1329 replies to this topic

[Vulpesveritas]

Also, @mopar, keep in mind I was comparing system cost to system cost, and was putting the 4.2ghz (4.3ghz turbo) Fx-4170 against the i3-2100 SB, where the fx chip performs at stock between the i3 and i5s for the same system cost as the i3.
Also keep in mind, that those benches that show the i3 to be faster than AMD chips are almost always clean builds - they don't represent an average system which has multiple programs running at the same time.

Another good rule of thumb; the newer the program or game, the more likely it is to be multi-threaded. It's the direction technology is moving, and AMD processors will be viable for longer, be able to be upgraded on a motherboard for longer, and at this time give a better price/performance ratio and allow for anything that's not gaming at this time to be faster within the mainstream cost range. ($250 and below for the CPU.)

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 27 May 2012 - 10:04 AM.

[UncleKulikov]

My god.

[Vulpesveritas]

UncleKulikov, on 27 May 2012 - 10:02 AM, said:

My god.

By what terminology is this being used, if I may ask? Given that that statement can be taken as either a compliment for the first post, or may be in reference to the rather annoying constant bickering on the AMD vs Intel debate which for whatever reason keeps going on and on in this thread for whatever reason?

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 27 May 2012 - 10:07 AM.

[Catamount]

Vulpesveritas, on 27 May 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

By what terminology is this being used, if I may ask? Given that that statement can be taken as either a compliment for the first post, or may be in reference to the rather annoying constant bickering on the AMD vs Intel debate which for whatever reason keeps going on and on in this thread for whatever reason?

He actually just bit into a really good sandwich, forgot what he was going to type, and just came out with that instead

[Gremlich Johns]

Catamount, on 27 May 2012 - 11:18 AM, said:

He actually just bit into a really good sandwich, forgot what he was going to type, and just came out with that instead

That or he needs a towel.

[cipher]

Gremlich Johns, on 28 May 2012 - 01:14 PM, said:

That or he needs a towel.

A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

[Tronchaser]

Always good to see hardware comparisons. I use http://www.tomshardware.com/ anytime I'm thinking about upgrading hardware.

[Vulpesveritas]

Tronchaser, on 30 May 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

Always good to see hardware comparisons. I use http://www.tomshardware.com/ anytime I'm thinking about upgrading hardware.

Tom's hardware is generally good, although TPU has a more in-depth review process with a larger selection of games, and therefore is going to be more accurate overall versus a smaller sample, so I tend to follow their reviews.
Also, in general it is always good to do your own research.

[Chiyeko Kuramochi]

I do feel that 680 curse, site tells you card is there and than it is not and waiting time is 10 days+

[Tronchaser]

Vulpesveritas, on 30 May 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

Tom's hardware is generally good, although TPU has a more in-depth review process with a larger selection of games, and therefore is going to be more accurate overall versus a smaller sample, so I tend to follow their reviews.
Also, in general it is always good to do your own research.

Never heard of techpower, so I'll check them out as well. Thanks.

[Vulpesveritas]

Chiyeko Kuramochi, on 30 May 2012 - 01:25 PM, said:

I do feel that 680 curse, site tells you card is there and than it is not and waiting time is 10 days+

I do recommend the 7970 ( a factory OC'd version.) Powercolor has a PCS+ at 1100mhz (faster than the vtx one above) which will be faster than a 680, you'll save a bit, completely obliterats a 680 in GPGPU, and you'll only consume 20 watts / hour more.

Something to consider if you haven't already bought one. lol

Tronchaser, on 30 May 2012 - 01:31 PM, said:

Never heard of techpower, so I'll check them out as well. Thanks.

Really? The GPU-Z GPU monitoring program was made and updated by their GPU reviewer aka wiz. If you're familliar with that at all.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 30 May 2012 - 01:33 PM.

[Chiyeko Kuramochi]

Vulpesveritas, on 30 May 2012 - 01:31 PM, said:

I do recommend the 7970 ( a factory OC'd version.) Powercolor has a PCS+ at 1100mhz (faster than the vtx one above) which will be faster than a 680, you'll save a bit, completely obliterats a 680 in GPGPU, and you'll only consume 20 watts / hour more.

Something to consider if you haven't already bought one. lol

I can change my card (Azerty has great service), but the card you mention is not one they offer which is sad as it actually looks like it would match my current selected 680 in gaming

It is just all the 7970 offered the best ones reach a clock of 1000Mhz, sure they are a bit cheaper, but I am not here to cheap out on the most critical part.

[Lightdragon]

me i prefer cheap and effective... right now i use an amd 5770 only because it cost me a total of 50 bucks and seemed to be a fairly decent upgrade over the gts 450 i was running im not a fanboy of either side whichever ends up performing better in my pricerange at the time i end up buying

[Cochise]

Some of my favorite sites for hardware info.

Techpower up - general tech info
http://www.techpowerup.com/

Storage Review - Storage benchmarks
http://www.storagereview.com/

Frosty Tech - PC cooling benchmarks and info
http://www.frostytech.com/

HardOCP - overclocking, reviews
http://www.hardocp.com/

Anandtech - general tech info
http://www.anandtech.com/

Toms Hardware - general tech info, always intel biased
http://www.tomshardware.com/

[Shivus]

I like tech powerup quite a bit as their benchmarks encompass nearly every game title and comparison you need even going into performance per $. The only qualm I have with them is that I need to take the 1920X1200 results and guess performance at 1920X1080, or search for those separately and compare them cross site. Tom's is great to cross reference with.

On Monday I ordered the sapphire 6950 OC for $214 total to upgrade from my old GTX 260 core 216, thank you newegg memorial day sale. It still performs admirably, able to run Skyrim on near ultra with the lite HD texture packs and other hd texture mods just with AA turned off and AF at 4x, but it pushes the card to the limit. It was time to upgrade, especially so to prepare for MWO. And grabbing that 6950 for pretty much the same price as a 560TI left a big smile on my face.

[cipher]

Vulpesveritas, on 30 May 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

although I do not like the amount of fanboyism and misinformation that comes out on both sides anymore.

Then practice what you preach...

Vulpesveritas, on 30 May 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

Top five recent graphics card series in order of GPGPU performance;
1. AMD Radeon HD 7000 series (7750 on up)
2. Nvidia GTX 500 series (all)
3. Nvidia GTX 400 series (460 on up)
4. Nvidia GTX 600 series (670/680, others fall in as Nvidia 500 series.)
5. AMD Radeon HD 6000 series
Note that in more or less all cases, the high end processors in all these lines are going to have an exponential increase in GPGPU performance, save in the GTX 600 series.

Are you crazy? That should be more like...
1. AMD 7000 & NVIDIA 600 series (only 670 & 680 are Kepler core)
2. AMD 6000 & NVIDIA 500 series
3. AMD 5000 & NVIDIA 400 series

I love how you left out "GeForce", but you included "Radeon HD" in all of the names. You can just drop both or add both. Your AMD fanboism, OP, screams in this thread. I'm sick of seeing it on these forums. In short, stop comparing Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD if you can't keep your fanboism in check. And no, it's not spreading facts, it's spreading biased opinion.

Edited by cipher, 31 May 2012 - 05:26 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

@cipher.
1. Note that i had already stated the gtx 600 series as such, had you read the parentheses. Also given that the gtx 400 line were fermi core, and fermi wiped the floor in gpgpu with everything AMD had until GCN came out.
2. The reason I use "GTX" instead of "Geforce GTX" is A; unlike AMD's branding for the Radeon HD line, wherein Intel also uses the "HD" nominier, sad as it might be for someone to be confused as such, there is no name conflicts as such for the Nvidia cards.
3. If you feel that adding Geforce to all Nvidia naming bits in this post, and improve it's overall quality, then I shall update it tonight.

Also, if you would, should you see any other parts of this post you feel are biased, please le me know.

[Catamount]

No, Cipher, Vulpes is correct in his information there. The Geforce 600 series is nowhere near the Radon HD 7000 series in GPGPU performance. It's actually very bad at GPGPU.

This is old news

http://www.theinquir...870-gpu-compute


It varies from test to test of course

http://www.anandtech...x-680-review/17

But generally speaking, that last test by Anandtech was the only one in which even the 680 managed to significantly beat the 7970 or even its predecessor, the 580! (and don't forget to include the above article as yet another failed test). Not only does the 680 fail to generally overcome the 7970 in GPGPU, and get beaten savagely when it does get beaten, but that article mentions that it couldn't even run some of their GPGPU tests! Given the margins and frequency of wins/losses, I might be willing to stick the 600 series next to the 500 series, and below the 7000 series in GPGPU, but given that last fact, I'm not even inclined to be that charitable.


Expanding our sample a little further, here are more tests:

http://www.brightsid...e.aspx?pageid=4

On that page, compared to the 7970, the 680 loses 8 of 10 tests if we count the two performance measures in each separately (which we shoudl; they measure two different things), and loses 5 of them very, very badly, as in, the 7970 is multiple 680s worth of performance. Of the two it wins, one is nearly a tie anyways, while it scores only one notable victory in 10 tests (admittedly doing very well there, but just the same...).

There was one further test in that review where the 680 could score some points, albiet it questionable, here:
http://www.brightsid...e.aspx?pageid=6

Clearly the test is rather dysfunctional if "hardware accelarated" performance is worse than CPU-only, but finding tests where the 680 doesn't fail abjectly isn't easy, so I figured it was worth a mention, even if it doesn't remotely change the overall picture.


So no, Vulpes was not being a fanboy, and his information was completely correct. The 680 is a fantastic gaming card, but it performs miserably in GPGPU, just like he said.

I understand that you want accurate information given here, but you should research other posters' claims before you declare them wrong.


I guess the clarification never hurts though. Now the OP has citations

Edited by Catamount, 31 May 2012 - 06:04 AM.

[cipher]

I concede, my mistake, sorry about that. I skipped right over GPGPU and just read it as GPU instead of general purpose GPU computing. For that matter the 7000 series does blow the 600 series out of the water.

You might want to rename the thread "General Purpose GPU Guide" instead of "General GPU Guide" as it's seriously misleading. Lightdragon and plenty of others were mislead as well.

On that note you might want to consider adding the Quadro and FireGL lines in this thread since they're used for CAD work, rendering, etc., and would be a good addition to compared GeForce and Radeon with those.

Edited by cipher, 31 May 2012 - 06:12 AM.

[Catamount]

No harm done; like I said, it was an excuse to expand the cited sources

This seems to be a combined/general guide, and GPGPU is gaining a place for the home user (in and out of games), and it is a minority of the post, but still, maybe Vulpes should put "GPGPU" in italics and/or bold to make the distinction clear?

Edited by Catamount, 31 May 2012 - 06:18 AM.