Fury X vs 980 Ti Longevity

Temp.sgk · 12 Jul 2015 at 22:28

Question is difficult, which card provides a better lifespan?

Some information off the top of my head that I found (mostly about Fury X):

Apparently Fury X will be better for DX12/Vulkan API's due to the way it is made with the Cores/rops etc if it goes well. However direct X 12 games won't be widespread in a years time after DX12 is released as games will need to be developed for it. Game development takes several years and in which there is a likelihood it will exceed the lifespan of the Fury X.

However, with Free-Sync the Fury X is able to cope. Speaking about Free-sync monitors I am eagerly looking forward to OLED monitors, I have no idea when the first consumer-friendly OLED monitors will arrive to the market, however there will be the Oculus rift with OLED displays, but that does not have Free-Sync/G-sync

Benchmark of Fury X vs the 980ti, especially non-reference ones show the 980ti to be having a big lead of about 10-20 fps difference. The Fury X also performs very badly at 1080p compared to the 980 Ti, this is not good when we talk about longevity because at the end of the fury X lifespan assuming game quality exceeding witcher 3, the 1080p performance is ever more important.

The Nvidia 980ti, sports lower CPU overhead drivers, this leads to it performing much better and smoother in games without Mantle/DX12/Vulkan. My CPU is an i5-4670k, so in comparison to benchmarks with i7 CPUs, the lower CPU overhead drivers will be ever more important.

There are rumours about Nvidia not paying attention to their Kepler cards, this had lead to Kepler cards performing worse than Maxwell cards if their equal or more better. E.g. 780ti vs 960. Who can say Nvidia will do the same to their Maxwell cards along the line?

G-Sync future does not look bright in 21:9 resolutions which I am an advocate off. The 2 biggest Monitor companies Samsung and LG don't support G-sync, also Samsung and LG is known for pushing technologies which OLED panels is a part off.

G-Sync is also more expensive, costing a hundred plus more than the equivalent Free-sync monitors. However as G-sync is more closed, the quality is higher with more consistent G-Sync FPS levels than Freesync.

The AMD drivers show some promise, recently they introduced a driver that heavily benefits their 390/290 series of cards which lead to as much as 20 FPS increase.

Quartz · 12 Jul 2015 at 22:30

I am concerned with the physical longevity of my Titan X card as with three monitors it runs hot.

Temp.sgk · 13 Jul 2015 at 02:48

Will probably be fine, as long as its not over the card limit. Looking at it, Nvidia seems to last longer than AMD. Only problem is G-sync availability.

Rroff · 13 Jul 2015 at 02:58

Flip a coin - even with an expected rapid acceleration of DX12 use by the time it comes down to the wire as to which works with it better they'll both be history.

(I've seen none of this supposed performance degradation on my 780 outside of 1-2 titles apparently that I've not played).

Temp.sgk · 13 Jul 2015 at 03:37

Well this reddit post goes into more detail about the Kepler performance thing.

Here it is

Rroff · 13 Jul 2015 at 03:43

Hard to say how much of that is due to Maxwell specific optimisations (that are only possible due to the newer architecture), AMD optimisations and/or nVidia getting lazy with Kepler updates - what I mean by my comment though is that I'd not seen any decrease in performance (outside of specific cases) with driver updates and my GPUs.

Temp.sgk · 13 Jul 2015 at 03:56

Maybe you need to compare them? There was another post on reddit about someone not apparently getting performance decrease as well, but without comparisons we do not know if Nvidia did not optimise kepler. But that reddit post is convincing, that why it worries me if Nvidia will do the same with Maxwell down the line, and likely make it harder to compare as there might not be an equivalent unlike maxwell. Also recently there was a driver that apparently fixed those issues, but not sure as the original topic is not updated.

Dirk Diggler · 13 Jul 2015 at 07:02

I would step outside the tech side of things and start asking the simple questions.

How long do you intend to keep the card?
What resolution do you want to game at?

Personally, I don't think there's any longevity with flagship cards. The enthusiast always had an eye on the next best thing. Also, with the amount of tech advancements in the very near future, I wouldn't expect much longevity from the current choice.

Buy the best at this moment in time, and expect to punt it on for a substantial loss in a year or so... Just look at the Titan X owners, that superiority feeling didn't last long!

Temp.sgk · 13 Jul 2015 at 07:09

About 3 years and if possible up to 5 years depending on the tech ecosystem e.g if it stagnates, resolution 1080p 144Hz over 60 FPS minimums and Oculus Rift or new VR resolutions. Sub 60 FPS minimums if games ever get that demanding will switch to a 2560x1080 G-sync or Freesync monitor but 21:9 for G-sync might be a problem.
I also don't think there is any longevity also, but I don't have a choice, its upgrade now or never in the 3 years time-frame. At the moment leaning towards a 980ti, due to its capabilities at 1080p compared to the Fury X and the lack of a DX12 game ecosystem. If there are no substantial arguments for the Fury X, will definitely go with the 980Ti.

andybird123 · 13 Jul 2015 at 08:00

There are 21:9 gsync monitors coming, so its not like they simply won't exist

Everything about DX12 is rumours and hearsay, but AMD have a long history over promising. I personally would take their DX12 claims with a pinch of salt, just like their mantle claims, didn't see them gaining a huge boost over equivalent nvidia cards.

Ash0787 · 13 Jul 2015 at 08:19

" however there will be the Oculus rift with OLED displays, but that does not have Free-Sync/G-sync"

Oculus doesnt need adaptive sync from what I can tell, or its possible they have their own implementation, what they use is low persistence frames at strict intervals that the graphics card must keep up with and very low frame times / input latency

I really want OLED as I have sensiitive eyes to standard LED backlighting
but from what I've read there are no ventures currently to create a product like that, the best you can get is a TV which cost around 5 grand for a decent resolution, oculus bypasses that by using a very small screen which is cheap.

I think you might find that Fury X is enough for 1080p, but a single 980Ti might not be enough for 4K or 144hz 1440p, so you may end up going SLI anyway, the performance difference with the 980 Ti wont make a great difference in that scenario.

andybird123 · 13 Jul 2015 at 08:25

Ash0787 said:
" however there will be the Oculus rift with OLED displays, but that does not have Free-Sync/G-sync"

Oculus doesnt need adaptive sync from what I can tell, or its possible they have their own implementation, what they use is low persistence frames at strict intervals that the graphics card must keep up with and very low frame times / input latency

I really want OLED as I have sensiitive eyes to standard LED backlighting
but from what I've read there are no ventures currently to create a product like that, the best you can get is a TV which cost around 5 grand for a decent resolution, oculus bypasses that by using a very small screen which is cheap.

I think you might find that Fury X is enough for 1080p, but a single 980Ti might not be enough for 4K or 144hz 1440p, so you may end up going SLI anyway, the performance difference with the 980 Ti wont make a great difference in that scenario.

I have a 980ti and 1440@144 and I'm seeing around 100fps either at max settings or with very minor tweaks in most games

The OP says he's looking at 2560x1080 anyway, and they aren't 144hz either

fs123 · 13 Jul 2015 at 08:47

Temp.sgk said:
Will probably be fine, as long as its not over the card limit. Looking at it, Nvidia seems to last longer than AMD. Only problem is G-sync availability.

Not entirely true after the Kepler debacle. A 780Ti on paper is faster than a 970 but is not anymore. Lack of driver optimisations from Nvidia to blame and even the supposed fix hasn't done anything. AMD cards seem to be getting faster since the latest drivers have improved my old tahiti cards by around 10%. :cool:

Part of the reason why AMD improve is because all the cards are based on GCN so any optimisations carry through to older cards to some degree.

Tom B · 13 Jul 2015 at 09:27

Interesting. Has the performance of 7 series cards actually decreased over driver updates, or is it just that driver updates for 9* has increased the performance of those cards?

Chisharpe · 13 Jul 2015 at 09:41

Tom B said:
Interesting. Has the performance of 7 series cards actually decreased over driver updates, or is it just that driver updates for 9* has increased the performance of those cards?

increased the performance of 9 series cards. its only in pj cars and witcher 3 that I can see so far

flopper · 13 Jul 2015 at 10:26

Temp.sgk said:
Question is difficult, which card provides a better lifespan?

Some information off the top of my head that I found (mostly about Fury X):

Apparently Fury X will be better for DX12/Vulkan API's due to the way it is made with the Cores/rops etc if it goes well. However direct X 12 games won't be widespread in a years time after DX12 is released as games will need to be developed for it. Game development takes several years and in which there is a likelihood it will exceed the lifespan of the Fury X.

The AMD drivers show some promise, recently they introduced a driver that heavily benefits their 390/290 series of cards which lead to as much as 20 FPS increase.

always depends where the bottleneck is.
dx12 removes the cpu overhead which means value will be great even when those games and engines comes out. a card like the 7970 still runs 1080p well and thats shows games dont scale that much over the years.

mmj_uk · 13 Jul 2015 at 11:25

fs123 said:
Not entirely true after the Kepler debacle. A 780Ti on paper is faster than a 970 but is not anymore. Lack of driver optimisations from Nvidia to blame and even the supposed fix hasn't done anything.

The GTX970 has more ROP's, higher clockspeed and numerous other enhancements.

You only have to look at Anandtech's Pixel Fill-rate test to see that Maxwell is a way better architecture than Kepler:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/19

opethdisciple · 13 Jul 2015 at 11:31

mmj_uk said:
The GTX970 has more ROP's, higher clockspeed and numerous other enhancements.

You only have to look at Anandtech's Pixel Fill-rate test to see that Maxwell is a way better architecture than Kepler:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/19

Plus a better tessellation engine (3x)

D.P. · 13 Jul 2015 at 11:46

Tom B said:
Interesting. Has the performance of 7 series cards actually decreased over driver updates, or is it just that driver updates for 9* has increased the performance of those cards?

The latter, maxwell v2 is a new architecture that allowed new optimizations.

Tom B · 13 Jul 2015 at 12:09

D.P. said:
The latter, maxwell v2 is a new architecture that allowed new optimizations.

That's what I thought.. I don't understand what people are complaining about. The cards they bought still have the same performance that they previously did.