Expected nothing less

Yeah, i expected HD pack for Fallout 4 too.

I am actually glad it's 490 and not some aggressive code name like "Fury". Doesn't sound like it gonna cost arm and leg. Now, be a good sport and giff good performance for $399 or less.

Whishful thinking...not gonna happen for under 400. IMO the lowest price could be like 600.

I'm surprised to see they're recommending a GTX 1080 to utilise the HD Texture pack. I've not really played Fallout 4 yet on my rig, but I did run the first few scenes just to see how it runs and it ran at really high fps on my GTX 1070 (at 1920x1080) - I can't imagine the texture pack doing anything besides needing more VRAM, so why do they put a recommendation of a GTX 1080?

I'm surprised to see they're recommending a GTX 1080 to utilise the HD Texture pack. I've not really played Fallout 4 yet on my rig, but I did run the first few scenes just to see how it runs and it ran at really high fps on my GTX 1070 (at 1920x1080) - I can't imagine the texture pack doing anything besides needing more VRAM, so why do they put a recommendation of a GTX 1080?

Why lol? Nvidia pays them profit for us blowing our money why else? Same with Intel.

First of all, it's Gamebryo v.5.0 Screaming-in-the-Cage Edition specs. Most people don't consider that if AMD presents the 490 at the 1080 price range, then they won't have anything vs the 1070, which is arguably the most profitable and big market. The numeclature indicates that there isn't another product between the 490 and the 480, therefore the 490 should be priced at the GTX 1070 range.

I can't see why AMD will charge $400 for this GPU. It's a whole new architecture from the ground up and years of research and development went into it. This GPU will be in the same price range as Nvidia's top GPUs eg: 1080 maybe 1080Ti.

It will be priced according to it's relative performance. Since Nvidia has a larger userbase and more customer loyalty, it will likely still cost less than or the same as the 1080, assuming performance is similar enough. In the past several years, the only product AMD has ever had a substantial price increase over Nvidia was the Fury Nano, and that's because Nvidia didn't have anything as powerful for that form factor. Unless the 490 blows the 1080 out of the water (which I am willing to bet that it won't), it will not likely cost more. Ground-up architectures don't necessarily mean higher prices. It may be expensive at first to have a new design but that's why the same designs are used for several years to come, with small tweaks in between generations. In other words, companies may go a little bit in the red when releasing a new product but they eventually make a substantial profit after some generational refreshes. Take Intel's history for example - almost every product they've released of the same performance bracket within the past 15 or so years has been priced roughly the same. There are a few exceptions but many of the exceptions either didn't last long (such as the pricing of the first Core2 Quad) or there was nothing remarkably different about the product to warrant the price difference (such as Kaby Lake). AMD is already in debt and they will probably remain that way even if the first generations of both Zen and Polaris are a huge success. Assuming the success is sustainable after several generations, they will get out of that debt.

I think that might have been a typo?? Bethesda removed the AMD 490 from the announcement. https://bethesda.net/en/article/52I2HyPCAowWG2ye8MKGU2/fallout-4-free-updates-high-resolution-texture-pack-and-ps4-pro-support This is what is listed now: Note: To utilize the High-Resolution Texture Pack, make sure you have an additional 58 GB of available and that your system meets/exceeds the recommended specs below. Recommended PC Specs Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required) Intel Core i7-5820K or better GTX 1080 8GB 8GB+ Ram

If it was a typo, they would change it, not remove it.

I'm surprised to see they're recommending a GTX 1080 to utilise the HD Texture pack. I've not really played Fallout 4 yet on my rig, but I did run the first few scenes just to see how it runs and it ran at really high fps on my GTX 1070 (at 1920x1080) - I can't imagine the texture pack doing anything besides needing more VRAM, so why do they put a recommendation of a GTX 1080?

If you play at 1920x1080, you will not see much difference with HD textures. This is for those running the game on 2.5K monitors and higher. That is why you need GTX1080 with a lot of VRAM The thing that I find shocking here is that you need additional 58 GB of hd space for this texture pack

If you play at 1920x1080, you will not see much difference with HD textures. This is for those running the game on 2.5K monitors and higher. That is why you need GTX1080 with a lot of VRAM The thing that I find shocking here is that you need additional 58 GB of hd space for this texture pack

It should certainly amount to a whole lot more than the Skyrim HD texture pack...which was barely noticeable, imo...;) Let's hope so, anyway.

Fingers crossed that it will be at least as competitive as gtx 1080, otherwise big disappointment.

Fingers crossed that it will be at least as competitive as gtx 1080, otherwise big disappointment.

If it's on par with gtx 1080, and so late released, that will be a big disappointment! The only thing that will make people buy it will be the future performance increase due to drivers and better dx12 support, but by then NVIDIA will have another card out. It has to be on par with 1080ti or big Pascal to be a game changer.

Fingers crossed that it will be at least as competitive as gtx 1080, otherwise big disappointment.

I don't get why people think this. Unless you have a 144Hz 2K monitor (or some other uncommon monitor setup), the 1080 doesn't make sense: it's not good enough to play most modern games at 4K with max detail, meanwhile the 1070 can play just about any game above 60FPS at 2K with max detail. I'm all for healthy competition but the 1080 is niche even for enthusiasts. What I think is more important is if it can handily outperform the 1070 while using at least 50 fewer watts. A GPU that can outperform the 1080 would only be worth buying if it can do 4K gaming, which for AMD would be a weirdly huge performance gap between the 480 and 490. Even the performance gap between the 460 and 470 is uncharacteristically large for AMD. If AMD makes another Fury, that I think is what should focus on outperforming the 1080. Anyway, if you don't have an obscure display setup, then clearly all you care about are getting bigger numbers for the hell of it. If that's the case, why don't you personally have a better CPU, or 2+ 1080s?

Price wise, Vega 10 is basically capable to be cheaper than Fury X to produce. (Bigger margins.) Take it this way: While it has 8GB of HBM2, it needs only 2048bit IMC instead of 4096bit IMC on Fury/Fury X. (And yet it has same basic bandwidth.) And that means bit cheaper interposer too. My humble guess is that RX-490 will have 225W Power consumption and will run at 1350~1400MHz. With changes in architecture I expect it to be up to 45~50% faster than Fury X (Mostly due to clock.) And Power efficiency improvement: 1.5 / 1 * 300/225 = 2 So I expect 2x performance per Watt over what Fury X delivers.

Tbh if it is 12tflop part it will be somewhere around 1500mhz no way around that. Also it should have better IPC then Fury or Polaris cards. And all in all improved anyway.

Why lol? Nvidia pays them profit for us blowing our money why else? Same with Intel.

Not sure about this, but it is gonna be a driving force for people to choose the faster card.

Don't think it matters much, 1070 isn't far behind the 1080 anyway.

Yeah, I didn't think for a second that my GTX 1070 is overclocked so the gap is now even smaller (I think 5% last time I calculated vs stock 1080), but as you say even the stock GTX 1070 is not far behind the GTX 1080 - if a 1080 can give a good experience then so will the GTX 1070 unless the GTX 1080 is only just scrabbling to get a good experience (which it won't need to).

If you play at 1920x1080, you will not see much difference with HD textures. This is for those running the game on 2.5K monitors and higher. That is why you need GTX1080 with a lot of VRAM The thing that I find shocking here is that you need additional 58 GB of hd space for this texture pack

What you say makes sense in as much as they might be referring to a resolution greater than 1080p, but I think the performance gap between GTX 1070 & 1080 is not a significant enough one to notice a big difference in playability, not unless the GTX 1080 is struggling to get past a consistent 40fps (in which case GTX 1070 would suffer poor playability). I would bet that when this HD pack launches then we'll see they should have put GTX 1070 as recommended spec. (Yeah, I'm gonna need to rearrange some games on my SSD to allow enough space for this monstrous download!)

@Gaidax Yes, you have a point. But most people who don't upgrade are often on a budget, in which case the 1080 is still a poor choice. A 1070 will handle most things you throw at it and by the time it starts to get a little too weak, you could buy a 2nd one. At that point you'll have spent less money than buying a single 1080 and you'll have more performance. I personally think 1070s are good enough to not get obsoleted in 3 years, assuming you stick with 2K gaming at 60FPS.

Nice texture pack for Fallout 4. As for Vega, the impression I got from what AMD's engineer said is that it's not a 100% win across the board and that at lower resolutions it was still uncertain, although, they hope they can beat GTX1080. My prediction is that it'll only come into it's own at high resolutions like 2k/4k, where as 1080p won't be very interesting for current pascal owners (not that it should be anyway). On top of this, I don't think it'll be the 4k card people are hoping for it to be. That'll be the next lot of cards.