PC Graphics

[markh1]

Not sure if I need to just replace the one that is bad or need to do both. 

[pokester]

If one died you would not be able to buy another new as a replacement. If you could get one second hand cheep enough is a question only you can decide if it is worth it. Honestly you could buy an new card that is faster than than those cheap enough. If you are a 1080p gamer an RX 580 is a very inexpensive card and is still a solid 1080p performer.

[markh1]

Ok. Thanks. Seeing I have two cards in there now, I should still replace both at the same time?

[black_zion]

Well here's the thing, you can't crossfire a R9 290 and RX 500 series card, and it's quite likely that when Navi releases the HD 7000-R300+Fury series will be moved to legacy support, both because they haven't received any updates in some time and because AMD doesn't have the resources to support so many architectures, not to mention the userbase is low, so the ability to use a mixed set even individually isn't going to last long.

Now, that being said, do you really NEED a dual GPU setup in an age where game developers, now that they have 100% responsibility to implement multiple GPU functionality with DirectX 12 and Vulkan, are moving away from multiple GPU support?

Also, and this is something to think about, do you NEED a new card NOW? Navi is right around the corner, figuratively speaking, and will supposedly start matching up with nVidia much better again in terms of performance as well as have ray tracing support for forwards compatibility, not to mention likely improved power figures due to a more advanced manufacturing process.

[pokester]

not sure why those would go to legacy? They are GCN and would not require anything special over the current cards being sold now?

[black_zion]

They may be based on GCN, but they are different generations, and AMD has been deadlocked on the RX 400/500 series for 3 years now, focusing so much attention on them that the physically slower cards are outperforming the physically faster cards of previous generations. Also since they have not received any performance improvements in some time, they are pretty much in legacy support now.

But that post was made before I came across Confirmed: Navi to be Graphics Core Next (GCN) Based (WCCFTech)‌, but since you can't Crossfire a 500 and 200 series card, there's no reason to use them in the same system unless you need a number of extra monitors.

[pokester]

I personally think that they will continue support for GCN until they drop all GCN support. That may be premature, as many felt previous gen support ended abruptly but time will tell. My issue would be though that even a first gen GCN card like a hd 7970 is still more powerful than an entry level current card. Once they have a new card that is cheap that is truly faster than old tech or a new generation or API's come out that the old cards don't support then I am on board with moving on. Unfortunately it isn't any of our choice. Not sure about no updates for the older cards, no there are maybe no new performance updates that have significant improvement overall, I'd argue that is the case for even new GCN. They have pushed the architecture beyond it's original intent IMHO.   I have seen game updates that improve performance across all GCN cards, including those first GNC cards. So yes they are still getting optimization benefit from updated drivers. I have cards from all generations of GCN except Vega. I think if Vega is successful on a magnitude like Ryzen has been GCN will go bye bye pretty quick. If not it may be around a few more years. As long as they are supported though I just can't see why they would not continue to support all GCN as it really should not be much of an effort to continue to do so.

[black_zion]

My theory behind that would just be lack of resources combined with a low user base. The HD 7000 series is 7 years old, and while the upper end is still viable, it is getting a little long in the tooth. When AMD moved pre-HD 7000 series cards to legacy support, the oldest, HD 2000 series was only 8 years old, and youngest 4 years, so it wouldn't be out of the question for AMD to boot the HD 7000/8000 to legacy support. Also, since many R200 and R300 series cards are just rebrands of HD 7000 series cards, and the lines are composed of 3 generations of such cards, just moving part of them to legacy status really isn't an option. Vega isn't going to be successful, there's no way to make it successful in the mass market with its reliance on HBM, just a flawed design.

Realistically speaking though, even the most powerful of the pre RX series, the 290X and 390X (Fury doesn't count, AMD doesn't care about them), is just barely hanging on to 60FPS averages in more modern games, despite the 390X being a faster card than the 580X, so their useful life is about over. And going back to the previous move to legacy, the R300 series is 4 years old, as young as the HD 6000 series was, so there is precedent.

Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the HD 7000 series lacks UEFI.

[pokester]

Oh I agree they have done it before, and don't doubt they would do it again. I just think when it happens it will be all the GCN gets dropped suddenly. That will just depend on the success as well as adoption rate of Navi. Time will tell.

[black_zion]

Well if it guzzles power like Vega, adoption isn't going to be that great...

[pokester]

With your other thread saying Navi will still be GCN has me back to also wondering why it wouldn't be easy just to keep support going. Again we will see. This news certainly isn't making me very optimistic about Navi.

[black_zion]

Well we know for a fact the Navi APU in the PS5 must be able to do 4k60, Sony said that, and the next XBOX will be, at minimum, just as powerful. While consoles are more efficient at that, they are single consistent systems weighed against PC overhead, and -some- games are already able to do it on the current systems, there aren't many, with most 4k30 or such. I would say at a minimum you're looking at an APU's GPU component that's twice as powerful as the current, though the rumor mill is already churning about how the heck they're going to keep these APUs cool, and we know from Vega's massive flop that it does indeed take a large power plant and cooling system to run the thing, even Vega VII which is a 7nm part. Going by the numbers the APU in the XBOX One X is about as powerful as the RX 580, so AMD's going to need to double that. I believe it was Lisa Su who said that the highest end Navi parts would compete with the GTX 1080/Ti, which seems to indicate they're aiming to increase performance by at least 75%.

I just can't see that happening with just revising an architecture and moving to GDDR6.

Now, that being said, I think back to the HD 6970. With the HD 6000 series, AMD took the existing inefficient VLIW5 architecture, trimmed it back to the more efficient VLIW4, and came up with a nice speed boost, though only in the 15-20% range, a far cry from the  75% AMD needs, but they've had a -long- time to work on Navi, about 3 years, so it is theoretically possible, but is it going to be the shock to the market the HD 4000 series was? I just can't see it.

Then again nobody could see the HD 4000 series either.

[pokester]

As a console owner too, I realize that in reality while it displays to a 4k tv. It's not like they are rendering at 4k ultra on a PC. 4k on the consoles is more like low and medium settings in AAA titles on a PC. So even if they doubled that on a console it still would not be even near as powerful as current PC GPU offerings available. If it is GCN tech going to a die shrink again I would bet at best you will see maybe at most a 50 percent improvement over current APU's. I would bet more in the 20 to 30 percent range. Same goes for any top product maybe 30 percent over Vega II but if they don't fix all the other issues that plague Vega on top of it, it still won't be worth it. I think they have to have new architecture period to fix things. 

[black_zion]

Definitely needs a new architecture, and you have to think that there is a chance that the GCN references to Navi in the Linux code may be red herrings, but if you look at the figures, for a midrange card to perform as well as a GTX 1080, it only needs to have the power of Vega 64. Now, Vega 64 is $400 (or $500 if you take AMD's launch price), axe off about $100 for the cost difference between HBM2 and GDDR6, then axe a bit more off due to lower overhead of the 7nm process and AMD's dire need to get back into the graphics market, it's not unfeasible that the upper mid range card, what will replace the RX 590 could have a $250-$299 price with custom editions around $300-$350, though likely in the $400 range, less than half the cost of the GTX 1080. The biggest question is power, it needs to drop by a third to be in GTX 1080 range, and that power figure will also determine how good APUs can perform.

[pokester]

I can say this, I own 3 currently made Nvidia cards the most recent being a RTX 2060. I have had zero issues with this card. At default speeds it is on the level of a 1070ti or vega 56. However these cards overclock like crazy, the card is also very small and only uses about 160w at max. It is very cool and my model is only one fan.  My card easily benchmarks in the neighborhood of a 1080, vega 64. Mind you I also bought this card for under $300 with 2 AAA games and another indie game thrown in by EVGA. One heck of deal. So to me AMD has to find a way to compete with that for me to be a buyer once again. They do have their competitive game bundles but boy have they lost me on the stability issues and software features not working.

One for instance is my Freesync. I have had 2 free sync monitors and 2 FreeSync compatible AMD cards. FreeSync worked in varying degrees from driver to driver but always with shortcomings, things just not working well, I figured were just the way it is. With Nvidia and the adoption adaptive sync. The FreeSync is perfect, it works fantastic like never before. I am not meaning to bash one over the other just simply stating that for me none of my 3 nvidia cards have issues currently. The couple problems I have had were fixed within a driver version. Their support staff was polite and immediately available and fixes were in the next driver.  There driver development team members are also very active in their forum. On the AMD side in the past year plus since getting my RX 580, it has never worked without continual tweaks and nearly every driver has fixed something, changed nothing or broken things that once worked. Then on my 4 older still supported cards ranging from GCN1 to the R9 380x the introduction of Wattman era screwed them up and they previously had worked flawlessly. I don't know what, if or when AMD will fix their GPU issues. It sure doesn't look like Navi will do it. The worse thing for them is that they have allowed user like me they had locked into their products for nearly 20 years to go elsewhere to get the level of quality and stability that I used to count on AMD for. I honestly think most of the issue is frankly they didn't have the resources to properly develop Ryzen and a next gen GPU at the same time. I think Ryzen 3 is going to be really special and I hope that will allow them to really develop a good GPU again, but they take years to get to market and AMD will likely just lose even more users in the process. It is hard to get customers to change unless you do something really bad to make them. I didn't even look into the competition when I bought my RX 580 as every AMD card before it had been fantastic. My eyes are open now though.