So this article/report is extremely recent. Since TSMC 16nm process will not go into mass production until Q3 2015 and Nvidia's GM200 Maxwell GPUs will not hit the consumer market until sometime in 2016, AMD possibly will take over 2015 with their Pirate Island series GPUs coming out the first half of 2015 (February is the planned month of release).
It is no secret that the new AMD cards will be on the 20nm process and will have 3D stacked memory leaked here, which is an insane improvement over GDDR5. This, along with the improvements you get for having a processor on a smaller fabrication (lower power consumption, higher performance), would completely outclass the 28nm GTX 900 series in every way possible (unless pricing is expensive) and Nvidia will have nothing to compete throughout the whole entire year due to making the decision of skipping 20nm for 16nm. However, there is more. If the rumors for the R9 380X being the competitor for the GTX 980/970 are true, then I do not know how Nvidia will combat this.
However, I am not a prophet so many things could happen. What do you guys think?
[EDIT 1: 1:36 AM EDT 11/10/14]: http://wccftech.com/article/generation-graphics-prospects-nvidia-big-daddy-maxwell-16ff-ports/
So Nvidia may have something for 2015 after all, even though they never answered the questions.
I think Nvidia got a 990 or a 980 ti ready right now, maybe another TI model, and as soon as AMD releases their new series, Nvidia will release the 990 or ti model, there by dropping the prices of the 900 series, making them way more competetive. This is what they've been doing the last couple of years, and have worked very well. Besides, Nvidia has some features that some people like my self wouldn't cut down on, as G-sync which will not be supported by AMD cards, shadowplay(I know AMD has released something similar, however, it's nowhere near as good) and in general great performance per wattage and heat exchange. However AMD will be a hard competitor for the low-mid and even some of the high end market.
EDIT: I know the TI or 990 is rumored to run on the GM200 however, you gotta remember that on the 980 and 970 they threw around 500 cuda cores of from the 700 series which they could make a ti card with the same amount of CUDA cores as the 700 series, which would bring the performance lvl up a lot more.
besides the rumours about the new cards being release time being delayed, that was the same for the 900 series, people said that they first comming out in the 1st or maybe even 2nd quater of 2015, which obviously, didn't happen. So take it all with a grain of salt.
Yeah, nVidia took some very wrong decisions back in 2012, and they've been having problems ever since. AMD is doing pretty good, especially as linux application software implements more and more OpenCL functionality, and now that AMD has open sourced the GPU kernel modules, so that no binary blobs have to be compiled in the kernel any longer to run Catalyst, they're probably going to take off enormously, because that's a big deal. Also with the success of In-House streaming and the better performance thereof on AMD systems, where AMD has open sourced the encoding and dev communities are still optimizing everything, I think it's not going to be all that important what nVidia does in terms of chips or memory on their cards, they're going to be left with the proprietary market only, and their only chance of making it to the console world was through Steam Machines, and they've done nothing to improve their linux performance.
On the other hand, it may not be necessary, as games will be locked down to hardware console performance anyway, high end GPU's will not be necessary for gaming anymore, but rather for computational duty, and that's another extremely weak point for nVidia in comparison to AMD.
Well, in general it's pretty fucking bad with all the fps caps on the upcoming titles, because they only come with excuses for bad optimization so that they can save the money need for better optimization, the only way we can game producers to go back to the non-capped thing is by protesting, unfortunately not enough people do this, including my self. because the games doesn't "look more cinematic" they look shit and laggy with a 30 or 24 fps cap, and they need to stop this now. nobody actually believes anything of what they're saying, and they're only saying it to have an excuse for the poorly optimized games.
Fortunately, in some games that has this cap, you can go into the files and change it by yourself. However this fps cap is still going to be a very large problem, and it's going to fuck up the minds of the gaming community. As you said Zoltan, I agree with you, this will be a problem for Nvidia as AMD just owns the low-mid end market.
its just fun to me to see Nvidia everytime tries to beat the old AMD stuf lol.
If i think back about the good old Tahiti cards 7970 These cards cards are just rock sollid and going on for ages right now. Nvidia needed 3 GPU launches to finaly beat this good old Tahiti. Becasue lets face it, the GTX680 didn't do it, the GTX770, didnt do it either lol. Its just funny to see.
If AMD launching theire 300 series, this indeed might be interessting, from what i´ve read about it sofar.
Seeing how other companies try to beat the competition is funny every time. It's even funnier when they fail epically.
The old Tahiti cards can still go pretty well. My photography teacher still has one, and can max out Saints Row 3. And like MysteryAngel said, NVIDIA had to release 3 GPUs to beat Tahiti.
I can't wait to see some official specs from the 300 series. NVIDIA really needs competition at this point. Pretty much all the major games are "optimized for NVIDIA," or in other words "if you don't have and NVIDIA card fuck you!" This could heat up some GPU wars. Would love to see that, since AMD has already lost the CPU wars, in my opinion.
That is why competition is good. Drives the industry forward and I want both companies to succeed but I do find it funny when a big company makes a wrong decision that will bite them in the ass later, leaving its competitor to take in for the kill.
The R9 280X/7970 is just a fantastic card, especially since one person could get one for around $200, although the R9 290 is more of a compelling deal in my eyes.
Yeah I cannot wait for more information on the 300 series as well. 20nm, HBM, and I hope the rumor of it being liquid cooled for the 390X is true. I need all of that because...reasons. I also hope AMD rectifies other issues like driver support. They have lost the CPU wars (at least on the gaming side), but I hope Zen becomes a game changer but that is coming out until 2016-17 and the only thing they have are APUs.
I really want OpenCL to take off (I think open-source is the future), but it will not be easy as >90% of the industry still uses CUDA (correct me if I am wrong). If there is one thing I want OpenCl support for, that is the Blender Cycles engine. Give me that support and I will have no desire to invest in CUDA (I plan on doing 3D rendering)
Thanks for reminding me that consoles still hold back technology. Forgot about that. Devs need to make games on PC first then port them to console, not the other way around.
The only really good that comes out of this is that it supports DirectX12. which i guess is nice. but then again i performance isn't going to really improve unless you crank up the details. but there's probably going to be a tiny tangible improvement.
IMO the fab of the GPU/CPU doesnt matter. We've seen AMD come out with bigger fab that can if not out perform Intel/Nvidia. I just care about the raw performance and the thermal limit. The 290/290x was way too crazy. A couple of degrees above boiling point of water? AMD better make a more efficient video card. My 760 that i mad oced on stock voltages never gets above 80c even though I have EVGA's ACX Cooler but still.
Same. I have two of them, my rig's and my wife's, and they are great. The DCUII unit keeps them nice and cool and they are very quiet. In my Define XL and her H440 they are pretty much silent yet still max pretty much every game at 1440p.
nVidia's reference cards are good. They are cool and quiet. AMD's not so much but really as enthusiasts who uses reference cards? So long as the heat is managed I don't care how much they put out. I have AC for the summer and they work as heaters during the winter. (Even though I don't really notice any change in room temp and i have an 8350 OCed to 5.0Ghz too.)
I personally don't care how much heat or power it uses. As long as it is fast as hell and offers good value I'm all over it. I bought the 290s for more than $100 less than a 780 and they are faster. Yeah my old 780 was cooler and used a little less power but it was slower. Simple as that. Plus if they are going to a smaller manufacturing process that means better power consumption too. So win win.
I could only see this be a real good benefit for games like Skyrim with tons of mods, Hitman Absolution, Max Payne 3, etc. I would only get the 8GB card if I had multiple monitors which I think would be its strongest suit. Still, not as a good way to compete compared to lowering the price down for the Hawaii cards.
This is all quite exciting. I really do think nVidia will be in trouble next year. In all reality this is becoming quite a pattern with these two companies.
The 7970 came out. Fastest thing around. Wasn't unseated until the 780. Nvidia controls the market for a few months and then fires back with the 290 and 290X. Both faster and cheaper than the 780. nVidia panics and staples a few more CUDA cores to the 780 and releases the 780 Ti. nVidia controls the high end but AMD destroys them everywhere else. 295X2 comes out. A bit crazy but fast as hell. nVidia panics again and Titan Z WOOOOOO. $3000. Double The price of the R9 295X2... and how much faster? None. It was slower. Fucking worthless.
Seeing the same thing now. 970 and 980 come out and they will control the market for a while but then AMD will fire back and the war will begin all over again.
Only this time it looks like nVidia will be on the back foot even more. AMD is gonna be on a smaller manufacturing process so they lose in power consumption. AMD will have much faster RAM which of course helps very much and probably more of it. nVidia will still be on GDDR5. Yes they have their fancy compression tech but AMD is coming with something similar and as we've seen even with the compression at higher resolutions it can't make up for the narrow bus. So AMD again wins.
Plus nVidia plans on re releasing 980s and 970s and other cards on smaller manufacturing processes and other stop gap measures? That seems like a great idea....
This is good though it promotes competition and we as consumers win. Lower prices and faster products. Hopefully Zen will put AMD back in the running with Intel so we can see the same thing over on the CPU side too.
To me though nVidia seems to be really reactionary not revolutionary. Their cards will fall behind and really don't have much to redeem them IMO. CUDA possibly but OpenCL is increasingly being chosen over it and is usually faster. G-Sync? Buy a special monitor and be forced to stay with nVidia? No thanks. I'll take AMD's open solution thanks. Plus no Mantle support which, with further development, could be really interesting.
Even though I may seem like an AMD fanboy I'm really not. I just want the best products at the best value. AMD seems to provide.
i think as far as i have seen the rumoured specs of the new 300 series gpu´s it looks very promissing and interessting.
But still if i look at the current cards. offcourse the GTX970 scores a littlebit better in a few games on 1080p then a 290. However, prices are droped massively on the 290 cards, there are allmost €80 cheaper then a GTX970. And you also get a game bundel.
like i said, if i loop at the price war, the 290 still gives the 970 a run for its money. even if the 970 slightly better performing on 1080p, and it runs a bit cooler. in my opinnion this still not justifies the €80 cost diffrence in my country.
That is a trend I have noticed as well but didn't know it goes back to the 7970 vs. 680.
I would say Nvidia have this sort of syndrome where they want to stay on top the mountain for a long time and when it is someone decides to overthrow them, they get an egotistical mindset where they have to be on the top of the mountain again no matter what the consequences would be. The 780 Ti is them saying "We have the fastest GPU on the market even though it is like a 5% performance increase from our competitor's offering and you have to pay >$600 for it, but we have the fastest GPU. It is the bragging rights that matters." Competition is good, regardless though. There is something for everyone.
I would also say AMD was reactionary when G-sync came out but their method of doing it is more revolutionary. I do not know how G-sync will fare into the future as Adaptive-sync will really become a standard for monitors soon. If there is one thing I really do not like about Nvidia, it is that their technologies are proprietary. Since OpenGL is archaic to code and DirectX12 is coming in Holiday 2015 & only works on Microsoft (duh), if AMD gives Mantle support for Linux, they would be a killer in the PC market.
Don't worry, you are not sounding like a fanboy. You are just giving credit when a competitor makes a good decision. If a competitor does something good, I give them props, but if they do something bad, I will critique them.
I was referenceing the stock coolers. Speaking of CPUs I want to see what AMD will pull to replace their FX. Seeing that they made 8 core CPUs available at a low price is simply mind blowing. I might go AMD/Nvidia when I plan to build a new PC. I'll have to see what AMD has to offer.