Unpopular opinion: GPU shortage is actually a good time

[95Viper]

Stay on topic.
Stop insulting other members... discuss the topic not people.
Be civil.

Behavior that is inappropriate/should be reported
Insulting other forum members (calling someone names makes you look stupid anyways).
Hateful, toxic, and otherwise demeaning comments will not be tolerated; whether meant as a joke or not.

All posts and private messages have a "report post" button on the bottom of the post, click it when you feel something is inappropriate. Do not use your report as a "wild card invitation" to go back and add to the drama and therefore become part of the problem.

Thank You, and, have a good day.

 

[cvaldes]

I don't care about you flexing your poor financial decisions, but tell me, why exactly do you dislike medium settings so much? It's been known in enthusiast circles for over decade that ultra settings often give next to none visual benefit over high settings and often reduce fps by two times. And in last 5 years many games even on low do look quite good. So that's even more reason to don't care about ultra settings. The only time when they are good for something is when game becomes legacy and you can max it out, when you get another graphics card, otherwise ultra is just too hard to justify.

I think purchasing high quality graphics cards for gaming is a good decision when done by someone who has the means. It's not an investment, it's a cost, just like buying a new refrigerator or an electric toothbrush. Buying shares of NVDA is an investment.

Games look better at Ultra settings if you haven't noticed. A decade ago there was no ray-tracing either. A lot of the more sophisticated graphics settings have developed over the years and weren't around in the first decade of this millennium. Heck, one simply needs to look at the evolution of anti-aliasing algorithms.

There's also the notion of screen resolutions increasing at a faster rate than years ago. Heck, you don't even need to look at PC hardware to recognize this. Today's smartphones are shooting 4K Dolby Vision in low light conditions that would have stymied the top-of-the-line smartphones from ten years ago.

There is a cottage industry of people modding older PC games to provide upgraded visuals that weren't attainable when those titles first released: reshade, high-resolution texture packs, etc. If you don't understand a graphics card with 8GB VRAM can support higher resolution textures than a 2GB card can.

Just as important: dickering with each game's setting to find adequate performance is laborious and time consuming. From a time perspective, it makes more sense just buying quality hardware, setting everything to Ultra and not wasting my limited free time futzing around with game configuration.

Not sure what else did you expect. It was marketed as one and delivers like it was marketed. Nothing wrong with card itself.

Just because something is marketed as something doesn't automatically mean it will deliver. Look at Cyberpunk 2077. The world is full of "over promise, under deliver" and not just the PC hardware market.

Consoles imo are out of discussion in PC sites. Console is not a PC, even if it can run games, it's not the same.

Unfortunately, the TPU operators have already let console discussions happen so you're too late complaining.

Moreover, the videogame console market essentially sets the parameters of the hardware requirements for PC gaming. With the debut of PS5 and Xbox Series X, 4K@120Hz gaming is THE standard for the next 6-7 years. It makes zero sense for a game studio to publish a title that can't be played on one of these two consoles so it's not like Bethesda, Ubisoft, Rockstar, et al. are going to start pumping out 8K games next year.

Same for me, I have no interest in following US market. Anyway, when I mention European hardware shop, then I really don't expect some out of context comments about how same cards were a lot cheaper in la la la land. Those prices weren't ever real here, so I don't care how they might had been at some point radically different on the other side of pond.

Sorry, US prices here are very relevant because THAT'S THE CURRENCY WHAT AMD AND NVIDIA ANNOUNCE THEIR PRODUCTS. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes the stage to announce a new GeForce product, he quotes US dollars.

But I don't care about them, especially for studios that can't make reasonably optimized code. That's entirely their issue that they did such an awful job at making their shit playable. More importantly, I don't get what's the big deal about playing the latest games. It's an entertainment a type of media, so as long as it works and is enjoyable, its age is irrelevant.

Look, no one can please everyone all the time.

There are some great new games that demand a lot of hardware performance and there are terrible new games that demand a lot of hardware. There are great new games that have modest hardware requirements and there are terrible new games that require modest hardware. There are tons of older games that fit all the same description.

You clearly don't realize that all games were new at one point. Don't you remember the whole "But can it play Crysis?" era? Now it's a meme from an era before they were known as memes. And yes, plenty of today's systems can play Crysis, back when it was released very few.

There are games that have a rough start and got better. There are games that were better before then got worse. There are good games that stayed good, there are bad games that stayed bad.

However, if you have very capable new hardware you can play anything the game studios can pump out without spending any effort trying to figure out how to run it satisfactorily. That's the point of premium gaming hardware.

Remember that these developers (are supposed to) test their content on a variety of systems before they publish the minimum hardware requirements.

I never said that newer games were better than older games (in fact, I mentioned that play a bunch of older games). However, newer games will push hardware farther than older games.

One thing is for certain: you have much lower standards than some others here.

Everyone has that choice, just like the shoes you put on your feet or what you put on your dinner plate.

 

[The red spirit]

I think purchasing high quality graphics cards for gaming is a good decision. It's not an investment, it's a cost. Buying shares of NVDA is an investment.

Basically any card nowadays (except frying RTX 3090s) are well made. The only difference is price, performance, power consumption. So far there hasn't been a single properly priced, quite fast for price and reasonably efficient card in a while. The last attempt was GTX 1660 series, but they lacked performance for their price, so the last truly good all around card was AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB (4GB is e-waste). It was cheap, fast and efficient. More than half of Vega 64 performance for 3 times lower price. Good and it lasts forever, as it is on GCN architecture, also has 8GB VRAM and now with FSR, it's essentially immortal card for another 4 years. nVidia's last best card was GTX 1060 6GB, but it's just worse than RX 480 8GB in how it will fare long term.

Games look better at Ultra settings if you haven't noticed. A decade ago there was no ray-tracing either.

Only sometimes. It's hard to say if high and ultra look any different at all.

And I was benching RX 580 in Unigine Tropics yesterday, I went through every setting combination and many things made little visual difference. Often even medium was nearly indistinguishable from high. For example, shader quality past medium, made no difference, but reduced fps. AA past 4x made such a tiny difference that it just didn't matter. Disabling tessellation made zero visual difference. I'm still mystified as to what refractions setting does. Ambient occlusion makes some subconscious (I wasn't able to tell if demo had it on or not, but when it was on it felt a little bit better, but I still can't point a finger and answer where and why) quality difference, but costs quite a bit of fps.

And same story is in games, thought visual difference is greater, it still isn't big enough for me to care.

A lot of the more sophisticated graphics settings have developed over the years and weren't around in the first decade of this millennium.

That's mostly due to transition from fixed pipeline to unified shader architecture. After that switch, game devs can make their own shaders (graphics effects) in ways that they want, not in graphics card predefined ways. Other than that, as long as card is unified shader and supports proper API versions, there isn't any visual setting difference between two cards. They render exactly the same image, but perhaps at different fps. The only big innovation is ray tracing, but it's still somewhat too early as it still is too darn slow and current architectures for it aren't that great, also it is way too much cost prohibitive to truly become mainstream. Even if it is a future, currently it's not much better than other technologies like 3D Vision, ATi TruForm or PhysX, which eventually became irrelevant and died. Once their updated version, which fixed initial issues, rolls out (if it even does), only then technology stays for good. But before that, I think that something like FSR will do that a lot faster, as it solves a very relevant problem for many gamers, instead of offering nice visual candy that adds nothing to gameplay.

Heck, one simply needs to look at the evolution of anti-aliasing algorithms.

Not at all. The main reason why there are so many of them is because full supersampling anti-aliasing is already made and it looks as good as it could be, but it is insanely heavy even on powerful hardware. RX 580 can achieve consistent 60 fps with it in Colin McRae Rally 2005 (by that I mean average fps is a lot higher, but game never drops below 60 fps), running at 1280x1024 resolution. Let's say most powerful card today is 4 times faster than RX 580, that gives enough boost to run probably 5 year old AAA game at same resolution with 8x super sampling AA. That's simply not fast enough and that's why many AA techniques exist today, but even if they get close to SSAA, they still look somewhat worse than SSAA, but offer times better performance. It's certainly not because SSAA can't achieve best visual quality, why those AAs exist, it's only due to limited performance of current hardware. And here's one dirty secret, MSAA (multisampling AA) pretty much achieved a perfect quality and performance balance in early 00s already and there's not much point in having other AAs, unless even MSAA is a bit too heavy, but then you inevitably end up with some kind of blurry antialiasing, that just looks like game is running at lower resolution and that kind of defeats the whole purpose of anti-aliasing in the first place.

There's also the notion of screen resolutions increasing at a faster rate than years ago. Heck, you don't even need to look at PC hardware to recognize this. Today's smartphones are shooting 4K Dolby Vision in low light conditions that would have stymied the top-of-the-line smartphones from ten years ago.

Phones aren't PCs. In PC space, resolution grows faster than even, but also stagnates more than ever. Because most people are still on 1080p and don't upgrade from 1080p, due to massive expense that isn't properly justified anymore as it was 15 years ago, when hardware was cheaper and generational gains were actually big.

Just as important: dickering with each game's setting to find adequate performance is laborious and time consuming. From a time perspective, it makes more sense just buying quality hardware, setting everything to Ultra and not wasting my limited free time futzing around with game configuration.

Once you get more skilled at that, it takes no more than half hour to find the perfect setting config. And your free time is financially free, as you wouldn't work (or generate money somehow else) during it anyway.

Just because something is marketed as something doesn't automatically mean it will deliver. Look at Cyberpunk 2077. The world is full of "over promise, under deliver" and not just the PC hardware market.

Same can be said for RTX 3090, it's the Cyberpunk of card. Many of them fry and you really can't run games at 8K, without some trickery that makes game to render at much lower resolution and then upscales it to 8K. It can't do that honestly, without DLSS it's dead meat at 8K, unless you play older games at lower settings and sometimes are fine with lower fps than you usually get. RX 550, however, delivered what it was advertised to do, which is replacement for older card, replacement for IGP or a card good for running esport titles. It does all that and it does a lot more. That was a proper card release.

Unfortunately, the TPU operators have already let console discussions happen so you're too late complaining.

That's of no relevance here. PC isn't console and Console isn't PC, they can't be really directly compared as they are completely different products. I don't care if mods give bans for that or not.

Sorry, US prices here are very relevant because THAT'S THE CURRENCY WHAT AMD AND NVIDIA ANNOUNCE THEIR PRODUCTS. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes the stage to announce a new GeForce product, he quotes US dollars.

That same Jensen dude also announces products in US. Sure as hell, he won't announce price in Chinese Yuans or Brazilian Reals, as crowd won't understand how much it is. But that's it. Or maybe his side of business is also done in USD, but beyond that, cards aren't infallible to taxes and other factors that change their price. And also that's MSRP, Market Suggested Retail Price, he doesn't say this is GTX Ultra nd you sell it for 500 dolleroos or else you are going to be straightened out. Nah, MSRP is a soft suggestion and is only useful to know roughly for how much you will be able to the card. And also , if you don't want very loud and hot version, then you will pay more too.

There are some great new games that demand a lot of hardware performance and there are terrible new games that demand a lot of hardware. There are great new games that have modest hardware requirements and there are terrible new games that require modest hardware. There are tons of older games that fit all the same description.

That's correct, and I just pick some titles from certain eras and play them. Latest and greatest isn't much more valuable than classics. There are plenty of old games that never got a new version, that is better in every way.

You clearly don't realize that all games were new at one point. Don't you remember the whole "But can it play Crysis?" era? Now it's a meme from an era before they were known as memes. And yes, plenty of today's systems can play Crysis, back when it was released very few. There are games that have a rough start and got better. There are games that were better before then got worse.

I can say that I didn't know much about computers in that era and certainly didn't know about that meme probably until 2013 or 2014. I only completed the game in 2019 or 2020 just to see what the big deal was and the game itself ended up being pretty boring sci-fi shooter. I don't even know how it got so popular for being such a mediocre game, that brought nothing new or fun. I'm not saying that it can't be enjoyed, it can be, but it really is quite generic and it has tons of similar games that you can play instead of it. It's also surprising how franchise didn't die after Crysis hardware spec disaster, for many games that would mean a tons of lost sales, but they made Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 even. It's hard to believe that Crysis franchise was even a modest financial success. I doubt that Crysis got better over time, I had a poor time on my GTX 650 Ti. It could only play it at 1024x768 resolution and pretty much everything set to low or medium, even then average fps was okay, but it tended to drop often. Kepler was released in 2013, 6-7 years after Crysis was made. And only then you could have expected to run it on sub native resolution. That's garbage optimization. And finally, a glorious day came, when RTX 2080 Ti was launched. It was the first single card that can max out Crysis at 4K and get average of 60 fps (it still dropped to lower than that). No matter how I look at it, but Crysis seems to be a shoddy game launch. Crysis 2 was a lot better, but it still was scandalous for tessellation. That one setting killed performance on GCN 1 cards. It wasn't a fault of game itself, it just exposed a fault of GCN 1 architecture, which had a really weak tessellator (which was shown to be true in other games and benches), but it was enough for many idiots to say that nVidia gimped AMD performance and for some that Crysis 2 might be as brutal to run as Crysis.

However, if you have very capable new hardware you can play anything the game studios can pump out without spending any effort trying to figure out what to run it satisfactorily. That's the point of premium gaming hardware.

Perhaps, that's a valid reason, but to max out games at say 1080p, for a while you really didn't need much of card. I go the other way, I buy lower end hardware and run games at higher than recommended resolution. And I found out that messing with settings, can yield minimal fidelity losses, but higher resolution and much better fps than what reviewers said. I even found out that RX 560 could run AAA games at 1440p, meanwhile reviewers said that it can't even do 1080p always. The only problem was that after a year or two it could no longer do that and I needed low settings and 1600x900 to make stuff run on that card, so it was upgraded to RX 580.

I never said that newer games were better than older games (in fact, I mentioned that play a bunch of older games). However, newer games will push hardware farther than older games.

One thing is for certain: you have much lower standards than some others here.

Everyone has that choice, just like the shoes you put on your feet or what you put on your dinner plate.

Perhaps due to me using nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB 128 bit for a long time. And for a long time having a very limited budget for computer hardware, basically I had to live with some poor choices that I may have made before for a long time. So my hardware buying rationale has always been to get a lot of bang for the buck and get stuff that will last for a long time. If my computer after 3 years couldn't play games at 1080p, then I would have to play at 1600x900 or 1280x1024, and then wait a lot until there was enough money to get something better. Such conditions certainly made me rather skeptical of ultra settings and many other things. I only cared about things that make a big impact and are inexpensive, ultra settings fails at that. My first completely mine card was GTX 650 Ti and since start, I had to make it work at 1080p as it certainly couldn't do ultra. Right now I'm less restrained by money, but things I learned before weren't forgotten and now it's no longer a necessity to be super stingy, just that beyond certain threshold there isn't anything really all that much better that I would really care about. And to be honest, I probably care about gaming much less than I did before. I think that I like learning about hardware much more than to actually use it. Right now I'm more interested in some GPU architectures and why some of them perform better than others, especially after fixed pipeline era. I might be stupid enough and buy GTX 560 Ti for benching only.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

This isn't a troll thread, but for real not everything is bad during GPU shortage. There are some great things about it:
1) It's the best time to appreciate low end hardware

2) It forces people to know which settings to adjust in order to get a better experience

1 Right say what now I owned a phone already I don't game on that, I do appreciate it though , doing low end work.
2 AMD and Nvidia are happy to do that for you and that's patronising, what do you think people do

3) It forces people to be more creative, when it comes to graphics card buying

Yeah buying a GPU with a price hike and a not free PSU, or a whole extra not free pc , or twice the price, great.

4) It's the best time to revisit classic PC games

You get that one

5) It's a good time to just appreciate what you already have

That's totally wrong to Some enthusiasts, I appreciate, but Nexxxxt.

6) It certainly helps to reduce conspicuous consumerism

Yeah sure those buying a GPU are the opposite, everyone else spent it on beer and tat.

7) If GPU shortage lasts a long time, then PC game makers will be forced to make games that run on lower end specs and that's good news for low end gamers (also FSR)

See below.

Frankly those threads about "oh no, RTX 3080 isn't available" are getting annoying. And to be honest, I never liked high end hardware. This GPU shortage just uncovered how much snobbism there is and it seems that most people that are into PC gaming aren't in PC gaming at all, but instead are just into buying high end shit and anything that isn't running at Ultra settings at 4K and at least 60 fps is literally unplayable to them. Thankfully, these times are doing a good job of getting rid of such people. And that said, in long term PC gaming may get cheaper and more accessible, that is if GPU shortage lasts long enough and instead of going bankrupt, game makers will make games that run on lower end hardware.

Nice opinion here , I just realized, I know, bit slow on the owner of this thread, the Irony though I actually chuckled, they're are already a great many indie Devs making game's to run on Intel Igpu grade PC's.
Total tit , snobism, some pay decent money on golf clubs, I don't call them out despite not appreciating golfs merits, it's shit.

But that's their hobby , I like high end shit but can't afford it, yet buy what I can when I can, like Steam deck

I replied to your numbered nonsense troll bait.

 

[Bones]

1: I fully agree, people are just all about themselves 95% of them, people like you, me and a few others are rarer than people really think.

2: Also the glass half empty folk are quick to make illogical decisions and emotional ramblings pretending they know anything and it is usually popular opinion that drowns out the rest.


3: People are intelligent, they understand that if a price rises, they can make money, it is simple and on a base level this is human survival instinct. Gathering as much resources as one can.

4: To think these are wrong people is to deny basic human nature.

This is a good read.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature | Forum for the Future of Higher Education

Doctrines of Human Nature The long-standing Judeo-Christian theory of human nature, based on a fundamentalist interpretation of biblical events, was replaced in the 20th century by a secular theory of human nature grounded in three doctrines, commonly referred to as the blank slate, the noble...

forum.mit.edu

The simple answer is... it's a graphics card, you already own graphics cards...

5: None of which are likely holding you back, your need to satiate a desire is why you can't hold back and give in to temptation, again also basic human nature but more complex than the other I mentioned as this is where greed comes from.

You deny the OP because you are jealous of others gathering those resources, really you want them too.

6: I have an R9 280x on Ebay if you like, it's at 5.00 pounds bid right now.

1: It's only natural for people to be about themselves, that's obvious.....
But then you went and made yourself out to be something special from the majority here, 95% in fact so from what I'm reading into this, you're that good......
Not.

2: And then classifying those that think in a certain way (Half empty) to automatically be "Wrong" is in itself wrong. There is no way any certain "Class" of people can be right ..... Or wrong all the time as you've put it by the words you used.

3: You said it yourself, it's simple so it doesn't take a genius to figure all that out.

4: We are not animals.
We can and do defy our nature at times because we have intelligence/intellect and if we use it, it's gonna happen at some point in time. Even animals at times defy it - I get what your point is but at the same time it's not a perfect point "As Made" by your own words.
And I don't need to read a book to figure it out.

5: Now - I really have to ask.
How is it you know the guy to make that ass-umption?
I do know there are tendencies, that's real but at the same time it goes back to intellect so one's "Nature" isn't always in play. There is a time logic (Intellect) is the main factor in a decision making process too.
However you are correct about greed, that is a more basic thing we all have (Goes for me and even you too) so can't say you're wrong about it in that way but even with that, intellect can override it.

6: Seriously - Good luck with that.
----------------------------------
Guys, I understand there's going to be thoughts about it and also based on the very thing about it being right or wrong (Moral).
I'm no fan of these high prices and to me it's taking advantage of others regardless of the reason(s) why, which DOES go back to human nature, but at the same time we do have intellect and by that we can use logic to decide.

However as it's also been pointed out (Correctly) it's the property of the seller and they can ask whatever price they want.

I'll also say there is a point I've made myself a few times in that this is nothing more than controlling the supply so prices, in turn can be controlled too. There is no logical "Need" for bots to be buying out an entire site's supply of cards within seconds IF greed wasn't part of it...... But it also takes intellect/logic to figure out how to do it.

In this case, it's a decision to take action based on greed over logic.

It's a very complicated "Thing" being discussed and there is no easy answer except if the price is too high, don't buy.

 

[95Viper]

Warned you (all) to stop the personal insults and a few can't seem to help themselves.
This the last warning...
Stay on topic. And, stop the insults... be civil.

Thank You.

 

[The red spirit]

Total tit , snobism, some pay decent money on golf clubs, I don't call them out despite not appreciating golfs merits, it's shit.

But that's their hobby , I like high end shit but can't afford it, yet buy what I can when I can.

I thought that it got particularly bad when it came to RTX 3000 series. Jensen said, that they have more demand than ever and I think it might be true. You only need to look at TPU and see folks here going apeshit for RTX cards. Some remain sane, but they are no more than 20% of those that reply to those threads. I don't really recall any other time, when people were so crazy for latest cards and not only latest, but high end cards and often scalped up. CPU section is only a little bit better, but not much. Some dudes just need to chill and remember that "nothing looks as bad as it does, nothing looks as good as it does". And I mention TPU here, OCN is too toxic in that regard, so I'm not coming back there for a while.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I thought that it got particularly bad when it came to RTX 3000 series. Jensen said, that they have more demand than ever and I think it might be true. You only need to look at TPU and see folks here going apeshit for RTX cards. Some remain sane, but they are no more than 20% of those that reply to those threads. I don't really recall any other time, when people were so crazy for latest cards and not only latest, but high end cards and often scalped up. CPU section is only a little bit better, but not much. Some dudes just need to chill and remember that "nothing looks as bad as it does, nothing looks as good as it does". And I mention TPU here, OCN is too toxic in that regard, so I'm not coming back there for a while.

Am I that old?!, Damn.

So so many times shit got expensive for a bit, quite random, but obviously not at all random.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

I think its not fair to say A high end card Doesnt give a better experience it definitely does and its compltlty reasonable to what the best gaming experience
but its also not bad to not want the best

AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB (4GB is e-waste). It was cheap, fast and efficient

the 480 AND 580 where anything but efficent
they where hot and heavy Not bad by any means but not efficent

Futheremore to the extent that high and ultra are not very diffrent
it also goes the same foer the performance hit ultra takes over high

 

[The red spirit]

the 480 AND 580 where anything but efficent
they where hot and heavy Not bad by any means but not efficent

I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient. They are also notorious for being great undervolters. Not that nV doesn't undervolt, but I doubt that they do as much as Polaris cards. RX 580 was a lame attempt to compete with GTX 1060, so it was clocked way too high than it could do efficiently and thus it's a disgrace to original Polaris. RX 580 is a legitimate space heater.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient. They are also notorious for being great undervolters. Not that nV doesn't undervolt, but I doubt that they do as much as Polaris cards. RX 580 was a lame attempt to compete with GTX 1060, so it was clocked way too high than it could do efficiently and thus it's a disgrace to original Polaris. RX 580 is a legitimate space heater.

480 runs hotter then the 580 the 580 is legit just a more efficent 480
its slightly faster
and slighty cooler

 

[The red spirit]

480 runs hotter then the 580 the 580 is legit just a more efficent 480
its slightly faster
and slighty cooler

What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.

Take a look at them yourself:

AMD Radeon RX 480 Specs

AMD Ellesmere, 1266 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon RX 580 Specs

AMD Polaris 20, 1340 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.

Take a look at them yourself:

AMD Radeon RX 480 Specs

AMD Ellesmere, 1266 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon RX 580 Specs

AMD Polaris 20, 1340 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Its again its more efficent
it runs cooler
my freinds 480 runs hot enough to shutdown the pc
My 580 does not run hot enough to throttle

 

[eidairaman1]

Ellesmere RX 480, Polaris 20 RX 580.

Both are 14nm process size.
I believe some yields were cherry picked or refined so the RX 580 launched, some pcbs were refined.

Polaris 30 is a 12nm process shrink of Polaris 20. Perhaps some RX 580s were actually Polaris 30s. I see it possible to flash RX 580 8Gs into RX 590s.

2048SP cards were RX 570s and Chinese RX 580s.

1002 67DF 1DA2 (RX 580 Full)
1002 6FDF 1DA2 (RX 570/RX580 2048 SP) some RX 570s could be made into RX 580s, not sure if 2048 model or full model)

What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.

Take a look at them yourself:

AMD Radeon RX 480 Specs

AMD Ellesmere, 1266 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon RX 580 Specs

AMD Polaris 20, 1340 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Its again its more efficent
it runs cooler
my freinds 480 runs hot enough to shutdown the pc
My 580 does not run hot enough to throttle

Neither of you are wrong. I really see no point on continuing the pissing match.

@The red spirit

In 2016 AMD GPU dept was hemmorhaging money due to Raja Koduri (noticed his firing by Lisa Su?)

GCN 4.0 was a refinement of GCN 2.0 (R9 290/X) so Polaris and Island GPUs are very a like. FSR should do wonders on the R9 200 series, possibly R7 too, maybe HD 7000?

Vega 56/64 should of had better support possibly a package shrink before launch.

 

[The red spirit]

Its again its more efficent
it runs cooler
my freinds 480 runs hot enough to shutdown the pc
My 580 does not run hot enough to throttle

No, it's not. RX 580 got 8 pin connector instead of 6 pin. Then RX 580 has beefed up BIOS, it has TDP (and power limits) set to 147 watts, meanwhile RX 480 has them set to only 110 watts. That's increase of 37 watts (in terms of percents, it's a whopping 33.6% increase in wattage). Base clock speed (the actual guaranteed speed in any game) went from 1120 MHz to 1257 MHz (increase of 12.2%), boost clock increased from 1266 MHz to 1340 MHz (increase of 5.8%). Realistically, neither card runs at base speed and they are always on boost, so RX 480 is usually at 1180-1220 MHz, meanwhile RX 580 is at 1310-1340 MHz. For massive increase in TDP, gains in clock speed are tiny. On top of that, clock speed doesn't seem to scale well on Polaris cards:

I guess, that this poor scaling is due to AMD using low power dies, that perform best at certain clock speed. But if you raise clock speed beyond that, you need a lot more voltage and that means a lot more heat and loss of efficiency. RX 480 likely already was clocked past greatest efficiency point as it is very common in consumer market, RX 580 doubled down on that and turned RX 480 into everything that Polaris isn't.

You can even use RX 480 BIOSes on RX 580s, if you inject your card model into RX 480 BIOS. As long as memory is the same, RX 480 BIOSes work on RX 580s. PowerColor reused same cooler, same PCB, same memory and likely electric circuitry between RX 480 and RX 580. They only increased maximum fan speed, lowered temperature target from 80C to 70C and cranked up clock speed. Beyond that BIOSes were identical, without even minor changes anywhere else. That tells a lot about how RX 480 and RX 580 are same dies, with RX 580 being clocked higher and requiring more voltage as result.

Your found out differences are likely from different BIOSes used (you would be surprised by how much BIOS can change your card) and from different coolers used and they show nothing about RX 480 and RX 580 difference.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

What are you talking about? Are you sure aren't mixing it up with GTX cards? RX 580 is literally the same RX 480 with no other improvements made, other than increased clock speed. Absolutely nothing else was done. No new features, interchangeable BIOSes, often interchangeable coolers, everything is the same. There's zero new technology in RX 500 series, same old stuff clocked higher.

Take a look at them yourself:

AMD Radeon RX 480 Specs

AMD Ellesmere, 1266 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon RX 580 Specs

AMD Polaris 20, 1340 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Your the one saying one (580) is efficient and the (480) isn't, they're the same?!.

The 580 was on a matured process offering negligible efficiency gains that were blown on max clock speeds.

So same.

 

[The red spirit]

GCN 4.0 was a refinement of GCN 2.0 (R9 290/X) so Polaris and Island GPUs are very a like. FSR should do wonders on the R9 200 series, possibly R7 too, maybe HD 7000?

If you actually look at what AMD has done to improve GCN over time, it's hard to say that they are minor improvements. If you compared GCN 1 with GCN 4, tessellation performance has been in creased 7 fold or more. That's insanely big improvement. GCN 2 added support for Freesync, True Audio and had updated PowerTune. That tessellation improvement was the culmination of GCN, but even in GCN 2, there were big strides made. GCN 3 further improved tessellation, it also had improved compression, which reduced memory bandwidth needs. GCN 3 has some new instruction sets, new multimedia engine, improved video scaler. GCN 4 cards, were made on smaller node and had naturally higher clock speed. GCN 4 has updated HW scheduler (a really important component of moderns cards), primitive discard accelerator (improves geometry processing) and new display controller, which now supports 10 bit, 4K, 60 fps, HEVC decoding. GCN 5 or more well known as Vega was a again an improvement to GCN. Now GCN gained more IPC, more instruction sets, higher clock speeds, HBM 2 support, larger memory address space, support for updated cache controller (only used in discrete cards), upgraded rasterization, packed rapid math support, added primitive shading stage (as replacement for vertex and geometry shaders).

And all that work results in quite some improvements in real world conditions:

Anyway, AMD really changed a lot in GCN, but they also made all GCN versions backwards compatible, so that new GCN chips are compatible with older ones found in consoles. If you look at what they have done to GCN, you really can't say that those are minor improvements or small refinements. A difference between GCN 1 and GCN 4 is big and between GCN 1 and GCN 5 is huge. You can even look at GCN 1 and GCN 5 dies:

They are indeed quite different and only very remotely resemble each other.

Your the one saying one (580) is efficient and the (480) isn't, they're the same?!.

The 580 was on a matured process offering negligible efficiency gains that were blown on max clock speeds.

So same.

I never said that RX 580 was more efficient than RX 480. It never was and will never be, unless you tweak RX 580's BIOS. Again, I'm not sure why are you mentioning process maturation. It's the same process, same lithography, same dies, same everything on core itself. I really don't get why you people just don't understand that RX 480 and RX 580 are using exactly the same cores, but with different clocks and voltages.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

If you actually look at what AMD has done to improve GCN over time, it's hard to say that they are minor improvements. If you compared GCN 1 with GCN 4, tessellation performance has been in creased 7 fold or more. That's insanely big improvement. GCN 2 added support for Freesync, True Audio and had updated PowerTune. That tessellation improvement was the culmination of GCN, but even in GCN 2, there were big strides made. GCN 3 further improved tessellation, it also had improved compression, which reduced memory bandwidth needs. GCN 3 has some new instruction sets, new multimedia engine, improved video scaler. GCN 4 cards, were made on smaller node and had naturally higher clock speed. GCN 4 has updated HW scheduler (a really important component of moderns cards), primitive discard accelerator (improves geometry processing) and new display controller, which now supports 10 bit, 4K, 60 fps, HEVC decoding. GCN 5 or more well known as Vega was a again an improvement to GCN. Now GCN gained more IPC, more instruction sets, higher clock speeds, HBM 2 support, larger memory address space, support for updated cache controller (only used in discrete cards), upgraded rasterization, packed rapid math support, added primitive shading stage (as replacement for vertex and geometry shaders).

And all that work results in quite some improvements in real world conditions:

Anyway, AMD really changed a lot in GCN, but they also made all GCN versions backwards compatible, so that new GCN chips are compatible with older ones found in consoles. If you look at what they have done to GCN, you really can't say that those are minor improvements or small refinements. A difference between GCN 1 and GCN 4 is big and between GCN 1 and GCN 5 is huge. You can even look at GCN 1 and GCN 5 dies:

They are indeed quite different and only very remotely resemble each other.


I never said that RX 580 was more efficient than RX 480. It never was and will never be, unless you tweak RX 580's BIOS. Again, I'm not sure why are you mentioning process maturation. It's the same process, same lithography, same dies, same everything on core itself. I really don't get why you people just don't understand that RX 480 and RX 580 are using exactly the same cores, but with different clocks and voltages.

Because I owned a fair few of both types, flashed both with home made BIOS and generally messed about with them including quadfire bench runs.
I know that they're the same chip but the process WAS refined after a year of production so that a 580 used a little less power or clocked 50-150 MHz higher.
I know because I saw, did not thought or read.
Processes and node's mature, the engineers use they're tools to improve the product, not just leave it as is and churn them out , read the f#@£ up and stop throwing Google regurge at us.

You said in reply. "

saac` said:
the 480 AND 580 where anything but efficent
they where hot and heavy Not bad by any means but not efficent

I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient."

Someone is confused and it isn't me, how can a 480 be decently efficient yet the same card plus a year(580) isn't, baffling.

 

[The red spirit]

Because I owned a fair few of both types, flashed both with home made BIOS and generally messed about with them including quadfire bench runs.
I know that they're the same chip but the process WAS refined after a year of production so that a 580 used a little less power or clocked 50-150 MHz higher.
I know because I saw, did not thought or read.
Processes and node's mature, the engineers use they're tools to improve the product, not just leave it as is and churn them out , read the f#@£ up and stop throwing Google regurge at us.

Sorry, but I messed with my own RX 580 in similar manner and know what's up. There was no refinement. Maybe RX 480 had voltage set higher, but likely it was too much, so they reduced voltage a bit in RX 580. My own card can do a lot better than default. It needs only 1025 mV in state 7 (1350 MHz), compared to 1150 mV stock, in state 6 I need less than 950 mV, compared to same 1150 mV stock (1310 MHz). Perhaps RX 480 had higher voltage set at maximum MHz, so RX 580 reduced that slightly, but that only happened due to how much overvolted Polaris cards came from factory already. My specific card is heavily overvolted and is set to use 12-25% more voltage than it actually needs. Considering that volts scale in square, that more or less translates in 24-50% more power used than needed.

You said in reply. "I can agree on 580, not so much on 480. RX 480 was decently efficient for its time and depending on cooler, it was really cold, although reference cooler, didn't rape ears either. But even RX 480 was clocked a bit past most efficient clock speed point, so even modest power limiter modifications can make it a ton more efficient."

Someone is confused and it isn't me, how can a 480 be decently efficient yet the same card plus a year(580) isn't, baffling.

Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked. That's basic stuff.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Sorry, but I messed with my own RX 580 in similar manner and know what's up. There was no refinement. Maybe RX 480 had voltage set higher, but likely it was too much, so they reduced voltage a bit in RX 580. My own card can do a lot better than default. It needs only 1025 mV in state 7 (1350 MHz), compared to 1150 mV stock, in state 6 I need less than 950 mV, compared to same 1150 mV stock (1310 MHz). Perhaps RX 480 had higher voltage set at maximum MHz, so RX 580 reduced that slightly, but that only happened due to how much overvolted Polaris cards came from factory already. My specific card is heavily overvolted and is set to use 12-25% more voltage than it actually needs. Considering that volts scale in square, that more or less translates in 24-50% more power used than needed.



Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked. That's basic stuff.

And did you own a 480 , they wouldn't clock past 1366 easy, where every 580 I owned went past 1400 , refined.

Your talking so much shite I can't even be arsed trying to figure out what your saying.

So a 580 is efficient because" Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked."

Yet a 480 isn't because?!

They're the same even process optimization doesn't take it to new levels of efficiency ,yet does have an effect regardless of your deluded opinion.

 

[The red spirit]

And did you own a 480 , they wouldn't clock past 1366 easy, where every 580 I owned went past 1400 , refined.

Your talking so much shite I can't even be arsed trying to figure out what your saying.

Doubt that:

Sapphire NITRO+ RX 480 OC 8 GB Specs

AMD Ellesmere, 1342 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

That's still on same stock watts.

So a 580 is efficient because" Because it's clocked way past optimal efficiency point and stays in it, unless further tweaked."

Yet a 480 isn't because?!

Because it's clocked at more sane values. I feel my brain cell dying after such questions.

They're the same even process optimization doesn't take it to new levels of efficiency ,yet does have an effect regardless of your deluded opinion.

Even if what you say is true, it changes nothing about efficiency, only about clock speed. RX 580 sacrificed a lot of watts for small performance gains and as result ran hot and consumed as much power as GTX 1080. RX 480 ran at lower clocks and was far more efficient. Efficiency = fps/watt. RX 580 wasn't great at that.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Doubt that:

Sapphire NITRO+ RX 480 OC 8 GB Specs

AMD Ellesmere, 1342 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR5, 2000 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

That's still on same stock watts.


Because it's clocked at more sane values. I feel my brain cell dying after such questions.



Even if what you say is true, it changes nothing about efficiency, only about clock speed. RX 580 sacrificed a lot of watts for small performance gains and as result ran hot and consumed as much power as GTX 1080. RX 480 ran at lower clocks and was far more efficient. Efficiency = fps/watt. RX 580 wasn't great at that.

I'm done with this convo, I owned four rx480s 12 580s I water blocked the reference 480s and ran xfire than quad, they all still topped out at 1380 relatively unstable, simple.

All the 580s beat 1400. All, and most got to 1466 on air. Refined.... .

As for your opinion on the 580 being less efficient than the same chip older clocked less than 100Mhz typically lower, they're so close on efficiency it's a massive ,epic stretch to call it "far more efficient",. It wasn't.

 

[The red spirit]

I'm done with this convo, I owned four rx480s 12 580s I water blocked the reference 480s and ran xfire than quad, they all still topped out at 1380 relatively unstable, simple.

All the 580s beat 1400. All, and most got to 1466 on air. Refined.... .

As for your opinion on the 580 being less efficient than the same chip older clocked less than 100Mhz typically lower, they're so close on efficiency it's a massive ,epic stretch to call it "far more efficient",. It wasn't.

Stock RX 480 BIOS has power limit set to 110 watts, RX 580 stock BIOS has power limit set to 147 watts. Sure as hell those cards don't set it that way so they throttle or have it unrealistically high. You can also look at reviews. RX 580 is much less efficient and doesn't achieve much with increased clock speed. It's still the same GCN 4. There was a massive leap from GCN 1 to GCN 2, but not from Polaris to Polaris refresh. RX 580 needs a lot more watts and beefed up power delivery for those last MHz and it's all pointless, when RX 480 achieve almost all clock speed with far more modest other hardware needed and doesn't suffer from being clocked nearly as high.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Stock RX 480 BIOS has power limit set to 110 watts, RX 580 stock BIOS has power limit set to 147 watts. Sure as hell those cards don't set it that way so they throttle or have it unrealistically high. You can also look at reviews. RX 580 is much less efficient and doesn't achieve much with increased clock speed. It's still the same GCN 4. There was a massive leap from GCN 1 to GCN 2, but not from Polaris to Polaris refresh. RX 580 needs a lot more watts and beefed up power delivery for those last MHz and it's all pointless, when RX 480 achieve almost all clock speed with far more modest other hardware needed and doesn't suffer from being clocked nearly as high.

There are ways around such power limits, easy I've overjuiced even this vega64 though it was much harder to do than on Polaris, I could fully edit bios on Polaris, it wasn't even hard.
The 580 would do the same clocks with less power, they were setup 100Mhz ish higher and the reference rx480 board had quite the power delivery setup ,power was never an issue, chip limits decided the end spec, and after a year the process had matured so they Could push clocks higher , it was less efficient, not massively less.

 

[The red spirit]

There are ways around such power limits, easy I've overjuiced even this vega64 though it was much harder to do than on Polaris, I could fully edit bios on Polaris, it wasn't even hard.
The 580 would do the same clocks with less power, they were setup 100Mhz ish higher and the reference rx480 board had quite the power delivery setup ,power was never an issue, chip limits decided the end spec, and after a year the process had matured so they Could push clocks higher , it was less efficient, not massively less.

Oh well, no shit there are ways around them, but I don't care about that. In fact, if cards are good, I shouldn't be even aware of them. Unfortunately, with RX 580 I had to. I would say that 30% increase in power for around 100 Mhz is totally not worth it and that is a clear marketing fail. AMD pushed Polaris as efficient cards and RX 580 is certainly failing at that. Even back then, it was supposed to compete with GTX 1060 6GB. In actual market it failed hard. Sure it was a tiny bit faster, but it consumed as much power as GTX 1080, a full flagship card. Even if RX 580 was a little bit faster, power consumption when compared to GTX 1060 was a clear turn off. Polaris was supposed to dispel the myth (or reality), that Radeons are hot, loud and inefficient. Polaris was okay at that, but Polaris Refresh failed hard. If 100 MHz ruins the card so much, then it really is pointless. AMD could have been much better off if they kept the same clock speeds, but reduced voltage to bellow 1 volt.

Anyway, this is boring off-topic. If you want to write about power efficiency of cards and if it matters to people, do it at some other thread.