Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

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Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby OldAirmail » Sat May 07, 2016 9:37 am

Yeah, STOP RIGHT NOW!


What I like about the AMD cards is that they give very good results at a reasonably low price. Maybe not as fast as the Nvidia cards that they try to compete against, but still very good performance for the money.

My view towards Nvidia is that if you can't afford the very best Nvidia, nor near the top of their line, then you might as well save yourself a lot of money with a top, or near top, of the line AMD card.


And as I've said over and over, the upper half of either card line is more than enough for FSX. BTW -although Prepar3d is still very similar to FSX, it now uses any extra memory & power of the video card to run P3d.

To Nvidia fans all that is, of course, heresy.



Now, things are about to REALLY change.

Nvidia’s GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 revealed: Faster than Titan X at half the price

"GTX 1080 will cost $599 and launch May 27, with GTX 1070 following June 10 for $379."


Of special import to me is this -
"Meanwhile, Simultaneous Multi-Projection is a new rendering pipeline for Pascal cards that allows them to render 16 independent "viewpoints" in a single rendering pass. In a regular graphics card, a single viewpoint—i.e. what a user sees on a monitor—is rendered in one pass. That's fine for most applications, but problems occur with multi-monitor setups and VR. In a triple monitor setup where a users curves the monitors, the graphics card can only render a single viewpoint, where it assumes all the monitors are arranged in a straight line, resulting in the images on the left and right monitors looking warped."

Traditionally, this problem is solved by using three separate graphics cards in supported games, but with Multi-Projection, the single GPU can render three different viewpoints, with two of them correcting the distortion.

"Simultaneous Multi-Projection" is also important for VR.

Read the article, there's a lot more interesting info.


In short, the GTX 1080, at $600, will probably be more than I'm willing to spend. But the GTX 1070, at $380, will be very tempting.



As far as AMD is concerned, they intend to produce VERY fast video cards at a MUCH lower price than the nearest Nvidia equivalent.

Why a reformed AMD is going all in on VR, rather than badmouthing Nvidia

Instead of running behind Nvidia, they seem to be tacking in a slightly different direction and betting heavily on the VR boom.



If Nvidia can live up to it's promises in the first article, AMD's offerings will have too little to offer for any heavy gamer.

However, AMD will still have a place for anyone who wants a very good card at a relatively low price.

If the toughest game that you play is FSX, you can safely buy any upper-end AMD card.

It you have three, or more, monitors, and use Prepar3d, wait for either the GTX 1080 or GTX 1070. No question about it.



A note on the DDR4 vs DDR5

The two Nvidia cards, GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, use DDR5 & DDR4 respectively.

In theory, and strictly by the numbers, DDR5 is faster than DDR4.

However, during my search for a new motherboard, I found out that DDR5 didn't live up to it's hype and extra cost.


But that was for motherboards with the newest Intel chips. It may be very different for either video card.

My advice would be to wait until both cards can be compared side by side when they're out in July.
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby Awaken » Sat May 07, 2016 8:46 pm

Very interesting info on the new graphics cards soon coming out. I understood from all my research that AMD is on top right now with current card performance, just edging over Nvidia. I've used both AMD and Nvidia over the past several years and like both. I'm currently ordering parts for my new PC and plan to continue using Nvidia for now, a GTX 960, because I seem to have fewer problems with FSX with the Nvidia stuff. I've decided to go Intel with this build also, been building AMD PC's for the last 10 years. Going from a FX6200 and GTX750ti to a I5 4670 and GTX960, should see some moderate increases in performance. With my budget I always run a generation behind usually. ....until I hit the Lottery one day :dance: :P
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby Tonydb » Sat May 07, 2016 11:50 pm

Interesting post, thank you. Up to now I have stuck with AMD, as you rightly say they perform well enough to cope with FSX, also it is much easier to get a good match across CPU, motherboard, memory and video card with AMD, and that gives overall performance benefits.
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby Flacke » Sun May 08, 2016 12:20 am

Awaken wrote:.
Going to a I5 4670 and GTX960, should see some moderate increases in performance. With my budget I always run a generation behind usually.


You may be quite surprised at the performance that you get in FSX with that combination. Its really quite superb overall and the pricing is great because you are not paying for Bragging Power, just performance. Enjoy.
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Jun 12, 2016 12:25 pm

Time for an update.

In the original post we had some good info, but no actual (shipping) products.

Now, we do have shipping products, at least from Nvidia, that you CAN buy.

Nvidia GTX 1070 review

Nvidia GTX 1080 review


Unfortunately, we don't have the promised lower prices.

Amazon - GTX 1070 - Lowest $579.97

Amazon - GTX 1080 - Lowest $689.99


To be fair, these are what Nvidia calls Founders Edition graphics cards.

I think that "Founders Edition" translate to - "Soak the poor basterds for all you can get".


It doesn't look like the prices in the first articles will be seen for many years.

We, the poorer half of the world, will just have to wait for the normal "non-Founders Edition" cards to come out. So what's new? :confusion-shrug:



Trying to come up fast from behind is AMD - AMD unveils R9 Fury X, Fury, and Nano graphics cards

Will they be able to take the lead? Dono.

At the very least, I think that they'll offer some VERY good video cards at a very reasonable price.

But the lead? We'll just have to wait and see at the end of June.



And let me say for the hundredth time - all of these cards are far beyond the needs of FSX, and even Prepar3d.

At the moment both sims work better with faster CPUs than they do with faster video cards. Although Prepar3d has shipped some of it's processing over to the graphics card. To a very noticeable advantage, I might add.



How will all this play out? Again, wait until the AMD cards, and the "non-Founders Edition" cards are out before you buy anything.
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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby ftldave » Sun Jun 12, 2016 1:31 pm

I've observed that it's nearly a law of the Internet that the value of a post's content diminishes as the number of exclamation points used in the subject increases. But not so here. Thanks for some good information. If you had used four !!!!, I probably would have skipped reading it. :D
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby Roypcox » Sun Jun 12, 2016 2:02 pm

Thanks OAM for keeping all of us educated for whats great and whats not. You give us great critiques on a lot of new products and I personally appreciate the time and effort to put this info out. homeboy
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Re: Are you about to buy a new video card? !!! STOP !!!

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Jun 12, 2016 4:01 pm

Thanks, guys.

If Nvidia decides to stop raking in millions, and sticks to the originally projected price, we could be in for a real treat.
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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