AMD R9 290X Review

The thing that bothers me now is
1 wait for 290x with aftermarket cooling
2 pay $380au for second sapphire 7970oc with boost
3 get a 780 that I still don't know how it performs with triple screens, particularly changing easily from 5760x1080 to three individual 1920x1080 screens oooorrr
4 cut my losses and just buy one single 27" screen @ 144hz and stay 1920x1080?????
 
i just checked by mindfactory and they got a 290x for 570 euros, a 290x oc (will probably melt your case) for 570 euros as well. the same shop offers a 780 with after market cooler for 530 euros.
 
Well one benefit of having a 290x coupled with my cpu is I will keep my room nice and toasty this winter :D
 
From reading that tweet thing.. Mantle is being accessed via OpenGL? is that correct?
If this is the case... I just don't understand how they're going to make all the new stuff work? Isn't BF4 built for the DX11 path etc etc..

Where's SPS he'll know...
 
SuB, not really, but they're adding similar features to OpenGL, making it just as fast. And seeing how that is the main graphics API on linux, steamOS will be interesting indeed.
 
SuB: That's how I understood it aswell.
Dx11 and OpenGL don't necessarily exclude each other. They're only libraries. They probably use Dx11 as primary display painter for most of their drawing, but let stuff that can be done easier with Mantle queue up in Mantle with OpenGL and let this handle it. I would personally call this "Spaghetti Programming", but this is the only way this would make sense to me. (OpenGL doesn't have to paint anything actually, because Mantle is apparantly low level, so if does what I think it does (and it should do), they could probably use mantle to hand-paint a picture into the framebuffer)
 
Apparently BF4 will run on Mantle without the use of DX11.

They probably just added a function which can switch between both Mantle and DX within the game engine. I'm no dev so I don't actually know if thats the case but thats the way I was thinking they were going to do it.

Sort of like a video player that can play different video extensions AVI, MKV etc. Except in this case it would be Frostbite 3 playing either DX11 or Mantle.

DXNuAhF.jpg
 
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Mantle is more an extension than it is an API.

Consider Mantle to be AMDs equivalent to Nvidias "CUDA" or "PhysX". Game developers can utilize both while using DX or OGL, they aren't particularly bound to an API like OpenGL or DX. When mantle is bound to OpenGL, it probably just means that the function/method calls are declared there...

In my opinion Mantle most closely resembles PhysX: It can give you a performance enhancement in very specific situations, but it doesn't mean it has to. It's more of a gimmick...

Edit: OMG SieB I like how you view the world of software development. Cute :)
 
d3rrial, nah, they are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, apparently the bridgeless crossfire allows, in theory, unlimited amount of crossfired cards. Source

So, since I am in creative mood today, shall we expect this mobo to be announced soon: link?
 
This isn't entirely true looz. You can't use both for rendering the game, but you can still load both libs and still access OGL methods while accessing DX11 methods.

For example you can still shove textures into the VRAM with OpenGL while you draw a frame with DX11
 
Sorry if that came over offensive, I honestly enjoy your view of software ;)

@looz I retract my previous statement, I have confused OpenCL and OpenGL in this scenario.
 
The interesting bit in that Mantle still is the bit about CPU usage, using all 8 cores for example.. Why does the thing have to be on an AMD cpu ? Surely they can enable this for anyone with 4+ cores..
 
SuB in my semi-professional opinion Mantle is a buzzword, much like PhysX I wouldn't worry too much about it. It isn't unlikely, that DICE will be the only ones actually using it.
 
SuB, the point of mantle is to reduce CPU load by allowing developers to issue commands directly to the graphics card without the need of CPU babysitting.

And why would anyone in their right mind build a gaming rig with AMD CPU. :-P
 
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