**NEW AMD Radeon Driver, EXTREME boost for game.

AMD Recently launched their new driver for next gen. 14.1 BETA which includes there mantle package. Right now as it stands for a newly built next gen driver, it is very nice. IT fixes a lot of DirectX stuff that was direly needed from previous beta builds.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-arti...dows-beta.aspx

As far as FFXIV goes, it is really worth the download, it is a significant boost for graphics performance. Stay tuned to www.guru3d.com for testing results. Keep inmind that the mainfocus of the drivers is for bf4 support with 8000 and 290 series cards, but backend fixes are present for old cards via support list.

Soooo, maybe my CrossFire 6800's might outperform my 760 gt now?

thanks will have to check it out

It alleviates some of the graphical corruption faced by 280X cards but not entirely.

FFXIV Benchmark with and without 14.1 drivers shows little to no improvement

Mantle only works for games coded to utilize Mantle, at this moment, FFXIV isn't Mantle compatible.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Soooo, maybe my CrossFire 6800's might outperform my 760 gt now?

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Lol we can only hope, but I highly doubt it, maybe when game goes live for PS4 square will be force to optimize for AMD. But as of right now, it is a huge boost for the game, we are not sure if it benches to be like the NVidia cards, but it is definitely progress and a boost that is well needed. Who know maybe performance will finally equal an NVidia card like it is suppose to be. :D

Well, AMD is way behind Nvidia imo, nvidia is the gpu version of intel .... Can't even really say Nvidia's are much more expensive either, jkust like intels have come down.

The reason I say AMD is behind is because of GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay with built in twitch integration....

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Originally Posted by Meier

Lol we can only hope, but I highly doubt it, maybe when game goes live for PS4 square will be force to optimize for AMD. But as of right now, it is a huge boost for the game, we are not sure if it benches to be like the NVidia cards, but it is definitely progress and a boost that is well needed. Who know maybe performance will finally equal an NVidia card like it is suppose to be. :D

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Mantle works by easing the load on the CPU thus removing CPU bottlenecks, performance improvements are most noticeable on low to mid range CPUs, basically, the better your CPU, the less improvements you'll get.

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Originally Posted by ReiszRie

Mantle works be easing the load on the CPU thus removing CPU bottlenecks, performance improvements are most noticeable on low to mid range CPUs, basically, the better your CPU, the less improvements you'll get.

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indeed. Most people will definitly see a boost if they poses an older generation card such as 6000 series and a newer CPU. And yes the main boost is for games that are built with mantle.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Well, AMD is way behind Nvidia imo, nvidia is the gpu version of intel .... Can't even really say Nvidia's are much more expensive either, jkust like intels have come down.

The reason I say AMD is behind is because of GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay with built in twitch integration....

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GeForce GPU are generally slower than Radeon counterparts and Radeon cards have better options for overclocking without voltage locks, Radeon GPU at this moment offers the best bang for bucks, a 280X with minor overclocking can easily rival or even surpass (in some tests) at around $70 lower in costs. 3GB graphics memory also proves to be beneficial as games starts having larger and higher resolution textures

With all said, nVidia generally has better and more stable drivers over Radeon cards, it takes a few driver releases for Radeon cards to be stabilized and optimized

Yeah, I guess my issue is my CPU isn't a bottle neck, it's at 4.8ghz with SSD's in raid Zero (Sata III, I get 950mbps on reads).... with 16gb of 1600mhz memory. When I run load tests it's always, always my gpu that is bottlenecking, sitting at 100% load, with me playing with the overclock on it to try to get it to go a little faster.

Sad thing is that it's an i5-2500k I bought in 2011 and is like 4+ years old tech and imo it's still the best, overclocks 4.8 stable, stays cool on a 50$ closed radiator cooler.

But mostly becasue atm, FFXIV is coded to use Physx, and that takes a BIG load off the CPU in FFXIV. Based on my tests it would appear FFXIV isn't using AMD's Physics stuff on the AMD cards and is instead doing a CPU Emulation, e.g. they made a wrapper for Physx and if you ahve it it uses it and if you don't it falls back to CPU.

It would probably be better if I had 2 nice amd cards (250$ range) in crossfire, but.... At the time this game launch I had a 760gt and some decent amd cards, And the 760 nvidia was smoking my crossfire setup so I stuck with the 760. But that was before the frame pacing driver fix and now this driver is out, so I don't know.

Really though AMD has let me down a lot lately. I used to be an AMD guy always rooting for them and buying their stuff. Then it became obvious how much farther ahead intel was when sandy bridge came out (and is still out performing amd's latest 32nm (e.g. Zambeni/Bulldozer, etc). Then I had a 7000 series amd card a while back I paid decent money for and was always blue screening and having driver fits. Went Intel and Nvidia and haven't looked back or had a single issue.

In fact I have a Phenom II 1090T sitting next to me I don't even use because the motherboard's Virtualization Support doesn't work when the onboard video is enabled.... But that's more EVGA's Fault... But my point there is that in all the intel rigs I've built, I have 100% stability with no feature/bug issues. I just feel like Nvidia and intel stuff get's better quality vendor made stuff.

Didn't have a problem with my R-290 (Custom Card Cooling via Tom's Hardware) but will download the new drivers to see if it boosts my performance!

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Well, AMD is way behind Nvidia imo, nvidia is the gpu version of intel .... Can't even really say Nvidia's are much more expensive either, jkust like intels have come down.

The reason I say AMD is behind is because of GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay with built in twitch integration....

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Nvidia/Intel vs AMD/ATI is price vs performance! My New AMD build compared to my friend's Nvidia new build is about equal unless you are doing calculations (Maya and Autocad). I only game, browse the net, and do homework for class on my comp so i saved myself around 300+ usd !

Yeah except price vs performance isn't nearly as large a gap as it used to be. E.g. amd processor 170 vs intel processor for 190 where the 190 intel processor is 15% faster than the 170 amd processor. Or a 249.99 nvidia vs a 199 amd where the 249.99 nvidia is 20% faster/optimized better than the amd. Etc.

It's still price vs performance, but the playing field is leveling out.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Yeah except price vs performance isn't nearly as large a gap as it used to be. E.g. amd processor 170 vs intel processor for 190 where the 190 intel processor is 15% faster than the 170 amd processor. Or a 249.99 nvidia vs a 199 amd where the 249.99 nvidia is 20% faster/optimized better than the amd. Etc.

It's still price vs performance, but the playing field is leveling out.

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That extra 50 usd can be used for a better cooler and Nvidia MOBO's are usually way higher in price and Nvidia's cards last i checked in Nov were wayy overpriced for same performance cards!

Shadowplay is worth the 50$ imo

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Originally Posted by Atheena

Nvidia/Intel vs AMD/ATI is price vs performance! My New AMD build compared to my friend's Nvidia new build is about equal unless you are doing calculations (Maya and Autocad). I only game, browse the net, and do homework for class on my comp so i saved myself around 300+ usd !

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Or you have a GTX 780 for about 500 and an AMD R9 290X for about 600 and the 780 is around 20% faster... owait. Also boards aren't all that different in price, and most will support both Multi GPU systems. Not to mention, you don't need to do things like CAD to see the difference in Intel/AMD CPUs.

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Originally Posted by ispano

Or you have a GTX 780 for about 500 and an AMD R9 290X for about 600 and the 780 is around 20% faster... owait. Also boards aren't all that different in price, and most will support both Multi GPU systems. Not to mention, you don't need to do things like CAD to see the difference in Intel/AMD CPUs.

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http://m.hardocp.com/article/2013/11...7#.Uu4Vj3gazCQ

Reviews generally concludes that 290X and GTX 780Ti are pretty much equivalent in performance, with the 290X coming in at around $150 cheaper.

GTX780 (non Ti) certainly is not on the same league as the 290X

Thats still not factoring in the adoption of AMD Mantle, we have already seen double digit improvements on mid range CPUs running Mantle and with big name studios being key supporters behind Mantle (EA, Square Enix) its hard to not take Mantle seriously and consider that as an AMD advantage over nVidia.

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Originally Posted by ispano

Or you have a GTX 780 for about 500 and an AMD R9 290X for about 600 and the 780 is around 20% faster... owait. Also boards aren't all that different in price, and most will support both Multi GPU systems. Not to mention, you don't need to do things like CAD to see the difference in Intel/AMD CPUs.

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AMD prices on the 280X and up are all out of whack right now, they're supposed to be a lot cheaper but people are eating them up for crypto currency mining so the retailers jacked the price up, they're more than a $100 over MSRP right now. Other than that I don't know what reviews you're looking at but AMD's 290x is just as fast as a 780Ti.

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Originally Posted by Fiorana

AMD prices on the 280X and up are all out of whack right now, they're supposed to be a lot cheaper but people are eating them up for crypto currency mining so the retailers jacked the price up, they're more than a $100 over MSRP right now. Other than that I don't know what reviews you're looking at but AMD's 290x is just as fast as a 780Ti.

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Indeed, R9 prices are now totally jacked due to all the miners

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/que...r-than-nvidias

Got my R-290 (overclocked to R-290X specs with the Artic Cooler III mod a whopping 150usd difference between the two) for only 329.00 usd from Newegg on the 1st shipments! Didn't realize until now that the R-290 prices have nearly doubled!! WTF!

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Originally Posted by Atheena

Got my R-290 (overclocked to R-290X specs with the Artic Cooler III mod a whopping 150usd difference between the two) for only 329.00 usd from Newegg on the 1st shipments! Didn't realize until now that the R-290 prices have nearly doubled!! WTF!

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Sell it fast!!

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Originally Posted by waldo

Sell it fast!!

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Pfft I'm keeping both of mine sold my 5850's already ><!

Very good to hear this. Just wanted to note that I've a older rig I put together last year -- Radeon HD 7750 card and the game has played amazingly ever since I stepped into early launch. Even fps is 65+ out in zones and 55-60ish in town. Maybe I'm just lucky? Then again, I'm running overmuch ram which is always delicious as well. My bf's Dell XPS desktop w/nVidia and as maxed out as he could get in when ordering from the corporate world - eh, runs FFXIV ARR, hmm ick-ily? LoL. Until my little build experiment last year I was a marked white knight for nVidia in gaming, but I'm now extremely pleased with the performance I get in mmo's with AMD.

AMD = same thing (for the most part) for less money.
Personally I've had few crash issues with AMD than nvidia hands down.
To each their own.

Goddamn, I picked a 7950 over a 290 earlier this year to save cash, and here I am thinking I couldve made cash buying it new and reselling.

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Originally Posted by Ryios

Well, AMD is way behind Nvidia imo

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As one of those "Nvidia fan boys", I'll tell you this now. Current Nvidia drivers are absolutely horse faeces and I'm honestly considering making a swap to AMD cards if Nvidia continue to make terrible drivers. I'd say AMD currently ahead of Nvidia, lol.

Thank you for the heads up on the new drivers.

I would like to see SE add Mantle support to the Directx 11 client that is coming.

In theory it should increase the frame rate a lot in situations where there are 100 characters displayed such as large fates. Might even allow the 100 character display limit be increased.

I will switch back to AMD video card if SE does this.

I've always gone with Nvidia because EVERY LAN party I've gone to, it's only the people with AMD cards that get crashes, and complain about their horrible drivers.

I'm not really a fanboy of either, I just use whatever gives me the best performance for the price for the game I want to play. And at FFXIV Launch, that was an Nvidia 760, which was the cheapest card with the highest benchmarks on an i5-2500k build.

However, I do LOVE shadowplay. makes it so much easier to stream.

Yes recent updates to shadowplay is really nice that I use it now instead of fraps

I tried the Beta drivers today with Mantle, and I noticed no change at all. However, it didn't crash running beta drivers, so that's a good thing! Are we sure that these drivers are doing anything for FFXIV at this time? I'm using an AMD Radeon HD 7770 GPU by the way.

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Originally Posted by HylianProtagonist

I tried the Beta drivers today with Mantle, and I noticed no change at all. However, it didn't crash running beta drivers, so that's a good thing! Are we sure that these drivers are doing anything for FFXIV at this time? I'm using an AMD Radeon HD 7770 GPU by the way.

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They shouldn't do anything for FFXIV unless some miracle SE releases a FFXIV patch that supports mantle. These drivers are mainly to support mantle that BF4 latest patch supports; there are some game fixes, however nothing mentioned for FFXIV.

I don't think OP understands that the developer must change the code so that it has mantle support in order to benefit from it.

SWEEEEEEEEET. I've been waiting for the new beta

Edit: Awww crap, I have to re set up Afterburner ><. AMD and their ULPS gating