Ps4 and a 2nd 7950 or Sapphire Fury air or wait

Title says it all..Three choices..I have about $540 firm..My specs, if you can't see, are 3570k..Msi g43 z77..Msi twin frozr 7950..a Corsair cx 750watt. I should note the mb 2nd pcie lane runs at x4, but I've read the difference is negligible 1-5fps..I game between a 27inch Asus monitor, and 120hz 55 inch led tv..both 1080p..Thanks

Forget Crossfire too much hassle and issues, Also a known issue with fury is its 4gb HBM buffer causes framepacing issues once buffer is full and has to use system ram. I would grab a 390/390x, 970 or 980ti if you can afford one. If you really want to upgrade. But if you can wait it out for Nvidia's and AMD next line of gpus would be best.

If you save about $60 - $80 more then you can grab a GTX 980 Ti. It's a GPU worth getting most definitely (you'd be able to max pretty much every game). I'd say your best option is to sell your 7950 and then you'll have enough to grab a 980 Ti.

GTX 980 is not worth it IMO. Price/performance ratio isn't so great. If anything just sell your 7950, grab an R9 390, overclock it to GTX 980/R9 390X standards or further, keep it until Nvidia/AMD release their new line of GPU's and then you can decide what you want to do.

Crossfire and SLI haven't been getting as much support as they should this last year... so I wouldn't recommend getting another 7950 specially since you could use more VRAM now days.

Yeah, forget any multi-GPU setup. Have been using them for years and the past year has been the worst in game support.

Stay single GPU. Can you wait 5 to 6 months? If so, wait for Polaris. If not, buy a 390.

Don't get crossfire on that MOBO if it's x4 on the 2nd PCIe lane.

Fury is not worth it, either 290/390, 970 or 980Ti.

You could also wait if you can settle right now on the graphics settings you're playing.

Go with the Fury. You can get something like the newley released Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury which has 4GB of ultra fast HBM. Plus you get a copy of Battlefront for free.

Polaris is supposed to come around Back to school timeframe, if you can wait that long. Pascal maybe even longer as they didn't show a running Pascal at CES unlike Polaris which was demoed.

@04dcarraher: why are you complaining about 4GB HBM of Fury at the same time suggesting the GTX 970 which has 4GB too.

Fury is a waste of money , spending $500+ on a gpu's that isnt even 30% faster than a $300 stock GTX 970 at 1080p.

What is of "value" depends on the user. Some people may still buy it as it still faster than the GTX 980. Some people even upgraded to the GTX 970 after the 3.5GB issue because the GTX 980 had a "full" 4GB. I don't think spending $720 on Hybrid 980 Ti is of value. Some people still buy it. But that wasn't the question. You were mentioning that 4GB Frame Buffer of the R9 Fury as not one of the criteria not to buy the Fury whereas by that analogy the 970 would also not be on the list as that also has a 4GB Frame Buffer.

Fury price to performance just sucks, and the reason why I mentioned the issue with the 4gb HBM is because for $500+ you get more than 4gb, and the 4gb HBM is an issue when buffer is oversaturated more so than any other gpu with 4gb GDDR5.

The only worthy cards to buy right now is 390x/390 or 970 or 980ti.

For 1080P you can make that argument. But still people buy it because it's faster. If TC want's to buy it because it's faster than he can do so. Hell, I know one buddy who brought a GTX 970 and then upgraded to a GTX 980 series just because it's faster. A lot of people did so as I mentioned because of the 3.5GB issue with the GTX 980.

And where in the world did you get that 4GB HBM is an issue more so than 4GB GDDR5. They will both have the same 4GB frame buffer. Given the choice I would go with 4GB HBM because it's faster than 4GB GDDR5. Hence R9 Fury Nitro > GTX 980.

That buddy was not too smart,

Problem with the HBM that the sudden massive bottleneck that happens when the gpu has to go to system ram to because it has to dump data and grab new data creates massive framepacing issues. Even with an AMD gpu like 290x with 4gb does not see the issue.

It will only go to system RAM when it exceeds the 4GB. I don't see why this is unique to other cards with 4GB GDDR5. They both have 4GB frame buffer.

When its buffer is full or over saturated Fury sees massive frametiming issues that other 4gb cards dont see. Even with an AMD gpu like 290x with 4gb does not see the issue in same games

Source? Also, the Fury and Fury X, AMD is doing special memory optimization via drivers. It's also dependent on driver updates. That's why you see some stuttering with Shadow of Mordor when the Fury X at 4K everything maxed out because it exceeds the 4GB frame buffer. But with the newer drivers you see that problem has been contained where you don't see the stuttering.

lol your sounding like Xasty...... AMD cant fix the issue of games requiring more than 4gb, all they can do is soften the blow when game is requiring all the buffer.

False, the new drivers have not fixed the issues with Fury buffer the new drivers mainly helped improve crossfire framepacing in DX9 games.

Well actually they have improved. Shadow of Mordor now run much better at 4K maxed out:

But where is your proof that other 4GB cards doesn't have the same issues?

your clearly an alt account a short youtube video is not proof.

I don't know why you keep on accusing me of being in an alt account. The only reason I am on this thread is because I was interested in the R9 Fury which then led me to the interesting topic of the R9 Fury X as the World's Most Powerful GPU on the other thread. THESE WERE THE ONLY TWO FURY TOPICS on the FRONT PAGE OF THE PC AV AND HARDWARE section. I posted on this thread first before I ended up on the other one. Maybe you should do a little bit of thinking before you spout stuff. And yes you can look at other videos on Youtube where you can see the issue back from june from short videos and comparing it to the new ones.

And where is your claim that other 4GB cards doesn't experience the same issue? If you are going to make a claim at least back it up.

And no I don't have a R9 Fury but I am interested in acquiring one. So, this card does interest me. From my research there isn't this so called stuttering problem with newer updates (at least not that is visible ). You could go to Tom's hardware and see for yourself.

lol youtube is not proof , its funny that you cant find all the benches showing all the framepacing issues, when vram is 4gb+.

As you can see 290x does not spike like furyX

here are some more

@04dcarraher said:

lol youtube is not proof , its funny that you cant find all the benches showing all the framepacing issues, when vram is 4gb+.

As you can see 290x does not spike like furyX

Well thank you for the graph. But what drivers were they using for the Fury X? Is this from the early benchmarks from when Fury launched? If so, those were quite immature drivers. Plenty of reviews have mentioned that the Fury X drivers were up to snuff when it launched. Because what other users that were using Fury X with newer drivers they didn't have any stuttering issues. Also, you can Youtube this with the newer drivers.

I like using Youtube because that shows actual gameplay video with newer drivers, where stuttering would be noticeable. As I mentioned in my early comments that there was stuttering at 4K on Ultra with Fury X on Youtube and now with newer drivers you don't see that. You could Youtube yourself.

And that's from GTA V not Shadow of Mordor. Besides I am thinking about getting the Acer XG270HU 27" 1ms 144Hz freesync monitor to go with the Fury. Which would not be an issue because that would be at 1440P.

Frankly, the current crop of graphics card including the 980 Ti is not suitable for 4K Gaming as you can't max those games out getting hickups in gameplay, certainly not 60 FPS. You could tone down the settings to get better frame rates but who want's to tone down settings on a $650 graphics card.

Next gen with Pascal and Polaris on 14nm then that would be much better at 4K.

that graph was done in august , there are other graphs of GTA 5 with upto beta crimson drivers still showing same framepacing issues with fury but only with other gpu's with more than 4gb.

youtube is not a correct way to see the issue, also with some games at 1440p 4gb still isnt enough with max settings. You really need to aim for 980ti or even 390/390x instead of a Fury, you will regret it when games continue increase usage using more than 4gb.

It's not unusual to have some framepacing issues. AMD has done a lot to improve frame pacing as shown by newer videos.

Youtube is a great way to see improvements. Let me break this down for you. If you look at Shadow of Mordor at 4K Ultra back in June below you can see stuttering:

Even the guy mentions how he is looking forward to the issue being solved. And now compare that with the newer drivers.

As you can see the performance is vastly improved.

And at 1440P 4GB is plenty fine. I am not spending another $100 for a 980 Ti when I can get a Fury X cheaper or save another $50 and get a R9 Fury.

Also, you have to remember some games show more VRAM usage but it still works fine. I believe it was of Call of Duty Ghosts/Advance Warfare that had like 6GB usage for Titan X but when you ran it on a 4GB card it showed less memory usage and it ran fine.

Also, other reviewers are showing the Fury X runs fine at 4K running GTA V.

As they stated:

"No matter how you slice it, the Fury X handles GTA V in 4K quite nicely. The 99th-percentile results track with the FPS results, which is what happens when the frame time plots are generally nice and flat." And those were done with older drivers.

I have also looked at videos on Youtube. I haven't seen any frame pacing issues.

@neogeo419 I have a very simple rule when buying GPU's. When buying GPU's I try to buy the most performance single GPU that I can buy within my budget. Since you have a 'firm' $540 the R9 Nitro Fury is right up your alley.

Trust me. The R9 Fury is going to be a major improvement over your HD 7950.

Wait... Isn't Polaris supposed to release soon?

If I remember right, both nVidia and AMD release their new cards some 9 months after they have been taped out.

You cant go by youtube videos, because lack of data, ie drivers, setup being used, bias etc.

while yes drivers do improve performance it does not fix the underlying cause of the issue, lack of memory. even with new crimson drivers people still see issues when at 4+gb.

Shadow of Modor seen performance lost with latest drivers. at 4k Furyx seen around 8 fps lower minimums but roughly the same average fps. So question is that did they counter the framepacing by limiting min frames. So instead of getting a near 40 fps now your getting 30 fps as a low.

How much longer is 4gb fine for 1440p? We are already seeing games allocating beyond 3gb for 1080p, and a few games allocating 4gb or more at 1440p.

Using COD's "fake" vram requirements as a example of vram being over estimated in general is wrong.

I am not going to go by old video and benchmarks to make judgements. Who would you rather use an old data or old videos that show stuttering or newly improved drivers that reduces stuttering and newer videos that shows no more stuttering? Many reviewers have mentioned that the drivers were not up to snuff on many of the review sites and they were still working on driver optimization as communicated by them by AMD and I believe them. I don't see anything to say that stuttering or drivers have gotten worse.

Your theory about counter the framepacing could definitely be a possibility. Only AMD knows what they did to remove stuttering in Shadow of Mordor. That's the only game I have seen stuttering at 4K on the Fury X. Regardless, it was a good thing.

With respect to 4GB at 1440P is more than fine for this year and I would argue even next year. 4K on the other hand I would argue could be an issue with 4GB or even the 6GB of the 980 Ti for this year and next year. Then again I really don't think the 980 Ti or the Fury X can handle every games at 4K with silky smooth framerates, you really need 2X Fury X or 2X 980 Ti to get 4K 60FPS. Problem is that with multi-gpu configurations is that not all games are supported and as you rightly pointed in the other thread where the HD 5970 was losing to the HD 7870 in Arkahm City because it's lack of support for 2 GPU cards like the HD 5970. Which means that your second card could be sitting idle and you would not get the most out of your money. I have never really been a fan of multi-gpu configurations.

As for the COD, I would argue it was an outlier but it was to make a point that just because it uses more VRAM doesn't mean it's not unplayable. I think it comes down to how the memory is managed. That's why even in some games where it takes more than 3GB like with graphics cards like the HD 7970 or the 780 Ti, those games are still playable. Also, with respect to framepacing showing spikes for .001 seconds won't really be noticeable. You are really exaggerating the issue of framepacing. That's why even in games like GTA V where it spikes for a fraction of a second with the Fury X none of the reviewers were complaining that they had noticeable stuttering where it was unplayable as pointed out in my earlier post. Techspot, Anandtech, Tom's Hardware none of them complained about GTA V and the Youtube videos confirms that.

I mostly view the Fury X as AMD doing a testbed for implementing 4GB HBM + using a interposer to lie on the top of the GPU to get experience and technical know how to do develop a GPU using HBM with an interposer. They have done that before with going to new nodes such as the 9600 Pro which was using .13 micron where as the 9700 Pro was using the .15 micron. Also, they did that with the HD 4770 which they used as a testbed to get to 40 nm where as the HD 4850 and the HD 4870 was still on 55 nm. I think this was a smart move. If you look now they already have Polaris GPUs taped out and were demonstrating it at CES. I expect them to be released earlier than Pascal.

They problem I have with the Fury X was that they launched it at the same price as the 980 Ti with drivers that weren't up to snuff. They should have launched it at the price they have now with the driver performance improvements which shows that it's actually ahead of the stock 980 Ti at 4K. And the Fury prices should have been at $500 like they have now. It would have been a much more attractive option. And whose idea was it to include a custom liquid cooler as a standard? It added extra $50 - $80 cost. Not to mention it affected availability as many people weren't able to buy it. They only fixed the issue in Q4 of 2015 and by that time many people had already brought the 980 Ti. They should have a closed loop cooler as an option for AIB partners just like nVidia's AIB partners have done with 980 Ti hybrids.

These are the kind of business decisions that's killing AMD despite them having stellar products.