380x - When?

[bru]

Rumours of the cutdown GM204 960ti were about nearly a year ago.

I'm surprised that they haven't arrived yet, maybe they were just waiting for AMD to release the full fat Tonga.

http://wccftech.com/gtx-960-ti-benchmarks-specs-revealed/

 

[humbug]

Rumours of the cutdown GM204 960ti were about nearly a year ago.

I'm surprised that they haven't arrived yet, maybe they were just waiting for AMD to release the full fat Tonga.

http://wccftech.com/gtx-960-ti-benchmarks-specs-revealed/

Interesting, 1536 Cores?

The 970 has 1664 Cores, a difference of 6%, clock for clock that would result in a 4% difference in performance.

I would also question how they are going to do that, because of the way Maxwell is they have had to reduce the L2, ROP's and hack the memory to keep the 256Bit Bus from the GTX 980 to make the 970.

What they would also end up with is two GPU's with 'as near as makes no Difference' identical performance, so unless they are going to price them with in £5 to £10 of eachother the GTX 970 would be rendered obsolete, if they do price them in the same ball park they will only end up selling the same number of GPU's split between two different GPU and either way would not have addressed the huge gap between the 960 - 970 sub £200 that the 380/X currently occupy.

I do not wonder why that card has not been released.

The 1280 Core one would work better, its a difference of 30% in cores which would make it a little faster than the 380X but its quite a big hit to take on a 980 chip.

 

[Davedree]

Interesting, 1536 Cores?

The 970 has 1664 Cores, a difference of 6%, clock for clock that would result in a 4% difference in performance.

I would also question how they are going to do that, because of the way Maxwell is they have had to reduce the L2, ROP's and hack the memory to keep the 256Bit Bus from the GTX 980 to make the 970.

What they would also end up with is two GPU's with 'as near as makes no Difference' identical performance, so unless they are going to price them with in £5 to £10 of eachother the GTX 970 would be rendered obsolete, if they do price them in the same ball park they will only end up selling the same number of GPU's split between two different GPU and either way would not have addressed the huge gap between the 960 - 970 sub £200 that the 380/X currently occupy.

I do not wonder why that card has not been released.

The 1280 Core one would work better, its a difference of 30% in cores which would make it a little faster than the 380X but its quite a big hit to take on a 980 chip.

They'll just use the 980m which is a 1536 gm204.

 

[Davedree]

380X is a cracking card from AMD and spanks the similarly priced 960 4GB. Be mad to take the 960 over it.

Rumours of the cutdown GM204 960ti were about nearly a year ago.

I'm surprised that they haven't arrived yet, maybe they were just waiting for AMD to release the full fat Tonga.

http://wccftech.com/gtx-960-ti-benchmarks-specs-revealed/

Tonga is 359mm2 Gm206 is only 228mm2 though.
Gm204 is still 398mm2 and the 980m is too big to sell at 960ti prices.

 

[humbug]

Tonga is 359mm2 Gm206 is only 228mm2 though.
Gm204 is still 398mm2 and the 980m is too big to sell at 960ti prices.

Then they would just be replacing the 970 with a 960TI.

 

[Davedree]

Then they would just be replacing the 970 with a 960TI.

The 970 is the 960ti
They probably won't do it on 28nm as the 398mm2 gm204 at the pricepoint of the old 760 kepler just isn't viable.

 

[humbug]

The 970 is the 960ti
They probably won't do it on 28nm as the 398mm2 gm204 at the pricepoint of the old 760 kepler just isn't viable.

And this is my point really, GM204 is too big to sell at <£200 and GM206 is too small to get anywhere near Tonga performance.

Nvidia would have to come up with a new chip to fit in the middle there or that middle performance £200 1080P slot belongs to AMD.

 

[Davedree]

And this is my point really, GM204 is too big to sell at <£200 and GM206 is too small to get anywhere near Tonga performance.

Nvidia would have to come up with a new chip to fit in the middle there or that middle performance £200 1080P slot belongs to AMD.

Agreed as gm206 is half a gm204, there's no room for a bigger die. As tonga failed to compete with gm204 it's left this strange performance gap in the market.

But foxeye (edit) still has a point I can relate to,
where is the progress in mid range cards from Amd from Tahiti to Tonga over 2-3 years.

Amd pitcairn rebranded 3 times is an olf gcn outdated on all levels but it has a similar die size to the the superior gm206.
Tonga is too big to sell at a price nearing entry level gm204 970 money, when it can't perform like a gm204.

 

[humbug]

Agreed as gm206 is half a gm204, there's no room for a bigger die. As tonga failed to compete with gm204 it's left this strange performance gap in the market.

But firefox still has a point I can relate to,
where is the progress in mid range cards from Amd from Tahiti to Tonga over 2-3 years.

Amd pitcairn rebranded 3 times is an olf gcn outdated on all levels but it has a similar die size to the the superior gm206.
Tonga is too big to sell at a price nearing entry level gm204 970 money, when it can't perform like a gm204.

Its 366mm^2 vs 398mm^2, yeah its certainly not a lot of Difference.

Yes i do agree with Foxeye in the sense that AMD have nothing new in the low to higher range, not for 2 years, but they are still strong GPU's competing with Nvidia.

Nvidia don't have anything that competes with the 380/X, they probably thought they did when they launched the 960 but as usual AMD have managed to pull ahead by working on the Drivers, same with the GTX 970, initially when you looked at the 290 or even the 290X it looked very much like Nvidia had AMD in a head lock, some generations of Drivers later and a slight bump in clock speeds and Nvidia's wonder child is beat by that very same Hawaii, the cut-down Hawaii at that.

At the top end (Fiji) there is still work to do, but having said that the Fury-X is starting to look like a match for the 980TI at 1440P, certainly at 4K, a bit more time will tell where they ultimately finish up.

 

[Scougar]

Just be aware that if you are quoting higher band bandwidth due to the 384 bit bud, that you are also aware of the efficiency work in the 380 and 380x. It is not a straightforward comparison. I would take a 380x everyday of the week over a 280x. Heck, half the time a 380 is beating the 280x, going by prior reviews.

If AMD would drop the price of 380 and the x, it would be a totally no brainer mid range win.

For 50 more I think, you can get the 390 which to me, makes the 380x a hard sell.

 

[FoxEye]

Just be aware that if you are quoting higher band bandwidth due to the 384 bit bud, that you are also aware of the efficiency work in the 380 and 380x. It is not a straightforward comparison. I would take a 380x everyday of the week over a 280x. Heck, half the time a 380 is beating the 280x, going by prior reviews.

If AMD would drop the price of 380 and the x, it would be a totally no brainer mid range win.

For 50 more I think, you can get the 390 which to me, makes the 380x a hard sell.

If you look at reviews, it's also true to say that "half the time, the 280X beats the 380X (and obviously the 380)".

So whilst the 380 might beat the 280X "half the time", it's also true that the 380/X appears to have some serious deficiencies, which result in worse performance than the 280X the other "half the time".

I'm sorry, but if I had a 280X, there is no way I'd view the 380X as an upgrade. And that really is the crux of my argument. The fact that they've released the 380X at the same price at the 280X launch price shows that we just haven't moved on from 2013.

So I'm really quite bemused how people can say the 380X is a "cracking little card", when it offers nothing we didn't have in 2013. Are we easily pleased or what?

 

[humbug]

If you look at reviews, it's also true to say that "half the time, the 280X beats the 380X (and obviously the 380)".

So whilst the 380 might beat the 280X "half the time", it's also true that the 380/X appears to have some serious deficiencies, which result in worse performance than the 280X the other "half the time".

I'm sorry, but if I had a 280X, there is no way I'd view the 380X as an upgrade. And that really is the crux of my argument. The fact that they've released the 380X at the same price at the 280X launch price shows that we just haven't moved on from 2013.

So I'm really quite bemused how people can say the 380X is a "cracking little card", when it offers nothing we didn't have in 2013. Are we easily pleased or what?

Serious deficiencies? hyperbole wording.... i think you blowing this all out of proportion, or your losing your cool over something that isn't even an issue.

In the review you posted the:

380X is a match for the 280X 5 times
The 380X beats the 280X by 5% 1 time
The 380X beats the 280X by 20% 3 times
The 280X beats the 380X by 10% 2 times

So that's 5x even, the 380X wins 4x, the 280X wins 2 times, the biggest lead goes to the 380X, in a quarter of those games the 380X is 20% faster, 20%.

 

[bru]

So I'm really quite bemused how people can say the 380X is a "cracking little card", when it offers nothing we didn't have in 2013. Are we easily pleased or what?

At the end of the day Tonga GCN1.2 brings features that you don't get or are much improved over Tahiti, its called progress.

 

[Davedree]

At the end of the day Tonga GCN1.2 brings features that you don't get or are much improved over Tahiti, its called progress.

Depends on your definition of progress I guess, i'd say nvidia provided progress and amd struggled to provide progress over their older gcn 1.0, they made the mistake of balancing tahiti as a compute and gaming card.
Gm204 was a midrange offering, hawaii was respun as a midrange offering.
Tonga is also a midrange offering but doesn't perform anywhere near gm204.
There are pro's and con's.
Tonga has a better uvd engine, bigger l2 cache and a more advanved front end, which aids in higher tesselation output. But sacrifices it's dp compute and memory bandwidth.
In some game engines the wider front end performs slower than tahiti. Most the time tonga is ahead but not by a great amount.
Power consumption is.more or less the same however tonga doesn't clock like tahiti if thermal cooling isn't the factor in holding the cores back.

At 160-180 it's attractive I guess, but it's 2 years late to the party.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Depends on your definition of progress I guess, i'd say nvidia provided progress and amd struggled to provide progress over their older gcn 1.0, they made the mistake of balancing tahiti as a compute and gaming card.
Gm204 was a midrange offering, hawaii was respun as a midrange offering.
Tonga is also a midrange offering but doesn't perform anywhere near gm204.
There are pro's and con's.
Tonga has a better uvd engine, bigger l2 cache and a more advanved front end, which aids in higher tesselation output. But sacrifices it's dp compute and memory bandwidth.
In some game engines the wider front end performs slower than tahiti. Most the time tonga is ahead but not by a great amount.
Power consumption is.more or less the same however tonga doesn't clock like tahiti if thermal cooling isn't the factor in holding the cores back.

At 160-180 it's attractive I guess, but it's 2 years late to the party.

I think it's fair to say for the sub £200 price range, progession is fairly disappointing regardless of if it is offerings from AMD or Nvidia. This the reason why if people can financially afford, they'd be stretch their budget to up to £250, rather than buying any new cards at sub £200.

Those R9 285 that OcUK sold for £99.99 EOL pricing on a today only deal back then were definitely the best bang for bucks card for people looking at buying cheap and cheerful card...it absolutely put the pricing of the GTX950/GTX960/380/380x to shame!

 

[Davedree]

I think it's fair to say for the sub £200 price range, progession is fairly disappointing regardless of if it is offerings from AMD or Nvidia. This the reason why if people can financially afford, they'd be stretch their budget to up to £250, rather than buying any new cards at sub £200.

Those R9 285 that OcUK sold for £99.99 EOL pricing on a today only deal back then were definitely the best bang for bucks card for people looking at buying cheap and cheerful card...it absolutely put the pricing of the GTX950/GTX960/380/380x to shame!

I agree and the rare single 8 pin sapphire itx version was nice too.
If we had a die shrink then a shrunken hawaii would have been an amazing mid range card with an updated uvd and hdmi2.

 

[FoxEye]

Serious deficiencies? hyperbole wording.... i think you blowing this all out of proportion, or your losing your cool over something that isn't even an issue.

In the review you posted the:

380X is a match for the 280X 5 times
The 380X beats the 280X by 5% 1 time
The 380X beats the 280X by 20% 3 times
The 280X beats the 380X by 10% 2 times
n
So that's 5x even, the 380X wins 4x, the 280X wins 2 times, the biggest lead goes to the 380X, in a quarter of those games the 380X is 20% faster, 20%.

Let me re-word that for you.

The 280X matches or beats the 380X 63% of the time. Yes, in some titles the 380X is 20% faster. But that is only in 3 of 11 titles. A good enough reason to upgrade? It could be - but not at these prices!!

I'm not having a go at the card. I'm having a go at the card at this price. Given that it's barely more powerful than a 280X, it shouldn't be priced like a next-gen card. Don't you think? How would the 280X be priced if it was still on sale today?

 

[humbug]

Let me re-word that for you.

The 280X matches or beats the 380X 63% of the time. Yes, in some titles the 380X is 20% faster. But that is only in 3 of 11 titles. A good enough reason to upgrade? It could be - but not at these prices!!

I'm not having a go at the card. I'm having a go at the card at this price. Given that it's barely more powerful than a 280X, it shouldn't be priced like a next-gen card. Don't you think? How would the 280X be priced if it was still on sale today?

I switched to Nvidia because i didn't want to spend £400 for an upgrade and i didn't want to spend the £300 i was willing to spend on a 390 when the card i already had was a 290, at least i got a change out of it.......

No one is / was more ###### off than me with AMD re-branding but your blowing this all out of proportion, to reasonable people a 2% and 3% difference is a match, your counting those as "Faster than" to bolster an argument you know you don't have, your turning it into a completely one sided argument about AMD, ignoring Nvidia's lack lustre performance at the same level, the GTX 960 is junk at £160, its a green 7870, at least AMD's offering has more power than that, a lot more, AMD's offering is 12% shy of a GTX 780, that 380X you have your teeth into... its really not bad at all. and the 390 is better than the GTX 970.

If you want better GPU's stop being one brands mouth piece or you'll get nothing but lower end green cards masquerading as mid range.

Nvidia haven't done anything to move up the mid range either, because they are both stuck on 28nm, of course they want to offer better cards, they want to move things along, they can't yet.

 

[FoxEye]

I'm a mouth piece for nVidia? You could not be more wrong.

You know what? This thread is about the 380X. It's not about nVidia cards. The fact that every thread gets derailed into AMD vs nVidia is NOT a good thing, and I do not intend to contribute toward that.

I'm not a fan of the 960 or the 970, incidentally. The 960 because it really should have been the 950 (performance is way too low for the x60 spot) and the 970 because of the 3.5 GB ram fiasco. But that's neither here nor there in a thread about the 380X.

Tbh, I'm as neutral as they come, having owned both brands in equal numbers, and judging each card on price/perf grounds primarily.

Defending either company atm is difficult if you are, as I am, interested in mid-range cards and not the top end.

The fact that I'm not willing to praise AMD's offerings does not make me "anti AMD", despite your misconceptions.

 

[humbug]

I'm a mouth piece for nVidia? You could not be more wrong.

You know what? This thread is about the 380X. It's not about nVidia cards. The fact that every thread gets derailed into AMD vs nVidia is NOT a good thing, and I do not intend to contribute toward that.

I'm not a fan of the 960 or the 970, incidentally. The 960 because it really should have been the 950 (performance is way too low for the x60 spot) and the 970 because of the 3.5 GB ram fiasco. But that's neither here nor there in a thread about the 380X.

Tbh, I'm as neutral as they come, having owned both brands in equal numbers, and judging each card on price/perf grounds primarily.

Defending either company atm is difficult if you are, as I am, interested in mid-range cards and not the top end.

The fact that I'm not willing to praise AMD's offerings does not make me "anti AMD", despite your misconceptions.

Next year we'll get proper upgraded cards.