Single vs Double Precision on AMD RX 480 vs. GTX 1080/1070

[~El~Jefe~]

http://lanoc.org/review/video-cards/728 ... l=&start=6

This is a really nice review. Very thorough.

That review is backed up by this review, different graphing, and still very useful.

https://techaltar.com/amd-rx-480-gpu-review/2/

Seems that the claim AMD made are very valid, that it meets or beats Nvidia GTX 980. It even beats GTX 980ti when it comes to double precision work computing.

I keep desiring to buy an nvidia card, every year, for the past 15 years. I am always halted by some odd technicality or inflated price, or something. Everyone knows that gaming on the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 is just incredibly smooth and efficient. However, as an all-arounder, AMD never hobbles their cards for scientific computing or for the latest open source technology. Nvidia does not do open source on Linux from what i am seeing as I search for drivers. Nvidia also didnt do asynchronous computing the past two editions until now. Nvidia does not use Vulcan well. Such a stupid toss up of features to choose from if a person, like myself, uses their gfx card to compute science projects during the day (varying ones), and games with old and new titles at night.

Nvidia disabled their cards this year from excelling at double precision because it wanted people to be ripped off and have to buy $1200-$2000 dollar cards for "workstations". That just irritates me to no end. this probably has no impact on most of the users currently playing games with their card and want cool and quiet systems. however, VALVE is going to be using Vulcan and is using Vulcan.

I do not know why people are "merely mentioning" DOTA vulkan development. As far as I can see, Valve is an enormous player in gaming. Also, if one wants to use LInux and game at high resolutions, I see vulkan as the way to go.

short of it is this: It is not the case that AMD is bad performance per watt. It actually is great if you use the technology that it has. It is not good compared to 2016 offerings from nvidia if you never plan on using vulkan or scientific computing that uses double precision.

[CA_Steve]

Yep, if you need double precision, and don't have the budget for the professional cards, AMD gaming cards > Nvidia gaming cards.

Might be a small subset of the total use cases, though.

[~El~Jefe~]

Yup. Seems so.