Slight Buyers Remorse (from 780 to 290)

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Mr. Stryker

Supreme [H]ardness
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I knew that it would be a side grade when I sold my Galaxy GTX 780 to play with the 290. Lost the gamble after finding out I couldn't unlock it into a 290X. (That might have been cool) I don't even mine and all I do is game at 2560x1440. I grew fond of the NVIDIA Shadow Play feature on their GeForce Experience program. I had a decently clocked 780 that was stable at 1187 on the core (boost) while my 290 is stable at 1100 on the core, with the fan at 100% which never broke more than 70c on any games like BF4 and Skyrim. It was a launch card and I miss the 780 already, I remember gameplay being much smoother than on the 290 with similar FPS.

Would it be silly to go back to a 780 right now? Oh yeah it was very nice being able to overclock my Catleap without custom drivers, but straight from the NVIDIA panel. I even replaced the TIM on my 290 with MX-2 paste.
 
100% fan speed on the 290? I remember what the ref 7970 was like at 100% :eek:

I won't comment on 290 vs 780 but. I agree with you on the software. NVidia has tons of useful features that I find myself using quite a lot, great stuff for enhancing games and increasing IQ. Whereas AMD's CCC is very basic. Pretty disappointing that AMD hasn't updated their features much at all in a very long time.....
 
You have no idea how loud 290 is @100%...

I have sold my R9 290 (@290x 1025/1250 - unlocked, but awful overclocker) with a profit and bought Asus GTX 780 DirectCU II. Awesome card, running 1256/1652 since day1. Significantly faster than the AMD card, mainly because I have a weak CPU ([email protected], already considering i5-4670k+extreme4)

I have swapped it for few reasons:
- it is faster after overclocking
- it is blissfuly quiet and cold (I didn't know that <30c idle was possible)
- I am getting G-Sync VG248QE once it is available. Or maybe I could wait a month or two more for 27" with G-Sync
- Shadowplay is a cool feature. If they could only make it usable in windowed mode... #hope

My R9 290 was is in a well-ventilated case, it had 82% ASIC (=low voltage) and still to keep it under 92-93C at clocks and unlock mentioned before, fan had to be cranked up to 49-55% depending on game
 
Haswell would be a great upgrade IMO, since nvidia's drivers take advantage of multi-threading very well. I personally upgraded a buds lynnfield system (870) to a 4770k and the difference in CPU limited games is quite drastic.

I know some people have the opinion that CPUs have changed much in years. Which is partially true, Ivy to Haswell isn't an upgrade really. But with a 2009-2010 era system, there's a pretty large difference. You can play GPU limited games with minimal difference of course, but in any game with heavy multi threading or CPU limited games - the difference between nehalem/bloomfield/lynnfield compared to Haswell is pretty big. Not just "pretty big". Huge difference in CPU or very highly threaded games. Just IMO. And nvidia's driver really capitalizes on heavy multi threading as mentioned.

Plus i've seen some great sales on Haswell CPUs at microcenter in the past month. It's something to consider if you can find a good sale. ;)
 
I'm deaf and whenever I get something with a fan on it, zero fucks are given in making sure they spin to their fullest RPM capability. My roommates are deaf as well, and they do the same thing. I honestly don't know what the apartment maintenance folks think of all of the noise when they come to fix the garbage disposal, the burners on the stove, and the dryer machine.

I already have the 4670K @ 4.3 and it's been great so far, I bought the basic i5 thinking that Maxwell would come out on 1150 platform but it doesn't look like it unless I'm mistaken. Of course, Intel's at it again with the platforms. AMD is guilty of it with the FM platform though. My roommate's running a 2600K at 4.6GHz. I still regret selling my 2600K that did 4.8 daily under water. (If you count the H100 that is)

Again, the question is that would it be crazy if I went back to a 780 right now? Titan was released last February, so maybe NVIDIA is going to release something pretty soon? I bought my 290 for $399 with a copy of BF4 and Mantle is nowhere to be seen, but I honestly don't know if it's worth it at all.
 
I just started using Trixx on my 290 which unlocks the factory 47% to make my own profile , It only runs at 82c under Valley benchmark with 56% fan speed and 80c under Heaven benchmark at 55% fan speed under normal clocks and stock cooler with tim being replaced.

So I really don't see why you need 100% fan speed myself as Trixx give me 13 to 15c to work with at 55% fan speed.
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Again, the question is that would it be crazy if I went back to a 780 right now? Titan was released last February, so maybe NVIDIA is going to release something pretty soon? I bought my 290 for $399 with a copy of BF4 and Mantle is nowhere to be seen, but I honestly don't know if it's worth it at all.
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Well. It's your choice, I know what i'd do (probably switch) - but It's not like you'd lose any money if you did go this route. Personally I prefer nvidia unless AMD offers a better value (due to the feature set and other factors). The price is not a fault of AMD's at all though. Just supply/demand given the mining situation.

Anyway, you could easily ebay the card for over MSRP probably, if you chose to do so - and switch without a monetary loss. Either way you could play around with the 290 for a bit and let it "soak in" so to speak and see if you can live without the nvidia features. Some people don't care, whereas others really enjoy them. You'll have a clearer decision of what to do after using the 290 for a few days - worst case though like I said, is you could switch without any real monetary loss. So it's not a big deal either way.

When I get slight buyer's remorse. I play around with whatever that purchase is a few days before making a final decision on whether to keep or sell. Early decisions tend to be rash, but using it for a week or so will give you a clear idea of what you want to do.
 
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Well if you bought it for 400$ then you should be able to resell it with a profit I think? I am not too farmiliar with other markets' pricing

Plus i've seen some great sales on Haswell CPUs at microcenter in the past month. It's something to consider if you can find a good sale.
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I live in Poland. No special deals on cpu/motherboard unfortunately, but it isn't really that expensive. Good thing is that I won't have to buy another cooler (Mugen 2 rev. B is compatible and good enough). I could use some new features from the motherboard itself, like better integrated soundcard for speakers, SATA 3.0, front USB 3.0 ports etc... and the FPS boost should be quite massive because I mainly play multiplayer games. I will need it since I am also getting G-Sync 120hz monitor once it is available :p
 
At the current pricing its a crap shoot but at their true MSRP the 290 is a far better buy.
 
Budwise said:
At the current pricing its a crap shoot but at their true MSRP the 290 is a far better buy.
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That wasn't the debate. ;) The 290 is a great value at MSRP. That is very true. But in the OP's situation, he already bought both (went 780 > 290), but is considering a return due to the nvidia features and other factors.

I think the best bet is to play around with the 290 a few days and that will lead to a more clear and level headed decision. It's what I would do , as mentioned.
 
Mr. Stryker said:
I'm deaf and whenever I get something with a fan on it, zero fucks are given in making sure they spin to their fullest RPM capability. My roommates are deaf as well, and they do the same thing. I honestly don't know what the apartment maintenance folks think of all of the noise when they come to fix the garbage disposal, the burners on the stove, and the dryer machine.

I already have the 4670K @ 4.3 and it's been great so far, I bought the basic i5 thinking that Maxwell would come out on 1150 platform but it doesn't look like it unless I'm mistaken. Of course, Intel's at it again with the platforms. AMD is guilty of it with the FM platform though. My roommate's running a 2600K at 4.6GHz. I still regret selling my 2600K that did 4.8 daily under water. (If you count the H100 that is)

Again, the question is that would it be crazy if I went back to a 780 right now? Titan was released last February, so maybe NVIDIA is going to release something pretty soon? I bought my 290 for $399 with a copy of BF4 and Mantle is nowhere to be seen, but I honestly don't know if it's worth it at all.
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Depends on how much money you'd lose. If you'll lose nothing or little to nothing then I say go for it, I absolutely love my GTX 780 (1215/6800). I use ShadowPlay to record gameplay since there is very little impact on the card and I have a G-Sync capable monitor, and from what I've read, G-Sync is a game changer.

We have no idea when Maxwell will be coming out, we've heard anywhere from March 2014 (doubt it since we haven't heard anything about Maxwell recently) to 2H 2014. The Titan did come out in February, but it wasn't a "series" release like the GTX 700 release, which came out in late May for desktops. Honestly, I could see Nvidia doing a "refresh" and releasing a GTX 870 and 860 in April/May that are rebranded GTX 780 Ti and GTX 780 with a clock boost; then release a GTX 880 and 880 Ti Maxwell card in August/September. AMD recently released their R9 series cards a couple months back to go against the GTX 700 series and Nvidia's cards are holding up nicely, so Nvidia doesn't feel the need to rush out Maxwell.

I saw somewhere that there might be some Maxwell news tomorrow, but otherwise no point in playing the waiting game! :D
 
Put a thread up on various forums amd offer to trade you good overclocking 290 for a GTX 780. I wouldn't expect to get another 780 that overclocks so high though
 
Mr. Stryker said:
I knew that it would be a side grade when I sold my Galaxy GTX 780 to play with the 290. Lost the gamble after finding out I couldn't unlock it into a 290X. (That might have been cool) I don't even mine and all I do is game at 2560x1440. I grew fond of the NVIDIA Shadow Play feature on their GeForce Experience program. I had a decently clocked 780 that was stable at 1187 on the core (boost) while my 290 is stable at 1100 on the core, with the fan at 100% which never broke more than 70c on any games like BF4 and Skyrim. It was a launch card and I miss the 780 already, I remember gameplay being much smoother than on the 290 with similar FPS.

Would it be silly to go back to a 780 right now? Oh yeah it was very nice being able to overclock my Catleap without custom drivers, but straight from the NVIDIA panel. I even replaced the TIM on my 290 with MX-2 paste.
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Must say that was a stupid choice.
 
xoleras said:
I think the best bet is to play around with the 290 a few days and that will lead to a more clear and level headed decision. It's what I would do , as mentioned.
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I've had the 290 since its launch which was like 2 months ago? So it has been bothering me for a while.

xoleras said:
Anyway, you could easily ebay the card for over MSRP probably, if you chose to do so - and switch without a monetary loss. Either way you could play around with the 290 for a bit and let it "soak in" so to speak and see if you can live without the nvidia features. Some people don't care, whereas others really enjoy them. You'll have a clearer decision of what to do after using the 290 for a few days - worst case though like I said, is you could switch without any real monetary loss. So it's not a big deal either way.
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Yeah, thinking about it.

Scheibler1 said:
Put a thread up on various forums amd offer to trade you good overclocking 290 for a GTX 780. I wouldn't expect to get another 780 that overclocks so high though
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I'm leery with trading in general online, it'd be fine if it was in person.

exlink said:
Depends on how much money you'd lose. If you'll lose nothing or little to nothing then I say go for it, I absolutely love my GTX 780 (1215/6800). I use ShadowPlay to record gameplay since there is very little impact on the card and I have a G-Sync capable monitor, and from what I've read, G-Sync is a game changer.

We have no idea when Maxwell will be coming out, we've heard anywhere from March 2014 (doubt it since we haven't heard anything about Maxwell recently) to 2H 2014. The Titan did come out in February, but it wasn't a "series" release like the GTX 700 release, which came out in late May for desktops. Honestly, I could see Nvidia doing a "refresh" and releasing a GTX 870 and 860 in April/May that are rebranded GTX 780 Ti and GTX 780 with a clock boost; then release a GTX 880 and 880 Ti Maxwell card in August/September. AMD recently released their R9 series cards a couple months back to go against the GTX 700 series and Nvidia's cards are holding up nicely, so Nvidia doesn't feel the need to rush out Maxwell.

I saw somewhere that there might be some Maxwell news tomorrow, but otherwise no point in playing the waiting game! :D
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I thought I read somewhere that the GTX 700 series are the LAST of the Kepler architecture so I'd be slightly surprised if they rehashed Kepler AGAIN in the next series, but I could be wrong. I meant to say Broadwell CPU (for LGA 1150 in my earlier post), not Maxwell (got them confused).

Good thing XFX is fine with taking the HSF off to reapply your own TIM... now I know that NVIDIA AIB partners aren't too keen on this are they? I was going to do that to my first GTX 780, but saw online videos on how complicated it is to take apart the HSF? I might get a MSI Gaming GTX 780 to match my motherboard lol. (MSI, dragon, red/black thing)
 
Would the fact that these cards having two 8-pin power connectors mean that it'd overclock better?

Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition

MSI GTX 780 Lightning

I'm also not sure where is the best place to sell my 290 since it's a little different this time.. where I can make a small profit to help tide me over back to the 780 without too much of a monetary loss. I'd hate to rip off fellow [H] members so should I try eBay?
 
It's personal preference so it really doesn't matter whether you switch or not.


Having said that, I played with a 780 and 290 at my buddies house side by side and neither of us could perceive any real difference.

Might not be a bad idea to do a clean sweep with the drivers if you didn't, or consider a reinstall of windows to see if there is something amiss.

If it's just one of those things where any change is perceived by your brain as being tangibly different regardless, it may take a bit to readjust, or you may never, depending on what kinda guy you are.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
 
I think you're better off waiting for the time being. At least wait until after CES. You might also want to wait to see how Mantle pans out since we will supposedly see it in action this month. That is if you are playing/looking forward to games like Battlefield 4, Star Citizen, Star Wars Battlefront.
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Would the fact that these cards having two 8-pin power connectors mean that it'd overclock better?

Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition

MSI GTX 780 Lightning

I'm also not sure where is the best place to sell my 290 since it's a little different this time.. where I can make a small profit to help tide me over back to the 780 without too much of a monetary loss. I'd hate to rip off fellow [H] members so should I try eBay?
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I like the GHZ edition personally. You're more or less assured that you will get a B1 revision of the GK110 which is known to overclock better on average. Yet the lightning also OC's well since it has OV capability.

One thing about the Lightning is that it is 2.5 slot whereas the gigabyte card is 2 slot. Personally I prefer 2 slot with all other things being equal - that will allow greater flexibility if you decide to SLI down the road.

Both are great cards however - would be a hard decision IMO.
 
almendragrande said:
I think you're better off waiting for the time being. At least wait until after CES. You might also want to wait to see how Mantle pans out since we will supposedly see it in action this month. That is if you are playing/looking forward to games like Battlefield 4, Star Citizen, Star Wars Battlefront.
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Star wars battlefront is a 2015 release and Star citizen will not have all modules released until....2015. In other words, Star Citizen won't be a complete game until 2015.

Seems pretty ridiculous to wait on Mantle based on those two games. In fact I think Mantle only has two confirmed releases for 2014. BF4 being one of those. Which the OP did mention playing, so that could be a factor in the decision process - Depending on how well his prior GTX 780 did in BF4. Personally, I think the GTX 780 really plays BF4 well - completely smooth and fluid. But i'm not too sure on how the OP feels about it, I guess it just depends on how much value he places specifically on getting higher FPS potentially in bf4.
 
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Yes, the GTX 780 was much more fluid with BF4. And that's one of the reasons I made this thread. I'm a freak when it comes to "stuttering" or the "rough" FPS that I see often with the 290. It's hard to explain. Also I already reinstalled Windows 7 when I got the 290, I tend to do that. But before I did that I used a paid license of Treexy Driver Sweeper which seems to work wonders. I reformatted because my Windows 8 got messed up trying to upgrade to 8.1, so it says my Win 8 key is no longer valid. I didn't feel like dealing with it, mostly because I paid only $40 for Windows 8 on its launch back in '12.
 
I would go back to GTX 780 and possibly get an MSI lightning. That card is an overclocking monstrosity. Also considering you can sell your 290 for around 550 bucks, it is a no brainer decision :).
 
KickAssCop said:
I would go back to GTX 780 and possibly get an MSI lightning. That card is an overclocking monstrosity. Also considering you can sell your 290 for around 550 bucks, it is a no brainer decision :).
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Who the hell would pay 550 for a used 290 when they are going for 530 on newegg?


To the OP, if I was personally buying a card with a stock cooler I would have never purchased a 290, would have kept the 780. I watercooled my cards so noise is not an issue. I dont know why people are going back and forth with switching from 780 to 290 and in reverse, they are practically the same.
 
Prices must have come down then. Last time I checked a 290 was going for 599 at egg and amazon.
 
KickAssCop said:
Prices must have come down then. Last time I checked a 290 was going for 599 at egg and amazon.
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The dust buster reference cards are 500-530$, with aftermarket cards being 599$.

Certainly NOT worth buying at those prices.
 
I did the same thing, I sold two EVGA 780 ACX cards for two reference 290's, mainly out of interest to try AMD's new flagship card. The only thing that improved was my benchmark scores. I tried to love them, I really did. I bought waterblocks and carefully crafted a loop to cool them, showed them all the care they would need to grow up and be good little graphics cards...

... except I spent 90% of the time with crossfire disabled, due to bugs or unsupported games. I had numerous problems with BF4. I had black screen crashes. I had sound bugs with the AMD audio out like I always do, sound control panel refuses to open, etc. The list of problems was much, much longer than the list of things they did right (since that should have been gameplay and most of the time they couldn't manage it). I'm not a big AAA headliner title gamer, I like to play the ones I have already so if there are bugs they will never be resolved.

Know what? I sold them and bought a single GTX 760 and it was a relief. I haven't even overclocked it, I just play my games and not a single fuck is given, possibly because I don't expect so much from it.
 
Wait one month for Mantle. In the mean time, use Raptr/OpenBroadcaster to replace Shadow Play.
 
LigTasm said:
... except I spent 90% of the time with crossfire disabled, due to bugs or unsupported games. I had numerous problems with BF4. I had black screen crashes. I had sound bugs with the AMD audio out like I always do, sound control panel refuses to open, etc. The list of problems was much, much longer than the list of things they did right (since that should have been gameplay and most of the time they couldn't manage it). I'm not a big AAA headliner title gamer, I like to play the ones I have already so if there are bugs they will never be resolved.
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I didn't want to say it, some AMD fan will jump down my throat, but, yeah. That's the typical AMD software experience right there. Dealing with bullshit. Had the same thing with 7970CF, one issue every couple of months. Went green, not a single fucking issue ever. And I actually expected mGPU issues which never happened.

I know some don't have problems. AMD actually does pretty well in single card configs these days. And AMD has improved on the software front, but not anywhere close to nvidia yet. Anyway, in mGPU configurations nvidia and quick bug fixes in general, nvidia is just a night and day difference (for the better) in terms of software actually JUST working without doing stupid workarounds. Hell, Crossfire doesn't even work in 90% of ubisoft/activision-blizzard games.
 
Ozymandias said:
Wait one month for Mantle. In the mean time, use Raptr/OpenBroadcaster to replace Shadow Play.
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That Raptr app is garbage compared to the Nvidia equivalent. AMD really should have developed their own app instead of just farming out the work to them.
 
Spazturtle said:
I'd wait for the January driver before doing anything.
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...the irony of having to wait for a driver on the AMD side. I'll just bow out, but I would point out that this is always the story. Wait for the new driver. Wait for this. Wait for that. Wait for AMD to fix 79xx microstutter in DX9 and eyefinity next month (after 2 fucking years of being broken). etc.

Whereas you can just go green where shit just works 99.9% of the time. Just IMHO.

x3sphere said:
That Raptr app is garbage compared to the Nvidia equivalent. AMD really should have developed their own app instead of just farming out the work to them.
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It's also full of advertisements everywhere.
 
Mr. Stryker said:
I'm deaf and whenever I get something with a fan on it, zero fucks are given in making sure they spin to their fullest RPM capability. My roommates are deaf as well, and they do the same thing. I honestly don't know what the apartment maintenance folks think of all of the noise when they come to fix the garbage disposal, the burners on the stove, and the dryer machine.

I already have the 4670K @ 4.3 and it's been great so far, I bought the basic i5 thinking that Maxwell would come out on 1150 platform but it doesn't look like it unless I'm mistaken. Of course, Intel's at it again with the platforms. AMD is guilty of it with the FM platform though. My roommate's running a 2600K at 4.6GHz. I still regret selling my 2600K that did 4.8 daily under water. (If you count the H100 that is)

Again, the question is that would it be crazy if I went back to a 780 right now? Titan was released last February, so maybe NVIDIA is going to release something pretty soon? I bought my 290 for $399 with a copy of BF4 and Mantle is nowhere to be seen, but I honestly don't know if it's worth it at all.
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I have always wondered what happens when you need to diagnose a fault using the system beeps? Can you run an led from the pc speaker header?
 
xoleras said:
...the irony of having to wait for a driver on the AMD side. I'll just bow out, but I would point out that this is always the story. Wait for the new driver. Wait for this. Wait for that. Wait for AMD to fix 79xx microstutter in DX9 and eyefinity next month (after 2 fucking years of being broken). etc.
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Same on the NVIDIA side, still waiting for drivers that work.

NVIDIA cards still use 3 ALU cycles to perform 1 integer operations.

NVIDIA cards still require the CPUs assistance to perform OpenCL work.

On the NVIDIA side you need to worry about keeping a thread free incase the driver needs it to work. AMD cards can do Compute work without the CPUs assistance.

NVIDIA have been saying these will be fixed in the next driver for 6 years now, when will it happen?

The quality of AMD and NVIDIA drivers are pretty similar.
 
Spazturtle said:
Same on the NVIDIA side, still waiting for drivers that work.

NVIDIA cards still use 3 ALU cycles to perform 1 integer operations.
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Which doesn't make a goddamn difference unless you're a miner.

The quality of AMD and NVIDIA drivers are pretty similar.
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Oh. You're welcome to your opinion, but I would respectfully disagree. And yes, i've used both sides pretty extensively - AMD still doesn't have crossfire profiles for most activision and ubisoft games. I remember Witcher 2 crashed for 5 straight months in CF on 7970s before AMD decided to fix it. Stuff like that? Typical. 1-2 problems per month. Aside from that, It's not even just the drivers (and I don't agree with your statement at all), it's features. Nvidia actually added nearly 10 features since Kepler made its debut. Monitor overclocking, shadowplay, TXAA, FXAA from the driver, adaptive vsync, I could go on here. AMD? Zero. Except Mantle which has nothing as of yet.

This is why I firmly believe AMD can't sell cards to PC gamers unless they offer a value. At least, to PC gamers. Miners obviously don't give a shit.
 
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xoleras said:
Which doesn't make a goddamn difference unless you're a miner.
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Or run any apps that use OpenCL such as Folding or rendering, or anything GPU accelerated.

Oh and games also now use OpenCL so gaming is also affected.

Don't worry you can still use your NVIDIA card for watching videos.

Oh wait, if you want to watch videos that use the new H.265 and VP9 codec they use OpenCL acceleration.
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Yes, the GTX 780 was much more fluid with BF4. And that's one of the reasons I made this thread. I'm a freak when it comes to "stuttering" or the "rough" FPS that I see often with the 290. It's hard to explain. Also I already reinstalled Windows 7 when I got the 290, I tend to do that. But before I did that I used a paid license of Treexy Driver Sweeper which seems to work wonders. I reformatted because my Windows 8 got messed up trying to upgrade to 8.1, so it says my Win 8 key is no longer valid. I didn't feel like dealing with it, mostly because I paid only $40 for Windows 8 on its launch back in '12.
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The key you get is only valid for 8.0. I called MS and asked them why couldn't I install 8.1 as it was saying the key was invalid. The rep linked me the 8.0 download and told me to upgrade to 8.1 afterwards. It worked like a charm.

I would do that before I'd go through the hassle of selling cards again. If it still feels "different" in Win 8.1 then look into switching.
 
xoleras said:
Which doesn't make a goddamn difference unless you're a miner.



Oh. You're welcome to your opinion, but I would respectfully disagree. And yes, i've used both sides pretty extensively - AMD still doesn't have crossfire profiles for most activision and ubisoft games. I remember Witcher 2 crashed for 5 straight months in CF on 7970s before AMD decided to fix it. Stuff like that? Typical. 1-2 problems per month. Aside from that, It's not even just the drivers (and I don't agree with your statement at all), it's features. Nvidia actually added nearly 10 features since Kepler made its debut. Monitor overclocking, shadowplay, TXAA, FXAA from the driver, adaptive vsync, I could go on here. AMD? Zero. Except Mantle which has nothing as of yet.

This is why I firmly believe AMD can't sell cards to PC gamers unless they offer a value. At least, to PC gamers. Miners obviously don't give a shit.
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Well I render films on my video cards in OpenCL and there are other programs such as Photoshop that render directly on the video card. Corel products utilize OpenCL a ton also. OpenCL is a godsend if you have the proper GPU to work with it. I hope that Maxwell brings back raw horsepower into the Nvidia lineup. Their last great cards were the 400 series as far as raw horsepower goes if you're doing heavy multimedia tasks like I do from time to time.

Offloading the workload onto your video cards is pretty darn sweet. I would assume that the OP likes multimedia also as he mentioned ShadowPlay. I've been doing that same function for years on my AMD cards. And it's Open Source, so if you can dream of other functions for it, you can ask for the feature to be added or do it yourself. :)
 
xoleras said:
I didn't want to say it, some AMD fan will jump down my throat, but, yeah. That's the typical AMD software experience right there. Dealing with bullshit. Had the same thing with 7970CF, one issue every couple of months. Went green, not a single fucking issue ever. And I actually expected mGPU issues which never happened.

I know some don't have problems. AMD actually does pretty well in single card configs these days. And AMD has improved on the software front, but not anywhere close to nvidia yet. Anyway, in mGPU configurations nvidia and quick bug fixes in general, nvidia is just a night and day difference (for the better) in terms of software actually JUST working without doing stupid workarounds. Hell, Crossfire doesn't even work in 90% of ubisoft/activision-blizzard games.
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So he had issues, and maybe another guy across the street, but you know how many didnt have issues? Many.
Point is, a lot of times its not always the drivers, but your hardware. My previous motherboard would have random blackouts and no display issues when I installed my 290 card. But guess what? It wasnt the card, it was shitty BIOS support from Gigabyte.
At the end of the day its easy to blame the drivers, but what you should be blaming is companies like Asus, Giga, MSI, etc for not properly testing video cards with their boards. Until I had issues with Gigabyte I didnt even imagine that a modern day MB could have problems with a simple high end card.
Having have owned ATI for the last 5+ years I never had a single issue with drivers or any of things you people are describing.
 
iGrooCk said:
So he had issues, and maybe another guy across the street, but you know how many didnt have issues? Many.
Point is, a lot of times its not always the drivers, but your hardware. My previous motherboard would have random blackouts and no display issues when I installed my 290 card. But guess what? It wasnt the card, it was shitty BIOS support from Gigabyte.
At the end of the day its easy to blame the drivers, but what you should be blaming is companies like Asus, Giga, MSI, etc for not properly testing video cards with their boards. Until I had issues with Gigabyte I didnt even imagine that a modern day MB could have problems with a simple high end card.
Having have owned ATI for the last 5+ years I never had a single issue with drivers or any of things you people are describing.
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I've had dozens and dozens of both AMD and Nvidia cards on more different systems than you can shake a stick at. Hell, my 290's alone in the single month I had them went in four different machines with both AMD and Intel CPU's. Some of us see enough hardware to notice a definite trend. If you upgrade every few years and got a solid set of parts, all well and good, you might not see the issues others are reporting.
 
LigTasm said:
I've had dozens and dozens of both AMD and Nvidia cards on more different systems than you can shake a stick at. Hell, my 290's alone in the single month I had them went in four different machines with both AMD and Intel CPU's. Some of us see enough hardware to notice a definite trend. If you upgrade every few years and got a solid set of parts, all well and good, you might not see the issues others are reporting.
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I understand, but again its a combination of your components. If you have problems with your video card on so many systems then its obviously a faulty card. I can understand if AMD had issues with drivers all across the board with every single build but they dont. Some manufacturers test their hardware up to a certain point, like MB manufacturers picking certain approved RAM modules.
When I had issues with Gigabyte, they obviously didnt test a 290 because it wasnt out then, but it was still x16 interface. Yet the card wouldnt run right because of the motherboard support. It wasn't AMD's fault or their drivers.
 
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