GK104 = GTX 680 (confirmed), paper launching soon [SA]

Siryak said:
If Kepler can do BF3 in Nvidia Surround on ONE card, I will probably go back to team green. If it can't be done on one card though I will probably go for the 7970. Do you guys think 2GB of VRAM is enough for surround on BF3 at 5760x1080 though?
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at 5760x1080, a single gtx680 will probably run of gpu power before vram.
 
cannondale06 said:
at 5760x1080, a single gtx680 will probably run of gpu power before vram.
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I hope not...The 7970 can run BF3 on Ultra at a "playable" FPS, so I would assume it can run it on High or Medium at an actually "playable" FPS. If the Nvidia 680 is going to have more power than a 7970 it should handle it no problem unless it is limited by VRAM. Which personally running the game on High is perfectly fine for me. I can't really tell the difference between High and Ultra.
 
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Siryak said:
I hope not...The 7970 can run BF3 on Ultra at a "playable" FPS, so I would assume it can run it on High or Medium at an actually "playable" FPS. If the Nvidia 680 is going to have more power than a 7970 it should handle it no problem unless it is limited by VRAM. Which personally running the game on High is perfectly fine for me. I can't really tell the difference between High and Ultra.
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I have seen reviews showing a 7970 only getting about 40fps on Ultra settings with 4x AA at just 2560x1600. 5760x1080 is over 50% more pixels than 2560x1600 so it seems like a 7970 would start to struggle a bit even without AA at that high of resolution.
 
cannondale06 said:
I have seen reviews showing a 7970 only getting about 40fps on Ultra settings with 4x AA at just 2560x1600. 5760x1080 is over 50% more pixels than 2560x1600 so it seems like a 7970 would start to struggle a bit even without AA at that high of resolution.
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http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/9

There is a HardOCP review showing that it can just barely squeak by on Ultra in Eyefinity. For me personally those framerates would be a fail though. Like I said though I don't really care if I can run Ultra or not. The differences between Medium/High/Ultra or minuscule. Honestly the only way I can tell the difference between the 3 is if I am consciously trying to and this is with a still shot. In the heat of the moment I would never notice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ4sp55eLns
For example in that video I could barely tell the difference even if I was staring at it very closely.
 
Siryak said:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/9

There is a HardOCP review showing that it can just barely squeak by on Ultra in Eyefinity. For me personally those framerates would be a fail though. Like I said though I don't really care if I can run Ultra or not. The differences between Medium/High/Ultra or minuscule. Honestly the only way I can tell the difference between the 3 is if I am consciously trying to and this is with a still shot. In the heat of the moment I would never notice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ4sp55eLns
For example in that video I could barely tell the difference even if I was staring at it very closely.
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well that backs up what I was saying which is that you would run out of gpu power before 2gb of vram would be an issue. in other words you would have to use just FXAA and lower it to high to get over 40-45fps. at those settings you would likely be well under 2gb of vram usage.
 
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cannondale06 said:
well that backs up what I was saying which is that you would run out of gpu power before 2gb of vram would be an issue. in other words you would have to use just FXAA and lower it to high to get over 40-45fps. at those settings you would likely be well under 2gb of vram usage.
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Great! Maybe I will consider going Green then if they price that puppy reasonably. :D From what I have been reading since I decided to go AMD, Nvidia definitely has better drivers at launch usually.
 
I think if yields were fine that we could get a $399 gtx680 2gb since the actual chip they are using was probably originally meant to be a $249-$299 gtx660 part anyway. it appears that yields are not all that great though so Nvidia might just price this at 7970 levels since they know that they will sell every one they can make even at that high price.
 
Forceman said:
Kyle already said it does Nvidia Surround on one card.
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Then the question becomes can the card do it with the 2 dvi ports and the hdmi port? If not and the displayport has to be used can Surround be done without screen tearing.
 
Slava said:
I can't wait to get GTX 680, I got 7970 and had nothing but problems with it.
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It's that way with every new gen due to beta vid rivers and you may well have issues with GTX 680 too. That's one of the reasons I am now deliberately staying one gen behind.
 
kontact said:
It's that way with every new gen due to beta vid rivers and you may well have issues with GTX 680 too. That's one of the reasons I am now deliberately staying one gen behind.
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never had problems with a gtx 580 at lunch
 
cannondale06 said:
I think if yields were fine that we could get a $399 gtx680 2gb since the actual chip they are using was probably originally meant to be a $249-$299 gtx660 part anyway. it appears that yields are not all that great though so Nvidia might just price this at 7970 levels since they know that they will sell every one they can make even at that high price.
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When SA started the rumors about the $299 mid-range card, he was probably reporting about the GTX 670 Ti that is rumored be released with the GTX 680.
 
kontact said:
It's that way with every new gen due to beta vid rivers and you may well have issues with GTX 680 too. That's one of the reasons I am now deliberately staying one gen behind.
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I have had problems with the 79xx series too and it has been months since release. I never have had driver problems with nvidia on brand new cards, let alone for this long. Kepler can't come soon enough.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I have had problems with the 79xx series too and it has been months since release. I never have had driver problems with nvidia on brand new cards, let alone for this long. Kepler can't come soon enough.
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Ive had my 7970 for a few weeks now tested out dozens of games and havent had a problem with anything.Not sure why some of you have issues with the drivers but they have been solid for me
 
Banenwn said:
Ive had my 7970 for a few weeks now tested out dozens of games and havent had a problem with anything.Not sure why some of you have issues with the drivers but they have been solid for me
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Well considering they only JUST NOW released a WHQL driver for the 7970 (what 2 months after release?)....I can understand some peoples frustrations.
 
Banenwn said:
Ive had my 7970 for a few weeks now tested out dozens of games and havent had a problem with anything.Not sure why some of you have issues with the drivers but they have been solid for me
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Count yourself lucky. Ocn has a multithousand post thread of issues that most encounter.... even bad card drivers still work for some people though, same as anything.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Count yourself lucky. Ocn has a multithousand post thread of issues that most encounter.... even bad card drivers still work for some people though, same as anything.
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Yeah, and this is what they say over there as well:
Levesque said:
Everything is working fine for me with latest drivers and CAP, with 4X 7970 Quad-Fire in my main system with 3X 30" LCDs Eyefinity, and 2X 7970 Crossfire in my 2nd rig for LAN games at home.
All my cards are watercooled and heavealy OCed.

So if those 2 really complicated systems are working fine with over 100 games in my Steam profile, then there is only 2 possibilities.

1) I am extremely lucky, or 2) I know what I'm doing, and those with problems are suffering from PEBKAC.

I'm 99% sure number 2 is the good answer. So learn 2config, and stop complaining.
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http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/official-amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-owners-club/6120#post_16684204

Amazing how people will blame everyone but themselves. :rolleyes:
 
Mr. K6 said:
Yeah, and this is what they say over there as well:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/official-amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-owners-club/6120#post_16684204

Amazing how people will blame everyone but themselves. :rolleyes:
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Yes, because we all know that one success proves that all the other problems are made up. Good thing no one has ever had problems with Origin, since I personally haven't.

[H] themselves took AMD to task for crappy driver support, so I'd hardly say it's a PEBKAC issue.
 
Forceman said:
Yes, because we all know that one success proves that all the other problems are made up. Good thing no one has ever had problems with Origin, since I personally haven't.

[H] themselves took AMD to task for crappy driver support, so I'd hardly say it's a PEBKAC issue.
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There are thousands of posts on this forum and others over how much people are enjoying their cards. You can find thousands of other 79xx users that don't have problems either and don't even bother posting. Where's the arbitrary cut-off? There is none.

I don't doubt there are people with issues, but I do doubt that most of those issues aren't the user's fault (either from negligence or incompetency). I think CF setups had a mess of bugs or lack of support for a bit there and there's no reason for that. As I've said before, AMD's driver team shouldn't be surprised that the 79xx series was suddenly available, that's ridiculous. However, most of these card's problems are like any others and are PEBKAC.

I've fixed computers for close to a decade now and I'd say greater than 90% of the issues I see here, on other forums, or in person are user-related. There's an interesting phenomenon where once a problem is announced or identified, anyone with any problem jumps on the bandwagon, despite their issue(s) having nothing to do with it. Like I said, it's typical that people would rather blame anything but themselves.
 
DASHlT said:
Well considering they only JUST NOW released a WHQL driver for the 7970 (what 2 months after release?)....I can understand some peoples frustrations.
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Those where the same as the 12.2 pre certified ones, and the extra time it took was to get the certification.

12.2 pre-certified did come out 1month and 1 week after the 7970 official "out in the wild" date (jan 9th), so it was bad, just not as bad as most people claim, which is actually pretty darn standard on these forums.
 
Mr. K6 said:
There are thousands of posts on this forum and others over how much people are enjoying their cards. You can find thousands of other 79xx users that don't have problems either and don't even bother posting. Where's the arbitrary cut-off? There is none.

I don't doubt there are people with issues, but I do doubt that most of those issues aren't the user's fault (either from negligence or incompetency). I think CF setups had a mess of bugs or lack of support for a bit there and there's no reason for that. As I've said before, AMD's driver team shouldn't be surprised that the 79xx series was suddenly available, that's ridiculous. However, most of these card's problems are like any others and are PEBKAC.

I've fixed computers for close to a decade now and I'd say greater than 90% of the issues I see here, on other forums, or in person are user-related. There's an interesting phenomenon where once a problem is announced or identified, anyone with any problem jumps on the bandwagon, despite their issue(s) having nothing to do with it. Like I said, it's typical that people would rather blame anything but themselves.
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I'm not saying there aren't issues both ways and I wasn't targeting your post, but that condescending crap from the guy you quoted - the if I don't have problems than everyone else is just an idiot angle - really pisses me off.
 
My experience, and the consensus opinion, is that Nvidia driver support beats AMD.

The two things that worked better for me with Nvidia cards are less crashes with games and more stable framerates in lesser known games. My theory is that both companies do a good job making their cards work well in the games that get benchmarked in reviews (cod, crysis, dirt 3, etc). But on lesser known games I have more problems with Radeon cards. Examples: Sega Rally Revo, Red Faction Guerilla, Cryostasis.

Considering that this website has written an article recently critical of AMD for poor crossfire support, it would be hard to argue otherwise. I certainly trust hardocp in this regard.
 
Siryak said:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/9

There is a HardOCP review showing that it can just barely squeak by on Ultra in Eyefinity. For me personally those framerates would be a fail though. Like I said though I don't really care if I can run Ultra or not. The differences between Medium/High/Ultra or minuscule. Honestly the only way I can tell the difference between the 3 is if I am consciously trying to and this is with a still shot. In the heat of the moment I would never notice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ4sp55eLns
For example in that video I could barely tell the difference even if I was staring at it very closely.
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cannondale06 said:
well that backs up what I was saying which is that you would run out of gpu power before 2gb of vram would be an issue. in other words you would have to use just FXAA and lower it to high to get over 40-45fps. at those settings you would likely be well under 2gb of vram usage.
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You need to overclock the 7970: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/09/amd_radeon_hd_7970_overclocking_performance_review/6
 
Forceman said:
I'm not saying there aren't issues both ways and I wasn't targeting your post, but that condescending crap from the guy you quoted - the if I don't have problems than everyone else is just an idiot angle - really pisses me off.
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I agree it's condescending, however I think he has a point.
biggles said:
My experience, and the consensus opinion, is that Nvidia driver support beats AMD.

The two things that worked better for me with Nvidia cards are less crashes with games and more stable framerates in lesser known games. My theory is that both companies do a good job making their cards work well in the games that get benchmarked in reviews (cod, crysis, dirt 3, etc). But on lesser known games I have more problems with Radeon cards. Examples: Sega Rally Revo, Red Faction Guerilla, Cryostasis.

Considering that this website has written an article recently critical of AMD for poor crossfire support, it would be hard to argue otherwise. I certainly trust hardocp in this regard.
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Cryostasis is one of the few GPU PhysX supported games, of course it will run better on an NVIDIA card. And here's a counter Red Faction example - http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/318357-33-nvidia-used . My point is that each company has its own set of problems. Personally, I will never trust a new NVIDIA driver release again until a lot of the community has already been the guinea pigs. This is after I had the dreaded 9800 series executioner drivers that killed a friend's 9800GTX (and many other cards). The fact that such an error could make it past QA is much more grievous than any delayed multi-GPU support, etc IMO. Anyway, I digress.
 
any type of configuration issue ussually gets blamed on drivers because folks don't know the real reason.

if the drivers work, who cares if they are certified, and if you have issues with a single card it's 90 percent likely the drivers aren't to blame.
 
To me this just seems like such a terrible time to buy a high end video card.

When I bought my 8800GTX, nothing came close. There was no other card that could even touch it besides the 8800 Ultra, so the price ($500ish) was justified.

...but now? Not even close. It seems like while everything else has gotten cheaper, we're all getting gouged on video cards these days--and people are suggesting the 680 will be $400-450ish? Makes me laugh.
 
stealthy123 said:
any type of configuration issue ussually gets blamed on drivers because folks don't know the real reason.

if the drivers work, who cares if they are certified, and if you have issues with a single card it's 90 percent likely the drivers aren't to blame.
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Wow, 90%? Amazing! Mind linking to that study?

AMD is well-known for having iffy drivers nowadays, it's hardly a shock that someone had issues with them. Sure, as I said, they work for some people, but for many others they don't. All-in-all, you're much likelier in my experience to find people with more serious issues with AMD drivers than with nVidia ones in general.

Regardless, whether you're an AMD fan and think they're flawless or not, it DOES factor into people's decisions as to which card to buy, as "It doesn't friggin work!!!!" is a pretty crucial part of the whole price/performance ratio. Especially when you want to go multi-card, you expect better support for your $1000+.

And, Mr. K6, save the chest-thumping... ;), especially when it's not even anything special to make your opinion carry greater weight :). Even the top experts in a field can be wrong at times, and PC repair is worlds away. It just makes the argument look even more ridiculous.

Anyway, as far as Kepler goes, we should have all the answers tomorrow... here's hoping for a nice Kepler that's a Radeon 7970 slayer to push some competition!
 
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