New GPUs from AMD

[Siress]

ooooooooh.jpg


https://www.anandtech.com/show/16202...-november-18th

This has my attention. There are several claims here that are exciting.

[Deltasteve]

I'd be interested if they have ironed out their driver issues.

[the_matrix_guy]

I'm kinda stuck with Nvidia for now, due to my Alienware g-sync, but I'm looking forward to the reviews and benchmarks. Competition is always good for everyone. Also, yes, let's see if AMD puts out good drivers. That's another reason why I havent looked back since my 7970.

[Scottybeans]

G-sync monitors for me so I have to go Nvidia. I tried to nab a 3070 this morning and had one in my cart a few times but couldn't secure checkout. Ah well, the waiting game continues.

Great as a consumer to see some real competition from AMD though! If I were building a new PC next year, I'd certainly consider a 500 series chipset, 5000 series CPU, and 6000 series GPU to get all those quirky little performance enhancements.

[gabe]

Saw those yesterday and the specs look amazing for the price point. The only thing lacking is ray tracing but I'm not sure how much of that is gimmick or actually useful. And who knows, maybe AMD can use their existing architecture for RTX with an update or something.

For the price I'll probably be looking pretty hard at a full AMD setup on my next gaming rig.

[Siress]

these cards support ray tracing.

[Siress]

Ugh. I forgot about the g-sync compatibility constraint. I too have a g-sync display that doesn't have freesync. Dirty ****ers (Nvidia). FreeSync is free and opensource while nvidia charge royalties on G-sync. If these cards are good, I'm inclined to bite the bullet and upgrade my monitor to go with it instead of supporting Nvidia's anti-competitive BS. This display can still be sold for decent coin or replace my old TN display.

[Tracker]

nvidia conceded that the G-sync chip was a bad idea and have started to use a g-sync compatible free-sync

all the newer monitors are coming this way, heres a list to check

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce...onitors/specs/

[Scottybeans]

My understanding is:

If I have a G-Sync monitor, I need to use an Nvidia card if I want to use adaptive refresh

If I have a freesync monitor, I can use AMD or Nvidia cards and adaptive refresh will work fine (if it's on Nvidia's list?).

Or will AMD freesync work with a monitor that has a g-sync module? I didn't think this was the case

[Tracker]

i believe you to be correct, if you plug an AMD card into a G-sync chipped monitor, i dont think the variable refresh rate will work

[gabe]

I was always told that Freesync was way inferior to Gsync. Any truth to that?

[Tracker]

the beauty part of g-sync is the module, it talks to the GFX card and they know what each other can do and you can fine tune thresholds,

free sync uses a much more "boilerplate" HDMI 2.1 protocol for variable refresh rates (i think, dont quote me on that one)

the g-sync module ended up being its undoing though, cause the modules made every monitor with them cost $200 more than a duplicate monitor without

[Siress]

the beauty part of g-sync is the module, it talks to the gfx card and they know what each other can do and you can fine tune thresholds,

free sync uses a much more "boilerplate" hdmi 2.1 protocol for variable refresh rates (i think, dont quote me on that one)

the g-sync module ended up being its undoing though, cause the modules made every monitor with them cost $200 more than a duplicate monitor without

vesa, <>hdmi, iirc. They both do essentially the same thing. The only important special sauce imo is that nvidia will ensure its working to spec on both devices while FreeSync is the sole responsibility of the device mfr.
So, you can trust a "cheap" G-Sync monitor to actually have working G-Sync, but a cheap FreeSync monitor might have issues. Personally, I view these as premium features for premium products and am not interested in the "cheap" end of the scale anyway. If you're buying a premium product at the premium rate from a premium company, it's going to work or you can return it.

That said, neither are absolutely required if I'm honest. Maybe after OLED...

[Tracker]

i have 2 240hz monitors (AW2720HF). they are gsync compatible.

i use them in g-sync mode, they work great

[Seajay]

I'm actually excited for AMD this time
The cards look very competitive and the AMD + AMD setup with the accessible system memory and CPU access (while sounding gimicky) could be amazing in an iteration or two.
It is something Nvidia doesn't and can't really do, so that is just cool technology wise.

Yay for Competition!

[Siress]

....the accessible system memory and CPU access...

That's the part that has me really nervous. I'm not a CS or anything of the sort, but that sounds like it's going to require that everything from the OS, Kernel, CPU microcode, MoBo driver, and GPU driver play nicely together... That takes a long while. We're not even to the point that I trust ThunderBolt compatibility and it's on it's 4th generation after being produced for nearly a decade - with it's only job being to play nicely with PCIe.