Widescreen Gaming Forum

AMD is the first to officially support PLP gaming.

I'm considering buying a 290x because of this support. I have a Dell 30" 3014, (2560x1600) and two dell 20" 1600x1200 monitors that I would use in portrait next to the 30".

I hesitate to migrate from Nvidia to AMD because I've owned Nvidia cards for so long and generally like their driver support better.

Do you think Nvidia will release officially supported PLP at any point soon?

At first, AMD's 290 do NOT support PLP, only the R9-285 does. And probably the upcomming R9-390.

Then, it took nvidia about 5? years to support 5x1P mode. So yeah, we don't know. we might get PLP from Vvidia in the next 6 monts or 6 years.

Oh and



Greetings,
Haldi

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We gonna send it to outa space!

Thanks for the greeting? You mean the AMD 290x doesn't support PLP? Only the 285x does?

What in the world?

The R9 285 was released long after the rest of the series and uses a newer architecture (GCN 1.2) which is why it has this feature advantage despite the lower model number.

If you want AMD's PLP the R9 285 is currently the one and only card that supports it.

SO --- then my question evolves:

From what I've read the 285 doesn't really have the horsepower to run 4960x1600 resolution on newer games -- since it is about the equivalent of a GTX670 - which is what I currently have.

There is a good sale on the AMD R9 285 right now at newegg where I could get a Gigabyte card and a copy of DIRT rally for $160 after rebate. That's a decent price to be able to explore the PLP tech for gaming, but I'd buy knowing it isn't really a performance upgrade from what I currently have in the Nvidia GTX 670.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125679

I'd like to consider the 3xx series, but I specifically want driver based PLP support. (no hacks)

Two questions -- will the 3xx series be built on tonga (R9 285) or hawaii tech (used for R9 290x)? (This is all confusing as I've been a staunch Nvidia guy for the last 15 years). I've long had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to try a 3 monitor PLP setup, and if AMD began supporting it - I'd jump to the red team, because Nvidia seems unwilling to do it.

How much money am I looking to spend (wild guesses acceptable) on a 3xx series card that is fast enough to support the 4960x1600 resololution in a way that is meaningful over the R9 285? I am unwilling to spend $500 on a graphics card - no matter how much better. I'd spend $300, however, if it was significantly faster than the R9 285. By significantly I mean 50% faster? maybe?


Thoughts? Should I just sell my 670, buy the R9 285 to try out PLP and buy the appropriate 3xx or even wait a gen and try AMD 4xx when the prices are known, or would recommend waiting till the 3xx series is released because it MIGHT be possible I could get a significantly faster card (say 50% faster than the $160 R9 285) for $300ish or less?

Hard to say... there are rumours out there that most R9-300er cards will only be rebranded 200er cards, or maybe OEM only cards. And only the R9-390 will be a new card (for about 500-800$).
We should get official announcements in the next few weeks.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

AMD has a press conference at Computex Taipei 2015 on June 3, 2015.

Should be interesting either way. I'm sitting on my hands waiting for the new R9 300 series cards. My R9 280X cards are itching to be upgraded.

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com