have AMD stopped competing

[Rroff]

AMD also just packed flexibility and backup plans.

Take the HBM issues. Nvidia knew stacked memory could be useful and initially worked with micron, then realized HBM would better, but it wasn't ready for mainstream due to high costs, they smoothly switched to GDDR5x, and now 6. AMD however put all their eggs in one basket. HBM made Fuji short on Vram, delayed production, increased production costs and complexity, reduced supply. Nvidia by only using HBM on server parts meant margins were huge and volume low, perfect to get a new tech going.

I fear AMD are still looking at HBM but the future HBM just don't look that enticing compared to to GDDR6. HBM2 hasn't really scaled much in density or speed. The next HBM stabdrst on the horizon is supposed to be a slower lower cost lower power version for embedded, nothing for a high end GPU.

The whole GF thing is also kind of their fault

HBM hasn't really shone in GPU use - GDDR has really benefited from shrinking nodes and continues to at a rate HBM doesn't seem to mitigating the power and heat considerations and allowing evolutions of layout, etc. to offset the potential latency downsides. Then there is that HBM seems more suited in methods of access and dealing with data to compute type tasks and only certain areas of rendering/gaming use where largely GDDR seems more suited.

TBH I think its time to start looking at types of memory beyond GDDR but meh GDDR6 will do for now. But I called it a long time ago on HBM and was shot down because it was newer and so it had to be better right? :s

 

[Kirby Wurm]

We are our own worst enemy,

The 4870 was a GTX 280 for half the money, nVidia sold far more 280's than AMD 4870's
The 5870 was a masterpiece that blew the 280 out of the water, even nVidia's GTX 480 response could not match it, add to that the GTX 480 was heavily criticized for all sorts of reasons, nVidia sold something like twice as many GTX 480's as AMD HD 5870's.
By the time it came to the HD 6000 series AMD not getting the sales was starting to show in their R&D, it was a HD 5000 series rehash, nVidia had all of the money going their way and that showed in their R&D, they managed to improve the GTX 480 enough to make the GTX 580 a better card than the HD 5870, re-branded HD 6970.
From there on it was all down hill and now we are where we are.

Yes, there were a lot of arguments during those years, i remember them, it seems to me we now have what the majority of us wanted, now reap our deserved rewards, its AMD powered consoles for you my friend. <rhetorical, not aimed at you.

Depressingly true. I've always supported and defended AMD yet through my purchases have been just as culpable as the blind fanboys/ill educated purchasers.

 

[Rroff]

AMD has surpassed NV in that regard on the oss stack tbh.

I'm a little behind the curve on Linux side but isn't the nVidia closed driver still far better than AMDs even though they've brought up the open source driver far ahead of nVidia's open source one?

 

[humbug]

Depressingly true. I've always supported and defended AMD yet through my purchases have been just as culpable as the blind fanboys/I'll educated purchasers.

I'm running a GTX 1070.

No point chaining ones self to a failing product because of principles, but our eyes should be open to what has really gone wrong.

 

[4K8KW10]

I'm running a GTX 1070.

No point chaining ones self to a failing product because of principles, but our eyes should be open to what really gone wrong.

Why principles? There are many things which you can point out as a reason why NOT to buy a GeForce.
For example, my last GeForce was a 8500 GT and I have no plans for any GeForce upgrades in the future.

 

[pete910]

I'm a little behind the curve on Linux side but isn't the nVidia closed driver still far better than AMDs even though they've brought up the open source driver far ahead of nVidia's open source one?

Not really now, trades blows now for the most part, Desktop is far better AMD now too, Ironic considering.

Put it this way, swapped a GTX1080 out to go AMD due to desktop bugs/niggles ect

Like I stated though, neither are perfect by any stretch however, I personally find it a far better experience on AMD now.

 

[FoxEye]

Not really now, trades blows now for the most part, Desktop is far better AMD now too, Ironic considering.

Put it this way, swapped a GTX1080 out to go AMD due to desktop bugs/niggles ect

Like I stated though, neither are perfect by any stretch however, I personally find it a far better experience on AMD now.

Last time I played with Linux the AMD OSS driver wasn't an official AMD driver... it was a community-made affair.

I'm just asking how much credit AMD can take for a driver that isn't their own work?

 

[Hotwired]

Last time I played with Linux the AMD OSS driver wasn't an official AMD driver... it was a community-made affair.

I'm just asking how much credit AMD can take for a driver that isn't their own work?

This is a grand new low. Claiming that it doesn't count if the driver isn't made by AMD.

Not obvious at all there FoxEye.

Did you make the same comment that Intel doesn't deserve any credit for their chip performance and temps if people have to manually delid the chip for it.

 

[D1craig]

the rx580 is gtx1060 level or better and the vega56 is gtx1070 level or better. prices are worse for the AMD parts because they are better? more miners buying them so the prices sky rocketed far quicker than the nvidia counterparts?

and like has been said in this thread AMD make a better gpu by a mile they will still sell less than nvidia. people say bad drivers, its been a while since nvidia have had more stable drivers. well over 4 years imo.

 

[EsaT]

The 5870 was a masterpiece that blew the 280 out of the water, even nVidia's GTX 480 response could not match it, add to that the GTX 480 was heavily criticized for all sorts of reasons, nVidia sold something like twice as many GTX 480's as AMD HD 5870's.

You forgot the best part:
Nvidia showing around completely faked off card.
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/fermi-card-on-stage-wasn-t-real/1/
But unlike for AMD there wasn't any public lynching and pitchforks and torches to burn down whole Nvidia.

And then when it finally came out some half year late its power consumption was in class of AMDs previous gen double chip card and idle consumption bad 50+ W while 5870 had below 20W idle draw.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/30.html
While performance per watt was complete AMD domination throughout line up:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/33.html

Anyone who bought Nvidia card of the time should keep his/hers hypocrite mouth closed for why AMD isn't able to compete now.

AMD frequently offer a judge podge of different generations.

Of course it becomes impossible to have R&D resources to every time do full chip line up when people kept buying even inferior products of competitors.
And with Bulldozer turning out Faildozer CPU side couldn't offer GPU side any extra money for R&D.

 

[4K8KW10]

The truth is that average joes are stupid.

The same destiny with Betamax that was clearly the better technology over VHS.
The same destiny with Siemens GSMs, which were better than Nokia and Samsung.
The same destiny with Matrox.
The same destiny with dozens of other cases.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

You forgot the best part:
Nvidia showing around completely faked off card.
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/fermi-card-on-stage-wasn-t-real/1/
But unlike for AMD there wasn't any public lynching and pitchforks and torches to burn down whole Nvidia.

They where found out and where rightly ripped into

And then when it finally came out some half year late its power consumption was in class of AMDs previous gen double chip card and idle consumption bad 50+ W while 5870 had below 20W idle draw.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/30.html
While performance per watt was complete AMD domination throughout line up:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/33.html

Anyone who bought Nvidia card of the time should keep his/hers hypocrite mouth closed for why AMD isn't able to compete now.

At least it was faster and scaled better even if it was a bigger chip, but hey AMD fans only care about Power consumption when its Nvidia that's doing poorly on PPW *cough* Hawaii, Vega etc

like with the FX cards before they knew they screwed up the tech and fixed it with Kepler and went from strength to strength there

Of course it becomes impossible to have R&D resources to every time do full chip line up when people kept buying even inferior products of competitors.
And with Bulldozer turning out Faildozer CPU side couldn't offer GPU side any extra money for R&D.

I did buy a 5850 to replace a GTX280 and xfired it later on as the Asus direct CU card was epic, sadly Xfire drivers let me down on several big releases at the time (BF3, Rage, Skyrim) and went back to the green team and a pair of watercooled GTX 480's i got a good deal on

 

[humbug]

Last time I played with Linux the AMD OSS driver wasn't an official AMD driver... it was a community-made affair.

I'm just asking how much credit AMD can take for a driver that isn't their own work?

The problem with nVidia Linux drivers is that they are locked and propitiatory, the fact that AMD's Linux drivers are open is not a bad thing, its a good thing, the biggest complaint Linux users have is that nVidia are #### heads when it comes to drivers.

 

[Rroff]

Anyone who bought Nvidia card of the time should keep his/hers hypocrite mouth closed for why AMD isn't able to compete now.

Key difference though - while it was late behind the 5000 series cards the 400 series cards retook the performance crown - something AMD haven't managed to do with Vega - people would be a lot kinder on AMD if Vega had taken over from Pascal on performance and probably more forgiving if AMD hadn't come out with some frankly quite delusional PR such as the banded about "Poor Volta" thing.

Also unlike today AMD's drivers were at times quite tragic back then especially as pointed out above with crossfire - it wasn't until some time in 2010 that they pulled out some better drivers with fixes for games like Farcry 2, etc. (Not that nVidia didn't have its own dose of fail with the 195 drivers but there were at least versions out that worked very well even if you had to sometimes stay back a driver or two from the latest release).

 

[pete910]

Last time I played with Linux the AMD OSS driver wasn't an official AMD driver... it was a community-made affair.

I'm just asking how much credit AMD can take for a driver that isn't their own work?

It's the official open source driver for amd's gpu's.

AMD had a rewrite of the driver from the ground up a few years back(AMDGPU), if you recall they got some stick with some code they wanted adding that Linus didn't think was good enough.
Of the top of my head there are 6 or so that are actually employed by AMD to work on the driver, I believe they added more to that in 2017 . Could be wrong on that though.

They also contribute to the Mesa(opengl) as do others, Valve has 5 that I know of too.

Intel also heavily contributes to drivers/kernel/Mesa ect for there stuff too.

Then you have others from personal open source devs to company employed persons contributing to the various parts.

So you are correct in essence saying it's a community-made affair as anyone can submit code to it, But keep in mind the companies like AMD/Intel have a big role on the overall development of there respective hardware.

 

[LabR@t]

The problem with nVidia Linux drivers is that they are locked and propitiatory, the fact that AMD's Linux drivers are open is not a bad thing, its a good thing, the biggest complaint Linux users have is that nVidia are #### heads when it comes to drivers.

My pc is running a multiseat setup with 670gtx and a hd8450 together on fedora open drivers. Runs well.

 

[4K8KW10]

Key difference though - while it was late behind the 5000 series cards the 400 series cards retook the performance crown - something AMD haven't managed to do with Vega - people would be a lot kinder on AMD if Vega had taken over from Pascal on performance and probably more forgiving if AMD hadn't come out with some frankly quite delusional PR such as the banded about "Poor Volta" thing.

Also unlike today AMD's drivers were at times quite tragic back then especially as pointed out above with crossfire - it wasn't until some time in 2010 that they pulled out some better drivers with fixes for games like Farcry 2, etc. (Not that nVidia didn't have its own dose of fail with the 195 drivers but there were at least versions out that worked very well even if you had to sometimes stay back a driver or two from the latest release).

I have never had any problems with the drivers, there were some crashes and freezes, but the same happens now with every GeForce driver, too.

480 GTX didn't retake any performance crown. Fermi was late, launched with revision A3, was hot, was exploding with its weak power delivery circuit, and as usual for Nvidia, was expensive. Complete ****.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/32.html

 

[Rroff]

480 GTX didn't retake any performance crown.

Um - in a lot of the big "next gen" or graphically acclaimed games of the time - FC2, STALKER, FEAR, WiC, Call of Juarez, etc. the GTX480 was a clear 30% faster than the 5870 at the kind of resolutions and settings people were actually gaming at. In older games sure it was more mixed with some trading of blows and Crysis partly due to being CPU bound was more even results. At the end of the day it was rarely slower than the competition and outside of a couple of extremes when it was slower it was insignificantly so and quite often significantly faster - that is generally regarded as retaking the performance crown. Take a look at the DX11 results there and elsewhere and more often than not it isn't even a competition with the 5870 a long way behind unfortunately that review only really covers Metro 2033 which has some dubious optimisation issues https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/27.html

Regardless that is a very different story to Vega where comparing like for like against Pascal you rarely find results that offset the complaints about heat and power you talk of.

Most people in 2008-2009 or so were still playing at like 1680x1050 resolutions and a lot even less than that - 2560x1600 was used by relatively few - where the 480 even in that summary of performance has a 15% overall lead.

 

[EsaT]

Also unlike today AMD's drivers were at times quite tragic back then especially as pointed out above with crossfire - it wasn't until some time in 2010 that they pulled out some better drivers with fixes for games like Farcry 2, etc. (Not that nVidia didn't have its own dose of fail with the 195 drivers but there were at least versions out that worked very well even if you had to sometimes stay back a driver or two from the latest release).

Didn't have any out of usual driver problems with HD5870.
Though multiple cards has certainly been always problematic, also for Nvidia.

Also Nvidia has had drivers burning cards:
https://www.techspot.com/news/38131-nvidia-19675-gpu-driver-burning-up-graphics-cards.html
And there has been also few such occasions since that.
But while AMD drivers get automatically crucified for any problems Nvidia seems to have that get ouf of jail for free card.

 

[sideways14a]

Nvidia definitely has had its fair share of driver cockups, but it seems that these do not stick in the memory of folk like AMDs problems from way back.....