I was referencing the stock OEM coolers.
HOLY FREAKING CRAP! The Vapor-X is the best cooler for the 290 series and for being at such a low price, you'll feel like you got away with robbery if you buy it. The initial $400 price tag it had was fantastic to begin with. You would be stupid not to get two of these.
It is crazy that AMD is making a consistent amount of smart decisions in regards to their GPU market.
That cooler is ugly as fuck though, the vapor-x coolers on the 7950 and 7970 was miles better looking.
Have you ever used amd's game recording/streaming software? I would say that it is just as good as shadowplay, and as for gsync...It is typical nVidia making something that should be free and open to be expensive and exclusive. Look at FreeSync...
Nvidia will really get fucked when 4k becomes standard, as we've seen, the 290x is STILL the best 4k card on the market. Trades blows with the 980 and costs half as much.
AMD did announce they are releasing an entirely new x86 high performance architecture at 2016. It is called Zen. About time.
Well 4k isen't really on the market, and the technology to make great 4k screens isen't really there yet, really they Nvidia and AMD should focus on 1440p as that is what's going to be the most used for the next couple of years, Nvidia got lots of time to get some 4k cards out there.
Yeah I did read about Zen. Hopefully it will be DDR4 compatible and support M.2 and/or Sata Express.
I personally don't like 4K. At least right now. But 1440p won't catch on. Sorry.
The whole display industry is making a move towards 4K. No one is making a 1440p/1600p TV. Just like how 1080p is the standard now, 4K will be the new standard. It would be cool to see if AMD can make a card that plays games ultra settings, 60+fps on 4K.
I can never understand on buying a 4K TV as my local provider is broadcasting 1080p content SOON. It will looks terrible and I can never bring myself to shop a 4K TV with anyone whereas I can recommend or shop a 4K monitor.
It doesn't make sense to buy a 4K TV now but give a few years and that will change.
Technically speaking, cable providers broadcast in 1080 interlaced not progressive. You get progressive scan in the 720 and lower. There is a limitation to why they cant broadcast 1080p. I forgot but my dad is the cable guy lol.
TRUTH! I don't understand most console developers at all. There are some logical developers (usually indie) that create for PC on PC and then port to the consoles. That is the most logical path and you can't deny it.
It'll definitely be an interesting year, but I think that Nvidia's gaming line-up won't be in trouble tbh. Mark my words, if AMD releases a GPU for 400 bucks that beats the 980 across the board by a considerable amount and does so while having a 250W TDP people will freak out and go on about "power efficiency!!!" and claim that they will safe money in the long run with a 980. I trust that the fanboys will keep Nvidia afloat for the longest time.
I personally won't upgrade this generation, but maybe for the R9 400 series in 2 years. I'll keep a close eye on both companies and see how this plays out, if anything it'll be entertaining.
It's interesting how an nvidia fanboy like linus says that 4k is dead to him and promotes the 1440p monitors now..
Remind me... What graphics card are better for 4k?
:D
For me it would be another 970 since CF 290's would melt the inside of my case and make my PSU die an early death. Single GPU UHD is simply a no-go on higher settings at the moment.
I think it's a shame AMD ditched analogue because DSR 2560x1600 on a CRT looks astonishing and the new AMD cards would have probably pushed that res NICE.
I'd like to upload a still but you cant appreciate it unless you have a CRT...
The biggest problem for nVidia isn't even their hardware. The biggest problem is their software and their greed. AMD has open source the full HSA development tools last November, and anyone can use it for free. With kernel 3.19, amdkfd is now a thing, and HSA will be fully implemented on kernel 3.20 in a couple of weeks. That's a problem for both nVidia and Intel imo, because they have nothing of the kind, and nVidia certainly has nothing of the kind at all, in fact, nVidia merged code to kernel 3.19 to make Maxwell 2.0 chips work on linux, but they've yet again - despite their earlier commitment - to provide the proper platform information so that the compatibility could be implemented. So yeah, no Maxwell 2.0 compatibility with linux... that's a problem, much more a problem than any possible hardware crap.
I just wanted to point out interesting part. Currently Samsung will lend their chip factories to AMD for zen? but i think it will also allow amd to have more control over the process (currently amd&nvidia do not own their own factories thus they cannot control size and quality as much as they'd like) While Nvidia is currently in lawsuit against samsung -> if it gets traction i have feeling amd will join up with samsung and sue nvidia.
If nvidia looses the battle, lawsuit it'll be in dire situation. Which would be bad for us... maybe. intel would save the nvidia. maybe.
I hope AMD pushes the 390x out soon. I want to see what Nvidia has. Maybe we'll see something like when the 7970 was kicking the 680's ass but the Titan destroyed both. I wonder if AMD destroying Nvidia this year would put them in as hard of a spot as everyone says it will. After the sales of the 970 being so successful that there were month long back-orders I find it hard that Nvidia would be hurting that bad. We all know Nvidia has pretty good profit margins on the 970 and 980 as there scheme seems to slash away some of that margin once AMD forces them too. I mean there stock has been hovering within 2 dollars of $20 and they have 7.2 million in assets but, there net income was $439.99 million in 2014 which is down from $562.536 million in 2013. Hard to say from all that if there are that vulnerable to a single bad year.