New G-unit: Kepler vs GCN

[Deleted member 13524]

Have you ever looked at the used market?

I've seen plenty of dirt-cheap 2GB HD6900, HD7800 and even GK104 cards on sale. I myself bought a 2GB GTX 670 (signature edition that goes over 1.2GHz) for 215€ back in October. That was less than £180 and you could find even cheaper than that nowadays.
I actually have a 2GB HD6950 that I need to sell. PM if you're interested.


If you're convinced you'd rather have a stopgap solution before spending more in a future 20nm GPU, used market is the way to go. Last gens are quite good for Skyrim and you'll save money for later.

 

[ams]

Which architecture is more future proof: Kepler or GCN??

This is a difficult question to answer, because each architecture has strengths and weaknesses (for instance, Kepler is very strong in tesselation perf. and geometry shader perf., while GCN is very strong in forward lighting perf.). The subtle difference in API support is not very relevant IMHO (Kepler supports some key features in DX11.2 as described here: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/10/17/windows-8-1-2/ ). There are differences in feature set (Kepler supports G-SYNC, PhysX, TXAA, etc. while GCN supports Mantle; note that GCN 1.0 GPU's such as R9 280X do NOT support TrueAudio nor Xfire XDMA). Also note that, even though not used in PS4/XB1, Kepler GPU's should be very strong, relatively speaking, in any upcoming Unreal Engine 3 or Unreal Engine 4 game (or any other future PC game that is developed on NVIDIA hardware). In fact, Kepler is the first ultra mobile GPU to get UE4 support.

That said, if you want something truly future proof, your timing is not good, because both of these fundamental architectures are ~ 2 years old now. In the coming months, we will see Maxwell GPU's with unified virtual memory between CPU/GPU, improved IQ, and superior energy efficiency.

 

[homerdog]

Thanks for pointing that out! Just assumed they both offered the same level of DX support ...

So tiled resources will only be available on the 280X!

That should be in use by, like, 2018 right? So that could be useful to me! Too bad it'll mean I can't downgrade to Windows 7 like I was thinking of doing (I've spent some time on Win 7 machines recently, and even after a year with 8 I still prefer the feel of 7).

Kepler absolutely supports Tiled Resources. In fact the first Microsoft demo for Tiled Resources was run on a Kepler GPU (GTX770).
http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Windows-Blog/Tiled-Resources-for-DirectX-in-Windows-81

Kepler lacks some required D3D11.1 functionality, thus it can only be marketed as fully DX11 compliant, but in reality it supports all of the optional D3D11.1 features and all of the required new D3D11.2 features and is mostly on par with GCN in terms of D3D feature set.

The biggest barrier for Tiled Resources is the Win8 requirement...

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I would most certainly not pay the currently exorbitant prices for a 280 or 290.

That's seeming like pretty good advice.

Swaaye is looking at a vastly different prices, He is in US, where AMD card prices have skyrocketed due to the popularity of mining. The £235 for the 280X is not a bad price and should offer you great performance. I would not consider a 760 next to that card. Waiting is always an option, also getting a second hand card should be valid option too. A used 7970 is pretty much identical to the 280X and a good SKU with still warranty left should be easily available, also a used 4GB nVidia 670 would be better than the 760 and those should also be found relatively cheaply. They were going out with great bargain prices a little while ago.

 

[swaaye]

Yeah the Radeon prices are totally messed up here.

Might be interesting to see where the coming GTX 750 cards land in price and performance.