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AMD's CPU offerings have been lackluster in recent years, Intel has taken the cake in that department. I'm not surprised people are building Intel more and more

AMD's CPU offerings have been lackluster in recent years, Intel has taken the cake in that department. I'm not surprised people are building Intel more and more. Ryzen is going to change all that, though. AMD is squaring that up to be the next big competitor. On the GPU front, the 8GB RX480 is making quite a dent in the market. It's beating out NVidia's 6GB GTX1060 in DX12 games, creeping towards the 1070's benchmarks, while costing less than $250. They aren't catering to the high-end market that the GTX1080 latches onto, but the price for performance is hard to beat. I surmise Ryzen to play out the same way.

SamUK96 10y ago
A major cost of that good price per performance metric with AMD cards however is their incredibly eye-watering TDP per performance (and their poor heat dissipation solutions). The electricity cost will in itself mean in maybe a year or so they'll cost more than an equivalent Nvidia/intel card. Also not sure how the hotter-running AMDs affect their life, but it's possible it's considerable...
speeder 10y ago
I recently bought a new 380X... Being honest, AMD disappointed me, it was my first AMD GPU, that I purchased after all the pain of nVidia Optimus, and... AMD managed to outdo nVidia in how shitty they are. * All cards and models have terrible power usage and heat. * Drivers, both on Windows and Linux still aren't decently stable, on my Windows I had to switch drivers SEVERAL times depending on what game I wanted to play, because with each game it had a different serious bug. * AMD software (not just drivers) crash a lot on my machine. No other software behave like that. * AMD tried to "pretend" they don't have too much power usage, on the 380X case they just put a tiny TDP limit for a beastly GPU, so it all the time keeps throttling due to power limits (even when increasing them... I am looking now for information on how to edit the TDP beyond the card defaults), the 380X TDP is the same as the 380, despite it having double the RAM and having more transistors to power. * AMD RX480 "tdp cheat" instead was to add only a single cable, pretend the card didn't had too much power usage, and let it melt people's PCI-e slots by pulling 7.7A from slots rated to 5.5A * AMD distribution network is terrible, they make zero effort to sell around the world, meanwhile nVidia and Intel trounces them, not only in marketing, but by reaching local companies to do distribution deals, for example I paid for my 380X the same price as a GeForce 970... (this was one month before RX480 launch). When nVidia launched the 1080 they called the local media, and told them what price the retailers were supposed to sell the 1080 (even if they ran out of stock), a price that was slightly cheaper than AMD Fury cards... * AMD and partners support just suck, I asked the SIZE of my card, and their support instead told me to "RMA" it, I tried to explain I wanted information, not an RMA, and they refused to help... when I asked about the TDP, then thigns got worse, they got even more staunch that I should just return the card (and eat the shipping costs to US myself!) * AMD official forums has employees spouting bullshit (like claiming in a huge thread of people complainign about the 380X, that it was the hardware on the complainers machines that was defective, withotu realizing that he just accidentally painted the whole 380X product line as shitty, since there is lots of people complaining of common issues, and if lots of people have the same issues, and is a hardware issue, then the hardware that is crap... also, on the forums making ANY negative comment about AMD, get you attacked, people claim you are nVidia shill or worse, I even got banned from AMD chat after I asked how to circunvent a driver bug that was preventing me from setting my CRT resolution correctly, because they didn't wanted me talking in public about negative things).
- mustacheemperor 10y ago
  Interesting, I am an nvidia owner but have read many times that AMD's software and drivers are much better now than they used to be. If that bit about the 480 is true that's appalling. It doesn't really surprise me the brand's product forums are defensive about the brand, I'd wager the Nvidia forums users respond to negativity about nvidia the same way.
  - speeder 10y ago
    It is true and AMD "fixed" it with a driver hack. https://www.custompcreview.com/news/amd-aims-reduce-rx480-power-consumption-upcoming-graphics-driver/30719/ https://www.custompcreview.com/news/amd-aims-reduce-rx480-po... The driver do two things to "fix" the problem: 1. Draw more power from the cable (it is what the card should have done in first place). 2. They put back on the card the behaviour the 380X have, that I am trying to get rid of, of clamping down hard on the TDP and throttling heavily. And yes, the claims of this making the card faster ARE true, and also applies to older cards, AMD cards draw so much power and make so much heat, that if you UNDERCLOCK them, they can get faster, because sometimes the stable speeds with less throttling is a bigger benefit than the amount that you underclocked the card. That said, last I checked (this was 2 months ago), the driver changes were Windows only, some guys mining bitcoin on Linux didn't noticed and happily melted their riser cables. I really don't like nVidia behaviour as company, pulling shady tactics left and right, but AMD frankly shocked me with their shoddy engineering. (also see: recently Linux kernel devs REFUSED AMDGPU driver patch... AMD was warning in February that the patch they were attempting to do was crap, and they still went ahead with it, there was even some passive-agressive personal insults exchanged on official Linux kernel mailing list).

SamUK96 10y ago

A major cost of that good price per performance metric with AMD cards however is their incredibly eye-watering TDP per performance (and their poor heat dissipation solutions). The electricity cost will in itself mean in maybe a year or so they'll cost more than an equivalent Nvidia/intel card. Also not sure how the hotter-running AMDs affect their life, but it's possible it's considerable...

speeder 10y ago

I recently bought a new 380X... Being honest, AMD disappointed me, it was my first AMD GPU, that I purchased after all the pain of nVidia Optimus, and... AMD managed to outdo nVidia in how shitty they are. * All cards and models have terrible power usage and heat. * Drivers, both on Windows and Linux still aren't decently stable, on my Windows I had to switch drivers SEVERAL times depending on what game I wanted to play, because with each game it had a different serious bug. * AMD software (not just drivers) crash a lot on my machine. No other software behave like that. * AMD tried to "pretend" they don't have too much power usage, on the 380X case they just put a tiny TDP limit for a beastly GPU, so it all the time keeps throttling due to power limits (even when increasing them... I am looking now for information on how to edit the TDP beyond the card defaults), the 380X TDP is the same as the 380, despite it having double the RAM and having more transistors to power. * AMD RX480 "tdp cheat" instead was to add only a single cable, pretend the card didn't had too much power usage, and let it melt people's PCI-e slots by pulling 7.7A from slots rated to 5.5A * AMD distribution network is terrible, they make zero effort to sell around the world, meanwhile nVidia and Intel trounces them, not only in marketing, but by reaching local companies to do distribution deals, for example I paid for my 380X the same price as a GeForce 970... (this was one month before RX480 launch). When nVidia launched the 1080 they called the local media, and told them what price the retailers were supposed to sell the 1080 (even if they ran out of stock), a price that was slightly cheaper than AMD Fury cards... * AMD and partners support just suck, I asked the SIZE of my card, and their support instead told me to "RMA" it, I tried to explain I wanted information, not an RMA, and they refused to help... when I asked about the TDP, then thigns got worse, they got even more staunch that I should just return the card (and eat the shipping costs to US myself!) * AMD official forums has employees spouting bullshit (like claiming in a huge thread of people complainign about the 380X, that it was the hardware on the complainers machines that was defective, withotu realizing that he just accidentally painted the whole 380X product line as shitty, since there is lots of people complaining of common issues, and if lots of people have the same issues, and is a hardware issue, then the hardware that is crap... also, on the forums making ANY negative comment about AMD, get you attacked, people claim you are nVidia shill or worse, I even got banned from AMD chat after I asked how to circunvent a driver bug that was preventing me from setting my CRT resolution correctly, because they didn't wanted me talking in public about negative things).

mustacheemperor 10y ago
Interesting, I am an nvidia owner but have read many times that AMD's software and drivers are much better now than they used to be. If that bit about the 480 is true that's appalling. It doesn't really surprise me the brand's product forums are defensive about the brand, I'd wager the Nvidia forums users respond to negativity about nvidia the same way.
- speeder 10y ago
  It is true and AMD "fixed" it with a driver hack. https://www.custompcreview.com/news/amd-aims-reduce-rx480-power-consumption-upcoming-graphics-driver/30719/ https://www.custompcreview.com/news/amd-aims-reduce-rx480-po... The driver do two things to "fix" the problem: 1. Draw more power from the cable (it is what the card should have done in first place). 2. They put back on the card the behaviour the 380X have, that I am trying to get rid of, of clamping down hard on the TDP and throttling heavily. And yes, the claims of this making the card faster ARE true, and also applies to older cards, AMD cards draw so much power and make so much heat, that if you UNDERCLOCK them, they can get faster, because sometimes the stable speeds with less throttling is a bigger benefit than the amount that you underclocked the card. That said, last I checked (this was 2 months ago), the driver changes were Windows only, some guys mining bitcoin on Linux didn't noticed and happily melted their riser cables. I really don't like nVidia behaviour as company, pulling shady tactics left and right, but AMD frankly shocked me with their shoddy engineering. (also see: recently Linux kernel devs REFUSED AMDGPU driver patch... AMD was warning in February that the patch they were attempting to do was crap, and they still went ahead with it, there was even some passive-agressive personal insults exchanged on official Linux kernel mailing list).