AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

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Janos (retired)
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#1 AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Janos (retired) »

Has anyone looked into the R9 cards yet?

http://www.amd.com/UK/PRODUCTS/DESKTOP/ ... eries.aspx
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#2 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Silver »

I was partly waiting for them to come out before I upgraded.
Didn't see any compelling reasons to spend the extra money on the newer, noisier, more power hungry cards for either a very minimal or nil performance gain.
The reference cards are really getting slated for noise - and thats for gaming, so imagine 24/7 crunching - custom coolers are not expected until at least January.
I have seen there have been a lot of driver issues, some of which have been sorted.
Not sure there really are many benefits to being an early adopter!
I also got a cracking deal on my 7970.

I'm thinking that skipping this generation and waiting till we get the next architecture and manufacturing process reduction to 20nm? Is where we will get some improvement to the power efficiency and be a bit more appealing
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#3 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Janos (retired) »

I agree, I tend to leapfrog technology generations also.

The 7970 is a superb card. The only reason I've not gone out and bought several more is the electric bill going daft.
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#4 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Silver »

I really thought the Hawaii R290 might've been more power efficient but it certainly doesn't seem to be.

You are right, the 7970 is pretty impressive!
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#5 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Silver »

Unless you fancy a move to the green side.
The new 780Ti looks impressive and is seemingly an unlocked Titan and therefore pretty much the top line nvidia card until you get into their pro Quadro cards.
Does have the price to match!!
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#6 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

The quadro's are only impressive ( by nVidia standards ) once you get into DP. For the money the 7970 is by far the better card. In SP my 660ti's still give good value. Amazing that the ATI's are so good but tend to be let down so badly by the driver support, yet the nVidias's are the opposite.
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#7 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by PinkPenguin »

Alez wrote:Amazing that the ATI's are so good but tend to be let down so badly by the driver support, yet the nVidias's are the opposite.
This seems to suggest that using an ATI card with an NVIDIA driver is the perfect solution... hmmm! :D
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#8 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Silver »

PinkPenguin wrote:
This seems to suggest that using an ATI card with an NVIDIA driver is the perfect solution... hmmm! :D
What's the worst that could happen 8)
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#9 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

I have an R9 270. If I can ever get it to work that is. Too new for the current Linux drivers :( The stand alone drivers that came on the disc won't work with either a 6670, 7750 or a 7770 :?: I think it may have to go along side the 7970 in a windows box and see if they will play nice together.

If ATI built the cards and nVidia built the software, we would have a Carlsberg of a GPU :D
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#10 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

The R9 270 is now running under windows in Orac. Reports 6080 Gflops compared to the 9728 Gflops of the 7970 next to it. I got the card for £120, so 2/3rds the power for less than 1/2 the price :D
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#11 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by scole of TSBT »

Decided to move questions here instead of Collatz Optimization...

So to recap, system is rebooting when pushing a R9 270X on Collatz. reviews show that card draws around 255w during benchmark testing, so i figure that is a peak load. Thought I had enough power with a 650w PSU. System has a bunch connected [i3 that draws 55w, 3 WDC hard drives (2 green and 1 blue), an optical drive that wife is using a lot to rip CDs, half dozen USB devices could be conencted (iPhone, WDC Mybook, SD card reader, scanner, printer) and 22" LCD monitor], but if the GPU only draws 255w, I didn't think the rest would draw over 300w or enough cause a problem. Well, the event log shows a kernal-power critical error (took me long enough to pay attention, I'm smart like that :oops: ). What size PSU would you put in it?
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#12 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Janos (retired) »

How is it wired up internally? It could be that each rail from the PSU has a maximum, the total of which sum to 650w.
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#13 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by scole of TSBT »

It's a 650w Blue Star PSU. Only puts out 35A on the +12V leg. That's only 420W :evil: Will try a new, better PSU today. I can get a Corsair CX 750M at Best Buy which puts out 62A/744Ws on +12v.
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#14 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

I just smoked a 750 W psu because cheap psu's quote maximum peak power. Quality psu's like PSU's from Antec, Corsair, or Seasonic quote power output as maximum constant delivery.
In theory my 750 should have been up to the task no problem, but do the calculations and it was simply not up to the task and went pop quite spectacularly by all accounts. CIT quoted 750 W, in reality anything over 500W constant and it was on borrowed time.
I've just ordered an Antec http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ECBRVG4/r ... 71_TE_item should do the task.
I've also got a few of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008 ... UTF8&psc=1 for single or dual card systems. For 3 card systems I use the 1000 w corsair. On my top one which was supposed to be a quad card I have the 1200 w version.
The Antec can produce the full 850 w on the 12v rails alone which give confidence.
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#15 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

I should also add that the R9 series cards are quite power efficient however.... if you run projects that are Double precision then note the 270X is only 1/16 DP ie crippled horribly, the 280X is 1/4 DP ie normal AMD and the 290X is 1/8 DP ie disappointing. They promise much but are not a patch for crunching on Boinc. The 7970 still rules :D although I still have high hopes for my 6970 / 6990 combos :D
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#16 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by scole of TSBT »

This is not for the 270X system, but a different one. Does the Corsair AX1200i has a single 12v rail? I think the spec says it does, but I want to make sure.

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/ax1200i-di ... odular-psu
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#17 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

I have the older version, no digital control. this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003 ... uctDetails

However the full review for the i version is here http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Cors ... 00i/1.html
page 2 gives the stats you want, specifically single 12v rail capable of handling 100.4 A , 1204.8w.
There ain't no way you could break this baby :D
My one has never missed a beat in over a year of 24/7 running with 3 x gtx 660ti's , plus tons of other stuff. At one point it even had all my droids plugged into various usb slots. Can't say better than that except that you do need some serious cards in this system to justify the outlay for such an over-speced beast :D
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#18 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by scole of TSBT »

Alez wrote:Can't say better than that except that you do need some serious cards in this system to justify the outlay for such an over-speced beast :D
Still classified :wink:
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#19 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by Alez »

scole250 wrote:
Alez wrote:Can't say better than that except that you do need some serious cards in this system to justify the outlay for such an over-speced beast :D
Still classified :wink:
:shock:
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#20 Re: AMD R7 and R9 Series Graphics

Post by scole of TSBT »

:evil: Well, I had another kernal power error last night. Decided to finally Google it (kernal power 41 63) and several others reported an issue while heavy gaming. The solution was to look for multiple audio drivers and remove one. I had a driver for the on board audio and ATI audio. I've uninstalled the ATI driver and we'll see if solves it.
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