AMD has announced two new GPUs, the Radeon RX Vega 64 and 56. The GPUs are named in reference to the amount of "compute units" included. Both GPUs have 8 GB of High Bandwidth Memory 2.0 VRAM and will be released on August 14.
The Vega 64 is priced at $500 and is said to be on par with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080. The GTX 1080 was released on May 27, 2016 and has a TDP 105 Watts lower than the Vega 64.
Previously: AMD Unveils the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition
AMD Launches the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:17AM (4 children)
Gamer here. What card did you get? What games couldn't it play? What games do you want to play?
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(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Tuesday August 01 2017, @04:02PM (3 children)
Thanks for offering clue.
I got a Radeon R7 240 (*1). At the time it was one of the highest rated -- and available -- "High Mid Range" AMD cards per www.videocardbenchmark.net. I also saw advice to get something a couple years old so the drivers had a chance to "settle in". From what I hear that is still good advice today.
I chose AMD over NVidia because I've heard NVidia is more linux-hostile. Not that linux matters in this case, because the game only runs on Windows (where have we heard this before?) and IMHO any type of virtualization or emulation layer could only be expected to slow things down.
I dug up one of those Windows 7 SP1 hard drives that comes with the computer when you buy it; never booted until I decided to try this game. Given my decades of professional experience with Windows, my personal policy is that a Windows instance will never see a live network connection. So installing drivers, patches, etc. all happens via an airgap-hopping thumb drive.
The game (Trainz A New Era) requires at least ATI 5550 (*2) but recommends AMD HD 6950 (*3).
*1: Rated 967, higher is supposed to be better
*2: Rated 539
*3: A "High End" card. At the time of purchase, what was available was priced out of my range.
So today, I could drop $BIGBUX on a higher-rated card, but my fundamental question is how do I know in advance that it will deliver? What I got supposedly had 1.8 times the power (rating) of the minimum, but still barely works.
In case you're curious, the game is somewhat like SecondLife. (Is that still a thing?) Lots of user-created content; long sight lines leading to potentially millions of polygons to render. The game does have settings to pare down the more distant objects, but that kinda ruins it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday August 02 2017, @06:25PM
The R7 240 is not high mid range. It is low end, a hint being the $70-80 price tag. You were fooled by the "High to Mid Range" description of the list at videocardbenchmark.net. From what I can tell it's more like the middle of a long list with the bottom being goddamn old and slow cards. You have to be careful with PassMark period, as the numbers can be misleading.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9217/the-amd-a8-7650k-apu-review-also-new-testing-methodology/7 [anandtech.com]
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html [tomshardware.com]
Nvidia's GT 1030 [videocardbenchmark.net] is around that price and more than double the PassMark at 2281.
Linux hostile? Maybe more like open source hostile [pcworld.com].
Now we could call this an epic fail on your part right here, but from the AnandTech benchmarks linked above and this video [youtube.com], you can see that the R7 240 can run modern games at well over 7 FPS. So what's the problem then?
I can only conclude that Trainz: A New Era is a crappily coded title. Lo and behold [steamcommunity.com]:
User created content and long view distances probably hurt too, but you picked the wrong title to judge the state of GPUs by. Make sure you update Trainz to SP2 (horrible patch names for a reason that should be obvious) and come back.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday August 06 2017, @03:00AM (1 child)
I've got an extra HD 6970 and R9 270. SN doesn't have priv messaging but if you can post a way to contact you then i'll mail you one. Just let me know which you'd prefer.
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(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday August 06 2017, @03:38PM
This is a generous offer, thank you. I hope at least I can reimburse your packaging and shipping costs.
Please send an email to imbrie2 who is at the domain zotline doubt com. (Of course I hope you will doubt part of that address.) I will then reply with a mailing address.
It looks like the 270 is the better card, though I've already proven myself pretty poor at selecting. This page makes me think there are only drivers for WXP. (I'm on W7.)
https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-200-Series-Drivers.aspx [amd.com]
For the 6970 I hear it runs hot and the fans are loud. Has that been your experience?