Texture Shimmering/Artifacts on AMD GPU's

[johnnydoe]

What's you guys` take on this?

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2827621

I know this has been an ongoing issue mentioned on various threads over the past years. Have been thinking about picking up a reference 6950 for an another machine and am a little concerned since I mostly play old DX9 games.

I stopped using AMD on my primary machine since 2009 due to the lack of CrossFire profiles (at the time) and some other driver issues such as the HDMI Audio bug which caused high CPU usage even though I didn't use HDMI for audio.

I know most issues have been ironed out and AMD's drivers should be well nowadays, especially with the IQ tweaks, but what about these people that're STILL having issues? I thought this texture shimmering issue have by far been fixed.

Need your opinions guys, I don't care much about the experiences about those AMD fanboys over TPU to be honest. They get on my nerves.

 

[djsb]

It's a rare issue that resembles the corruption when you get when a card overheats or is overclocked too high, but AMD recognizes it as a problem that they need to fix. I've personally never encountered it in a year of owning a 7950, but apparently some people have.

 

[johnnydoe]

Well, thanks for the input but I wasn't referring to the overheating or too high OC'ed artifacts.

I believe these things happen on the driver level and not on the hardware.

 

[GoldenTiger]

I've had numerous small/major (depending on your point of view) issues like this with AMD cards, persisting from the HD 4xxx, 5xxx, and 79xx series of cards. Without fail I have tried an AMD card, and without fail they have burnt me on the drivers . From minor game glitches/hiccups, to texture shimmering, to uneven frametimes, to a poor control panel, to lack of some features that some games I play use (physx, txaa) nowadays, I don't and won't be using one in my main machines again.

 

[johnnydoe]

^ Yeah, same here. More or less the reason why I don't use AMD GPU's on my primary machine anymore.

Wouldn't mind one (or two ) for a gaming notebook, though.

I love the reference 6950/70 really a lot. Pretty much my favorite cards due to their looks and the Volterra Digital PWM. But the drivers, on the other hand...

 

[dragonstongue]

well, I have noticed shimmering/texture issues/corruption on some games over the years, this is part of why they did the surface format optimization which can help in some games, but I leave it off.

Yes thier drivers can be abit spotty from time to time as far as random card reset, flickering, sometimes lag etc. But overall, I am happy with my AMD cards, which is why I continue to use them. Nvidia is not even on my map imo. I have just as many freinds that own both, and overall we all have roughly the same opinion about the cards we use going back to the 8800 days and all the way to now with the 7k/600 series.

I personally have used Nvidia cards over the years(and why I no longer do or will) in the 6000/7000/8000 series and have/own 4870/6870/7870 I found with alot of games I play, Radeons look more "real" for things such as shadowing, lighting and the like, vs the Nvidia cards which on average tried to stuff raw FPS for "performance" and alot of the same things water, smoke, lighting, shadows did not seem as "nice" and more "artifical"

I have seen plenty of SS/benchmark/Comparison of alot of the more modern cards, and I still feel this way.
not talking about anything else in this stament
Radeon (especially when they were ATi) Quality of rendered image
Nvidia speed of provided images

Nvidia on average does have better driver support, but, they are also just as far from perfect as AMD is, they are just on average better. I guess its just that, find the drivers that work well for you, stick with them. For me so far cat 12.6 and stream 2.8 work best for my mining and gaming both for my MSI 7870 overclocked, performs well, is fast, is quiet, I notice a bit of flickering from time to time, but I can deal with that, the colors are perfect, performance is great, very rare driver crashing(which never fully resets itself, I wonder why this is, and this does affect Nvidia as well)

As for the "extras" the mentioned physx and txaa and the like, personally I think they should burn and die in hell. If the devs and the makers work on "standards" that benefit us all, awesome, but if things are kept propietry just to be that way when overall there is no definative benefit to doing so, well then they should be burned at the stake for all I care.

Nvidia and PhysX especially, physics are done by alot of different groups, PhysX is kept locked down more or less even though not many new games use it, just to be "different" There is no real reason why it is not allowed to run on anything that can crunch the code, no different then say the task that allows IE to run as a task. Nvidia is way to protective of this as its supposed to be "for the gamers" is it not?

Anyways. shimmering/corruption etc can sometimes be traced back to the maker(AMD sometimes Nvidia) but alot of time, its the devs that made the game not doing things properly, taking shortcuts etc) more often then it is the hardware at fault, simple, the hardware works in a specific way, if the program/app is coded poorly, not optimized for the hardware, well you get the picture, its not going to look/operate as it should or at least not nearly at its best. for Radeon folding@home vs Bitcoin shows perfectly what I mean to say, one being not coded for the specific design, the other being truly coded to take advantage of.

 

[johnnydoe]

What you explained (AMD's IQ being better) used to be correct years ago. And it still can be due to their new IQ tweaks.

But, it's not "always" been the case. With nVidia GPU's, you can add in extra Transparency AA or use ridicilious AA levels such as 64x by dedicating one card to render AA only (SLi AA).

So it's not really just that AMD offers better IQ tweaks.

 

[Tanquen]

It seems to be game and maybe card specific. The artifacts do look like maybe you are OC-ing the card or CPU but for those of us that have the issue in a particular game you can under clock all you want and the artifacts don’t go away. The 12.11 beta 11 driver did have some kind of fix listed for certain DX9 games and it did fix some that I had but not all. Others continue to have issues. It’s a tuff one as some have the same game and card and say they have no issue. Like there are 7XXX cards that are sort of working and some games bring out the issue and AMD is trying to fix it with drivers.

My friend and I got into Age of Empires Online, we liked the old ones and it is free to play. My old system has a 5970 and it crashed like clockwork 10 minutes or so after the start of every match with any of the new drivers. The (my) 5970 has an ongoing issue with the newer drivers and I have to use 10.11 (I think) to play a handful of games on it in Windows 7. If I run Age or any of the problem games in XP with the new driver it’s ok. They did fix Dead Rising 2 in the newer drivers but I keep bumping into issues with games so the system is setup to dual boot into XP or Windows 7. Anyway, so if I use the older driver in Windows 7 or any in XP no crashing and never any artifacts on the 5970 in Age. So I don’t think that is a hardware issue in just my card but something AMD messed up in the 5970.

My new system with the 7970 on the other hand has no driver or OS combo that can remove the artifacts. I have a spare drive I test with and have done a number of clean installs of Windows 7, 8 and XP. They all have the issue with the latest driver and Age of Empires Online but the fix they added in 12.11 Beta 11 did fix some other games for me. I have two 7970 cards and each card installed separately still has the artifact issue and even when installed in my old 5970 system the 7970 still has the issue. But others say they have a 7970 and this or that game and never see the artifacts. So is it hardware or software or both?

AMD and nVIDIA both have issues but for me this last AMD exercise has been the most troublesome as my new system uses an X79 motherboard and many of us spent months trying to fix the random crashing. I spoke with AMD, ASUS, ASRock and even Intel support many times and was never told that AMD knew what was going on. They all just said that everything was fine and I must have a bad part somewhere and do you have a spare everything to test? Umm, no! I did end up installing the OS many times, tried three sets of RAM, two 7970 cards and even bought two different X79 motherboards. Then 9 or 10 months latter there is a note in the 12.11 beta 11 driver release notes about it. I did not find this until moths later but some guys at an ASUS forum had noticed that everyone with the X79 motherboard had issues and some guy from or with conections to AMD was posting and even gave them some free games and let them know AMD knew about the issue and was working on it. Not a fair trade but I would not have minded some free games.

You can see that thread here:
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...the-Rampage-IV&p=178788&viewfull=1#post178788

 

[johnnydoe]

Yeah, the 5970 did use to be a driver nightmare anyway. But STILL? Gee.

Oh and, no offense but LOL at buying two X79 boards to fix these issues.

 

[Tanquen]

Yeah, the 5970 did use to be a driver nightmare anyway. But STILL? Gee.

Oh and, no offense but LOL at buying two X79 boards to fix these issues.

Offense taken.

It was the randomly crashing (not the in game artifacts issue) in or out of games and no one could tell me anything other than it must be your power supply, RAM, CPU, MB, HD etc. I started out with an ASRock MB and was tired of it locking up so I tried an ASUS MB and lockups continued regardless of which of the two 7970 cards I used. How was I to know it was all X79 motherboards? That sounded crazy, AMD would surely let people know.

 

[Lord_Exodia]

Never had the artifacting/texture crawling when I had my previous setup of 2 6950s bios modded with unlocked shaders and a higher overclock than some 6970s were doing.

I moved on to nvidia but my experience with AMD then was good. It looks like things took a turn for the worse with the new architecture for several months but they are finally coming around to fixing the drivers but then again their new architecture is due soon.

 

[johnnydoe]

I believe there's still a long way till AMD's new architecture since Global Foundry hasn't built up any single thing yet.

I'm more excited about the GF Titan.

 

[dragonstongue]

Not talking about advanced IQ such as insane levels of AA different Vsync methods and the like.
Just the general quality overall, I cannot explain it the best I should be able to, but even going from the last 3 generations with a given game(BF3) I still find using the exact same settings, Radeons(5-6-7k series) VS Nvidsia(4-5-6xx series) the radeons just look more "lifelike" and less "rendered" more polished if you will.

All depends on the way the hardware is used, and what the devs strive for always has been. But this is IMO after all, and I could care less about 64xAA and stuff like that, hell I barely even bother using higher then 4xAA 16xAF even when my card can handle it, I barely notice much of a difference anyways.

 

[dragonstongue]

I believe there's still a long way till AMD's new architecture since Global Foundry hasn't built up any single thing yet.

I'm more excited about the GF Titan.

GF TItan??
do you mean this perchance, if you do, do read the comments/speculations in the posts section, quite worth considering.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphi...tion_GK110_Based_GeForce_Code_Name_Titan.html
while not related by name, this one is always a neat thought
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di..._ARM_Based_Boulder_Microprocessor_Report.html

 

[johnnydoe]

Well... yeah? Why should I to be honest? It's all fluff and rumors. I don't waste my time reading rumors. I only read things on products that're built up, why I should read what people make up about something that doesn't exist? It offers me nothing.

And well, if you're referring to the price of the card, I can afford one (probably not two though ). If you're referring to it's power consumption, noise etc... none of it is my concern with a load of Nidec and Delta's running on my desk.

 

[dragonstongue]

I'm more excited about the GF Titan.

I only read things on products that're built up

??

 

[johnnydoe]

I'm more excited about the GF Titan.

I only read things on products that're built up

??

GF Titan is in the progress of building up from what I understand.

The AMD 8000 cards, on the other hand, are currently snake oil.

 

[dragonstongue]

lol lol, thats funny, GF Titan in regards to those claimed Nvidia cards are snake oil as you put it, the AMD 8k cards are shipping for revenue(to our hands) within the next couple months(this quarter to 2H13) Its happening, and has been put on the books as fact, can`t argue with what shareholders are told, that is way bad for business.

They already are shipping the rebranded ones to OEM the cards did slip 1Q but they are not "non existent" as it sounds like you put it. Whereas Nvidias maxwell, and this Titan whatever it may be, are just as magical fairy dust as AMD 9k series as well as is Intels Haswell and 3dFX revival

 

[johnnydoe]

AMD investors should GTFO as soon as possible... because GF Titan seems like it's going to shit over it.

I mean, since when did AMD had the best cards per generation out in the market? The last time was the X1950 XTX and that was how many years ago?

Except for the 5800 series of course but then again, the 400 cards came in sooner or later and outperformed them even though they were much less efficient and loud.

Wise investors are mostly the ones that get back what they put out in the long run, and since nVidia's offering seems like it's going to outdo it, I'm not putting my money on AMD. And I never did because nVidia is a far bigger company than AMD is and %90 of the time put out stronger cards.

Show me where Global Foundry has built up a 8000 series card.

Nothing is shipping right now and nothing has been finished yet. There's not even a single design paper out there for an AMD 8000 series card yet you're telling me the cards are shipping...

I don't mean to offend anyone in my thread or turn this into a flamefest, but ever since your first post in this thread, you came off as nothing more than a hardcore AMD fanboy...

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Well, I started that thread to raise awareness of the issue in hopes that it would get AMD off their ass and fix the issue.

That said, I'm still having a smoother experience than I did with Kepler. I had a lot of performance issues with Kepler. 3d vision never worked properly and that is a big part of the reason that I sold my 3d vision display. It was too bad since it worked great with Fermi. I ran into a few games with similar performance issues that ran great on fermi like GTA4, Stalker Clear Sky, and serious sam hd.

I had issues with certain games crashing like Fallout New Vegas and FO3. Again they worked great with Fermi. I'm finally able to play Fallout New Vegas again and with working SSAA on my 7950s.

I also got hit with the vsync issues with Kepler. I was very annoyed by that.

I haven't run into a gamebreaking issue with 7950. I ran into a few with GTX680. Thats just my experience. Also crossfire has been great, just like sli.

Still, Tahiti has been on the market for a year now. Issues like these artifacts really should be fixed by now. There really isn't any excuse at this point in time.

I also see the occasional artifact on my desktop. Some people call it the "desktop flicker" issue. I actually sent in a card for an RMA over it. I didn't know that it was a driver issue at the time. Still, that was six months ago and there still isn't a fix.

AMD investors should GTFO as soon as possible... because GF Titan seems like it's going to shit over it.

It damn well better at three times the price. GF Titan is going to be $900 and won't even effect the price of a single other product on the market. There is no way in hell that I'm paying that kind of money for a single gpu. At even $700 I might have considered it but I'm not paying that kind of money for a single gpu that I can't even adjust the core voltage on. Thats what I paid for all three of my 7950s almost six months ago. Thats crazy.

Its too bad since I had my hopes up for GK110. My plan was to give GK110 a shot if these issues weren't sorted out by the time that it was released. Not now, not at the rumored price.

Never had the artifacting/texture crawling when I had my previous setup of 2 6950s bios modded with unlocked shaders and a higher overclock than some 6970s were doing.

This is only an issue with GCN. You won't see it on 6xxx series.

 

[dragonstongue]

LOL..There has been quite a few press releases directly from AMD, so yeh.

As far as a best of the best, whatever, no company needs to release super high end to have market share, look at Intel as an example, they still hold more market share then AMD and Nvidia both for graphics share of the market, and they have nothing close to as powerfull.

As far as this "oh Nvidia is releasing a super duper card that is going to blow AMD out of the water" do you remember they were going to do this when AMD released the 7k cards, and they decided against it. Instead, they held it to release for a workstation product instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Islands_(GPU_family)
http://www.techpowerup.com/176529/A...-quot-Sea-Islands-quot-Launch-to-2Q-2013.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/346081-33-radeon-8000-series-complete-discussion

So again, they are in the process of being released when they feel like its a good time to do so, this is no different then this so called "Titan" which is vaporware just as you say the 8k series is..

Nvidia should have released thier best offering, but held back, "because they didnt have to"

So sure, I am an AMD fan, I hate Nvidia with a passion, have for many years, for many reasons, I can admit that, but at least I am not blind to what transpires.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices
So who is the bigger company based on employees, not on profits? AMD is my good sir, So no, Nvidia is not a bigger company, they are by and large focused on Graphics more or less, so larger in regards to numbers of GPU related design, yes, far bigger LOL..

Anyways, I am done here.
http://www.hwcompare.com/8783/geforce-gtx-480-vs-radeon-hd-5870/ just a simple one here, overall not a land slide victory here.

so yes, if you actually take the time to do a little hunting, there is plenty for AMD 8k series aka sea islands reports out there, just as much as there is for Nvidias Maxwell and other related products that are "in the works" vs something that is shipping out very soon, and as it stands is in testing and qualification.

So, something that is oh 95% ready to roll, vs something that is a wood model with papers, hmmm, I know what I am picking.

Anyways, Nvidia and AMD series after series are competative with each other, the only exceptions I am aware of are the 2xxx and 3xxx series, from 4870 to the coming 8870 AMD has been very comparable, if not a great value for the dollar.

They are companies, they are not stupid, and generally are always going back and forth between brackets of performance and $, as well as temperature/performance etc. So, again, to say AMD simply cannot compete and haven`t for a long time, you my freind, need to be a little less biased maybe?

4870X2, 5970, 6990, 7970GE, even the custom versions are quite comparable, best for thier generation, or at least a choice for the consumer at large, hey, at least we have a choice now dont we

Point at hand, Nvidia did not state a specific date of shipment, AMD more or less has 1Q2013 it got pushed to 2Q2013 for the 8k series, why? To get some product off the shelf for thier "consumers" I.E Ncix, Newegg and such to clean up stock before new cards arrive. OEM 8k series is shipping and being put into new products, next up is the consumer Radeon HD 8k series i.e Sea Islands.

 

[johnnydoe]

Sorry, not going to bother. LOL.

 

[cageymaru]

My Sapphire 7950 OC does similar things if I run it in the faster bios position and don't enable the +20% Power Control setting in Graphics OverDrive. Runs fine with the +20% on until I over volt it too much. As soon as it hits 91c it does the black screen loud noise thing.

These new drivers that made the cards a lot faster have lowered my potential to OC my card. Where before I could feed the core 1.25v, I only do 1.15v now because the GPU is better optimized. Where I could go for 1200 on the core, now I do 1100. It runs games much faster with the new drivers at lower speeds and voltage than the old drivers did at higher speeds.

Now if the videos in the linked post are of a bad card then he needs to return it. I think it's just a person that is trying to OC by optimizing for one game. Then later on they try those same settings in another game and get bad results. Each game has different thresholds in an OC as they all tax your system differently. He should probably pick his most demanding game and use that as his baseline.

Oh and never run MLAA. That shit is terrible and makes text look really bad. It sometimes distorts textures on my 7950 and even after exiting the game my desktop will have this greasy look that won't go away until I disable it and restart the PC.

 

[johnnydoe]

It damn well better at three times the price. GF Titan is going to be $900 and won't even effect the price of a single other product on the market. There is no way in hell that I'm paying that kind of money for a single gpu. At even $700 I might have considered it but I'm not paying that kind of money for a single gpu that I can't even adjust the core voltage on. Thats what I paid for all three of my 7950s almost six months ago. Thats crazy.

Its too bad since I had my hopes up for GK110. My plan was to give GK110 a shot if these issues weren't sorted out by the time that it was released. Not now, not at the rumored price.

I call BS on that $900 price. There hasn't been a $900 single GPU card ever since the 8800 Ultra.

 

[Lord_Exodia]

I call BS on that $900 price. There hasn't been a $900 single GPU card ever since the 8800 Ultra.

I'm skeptical too, if that is nvidia's intended price hopefully AMD slaps them down with some competitive product on their end like they did when the 8800 series was out forcing them to dramatically lower prices

 

[reaper12]

AMD investors should GTFO as soon as possible... because GF Titan seems like it's going to shit over it.

Erm, what are you talking about? There is nothing known about the Geforce titan only rumours. But, you seem to think it's been "built up" as you put it, then please share with us the Specs of the card?

I mean, since when did AMD had the best cards per generation out in the market? The last time was the X1950 XTX and that was how many years ago?

I think a lot of neutrals would say the 7970 holds the single GPU crown at the moment. But this is the first generation of cards in a long time that AMD have made a challenge for the fastest single card. The 5xxx cards had no competition, but the top 4xxx and 6xxx cards were aimed at the mid-high end market not at the top spot.

Wise investors are mostly the ones that get back what they put out in the long run, and since nVidia's offering seems like it's going to outdo it, I'm not putting my money on AMD. And I never did because nVidia is a far bigger company than AMD is and %90 of the time put out stronger cards.

???

Show me where Global Foundry has built up a 8000 series card.

Nothing is shipping right now and nothing has been finished yet. There's not even a single design paper out there for an AMD 8000 series card yet you're telling me the cards are shipping...

Show me a built up Geforce titan?

Show me a single design paper for the Titan? To use your words, nothing is shipping right now and nothing has been finished yet.

I don't mean to offend anyone in my thread or turn this into a flamefest, but ever since your first post in this thread, you came off as nothing more than a hardcore AMD fanboy...

You didn't offend me anyway, but ever since the first post you have came off as nothing more than a hardcore Nvidia fanboy. I mean you even say yourself that you don't waste time reading rumours, but there is nothing but rumours about the AMD 8000 series card and the Geforce titan. So why are you taking the rumours of the titan at face value?

 

[reaper12]

I call BS on that $900 price. There hasn't been a $900 single GPU card ever since the 8800 Ultra.

Who knows? it's all just rumour. But, if the rest of the rumours are true that it's based on the GK110 and that it's using binned chips for a limited production run, then, I can see Nvidia putting the price at $900 since it will be a sort of exclusive product like some of the custom Asus cards.

 

[johnnydoe]

Erm, what are you talking about? There is nothing known about the Geforce titan only rumours. But, you seem to think it's been "built up" as you put it, then please share with us the Specs of the card?

There're news posts floating around that the chips are in progress.

I think a lot of neutrals would say the 7970 holds the single GPU crown at the moment. But this is the first generation of cards in a long time that AMD have made a challenge for the fastest single card. The 5xxx cards had no competition, but the top 4xxx and 6xxx cards were aimed at the mid-high end market not at the top spot.

That's BS. Yeah, surely the 7970 Ghz is slighly faster than a 680 at stock. But a very well OC'ing 680 like the Galaxy white with Volterra VRM will beat a 7970 Ghz, and do it more efficiently.

???

Your reading compherension may need a bit of work as it seems.

Show me a built up Geforce titan?

Show me a single design paper for the Titan? To use your words, nothing is shipping right now and nothing has been finished yet.]???

Correct. However, it doesn't change the fact that the Titan has been announced and that nVidia is at it on the GPU part and nothing has come out of AMD 8000 series yet.

You didn't offend me anyway, but ever since the first post you have came off as nothing more than a hardcore Nvidia fanboy. I mean you even say yourself that you don't waste time reading rumours, but there is nothing but rumours about the AMD 8000 series card and the Geforce titan. So why are you taking the rumours of the titan at face value?

You offended me though.

It's not just rumors about GF Titan, but I may be wrong though from what I saw, the Titan speculations come from nVidia while the AMD 8000 series speculations are made up shit.

If anything, I'd actually get called an AMD fanboy because I mostly suggest people AMD cards over nVidia's due to their "becoming faster once OC'ed" potential and lower prices this genertation. And I like AMD cards more because they're most the time better built with Volterra VRM's and Bussman chokes while nVidia doesn't give much shit about the build quality of their cards (*cough* 590/570 *cough*).

 

[GoldenTiger]

I believe there's still a long way till AMD's new architecture since Global Foundry hasn't built up any single thing yet.

I'm more excited about the GF Titan.

Quoted for truth. Though, my 24/7 oc of 1372mhz core on my WindForce 3 GTX 670 is pretty fast for a single GPU... ("stock" cooler, quiet).

 

[dragonstongue]

OK, Titan vs AMD 8k. 8k is just as close if not closer to release then Titan is at this point, thats fact.
The AMD speculations are just that for the most part, however, there ARE release specs NDA directly from AMD for the 8k series, they are NOT(to my knowledge) for Titan, also Titan is nothing more then the higher end Kepler that they postponed the launch of, not a "new" card, Radeon 8k will be, not that this matters much anyways.

For price, well if Nvidia releases a say 2800 shader card, when what they have now is 1/2 that at best, then yes it going to be $$ as hell. GK110 is what 7 billion transistors and something like the 680 is only 3.54.

So essentially double the count, on the same process, no way is that going to be cheap, yields alone were apparently not the greatest for Kepler at its peak that it could do, so I highly doubt it will be anything but $$. This may simply be a halo card for the 700 series, just to say "we are the best" when very few folks will ever buy one, more then likely also be a limited edition, unless somehow they magically got yields through the roof, and it suddenly became cheap for them to do, hate to see the X2 of the card, omfg thats going to be hellacious $

Point and fact. Nvidia has done this last few gens of cards, whenever AMD announce they will release X card, usually the same day/within a few days they turn around and do a "but we have one as well" If "Titan" is "real" as you belive, then going by offical documents from AMD for thier next gen is as much if not more real, seeing as within a month of them releasing the 7800 series they were already in the process of finalizing specs for the 8k series, not to mention getting cards shipped back to them for qualification in Nov/Dec. The only one AMD did this for overall that I remember was the 5k generation, it was a little late to the party.

Seems like I do not think anything anyone says will matter, will it. Nvidia 700 series has been quoted for 2Q-3Q2013 for awhile now, Radeon HD 8k series has been PUSHED from 4Q2012 to 1-2Q2013 they told thier investors this(and they had direct reasons for it) Like it or not, EVERTHING business tells thier investors and shareholders matters far more then any leak or NDA that us consumers see.

Like Reaper pointed out, when you take one company at face value, and throw the other to the curb in the same breath, when they are more or less both speculation at this point, is absurd. Untill we have them on the shelf, nothing matters, again, Nvidia did this when the 600 series launched as well, decided to not release this "monster" and instead use a trimmed down version and labeled as the 680. Smart business move, and cool they could do so, but they(Nvidia) are anything but to be praised.

Last thing I have to say IMHO, AMD since I would say the 3k series, every generation is actually giving a noticeable performance improvement in virtually all price brackets(usually at a reduction in overall power-same approx price for performance boost) from the budget to the enthusiast side of their offering, a constant bump, the 6k series threw this off with the naming, but it was still there.

I much prefer AMD naming schemes then Nvidia..Example 7650-7670-7750-7770 makes more sence to my brain then 650-650Ti-650SE-660-660TI etc, this is quite confusing to do recomendations when it came to many of them, alot of folks also do not have nearly as many options, going from something that is barely capable of gaming performance, to something that is gaming grade. Easier to see straight numbers then also have to mix monikers or extras to the end of the product name to confuse it up more, like slapping 2gb on a card that can barely use 512mb

btw, Global Foundries is not doing Sea Islands, that is still TSMC just like Nvidia uses "The company has roughly set its 28nm outsourcing plan for 2013, retaining TSMC as contract supplier of its graphic chip Sea Islands and GlobalFoundries as contract supplier of its accelerated processing unit Kaveri."
One source of above

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Wow, this thread went wildly off topic.

 

[johnnydoe]

Thanks to dragonstongue...

Veedo was offering me the unlockable reference 6950 for $175 but I'm not getting it after all I've heard over the past weeks.

Like the skipping frame time issue, your thread and given some of my previous experiences.

Will just throw in that 570.

 

[dragonstongue]

. The 6950 do not have the latency issue the 7k series have(currently) it is a known issue, and there have been patches to sort it out, 13.2 is apprently also going to be a massive patch in thie regard to fix this issue, among a couple others, memory coherency is apprently one of them(7k series being a new arch in the way that AMD does things, there has been memory performance" issues" and as such are not performing as they should be.

Just to caution though, the Nvidia side of the fence is no greener and they do have thier own pecularities.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Actually both the 6xxx series and 5xxx series did pretty bad with frametimes in Techreport's reviews.

GCN just appears to have some issues in a few games, mostly newer games which is why framtimes didn't look bad in older reviews. For now they are fixing it on a per game basis and are hoping to that as drivers mature it'll work itself out. They are claiming that they're working on a rewrite to the memory management system to make better use of GCN. I'm not sure why that took a year.

Still, there are enough threads about the latency issues. This thread isn't one of them but I'm not sure what this thread is about anymore.

 

[dragonstongue]

I do not know about the 5k series, but I do know quite a few freinds that had them and they never complained about them not being smooth as said report would lead one to believe. I have had the issue a little bit with my 7870 but am also goingf through quite a few different drivers as I mine and game and trying to get the most out of both.

I had a 4870, 6870 now 7870 all stock and overclocked in various ways/speeds, and only rarely did I notice any lag-stuttering non smoothness. I am sure there is defiantely some games more prone to this then others, as I am sure the test system may have something to do with it as well i.e using an Intel chip clocked up vs an AMD chip etc. I don`t call it "fair" unless the kinks are waded through somewhat first. Bottlenecks in various ways can cause all kinds of nasties as well of course.

Anywas, as per the original post, I have seen this issue very few times through 3 generations of cards I have used, and overall, very few issues beyond the occasional driver hiccups, I do not use Crossfire or SLI I have no need of, nor believe in the use(and don`t have the cash for it anyways ) so therefore I cannot base it on that.

I can say though texture format optimization as well as MLAA are useless in my opiniion, I have not found them beneficial for any game I play, whereas Edge-Detect AA is wonderfull, and if the performance hit wasn`t as severe the new advance AA(whatever its called) for the 7k series is nice as well.

I seem to remember this whole latency between frames being an issue for Nvidias cards as well(some of them) and its only really the 6900 and 7800/7900 that is more prone to this. Had I the stuff to do the testing I would do it myself to see if they are tyring to cause trouble, or if it is fact, but alas, I cannot, although, I have yet to notice it myself. I do notice for some games though(Nvidia based of course) where frame rates are limited, or features turned off when AMD cards are used, but whatever, I still get to enjoy the games anyways.

 

[reaper12]

There're news posts floating around that the chips are in progress.

News? One site posted up a rumour and every other site is quoting that site. Again show me anything directly from Nvidia that states what specs the titan will have. My point is what makes those rumours any different than the rumours about the next cards from AMD?

That's BS. Yeah, surely the 7970 Ghz is slighly faster than a 680 at stock. But a very well OC'ing 680 like the Galaxy white with Volterra VRM will beat a 7970 Ghz, and do it more efficiently.

Actually no it's not, the 7970 is faster than the 680. The 7970 overclocks better than the 680 too.

Your reading compherension may need a bit of work as it seems.

No my reading comprehension is fine. You were talking about shares and investing money but nothing you said made sense. First do you really think that having the fastest desktop card makes any difference to investors? Nvidia make most of their money from Tesla/quadro and mobile side of things. Second, AMD's graphic division is doing fine, it's the CPU side of things that's letting them down. And that's the reason why their share price is so low. AMD is a bigger company than Nvidia but Nvidia is more profitable. That's why I would invest money in Nvidia.

Correct. However, it doesn't change the fact that the Titan has been announced and that nVidia is at it on the GPU part and nothing has come out of AMD 8000 series yet.

What fact? Sorry Johnny, but seriously, show me the proof? post a link please. I haven't seen any announcement from Nvidia about the Geforce Titan. Don't you find it odd that Nvidia made no mention of Titan at CES earlier in the month?

You offended me though.

It's not just rumors about GF Titan, but I may be wrong though from what I saw, the Titan speculations come from nVidia while the AMD 8000 series speculations are made up shit.

If anything, I'd actually get called an AMD fanboy because I mostly suggest people AMD cards over nVidia's due to their "becoming faster once OC'ed" potential and lower prices this genertation. And I like AMD cards more because they're most the time better built with Volterra VRM's and Bussman chokes while nVidia doesn't give much shit about the build quality of their cards (*cough* 590/570 *cough*).

Apologies for offending, I was just pointing out that it's a bit silly calling you a fanboy just because you believe the rumours about Titan just like it's a bit silly calling him a fanboy because he believe the rumours about the AMD 8000 cards.

You were offered a reference 6950 for $175? Is that a good price? If it is a good price you should take it, the 6950's are pretty amazing cards, I had two in crossfire myself for 14 months. Had no issues what so ever. Actually I lie, I had one issue, I had to disable crossfire for CS:Source or else my hit reg went to crap. I had no latency issues, and I would have noticed because it would have affected my KDR in CS:Source.

Mind you the GTX 570 is a great card too.

Oh, just in case you are interested I am currently using a GTX 680. I have had more issues with it than I had with the 6950.

 

[dragonstongue]

http://www.gamefront.com/amd-radeon-hd8000-cards-h2-201/
I met with AMD today at CES to talk graphics hardware, and when the retail/channel HD 8000 question popped up, the answer was not Q1 or Q2 2013. AMD is riding high on solid HD 7000 sales, especially with recent price breaks. Why replace a product that’s still selling so well? Plus, there’s no rush to launch a new wave of cards until Nvidia hints at a GeForce 700 series launch. As AMD Product Marketing Manager Darren McPhee put it during our meeting: “We already have a roadmap, and we’re sticking to it…[the] 7000 series is very strong in the channel.”

So when will the new desktop retail HD 8000 parts launch? The second half of 2013. That’s when you’ll be able to go on Newegg or Amazon and buy an HD 8870 or 8970. For now, you can find HD 8000 parts in notebooks, and some mid-range HD 8000 cards (which might be rebranded HD7000 parts) in OEM PCs. When the HD 8000 retail cards DO hit, however, they’ll all have Graphics Core Next 2.0, DirectX 11.1, and PowerTune, and every part will be manufactured with a 28nm process.

As far as "specs" that is always last minute detail, leaks are usually pretty close to the final configs, but this can always change *cough* Nvidia 600 series, Radeon 4k series. As usual and not a surprise to me, Nvidia will release "Titan" to steal some thunder, and AMD will release thier range within the same time frame, this will allow one or both to adjust clocks as needed, tune thier drivers and such. It has been like this generation after generation. Titan no doubt will be massively powerfull, however, its not "truly" a gaming card, it is a workhorse that can game, it is the one card the 600 series did not have, a more or less stomper of a card tuned for massive work performance (folding and such) AMD has the x9xx series for this purpose.

Anyways. March-August was the time frame for both(last I heard any major "news") likely Nvidia will release thier $$$ top end 700 card first, AMD will follow up boosting performance for the lineup they are replacing from top to bottom, going by information that can be found at the moment, some official from AMD, some suspected by doing reverse thinking, some purely speculation, nothing is nor ever has been concrete till it is on the shelf, folks are always bound by NDA, and no one really likes to cross that barrier.

 

[johnnydoe]

I think you should stop adding fuel to the mayhem...

really, none of that has anything to do with the OP. Please don't cause this thread to be locked as some people (excluding you) have took the time and effort to give out there experiences in this thread.

And I'm not replying to the guy above you because this thread was originally opened up to collect some experiences, not for these pointless discussions.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Oh, just in case you are interested I am currently using a GTX 680. I have had more issues with it than I had with the 6950.

Thats why I sold my 680.

 

[reaper12]

I think you should stop adding fuel to the mayhem...

really, none of that has anything to do with the OP. Please don't cause this thread to be locked as some people (excluding you) have took the time and effort to give out there experiences in this thread.

And I'm not replying to the guy above you because this thread was originally opened up to collect some experiences, not for these pointless discussions.

hey, you brought all this up!! You mean We can't reply to things you start? All I wanted to see was the links to the facts tat you keep going about in regard to Titan. But, fair enough return to topic at hand.

Oh, you are banned. Never mind then.