Vulkan and Nvidia

[dadev]

Last time I checked GPUOpen was a few months ago, back then it was all DX11. I will take a look again, it might shed more light on best practice on GCN with DX12. Probably won't help with better control of compute engines in DX12, but might be something.

[Musta Kyy]

AMD has proved a very future proof option even before this Vulkan/DX12 stuff.
Consider this:

Back when the HD 7970 was released it was up against the GTX 680 and at the time of release the 680 was a lot faster (around 20% and this forced AMD to lower prices).
Afterwards these cards have been rebranded as 280X and GTX 770. If you now, after many driver updates, go check the difference between these cards, you'll see that the 280X has actually surpassed the GTX 770.

Same thing happened with the R9 290X vs GTX 980, the 290X was released a year before the GTX 980 and when the 980 was released it was a better card. However, if you look at new benchmarks you'll again see that the cards are now about equal and in DX12/Vulkan the 290X is actually better.

Edit: Also consider that you can now get a Fury/Fury X for half the price of a GTX 1080. The 1080 is better card overall now (it should be, it costs twice as much) but how will things look in a year?

[Drunkenvalley]

Actually, the HD 7970 and GTX 680 were trading blows at the time... The favor would vary from one bench to the next. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1495?vs=1494

[Artorius]

Futuremark is not going to shoot themselves in the foot with optimizing for one vendor over another.

They're shooting themselves in the foot by purposely not showing off what the API is capable of doing. They chose not to go deeper into it because they wanted to "make it fair" for things as old as Kepler, so I sincerely wonder what is the point of that benchmark...

[Zenny]

They're shooting themselves in the foot by purposely not showing off what the API is capable of doing. They chose not to go deeper into it because they wanted to "make it fair" for things as old as Kepler, so I sincerely wonder what is the point of that benchmark...

Because it is the most supported version of Direct X 12? The one that every single DX12 game on the market is using? But you are absolutely right, let them create a benchmark for the most advanced Direct3D 12 feature level, namely 12_1! So all GCN 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 cards won't be able to run it. That would be fair I guess.

Sucks for AMD owners though.

[Lumineus]

AMD has proved a very future proof option even before this Vulkan/DX12 stuff.
Consider this:

Back when the HD 7970 was released it was up against the GTX 680 and at the time of release the 680 was a lot faster (around 20% and this forced AMD to lower prices).
Afterwards these cards have been rebranded as 280X and GTX 770. If you now, after many driver updates, go check the difference between these cards, you'll see that the 280X has actually surpassed the GTX 770.

Same thing happened with the R9 290X vs GTX 980, the 290X was released a year before the GTX 980 and when the 980 was released it was a better card. However, if you look at new benchmarks you'll again see that the cards are now about equal and in DX12/Vulkan the 290X is actually better.

Edit: Also consider that you can now get a Fury/Fury X for half the price of a GTX 1080. The 1080 is better card overall now (it should be, it costs twice as much) but how will things look in a year?

So what you're saying is that AMD ships their cards with poor drivers, takes literally forever to get around to optimizing them, and by the time they work like they're supposed to it's time to buy a new card and suffer through it all again? And that you can avoid all this by paying a slight premium for the nVidia equivalent and not have to wait two years to get the performance you paid for? Brilliant, I concur.

Fury X will never be equal to 1080 BTW. 1070 maybe, but you're not really saving any money there. And by the time they come up with something that is, nVidia will be on to 1080Ti, 1090, or even 1095, and you'll be waiting until 2019 for AMD to fix the drivers for it.

[Vash The Stampede]

So what you're saying is that AMD ships their cards with poor drivers, takes literally forever to get around to optimizing them, and by the time they work like they're supposed to it's time to buy a new card and suffer through it all again? And that you can avoid all this by paying a slight premium for the nVidia equivalent and not have to wait two years to get the performance you paid for? Brilliant, I concur.

What DX12/Vulkan does for AMD isn't getting around poor driver optimizations, but exposing hardware that would otherwise lay dormant. Since AMD was probably expecting DX12 to come out soon after their first GCN cards were released, AMD was forced to tweak games by using that dormant hardware for DX11. Even through hand optimizations for DX11, you can't expose the hardware properly without an API like Mantle, Vulkan, and DX12. On top of it, the game would have to be specifically optimized to take advantage of these API's and the hardware.

Nvidia cards are specifically optimized for DX11, but Nvidia had no foresight for these newer API's. So the Maxwell cards just don't have the hardware.

Fury X will never be equal to 1080 BTW. 1070 maybe, but you're not really saving any money there. And by the time they come up with something that is, nVidia will be on to 1080Ti, 1090, or even 1095, and you'll be waiting until 2019 for AMD to fix the drivers for it.

Nobody expects the Fury X to compete with the 1070, let alone the 1080. Who cares about 1080Ti's or whatever newer or faster more expensive cards? It's all about the $250 and lower price range.

Just so happens the Fury X beats the GTX 1070 in Vulkan Doom. Nothing to get upset over. The Fury X won't see many other victories, and at $600 it isn't something to be proud of. Not when the GTX 1070 is $450 at best.

[Bigvizz]

Just so happens the Fury X beats the GTX 1070 in Vulkan Doom. Nothing to get upset over. The Fury X won't see many other victories, and at $600 it isn't something to be proud of. Not when the GTX 1070 is $450 at best.

Fury X current pricing in USD 459.99 is the best price you're going to find at the moment.

1070 current pricing in USD is 409.99 that's in stock at the moment, although their are better options for 429.99.

So, your pricing estimates are little off.

[Drunkenvalley]

Fury X current pricing in USD 459.99 is the best price you're going to find at the moment.

1070 current pricing in USD is 409.99 that's in stock at the moment, although their are better options for 429.99.

So, your pricing estimates are little off.

Kinda tangential point though.

[Bigvizz]

Kinda tangential point though.

Misinformation is a bitch, when it's relating to the main point. Also I'm not arguing against his main point.

[Vash The Stampede]

Fury X current pricing in USD 459.99 is the best price you're going to find at the moment.

1070 current pricing in USD is 409.99 that's in stock at the moment, although their are better options for 429.99.

So, your pricing estimates are little off.

Doesn't change my point. Last I checked it was $600, but prices are fluctuating a lot lately. The Fury X performs the same as a 1070 unless you count Doom, but costs more. The 1070 is suppose to be $380, but yea in the wild it's $430. Still cheaper.

[Zenny]

Some 1070's have been appearing at the $399 price point but are quickly sold out, I guess you'd have to wait another month or so before $399 in stock 1070's would be common.