That too.

I believe some lower-range models will basically be rebranded 6000-series.
But the high-end is as Anandtech describes it (they got the information from AMD's presentation at the Fusion Developer Summit, so straight from the horse's mouth).

Makes you wonder why they don't go straight for manufacturing the new architecture instead of mucking around with older designs first. But then the shadow of R520 and R600 probably looms large still. I think R300 and R420 are the only archictures post rage that didn't give them trouble at first, something their fans should bear in mind when they point and laugh at GF100 and nv30.

Mainly because it's much more difficult to debug new chips when both the architecture and manufacturing process are new.
You have too many unknowns. By just shrinking a known design, you at least know that the chip itself is 'flawless'. So you can just fine-tune the chip layout to get the most out of the new manufacturing process. You don't have to worry about logical problems and such.

Intel's tick-tock strategy is Intel saying very explicitly that they will NEVER do both at a time.
You see nVidia being quite conservative as well, when it comes to new processes (and even then, after nVidia did some runs with OEM DX10/DX10.1 parts on TSMC's new 40 nm process, and AMD had already shrunk their entire product line to 40 nm, Fermi still had manufacturing issues... However, those early 40 nm parts were probably the reason why nVidia could turn Fermi around into the GTX580 rather quickly).
AMD tends to take more risks, both on the CPU and on the GPU side. Bulldozer is released fairly quickly after the 32 nm process was introduced, and AMD was first to 55 and 40 nm as well, and by the looks of it, they will be going 28 nm before nVidia.

OP, paying $200+ for a midrange GPU with 2gb of ram is not worth it IMO. The only way a card like that is worth it is if you're going to get two of them, and even then, you're going to wind up with a ton of heat in your case that you somehow have to deal with.

I say try to find something for around $100 that will suit your needs.

2gb of vram pretty much needs the computing power of an overclocked GTX 580 to take proper advantage of it. Not only that, but unless you're running a multimonitor setup or an insane resolution, there isn't really that much of a need for all that vram (yet).

I thought it was because Rage simply sucked on the PC, since both card manufacturers were experiencing issues? Also, I've seen AMD cards outperform their Nvidia counterparts in some Dx11 games; not sure which one wins overall. The AMD cards, surprisingly, also seem to be less power hungry still.



Glad to see you haven't changed. LOL.

Rage needs to be optimized by AMD and Nvidia's OpenGL drivers. As i understand it, Rage now runs really well on GeForce cards with the drivers released today; gamers are still waiting for AMD's updated OGL drivers.

Well, there are issues, and then there are issues
I tried Rage on my GTX460 and on my Radeon 5770.
On the GTX460, the game worked fine in Windows 7, with the WHQL drivers released in August (so no special Rage beta or anything).
There was the issue with texture popping, but that was apparently a bug in the game. nVidia provided a .cfg file which fixed the problem, and later a Rage update was released, so the .cfg was no longer required.
I never even bothered to try the Rage beta driver that was around, since the game worked fine... and extra performance? You've got to be kidding me, the game is limited at 60 fps, which my GTX460 can do all day and all night, in 1920x1080p. The game is an insult to modern GPUs.

But on my 5770... With the drivers I had on there (latest official WHQL Catalyst), the game just crashed altogether, before you even saw anything.
Then I tried the first beta release, their 'Rage Performance' drivers. Didn't crash, but the framerate was < 1 fps, so the game was unplayable.
Then they released a 'preview 2' beta. Not sure what they changed, but it didn't fix my problems.
Then finally, a 'preview 3' beta, which made the game playable. However, even with the Rage update, there are still some texturing issues. You sometimes see textures flashing in the wrong colour (black, blue, red, whatever).

So on the nVidia side, the game pretty much just worked out-of-the-box (as it should). With AMD, I've gone through 4 drivers now, and the game is playable, but it's still not 100%.

By the way, the game doesn't work on Sandy Bridge IGPs either. Apparently Intel's OpenGL driver lacks some extensions, and ID didn't bother to write a fallback path (just like you still can't run Doom 3 on most Intel IGPs). Which is a shame, because the SB IGPs would probably be able to run this game okay.

As a graphics developer I say: nonsense!
OpenGL and Direct3D are standards. Drivers simply need to implement the standard properly, and any software will work, and perform as expected.
Heck, most developers aren't a high-profile game developer like ID, and will never receive any specific driver release for their software. It just has to work.
There should certainly never be a *need* for optimized drivers, although I understand that in the spirit of competition, nVidia and AMD want to do application-specific 'optimizations' (read: shader-replacements, lowering of quality and other hacks) in order to get the best possible user experience (read: benchmark scores).

The problem is: AMD has never had a proper foundation for their OpenGL drivers, unlike nVidia.
nVidia hired a number of SGI people to develop their OpenGL driver, and it shows.
Since OpenGL is largely irrelevant, AMD stopped working on their OpenGL drivers a long time ago. This wasn't a problem until Doom 3. So AMD decided to work on their OpenGL drivers.
I figured they weren't going for a proper rewrite, so they too would have a good foundation for the future. I figured they'd go for the quick hack: just make sure Doom 3 runs okay, and ignore the rest.
Well, that was no problem, until another OpenGL game finally came out: Rage. AMD's house-of-cards fell apart yet again.

The nVidia 280 drivers that I used may not have been 'optimized' for Rage, but at least they *worked*... After all, at the end of the day, Rage is just an OpenGL application. It should work on any OpenGL drivers, as long as they meet or exceed the minimum requirements in terms of OpenGL version and extensions supported.
There is no excuse for any OpenGL application crashing on AMD hardware with drivers that claim to be OpenGL 4.1-compliant. That has nothing to do with optimizing. That's just broken drivers.

Well, TBH, I doubt folks really care, since Rage is a pretty average title. John admitted that they focused on consoles during development, and the fact that Rage was a mess upon release.

I doubt many people are going to be that devastated; particularly when their cards excel so well in BF3.

As Kyle over at HardOCP put it in regards to Rage:

"I want my damn money back."

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/10/19/r ... _quality/7

The most this will do is make a small stink for a bit; at least until a comprehensive fix is provided. I blame Id mostly though, but meh; I'm probably a bit biased. LOL.