The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

i would wait until we get a really fast(Stock) Quad Core its only a matter of time. the only thing more core's will do at the moment is increase multitasking capability.

 

I multitask like mad. That's why I see benefits to 6 and 8 cores during the day. You are correct though. I probably should wait for a really beneficial CPU. We'll see if I can talk myself out of it LOL!
If 1090t can be had for say, ~149.99USD, I may just get it. But another CPU release would probably have to drive the cost down

 

We've got one, the i5 2500k

 

LOL, I see the benefits, I do. But I would also have to buy a new board to accommodate that CPU. Even more money.

 

Almost still want a 2500k but a 1090T would shut me up lol.

 

There's a deal going on for 1055. I'm tempted, since I have the funds. But I'd rather wait for the black edition 1090t

 

Well, with the failure of bulldozer, you're not going to see a fast quad core cpu on the 2006 AMD platform. That is now solely Intel's domain for the forseeable. More cores, yes by all means carry on, but you're making sacrifices for some very old hardware, and there comes a point now where you should consider how beneficial it is to stick with the AM platform in favour of much more modern alternatives. If there had ever been a hex core on LGA775, thats essentially the same. Nobody's really consideree buying 775 CPUs for years, yet without bulldozer, upgrading within AMD's confines is the exact same.

X6s may be cheap, but theyre cheap for a reason. Those who want big multitasking should look long and hard at stuff like LGA2011, and those who want raw speed should already know about the performance of the 2500k/2600k, sufficiently fast that they outpace the X6s in multithreaded apps with just four cores, then pay themselves off in energy savings for 24/7 users. Wants vs. needs. If an X4 is fine for you like it is for most, stick with it. But a lot of people risk short-changing themselves with pretty minor upgrades getting the last out of AM, when if they really did need extra grunt, they should have looked elsewhere. For gamers the X6 is no better than the X4, and the latter's days are numbered for high-end gaming.

It's hard to type all that on a phone!

 

It'd be my luck, I switch to intel's offerings, and then AMD releases something that smacks intel down like a child. Which is part of why I won't be doing any huge upgrades for a while. I just don't see a huge enough increase from EITHER AMD or intel. I suppose Intel is close to what I'd like to see, but as I said, my luck has a way of hexxing things 0_o
I see an upgrade option in 1090t, because I already have a board that supports it. I'm not expecting huge gains(in fact nearly nothing at all), just more core support. I would really like to see the performance for myself Not suggesting that countless reviews are wrong however...

I probably wouldn't even overclock it much at all. For fear of melting my board LOL!!!

 

Ouch! I guess I knew it could/would be that price, but seeing is believing.
Not sure if I'm willing to spend that much on a GPU. That's more than twice what I spent on my GTX 260(when it was an agreeable card).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102961

 

The GTX260, however, was never top of the line. The GTX285 (which at the time, was), fetched a similar price. The HD7970 is only priced how it is due to the excessive cost of its main rival, the GTX580. If the GTX580 were more affordable, so too would be the HD7970.
In all honesty though, the HD7970 is a living highlight of the future of the graphics industry - mass hardware stagnation. It has already set in to an extent with the CPU market, and it is now taking hold of the graphics market. Future performance gains are now almost exclusively coming from instruction enhancements, better drivers and better software. Mass hardware performance increases are now pretty much a thing of the past. Moore's law as we know it, is over.

 

So if anything the price will drop by february, you think? I certainly hope so! You're right, the 260 was never a top dog. I did say agreeable Plays everything I want to play well enough. However it's getting a bit long in the tooth! But I would like to see some performance increases across the board I probably will break down and end up paying for it.

 

Perhaps now you can view the page?

 

I doubt it. The HD7970's price will only drop below MSRP ($550 is baseline, it will be higher if supply becomes very tight, but 550 is what it will always roughly be) once it is dethroned by Kepler, or if nvidia work some serious magic, a 28nm Fermi refresh, whatever they actually decide to produce. Given that Kepler's so far had all the hallmarks of Fermi (late, needing several silicon revisions, with an excessive power consumption) I think it'll be a while before we see it - quite possibly almost as long as the gap between the HD5870 and GTX480 (which was 7 months). Until that time, if the HD7970 reigns supreme and nvidia care not for lowering the price of their top end card (they never have before - even when the HD5870 was firmly established, they still charged top dollar for the hopelessly outperformed GTX285) then to be honest, the HD7970 may not drop below $500 before midsummer.

The HD7970 is all about tolerance. In lieu of a proper horsepower increase, the HD7970 offers a modest 25% increase, reasonably substantial (the difference between the HD5870 and GTX580), but nothing groundbreaking. The rest of the work comes from optimisations. At very high-res (2560x1600 as an absolute minimum, realistically eyefinity), the HD7970 can deal with the demand like nothing we've ever seen the likes of before. This also helps the 7970 take on considerable amounts of nvidia bias code, and push it aside. Games that were once geforce-only domains now have a pretty strong AMD showing with the HD7970, and with 3GB of memory to play with, running two of the cards unlocks quite a few possibilities. Sadly, AMD have still chosen to build the card on the cheap, much as with the HD6 series, and omitted enough connectivity to make the card natively compatible with eyefinity. This cost-saving exercise will cost AMD a fair fortune in lost revenue on multi-display user sales in the long run.

 

Well, we do pay top dollar for top notch performance. My words are blasphemy to AMD, and hardware enthusiasts LOL! I'm simply being a tightwad! Depending on my tax return(should be the best ever), I'll likely buy this badboy. Not sure which brand yet. Guess I'll decide that when the time comes

 

Not that it matters as hardware warranties often aren't worth the paper they're written on, but bear in mind most manufacturers have removed their warranty programs with this generation to save costs and dropped to 1 or 2 years only. Buying a brand for its warranty support is no longer advisable.
The same is happening across the industry, with Seagate slashing hard disk warranties from 5 years to just 12 months, in accordance with their migration from a tier-1 manufacturer to an entry-level manufacturer. Even WD have cut warranties to 24 months for Blue and Green products, but unlike Seagate, maintain full-length warranties for their Black products. How long for, of course, is anybody's guess.

 

Interestingly the jump is a bit more substantial on more demanding games. Metro 2033 increases from 16 to 25FPS average between the 6970 and 7970. That's a 56% increase which is far from marginal or insubstantial. This is at 2560 x 1600 as well.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/17

So if a 56% increase on one of the most historically demanding games is stagnation, I don't know why the hell we post here

Obviously the case isn't identical in every game, but I'm still seeing healthy numbers of 25, 30, 40% on a lot of very popular games. Obviously not magical like when the 8800GTX came out but far from stagnation. Tick tock. Sometimes tick tick tock. I have full faith in Moore's Law, but instead of raw hardware advances, we need true architecture improvements and optimizations.

Intel is obviously faster Sam, but what you fail to notice or maybe plain overlook is the fact that our X4s are adequate. I'm not talking it barely runs my games. I mean averaging in the mid-high 60s playing the very newest games maxed. That doesn't seem like it's at the end of its effective life to me... I understand what you mean philosophically, but realistically, it simply isn't true. It's not that our Phenom IIs are simply fast enough, but that Intel also doesn't offer a substantial enough upgrade for it to be worth it. I can drop $80 on a used 1090T for a sizable boost to an already overbuilt system, or I can drop $300 on a new platform. It doesn't matter how much more economical the new platform would be if it's more expensive anyway. The world is currently in a depression dude. Basically, I upgrade when I feel the need. I do not feel the need BECAUSE EVERYTHING RUNS EFFING PERFECT. So what's the issue here? I built my car to go 60MPH, all it will ever do is go 60MPH. Using a car capable of 120MPH doesn't matter if you will only ever drive it at 60MPH. If that makes sense.

Skyrim and BF3 were going to influence my decision on Sandybridge. They did, heavily. They both run silky smooth, so why the heck would I need to upgrade?

 

I rarely think of the warranties. The reviews however are part of the decision making process. How many, how positive, etc. I generally don't base my decisions on the negative reviews. Too many factors involved with the negative reviews. Positives are a very good thing. If 500 people buy XFX(and 90% good reviews), and only 80 buy Diamond, there must be a reason why. So at least by february, I'll be able to weed through the cards a little better

I feel like I sold my children :S My hard drives...
Won't happen again! LOL!

 

This seems to keep coming up. It's never been my focus to try and get X4 users to needlessly ditch their current CPUs. I often use the disclaimer that the upgrade should only be discussed if it's necessary (and often for gamers, it isn't) - but my point is that those who are looking at upgrading, and currently use Phenom IIs should probably forget about the relatively minor gains to be had from other AMD offerings except certain cases that work very well with the X6. In any other environment, Sandy Bridge should be looked at very seriously. If you already have an X4 and that's adequate for you though (many, after all my Q9550 which performed similarly to the best clocking X4s at the speed I had it at, was perfectly adequate for what I used it for), then no point upgrading. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't noticed a bit of a benefit with the i5, but by the time the software came to take full advantage of the difference, the SSD came, and that changed everything. Remembering how much of a gain I got over my Q9550, and looking at how much faster the best Sandy Bridge CPUs are than my i5 750 (40%+ in many cases), it's plain to see that given AMD haven't actually progressed anywhere with per-core performance, IF you want to upgrade, look at an i7. But don't upgrade just for the hell of it. That has never been something I advised, and I made a name for myself nullifying some people's posts back in the day who were advising massively more hardware than people actually needed.

I stick with XFX for graphics because I think their design methodology is more sound than other brands. Like any other company they do produce some cheap crap, but the clue is to realise that the cheapest non-reference designs will always be shoddy. Their dual-fan coolers are excellent performers, and their pricing in the UK for the good models is actually very favourable.

 

You stick with XFX, and yet I recall you seemed to like Sapphire. Has sapphire turned out to be like ASUS? Quality control slipping? I recall you having trouble with them. I more than likely will go with a respectable name, like XFX or Evga, perhaps even HIS. But I think I'd be paying for the name, with a card like HIS.

 

Sapphire are probably the only company I hold in lower esteem than Asus. It's been a long time since I've spoken to someone with a working Sapphire card.