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[JaseC]

Which most game developers do as well. How many PC games use OpenGL really? Very few if any modern games take advantage of it and those that do work fine. Rage was the only high profile issue in recent memory and it works fine now.

The fact it's hardly used is beside the point. Brink released to many the same driver issues in May, giving AMD ample time to get their shit together for Rage, but that didn't happen; in fact, as of the latest Catalyst drivers they were still fixing a multitude of issues, including shadows not being rendered - quite the feat in a game with next to no dynamic shadow technology.

Really, though, AMD/ATi's OpenGL support is and always has been terrible.

 

[Massa]

I think dev support is just as important as post release drivers, if not more so. AMD has been working with DICE on Frostbite 2 and it shows. On the other hand, Saints Row: The Third and RAGE were completely broken at launch.

id worked with AMD, that's how the game worked for them before they shipped. Problem is that AMD failed to release those fixes to the public ahead of the release of the game.

 

[Antiochus]

These are most likely laptop variants of the 7000 series. Laptop chips are coming later in December, but desktop ones will not arrive until two months later.

 

[deduce]

Wow there's a lot of hate for ATI in this thread. I've been running a 5770 after my 8800GTX committed suicide and have been happy with its performance. Are all these driver problems people are mentioning related to ATI's higher end cards?

 

[derFeef]

Unless you count the driver problems they've had just this year, with Dead Island, and Crysis 2, and Batman Arkham City, and Battlefield 3, and RAGE...want me to keep going?

What was with Dead Island and Crysis 2? I can't rememebr anything. And isn't Arkham City really borked on ANY card in DX11 mode? Oh and hey, BF3 - where nvidia has more problems as well (or had).

 

[Fireye]

It isn't hate when xFire Witcher 2 was broken and Rage was unplayable.
xFire 6950 here

I have to think that crossfire users are a fairly small subset of their overall users. I'm not justifying the fact that it doesn't work with your setup, because that sucks. I wonder how AMD handles crossfire profile development, if it's something that the dev studios have to initiate, or if it's something that AMD handles in-house.

 

[Hazaro]

Wow there's a lot of hate for ATI in this thread. I've been running a 5770 after my 8800GTX committed suicide and have been happy with its performance. Are all these driver problems people are mentioning related to ATI's higher end cards?

Driver problems include all AMD/ATi cards.

I have to think that crossfire users are a fairly small subset of their overall users. I'm not justifying the fact that it doesn't work with your setup, because that sucks. I wonder how AMD handles crossfire profile development, if it's something that the dev studios have to initiate, or if it's something that AMD handles in-house.

I'm not upset that xFire has kinks to it, but even driver delays and fixes for single cards are what upsets me at launch.
They need to commit to better launch drivers 100%. Firefall wasn't optimized for AMD until 2 months in because the development studio only had nVidia GPUs. smh

 

[Gully State]

I've always seen dual GPU support in general as spotty at best. I've just settled on going single card and ignoring SLI and Crossfire. My own forray into Crossfire was just unpleasant and I've read impressions of SLI pretty much having the same issues or is nVidia really on the ball with SLI?

I think I may go with nVidia next round but my first nVidia card (6800GT) wasn't very good and AMD is generally has a better price/performance ratio...

 

[derFeef]

I'm not upset that xFire has kinks to it, but even driver delays and fixes for single cards are what upsets me at launch.
They need to commit to better launch drivers 100%. Firefall wasn't optimized for AMD until 2 months in because the development studio only had nVidia GPUs. smh

Funding. Hardly AMD's fault.

 

[x3sphere]

Wow there's a lot of hate for ATI in this thread. I've been running a 5770 after my 8800GTX committed suicide and have been happy with its performance. Are all these driver problems people are mentioning related to ATI's higher end cards?

I had a 5870, then 5970 and now 6970. Was smooth sailing up until this year.

I just hope Nvidia isn't six months late again otherwise I may have to pick up a 79xx card. My 6970 isn't cutting it with games like Serious Sam 3 at 2560x1600 and I find dual GPU unusable due to microstuttering so that's not an option for me.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

I remember my Radeon 7500. 32MB. Ran Return to Castle Wolfenstein like a dream.

Spoiler

GPU naming/numbering is almost as confusing as CPU naming/numbering

 

[Smokey]

I've always seen dual GPU support in general as spotty at best. I've just settled on going single card and ignoring SLI and Crossfire. My own forray into Crossfire was just unpleasant and I've read impressions of SLI pretty much having the same issues or is nVidia really on the ball with SLI?

I think I may go with nVidia next round but my first nVidia card (6800GT) wasn't very good and AMD is generally has a better price/performance ratio...

I have 580 SLI and have had very few issues (if any) with games. I hear Crossfire is far worse on the multi-GPU front than SLI.

 

[Fireye]

Driver problems include all AMD/ATi cards.

I'm not upset that xFire has kinks to it, but even driver delays and fixes for single cards are what upsets me at launch.
They need to commit to better launch drivers 100%. Firefall wasn't optimized for AMD until 2 months in because the development studio only had nVidia GPUs. smh

I, personally, haven't encountered any driver issues with AMD/ATi cards in years. I had an 8800gt prior to my 5850, so I missed out on a number of years of ATi drivers.

Doesn't it behove the developers to get at least one machine to test AMD cards with? I'm sure most decently-funded games can spare $250 for a decent current gen AMD graphics card in their test machine. It isn't AMD's responsibility to police developers.

 

[Dipswitch]

I'll be watching this release closely. Used ATI for my last two PC builds and haven't really had any issues, with drivers or hardware (Using a 4870 currently).

Gonna be building a new rig Q3 2012 though and I'm leaning towards Nvidia this time around, so I can take advantage of the Physx stuff. We'll see how they both fare from a price/performance comparison though.

 

[Hazaro]

Funding. Hardly AMD's fault.

I don't know. I feel AMD offers really good FPS/$ in comparison to nVidia. Even today if they got their act MORE together with drivers and launch days they would be the go to buy imo. I think that is a good investment and if they want a larger market they need to get rid of the ATi drivers = bad notion.

I, personally, haven't encountered any driver issues with AMD/ATi cards in years. I had an 8800gt prior to my 5850, so I missed out on a number of years of ATi drivers.

Doesn't it behove the developers to get at least one machine to test AMD cards with? I'm sure most decently-funded games can spare $250 for a decent current gen AMD graphics card in their test machine. It isn't AMD's responsibility to police developers.

Yes it does, but it says something about how developers wouldn't buy a single AMD card in the first place imo.

 

[ghst]

Funding. Hardly AMD's fault.

with the red team's perpetual legacy of being the underdog, it's easy to forget that amd is a company with twice the employees/revenue of nvidia.

 

[derFeef]

I don't know. I feel AMD offers really good FPS/$ in comparison to nVidia. Even today if they got their act MORE together with drivers and launch days they would be the go to buy imo. I think that is a good investment and if they want a larger market they need to get rid of the ATi drivers = bad notion.

Yes it does, but it says something about how developers wouldn't buy a single AMD card in the first place imo.

The "bad drivers" notion is outdated, but reading this thread makes me a little bit mad as it is still stuck in peoples head. There are problems with nvidia as well but no one talks about that (see BF3, even there AMD gets blamed falsely). The only time I had problem recently was Rage and that got fixed two days after launch.

with the red team's perpetual legacy of being the underdog, it's easy to forget that amd is a company with twice the employees/revenue of nvidia.

With half of it (?) dedicated to CPU's.

 

[Fezan]

And i just bought 6790 ...was hearing rumor of mid year release so couldn't wait that long..Also include me in camp which think ati drivers sucks..the only reason i went with ati is price/performance ratio is great

 

[MickeyKnox]

I wonder if they'll stick with the numbering system, what happens when they get up to another 9700 Pro you can't just re-use it, that's such a legendary card like the GeForce 256, the GeForce 3 and the 8800 GTX.

 

[Fallout-NL]

And i just bought 6790 ...was hearing rumor of mid year release so couldn't wait that long..Also include me in camp which think ati drivers sucks..the only reason i went with ati is price/performance ratio is great

Should have waited man

 

[Clott]

Will be waiting for Nvidias rendition of the 28nm card.

I have a 580 and that should hold me until then.

 

[Hazaro]

The "bad drivers" notion is outdated, but reading this thread makes me a little bit mad as it is still stuck in peoples head. There are problems with nvidia as well but no one talks about that (see BF3, even there AMD gets blamed falsely). The only time I had problem recently was Rage and that got fixed two days after launch.

Yeah, but half the people saying bad drivers are AMD owners, so obviously they need to convey a better message at the very least.

 

[K.Jack]

HP is releasing its new Envy 15 and 17 multimedia/gaming notebooks on the 7th, both of which supposedly house under NDA 7000M graphics chips.

Don't be too surprised or disappointed if this announcement is centered around those cards.

 

[Fezan]

Should have waited man

Skyrim, Batman, Battlefield 3. I tried but it was a losing war.

Spoiler

Also had a University project on UDK

 

[SuperÑ]

I'll probably sell my 6950@70 2Gb when the new cards arrive if its substitute reaches ~70% performance gain.

 

[Chris R]

HP is releasing its new Envy 15 and 17 multimedia/gaming notebooks on the 7th, both of which supposedly house under NDA 7000M graphics chips.

Don't be too surprised or disappointed if this announcement is centered around those cards.

How sweet would a laptop with Ivy Bridge and one of these new 7000m chips be... Hnnnnnng

 

[DodgyGeezerFella]

Like others have said, AMD hardware i cant fault, but everytime ive been with AMD, i buy a game day of release, and find the game has problems, either sub par frame rates, stuttering or other oddities, which either dont happen on Nvidia hardware, either because the drivers are already out, or beta drivers were released either before or not long after the games release.

For example recently i had a 4870 in my system, got BF3 day of release, it ran like shit, even on 720p Low settings. Swapped in an 8800GT, it ran significantly better, 720p on Medium was quite playable, on Low no problem whatsoever. I recently put the 4870 back in, and got the latest drivers, and finally the game is playable at 1080p Medium. Yay ! But if i had stuck with Nvidia in the first place, i wouldnt of had this problem and would just have had happy gaming for whatever the time from release to the new drivers was (2/3 weeks ?).

I want AMD to get there shit together, because there hardware is powerful and the cheaper equivalent to Nvidia, but the drivers just make my fun time shitty :/ I shouldnt have to wait nearly a month to play my game "properly".

Yes, Nvidia fucks up on games too (Dragon Age 2 for example "•Up to 516% in Dragon Age 2" LOL no Nvidia, you mean it finally runs properly), but from my own experience, its usually a safer bet for more games than AMD, either because it works day 1 or is quickly fixed with a beta driver (which, i still dont like, but its better than AMD, who i dont see releasing nearly as many beta drivers as Nvidia).

 

[Fireye]

I'll probably sell my 6950@70 2Gb when the new cards arrive if its substitute reaches ~70% performance gain.

Going from a 5850 to a 6950 (I think that's the equivilant in the 6xxx series) was only a 15-40% improvement. A 70% improvement would be HUGE, and unlikely:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=293#

This is why I skip a generation (at least) between videocard upgrades, going from gen5 to gen6 isn't really noticable.

 

[Minsc]

Hopefully even the people who dislike AMD/ATI cards still appreciate having them around to give a little competition, that never hurt anyone, that much.

I don't really have any complaints for my 5870, but then again I don't play as many games day 1 as others, so issues tend to be resolved by the time I get to the games. Stuff like Starcraft 2, The Witcher 2, Skyrim, Dawn of War 2, and plenty of others work fine at release for me, and my entire library of older games works fine too. I'm not about to blame them for RAGE (it doesn't take a genius to know their OpenGL support is not up to par and to expect issues), or Batman AC's DX11 performance, when issues are a plenty for everyone.

XFire is a whole separate thing I can see causes a lot of trouble, and overall I do agree the number of issues that people have had w/ AMD is not good. Hopefully things get better for them, but when I do get a new card, I'll do what I did with the 5870, and get whatever seems to offer the best performance when I upgrade. It'd be nice to see AMD give 3DVision and physX a little competition in the future too, but I'm pretty sure they said they were more in favor of open solutions.

 

[EternalGamer]

The "bad drivers" notion is outdated, but reading this thread makes me a little bit mad as it is still stuck in peoples head. There are problems with nvidia as well but no one talks about that (see BF3, even there AMD gets blamed falsely). The only time I had problem recently was Rage and that got fixed two days after launch.



With half of it (?) dedicated to CPU's.

You must not play many games on release. Crossfired gamers continually got fucked this year with games they had to wait weeks if not months to play properly. Witcher 2, Batman AA, Rage, Skyrim, the list goes on and on.

 

[Necronomikon]

Not falling for this right away as I did with my 6870. I've learned that when new video cards launch you should wait to see what the competition brings to the table, which features are worth the while, prices to drop, fixed performance and most of all... if the jump is worth!

I upgraded my rig so I could play Crysis 2 on ULTRA on day 1 and sadly Crysis 2 on day 1 was a disappointment, then The Witcher 2 and BF3 came out and they're worth it but not worth enough to spend more of the kind of dough I could've invested in a top class last series card (5870). That and support from software (like Linux OS or games) tend to be less compatible with newer stuff.

This time around I'll wait a long time before an upgrade as in the near future there's nothing worth it that could make me jump in the wagon right away!

 

[ShdwDrake]

Had a 4870 now I 6870.... going with NVidia as my next card.

 

[scitek]

Wow there's a lot of hate for ATI in this thread. I've been running a 5770 after my 8800GTX committed suicide and have been happy with its performance. Are all these driver problems people are mentioning related to ATI's higher end cards?

They're primarily issues for people who play games on day one. AMD is very slow at fixing things -- like mentioned, they're still fixing Rage -- but from my experience with them over the past two years (went from a 5770 to a 6950), they've been alright. I'd certainly welcome better support, but I don't often buy games on day one, so I can usually wait it out. And when there are issues, like with Rage, they're usually minor things, or things I'm fortunate enough not to experience. That said, when I do upgrade again in 2013, I'll be going with Nvidia just because I want to try them out. (Last Nvidia card I owned was a Geforce4 Ti4200 ). I'm going to upgrade my CPU early next year.

 

[Zzoram]

Oh I want to like AMD, but they haven't done anything to fix the Radeon driver problems.

They tend to have slightly better value in terms of raw power/$ but that gets negated by the driver headaches.

 

[Big-E]

What are the problems with Saints Row 3 people are having on AMD? I am using a 5870 mobile card and am getting the game to play ok on pretty much high at 720p. I lose frames from time to time but nothing earth shattering from an open world game. Are nvidia cards not dropping frames as much?

 

[kamspy]

It'd be nice to see AMD give 3DVision and physX a little competition in the future too, but I'm pretty sure they said they were more in favor of open solutions.

It's funny because that's their stance against PhsyX, but then they can't get OpenGL right.

 

[krameriffic]

The "bad drivers" notion is outdated, but reading this thread makes me a little bit mad as it is still stuck in peoples head. There are problems with nvidia as well but no one talks about that (see BF3, even there AMD gets blamed falsely). The only time I had problem recently was Rage and that got fixed two days after launch.

So you think the entire world is just biased against them? There are so many people who still post that they have problems with AMD cards and comparatively fewer with NV. My own personal experience dictates that I've never had major driver level issues with an NV card. I owned mostly ATI cards back in the day, starting with a 9800 Pro, then an X1900XTX, a 4850 and most recently a 4890. I had an 8800GT at some point in there as my only NV card and now I'm on a 560 Ti. I had no problems at all with the NV cards but constant headaches with the AMD ones.

It's like the people who defend Razer because they own a Deathadder that works fine while you can find a thousand posts on the internet complaining about Razer's build quality, quality control and support being complete shit. Just because you personally don't have issues with it doesn't mean you should ignore the relevant masses of people who are posting about issues with the hardware.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

Thanks to babel-crocodile Google translation


For people, who dont know what GCN architecture is about .. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=434388

Lock if posted, tried searching but couldnt find anything.

Was the Wii really ahead of the game then? Nintendo redeemed?

Spoiler

derp

 

[BoobPhysics101]

Finally. Knew they'd reveal in December. I'll take a 7950 or 7970 day 1 depending on price, especially if it's 1.5x-2x+ faster than my GTX 570.

Also, overclocking these should be awesome. I fully expected 150-250 Mhz core overclocks to be the norm on these beasts.

Going from a 5850 to a 6950 (I think that's the equivilant in the 6xxx series) was only a 15-40% improvement. A 70% improvement would be HUGE, and unlikely:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=293#

This is why I skip a generation (at least) between videocard upgrades, going from gen5 to gen6 isn't really noticable.

Sorry man, but you're about to be blown away. Remember, 5870 to 6950 wasn't a DIE shrink generational leap. 4870 to 5870 was, and the 5870 was like 70-90% faster than the 4870.

Now we're going from 40nm to 28nm AND getting an entirely new architecture. Don't be surprised if one 7950/7970 is as fast as two 6950/6970's in Crossfire.

 

[tenchir]

They going from 40 nm(5000/6000 series) straight to 28nm? That's an awfully big jumped.

 

[lunarworks]

Number rollover!

I wonder how this compares with my ancient Radeon 7200.

 

[Pachinko]

I've got 2x5870 crossfire'd right now and it seems to handle most things fine. I usually don't buy pc games day 1 either since steam has them for 75% or more off within a few months anyway so slow driver updates have never been much of a problem for me. The direct X 10 memory leak issue in crysis' final stage being a notable exception. The game WAS like 2 years old by then.

I'll probably sit out a GPU upgrade until new games consoles are out. I just can't see my personal gains being that high.

 

[obonicus]

No, we're talking exclusivity deals with programs like TWIMTBP.

Yeah, but like, with Saints Row 3, the game is 'AMD Gaming Evolved', and it still runs better on Nvidia. What's the reasoning there?

 

[XiaNaphryz]

It's kind of a toss, really. There are cases where Nvidia has poor drivers, too.

Nvidia is much more likely to respond quickly with updated drivers for issues though. Considering how good their driver team is on the developer side (Quadros) in responding to issues, I'm sure it has an effect on the consumer side as well.

Funding. Hardly AMD's fault.

Nvidia's developer support is top-notch and a major reason why so many developers and other companies (Pixar, ILM) use them. And when it comes to game developers, it's very common for hardware companies to donate a few cards for troubleshooting/developer purposes. I remember getting cards from ATI and Nvidia all the time back when I did hardware testing several years ago. Not sure if AMD still does it.

AMD has a looooong way to go in the developer support area still for GPU stuff. They're alright on the CPU/server side though.

 

[Gav47]

Can't wait to see the benchmarks on these bad boys. 40nm to 28nm is a huge leap forward, I'm hoping to see at least a 50% increase in performance. That said I'll be holding out for Nvidia's offering, there has been too many horror stories involving AMD cards in the past few months.

 

[hteng]

single card on crysis 1 1080p and 60fps on ultra settings possible?

 

[Zombie James]

Plan on building a new PC in the new year and really looking forward to these new architectures. Hope the mid-range offerings are decent and have reasonable power draw, but most of all I hope AMD works on the driver interface. CCC is a bloated mess and I hate using it for anything. And more filter-based AA modes!

 

[artist]

I wouldn't run an ATI card again even if it was given to me for free...

Hyperbole ..

The "bad drivers" notion is outdated, but reading this thread makes me a little bit mad as it is still stuck in peoples head. There are problems with nvidia as well but no one talks about that (see BF3, even there AMD gets blamed falsely). The only time I had problem recently was Rage and that got fixed two days after launch.

As usual in GAF, the hyperbole is present here. With the 'me too' negatives in this thread there are positives coming from AMD owners as well;

Wow there's a lot of hate for ATI in this thread. I've been running a 5770 after my 8800GTX committed suicide and have been happy with its performance.

I'll be watching this release closely. Used ATI for my last two PC builds and haven't really had any issues, with drivers or hardware (Using a 4870 currently).

with the red team's perpetual legacy of being the underdog, it's easy to forget that amd is a company with twice the employees/revenue of nvidia.

lol, you have no clue.

 

[Ryoma-Echizen]

Wow there's a lot of hate for ATI in this thread. I've been running a 5770 after my 8800GTX committed suicide and have been happy with its performance. Are all these driver problems people are mentioning related to ATI's higher end cards?

You'll see it every time AMD releases a new gpu and nvidia with nothing to compete for a long, long time.

AMD new and improved mobile chips vs Nvidia rebrands.
High end GTX600 for Q4 2012/Q1 2013 with 250w+ power consumption (HD7970 tops at 190w)

 

[Kabuki Waq]

i recently moved to the green for the first time. I dont think i am ever going back. Everything just runs smoother with less hassle IMO.
I like the CCC interface and I liek the ATI cards but fuck so many little issues with drivers really adds up IMO.