Not far it's the next release. But thats only the open drivers, not sure when the AMD binary will appear or if it's required.
1 Like
I will keep a lookout then.
1 Like
well seeing as how I am kicking out 60 fps in gta5 with a phenom 2 and a 370 I don't think I really have a problem using amd. I have a problem with the catalyst linux drivers but when ubuntu gets the 16.04 release I'll be able to use amdgpu. Yeah, I don't have a problem with amd. I just want Riot Games to port league of legends to linux.
1 Like
To answer the question in the title, yes I would and yes I have (from a 2500k & GTX 550Ti to a 8370 and R9 270) but I did it for other reasons beyond the scope of what your asking, I have no problem with performance and a loss of FPS really isn't that big of a deal to me, for me my all AMD build does exactly what I wanted it to do and the price was more reasonable then if I would be doing the same thing with a Intel/Nvidia combo.
For me the price per CPU core was the deciding factor and I know that may seem odd but the people here who know what I'm doing with my rig will understand, I needed as many cores as I could get and the 8300 series of AMD processors fit nicely, I'm not a bleeding edge person I like to stay a generation or so behind the fray so I have no issue with running AMD hardware, but I do look forward to Zen, AMDcpu, or any other advancements they make that will hopefully put them back in the running. I'm not a fanboy of any of the companies but pick and choose hardware for the performance and price point that suits my needs.
3 Likes
This. I base every single purchase I make for a build on price to performance, and use case. The only thing right now that actually steers me away from buying AMD cpus for any rig is the beyond dead-end platform. It's basically impossible to recommend AMD in good conscious.
If AMD can sell me a chip that does what I need it to do and it will save me enough money to upgrade another component, or buy myself a lunch, I'm doing it.
Not to mention that meeting specs while coming in under budget is a sure fire way to get people coming back to you for builds, which I'm often able to do with AMD parts.
Exceptions to my P:P ratio being king rule are when I'm buying/building for myself. I personally don't like supporting Nvidia, and I'm too poor to support Intel most of the time. Not to mention I'm proudly an AMD fanboy and I love their hardware, and most of what the company does even if they mess it up a lot of the time.
I don't want a world where there isn't any competition in this industry, or any industry for that matter. Choice and competition are extremely important for the consumer, and for innovation. The only real way to support a company is by purchasing their products, and that's what I do when it comes to AMD.
1 Like
Since my system is ancient the question isn't really aimed at me, however I will still give my opinion.
I would like to upgrade to an all AMD build but at the moment my main issue is the cpu overhead and the resulting frame time fluctuations in the AMD drivers are a big reason for me to steer clear from AMD GPUs.
As for the CPU side I am hopeful for Zen but whether I buy one is another story. The main variables in my decision are if the google android emulator will work on intel chipsets in linux by early 2017, the price of the high end consumer Zen CPUs (+motherboard) compared to equally performing intel CPUs and the performance of the integrated graphics as I hope to put that to use with a VM pass-through.
In the end still the overriding factor is bang-for-the-buck, so I'm hoping for a situation where I can spend $200 for a AMD GPU and get hardware equivalent to a $300 NVIDIA GPU but will perform like a $200 nvidia GPU. And since the software is the constraint hopefully that will change overtime and I will get +10% performance over a few years just by updating drivers.
1 Like
Thanks to all for their valid input on the question! Glad to see civil conversation on the matter.
PCI-E 3.0 is available on only one AM3+ based board, but it's supported natively on newer FM2+ boards.
PCI-E 3.0 vs 2.0 is really not much as a bottleneck as you'd think. While half the bandwidth might seem like a big number, modern GPUs aren't quite effected by it yet. There are plenty of tests out there that show that, for gaming, the performance delta between PCI-E 3.0 and 2.0 is negligible.
And for multiple PCI-E device applications, the AMD 990FX chipset actually has many more lanes available vs a comparable mainstream Intel chipset(let's say Z77).
So when running a mutli-GPU setup, the Intel chipset runs them at 3.0 x8 + x8, the AMD chipset is running at 2.0 x16 + x16, which is the same effective bandwidth.
Probably much more info than called for, but I think it provides some perspective on the choice between AMD and Intel platforms.
1 Like
You can out AMDGPU now if you just recompile the kernel (not terribly difficult but can lead to dependency issues if you go with a experimental version like 4.5rc6 etc..) and set the CIK and AMDGPU flags to on.
I tried to get DRI3 working with AMDGPU but didn't succeed first try, might give it a go again once meas 11.2 and kernel 4.5 go final. But from initial impressions the speed difference between radeon and amdgpu oss isn't very little if anyone so I'm not sure at what point AMD is going to make the driver FASTER, it needs to be 2x or more faster to really be useful....
OH and about PCIe 3.0, yes boards can support it, but current AMD CPUs from my understand DON'T so its a moot point unless the most recent AMD cpus have it included now???
I'm all intel and nvidia right now but if Amd comes out with better products then intel and nvidia i would switch. Really curious to see how the new lineup of AMD Gpu's will perform with the new 14nm process and also how zen will do. I do think its important to support the better product so if intel and nvidia are the best for my needs i will stick with them. I do hope AMD pulls a rabbit out of the hat to keep healthy competition going.
For me it is about getting best overall value for $ and that is where AMD wins for me. They are actually in a good position with Zen in my opinion because they don't have to beat Skylake, just come pretty damn close say within 5% and price it really good. Say top end Zen CPU goes for $250-$300 at launch. Assuming Skylake, for whatever reason, is still gouged to $400 (Unlikely) by the time Zen releases. Then AMD has a chance to really take back some market share on CPU side. As far as polaris/pascal feud goes. I think we will see what we have always seen Nvidia overpricing their midrange line allowing AMD to swoop in and offer high performance cards without breaking the bank.
To add to this, LTT did a video comparing older xeons using pcie gen1 to amd using gen2. The benchmarks were dead even at 4K. Which actually means that really, although not recommended by any stretch, PCIe gen1 can still be gamed on. Because really it is about finding a sweet spot where the CPU and GPU can communicate at sustained speeds
Yes.
There is indeed no pci-e 3.0 support on AM3+ 970 / 990FX chipset boards.
On FM2+ boards with the latest A88X chipsets, there is pci-e 3.0 support.
Asus made one Sabertooth 990FX gen3 board with "pci-e 3.0 support" but that board was only a limmited edition.
And ofc it was not true pci-e 3.0 native.
Yeah, sure. Why not?
I mean like if Zen's IPC can match Haswell, and they have 6C12T as well as 8C16T versions available...
I'll seriously consider them. I'm an Intel fanboy but Intel right now has the performance that I want. AMD does not. Simple as that.
That is if the price point is competitive to Intel and that is if the new chipsets have good features.
One of AMD's problem for the past year or two has been the ancient chipsets.
I wouldn't mind paying 400€'s for a Zen 6C12T, that's roughly what Intel's 5820K (Haswell-E) goes for in Germany right now.
I'm not sure what I'd be willing to pay for a Zen 8C16T though, not 1000+ €'s for sure :D
I'm also interested in seeing Zen's 2 core variants. Bring on the 2C4T Black Edition..
That's gonna be bananas..
In regards to GPU, sure why not. I don't have any loyalty towards Nvidia even if my build recommendations might seem like that.
When I bought my GTX 670, I wanted good perf per watt and the 670 was the card for me.
If AMD continues to offer good compute performance with Polaris, it would be great.
If their perf per watt is comparable to Nvidia's, it would be great.
Hopefully the new video blocks in Polaris also solve one of AMD's big problems, bluray power consumption.
This is just fucking ridiculous.
Before I bought my GTX 670, I was actually seriously considering to buy a 7950.
When I did my research it turned out that here in Finland the good models with proper VRM cooling and quiet coolers were nonexistant. And then I saw the bluray power consumption figures vs the GTX 670 and I made my decision..
Nowadays I don't play games pretty much at all but I do need compute performance. And at the same time my friend was talking about how he would want more gaming grunt.
So we swapped GPU's, he got my GTX 670 2GB and I got his HD 7850 1GB + €€'s.
Good trade for both of us, he got what he wanted and I sort of got to keep what I needed.
I didn't even realize this was a problem. Why would Bluray playback cause that much power consumption on a video card?
have you not looked at file type and size ?
Explaining that goes well beyond my expertise. I'm not gonna even claim to even remotely understand GPU architecture's and ALU's and whatnot.
But my uneducated guess is that it boils down to the efficiency of the UVD and/or it's design and how it does what it does..
If you look at the "temperatures and clock profiles" page in TechPowerUP's reviews, they tell you the clockspeeds and voltages the GPU's ran in their testing.
Here's the clock profiles for R9 Nano and 980 Ti reference from TechPowerUP's reviews.
I'm not gonna tell you which is which in the image, I imagine you can probably guess it yourself!
Also I should've typed "Multimedia Cores" instead of video blocks. Video block is kind of okay, a block of the GPU that does video stuff but...Oh well, anyway..
Sources
Edit: Or did you actually ask why does the GPU consume power while you're playing Bluray's? The GPU is doing the actual decoding of the video stream because they are using GPU acceleration, which is what you should be using as well.
Blu-ray Playback: Power DVD 9 Ultra is used at a resolution of 1920x1080 to play back the Batman: The Dark Knight Blu-ray disc with GPU acceleration turned on. Measurements start around timecode 1:19, which has the highest data rates on the BD with up to 40 Mb/s. Playback keeps running until power draw converges to a stable value.
And if you're wondering why they still are using PowerDVD 9 when we're living in 2016, well, comparable results I guess.
This has been TechPowerUP's way of testing GPU Bluray playback power consumption since like, uhm, idk, when they redid their power consumption test setup? Edit2: Actually since Jan 2010, not 2009.
Well, seeing you're referring to unreleased hardware , Right now AMD has nothing to compel me to switch.
if their IPC is on par with latest gen intel and can have equal to or better thermals/power consumption, then I might consider it. Intel also has all of the instruction sets in their CPUs that I would want as well.
In the end it really, is who does it better for cheaper. I will not take higher heat, more power consumption, and half the performance to save a few bucks.
1 Like
I to plan on upgrading this year and would not have a problem with going all AMD. Used to have their CPUs, been usin ATI/AMD GPUs for a while now. Their CPUs used to kick intel around like it was nothing up to the Core2Duo days. After that launched, they started falling behind a bit and after the i7s hit, it just got worse.
Now i'm hoping Zen will bring them back, since competition is always a good thing. If they perform similar to Skylake/Haswell E, so a few % difference for a better price, i'd love to go for that.
As far as their GPUs go, I think i'll be staying with team red, never had a problem with them, either hardware or software. Support for older cards seems to last longer than Nvidias.
Now if Zen doesn't perform as i'm hoping, i'll be going with intel and their upcoming X99, hopefully the 8c K part won't be around 1k$.
As long as it's cheap, works and has the die features I want. That would be why I'm using a FX-8320 with a Sapphire Nitro R9 380 4gb. Can't really seem to get into most modern CPU intensive games, something about the guy standing in midair snipping you with a handgun through the walls seems to make it not very enjoyable. If ARM keeps advancing at the rate it is I might eventually go that direction in a few more years.