updated AMD Enduro article from AnandTech

AnandTech - AMD Enduro Beta, Take Three!

 

We would all love to see our 7970M kick 680M a.. but that just wont happen, 15% win for Nvidia for 40% extra cost sound good to me. I think saying AMD is not working is going too far, they have been working and releasing betas like crazy for over a month now, and they dont seem to be nearly over, so i think we will get to a good end eventually.
I trust we will get considerable improvements in the weakest points in the coming releases.
I still think price/quality wise 7970M is the way to go, of course right now waiting for next year releases might be the way to go, but thats just normal.

 

Another stupid evaluation from Jarred. So much fail. He claims the 7970M needs so much work to be done even though it's nearly on par with the 680M. There are only 3 games I see problem with. Portal 2, careface, it's over 100 FPS, just get rid of it. Diablo 3, don't know why, but I'm not going to buy Diablo 3 to find out. Borderlands 2, that is real fishy to me. I know Deagleson does not get 88 FPS average in BL2. And I also know BL2 even on low PhysX runs off the 680M, not CPU, which is a massive advantage. Same for Batman Arkham City.

Just proves to me yet once again, Jarred doesn't actually play these games and wants to coddle his MacBook Pro and Razer Blade cause they be so pretty.

Yes apparently Nvidia is ahead of driver support for games they paid for. Shocking :/

This isn't to say I'd like to see continued improvements for GCN cores and that both this type of switchable graphics and GCN core is entirely new for the AMD driver team, this is understandable. But... Jarred still fails. AnandTech should keep Jarred in a corner with his MacBook/UltraBooks and iPhone and keep him away from the notebooks that can actually do stuff beyond Facebook and looking at photos.

 

In one of the earlier articles they mentioned they were in talks with AMD to get an Alienware with 7970M for Anandtech so they could compare Enduro vs Non-Enduro. I wonder what happened to that project... Would still like to see Enduro 7970M pitted against a Non-Enduro 7970M.

 

He said he will test AMD branded games too, if he gets the chance (e.g. new MoH and Farcry 3). You are taking this way too personally.

 

You do know NBR has a HUGE Alienware community that actually plays games and knows games, unlike Jarred...

You can just ask them.

AMD branding doesn't mean anything. All it means is that the game works with AMD's Eyefinity for the most part. AMD doesn't have proprietary 3D, CUDA or PhysX like Nvidia does. The only thing AMD can do is make sure the game works with EyeFinity, and works with DX11. That's pretty much it. But again, just shows Jarred doesn't seem to play games, or know much about 'em, he's terrible for reviewing gaming/high end machines.

All AMD branded games run fantastic on Nvidia, shocking. May be some games like Dragon Age 2, just takes Nvidia a week or two to get out drivers, but after, runs great.

 

AMD branding DOES mean that they pay the developers, like Nvidia does, to optimize the games for their cards.

 

WRONG WRONG WRONG. SO WRONG!!! Doesn't mean that at all. AMD does not pay for their games, their service is free. And again, for the most part, all it means is the game supports Eyefinity natively.

What are they going to pay for? ROFL, DX11? Bullet Physics? Oh wait that's OpenCL so it would work awesome on Nvidia too. 3D? Oh wait, that's open platform from AMD... Use some proprietary AA? Oh wait, they only have post-processing MLAA which works fine on Nvidia. Paying companies to have games that favor AMD wouldn't make any sense, since AMD doesn't have proprietary hardware to have games favor. Makes no sense.

 

Could you give me the source? Also, don't get so worked up, I'm not attacking AMD

Ok, it seems they are not paying, but offering their help, which of course comes with a "price". The games will still highly likely perform better on AMD cards, like Shogun 2 originally did, before Nvidia caught up with their drivers.

 

AMD ramps up its Gaming Evolved program - The Tech Report - Page 1

There are tons of sources. The games in the past that had initial better performance on AMD had a great reason. Nvidia like always, was slow to adopt DirectX technologies so at the time of developing games to support DX11, there was only one choice to test with, AMD. Dirt 2, 3 are examples of that. BC2 was an example. Also AMD Gaming Evolved as shown there is not exclusive, AMD does not sign a contract with developers saying they can't work with Nvidia at the same time. Though we have seen this with Nvidia, for example, John Carmack for a long time claimed his studio didn't have any AMD machines... so it was up to AMD to just try and provide OpenGL drivers to support his games. AMD EyeFinity is just 3 display, and 3D tech is open platform. As said, Gaming Evolved just means AMD is more committed to working with developers to make sure their games and drivers work. There isn't proprietary tech that would affect Nvidia negatively.

Also I don't know what Jarred is doing. I just booted up Sleeping Dogs and getting 50-60 FPS with everything on/maxed in game except for 3D and Motion Blur (Since they both suck), and I'm forcing 2xEQ SSAA at stock clocks.

 

I think Jarred said they were mainly testing certain areas of the game, where the GPU is stressed the most. While this can be a faster way to examine the performance of the card, it might not give the best view of the big picture.

 

Running at the clocks I usually play games with, I still getting a dip to only 40 FPS. And again this is WITH the 2xEQ SSA (super sampled anti-aliasing) in CCC. So I have no idea what Jarred is doing.

There is no argument from me that the 680M is the faster and more powerful GPU. And I don't doubt there is more AMD can do considering this is the first high performance card from AMD that has full switchable support and a new GCN architecture.

But he seemed to make it out to be worse than it is if the 7970M initially $300 less is only on par with the 680M, except the few exceptions that use the horrific PhysX.

There is one game that I'm horrified by though. Planetside 2. I don't know what's going on there. Not surprising it's a PhysX game. But still, I'm hovering about 25 FPS and the visuals are not stunning. SOE has some serious work to do. And it runs slightly better on Nvidia, but not by much. Something terrible is going on wit that game.

 

i have to agree with hulawafu on this, i think Jarred was not very objective in this late article, not sure were he is aiming at, what he says just dont show in the charts he publishes.
Also, and i repeat myself here, i think AMD is working a lot in fixing enduro and performance issues, with great results so far, the work is far from over, but the last weeks we have seen a lot of effort and accomplishments on their side to say they are not up to nvidia..

we will have to sit and wait for the final results, but just 3dmark11 and vantage scores are more than satisfactory by now.

 

Agreed Hula, something's up with Sleeping Dogs. On those same settings I average 40-60 fps.

edit: that was on beta3, haven't played on 12.11P yet. Pretty sure there won't be that much of a difference.