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AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta Drivers and Never Settle Bundle available now

Sethos

Banned
Because it would be hard to see the differences in a small picture. And sorry but if someone gets mislead by this in 2012 it's their own fault. nV, AMD and others are doing this since forever. Here the gains are at least respectable, there are charts like this with 1% changes.

ikcNITv5yLXUQ.png


Just pointing out the difference.
 

haikira

Member
This sort of thing is as old as time. Adverts do it all the time. At least here, despite obvious manipulation, to make it more visually appealing, it's still cold hard facts. We also have the numbers backed up by various review sites. It's all very well cracking a joke about it, but it's hardly worth getting too worked up over.
 

Vilam

Maxis Redwood
I tried AMD once and swore I'd never go back. Years later they suckered me again, and yet again I got another ass of a card. They can give away all the free games they want; never again.
 

beje

Banned
7850 seems like one of those legendary price/performance cards, like the 8800GT/9800GT.

Yup, I just got one last week for 150€ (1GB edition though) and holy fuck, it overclocks with barely nothing. Managed to put it at 1GHz (from stock 860MHz or so) without overvolting.
 

n0n44m

Member
should've called it "sorry for fucking up BF3 earlier guys"-driver

but this does make the 7950 extremely interesting for anyone looking to grab a new card for the next couple of years (for US buyers at least... Anandtech already mentions to double check whether your retailer offers the coupons/codes so I'm not sure what the situation over here would be)
 
Newegg has taken down the Sleeping Dogs promotion that was with the 7000 cards last night when this was posted. Maybe this will be going live quicker than the Anandtech article thought. Or they're really going to kill their sales until this promotion starts now that everyone knows and they took away the pre-existing promotion.
 

Derrick01

Banned
If nvidia was offering this I'd probably try to upgrade since my card is aging a bit and I do want hitman and far cry. I don't trust AMD after how poor their drivers and overall support are. Too many horror stories.

Hero_of_the_Day said:
EDIT: This just says they confirmed it will have "higher resolution textures".

Yeah I remember when Dishonored was supposed to have high res textures too and it has the muddiest and lowest res textures possible.

Not saying you're wrong. I'm saying they're probably lying.
 
will this be available in Canada? I am planning to buy a 7970...maybe I should wait for the 8000 series? I will be busy for a while with studies and work.
 
I'd like to get a really good graphics card to upgrade from my 5770. I'd probably need to upgrade more than just my GPU, though. :S

About six months ago I had the same dilemma. Got the great idea to upgrade my video card, which turned into new CPU and doubling the RAM, which THEN led to putting the 5770, old CPU and RAM into a whole new box that is now our second PC (wife and I play WoW together and her laptop just couldn't handle the game anymore). These things tend to snowball, folks.
 

Totobeni

An blind dancing ho
If nvidia was offering this I'd probably try to upgrade since my card is aging a bit and I do want hitman and far cry. I don't trust AMD after how poor their drivers and overall support are. Too many horror stories.

.

are you still using the GTX 470?

and yeah AMD shitty drivers-and cards- made me almost quit pc gaming,I stopped buying PC games for two years before I went nvidia and got better PC gaming experience since then.
 

Derrick01

Banned
are you still using the GTX 470?

and yeah AMD shitty drivers-and cards- made me almost quit pc gaming,I stopped buying PC games for two years before I went nvidia and got better PC gaming experience since then.

Yeah my 470 is going strong still but I'm starting to see it struggle more on games that push things. Obviously I can still run stuff like Xcom and Dishonored at pretty much max settings at 1080p but I had to turn the view distance on Borderlands 2 down to high (oh noes!) to stop it from dipping to the 30s and 40s.

Ideally I'd like to keep it until a year into the next gen consoles so developers are set in a routine and the new GPUs, whether it's the 700 or 800 series by then, will be out.
 
will this be available in Canada? I am planning to buy a 7970...maybe I should wait for the 8000 series? I will be busy for a while with studies and work.

Check Newegg.ca and other Canadian retailers like NCIX and Tigerdirect: The never settle deal is already up:

http://www.newegg.ca/Desktop-Graphics-Cards/SubCategory/ID-48

[EDIT]: It only seems to be available for the 7950/7970's at the moment. Maybe they are still updating their prices?
 
If nvidia was offering this I'd probably try to upgrade since my card is aging a bit and I do want hitman and far cry. I don't trust AMD after how poor their drivers and overall support are. Too many horror stories.



Yeah I remember when Dishonored was supposed to have high res textures too and it has the muddiest and lowest res textures possible.

Not saying you're wrong. I'm saying they're probably lying.

Don't worry guy, nVidia is PERFECT with support and drivers. No one has had problems with them, and they never will. Forget the fact there are just as many reported issues as people have with AMD on forums like overclock.net and such.

Unless of course you're talking about the PC thread on Neogaf, which seems to be only full of people that started PC gaming in the last year or 2. Had nVidia and AMD(ATi) cards since the Rage/TNT days and they both have the same problems.
 
Good deal and to be honest, im really happy with my 7970, but I do miss the stuff that you can add with nVidia inspector, and easier super sampling, etc
 
...but I just picked up a GTX 660 ti to upgrade my aging Radeon 5770.

I know I probably should have waited for Black Friday, but I had the money and it seems like a damn good card so far, it even plays some games my AMD wasn't able to (Halo 1 for some reason, just couldn't get it to start up with the 5770.)

I was mostly happy with my AMD though, so I have nothing against them (although Physx IS pretty awesome for the games that have it). I only had two or three games that had AMD exclusive issues (or maybe just my 5770) over the course of the 2-3 years I had it.
 

MNC

Member
I just want to state that if somebody wants to furiously get rid of his/her Sleeping Dogs Steamworks CD Key TM I would be happy to oblige in such a stressing matter.
 

Piggus

Member
Just contacted Newegg and they are not sending out this bundle to those who bought prior to today. Even though I only got my card last week.. Oh well. :( Might be able to return the card (it gets abnormally hot anyway) and perhaps re-order.
 
That was quick.

The 7950 is tempting and its 3GB VRAM is more future-proof than my 2GB 660ti, so I dunno if I should do it. Then again, everyone going "lol AMD drivers" is holding me back from the switch.

I still think the driver issue is a little overblown. I have a few different friends with Radeon cards in the 7850 to 7950 range, and I haven't heard any complaints from them with driver issues. There were a few issues in the end of 2011 with games like Rage and such, but I think AMD has been trying to turn that situation around in 2012, and they have been doing a decent job.

Though, if you're like me and dual boot with Linux, the NVIDIA cards will always still be a little more favorable. I have no idea what the current state of AMD drivers are like in Linux (though I hear the open source ones have been making progress) but NVIDIA is still the best option there. There are also the extra perks like PhysX on the NVIDIA side, but still.. you can't go wrong with a 7950 at $300-320 dollars. That's a good bang for your buck right there.

Though I wonder what the performance would be like with a hybrid PhysX solution? Something like a Radeon 7870/7950+ Geforce 430/630 combination? I've heard that some people had pretty decent results with set ups like this, but I don't have any first hand results.
 

Piggus

Member
And yet it persists in 2012.

I'd say that's true when it comes to Crossfire (had nothing but issues with dual 5850s) but support for single cards has been fine, especially this year. After the crap I dealt with with the 5850s I was strongly considering going back to Nvidia, but slightly worse single card driver support is not enough to make me pay an extra $100 for a GTX 680, which has essentially no performance benefit over a 7970.
 
And yet it persists in 2012.

Eh, I've been with Nvidia for the last year, but for the 3 years preceding that I was with AMD and I didn't have a single problem. The two GPU players are pretty much on par now, any problems are really just anecdotal.
 

cress2000

Member
Damn. To upgrade from 5850 to 7950 or not. I've been eying Nvidia for my next upgrade at some later date, but this is making it hard to not upgrade now.
 

jwhit28

Member
I think the Radeon 8xxx and Geforce 7xx series will have A LOT of rebadging from the current generation for those thinking about waiting. From $170 up it is crazy how much power and overclocking potential you get from either side.
 

pestul

Member
Hmm, thanks for the heads up on the new beta drivers. Going to have to do some crossfire comparisons with my 5850s and see if there is any improvements. I'll install the new 12.10 Caps as well.
 
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