Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
AMD 9000 vs. Maxwell GTX 800
ZeroPointNRG
Member Posts: 70
Title pretty much says it all. I've got a GTX 580 I'm going to be looking to upgrade in the next several months. I'm currently looking at getting an AMD 9000 series card which may be out as early as this October. What I'm wondering though is if I'd potentially be better off waiting for the next series of Nvidia cards that come out next year. My primary concern is that the 9000 series may be using a 28 nm die size, and I don't know if I'm comfortable paying top dollar for what is essentially going to become last gen technology, (the new Nvidia cards are going to benefit from another die shrink, I believe).
My current monitor is a 120hz Samsung @ 1980x1080 resolution, but I've thought about possibly going to a higher resolution monitor when I get a new card, (I'm not sure if I'm willing to go back to a 60 hz monitor for a higher resolution, if anyone has any opinions about this I'd love to hear them). I primarily play MMOs and ARPG/RPG games.
No brand fanboys please, I buy both AMD and Nvidia, depending on which offers the card that suits my needs/budget at the moment.
Thanks.
Comments
AMD is reportedly going to announce their 9000 series in September, which likely means retail availability in October. It's not clear whether they'll offer only a new high end chip (code name "Hawaii"), or whether they'll offer new chips all up and down the lineup.
I haven't yet seen any credible rumors on when Nvidia will launch their first Maxwell chips. They'll probably be on 28 nm; if Nvidia is waiting for 20 nm, the cards could easily be a year away. AMD is traditionally much faster at moving to new process nodes than Nvidia; the last time that AMD didn't beat Nvidia to a new process node by at least several months was way back before they had bought ATI.
It's not at all clear that the new cards will be a big deal, as they're still on 28 nm. AMD having a competitive higher end product should collapse prices some in the short term, so Hawaii will probably matter for that, but it's not likely to be a huge jump in performance as compared to what you can buy today.
The foundries seem to be more interested in talking about 16 nm (TSMC) or 14 nm (everyone else) than 20 nm, as that's when everyone moves to FinFETs. So it's entirely possible that the 20 nm process nodes will be short-lived or not very good, in addition to being delayed, or possibly even canceled entirely.
I'd also expect to see video cards start having sizeable L3 caches at 14/16 nm, much like what the Xbox One and Intel Iris Pro are doing. (Incidentally, Microsoft is doing this two process nodes before it makes sense, while Intel did it only because Apple was willing to pay a fortune for it.) Nvidia has already announced this, but that's Volta, not Maxwell, and likely not coming until around 2016.