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Airmantharp
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:27 am

cynan wrote:
CityEater wrote:
Don't some of the crossfire issues in recent press point to something more fundamental architecturally than merely driver issues though? Or have I been reading it wrong? Presumably AMD are aware of the problem, what would it take to revamp crossfire at a hardware level, is there any reason they wouldn't?

Looking forward to the announcement though. I wonder if $599 gets you a copy of BF4 aswell...

I kind of wish they would bring a new feature set along to the table like HDMI 2.0 or game streaming to a tv dongle or something but that's probably wishful thinking. This is a genuine question but what makes these cards any more expensive to produce than a Kepler (If the leaks are true)?


To answer the second part, die size, 512-bit bus, etc. Essentially the bigger and more complex the die, the poorer the yields per wafer.

For the first part, we don't really know if there is a "fundamental" architectural hurdle in the way of crossfire and multi-GPU gaming. I think most of this is speculation based on the 4 megapixel frame limitation of the crossfire bridge. However, at least for the present, there are no single displays greater than 4 megapixels as all 4K displays are currently tiled (two displays in one), so at some point the image has to be split up regardless. It's outputting them to the display stream at the right time that seems to be the issue - which suggests a software timing solution. And if Nvidia can make it work reasonably well, then there's always hope for AMD...


There's a ton of hope for AMD- and in reality, there's very little reason to doubt that they won't get it right. That's why I'm really looking forward to these cards. If they screw up, we'll know it. If they don't, they'll probably far and away the best solution for 4k gaming for your money. Give me pixels or give me death :D.
 
Waco
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:37 am

Airmantharp wrote:

That's your own damn fault- anyone in the know knew better! :-p

I bought it launch day and while I understood the drivers would be the saving grace for that card...my experience with my 9800 Pro made me believe ATI could pull it off.
Victory requires no explanation. Defeat allows none.
 
cynan
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:39 am

Airmantharp wrote:

There's a ton of hope for AMD- and in reality, there's very little reason to doubt that they won't get it right. That's why I'm really looking forward to these cards. If they screw up, we'll know it. If they don't, they'll probably far and away the best solution for 4k gaming for your money. Give me pixels or give me death :D.


Yeah. The main issue is whether AMD can fix these issues in a quick enough time frame that avoids them getting utterly trampled into the ground by Nvidia's relentless PR machine.
 
clone
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:06 pm

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Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:53 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Airmantharp
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 3:24 pm

Waco wrote:
Airmantharp wrote:

That's your own damn fault- anyone in the know knew better! :-p

I bought it launch day and while I understood the drivers would be the saving grace for that card...my experience with my 9800 Pro made me believe ATI could pull it off.


I went ATI from the 8500 Pro to the X800 Pro- but jumped ship when this card came along. Not sure why I knew to avoid it; other than being mostly poor and not being able to afford it on launch day anyway, which might have saved me. The 8800GTS 640MB I went with was certainly a beast in comparison :).

And sadly, I've only strayed to AMD once since then; I traded my 1.25GB GTX570SC straight up for a 2GB HD6950, then added a second, to power my 2560x1600 HP ZR30w. That experience was fairly good outside of BF3, which was atrocious, for reasons that I didn't really understand until later. But seriously, those same reasons still exist in AMD's current drivers. They don't fix that, they deserve every bit of negative PR Nvidia throws at them. They've had years, for God's sake.
 
flip-mode
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 5:01 pm

Airmantharp wrote:
They don't fix that, they deserve every bit of negative PR Nvidia throws at them. They've had years, for God's sake.

Yep. QFT.
 
JohnC
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 5:34 pm

Airmantharp wrote:
they deserve every bit of negative PR Nvidia throws at them.

Sad but true.

P.S: We need moar AMD fanbots in this forums, a couple of current ones aren't very entertaining to work with :wink:
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mdk77777
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 6:06 pm

meh...I tend to avoid NV because of bumpgate, and their high prices.

but to each their own. Spending a couple grand on SLI just seems a little excessive...It is just a game after all.

really $600 is the most I'm willing to spend, and I really like to spend closer to $350.

All debate is rather pointless, the proof will be in the pudding shortly.

If they fail, they will just focus on the consul business for a few more years.















me
 
flip-mode
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 6:21 pm

JohnC wrote:
P.S: We need moar AMD fanbots in this forums, a couple of current ones aren't very entertaining to work with :wink:

Please go somewhere else for that kind of entertainment. Maturity is underrated.
 
Ryu Connor
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 6:26 pm

JohnC wrote:
Airmantharp wrote:
they deserve every bit of negative PR Nvidia throws at them.

Sad but true.

P.S: We need moar AMD fanbots in this forums, a couple of current ones aren't very entertaining to work with :wink:


No thanks. We're all full up on crazy here.

Sort of like my relationship with my 4870X2. It beat me till I bled and I kept coming back each monthly driver release when it promised me it had changed.

See, definition if insanity right there.

Personally I could care less if AMD cards cure cancer at this point. I've got my dignity and it says I'll never let myself get beat again. As I see it all these EyeFinity and Crossfire problems just illustrate a company who in addition to not having their eye on the ball (What QA?) simply has no pride in their work. Finding out these heavily pushed features are broken is equivalent to the network guys who let the patch panel become a rats nest because they don't give a damn about anything other than drawing a paycheck. It also illustrated that even three generations since my last purchase nothing had really changed.

My time per hour is worth more than the price differences people fight over so deeply on these cards.

I will give them this, they are performing just like a $3 a share company in my eyes.
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michael_d
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 6:27 pm

If this benchmarks and specs turn out to be true, it is a Titan killer.
 
sschaem
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 8:44 pm

This is a product I would not pre-order....

My prediction ? more article like this one

http://techreport.com/news/24136/driver ... of-updates

And from past record, it will take AMD 6 month to 5 years to address them?

But I hope TechReport shows us that AMD changed, and the 2 years they took to release this card was well spent.
 
JohnC
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Mon Sep 23, 2013 8:47 pm

Ryu Connor wrote:
Sort of like my relationship with my 4870X2. It beat me till I bled and I kept coming back each monthly driver release when it promised me it had changed.
See, definition if insanity right there.

:D I know that feeling oh-so-well...

Edit: Found that torture device! Sorry for crappy cellphone pic, too lazy to get the proper camera:

Image
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Waco
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 8:45 am

Airmantharp wrote:
I went ATI from the 8500 Pro to the X800 Pro- but jumped ship when this card came along.

I should have known better. My X850XT experiences weren't great...I just had that hope in the back of my mind that they'd pull it off.
Victory requires no explanation. Defeat allows none.
 
flip-mode
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 9:19 am

FWIW, being a single card user, the only problem I've ever had with Radeon drivers was back when Windows 7 first came out and I had a weird issue with resuming from sleep.

All the problems are usually limited to Crossfire users, with are a sliver of the market. Then these issues with Crossfire on 4K monitors are a sliver of that sliver.

In fairness to the Radeon driver team, the single card drivers are pretty good as far as I'm concerned. I've got the HD 7850 in my work machine that I use 8 hours a day and I never have a problem. I had a series of Radeons at home and never had an issue playing games. I was never a hardcore gamer, though, and never played newly released games, so I never got bit by new-release issues.

The Crossfire issues are giving AMD bad publicity. It would be nice to see AMD do more obsessive QC testing of Crossfire, even testing niche scenarios. And it would be nice for AMD to start listening a little harder, for instance, to people who have insisted there are stutter problems in Crossfire. It took years and finally a tool that could deliver hard numbers before AMD really paid attention to the issue. Meanwhile, we hear that Nvidia has had frame pacing optimizations baked in since the GTX 8000 series, and that SLI works just fine at 4K. :shrug:
 
Waco
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 10:06 am

I've had bad luck with AMD drivers just being stupid (even with a single 7970). Between CCC not installing properly (as in it just won't load) and taking 2-3 times installing/cleaning/reinstalling to get it to work and random crashes in my HTPC with various 7750s and 7770s after extended periods of video playback I was happy to move to 770s.

I've been on the red team for a very long time but I honestly enjoy playing with my SLI setup whereas my Crossfire setups (all of them) have been quite cranky at best.
Victory requires no explanation. Defeat allows none.
 
DancinJack
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 10:13 am

We get it. You guys don't like AMD drivers.
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sschaem
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 12:34 pm

DancinJack wrote:
We get it. You guys don't like AMD drivers.


Rant of the day.

I wonder if anyone , ANYONE, at AMD goes on the internet and read all the discontent and is actually going to do something about it ?

Most recently there was some "warlordFragger" (or some silly handle like that.) user that recently registered claiming he was from AMD, and was here to answer questions, but bailed out after people asked questions.
No credential, posted the same intro to a dozen boards, no proof or even a signature with AMD credential verification. People had to play detective and ask other AMD employee if he was legit because he refuse to himself provide a verifiable AMD link.
! How lame is that ?
And after he was confirm to be from AMD.. just ignored question and left.. asking people to PM him... WTF AMD ?! More Marketing Self destruction ?

My guess is that people stating their disappointment are just dismissed by AMD , 'Just isolated cases', until it goes mainstream, like the shoddy memory manager in GCN1 or frame pacing/ lack off in crossfire, etc...
The memory manager issue was not fix even a year after the 7970 release. it was only after it was exposed via full articles on tech sites.
New management, new marketing group of people, new CEO, new VP... same AMD. Ignore problems, do nothing about them, untill the sit hit the fan all over the web.

The work at AMD HW division seem world class (I mean ATI), the rest of the company feel so amateurish and out of touch, with a "who cares" attitude :(
AMD need to stop relying on ATI HW guys to keep the company afloat and need to bust some ass and start working !!!
#1 Hire experienced software designers that knows realtime graphics... "But they ask to much money !" ... well then, dont call your next GPU "Fiji" or "Bahamas" so you can save millions and use that for R&D.
Your Marketing group is wasting money to get a lavish trip to remote pacific resort islands.
Instead... call you next chip "San Jose" .. and the million you save, but a bounty to get nvidia people to switch boat. $500,000 + loads of share will do the trick.. and that is still a fraction of what you pay your "Doctors." VPs for steering the company into a wall.
Save money, hire pros... No lavish parties for a GPU when the web is laughting/lamenting at your graphic drivers.
Ok, your merketing guys wont be happy that GCN3 will be called "San Jose" Instead of "Bahamas" , but think about the company VS just having fun. Because at this rate, Hawaii release party fee like a "Lets spend the cash we borrowed while AMD is not bankrupt"
Yes, AMD pays about 200 million a year in terest on the 2+billion they had to borrow to pay the emploeys that are left.. sold the Austin offices, Sold Taiwan offices, ... Plane is diving and the Pilot is sipping martinis in the back.

Why cant AMD changes ? they had the opportunity 3 times, CEO and management. Every time AMD doesn't get better, it get worse ...

Oh ,well thats AMD for you. Second rate amateurish company with world class HW designers. I wouldn't be surprised many stayed to get GCN2.0 done, and now left to join the rest of the ATI crew at Apple, Samsung, etc..

side note: we are now going over 200 megabyte for a compressed download for a driver... a driver. Its absolutely mind boggling the bloat thats going on.
 
Star Brood
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 1:28 pm

I agree that the driver download/install process takes forever with AMD, but how big are the NVIDIA drivers? I remember the download/install taking the same amount of time when I had my GTS 250 installed.
 
clone
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 1:41 pm

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Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Firestarter
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 2:18 pm

I think AMD might as well just ditch Crossfire for the time being and focus their efforts on single GPU performance/compatibility. As long as there are 300W+ single GPU monsters that cost an arm and a leg, the use of Crossfire/SLI is limited to the fringe anyway.
 
cynan
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 3:28 pm

Firestarter wrote:
I think AMD might as well just ditch Crossfire for the time being and focus their efforts on single GPU performance/compatibility. As long as there are 300W+ single GPU monsters that cost an arm and a leg, the use of Crossfire/SLI is limited to the fringe anyway.


Pragmatically, this sort of makes sense. But what crossfire really is, is a marketing tech demo. One that AMD has championed for years as their answer to market-leading performance. If they pull the plug now while they've been caught with their pants down due to their own enduring negligence or incompetence (with ample help from their bestest competitor, of course), they'll be hard pressed to exonerate themselves in the eyes of the public as a leading gaming GPU company. They've dug their own whole with crossfire, and now, they had better have realized that their very reputation in this regard is dependent on digging themselves out as quickly as possible with a multi GPU solution that works as advertised (or at least as well as Nvidia's).
 
danny e.
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Tue Sep 24, 2013 5:12 pm

I've never had a problem with AMD drivers and I've had only ATI/AMD cards with the exception of one GeForce stint.

Granted, I don't play a lot of games, though. Half dozen or so.. but my next card will probably be an AMD one again if they can come out with the price/performance win
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anotherengineer
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:28 am

Possible reports it might just be a re-badge.
http://www.techpowerup.com/191440/radeo ... ition.html
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clone
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:43 am

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Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
neg
 
Airmantharp
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:44 am

anotherengineer wrote:
Possible reports it might just be a re-badge.
http://www.techpowerup.com/191440/radeo ... ition.html


Good fun- actually, this is what one would expect, and really it's the best solution. A new, larger, top-end GPU to compete with Nvidia in the gaming theater, which should actually be very competitive given the 'circuit density' in AMD's GPUs that focuses on gaming performance. It means that AMD should be able to build a card that is performance competitive with the GTX780 and Titan for gaming applications that's more efficient in every manner.

And for the lower end models to be 're-badges', well, since we're not going to another node, I don't see a reason for them to invest in a replacement spin unless there's a whole lot to be gained; and I don't think that there is, given just how extremely well AMD's products currently perform while running at the same node as their competitor's.
 
clone
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:00 am

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Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
neg
 
Waco
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:30 pm

clone wrote:
Your Marketing group is wasting money to get a lavish trip to remote pacific resort islands.
to be clear this is a small point, but I've found myself irritated by AMD's choice in this regard, it just seems like they haven't learned anything by doing this.

it's not that it'll break the company or anything but that it's indicative of a culture that's out of touch with the market it's reputation and it's position in it.

good hardware will sell itself especially when combined with good drivers... for a company that's recently been taking it on the chin in every way to suddenly do an absurdly expensive launch event just seems delusional.

a Jerry Sanders approach to the business which is what got them here in the first place.

This bugged me as well...they're hemorrhaging money but they throw a huge launch party like nothing is going on. I know that they've got to keep up the appearance that everything is just peachy but they could at least stay grounded in reality.

My first thought after reading that they were throwing a big party in Hawaii was "how much could they get done if they just paid the driver team to work overtime instead?"
Victory requires no explanation. Defeat allows none.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 1:38 pm

Yeah, it sounds more like a 'denial' strategy- to make it seem like they're actually making money or something. I'd rather them just be honest about it and tell us to 'let the cards speak for themselves'. They can do the lavish crap when they return to being a first-tier brand!
 
clone
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Re: AMD Hawaii R9-290X GPU

Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:47 pm

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Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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