The Exciting News About 15 Graphics Cards

I was talking to my friend about his new graphics card and I said, "Hey, is it your birthday? Did you forget?" He replied, "Nope, we just got bought by Nvidia! It's being announced later today." I was like, "Seriously? That's awesome dude!" My friend jokingly added, "All my friends got free upgrades. Way I got free pizza for a year. Nice but yeah... I've seen all the Voodoo cards. Voodoo was incredible. But Voodoo considering Nvidia bought them it's amazing to me they haven't learned the lesson that Voodoo taught."

Voodoo's Proprietary Technology

Voodoo put all their eggs into proprietary technology baskets if they didn't have good direct X support, they had mediocre open GL support. Support for anything outside their proprietary technology was lacking. The result was eventually despite having a huge lead in the market, the market turned on them because open technologies were better solutions for everyone. Nvidia has this with PhysX and G-Sync. They will eventually have to acknowledge that they've got to get with the times.

Nvidia's Problem

Proprietary technology in the PC world is a death knell. The PC world is about choice, proprietary technologies are about removing choice. I think for NVIDIA users, if I was a full-time Nvidia user, I'd be mad as hell because free Sync would take a minor driver update to be 100% supported by Nvidia cards. Minor driver update and it could be supported. The only reason it's not being supported is they want to push G-Sync. It's funny you mention that because yeah, you actually did it didn't you? Yeah, and it turns out they don't like that at all.

G-Sync: A Limited Option

It's dumb why wouldn't you give your consumers a free choice? Nobody's going to argue that G-Sync monitors aren't great monitors. They've got a very tight standard. AMD is just getting there with PRINC. They've got a very tight standard, the module does have some advantages but there is an increased cost so you have to decide if it's worth the cost for the advantage.

The Situation with G-Sync

The gsync implementation on the particular notebook that I'm thinking of was in fact freesync. Probably but the driver was like "I'm running in this notebook in these circumstances I'm going to enable Notebook G-Sync, but it was actually just the Visa sync technology for the display not actually a daughter board. See the funny thing is it goes the other way too.

Imagine if Nvidia opened up G-Sync to AMD cards well not just AMD cards but Korean manufacturers all cards for that matter what if they open it up to Intel? What if they made it an open standard this is this is the problem with proprietary and this is it's funny to me that here's the company that bought the graphics lead of the decade because proprietary technology forced them into a mess they couldn't get out of.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell you've just tuned in for a new episode of the GP view it's like the view but with gpus GPU view can I view whoy you can you can be whoopy I can be whoopy awesome we don't have Christa so you have to be whoopy okay I'm whoopy so I'm mad about something I don't know what but I'm mad let the talking of all of over of all of us commence it's going to be great I'm so proud that I don't know any of the other people on the vi to select one to be wait I think Rosie O'Donald's of them is he I think so maybe I don't know that's probably wrong I don't know what's happening if you make him Rosy that's wrong well for those of you that are not in the know this is Ed from Sapphire hi and we've recently taken a look at some of the sapphire pulse graphics cards the 570 and the 580 and he's also brought the nro plus and there's a ton of like if you missed it there's a Q&A on the Forum people ask questions those are the attentive ones uh for somebody that doesn't understand explain to us Sapphire's product lineup okay so what we've got is essentially two different products for The Gaming Community the high-end product is the Nitro plus Series this is the the premium the the way I like to explain this let's let's get to an explanation what the difference is between pulse and Nitro plus is probably the easiest way to do this if you're a car person think of the Ford Taurus Ford taus great car wellmade well constructed but there was another model the Mercury Sable Mercury Sable was for all practical purposes the same car it was just it had the extras it had the the the BOS if you will were added to it and that's Nitro plus versus pulse the pulse is a well-made solid lowcost card it's meant to be reasonably priced but give you a great gaming experience Nitro plus takes that and adds to it now it as far as raw performance goes it's faster it's not ridiculously or redonkulous faster but it's faster but it adds it adds the features it's got a bigger heat sink which makes it a little quieter a little cooler it's got RGB cooling it's got a higher overclock out of the gate it's got a more robust Energy Delivery system so at the end of the day we offered you your choice do you just need good solid gaming at a reasonable price or do you want the BOS and most people probably won't get the BOS they they don't remember the BOS commercials It was a commercial where you added bacon bits it and it made it better so this is this is the card with bacon bits this is the card without bacon bits and look at the two cards you can see they're not that different okay you can see they both got well I'll let you do it because you can do it without bumping a mic the uh the natro plus uh you know you've got a huge graphics card you've got multiple power connectors you get the four pin and the six pin and this is the same card by the way these are both 474 gigs this is quite a bit heavier it's got four four heat pipes looks like yes um and uh and a much denser heat heat fin array yeah it's it's a lot heavier to be honest and then this is the uh this is the uh P yeah it's it's got four it's got four heat pipes but they're smaller they're yeah and they're all coming off the bottom of the card so they're all red here here we've got two off the top two off the bottom right so um and this card is is quite a bit lighter um what's the the difference in the clock is about 50 MHz I think it's actually even a little more than that this is close to the stock speed that is available yeah it is about 50 MHz you're right now that I think about that that that that's right it's about 50 MHz off the stock speed so overall I mean they're both you know when we I've taken an in-depth look at this point of the uh the pulse cards and I was really impressed with the build quality on the pulse cards because I know I mean you know off off the the record on the record that the margins really are pretty razor thin on oh ridiculously compared to other products I I get a kick out but we go to events and people are like well this company sent 23 mice why did you send two video cards because those 23 mice that sell for $60 a piece in the store cost them about $4 to produce can confirm no well yeah you can you understand this you understand this the the margins in so many other products are so much higher and with video cards are actually really tight ridiculously tight so we can't we we can't do that you've got to when when you design a video card people always ask me what do you shoot for once we know what the chip is um the first concern is what's our Target price point because we've got to build everything then around that what can we deliver how much can we give you and stay within a margin that's reasonable for us as a company and hit the price point we want to hit well you know I've noticed that uh with I mean probably not our audience I think our audience is probably one of the more technical audiences on YouTube but I I think that AMD is is getting on board with the right kind of marketing with this because I've seen from from Sapphire and from AMD in general that they're more like okay 570 good 1080p gaming experience 580 great 1080p good 1440p gaming experience and that's pretty much the end of the story for how they're marketing it no for for mainstream gaming I'm really I when when the 4 series came out I'm really excited about this I I'm I'm a tech Enthusiast but I'm a tech realist and most of us have mortgages and kids and wives maybe Ex-Wives car payments house payments and to have to throw $400 $500 at a video card to get a great gaming experience is just it's beyond the reach yeah well you know even with like the 400 series cards um really the situation the landscape with Graphics CS in general has changed a lot since the N9 series cards from Nvidia because I thought that like the 970 for example when it first debuted was not completely unreasonably price but then the 1070 was significantly higher and it's like yeah this isn't really a good a good situation for gamers because there's not really a lot of competition in the market but for 1080P and 1440p gaming I think these are these are the new value um proposition and it is I mean it's weird though because these are like the refresh of the 400 series cards refresh remember that refresh that's correct term um it it shows how good the architecture is yeah it it shows the power that's in the architecture I'll take it a little bit beyond 1080 though with the 570 that particular 570 by the way came out of my demo rig and that's been running 2560 by 1080 oh wow uh and I've been able to Peg pretty much everything at high detail level at the 75 H refresh rate of the monitor oh good yeah so ultrawide gaming 1080p with that is incredible and you can get decent 1080 ultrawide monitors for 200 yeah yeah we've got the the micro board free sync over there you know I didn't think to test it with the 570 but I did test it with the 580 and I was super impressed that it was able to maintain the frame rates on that particular one will go up to I think 90 HZ and is that a 3440 by 1440 or is that a 2560 by 1080 well that one is a 35 uh 30 3560 by 1440 but I was running it at 2560 by 1080 okay to get to get the best frame rate the the the 580 can do 3440 by 1440 but that's really beginning to stretch its legs yeah yeah it in like OverWatch it was okay but in in more unoptimized games not so much OverWatch seriously OverWatch a hamster on a wheel can run OverWatch come on CS go CS go a hand Turnal wheel can okay it I I get a kick out of that you get these guys that are that are the competitive Gamers they like OverWatch they like League of Legends they like uh CS go they like uh DotA and these guys are like we need to buy these super high-end monitors and these amazing high-end video cards Dude you can run 4K at 100 frames per second on that on on bubble gum okay these games don't require this immense amount of horsepower I I think people tend to over buy video cards they tend to buy more than they need because we've got a you and I talked about this a little bit the term Enthusiast has been really destroyed in the last decade in the PC World it it's not about enthusiasm anymore it's about money how much money can you throw at it I I watch reviewers they get a they get a $700 video card and a 4k monitor and they they sound like they are amazed at the incredible experience they're getting dude if I spent that much money on that crap it better not only game amazing it better make me lunch it it's crazy what we've come with expectations they they they get so unrealistic don't get me wrong 10 is a great card it it's a great card but serious unless you're trying to push 4K gaming well is there a reason that there's an advantage to it the thing that we're always trying to push with our audience is like there's a curve on return on investment right and so like in the middle of the curve is where you get the best value per dollar and at the upper end of the curve like with the 1080 you've paid significantly more for better yeah but not linearly better well it it's it's not just the the curve in the performance it's the curve in what they need so let's just go off the curve right now let's talk about monitors for a minute buying a monitor I'm amazed at how broke the consumer public is when it comes to understanding how monitors work they run at 60 HZ most of the time okay well they they they think that they have to have 144 Herz to be a great gaming experience well that's a myth okay anything anything past about 75 doesn't really help unless you're a first-person shoter competitive gamer other than that it's just there's there's no real advantage to it in fact every study I've seen says the same thing from 60 to 75 Hertz there is a noticeable smoothing of the entire Computing experience from 75 to 100 Herz the the experience is still improved but less drastically by a pretty significant margin from 100 to 144 it's practically impossible to tell the difference in the overall Computing experience it just isn't there so people first think they've got to buy 144 Herz moners well if you're not a competitive first person sh your gamer don't waste your money yeah you didn't gain anything then we get wrapped up in TN versus IPS versus VA versus you know what get what looks good to you who cares yeah okay finally pixel density I love this argument so a big movement in ultrawide or 34-in displays many of them have higher refresh rates but they're going 2560 x 1080 you tell an Enthusiast 34-in monitor 2560 x 1080 oh my God I'll see pixels everywhere oh my God I'll go blind it'll be so terrible it be so ugly they forgot to take into account pixel density and size of Monitor and resolution are that the only factors do you remember a term coin by Apple called retina most people don't understand what retina is they think it's Hardware it wasn't retina is a mathematical formula that says at this distance and this pi pixel density it is physically impossible for a per person with perfect vision to see a pixel physically impossible to see that means the distance you sit from the monitor is just as important as the pixel density but nobody talks about that I guess they all assume that we're going to sit 24 in from the Monitor and I I don't know maybe if you live in your mama's basement you got that little shelf and you got to be creamed in there to you saying there's a problem with my monitor wall it it's all of this comes together and this creates a lot of The Angst and confusion for the mainstream gamer when they go to buy Hardware they don't understand they've been told well you got to get a 4k monitor no you don't okay 1080p is a great for gaming it's an amazing gaming experience 2560 by 1080 is in my opinion even better for gaming experience uh you got to have these high-end video cards no you don't mainstream video cards are more than capable of giving an amazing gaming experience we we need to we we need sites like yours and others to help the mainstream begin to understand that the Enthusiast in is exactly that that's the extreme the the majority of us fit in a different group all together and suddenly I think we'd find a lot more PC Gamers it's hard to convince somebody when they can buy a $400 game box that by the way of specifically designed just to play games um it's hard to convince them when the Enthusiast Community is tell them they got got to spend $1,500 to get a gaming PC so I think we have a good opportunity here to organically incorporate some questions I get off topic I'm very sorry I ramble this so you mentioned a $400 gaming PC right so a lot of people have asked and the and the submitted questions we ask our audience hey what are some questions you want to see uh we Advocate a lot if you're if you're new to gaming or you're broke or whatever go find an old Dell that's in Surplus and you know do a little refurb and put a nice video card in there and you've got a as good or better as a console kind of thing absolutely so a lot of people are asking what about half height cards what about single Slot Cards low power cards what should I look for minimally there in terms of where do I start you know what card do I well when you're starting with the older older cards this or the older builds this is something um W and I have been talking about many of the newer cards have trouble with older motherboards because the BIOS and I'm not sure maybe it's a mechanical thing as well maybe it's the way the PCI slot is developed I'm not that big of a Gearhead that's your job um we've been doing testing but there's a there's there's an issue there so you're probably going to be better off to go to an older C of choice the 380 or the 7850 both come to mind the 7850 was one of the most underrated cards of its generation or 7970 because you can get those for a bunch of nothing I'd still get a 7850 for 1080p for well it's it less power it's cooler it it's going to be easier to fit in that build finding a half height card becomes a complete nightmare because you have to have a certain level of cooling on any card for of any kind of Real Performance there's just got to be a certain level of cooling that's why you don't see half height cards hardly anymore they're really rare and when they exist they're ultra low end yeah so so it it would be cool to get the half height car but that's not going to work now what you might want to consider with the Dell is maybe make that a project for a first time buildt maybe pull the motherboard out of the case and put it in another case I I mean you can pick up a cheap case for 20 bucks the the the thing that we found in using some newer cards and older machines is that the older machine has to have good UEFI support so all the all the AMD cards are basically you know what what's called modern architecture a lot of them don't support booting Bios mode at all yeah so uh and like the first gen systems ufi supports not really there so the systems that I've tested that it works with as long as you've got an update UEFI you've got to you've got to you've got to update the ufi before you install the card is like the Dell 9020 and newer so we're talking IV Bridge the Sandy Bridge systems at Sandy bridge and older these cars are are not really going to work curiously the 550 apparently works sometimes so if you get validation or whatever maybe that's okay but if you've got an older system uh you know IV bridge renewer for one of the oems but a custom build a custom build Sandy bridge is fine yeah I but like I said if you're going to go this route look for the older cards too I as long as you're saving money save the money yeah if if you don't want to invest if you're building your first gaming PC that's a scary thing for some people that's a pretty significant investment CU most of these guys I I call it the water cooler effect um back in the Skyrim days you'd be hanging around the water cooler all your are talking about Skyrim and suddenly you're like I want to try that well invest in5 $6 $700 in a piec that's scary when you got the mortgage and you got the wife and you got especially the wife dude honey I'm spending this to play a game Divorce Court follows and you've lost a lot more money if you're just tuning in you're watching the GP View and it it's just it's a scary proposition but going the used route th This was um lonus does this you do this Su I like the I like the junkyard war war approach to building your first PC I think that that's a good idea to building your first PC because it lets you build a reasonably powerful system at a reasonable budget yeah that was what my first machine was it was definitely made from cast offs and garbage yeah yeah my my first PC was a 286 that was literally just pieced together it it duct tape was involved a lot of duct tape was involved um and then after that I just built my own so what else will we ever see anything like the R9 295x2 again we're coming on future products uh I'm not a big F I'm personally not a big fan of dual GPU cards multi card Solutions are historically not stable and that they just introduced more problems and more problems and more problems and putting it on the same CH or on the same board didn't fix it would would you say that in general the industry is moving away from multi GPU Solutions in general for gaming well I would I would think that that's a pretty safe assumption uh we've already seen Nvidia pretty much drop multi-gpu solution for the for the mid-range and low end uh AMD still got support there but when you look at the mid-range and lowend well anything at 1080p a multi card solution doesn't make any sense yeah um anything a 1440 a multicard solution doesn't make any sense a $250 video card can throw 1440 around pretty well it doesn't make any sense um we're beginning to see cards that can do 4K at single card capabilities they're they're just beginning to approach it but they're beginning to do it and then you're back to 4K isn't the most practical choice for a gaming resolution I mean 4K let's face it when when you and I when the three of us were growing up remember our mothers told us not to look at porn because of what we would do and we go blind right well mothers you were wrong that's not what makes a man blind doing a spreadsheet on a 4k monitor is how a man goes blind you will have you tried if you don't upscale the video ridiculous if you don't upscale everything ridiculously it's just impossible to see and this is why we import 40in monitors from Korea exactly you've got to get you've got to get up to that huge resolution before it makes any difference yeah so here's another question that probably going to be a plea the 5ifth which is fine do you have an official stance on flashing the 400 series with the 500 series firway official stance you void the warranty of your card if you do this unofficial unofficial stance I think it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard and let me explain why the power delivery system of the 500 series is completely different from the 400 series it's much more robust because the card that the chip actually has a higher power demand to be able to maintain the higher speeds so the power delivery system of the board is much more robust everything about the board is built around that more robust power delivery system so you take the BIOS from a robust power delivery you take the heart out of an of a V12 jaguar and you stick it in a pinto and then think the pinto is going to run as fast now that an ology by the way is ridiculously extreme but you get the point it it's in no way was the 400 series board designed for those kind of performance levels so conversely are you aware of other 400 series card producers that are only doing that with their rebadge uh not that I'm aware of not not that I'm aware of I'm not saying I'm not saying that that's not possible uh I'm saying I'm not aware of anybody doing that and if they were shame on them the audience is going to tell us because yeah somebody out there is going to go well we have found for a fact that like tell you Sapphire didn't well I you know I I had seen some some now the cooler is the cooler assembly from Sapphire for these is it the same similar upgraded from the 400 series or what are what are the particular the pulse the pulse is very similar to the 400 series but the pulse is also a lower power solution it's closer to the 400 series solution and power draw the Nitro plus is a completely redesigned cooler solution it's much more robust uh we have direct connection to this cooler for all the the the vrm for the memory all of it is through the single big cooler okay but uh uh the the but the main point of you know 150 watts or 180 Watts or whatever is can the heat sink dissipate that much heat because that's the back of the envelope because if the heat sink can't dissipate that much heat then the card is going to have heat production issues it's throttle to reduce the Heat and you're going to lose performance right we we designed the heat sinks around the temperature that we Target in the case of the pulses everything is targeted to 75c which means as long as it stays at its speeds that's that's listed with the clock profiles we've provided 75c should be a fairly quiet operation and it should stabilize at the temperature Point yeah well I've got that's the goal I've got a reference 480 and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner and it is these did not approach anywhere near that so no these are actually very quiet the the Nitro plus are even quieter that's what amazed me is we actually got these things down to practically silent I did a video on YouTube I took my cell phone camera and I mean I had that thing this far from the video card and it been doing um uh Metro we're running the Metro Benchmark for about 2 and a half hours and so you know it's up to heat at this point right that Fan's cranking away you couldn't hear it you hear the cars out outside over this and it it was we're really really happy with the way these cooling solutions have turned out we we had some missteps with the 400 we acknowledged them we we were a little louder than we wanted to be with the 400 we fixed it with the 500 cool so somebody here asked uh they prefer three fan cooling because it is quieter so would you say that compared to the old three fans this is still better in terms of how loud it is I would say the Nitro plus is pretty comparable to most three fan coolers um it's a really it's a really robust heat sink the only cooler I would call to question with that was the Trix Fury that we had but what made the Trix Fury so special was it had that small PCB but the cooler was a full length three fan cooler so the last fan was blowing air straight through the cooler that makes it very efficient at getting heat off of it so it made it very quiet um that was in my opinion the best cooler we ever made I I thought that was incredible in fact a non-te actually said it was the quietest cooler they had ever seen it was quieter than nvidia's offerings at idle underload it was quieter um that cooler was amazing it was incredible these I'm just as proud of when you realize how small the card is really at the end of the day that it's still this quiet is impressive I'm really proud of what we achieved yeah these cards being this size are also good candidates for upgrade systems because you know a lot of a lot of older systems don't support graphics cards much longer than the Nitro plus right and so the you know having the extra using the extra area just for a heat sink is good but only if your case is going to support that fulllength cooler and let's face it the the medium end machines that you might be upgrading are not going to have that no this is about as big as your you're going to get next uh someone was asking is there did you differentiate in terms of warranty if the cards are being used in a VM I can't imagine that would matter not that I'm aware of I think that what is it a fair statement to say that your the warranty holds up as long as you don't physically do horrible things to the card as long as the card has not been physically change the warranty holds up now we get Flack for that and and I I'm going to I'm going to fix Flack now okay because I want you guys you guys get it most people don't so you get a video card in and you want to take off the cooler and you want to put on a water cooling solution you're an old school modern Enthusiast you understand the minute you do that you voided the warranty most of the newer people today don't get it they're like well why does that void the warranty the reason why is I don't know your level of expertise I don't know if if I knew you were doing it you personally were doing it as a company I would warrant to you because I know you know what you're doing but you're rolling the dice you roll your dice every time and and so how do you how do you do this do you air to the side of caution or do you air to the side of oh my God we're going to have to warranty a thousand video cards and companies air to the side of caution now a lot of them use wording that a wink and a poke that if it comes back and it's not physically damaged it's okay the official response is if you physically modify this card your warranty is void and flashing the BIOS counts as a physical modification it does count as a physical modification unless we told you to flash the bias and no we have never told anyone to flash a 482 a 580 ever extra performance there's probably there's probably some owhere it's BOS well I mean there's there are people that are sitting at home that are like you know I mean I know I I personally know people that you know like they'll have the Nvidia 970 and they're like I'm going to sell my 970 and buy 1070 but this is not really any different than the 290 to the 390x I mean from the 290x to the 390x they improved the memory speed but for the people that had a 290x it doesn't make sense to throw out your 290x and buy 39x it does not make any sense to do that so these cards are for people I think in the I think in the review video I said it was like you know like the r seven series or older like if you got a graphics card that's 2 and a half three years old or more these are a great upgrade I if you've got a 380 or less in the performance range in my opinion these are worthy upgrades anything above that 290 290x is still faster than the 570 and just not that far behind the 580 390 390x that UPS at a notch but still stays in the range um now the 290 and the 390x let's be fair are space heaters compared to this thing well yes okay if you if you well not the sapphire ones well we had those big triple fan awesome coolers it's still producing the heat it's just better at carrying the heat away well the heat gets away before it's produced okay gets away before it's produced that's the point um but yeah if you've got a 380 370 280 270 any of the 7,000 series these are worthy upgrades these are things that you really want to consider moving to especially if you're not trying to push you you don't want to push 4K you're not going to try for 1440p at 144 Herz on Ultra detail settings in CSO okay it which you can still do probably but don't Pro CSO players play with like textur turn the details off every Pro Player I know plays at 1080p turns off everything and just plays at at Super as as fast of GP or editting you'll probably leave that in as fast of frames per second as humanly possible that's that's what they do and it that's why it's always funny to me I see some guy I'm going to play CSG go and I'm going to play at 1440p and I want Ultra detail levels at 144 what do I need to buy a clue you you have to think also that at 4K smaller targets yeah well at 4K it's harder to see yeah um it it's well even even at 1080p the the refresh rate becomes kind of silly all right so the idea the higher refresh rate is there's more opportunity for you to see the enemy quickly and be able to get that first shot in but remember as you increase the frame rate you're also increasing the the speed at which everything is taking place the average human response time is what 9 millisecond I think it's a lot more than that it it it's it's a really ridiculously high number which means maybe if you saw him first you're going to get the shot but the extra frame rates at a certain point just don't help you can't respond quick enough I really do like AMD for the for the value proposition that they're in just because you know when the 10 series cards from Nvidia debuted I thought they were you know I thought the price was kind of high especially even just compared with nvidia's previous generation and when the 400 series cards launched they were definitely Rough Around the Edges in terms of the software and and and that kind of thing but you know like the 290x if you look at the 29x to the 390x how much performance Improvement there was just based on software updates and you look at the 400 uh series cards with the drivers at launch compared to the 500 series cards with the drivers at the 500 series launch which also happen to be compatible with 400 series cards you're talking about except for the 550 no no there were some actual issues with the um initial driver AMD was really good about getting the initial driver out it actually wasn't a chip issue it's a bios issue in the in the PCB so the driver would look at these pcbs he goes what the hell are you say there's no card here there's no card um that got fixed luckily that got fixed but not like the ufi problem on older machines exactly um we we'll hope that gets fixed I I don't I don't know there there's a point of in in the case of Hardware companies as much as we hate to admit it there is a point of diminishing return for support for older equipment yeah there there's just a point to where the hardware companies say no um that's the reason it's good that that that's one of the reasons I'm happy I work for Sapphire the quality of our products have always been really high see you can go find a 380 or a 280 or a 290 or 7850 and it's probably still a good C there's probably nothing wrong with it plug it in and go and that'll work great with that older system that you're getting used or or an older system you want to just try to upgrade a little bit uh I still run at my dip your toes in the in the in the exactly in the pesent waters of the PC Master race exactly um I still run a we talked about this it's like an i7 950 or something and a 380x my father-in-law's that's still my gaming rig up there and I'm ecstatic with it 1080p gaming Is Awesome on it y yeah I mean I know a lot of people that are running older machines cuz I probably help to put it together well and it's fine it's honestly fine and and at least until Christ's student loans are paid off she's you know we got to help that poor girl she yeah she was she was using opinion wasn't she yeah yeah yeah it was like but it played OverWatch so yeah it was overclock g3450 we got to help this poor girl we got to help her we got to do something to help that you got I know you got chips laying around dude help your help her out well she's running uh she's running I think an i5 7600 now that's a solid chip there's nothing wrong with that with um with a 480 with the blower style 480 but it's a 480 and a 144 HZ 1080p monitor she got up recently let let me see what we can do about fixing that 480 let me see what we can do I got I got cuz well at the very least I'll get a re 4 it's not a blower it's a launch day actually it's funny I think it's a sapphire launch day 480 that's just the the blower style like just the repackaged AMD yeah my my launch day 480 sitting on a shelf it's kind of like a display I won't put it in a computer because well it's a blower cooler I I wish we could I I really believe I I would really like to see us make a real blower cooler get serious about the technology and develop a a really cutting edge heat snc blower cooler and I I've talked to people about doing that and the biggest problem is just frankly cost you you're going to be you go to do a completely new design like that and there's a certain minimum level of sale that has to be hit or just isn't Justified it's expensive yeah just the tooling alans like 50 75,000 I'd imagine oh that's just barely getting started cuz you're only tooling a one thing you got a couple of components have to be toed for this there's a motor and shroud plastic bits well there's the Shroud there's the PCB there's the heat sink itself how you going to deal with the aluminum is it going to be aluminum only or aluminum and copper you got to have tooling for both yeah it it gets crazy in the end you've seen Trends come and go yes RGB is it going to keep getting worse are we going to get more and more of it or was that going to go away is that a trend is it a fad I think it's a fad but I don't think it's a fad that's going to die soon and that's I'm I'm really upset about that I'm in my day we didn't need 36 lights well the pulse didn't have any RGB which I found delightful that nice we well we did that because again the pulse is about budget it's about keeping the cost down RGB lighting RGB or better fan RGB better he we get crazy with this I talked to you and I had this discussion I talked to somebody I know in the peripheral industry keyboards mice and he was explaining to me RGB keyboards have like a 20 to 30% higher failure rate because of lighting than regular lit keyboards because one color will die yeah us an early early production process so you don't you don't get the response I like a backlit keyboard all right let's just be clear I I I'm a gamer I play in the dark and I don't touch type I like a backlick keyboard so I I like that but I don't like RGB I don't need 16 million colors okay I don't need a rainbow going across my screen while I'm trying to dodge a wolf in Witcher three all right because it be like wolf wolf WF that's pretty I'm dead the these these companies that have these keyboards that we change lighting when you're about to die okay I'm I'm playing I'm playing I'm playing it's red I'm dead I'm dead because it turned red and I looked it it's it's a it's a fad but it's a fad that has such a following that it's impossible to to see it die I think RGB has been carried away I think too much emphasis has been put into making something that a a group thinks is cool than making something that's quality this is why I really like what we did with pulse we focused on a simple aesthetic the entire Nitro and pulse lineup is based on what I call the little black dress approach it's a simple elegant easy design that will fit anything it'll fit any build it'll short of a white build it'll just go in and even then black and white it still looks good they'll just go in they'll look good they're clean they're simple even with the RGB lighting the only thing we did was this right here on the top that's it we didn't RGB anything else in the lighting because why it gets gy it it just looks awful Robert HCK I think said it best he looked at our Nitro card and his comment on Twitter was this is the best looking card to me I'm so sick of Transformer looking video cards and this is this is one of the things we're focusing on we're focusing on quality ahead of flash so any other questions I know I saw one that you guys didn't take what was it was it the Vega question Vapor X oh VAP so somebody's asking about this and you asked about this okay so let me answer the Vapor X one now um You got to go back to when we created Nitro we had three basic models of cards we had Vapor X Trix and dual x the problem was those weren't actually models of cards those were Technologies and we wanted to get away from that and that's the creation of nitro and a pulse to actually have a product aligned that that makes sense not the technology in line so Vapor X so the idea was was to use a vapor chamber to increase cooling potential two things have happened over the years the first is chips require actually less cooling than they used to require there's just not a need for as robust of cooling anymore the second thing that happened is yeah or or what was the what was the one from Nvidia that was like a blast furnace when you ran it uh the 9800 GX something like that it was just oh my God I used I have one of those I I I fired one up in the room I was a reviewer and they'd sent me one and I fired one up in the room and I swear to God I had turn on the air conditioner and it was minus 4 outside um that's an exaggeration folks and people don't want to take a joke anymore um I lost my trade of thought sorry X so Vapor X do you even VAP no I don't so what happened with the vapor XX the second thing that happened was heat pipe technology has become so efficient that it is approaching pure Vapor chamber technology well if the difference is only going to be 1 or 2° Centigrade under load but it can be a 15 to $20 price difference why would you do that so we've hit the point that we just have not found we we look at it every generation but we just have not found a reason to bring a vapor chamber in there's no reason to the heat pipe technolog is capable of doing it and keeping the cost lower what else we got you guys have been easy so far cards with upgradeable vram will it ever be a thing it was when I don't remember that one oh tried it you're going to go back to Visa local bus yeah we go back to Visa we had well actually yeah Visa had it we had all sorts of video card they came without RAM and we added our own you guys are act like this is new technology that's not new dude that's ancient that was true on Isa and uh the 32 bit Isa that IB IBM did yeah and Vis local bus and there were a few PC cards that had but that was when they were doubling up on density I was going to say I don't think there was ever an APG that did it AGP AGP I mean I I don't think I don't think there was oh there might have been well tried it and uh Sirus logic might have no I think there was a prototype I was going to say that there was a a voodoo graphics card that had a socketed upgrade no but that was a prototype that was well it would have been a prototype I had every release voo card uh I actually fun story for you um again this back my reviewer days and I had a couple of really good contacts inside Voodoo and I get a phone call one day from my contact and he said Ed I just shipped out a box for you and I'm like that's awesome he said there's about 15 graphics cards that's awesome dude I said is it my birthday did I forget and he goes nope we just got bought by Nvidia it's being announced later today wow and and I'm like seriously he said dude here you go enjoy it all my friends got free upgrades way I got free pizza for like a year nice but yeah I so I've seen all the voodoo cars Voodoo was Voodoo was incredible but Voodoo and considering Nvidia bought them it's amazing to me they haven't learned the lesson that Voodoo taught Voodoo put all their eggs into proprietary technology baskets if it w if they didn't have good direct X support they had mediocre openg GL support support they they just didn't have good support for anything outside their proprietary technology and the result was eventually despite having a huge lead in the market the market turned on them because the open Technologies were better solutions for everyone Nvidia has this with physx they have this with g-sync Nvidia is sooner or later going to have to acknowledge that they've got to get and they they started to their um their game works they opened it up recently didn't they a bit yeah um proprietary technology in the PC World is a death nil because the PC world's about Choice proprietary Technologies about removing choice I I think for NVIDIA users if I was if I was a full-time Nvidia user I'd be mad as hell because free sync would take a minor driver update to be 100% supported by Nvidia cards minor driver update and it could be supported the only reason it's not being supported is they want to push g-sync well it's funny you mention that because yeah you actually did it didn't you yeah and uh it turns out they don't like that at all no and it's it's dumb it why wouldn't you give your consumers a free choice yeah I I mean nobody's going to argue that gsync monitors aren't great monitors they've got a very tight standard AMD is just getting there with prync they've got a very tight standard the the module does have some advantages but there is an increased cost so you have to decide if it's worth the cost for the advantage if my understand the situation is correct the gsync implementation on the particular notebook that I'm thinking of was in fact freesync probably but the driver was like I'm running in this notebook in these circumstances I'm going to enable notebook gsync but it was actually just the Visa sync technology for the display not actually a daughter board we see the funny thing is it goes the other way too imagine if Nvidia opened up gsync to AMD cards well not just AMD cards but Korean manufacturers all cards for that matter what if they open it up to Intel what if they made it an open standard this is this is the problem with proprietary and this is it's funny to me that here's the company that bought the graphics lead of the decade because proprietary technology forced them into a mess they couldn't get out of and now they're the ones with the proprietary technology y well it's you know he has the gold makes the rules yeah sooner or later though the gold tarnishes and disappears we'll look back and see if this was oddly prophetic because AMD is open sourcing all kinds of stuff not just everything from machine learning to lower level stuff it's honestly very uh very impressive they're even talking about open sourcing their platform security processor which is not actually owned by by AMD a lot of people don't realize that which is going to be more of an uphill battle than most people realize but that they're actually considering it signals that there are huge political changes inside of andd and this could actually be I mean it's it is congruent with what you're saying it's it's a good philosophy I think it's good for PC Gamers to have Open Standards so when you go buy something you don't have to buy a brand yeah you don't have to buy a brand of a brand of video card to be able to achieve what you want in a game you buy a game and then your video card is based on how much you're willing to spend in the horsepower within the price point not on does this certain Feature work or not work makes sense yep well if you guys had any questions you missed your opportunity you might be hanging around our Forum though so you might get your chance again you we can always come in another time you're close you're not that big a deal yeah that's true what do you guys think you can find us in the Forum at level one Tex see you there bye so cameras are off but seriously what about Vega we need to know you know what there is all sorts of cool things I can tell you right now so let me begin to explain you know what's coming right I know everything all right tell us all about it I know everything I know that we had awell you've just tuned in for a new episode of the GP view it's like the view but with gpus GPU view can I view whoy you can you can be whoopy I can be whoopy awesome we don't have Christa so you have to be whoopy okay I'm whoopy so I'm mad about something I don't know what but I'm mad let the talking of all of over of all of us commence it's going to be great I'm so proud that I don't know any of the other people on the vi to select one to be wait I think Rosie O'Donald's of them is he I think so maybe I don't know that's probably wrong I don't know what's happening if you make him Rosy that's wrong well for those of you that are not in the know this is Ed from Sapphire hi and we've recently taken a look at some of the sapphire pulse graphics cards the 570 and the 580 and he's also brought the nro plus and there's a ton of like if you missed it there's a Q&A on the Forum people ask questions those are the attentive ones uh for somebody that doesn't understand explain to us Sapphire's product lineup okay so what we've got is essentially two different products for The Gaming Community the high-end product is the Nitro plus Series this is the the premium the the way I like to explain this let's let's get to an explanation what the difference is between pulse and Nitro plus is probably the easiest way to do this if you're a car person think of the Ford Taurus Ford taus great car wellmade well constructed but there was another model the Mercury Sable Mercury Sable was for all practical purposes the same car it was just it had the extras it had the the the BOS if you will were added to it and that's Nitro plus versus pulse the pulse is a well-made solid lowcost card it's meant to be reasonably priced but give you a great gaming experience Nitro plus takes that and adds to it now it as far as raw performance goes it's faster it's not ridiculously or redonkulous faster but it's faster but it adds it adds the features it's got a bigger heat sink which makes it a little quieter a little cooler it's got RGB cooling it's got a higher overclock out of the gate it's got a more robust Energy Delivery system so at the end of the day we offered you your choice do you just need good solid gaming at a reasonable price or do you want the BOS and most people probably won't get the BOS they they don't remember the BOS commercials It was a commercial where you added bacon bits it and it made it better so this is this is the card with bacon bits this is the card without bacon bits and look at the two cards you can see they're not that different okay you can see they both got well I'll let you do it because you can do it without bumping a mic the uh the natro plus uh you know you've got a huge graphics card you've got multiple power connectors you get the four pin and the six pin and this is the same card by the way these are both 474 gigs this is quite a bit heavier it's got four four heat pipes looks like yes um and uh and a much denser heat heat fin array yeah it's it's a lot heavier to be honest and then this is the uh this is the uh P yeah it's it's got four it's got four heat pipes but they're smaller they're yeah and they're all coming off the bottom of the card so they're all red here here we've got two off the top two off the bottom right so um and this card is is quite a bit lighter um what's the the difference in the clock is about 50 MHz I think it's actually even a little more than that this is close to the stock speed that is available yeah it is about 50 MHz you're right now that I think about that that that that's right it's about 50 MHz off the stock speed so overall I mean they're both you know when we I've taken an in-depth look at this point of the uh the pulse cards and I was really impressed with the build quality on the pulse cards because I know I mean you know off off the the record on the record that the margins really are pretty razor thin on oh ridiculously compared to other products I I get a kick out but we go to events and people are like well this company sent 23 mice why did you send two video cards because those 23 mice that sell for $60 a piece in the store cost them about $4 to produce can confirm no well yeah you can you understand this you understand this the the margins in so many other products are so much higher and with video cards are actually really tight ridiculously tight so we can't we we can't do that you've got to when when you design a video card people always ask me what do you shoot for once we know what the chip is um the first concern is what's our Target price point because we've got to build everything then around that what can we deliver how much can we give you and stay within a margin that's reasonable for us as a company and hit the price point we want to hit well you know I've noticed that uh with I mean probably not our audience I think our audience is probably one of the more technical audiences on YouTube but I I think that AMD is is getting on board with the right kind of marketing with this because I've seen from from Sapphire and from AMD in general that they're more like okay 570 good 1080p gaming experience 580 great 1080p good 1440p gaming experience and that's pretty much the end of the story for how they're marketing it no for for mainstream gaming I'm really I when when the 4 series came out I'm really excited about this I I'm I'm a tech Enthusiast but I'm a tech realist and most of us have mortgages and kids and wives maybe Ex-Wives car payments house payments and to have to throw $400 $500 at a video card to get a great gaming experience is just it's beyond the reach yeah well you know even with like the 400 series cards um really the situation the landscape with Graphics CS in general has changed a lot since the N9 series cards from Nvidia because I thought that like the 970 for example when it first debuted was not completely unreasonably price but then the 1070 was significantly higher and it's like yeah this isn't really a good a good situation for gamers because there's not really a lot of competition in the market but for 1080P and 1440p gaming I think these are these are the new value um proposition and it is I mean it's weird though because these are like the refresh of the 400 series cards refresh remember that refresh that's correct term um it it shows how good the architecture is yeah it it shows the power that's in the architecture I'll take it a little bit beyond 1080 though with the 570 that particular 570 by the way came out of my demo rig and that's been running 2560 by 1080 oh wow uh and I've been able to Peg pretty much everything at high detail level at the 75 H refresh rate of the monitor oh good yeah so ultrawide gaming 1080p with that is incredible and you can get decent 1080 ultrawide monitors for 200 yeah yeah we've got the the micro board free sync over there you know I didn't think to test it with the 570 but I did test it with the 580 and I was super impressed that it was able to maintain the frame rates on that particular one will go up to I think 90 HZ and is that a 3440 by 1440 or is that a 2560 by 1080 well that one is a 35 uh 30 3560 by 1440 but I was running it at 2560 by 1080 okay to get to get the best frame rate the the the 580 can do 3440 by 1440 but that's really beginning to stretch its legs yeah yeah it in like OverWatch it was okay but in in more unoptimized games not so much OverWatch seriously OverWatch a hamster on a wheel can run OverWatch come on CS go CS go a hand Turnal wheel can okay it I I get a kick out of that you get these guys that are that are the competitive Gamers they like OverWatch they like League of Legends they like uh CS go they like uh DotA and these guys are like we need to buy these super high-end monitors and these amazing high-end video cards Dude you can run 4K at 100 frames per second on that on on bubble gum okay these games don't require this immense amount of horsepower I I think people tend to over buy video cards they tend to buy more than they need because we've got a you and I talked about this a little bit the term Enthusiast has been really destroyed in the last decade in the PC World it it's not about enthusiasm anymore it's about money how much money can you throw at it I I watch reviewers they get a they get a $700 video card and a 4k monitor and they they sound like they are amazed at the incredible experience they're getting dude if I spent that much money on that crap it better not only game amazing it better make me lunch it it's crazy what we've come with expectations they they they get so unrealistic don't get me wrong 10 is a great card it it's a great card but serious unless you're trying to push 4K gaming well is there a reason that there's an advantage to it the thing that we're always trying to push with our audience is like there's a curve on return on investment right and so like in the middle of the curve is where you get the best value per dollar and at the upper end of the curve like with the 1080 you've paid significantly more for better yeah but not linearly better well it it's it's not just the the curve in the performance it's the curve in what they need so let's just go off the curve right now let's talk about monitors for a minute buying a monitor I'm amazed at how broke the consumer public is when it comes to understanding how monitors work they run at 60 HZ most of the time okay well they they they think that they have to have 144 Herz to be a great gaming experience well that's a myth okay anything anything past about 75 doesn't really help unless you're a first-person shoter competitive gamer other than that it's just there's there's no real advantage to it in fact every study I've seen says the same thing from 60 to 75 Hertz there is a noticeable smoothing of the entire Computing experience from 75 to 100 Herz the the experience is still improved but less drastically by a pretty significant margin from 100 to 144 it's practically impossible to tell the difference in the overall Computing experience it just isn't there so people first think they've got to buy 144 Herz moners well if you're not a competitive first person sh your gamer don't waste your money yeah you didn't gain anything then we get wrapped up in TN versus IPS versus VA versus you know what get what looks good to you who cares yeah okay finally pixel density I love this argument so a big movement in ultrawide or 34-in displays many of them have higher refresh rates but they're going 2560 x 1080 you tell an Enthusiast 34-in monitor 2560 x 1080 oh my God I'll see pixels everywhere oh my God I'll go blind it'll be so terrible it be so ugly they forgot to take into account pixel density and size of Monitor and resolution are that the only factors do you remember a term coin by Apple called retina most people don't understand what retina is they think it's Hardware it wasn't retina is a mathematical formula that says at this distance and this pi pixel density it is physically impossible for a per person with perfect vision to see a pixel physically impossible to see that means the distance you sit from the monitor is just as important as the pixel density but nobody talks about that I guess they all assume that we're going to sit 24 in from the Monitor and I I don't know maybe if you live in your mama's basement you got that little shelf and you got to be creamed in there to you saying there's a problem with my monitor wall it it's all of this comes together and this creates a lot of The Angst and confusion for the mainstream gamer when they go to buy Hardware they don't understand they've been told well you got to get a 4k monitor no you don't okay 1080p is a great for gaming it's an amazing gaming experience 2560 by 1080 is in my opinion even better for gaming experience uh you got to have these high-end video cards no you don't mainstream video cards are more than capable of giving an amazing gaming experience we we need to we we need sites like yours and others to help the mainstream begin to understand that the Enthusiast in is exactly that that's the extreme the the majority of us fit in a different group all together and suddenly I think we'd find a lot more PC Gamers it's hard to convince somebody when they can buy a $400 game box that by the way of specifically designed just to play games um it's hard to convince them when the Enthusiast Community is tell them they got got to spend $1,500 to get a gaming PC so I think we have a good opportunity here to organically incorporate some questions I get off topic I'm very sorry I ramble this so you mentioned a $400 gaming PC right so a lot of people have asked and the and the submitted questions we ask our audience hey what are some questions you want to see uh we Advocate a lot if you're if you're new to gaming or you're broke or whatever go find an old Dell that's in Surplus and you know do a little refurb and put a nice video card in there and you've got a as good or better as a console kind of thing absolutely so a lot of people are asking what about half height cards what about single Slot Cards low power cards what should I look for minimally there in terms of where do I start you know what card do I well when you're starting with the older older cards this or the older builds this is something um W and I have been talking about many of the newer cards have trouble with older motherboards because the BIOS and I'm not sure maybe it's a mechanical thing as well maybe it's the way the PCI slot is developed I'm not that big of a Gearhead that's your job um we've been doing testing but there's a there's there's an issue there so you're probably going to be better off to go to an older C of choice the 380 or the 7850 both come to mind the 7850 was one of the most underrated cards of its generation or 7970 because you can get those for a bunch of nothing I'd still get a 7850 for 1080p for well it's it less power it's cooler it it's going to be easier to fit in that build finding a half height card becomes a complete nightmare because you have to have a certain level of cooling on any card for of any kind of Real Performance there's just got to be a certain level of cooling that's why you don't see half height cards hardly anymore they're really rare and when they exist they're ultra low end yeah so so it it would be cool to get the half height car but that's not going to work now what you might want to consider with the Dell is maybe make that a project for a first time buildt maybe pull the motherboard out of the case and put it in another case I I mean you can pick up a cheap case for 20 bucks the the the thing that we found in using some newer cards and older machines is that the older machine has to have good UEFI support so all the all the AMD cards are basically you know what what's called modern architecture a lot of them don't support booting Bios mode at all yeah so uh and like the first gen systems ufi supports not really there so the systems that I've tested that it works with as long as you've got an update UEFI you've got to you've got to you've got to update the ufi before you install the card is like the Dell 9020 and newer so we're talking IV Bridge the Sandy Bridge systems at Sandy bridge and older these cars are are not really going to work curiously the 550 apparently works sometimes so if you get validation or whatever maybe that's okay but if you've got an older system uh you know IV bridge renewer for one of the oems but a custom build a custom build Sandy bridge is fine yeah I but like I said if you're going to go this route look for the older cards too I as long as you're saving money save the money yeah if if you don't want to invest if you're building your first gaming PC that's a scary thing for some people that's a pretty significant investment CU most of these guys I I call it the water cooler effect um back in the Skyrim days you'd be hanging around the water cooler all your are talking about Skyrim and suddenly you're like I want to try that well invest in5 $6 $700 in a piec that's scary when you got the mortgage and you got the wife and you got especially the wife dude honey I'm spending this to play a game Divorce Court follows and you've lost a lot more money if you're just tuning in you're watching the GP View and it it's just it's a scary proposition but going the used route th This was um lonus does this you do this Su I like the I like the junkyard war war approach to building your first PC I think that that's a good idea to building your first PC because it lets you build a reasonably powerful system at a reasonable budget yeah that was what my first machine was it was definitely made from cast offs and garbage yeah yeah my my first PC was a 286 that was literally just pieced together it it duct tape was involved a lot of duct tape was involved um and then after that I just built my own so what else will we ever see anything like the R9 295x2 again we're coming on future products uh I'm not a big F I'm personally not a big fan of dual GPU cards multi card Solutions are historically not stable and that they just introduced more problems and more problems and more problems and putting it on the same CH or on the same board didn't fix it would would you say that in general the industry is moving away from multi GPU Solutions in general for gaming well I would I would think that that's a pretty safe assumption uh we've already seen Nvidia pretty much drop multi-gpu solution for the for the mid-range and low end uh AMD still got support there but when you look at the mid-range and lowend well anything at 1080p a multi card solution doesn't make any sense yeah um anything a 1440 a multicard solution doesn't make any sense a $250 video card can throw 1440 around pretty well it doesn't make any sense um we're beginning to see cards that can do 4K at single card capabilities they're they're just beginning to approach it but they're beginning to do it and then you're back to 4K isn't the most practical choice for a gaming resolution I mean 4K let's face it when when you and I when the three of us were growing up remember our mothers told us not to look at porn because of what we would do and we go blind right well mothers you were wrong that's not what makes a man blind doing a spreadsheet on a 4k monitor is how a man goes blind you will have you tried if you don't upscale the video ridiculous if you don't upscale everything ridiculously it's just impossible to see and this is why we import 40in monitors from Korea exactly you've got to get you've got to get up to that huge resolution before it makes any difference yeah so here's another question that probably going to be a plea the 5ifth which is fine do you have an official stance on flashing the 400 series with the 500 series firway official stance you void the warranty of your card if you do this unofficial unofficial stance I think it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard and let me explain why the power delivery system of the 500 series is completely different from the 400 series it's much more robust because the card that the chip actually has a higher power demand to be able to maintain the higher speeds so the power delivery system of the board is much more robust everything about the board is built around that more robust power delivery system so you take the BIOS from a robust power delivery you take the heart out of an of a V12 jaguar and you stick it in a pinto and then think the pinto is going to run as fast now that an ology by the way is ridiculously extreme but you get the point it it's in no way was the 400 series board designed for those kind of performance levels so conversely are you aware of other 400 series card producers that are only doing that with their rebadge uh not that I'm aware of not not that I'm aware of I'm not saying I'm not saying that that's not possible uh I'm saying I'm not aware of anybody doing that and if they were shame on them the audience is going to tell us because yeah somebody out there is going to go well we have found for a fact that like tell you Sapphire didn't well I you know I I had seen some some now the cooler is the cooler assembly from Sapphire for these is it the same similar upgraded from the 400 series or what are what are the particular the pulse the pulse is very similar to the 400 series but the pulse is also a lower power solution it's closer to the 400 series solution and power draw the Nitro plus is a completely redesigned cooler solution it's much more robust uh we have direct connection to this cooler for all the the the vrm for the memory all of it is through the single big cooler okay but uh uh the the but the main point of you know 150 watts or 180 Watts or whatever is can the heat sink dissipate that much heat because that's the back of the envelope because if the heat sink can't dissipate that much heat then the card is going to have heat production issues it's throttle to reduce the Heat and you're going to lose performance right we we designed the heat sinks around the temperature that we Target in the case of the pulses everything is targeted to 75c which means as long as it stays at its speeds that's that's listed with the clock profiles we've provided 75c should be a fairly quiet operation and it should stabilize at the temperature Point yeah well I've got that's the goal I've got a reference 480 and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner and it is these did not approach anywhere near that so no these are actually very quiet the the Nitro plus are even quieter that's what amazed me is we actually got these things down to practically silent I did a video on YouTube I took my cell phone camera and I mean I had that thing this far from the video card and it been doing um uh Metro we're running the Metro Benchmark for about 2 and a half hours and so you know it's up to heat at this point right that Fan's cranking away you couldn't hear it you hear the cars out outside over this and it it was we're really really happy with the way these cooling solutions have turned out we we had some missteps with the 400 we acknowledged them we we were a little louder than we wanted to be with the 400 we fixed it with the 500 cool so somebody here asked uh they prefer three fan cooling because it is quieter so would you say that compared to the old three fans this is still better in terms of how loud it is I would say the Nitro plus is pretty comparable to most three fan coolers um it's a really it's a really robust heat sink the only cooler I would call to question with that was the Trix Fury that we had but what made the Trix Fury so special was it had that small PCB but the cooler was a full length three fan cooler so the last fan was blowing air straight through the cooler that makes it very efficient at getting heat off of it so it made it very quiet um that was in my opinion the best cooler we ever made I I thought that was incredible in fact a non-te actually said it was the quietest cooler they had ever seen it was quieter than nvidia's offerings at idle underload it was quieter um that cooler was amazing it was incredible these I'm just as proud of when you realize how small the card is really at the end of the day that it's still this quiet is impressive I'm really proud of what we achieved yeah these cards being this size are also good candidates for upgrade systems because you know a lot of a lot of older systems don't support graphics cards much longer than the Nitro plus right and so the you know having the extra using the extra area just for a heat sink is good but only if your case is going to support that fulllength cooler and let's face it the the medium end machines that you might be upgrading are not going to have that no this is about as big as your you're going to get next uh someone was asking is there did you differentiate in terms of warranty if the cards are being used in a VM I can't imagine that would matter not that I'm aware of I think that what is it a fair statement to say that your the warranty holds up as long as you don't physically do horrible things to the card as long as the card has not been physically change the warranty holds up now we get Flack for that and and I I'm going to I'm going to fix Flack now okay because I want you guys you guys get it most people don't so you get a video card in and you want to take off the cooler and you want to put on a water cooling solution you're an old school modern Enthusiast you understand the minute you do that you voided the warranty most of the newer people today don't get it they're like well why does that void the warranty the reason why is I don't know your level of expertise I don't know if if I knew you were doing it you personally were doing it as a company I would warrant to you because I know you know what you're doing but you're rolling the dice you roll your dice every time and and so how do you how do you do this do you air to the side of caution or do you air to the side of oh my God we're going to have to warranty a thousand video cards and companies air to the side of caution now a lot of them use wording that a wink and a poke that if it comes back and it's not physically damaged it's okay the official response is if you physically modify this card your warranty is void and flashing the BIOS counts as a physical modification it does count as a physical modification unless we told you to flash the bias and no we have never told anyone to flash a 482 a 580 ever extra performance there's probably there's probably some owhere it's BOS well I mean there's there are people that are sitting at home that are like you know I mean I know I I personally know people that you know like they'll have the Nvidia 970 and they're like I'm going to sell my 970 and buy 1070 but this is not really any different than the 290 to the 390x I mean from the 290x to the 390x they improved the memory speed but for the people that had a 290x it doesn't make sense to throw out your 290x and buy 39x it does not make any sense to do that so these cards are for people I think in the I think in the review video I said it was like you know like the r seven series or older like if you got a graphics card that's 2 and a half three years old or more these are a great upgrade I if you've got a 380 or less in the performance range in my opinion these are worthy upgrades anything above that 290 290x is still faster than the 570 and just not that far behind the 580 390 390x that UPS at a notch but still stays in the range um now the 290 and the 390x let's be fair are space heaters compared to this thing well yes okay if you if you well not the sapphire ones well we had those big triple fan awesome coolers it's still producing the heat it's just better at carrying the heat away well the heat gets away before it's produced okay gets away before it's produced that's the point um but yeah if you've got a 380 370 280 270 any of the 7,000 series these are worthy upgrades these are things that you really want to consider moving to especially if you're not trying to push you you don't want to push 4K you're not going to try for 1440p at 144 Herz on Ultra detail settings in CSO okay it which you can still do probably but don't Pro CSO players play with like textur turn the details off every Pro Player I know plays at 1080p turns off everything and just plays at at Super as as fast of GP or editting you'll probably leave that in as fast of frames per second as humanly possible that's that's what they do and it that's why it's always funny to me I see some guy I'm going to play CSG go and I'm going to play at 1440p and I want Ultra detail levels at 144 what do I need to buy a clue you you have to think also that at 4K smaller targets yeah well at 4K it's harder to see yeah um it it's well even even at 1080p the the refresh rate becomes kind of silly all right so the idea the higher refresh rate is there's more opportunity for you to see the enemy quickly and be able to get that first shot in but remember as you increase the frame rate you're also increasing the the speed at which everything is taking place the average human response time is what 9 millisecond I think it's a lot more than that it it it's it's a really ridiculously high number which means maybe if you saw him first you're going to get the shot but the extra frame rates at a certain point just don't help you can't respond quick enough I really do like AMD for the for the value proposition that they're in just because you know when the 10 series cards from Nvidia debuted I thought they were you know I thought the price was kind of high especially even just compared with nvidia's previous generation and when the 400 series cards launched they were definitely Rough Around the Edges in terms of the software and and and that kind of thing but you know like the 290x if you look at the 29x to the 390x how much performance Improvement there was just based on software updates and you look at the 400 uh series cards with the drivers at launch compared to the 500 series cards with the drivers at the 500 series launch which also happen to be compatible with 400 series cards you're talking about except for the 550 no no there were some actual issues with the um initial driver AMD was really good about getting the initial driver out it actually wasn't a chip issue it's a bios issue in the in the PCB so the driver would look at these pcbs he goes what the hell are you say there's no card here there's no card um that got fixed luckily that got fixed but not like the ufi problem on older machines exactly um we we'll hope that gets fixed I I don't I don't know there there's a point of in in the case of Hardware companies as much as we hate to admit it there is a point of diminishing return for support for older equipment yeah there there's just a point to where the hardware companies say no um that's the reason it's good that that that's one of the reasons I'm happy I work for Sapphire the quality of our products have always been really high see you can go find a 380 or a 280 or a 290 or 7850 and it's probably still a good C there's probably nothing wrong with it plug it in and go and that'll work great with that older system that you're getting used or or an older system you want to just try to upgrade a little bit uh I still run at my dip your toes in the in the in the exactly in the pesent waters of the PC Master race exactly um I still run a we talked about this it's like an i7 950 or something and a 380x my father-in-law's that's still my gaming rig up there and I'm ecstatic with it 1080p gaming Is Awesome on it y yeah I mean I know a lot of people that are running older machines cuz I probably help to put it together well and it's fine it's honestly fine and and at least until Christ's student loans are paid off she's you know we got to help that poor girl she yeah she was she was using opinion wasn't she yeah yeah yeah it was like but it played OverWatch so yeah it was overclock g3450 we got to help this poor girl we got to help her we got to do something to help that you got I know you got chips laying around dude help your help her out well she's running uh she's running I think an i5 7600 now that's a solid chip there's nothing wrong with that with um with a 480 with the blower style 480 but it's a 480 and a 144 HZ 1080p monitor she got up recently let let me see what we can do about fixing that 480 let me see what we can do I got I got cuz well at the very least I'll get a re 4 it's not a blower it's a launch day actually it's funny I think it's a sapphire launch day 480 that's just the the blower style like just the repackaged AMD yeah my my launch day 480 sitting on a shelf it's kind of like a display I won't put it in a computer because well it's a blower cooler I I wish we could I I really believe I I would really like to see us make a real blower cooler get serious about the technology and develop a a really cutting edge heat snc blower cooler and I I've talked to people about doing that and the biggest problem is just frankly cost you you're going to be you go to do a completely new design like that and there's a certain minimum level of sale that has to be hit or just isn't Justified it's expensive yeah just the tooling alans like 50 75,000 I'd imagine oh that's just barely getting started cuz you're only tooling a one thing you got a couple of components have to be toed for this there's a motor and shroud plastic bits well there's the Shroud there's the PCB there's the heat sink itself how you going to deal with the aluminum is it going to be aluminum only or aluminum and copper you got to have tooling for both yeah it it gets crazy in the end you've seen Trends come and go yes RGB is it going to keep getting worse are we going to get more and more of it or was that going to go away is that a trend is it a fad I think it's a fad but I don't think it's a fad that's going to die soon and that's I'm I'm really upset about that I'm in my day we didn't need 36 lights well the pulse didn't have any RGB which I found delightful that nice we well we did that because again the pulse is about budget it's about keeping the cost down RGB lighting RGB or better fan RGB better he we get crazy with this I talked to you and I had this discussion I talked to somebody I know in the peripheral industry keyboards mice and he was explaining to me RGB keyboards have like a 20 to 30% higher failure rate because of lighting than regular lit keyboards because one color will die yeah us an early early production process so you don't you don't get the response I like a backlit keyboard all right let's just be clear I I I'm a gamer I play in the dark and I don't touch type I like a backlick keyboard so I I like that but I don't like RGB I don't need 16 million colors okay I don't need a rainbow going across my screen while I'm trying to dodge a wolf in Witcher three all right because it be like wolf wolf WF that's pretty I'm dead the these these companies that have these keyboards that we change lighting when you're about to die okay I'm I'm playing I'm playing I'm playing it's red I'm dead I'm dead because it turned red and I looked it it's it's a it's a fad but it's a fad that has such a following that it's impossible to to see it die I think RGB has been carried away I think too much emphasis has been put into making something that a a group thinks is cool than making something that's quality this is why I really like what we did with pulse we focused on a simple aesthetic the entire Nitro and pulse lineup is based on what I call the little black dress approach it's a simple elegant easy design that will fit anything it'll fit any build it'll short of a white build it'll just go in and even then black and white it still looks good they'll just go in they'll look good they're clean they're simple even with the RGB lighting the only thing we did was this right here on the top that's it we didn't RGB anything else in the lighting because why it gets gy it it just looks awful Robert HCK I think said it best he looked at our Nitro card and his comment on Twitter was this is the best looking card to me I'm so sick of Transformer looking video cards and this is this is one of the things we're focusing on we're focusing on quality ahead of flash so any other questions I know I saw one that you guys didn't take what was it was it the Vega question Vapor X oh VAP so somebody's asking about this and you asked about this okay so let me answer the Vapor X one now um You got to go back to when we created Nitro we had three basic models of cards we had Vapor X Trix and dual x the problem was those weren't actually models of cards those were Technologies and we wanted to get away from that and that's the creation of nitro and a pulse to actually have a product aligned that that makes sense not the technology in line so Vapor X so the idea was was to use a vapor chamber to increase cooling potential two things have happened over the years the first is chips require actually less cooling than they used to require there's just not a need for as robust of cooling anymore the second thing that happened is yeah or or what was the what was the one from Nvidia that was like a blast furnace when you ran it uh the 9800 GX something like that it was just oh my God I used I have one of those I I I fired one up in the room I was a reviewer and they'd sent me one and I fired one up in the room and I swear to God I had turn on the air conditioner and it was minus 4 outside um that's an exaggeration folks and people don't want to take a joke anymore um I lost my trade of thought sorry X so Vapor X do you even VAP no I don't so what happened with the vapor XX the second thing that happened was heat pipe technology has become so efficient that it is approaching pure Vapor chamber technology well if the difference is only going to be 1 or 2° Centigrade under load but it can be a 15 to $20 price difference why would you do that so we've hit the point that we just have not found we we look at it every generation but we just have not found a reason to bring a vapor chamber in there's no reason to the heat pipe technolog is capable of doing it and keeping the cost lower what else we got you guys have been easy so far cards with upgradeable vram will it ever be a thing it was when I don't remember that one oh tried it you're going to go back to Visa local bus yeah we go back to Visa we had well actually yeah Visa had it we had all sorts of video card they came without RAM and we added our own you guys are act like this is new technology that's not new dude that's ancient that was true on Isa and uh the 32 bit Isa that IB IBM did yeah and Vis local bus and there were a few PC cards that had but that was when they were doubling up on density I was going to say I don't think there was ever an APG that did it AGP AGP I mean I I don't think I don't think there was oh there might have been well tried it and uh Sirus logic might have no I think there was a prototype I was going to say that there was a a voodoo graphics card that had a socketed upgrade no but that was a prototype that was well it would have been a prototype I had every release voo card uh I actually fun story for you um again this back my reviewer days and I had a couple of really good contacts inside Voodoo and I get a phone call one day from my contact and he said Ed I just shipped out a box for you and I'm like that's awesome he said there's about 15 graphics cards that's awesome dude I said is it my birthday did I forget and he goes nope we just got bought by Nvidia it's being announced later today wow and and I'm like seriously he said dude here you go enjoy it all my friends got free upgrades way I got free pizza for like a year nice but yeah I so I've seen all the voodoo cars Voodoo was Voodoo was incredible but Voodoo and considering Nvidia bought them it's amazing to me they haven't learned the lesson that Voodoo taught Voodoo put all their eggs into proprietary technology baskets if it w if they didn't have good direct X support they had mediocre openg GL support support they they just didn't have good support for anything outside their proprietary technology and the result was eventually despite having a huge lead in the market the market turned on them because the open Technologies were better solutions for everyone Nvidia has this with physx they have this with g-sync Nvidia is sooner or later going to have to acknowledge that they've got to get and they they started to their um their game works they opened it up recently didn't they a bit yeah um proprietary technology in the PC World is a death nil because the PC world's about Choice proprietary Technologies about removing choice I I think for NVIDIA users if I was if I was a full-time Nvidia user I'd be mad as hell because free sync would take a minor driver update to be 100% supported by Nvidia cards minor driver update and it could be supported the only reason it's not being supported is they want to push g-sync well it's funny you mention that because yeah you actually did it didn't you yeah and uh it turns out they don't like that at all no and it's it's dumb it why wouldn't you give your consumers a free choice yeah I I mean nobody's going to argue that gsync monitors aren't great monitors they've got a very tight standard AMD is just getting there with prync they've got a very tight standard the the module does have some advantages but there is an increased cost so you have to decide if it's worth the cost for the advantage if my understand the situation is correct the gsync implementation on the particular notebook that I'm thinking of was in fact freesync probably but the driver was like I'm running in this notebook in these circumstances I'm going to enable notebook gsync but it was actually just the Visa sync technology for the display not actually a daughter board we see the funny thing is it goes the other way too imagine if Nvidia opened up gsync to AMD cards well not just AMD cards but Korean manufacturers all cards for that matter what if they open it up to Intel what if they made it an open standard this is this is the problem with proprietary and this is it's funny to me that here's the company that bought the graphics lead of the decade because proprietary technology forced them into a mess they couldn't get out of and now they're the ones with the proprietary technology y well it's you know he has the gold makes the rules yeah sooner or later though the gold tarnishes and disappears we'll look back and see if this was oddly prophetic because AMD is open sourcing all kinds of stuff not just everything from machine learning to lower level stuff it's honestly very uh very impressive they're even talking about open sourcing their platform security processor which is not actually owned by by AMD a lot of people don't realize that which is going to be more of an uphill battle than most people realize but that they're actually considering it signals that there are huge political changes inside of andd and this could actually be I mean it's it is congruent with what you're saying it's it's a good philosophy I think it's good for PC Gamers to have Open Standards so when you go buy something you don't have to buy a brand yeah you don't have to buy a brand of a brand of video card to be able to achieve what you want in a game you buy a game and then your video card is based on how much you're willing to spend in the horsepower within the price point not on does this certain Feature work or not work makes sense yep well if you guys had any questions you missed your opportunity you might be hanging around our Forum though so you might get your chance again you we can always come in another time you're close you're not that big a deal yeah that's true what do you guys think you can find us in the Forum at level one Tex see you there bye so cameras are off but seriously what about Vega we need to know you know what there is all sorts of cool things I can tell you right now so let me begin to explain you know what's coming right I know everything all right tell us all about it I know everything I know that we had a\n"