How are AMD video cards and drivers now a days?

So I'm running a gtx 670 at the moment and it's about time to upgrade.

Was planning on a 970 and now with the price drop of the AMD cards I was looking at them as well.

Considering going with a R9 290 but I know that AMD drivers in the past have been....lacking I guess.

But I have had nothing but NVidia for a while now...so how's amd these days?

Had no troubles with my HD 7950 or 8970m and have both done me well. Out of the 290 and the 970 I'd definitely go green though personally.

well the myth about AMD drivers been way worsed than Nvidia should have ended somewhere in 2007. Nowdays they are as stable as Nvidia if not better. The only downside is they dont update as soon as Nvidia ( lately is usually every 3-4 months for WHQL drivers but beta drivers come out almost every month )

On a side note i wouldnt upgrade to r9 290 from a gtx 670. In fact imo nothing really is worth right now upgrading from a gtx 670 as long as you play at 1080p. I would wait imo for new gpu releases from AMD next year ( and hopefuly nvidia will lowers its prices by then )

Of course if you play at 1600p or even plan to play at 4k then yes do upgrade ( though for 4k you are gonna need at least 2x r9 290 or 2x 970's as a minimum

The only problem I found is with Mantle... Frostbite engine is absolute crap. Stutter out the kazoo... For some reason it eats up the VRAM. No other Mantle game I played had probs though. It's been confirmed to be a problem with DICE's engine.

I like how they have a OC tool right in the control panel and 2D is much faster/snappy feeling too. I wish Nvidia didn't have all that gameworks stuff... Because I would stay AMD.

@adamosmaki:

I'm running at 1440p so I am struggling in some games for sure. Playable but could run better especially considering I only have 2gb of video ram.

I have a couple 290's (not crossfire currently) and they both run like champs. Performance is good but honestly if I could afford the step up to a 970 I'd go for it, Nvidia has a stronger card so might as well go where the performance is. I've had no real driver issues show up, but who knows, if they did have better drivers the 290 might even have better performance than it already has.

The thing is Nvidia is looking a lot better with DSR..

AMD has Mantle but DX12 could do the same thing better or not at all..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSUSYaa6C9s&feature=youtu.be

AMD driver s have gotten alot better over the years, until recently AMD had major issues with crossfire frame timings, not sure how well they have improved since last year but direct x9 based games had the worse of it. Their is no real point in upgrading to a 290 from a GTX 670 because even at 2560x1600 there is an average of around 30% and at 1080 its even less being around 20%. If you want a more meaningful upgrade look at the 4gb GTX 970 which are faster then 290x and GTX 780.

What is your current Pc configuration? because depending on what your running a cpu upgrade can almost double your minimum and average fps in cpu bound games.

So what's the difference in power between the 970 and 290?

Also the issue with frostbite engine could bee an issue as well because I do like bf games.

But in general am I going to see a difference between the two cards? Also how big a jump is out from a 670 to 290?

Performance difference is around 10-15% faster then 290x. As time goes on drivers for the 900 series will mature to the point of seeing around 20% differences. But here is the kicker GTX 970 uses around 175w while a 290 uses around 260w, and 290x nears the 300w limit. GTX 970 runs cooler, produces less heat uses alot less power and is the faster gpu overall . In BF4 even AMD's mantle does not save the 290 series from the 970 at 2560x1600.

But the question is what is your current cpu? Because if your running AMD phenom series or first gen FX's getting a faster gpu is not going to help at all. And even if your running Piledriver based FX series in cpu bound games your not going to see what a newer gpu can actually do because the cpu bottlenecking.

Here is the whole DICE BS.

http://imgur.com/a/6Sh8p

It affects Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare which uses the same engine as BF4.

Dragon Age Inquisition is also using frostbite.

The only fix I found is to have more VRAM then the bug can suck up or delete the file that is filling the VRAM. Then you wont notice the stuttering.

@04dcarraher:

So the 290x is only 15%ish faster than the 670?

That is odd. I would have thought it would have been a lot more than that.

up and down over the years, just like nvidia

Gtx 290x is equal to a 970 but is not worth it at this point because the difference between the 2 cards is small and 970 is a new product so do expect more performance out of them with newer drivers.

290 ( the non x ) is actually a good buy after the price cuts since its quite cheaper than 970 and its faster in some games though on average is a bit slower. Of course as is the case with 290x with newer drivers gtx 970 will widen the gap between it and r9 290

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8568/the-geforce-gtx-970-review-feat-evga/7

At 1440p there is quite a noticeable difference between r9 290 and gtx 670 especially in Crysis 3 and battlefield ( a close to 50% in 1440p ). Now if that is worth $270-280 is up to you

15-20% average yeah at 1080, even at 2560x1600 your only looking at around 30%. the 200 series is just a continuation of the GCN architecture of 7000 series just like the GTX 780's from 600's

Now if your over saturating vram buffer and memory bus then having the 4gb of vram will smooth things out but in actual worthwhile performance gains not so much. The better bet is to get a GTX 970

If I were you I'd probably wait. I wanna see if they're going to bring out a 980 ti possibly with 8-12gb of ram on it.

I mostly see 6GB for 980ti and 12GB for Titan II. Both 384bit.

edit: Oh and R9 290 is like 22-23% faster than 670:

@04dcarraher:

My cpu is a Intel i5-3570K and my PSU is a Corsair GS800.

Your fine, Your not going to have a bottleneck there

@

So a R9 290 at 1440p would be around 50%ish addition to my frame rate maybe?

no, only around 25%. at 1080p average 22%, at 1600p 26%. You can expect around 35% with a 970 at 1600p.

It's so freaking irritating. My 2gb of ram will not cut it with some games...they run but I have to adjust the setting and I don't want to.

Do you use any AA? if so turn it off. Also use high textures instead of ultra most of the time the differences are minor

AA depends on the game really. Metro 2033 and farcry 3 both slow down a lot.

i have an xfx 6950 hd 2gb and it a piece of shit msaa dont even work shadows have weird paterns something white curves pop out.

mmmm, k.

That does not sound good.

I had to add and modify some things in my registry to get my 290x to stop randomly blue screening.

Though to be fair, I found the solution in nvidia's forums.

Drivers are good now and you can find R9 290 for $260 brand spanking new. It really makes a difference if you have a 1440P monitor. A lot of the times I disable Crossfire and play games with a single R9 290 on 1440P. If you can get it for a good price then go for it. It'd be worth it.

I just GOT another 290 with Ausis V mobo ! omg man you should FEEL this lovely !

Drivers are good now and you can find R9 290 for $260 brand spanking new. It really makes a difference if you have a 1440P monitor. A lot of the times I disable Crossfire and play games with a single R9 290 on 1440P. If you can get it for a good price then go for it. It'd be worth it.

Finally! I told you crossfire 290's are beast! :p

If you have large budget go with 970 because it's cooler, quieter and more powerful than the 290.

The 970 is stronger than the 290 by 4% on 4K.

The 970 is stronger than the 290 by 6% on 2K.

The 970 is stronger than the 290 by 11% on 1080p.

Now, if those % that suits on what you're planning to play in the future or now is worth you a 70$ - go ahead.

@insane_metalist: Hahah you don't wanna know how much to cost me for this build , I live in Jordan a Mobi,and another 290 and new 850 power cost me 1000. $ thank god my birthday is 8 November i m gonna drain my friends from money , I told them no presents only cash haahahaha I m broke !!

Hmm that's a good idea! My birthday is tomorrow. I should drain my friends for money too.

In the last several years, I had a Radeon 4890, then a 7850. Never had any issues with either of them. From what I understand, most of the driver issues had to do with crossfire setups and a few launch-day AAA games. AMD/ATI has historically had driver issues in Linux as well, but most people on this forum don't use Linux so that is moot. Supposedly that has been cleaned up as well in the last few years.

As far as upgrading, I would wait. The R9 3XX series is getting ready to come out in a few months.

Well I ordered a Sapphire Radeon R9 290...got it for a good price. Reviews say at load it hovers around 72C and it's incredibly quite and my psu is a Corsair GS800 so power should be a nonissue. The 970 might have a small edge on it in most cases but I'm ok with that. Plus as stupid as this might sound, I really want a change....I have been using Nvidia for so long now.

So I got my new R9 290. Got the black screen and had to flash the cards bios and bam, worked great!! Runs like a champ.

Ran BF4 in 1440p at ultra settings and never dropped below 50fps....on my 670 I would be siting at about 25 fps at best in ultra settings. Pretty huge jump...I'm happy with it.

now OC it :D

It comes OCed but I'm sure I could push it a bit more. No need to really though.

Free performance is always welcome, just do a conservative OC something like core 1150MHz / Vram 1500MHz.