How AMD GPUs performs on non mainstream games and general PC usage these days?

[Napoleonic S]

I'm seriously considering going back to Radeon for my next GPU upgrade, my last Radeon GPU was ATI Radeon HD4850, so that was like a decade ago.

If the RX 7900 series can match RTX 4080 in ray tracing then I have little justification to pay more for Nvidia, add that AMD is still using the traditional cable and bringing in Display Port 2.1 whole Nvidia don't...

But my anxiety remains, how do AMD GPUs fare with indie-AA games and general PC usage these days? Are they hassle free? Or do they have performance issues, perhaps encountering bugs here and there? Or as they as smooth as Nvidia?

[Napoleonic S]

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

Hardʬare Hero eredeti hozzászólása:

I actually have an eye on that one. What a good value! 16g VRAM!

How are the drivers?

Drivers are fine. Stability issues are often overblown on AMD (especially now days) and are often under-stated but just as common on NV platform. Features wise, AMD drivers and software suite have been miles ahead of NV's for years. For starters no third party OC utilities needed, not even for voltage or fan curves. Game recording works well, streaming is quite good (though still a bit behind NV in that regard, need to use higher bitrate for same quality, but its getting close). Menus are decently organized. Though only decently, could be better at times. Overall much better than the {Drivers + GFE + Afterburner + Riva Tuner or other options} required for a comparable NV setup simply to match software ability.

As for the card, the 6800 is awesome. Though if you can get one at a good price the XT is even more awesome. The base 6800 though is a wonderful card. At stock clocks they are perfect for 1440p gaming, with a good OC they can be stand in cards for 4K/60 even at decent enough settings. I am in the process of having to RMA mine sadly, so the GF is rocking our Vega 64 for the time being, but while it lasted it was a great thing. I am hopeful that the replacement is just as good.

If you plan to go for 4K or higher than 144hz 1440p I would suggest looking at the XT cards, either the 6800 or 6900. The 6900xt can often be found at as low as 699 (maybe even better with black friday and such). And its a card that is more in the relm of the 3090 in performance terms for anything nonRT, and more like a 3070/70ti in RT. Meanwhile, a well OC'd and tweaked 6800xt is often a match for stock clocked 6900xt cards. I went to the 6900xt from the 6800-non xt for my 4K and was pleased. That said I am def looking at the 7900 line with possible intentions to get one, they are exciting cards!

Oh that's another thing I want to know, for a long time I've been using MSI afterburner OSD to display temp, clock speed, fan speed and voltages not just for the GPU but also my CPU...

Does that still works with AMD GPU or do people use different OSD software with and GPU? I'm not looking for oc ability but monitoring ability.

[Decathect]

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

Oh that's another thing I want to know, for a long time I've been using MSI afterburner OSD to display temp, clock speed, fan speed and voltages not just for the GPU but also my CPU...

Does that still works with AMD GPU or do people use different OSD software with and GPU? I'm not looking for oc ability but monitoring ability.

Yeah I use MSI afterburner and RIVA tuner to capture/monitor temps, fps, etc while in game.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

Drivers are fine. Stability issues are often overblown on AMD (especially now days) and are often under-stated but just as common on NV platform. Features wise, AMD drivers and software suite have been miles ahead of NV's for years. For starters no third party OC utilities needed, not even for voltage or fan curves. Game recording works well, streaming is quite good (though still a bit behind NV in that regard, need to use higher bitrate for same quality, but its getting close). Menus are decently organized. Though only decently, could be better at times. Overall much better than the {Drivers + GFE + Afterburner + Riva Tuner or other options} required for a comparable NV setup simply to match software ability.

As for the card, the 6800 is awesome. Though if you can get one at a good price the XT is even more awesome. The base 6800 though is a wonderful card. At stock clocks they are perfect for 1440p gaming, with a good OC they can be stand in cards for 4K/60 even at decent enough settings. I am in the process of having to RMA mine sadly, so the GF is rocking our Vega 64 for the time being, but while it lasted it was a great thing. I am hopeful that the replacement is just as good.

If you plan to go for 4K or higher than 144hz 1440p I would suggest looking at the XT cards, either the 6800 or 6900. The 6900xt can often be found at as low as 699 (maybe even better with black friday and such). And its a card that is more in the relm of the 3090 in performance terms for anything nonRT, and more like a 3070/70ti in RT. Meanwhile, a well OC'd and tweaked 6800xt is often a match for stock clocked 6900xt cards. I went to the 6900xt from the 6800-non xt for my 4K and was pleased. That said I am def looking at the 7900 line with possible intentions to get one, they are exciting cards!

Oh that's another thing I want to know, for a long time I've been using MSI afterburner OSD to display temp, clock speed, fan speed and voltages not just for the GPU but also my CPU...

Does that still works with AMD GPU or do people use different OSD software with and GPU? I'm not looking for oc ability but monitoring ability.

Afterburner works fine, but you can just press ctrl+shift+O and it will turn on the AMD overlay showing all of the same info.

If you are someone who is super interested in super live time stats and want like a frame time graph that runs on a 5 second loop showing you milisecond level frame pacing then afterburner+riva tuner is the way to go.

If you just want values or graphs updated every .25 - 2 seconds (adfjustable) you can get that with the drivers. Will show clocks, utilisations, temps, etc. Will also show basics like System RAM and CPU usage, and more detailed system stats on Ryzen 5k or higher (so things like CPU temp and CPU current use etc).

[Napoleonic S]

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

Oh that's another thing I want to know, for a long time I've been using MSI afterburner OSD to display temp, clock speed, fan speed and voltages not just for the GPU but also my CPU...

Does that still works with AMD GPU or do people use different OSD software with and GPU? I'm not looking for oc ability but monitoring ability.

Afterburner works fine, but you can just press ctrl+shift+O and it will turn on the AMD overlay showing all of the same info.

If you are someone who is super interested in super live time stats and want like a frame time graph that runs on a 5 second loop showing you milisecond level frame pacing then afterburner+riva tuner is the way to go.

If you just want values or graphs updated every .25 - 2 seconds (adfjustable) you can get that with the drivers. Will show clocks, utilisations, temps, etc. Will also show basics like System RAM and CPU usage, and more detailed system stats on Ryzen 5k or higher (so things like CPU temp and CPU current use etc).

Are you telling me that AMD driver suite has detailed monitoring OSD capability? Like MSI afterburner?

[Decathect]

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

Afterburner works fine, but you can just press ctrl+shift+O and it will turn on the AMD overlay showing all of the same info.

If you are someone who is super interested in super live time stats and want like a frame time graph that runs on a 5 second loop showing you milisecond level frame pacing then afterburner+riva tuner is the way to go.

If you just want values or graphs updated every .25 - 2 seconds (adfjustable) you can get that with the drivers. Will show clocks, utilisations, temps, etc. Will also show basics like System RAM and CPU usage, and more detailed system stats on Ryzen 5k or higher (so things like CPU temp and CPU current use etc).

Are you telling me that AMD driver suite has detailed monitoring OSD capability? Like MSI afterburner?

Yes.

But I said above you can use MSI After burner and Riva Tuner if you wish as well, they both work with AMD.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

Afterburner works fine, but you can just press ctrl+shift+O and it will turn on the AMD overlay showing all of the same info.

If you are someone who is super interested in super live time stats and want like a frame time graph that runs on a 5 second loop showing you milisecond level frame pacing then afterburner+riva tuner is the way to go.

If you just want values or graphs updated every .25 - 2 seconds (adfjustable) you can get that with the drivers. Will show clocks, utilisations, temps, etc. Will also show basics like System RAM and CPU usage, and more detailed system stats on Ryzen 5k or higher (so things like CPU temp and CPU current use etc).

Are you telling me that AMD driver suite has detailed monitoring OSD capability? Like MSI afterburner?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3_7JqjIbOY

Afterburner top left, AMD along the right (and quite large by r/q for mobile viewers).

[Napoleonic S]

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

Are you telling me that AMD driver suite has detailed monitoring OSD capability? Like MSI afterburner?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3_7JqjIbOY

Afterburner top left, AMD along the right (and quite large by r/q for mobile viewers).

Ah nice... but that's too intrusive... Can they be as minimal as the afterburner one?

[xSOSxHawkens]

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

xSOSxHawkens eredeti hozzászólása:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3_7JqjIbOY

Afterburner top left, AMD along the right (and quite large by r/q for mobile viewers).

Ah nice... but that's too intrusive... Can they be as minimal as the afterburner one?

yeh, you can make it small or large, more or less transparent, single or multi column, and text only or text + graphs. As mentioned, that graph was that large due to someone asking for graphs that were more readable on mobile screens as the Afterburner one was basically too small on mobile.

They cant be made *as* non-intrusive as afterburner/rivatuner, nor quite as finely detailed (no frame times etc). But for quick checks of performance or for more general monitoring purposes its great and fully built in.

The AMD Driver even has a full in game/app UI thats fully featured with every single window present from the in-windows driver, live stats, live time global or game specific settings changes, access to the decent (but not as fully fledged as something like OBS) streaming system, the recording system. On the OC side along with full custom OC it has built in auto OC thats decent and also has a built in OC Stress Test (though it tends to be less than what I like and only catches pretty extreme instability, I suggest 3dMark Timespy test 2 if you are fledging out OC's on RX6k cards ;) lol)

Heck, the driver has a built in, in-game web browser similar to Steam, and has its own remote play functions like steam in home streaming.

To be clear, not all of these things are the best of the best, but all of them are decently fledged out and usable, and all built right into the driver. Its a pretty feature rich package compared to the green team.

Its weird, NV used to have a bunch of these features (like driver level OC features, auto OC features, driver level stability testing). They were all part of the Geforce UI back in the 8800GT era. For some reason NV has kept the UI more or less un-changed since 2008 but has stripped features like these and basically just left people to use third party alternatives or (for things like recording) their first party companion app.

[Rusty]

I'm using the RX 6800 XT together with a ryzen 5800 on an LG 1440p 144 hz monitor and it's great. I've mostly been catching up on older games that I missed, playing everything I couldn't on my old laptop. Doom Eternal runs and looks amazing with perfect 144fps. For some raytracing so far I've only tried Quake, Ghostrunner and Cyberpunk. I've got to say it does look great, and mostly runs well (in ghostrunner levels lag at the start, but run smooth after a couple seconds). The biggest difference with raytracing is it audibly makes my fans spin up which are usually silent and It's not really worth burning extra electricity, so I mostly keep it off (this will be the same with nvidia).

If there were any issues in games they are so minor I can't even remember. One example I remember because it's funny is the nvidia hair physics thing in Witcher 3 for Geralts hair doesn't work well, unless you use mods. As if I care much about Geralts hair while fighting monsters! Witcher has buggy physics, when playing higher than 60 fps, so I play it on Steamdeck instead of desktop anyway.

One thing worth mentioning is I have two very weird non-gaming related issues with my desktop and I don't know if they are an AMD GPU/CPU, windows or motherboard problem:
- My PC bricks itself for a while if I put it into 'sleep' mode. If I jiggle around the IO backplate it boots again. EZ workaround: I just don't put it to sleep and use regular shutdown. No idea what the cause is and don't care enough to figure it out, although I suspect it's the motherboard (ROG Strix B550).
- High-end PCs sometimes freeze while watching Netflix. I know lol, every cheap laptop can watch no problem, but when I watch it on my desktop, it (rarely) freezes and needs a hard reset when watching Netflix. If you google it, this also happens on high-end Intel+Nvidia builds. My guess is that it's an issue with widevine junk DRM going crazy. Workaround: Netflix is banished to the Steamdeck, no issues there.

A friend has the RX 6600 (non-XT) and plays games at mostly high settings 1080p 75hz. I honestly can't tell that much difference to my setup, although I can usually put all graphics settings on Ultra and not bother tweaking things, my friend does need to tweak a little for performance in some games and raytracing is stuttery low fps, so not really playable (tested in cyberpunk, some settings are medium, where I can pick highest).

So although the 6800 and better GPUs are nice to have, higher refresh rate and resolution is only worth considering, if you have a good TV/monitor for it or plan to get one. One more thing to remember is you should cap your fps to your monitor max refresh using AMD 'chill' feature or fps will stutter sometimes, you also save some electricity. If you want to save money and just want to play the latest games at 1080p and don't care about raytracing, my recomendation is the RX 6600. You can easily make a build with it for less than 800$.

[Napoleonic S]

Upon reresearching info about the upcoming Rx 7900 series, it come to my realization that AMD ray tracing capability may still lag behind Nvidia latest by 50%, that's concerning for me, I mean I can stomach 10% slower performance maybe even 15-20% slower if the overall frame rate still playable, but 50% disadvantage is a serious stumbling block...

Anyway mid December can't come soon enough...

[ZAP]

Napoleonic S eredeti hozzászólása:

Upon reresearching info about the upcoming Rx 7900 series, it come to my realization that AMD ray tracing capability may still lag behind Nvidia latest by 50%, that's concerning for me, I mean I can stomach 10% slower performance maybe even 15-20% slower if the overall frame rate still playable, but 50% disadvantage is a serious stumbling block...

Anyway mid December can't come soon enough...

It's like Hairworks but not proprietary, if it's important to you then spend more for less performance outside of that situation.