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Why is compute performance important? 7970 vs. 680

A

Ajiki-kun

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2012
Messages
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I was just reading this article from way back during the Kepler launch, and I remember back then... not making heads or tails of it. It was a confusing time in my life, what with not playing games while waiting for a new graphics card.

Anyway, to the point, what is compute -- as it pertains to me, the casual overclocker and gamer -- actually good for?

Should I be worried about it for current games (like, let's say, Civ 5) or future ones that could supposedly take advantage of it?

And is it enough of a factor (or the difference between it in 7970 and 680 substantial enough) to decide between the two cards?

If someone could explain this to me, I would be very grateful.
 
Currently the only affect it has on games is PhysX and CUDA which AMD does not support. Otherwise it has no affect on gaming.
 
It matters to you not at all. Which is probably why Nvidia ditched that portion for Kepler in the first place.
 
If computer was going to be important to you, you would already know it :)

It matters not for gaming in the least.
 
Thanks for the quick replies.

So, to take a weird question further, if I was later going to dabble in things like video editing (on my list of "productive things I can learn to do with my computer"), would it matter then, or am I just being crazy/ignorant?

EDIT: Btw, I'm probably going to get 7970 regardless, but I thought I should get a definite answer.
 
Ajiki-kun said:
Thanks for the quick replies.

So, to take a weird question further, if I was later going to dabble in things like video editing (on my list of "productive things I can learn to do with my computer"), would it matter then, or am I just being crazy/ignorant?

EDIT: Btw, I'm probably going to get 7970 regardless, but I thought I should get a definite answer.
Click to expand...

Unless you are doing professional level editing. Otherwise no for the most part any high end card should be fine. Although so far for some reason the 7970 does not have a working h.264 encoder.
 
PRIME1 said:
Currently the only affect it has on games is PhysX and CUDA which AMD does not support. Otherwise it has no affect on gaming.
Click to expand...

Physx is not affected because it doesn't use double precision.

CUDA apps that use double precision will be much slower on GK104 than Fermi, while the ones that use single precision will run faster on GK104

BTW you could get a 670 and be done with it.
 
Nvidia had devoted significantly more die area to gpgpu uses in the 480 & 580 pushing their cuda closed standard. While ATI aimed for a smaller die, though still good at gpgpu tasks as a number of distributed projects can show, but developing for it was hell on wheels.

This time around AMD are putting a significant amount of resources into developing OpenCL & other developer libraries for their APUs and by extension GPUs. While Nvidia changed strategy and developed a 680 core just for gaming.

Just a shift, possibly also influenced by AMD's rumoured involvement in developing console GPUs, physics and whatnot.

AMD is working on OpenCL libraries for Handbrake as a practical encoder application, I'm very curious at the results of this one.
 
Ajiki-kun said:
Thanks for the quick replies.

So, to take a weird question further, if I was later going to dabble in things like video editing (on my list of "productive things I can learn to do with my computer"), would it matter then, or am I just being crazy/ignorant?

EDIT: Btw, I'm probably going to get 7970 regardless, but I thought I should get a definite answer.
Click to expand...

if you want to play with GPU 3D rendering, such as blender/cycles, then compute is very important.
 
R3MF said:
if you want to play with GPU 3D rendering, such as blender/cycles, then compute is very important.
Click to expand...

But then again you would buy a professional card anyway with the dedicated support that comes with it and not a consumer product.
 
If you're not a bitcoin miner or a developer who specifically takes advantage of GPU computing, it probably will not matter to you in the slightest.
 
PRIME1 said:
Currently the only affect it has on games is PhysX and CUDA which AMD does not support. Otherwise it has no affect on gaming.
Click to expand...
Not accurate. Battlefield 3 uses DirectCompute for its deferred shading calculations, DiRT 3 uses it for HDAO, Metro uses it for one pass of its depth of field effect and Civ 5 uses it for texture compression. Even Intel's IGPs can take advantage of that.
 
Richthofen said:
But then again you would buy a professional card anyway with the dedicated support that comes with it and not a consumer product.
Click to expand...

That's unnecessary. While the 7970s aren't as good in pure gaming as the GTX680 they do very very well in GPU compute and they're cheap compared to Teslas.

As for the OP's question: that depends. It depends on what you do with your PC but some tasks that can take advantage of GPGPU are video editing (rendering/decoding), the full Adobe line, F@H, etc. If you do use certain programs that can get a boost from GPU computing then it's worth noting. Handbrake already has openCL support as well as Adobe (Adobe also supports CUDA).
 
wonderfield said:
Not accurate. Battlefield 3 uses DirectCompute for its deferred shading calculations, DiRT 3 uses it for HDAO, Metro uses it for one pass of its depth of field effect and Civ 5 uses it for texture compression. Even Intel's IGPs can take advantage of that.
Click to expand...

Doesn't make any difference in performance though, even if that is the case.
 
For a variety of reasons. That's not to say that compute performance, in isolation, doesn't matter.
 
Great discussion! Thanks to everyone who replied; it was very helpful.

I think it's safe to conclude -- especially in my case -- that GPGPU isn't as important a factor (or even enough of one to be relevant) considering my day-to-day use. This is still subject to change.

That said, I've also determined that should the need arise for a heavier compute-able card at some point down the road, it should be far enough down the road that it would coincide with the timing of buying an upgrade video card.

Now, I may yet get that 680...
 
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