 970 in DX 11. Forget the fact that it's actually slightly slower and overclocks terribly for a moment. This is the key line:

The RX 480, a 2016 14nm GPU, offers the same performance per watt as the GTX 970, a 2 year old 28nm GPU.

Let that sink in.

The impications for Vega are profound. Forget competing with the 1080 Ti. Banish those thoughts completely. It will be a miracle if they hit 1080 performance.

Nvidia dominance is complete, and when history looks back, the card that changed everything was the GTX 970, truly the GOAT.

Let this sink in,
dx12, the software that created ultimate gaming for pc, Mantle developed by amd now used indx12 and Vulkan shows dominATIon from amd.
console use async compute and dx12/mantle games as BF1 and others coming in strong suit. We already see the 390 and its brother compete and beat the 980ti maxwell arc in dx12 and Pascal dont improve much there at all.
When one understands that a midrange amd card beats the oh so mighty 980ti you know nvidia is in trouble the coming years for PC gaming.

when one let that sinks in one ask, who is the future card, AMD 480 and Vega.
There is no competition from nvidia and they know it.

karik666 · 30 Jun 2016 at 15:56

I am waiting for Amd Navi,roll on 2018.

Gerard · 30 Jun 2016 at 15:58

flopper said:
Let this sink in,

I think you have problems letting that drivel sink in let alone preaching it to others.

harney · 30 Jun 2016 at 16:01

karik666 said:
I am waiting for Amd Navi,roll on 2018.

I am waiting for AMD leech nerve transistor cells roll on 2026

Griffildur · 30 Jun 2016 at 16:01

flopper said:
Let this sink in,
dx12, the software that created ultimate gaming for pc, Mantle developed by amd now used indx12 and Vulkan shows dominATIon from amd.
console use async compute and dx12/mantle games as BF1 and others coming in strong suit. We already see the 390 and its brother compete and beat the 980ti maxwell arc in dx12 and Pascal dont improve much there at all.
When one understands that a midrange amd card beats the oh so mighty 980ti you know nvidia is in trouble the coming years for PC gaming.

when one let that sinks in one ask, who is the future card, AMD 480 and Vega.
There is no competition from nvidia and they know it.

I am guessing you're from an alternate universe where that stuff is true, but in mine things don't quite work out that way :rolleyes:

LoadsaMoney · 30 Jun 2016 at 16:35

RavenXXX2 said:
You know AMD is in the **** when their 480 uses more power than the 1070.

It uses more power than the 1070! :eek: