So I did some researching and apparently the R9 380 has some reliability issues. Am I going to get screwed over? The R9 380 has absolutely outstanding performance for the price and it seems a little sketchy
I haven't heard of any issues with it. Reliability depends on brand, some might be more reliable than others.
So its official we (as in me and my parents) are moving to a new farm unlimited here we come (hopefully).
So here's another question. There are multiple cards with the same name and different prices.. What's the difference? http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?N=100007709 600565502&IsNodeId=1&Submit=ENE
There's only one card in that link. But, there are many different cards from different brands with the same GPU. Essentially they're all the same, but there are differences: * The most visible difference is heatsink+fans. Few cards use the chip manufacturer's 'reference' design (which is usually weak), most have custom coolers. * Some cards might have a custom PCB, different VRMs (power delivery) or more memory (the 4GB GTX 960 was never officially designed by Nvidia, for example). * Most non-reference cards are factory overclocked. Stock clocks are higher for better performance. The card you linked is an ITX graphics card meant for small form factor PCs, it's compact and won't do a great job at cooling. You'll get better temperatures and performance with a larger dual-fan cooler. Sapphire is a good brand, I've owned several and never had issues.
cuda is indeed it's own thing actually and serves same purpose as openCL. Nvidia doesn't natively support opencl, it remaps opencl to the cuda pipeline instead. AMD natively implement it instead. however where a larger portion of an nvidia gpu is dedicated to cuda, the final performance of the (extremely well) emulated nvidia implementation is basically on par with AMD. Native cuda is faster than opencl on nvidia hardware. It is not a marketing name
This XFX R9 380 is even cheaper and has a much better dual-fan cooler: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150732&cm_re=r9_380-_-14-150-732-_-Product XFX cards are pretty good, too. --- Post updated --- Yeah, different architecture. Didn't know about OpenCL being emulated on Nvidia though. Interesting. All this makes no difference in gaming though, only if you're a developer.
I think there are a small handful of frequently used OpenCL instructions that are indeed native simply because they are used so frequently. But a significant portion is emulated atop CUDA. Its clever stuff. Ultimately what you lose in emulation you regain in how much funding NVidia put into CUDA and how many CUDA processors you have aboard an NVidia GPU. One reason to get a Titan X over a 980Ti. CUDA. While a proper workstation PC for rendering would benefit more from a Quadro or if no display output needed a Tesla. For a best of both worlds. The Titan X does offer significantly more CUDA performance than its 980Ti counterpart. Little difference for most of us, but if you are an enthusiast gamer that does some rendering on the side, it can make a better choice. Niche, super niche, but its there.
I upgrade to win10 and the next day downgraded back to 8. Why? because win10 broke the start menu, task bar and other things. very annoying.
I want to upgrade to Win10, but I'm afraid it will break NR2003. Lots of people say it's broken for them, but only if they downloaded it rather than buying a physical copy. Maybe I should try it on my laptop tomorrow...
If it worked on windows 7 and especially 8 it is very likely to work on windows 10. Program compatibility is quite good overall. I've even run drivers on multiple older computers that have only got windows 7 drivers from years ago and even that is just fine it seems. Honestly though after using it for as long as I have (since release week) and recently getting windows 7 again on my laptop I really don't feel anyone should upgrade to it unless they really want to. It has a few nice things but the operating system is pretty much identical to windows 7 in usability and with windows 7 you wont have to the same degree, a load of questionable Microsoft terms and programs which seem to go hand in hand with windows 10.
Holy crap man, you really know your stuff. Thanks! I'll probably buy the one that you sent me below. LAST QUESTION lol. What are stream processors?
Basically the same as CPU cores, but much smaller and built with a different instruction set, specialised for graphics processing. More cores = more power, though it's only one of the defining factors - clock speeds and efficiency (IPC per core) are the others, just like in a CPU. Nvidia has CUDA cores instead, essentially the same thing, but different instruction set.
Windows 10 keeps resizing my windows to little squares when I turn off the screen, and doesn't seem to be able to remember the placement of my Firefox window *sight* I'm sorry but OS X seems better in (almost) every way to me (my opinion)...
The only annoying thing I've come across in windows 10 would be explorer. exe crashing at random after logging in. It may happen after 5 seconds, it may happen after an hour.
Some have 4gb of vram, some have 2gb of vram. Also some have different clock speeds. So minor variations. --- Post updated --- I have had a lot of issues with the lockscreen. It only seems to work about half the time, sometimes it asks for my password and sometimes it doesn't. I have even traveled half way across the country with the tablet screen turned off only to find it is still unlocked when I arrive, yet sometimes when i turn the screen off and on again within a 15 second window it wants me to enter my password. Windows also won't let me disable password protection, if i turn it off it still keeps asking for my password. Then there are the issues with the lockscreen itself. It would seem that ms implemented it as an app. If that app crashes or fails to start then windows will welcome anyone in to the operating system as if there was no lock screen.
