have AMD stopped competing

humbug · 13 Feb 2018 at 14:51

Lets not get into driver arguments because even today nVidia drivers are far from perfect, i have been running the latest nVidia architectures for going on 3 years now and it has not been problem free.
The nVidia better drivers arguments are complete tosh!

Fix your high stress latency bugs, nVidia, how annoying.....

Rroff · 13 Feb 2018 at 14:56

sideways14a said:
but it seems that these do not stick in the memory of folk like AMDs problems from way back.....

Thing people seem to often forget is that with nVidia back then there was almost always a working driver available even if it wasn't the latest 1-2 out - it wasn't uncommon to have to wait 1-2 months after a problem arose or a new game was released for fixes to sometimes game breaking problems - something that for some reason there is a lot of denial or short memory about on the AMD/ATI side despite the fact I've previously linked to dozens of tech site articles and game patch notes, etc. that document it with evidence in black and white.

Now granted nVidia isn't exactly excelling themselves of late :s though I think half the problem there is Windows 10 - I've stuck with Windows 7 on my machines I actually want to use and seen far less problems (pretty much none really other than having to avoid 1-2 releases) than Windows 10 with these drivers :s

Kaapstad · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:29

Rroff said:
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.

The GTX 480 also came with 1.5gb of VRAM compared to the 5870 with 1gb, this difference very quickly became important even at 1080p.

humbug · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:33

I can't believe people want to re-run 10 year old arguments.

Christ...

ubersonic · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:37

Kaapstad said:
The GTX 480 also came with 1.5gb of VRAM compared to the 5870 with 1gb, this difference very quickly became important even at 1080p.

The HD5870 was available in 1GB and 2GB versions, users had to choose if they wanted to spend the extra or not.

DragonQ · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:45

Both companies have flaky drivers. The whole graphics driver model just seems unsustainable, I'm surprised they work at all.

AMD struggle to compete at the top end but compete fine elsewhere in the stack (shortage related price hikes notwithstanding).

Rroff · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:47

I find it hard to be too critical of Fermi despite the 480 - I had a pair of 470s in SLI initially at 800Mhz and later at 840 and finally 900MHz when I cared less if they died - compared to a base speed of 607MHz

and paid somewhere around £160 each can't remember exactly now. Can only dream of those days now with current prices and performance tiers.

humbug · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:50

Rroff said:
I find it hard to be too critical of Fermi despite the 480 - I had a pair of 470s in SLI initially at 800Mhz and later at 840 and finally 900MHz when I cared less if they died - compared to a base speed of 607MHz and paid somewhere around £160 each can't remember exactly now. Can only dream of those days now with current prices and performance tiers.

Really? SLI was shocking.

4K8KW10 · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:52

ubersonic said:
The HD5870 was available in 1GB and 2GB versions, users had to choose if they wanted to spend the extra or not.

AMD did a mistake with HD 5870 and it was that they doubled the price over the previous top dog. They sold HD 4890 for appoximately half of what they asked for the 5870.

Rroff · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:56

4K8KW10 said:
AMD did a mistake with HD 5870 and it was that they doubled the price over the previous top dog. They sold HD 4890 for appoximately half of what they asked for the 5870.

I suspect they were making the most of the gap before nVidia could come back with an answer - any business would.

sideways14a · 13 Feb 2018 at 15:56

Yes AMD really do seem to have a good product at almost everywhere bar the very top end of the stack, but because of that they are seen as poor/terrible and going down the pan.

4K8KW10 · 13 Feb 2018 at 16:19

Rroff said:
I suspect they were making the most of the gap before nVidia could come back with an answer - any business would.

Nvidia always comes with new, faster graphics, but their prices were accordingly higher. Nvidia never had an answer to the 195$ HD 4890. Never would have got an answer for a 250$ HD 5870.
But no, AMD asked way too much for the HD 5870 - 400$.

pete910 · 13 Feb 2018 at 16:21

4K8KW10 said:
AMD did a mistake with HD 5870 and it was that they doubled the price over the previous top dog. They sold HD 4890 for appoximately half of what they asked for the 5870.

Really ? what was release price of the 4890?

Got a 5870 at the time and only paid 290 for mine week of release !

Edit: Answered above

4K8KW10 · 13 Feb 2018 at 16:25

pete910 said:
Really ? what was release price of the 4890?

Got a 5870 at the time and only paid 290 for mine week of release !

Edit: Answered above

I was also considering a purchase of HD 5870, but was mad at AMD for their pricing.

pete910 · 13 Feb 2018 at 16:28

4K8KW10 said:
I was also considering a purchase of HD 5870, but was mad at AMD for their pricing.

What was NV's equivalent/Price at the time ?

Rroff · 13 Feb 2018 at 16:34

pete910 said:
What was NV's equivalent/Price at the time ?

Release models of the 480 were £400-500 and 470 £300 - but fairly shortly after release the 470 was available for £240 (think they went back up for a bit after that though) and special offers at times £160-180 a few months after launch though I don't recall the 480 moving as much on price.

The 470s were often bundled with games like Mafia 2 as well so if you sold those codes you'd make a little more off the price.

melmac · 13 Feb 2018 at 18:11

4K8KW10 said:
I was also considering a purchase of HD 5870, but was mad at AMD for their pricing.

Come on man, it wasn't double pricing. The 4890 was £239, the 5870 was £300.

pete910 said:
What was NV's equivalent/Price at the time ?

Nvidia's 480 cards started at around £420 and the 470's started around £300. I can't remember the price drop Rroff talks about. I thought they didn't reduce price until later in the year.

4K8KW10 · 13 Feb 2018 at 18:14

melmac said:
Come on man, it wasn't double pricing. The 4890 was £239, the 5870 was £300.

4890 was 195$ when I bought it, Techpowerup says 400$ for 5870 at the time of its release.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870/

V F · 13 Feb 2018 at 18:26

humbug said:
Lets not get into driver arguments because even today nVidia drivers are far from perfect, i have been running the latest nVidia architectures for going on 3 years now and it has not been problem free.
The nVidia better drivers arguments are complete tosh!

Fix your high stress latency bugs, nVidia, how annoying.....

Honestly, they’re really quite a mess. It is quite abysmal.

pete910 · 13 Feb 2018 at 18:55

Rroff said:
Release models of the 480 were £400-500 and 470 £300 - but fairly shortly after release the 470 was available for £240 (think they went back up for a bit after that though) and special offers at times £160-180 a few months after launch though I don't recall the 480 moving as much on price.

The 470s were often bundled with games like Mafia 2 as well so if you sold those codes you'd make a little more off the price.

melmac said:
Nvidia's 480 cards started at around £420 and the 470's started around £300. I can't remember the price drop Rroff talks about. I thought they didn't reduce price until later in the year.

cheers, Don't have the best memory tbh.

So the 300 or so price tag was rather good then so not sure why @4K8KW10 was so upset.

Look at the prices now