AMD R9 300 Series to be released soon

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Nemo
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AMD R9 300 Series to be released soon

Post by Nemo »

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AMD is preparing to counter Nvidia Maxwell GTX 900 series with its new tree of releases soon. If you wanted to buy one of the new Nvidia cards but thought everytime ''or shall I wait a bit more to see what AMD has to offer..'' just like me well it seems the waiting is soon over (hopefully) after the endless rumors and silence from AMD side.

Im planning to buy a graphics card within few weeks so I can play some games at high/ultra settings again. I don't really care if it is a Nvidia or an AMD card, I look at its performance and price and thats what matters for me. I upgraded my system completely and currently running with integraded graphics (sucks damn hard..). I was very tempted to get the GTX 970 4GB (actually 3,5GB+0,5GB, works great still but some had stutters when it overrided 3,5GB using the last 0,5GB slow vram) but because of its memory issue I didn't wanted to spend so much money on it. GTX 980 on the other hand doesn't match its price/performance in my opinion and is therefore too expensive for only +-10FPS difference. GTX960.. Well it had 2GB of vram (I want minimal 4GB) but later they added another 2GB but it has only 128bit bus which made me think. The GTX 970 is the ideal card that fits my purposes for now. Not to forget that the prices will drop eventually after the new AMD releases. And the new Ti cards from Nvidia right after that. If you wait too long you will wait endless really ;D so at some point you have to make a decision. If the new AMD cards won't impress me I will probably go with one of the GTX model.

I know that the R9 290 (x) is a strong card but knowing that AMD will release a new series I didn't wanted to buy an old card (old but still going very strong). Alot of people struggled with its heat problem and its high power usage while some clearly didn't. I was thinking of getting this instead the GTX 970 but thought imma wait a little bit more.

I don't know who follows and likes the latest GPU news but here is an interesting article about the latest technology from AMD: AMD Radeon R9 390X Pictured – Fiji XT, HBM, Small Form Factor And Water Cooling. The pictures are from the coming R9 390x card (they say).

Any others that are waiting to upgrade/buy a graphics card? Or bought one?

Sidenote: Keep the topic clean. I know that there are heavy discussions with Nvidia Vs AMD everywhere that turns out into using bad words. Keep it neat, thanks.
ROCK N ROLL KID

Re: AMD R9 300 Series to be released soon

Post by ROCK N ROLL KID »

Nice. I have AMD R9 270x and these cards are awesome. I haven't tried any Nvidia cards, yet, but I might someday.
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Peter
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Re: AMD R9 300 Series to be released soon

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Due to PhysX, Gameworks, Sli (which works on Win,Linux,BSD flawless), Shadowplay, CUDA, LightBoost (that's god-tier), G-Sync... I use Nvidia.
Yes, it costs more, but electricity is not cheap either, and I just hate to have a room heater in the summer.

I bought a Radeon 7870 for my second desktop, don't get me wrong. It was fine for the price. I paid around 60$ for it.
But the above mentioned stuff is missing, so quite some games look/play worse.

I understand that proprietary technologies created by Nvidia is something AMD cannot compete with.
But they could have (just maybe) implemented similar technologies, there would be no issue.

And yes, the 3.5GB thing was a scumbag move, there is no denying it.

AMD do implement things to compete, but for example, there is Raptr now.
Which feels like a very outdated Xfire from the 2000 era, bundled with crapware.
Sure I can record gameplay now, but with a software full of crapware? Just why?
It's like Oracle's move to bundle ASK into the JRE installer.
There is now Freesync with the ghosting issue and such.

Oh well, we will see what the 300 series will bring us.
I just hope it won't be a rebrand again, and that they will be able to push down power consumption.
AMD could also open it's Linux driver 100%, and do away with the proprietary one.
That would be also a very nice/good move. Their open-source driver is OK, but got terrible bugs, and the devs cannot even fix them.
(I have a mobile Radeon in an old laptop, the open-source driver just cannot boot the PC at every 3-4 boots... lol.)

@Nemo
You could just buy a 780 Ti, they sell them for cheap now. (Depends on the country tho.)
Even though it's got 3gigs of ram "only", it will never get choppy.
Or just go for the 980.
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Re: AMD R9 300 Series to be released soon

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Yes, its true that Nvidia has alot more extras where the games benefit from and even more if they are optimized for it. And to be honest there are alot more games optimized for Nvidia (it seems) than for AMD. The drivers are also better in most cases. Only real thing that comes to my mind is Mantle but thats not being used very actively yet. Nvidia has the better options but im still waiting to see what 300 series offers. The devs on Nvidia side seem to release and improve drivers much faster than AMD does also. Im not a ''fanboy'' (hate that word..) that I prefer one or the other, infact I like both of them. Just want a card that performs well with a comparable pricetag. And there has to be some competition for Nvidia also so the prices can go a bit lower instead Nvida being the only GPU manufacturer keeping the prices high without any competition.

Rumors say that R9 360/370/380 will be rebrands and 390 will be a new one with new memory stuff called HBM. You know, rumors; It could be completely new ones or only rebrands for 360/370 we will see. New OEM systems will be released by HP with OEM models from 370/380 (rebrands, not the retail cards that you get when you buy one) at 10 June so I expect the new retail cards somewhere 1 June - 7 June to be announced.

Nvidia has Shadowplay that is much more popular than Raptr for recording game sessions. Seems more preferred than anything else to record. The crap that comes with it and some other programs like Oracle is really bad. You need to be concentrated and go step by step through the installation in order to avoid it. Its being done very sneaky though *KUCH uTorrent *KUCH*.

The 780 Ti 3GB models are going for around 650 Euro here, then its better to get a 980 with full 4GB instead 970 with its memory issue. But then again; 970 costs around 360-390 Euro (depends on the brands) and 980 costs close to 600 Euro and thats a huge price gap for the performance you will get for 8-10FPS more. So I think that the 970 is the better choice for me for 1080p.

My decision will be probably between R9 380x, 970 or 980 if it gets cheaper to compete with the new releases from AMD. 600+ Euro for a new card is just damn expensive, before you know its outdated next year. My budget is around 250-500 as 500 is the real max I want to spend on it. If im done for 350 is perfect, or lower, but I want to be ''future proof'' so I can use it for 2 years or so.
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Peter
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Re: AMD R9 300 Series to be released soon

Post by Peter »

So I think that the 970 is the better choice for me for 1080p.
Well, you won't have a problem with 1080p games, that's for sure.
And there are tools (RivaTuner + MSI AfterBurner) that can display active memory usage... but seriously, there are rarely - if any game hitting that 3.5gb mark.
(I have 4gb on my gpu, but I only play in 1080p and a tiny fraction of that is used only all the time.)

Just checked, GTA V eats currently 2.3gb / 4gb (everything maxed out , 1080p)
By the way, do invest in a >120hz display with 3D/LightBoost.*
LightBoost gives you CRT like god-tier refresh: http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion- ... boost-faq/

* Most 120hz Benq gaming displays know it, it's not expensive.
Last edited by Peter on Sun May 10, 2015 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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