THE CHIPS FROM HEAVEN

Still searching for any details on the GPUs everyone seems to think are coming out in Febreuary to March.

I am also still searching for the new APUs meant to be coming out around a similar time frame?

As I mentioned in a previous post I currently have an AMD A10-7850K that I orginally intended to first add a R7-250 card before changing my mind to a R9-270 and then onto the 280?

However what with things being muchg closer to a Carrizo launch and getting more so every week the ... landscape has changed...somewhat.

Instead of spending £200, or close to, on a graphics card at current prices it might seem more sensible to improve with the GPU AND the CPU together and for a great deal less by replacing the APU? Provided the new Carrizo APU plugs into an FM2+ socket. I normally think that with my luck it wont but we seem to be very close with these things and in all honesty normally new sockets get talked about way ahead of time. So maybe there isn't one? Been no motherboard announcements either.

Now of course it would be completely sensible to then wonder about dual graphics and I have to admit to being a bit disappointed with Kaveri due to its lck of options. This is why, once I had researched the hell out of it, I decided to go for a 270 or 280, though I have not actually 'gone for it', yet.

Now I have to admit that for me Kaveri would have been a perfect processor had it had an iGPU along the 260 lines, two more CPU cores and 500 Mhz up on the clockspeed front.

A die shrink from 28nm to 20nm could make most, if not all, of that possible.

So you can imagine why I am pausing. Well the graphics will obviously be better than an R7-250 and the next step in line would be the 260. How about the 270 even?

So yeah I was looking around, briefly, and I came across this little discussion with AMD that was reported, probably third hand, by wccftech and some AMD staff mention about the iGPU in Carrizo being smilar to the Tonga Graphics chip? That would be the Radeon R9-285?! Oh..my..God!

Could it even be possible? How cool would that be? Now doubt it would be a little slower than a stand alone card due to clocks and all but still!

Of course I then wondered immediately if this means that it would dual graphics with a Radeon R9-285? Or will they bring out a card based on this chip that will?

I did, or do, want to buy a card and will not do so now until I have something concrete on all this as I am not, nor can I afford to as of right now, want to end up with two bloody graphics cards and one is redundant.

So I have to wait but at least that little smippet has given me something to look forward to? The fact it slipped in a face to face discussion has me intrigued, and intriguing me is not something easily done.

http://wccftech.com/gtx-980-lose-performance-crown-amds-r9-380x-febuary-2015/

THE GRAPHICAL GRUNTERS

Will it has been 6 months since I began building my PC and even I could not have dreamed that a full 6 months on I am still missing the things to finish it off!

One of these is the graphics card.

So lately and after a certain financial problem that was supposed to come to an end I started looking at graphics cards and there prices. Namely I was looking at a graphics card based on either an R9-270X or an R9-280. Preferably this would be the efficient 285 but oddly the latter did not seem to come in 4GB varieties? Weird as suddenly 4GB versions of all the others were b omg released including the R9-270's!

Also odd were the prices that have gotten very confusing. Even nVidia's new Maxwell cards, the 980 and 970, started out being £225 for the latter but has since raised up to £280 to £300.

Of course there was the original theory that AND would release its next generation cards either late in 2014 or early 2015? The new Radeon, presumably to be called the R9-370, R-380 and R-390, would also go through a die shrink via lithography. Now normally when this occurs one of two things happens. The GPU chip acquires many more transistors so more powerful and normally able to be clocked faster? Sometimes it ends up slightly faster and yet much more efficient.

However the new Race in being released is not the only thing just around the corner and this second thing is causing me a headache. One to be added to the literal pounding headache I already possess because this too has a GPU!

I did not foresee that one!

Now the problem I have is that currently my integrated GPU is not quite powerful enough and can be paired up with a graphicd card that has a few less GPU cores than the iGPU and the extra ones get switched off.

Something I personally thought was bizarre to be honest.

Still.

Now then my APU model of the AMD A10-7850K also ran at a lower clock frequency than the others.

It's replacement is also imminent...sort of...only there are the main two things I cannot find out about it.

What socket and what GPU?

This is because it will have the perfect powered iGPU in theory and whereas mine is slightly faster than a Radeon R9-250 and can be setup to work in tandem with another R9-250, the new APU will be quicker. So following the naming convention the iGPU could be a Radeon R9-260, R9-270 or even 280? It is also possible it will be based on a cut down version of a GPU in the upcoming R9-300 series? An R7-350 for instance if the naming conventions are strictly stuck to.

This is annoying because if it will dual graphics with a currently available graphics card, say the sweet spot of the R9-270 then I could purchase that one!

Or I might need a whole new motherboard which in all honesty I am not willing to change at all. Unless of course the new 'carrizo' APU turns out to be something phenominally powerful and with more CPU cites built in, like 6 or 8 as this would be not only sweet but possible because of the chip shrinking.

A few extra bits on each half of the APU is normally what occurs leaving only the clock speed the commonly asked question.

In the last few iterations the lithography has remained the same.

In the meantime I will now keep scouring for any data concerning both the Carrizo APU and Radeon R9-300 series.

Bloody typical situation I am in, lol.

THE RESOLUTION GATE

Well I had to do a post about this after now reading about it enough times to know that is not just someone's mad rambling if bullshit!

It would appear that, as mentioned in my last post, Alien Isolation is reported by some to look good on what is now officially previous generation games consoles? Bizarre.

That paragraph had to be included because of the odd situation that has arisen regarding a couple of titles and one I am waiting for,  Dragon Age Inquisition, only being at a resolution of 900 pixels vertically on the Xerox One as opposed to 1080p on the PS4?!

This is odd. Sorry but very odd for a number of reasons...

1 Only vertical resolution is mentioned
2 It is being made a big thing of but...
3 It is only 180 pixels which would hardly be noticeable wick makes it...
4 Very odd that they had to do it as it is minimal as I said and...
5 Not checked but may be restricted to a particular game engine?
6 Why not just reduce about something else and bit resolution?!
7 Staggering that 1080p is an issue on next gen!
8 Kinect can't be helping matters?

Weird. It is all very bizarre. I cannot remember what the first title was I read about?

At the end of the day is only a few pixels in height. You would laugh at a mobile phone, cellphone of your American, that had 100x100 pixels. I dare say that throughout 2015 it probably won't occur anymore. Or a more efficient and prettier 3D engine would be created.

This is something that many posters on forums, especially fan boys committing themselves to a name calling spat, should remember. Is all code. Just because it looks pretty and plays well does not mean that it is programmed well! The same can be said the other way around. If a game is redheaded with a fault, yes it's a pain in the arse but does not mean the coding is crap. Like DriveClub, I think it's called. Online play falls down when there are a lot of cars on one track. Now I don't know what the numbers are but I thought what do you do if it's 50 players? What if it's going to take 100 players or 500?! How do you test for that? This must be hard to impossible so mistakes will occur.

Granted of its something stupid and it has not been corrected after the first month and especially if you pay a subscription this needs to be... dealt with. In the case of the aforementioned game they are and are apologetic.

However what I despise are the labels that act like God with some divine right and don't give a crap about players that I cannot stand.

I don't like it when companies, public services and others are quick to use the Internet to make more money but then decide to refuse to use completely free and immediate form of communication of emails.

Ooh good God man, do I hate that! Made worse if they want to direct you to idiots on forums who like to feel important but work for the company for free! Lol.

You have taken people's money, frustrated them, failed them or worse you can at least have something in place to answer their concerns?!

I have a list of names for those that are aloof in this way but I could not type that list here! There might be children present?! Lmao!

In the meantime there are a list of titles I am keen to read the reviews of and play...

Dragon Age Inquisition
Homefront The Revolution
Mass Effect 4
Star Citizen
Elite Dangerous... error...
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
The Order 1866
The Witcher 3
FarCry 4 (perhaps but read decent reviews first on Amazon/PC Gamer)
Project Cars and any other car games

Maybe by then you can add

Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls VI to the list?!

Maybe a much longer lasting Dishonoured 2? Sorry but I did enjoy the first until it rather abruptly ended and the DLCs not up to much.

I also really must attach my Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience, sharp images of breath, and undertake the drivers and see if there is a problem with it?!

About the time I discovered my Windows 7 was not genuine the racing wheel developed a fault! Annoying as I hadn't used it from new and I don't exist that of Thrustmaster! But then it's PC World so probably refurbished like the dented Corsair K70 Vengeance Keyboard they sold me?!

Annoyingly add the price of the wheels rise the quality died not appear to get any better?! Well that is until you reach about 220 quid and lasso across to old favourite Logitech and their G27 wheel! But a bit expensive compared to 40 quid for current Thrustmaster but even at a tenner useless if it's not going to last five minutes!

Technically PC World owe me a bloody teaching wheel and it gets worse still! The Advent Tegra Note I am typing on right now has had another one of the three I bought returned fur refusing to charge?!

So to recap... bought three tablet pc's and...

Two of them have been returned TWICE and this one... once!

All but one which refused to read perfectly good SD CARD were all for failing batteries. This also reminds me...

PC Gamer which I have read on and off from issue one disappointed me in recent reviews of the new version of this Tablet the nVidia Shield as well as my AMD A10-7850K KAVERI APU.

The former used no mention of the issues on the previous model, favoring nVidia unfairly...

The latter they stated is not a gaming chip and not to be considered at all for a gaming PC?! For a bunch of people that look like computer nerds in their pictures they understand very little about computer hardware!

Not only was that statement way, WAY off base but once again unfairly favors nVidia to a degree and Intel a great deal.

This is even more surprising when you factor in that the architecture is used in the next gen consoles or that future games and software can utilise not just the four integer cores but also the eight GPU cores.

That last point is also odd when you consider that a big thing had been made of using GPU cores to general computing but now that something guard thinking and usable is here is run down and ignored?! Despite the fact that Adobe's Photoshop can utilise them ashtray madness it all the more bizarre.

Remember this is architecture that sits inside all the game consoles and they state that is not to be considered for gaming! So can we take it that both the next gen consoles cannot be considered for gaming either?!

There is no reason that I could add in a Radeon R9-280, or R9-380, and future titles use the APU's GPU cores due other things?!  I feel sure that this will be the way things will turn out which is why I decided to take a punt at this APU.

Of course the next APU could just drop in and have 6 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores? Perhaps and if I both wanted and needed to go that route?

Interested in the lithography drop to the 20nm node from the current 28nm. This is particularly interesting for both the GPU's, R9-380? As well as the APU's, Carrizo/Excavator, and possibly even the FX CPU's if they end up revisiting this avenue?