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AMD on the road to recovery.

I wasn't on these forums the last time AMD had a top GPU. I had a 4870 back in the day. Since then I don't remember AMD having a top tier card that could compete since then.

Last time AMD had top tier card was the 290X. :)

290X vs 780TI

The 290x wasn't faster than a 780ti, Yes it aged better but AMD released the Hawaii cards to outperform the original Titan & 780, The 780ti & Titan Black were waiting in the wings, The 780ti released within a couple of weeks of the 290x retaking the performance crown with the Titan Black coming after to ensure the Titan branding remained on top.

Up until the Titan released I think the 7970 GHZ was the top card, First the 7970, Then the 680 and then the 7970 GHZ until the original Titan appeared.

I just googled the dates and the 7970 GHZ released on June 22nd 2012 & held the crown until the Titan appeared on May 23rd 2013. That was AMD's last untouchable and it held the crown for 9 or 10 months..
 
Yeah, but they need to increase it more.

If 7970 GHz ed. is a 2012 thing, which was then renamed to R9 280X, while R9 285 and 290 were renamed to R9 380 and 390, and R9 480 renamed to 580, these are the worst six years in the gaming industry development.
RX 580 needed to be at least a 4096 shader part, without any strictly compute features like more cashe which eat valueable die space.
 
nVidia only have two consumer cards that AMD can't compete with right now unless I'm mistaken: the 1080 Ti and Titan XVP or whatever letters they use these days, and they're both stupidly expensive. They just can't market their products well or break the nVidia mind-share.

In the CPU space they weren't able to compete with nearly anything Intel had, let's be honest. There is no comparison.
 
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The 290x wasn't faster than a 780ti, Yes it aged better but AMD released the Hawaii cards to outperform the original Titan & 780, The 780ti & Titan Black were waiting in the wings, The 780ti released within a couple of weeks of the 290x retaking the performance crown with the Titan Black coming after to ensure the Titan branding remained on top.

Up until the Titan released I think the 7970 GHZ was the top card, First the 7970, Then the 680 and then the 7970 GHZ until the original Titan appeared.

I just googled the dates and the 7970 GHZ released on June 22nd 2012 & held the crown until the Titan appeared on May 23rd 2013. That was AMD's last untouchable and it held the crown for 9 or 10 months..


EDIT: What's interesting is how the 680 and 7970 ghz compared to each other over time, Here's an Anandtech review from close to when the 7970GHZ released and the next is a Toms from when the Titan released and as an example in Skyrim the 680 had a decent lead on the GHZ but by the time the Titan was being reviewed the results were reversed.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-titan-performance-review,review-32635.html
 
AMD can't compete with nVidia at the top end but they're competitive up to the low-high-end: nVidia only have two consumer cards that AMD can't compete with right now unless I'm mistaken (the 1080 Ti and Titan range) and they're both stupidly expensive. In the CPU space they weren't able to compete with nearly anything Intel had, let's be honest. There is no comparison.

AMD can't compete on competitive merits with GTX 1070 and 1080, too. They need RX 580 to be as fast as GTX 1070, at the very least.
 
Yeah, but they need to increase it more.
I'm sure they'll gradually improve it over the coming years

If 7970 GHz ed. is a 2012 thing, which was then renamed to R9 280X, while R9 285 and 290 were renamed to R9 380 and 390, and R9 480 renamed to 580, these are the worst six years in the gaming industry development.
RX 580 needed to be at least a 4096 shader part, without any strictly compute features like more cashe which eat valueable die space.

It is a lot of rebrands but it was to be expected with the focus being on Zen for so long.
 
I just googled the dates and the 7970 GHZ released on June 22nd 2012 & held the crown until the Titan appeared on May 23rd 2013. That was AMD's last untouchable and it held the crown for 9 or 10 months..


295x2 was their last untouchable, nvidia had no response to that other than the 1500£ more titan z with a triple slot cooler and a ton of underclocking on the cores so the cooler could tame it.
 
nVidia only have two consumer cards that AMD can't compete with right now unless I'm mistaken: the 1080 Ti and Titan XVP or whatever letters they use these days, and they're both stupidly expensive. They just can't market their products well or break the nVidia mind-share.

In the CPU space they weren't able to compete with nearly anything Intel had, let's be honest. There is no comparison.
Without looking at the fine details I'd say you're slightly mistaken but depends on how we look at things. Power usage and pricing of AMD's 1070 / Ti, 1080 competing cards are not competitive against NV's offerings so the overall package is not there
The Vega range are good cards though but they're not really gamers cards. If you look at the specs they should be way better but just not optimised for gaming
You've also forgotten the Titan V :).
IMO if someone wants a good mid to top end gaming card and don't have freesync and have no issue buying NV products (some don't want to), the choice is really only NVidia when you take into account the cost/possible resale/power usage and performance.

I'm sure NV with be making a lot more profit on each 1070/Ti/1080 than AMD are making with each Vega 56/64 sold - they're obviously a high cost item to manufacture vs Pascal.
In the office I run a lot of calcs that utilise attached GPU. The calcs can run for hours and suspect a Vega 64 would way outperform a 1080 for that.
 
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295x2 was their last untouchable, nvidia had no response to that other than the 1500£ more titan z with a triple slot cooler and a ton of underclocking on the cores so the cooler could tame it.
I used to have one! Legendary and underrated card imo. It destroyed every other GPU for around 2 years while keeping cooler and quieter.
 
295x2 was their last untouchable, nvidia had no response to that other than the 1500£ more titan z with a triple slot cooler and a ton of underclocking on the cores so the cooler could tame it.


Hi, We're talking single chip graphics cards otherwise the 690 would have been the fastest compared to the 680 & 7970 GHZ and the Titan Z would have been the fastest at that time.

I used to have one! Legendary and underrated card imo. It destroyed every other GPU for around 2 years while keeping cooler and quieter.

Hi, I never had one but from what I remember it was a great card when the crossfire support was there. Unfortunately it wasn't for a lot of games and we often saw reviews where it was performing like a 290x.

For dual chip cards we could also include the dual 390 that either Powercolor or XFX released (I forget which). With it's additional memory over the 295 and Titan Z it would made a better 4k & triple screen graphics card when crossfire was working.
 
Without looking at the fine details I'd say you're slightly mistaken but depends on how we look at things. Power usage and pricing of AMD's 1070 / Ti, 1080 competing cards are not competitive against NV's offerings so the overall package is not there
The Vega range are good cards though but they're not really gamers cards. If you look at the specs they should be way better but just not optimised for gaming
True, power consumption is a big negative of Vega compared to the 1070, 1070 Ti, and 1080. However, FreeSync support is a big positive. Swings and roundabouts. The main disadvantage of Vega was the price and availability because shortly after launch the mining craze picked up. At MSRP I think it's fair to say they are competitive.

You've also forgotten the Titan V :).
That was one of the two cards I mentioned though, lol.

IMO if someone wants a good mid to top end gaming card and don't have freesync and have no issue buying NV products (some don't want to), the choice is really only NVidia when you take into account the cost/possible resale/power usage and performance.

I'm sure NV with be making a lot more profit on each 1070/Ti/1080 than AMD are making with each Vega 56/64 sold - they're obviously a high cost item to manufacture vs Pascal.
In the office I run a lot of calcs that utilise attached GPU. The calcs can run for hours and suspect a Vega 64 would way outperform a 1080 for that.
I suppose it depends on your definitions. I'd consider a 1070 or above as "high end" - it's a £350+ card after all and you can buy a current gen console for less than that! However, I would agree that above an RX 580 nVidia is the better choice if you don't want FreeSync support.

Compare this to the trouble AMD was in before Ryzen in the CPU space. They had absolutely nothing even in the "mid end" parts (Core i5 range) and they were only able to compete with Intel's low-end offerings (Celeron/Pentium/Core i3) in specific highly threaded workloads - anything else and Intel were just far ahead. At least now Ryzen is much closer that it at least becomes a question.

Whether their current RTG downturn ends up as bad as their 2009-2017 CPU downturn depends on what they do next. We know nVidia are going to release new cards later this year, IMO they will be terribly priced but people will still gobble them up. AMD will have a chance but I am not sure they will take it.
 
True, power consumption is a big negative of Vega compared to the 1070, 1070 Ti, and 1080. However, FreeSync support is a big positive. Swings and roundabouts. The main disadvantage of Vega was the price and availability because shortly after launch the mining craze picked up. At MSRP I think it's fair to say they are competitive.


That was one of the two cards I mentioned though, lol.
Sorry, I read it as 1080 Ti and Titan X/P - didn't spot the V in the middle or assumed typo, but that's three cards :)
Whether their current RTG downturn ends up as bad as their 2009-2017 CPU downturn depends on what they do next. We know nVidia are going to release new cards later this year, IMO they will be terribly priced but people will still gobble them up. AMD will have a chance but I am not sure they will take it.
Yeah, not sure AMD have the £ to spend ATM to get competitive in the same generation as NV. Think it'll take some good R&D over a longer period but who knows, maybe they're already well into that already so could spring a surprise.
Their CPU's are v.good now anyway
 
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Hi, We're talking single chip graphics cards otherwise the 690 would have been the fastest compared to the 680 & 7970 GHZ and the Titan Z would have been the fastest at that time.
The 7990 and 295x2 were respectively faster and the kings of their time.

295x2 was a faster card than the titan z. :)
Yup like I said very underrated. Crossfire used to scale much better than SLI and the 295x2 when fully utilized was an absolute beast. Only people that owned that card can fully appreciate it.

295x2.png
 
The 7990 and 295x2 were respectively faster and the kings of their time.


Yup like I said very underrated. Crossfire used to scale much better than SLI and the 295x2 when fully utilized was an absolute beast. Only people that owned that card can fully appreciate it.

295x2.png

One of the few games that could take advantage of 2 gpus though..... there are many others where it was no faster than a single 290
 
EDIT: What's interesting is how the 680 and 7970 ghz compared to each other over time, Here's an Anandtech review from close to when the 7970GHZ released and the next is a Toms from when the Titan released and as an example in Skyrim the 680 had a decent lead on the GHZ but by the time the Titan was being reviewed the results were reversed.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-catching-up-to-gtx-680

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-titan-performance-review,review-32635.html


That's generally how it goes with amd drivers improving, but in the long run it hurts them. First impressions and first day reviews to some extent dictate sales, its ok getting that extra performance months down the line but the general consensus online is that "x card is slower than y card" based on first day reviews and to some thats all that matters.

Seems like a lot of people only look at day one reviews and whatever the "results" are on that day colours their opinion if a card is faster or slower than its competition. And by that point anyone interested has already bought what was initially the faster card even if positions change months down the line.
 
That's generally how it goes with amd drivers improving, but in the long run it hurts them. First impressions and first day reviews to some extent dictate sales, its ok getting that extra performance months down the line but the general consensus online is that "x card is slower than y card" based on first day reviews and to some thats all that matters.

Seems like a lot of people only look at day one reviews and whatever the "results" are on that day colours their opinion if a card is faster or slower than its competition. And by that point anyone interested has already bought what was initially the faster card even if positions change months down the line.

Then maybe AMD should make sure their drivers are already as good as they can be before releasing the card? Sure nvidia make driver improvements too but not to the extent AMD do.
 
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