Nvidia vs Ati Advice

[Draakii]

Hi

I'm after abit of help and advice on picking my next graphics card be it Nvidia or Ati. I currently have a pair of XFX GTX 260 Black Editions that are liquid cooled and SLIed. Ive noticed recently they are starting to struggle and show signs of getting old so ive made the decision to upgrade to something with abit more punch.

My current system is an Asus Rampage IV Extreme running an i7 3930K with 32GB of Ram.

Ive always had Nvidia cards in the past but i'm no way a "fanboy" and im open to the best value for money options. After asking all my friends which immediately said Nvidia, i beg to ask the question... Why?

So i'm really after abit of advice on what to go for next. Ive been looking at the GTX 660 Ti's, GTX 670's and HD 7870's but im really unable to make a decision. I am looking to SLI or Crossfire them as id like to future proof my machine for atleast the next couple of years if thats even possible, and whatever i choose has to have a waterblock available.

Previously looking into reviews which are now becoming a blur ive read so many.

Ive be very greatful if anyone could give me suggestions from experiences they've had with any of the high end todays card as ive got no one else to ask.

Thanks in advance.

Ricky

 

[no_1_dave]

Welcome to the forums.
There are a million threads on this & each one is like opening a can of worms.
Basically it is all down to personal preference.

With Nvidia you get more of a complete package, you get physx, 3D Vision support and better driver support (as in forums where the devs listen & actually post). However Nvidia at the moment is more expensive so you have to way up if the extra features are just gimmicks or if you will actually use them.

With ATI you get more of a dedicated 'this card is designed to play games' approach. They haven't used their money investing in things that maybe classed as gimmicks, so there is no physx, no 3D Vision (done by 3rd party software instead) and the driver support isn't quite as good (they tend to ignore issues & sometimes release a hotfix that then breaks something else). However, this means they are cheaper for the same level of performance.

Way up the pros & cons, each to their own

 

[TheRealDeal]

If you want to keep the cards for a few years i would suggest a couple of 7950's. They have 3gb of ram which should see you good for a few years. As you are going the water route you should be good to use the voltage to good effect to get the best overclock possible. I would not be looking at the 660ti as its let down by low memory bandwidth which i think can only get worse as time goes by.

 

[LtMatt]

With Nvidia you get more of a complete package, you get physx, 3D Vision support and better driver support (as in forums where the devs listen & actually post).

AMD
the driver support isn't quite as good (they tend to ignore issues & sometimes release a hotfix that then breaks something else).

 

[Rusty0611]

AMD offer far, far better value for money for the same performing cards (on paper). However, there's other things to consider as mentioned above.

So it's up to you if it's worth it.

I don't personally feel AMD's drivers are as good as nVidia's. They aren't broken fundamentally or anything like that but you only need to look at the release day drivers for the 7970 compared to now to see that their driver releases historically have been far from what you'd call decent and releasing the cards potential. That said, to give you a balanced view, there was a stuttering bug which nVidia had a huge problem resolving with their drivers which should also be considered as a point that nVidia drivers can be bad as well.

To be fair to AMD, they have changed approach and it does seem to be working. Whether the improvements have just come from maturing code or whether the methodology change caused the improvements is unknown.

Either way you go, there's potentially downsides and there's no one size fits all approach. It's a very opinionated subject though so be prepared for a lot of arguing incoming!

As far a card recommendation: if you're watercooling and looking at the max from your cards then AMD fit better here as their 7*** series allow voltage adjustments. The nVidia 6** series do not out of the box and generally the 7*** series will go further on this set up.

7950 crossfire, water-cooled is a very future proof set up.

So weigh everything up and make a choice .

Good luck!

 

[spixelspixel]

Buy 1 670/7950 now, then another in a year or so when you need more performance and they've dropped in price.

 

[Mojo]

As always, your budget dictates what you buy. Bear in mind however, that the 7950 is £230+, and to get another 5-10% performance at stock you're looking at about £300+ (670/7970) or £370+ (680, not worth it). The 7950 will overclock to 7970/670/680 levels in many games anyway.

 

[Gregster]

7950 seems to be the best value for money at the moment. It can be a good clocker (chip dependant of course) and AMD drivers generally seem to be pretty decent reading from forum users. I am a Nvidia 'Fanboy' and have never had problems even in SLI but this is not to say others have had the same smooth experience as me. AMD bucked their ideas up and sorted out drivers which make the most of AMD cards but it was quite a long time after release of the 7970/50 this happened.

Generally speaking though, I feel the stigmata that AMD drivers had has hopefully gone.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III OC V2 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Sleeping Dogs PC Game £249.95
Total : £260.75 (includes shipping : £9.00).



This would be my weapom of choice if I liked AMD

 

[Rroff]

Without going into the AMD v nVidia aspect I find it generally pays with things like this to stick with the devil you know - 9/10 when issues arise with GPUs its due to people changing from one make to another.

Problem is nVidia's current prices are mostly a joke with many ostensibly mid-range or upper mid-range cards priced in high end brackets so finding something that retains the performance/price sweet spot that I'd reccomend is quite hard.

 

[layte]

I went from a highly overclocked 480sli setup (900 core under water) to xfire 7950's and now a single 7950. I have been plesently surprised at the performance of the AMD card once it has been given a decent overclock. Yes I've had a few driver foibles but nothing too major (the Firefox bug on 12.8 was annoying, and xfire being full screen only is a joke).

I had no issues with drivers going from one brand to another. Heck, I'm even running one of the old 480's as one beast of a dedicated PhysX card.

 

[bhavv]

Problem is nVidia's current prices are mostly a joke

You mean the prices they set to originally undercut AMD's prices?

And since they are still selling well, they wont reduce them like AMD had to.

 

[Geo-Gamer]

7950 seems to be the best value for money at the moment. It can be a good clocker (chip dependant of course) and AMD drivers generally seem to be pretty decent reading from forum users. I am a Nvidia 'Fanboy' and have never had problems even in SLI but this is not to say others have had the same smooth experience as me. AMD bucked their ideas up and sorted out drivers which make the most of AMD cards but it was quite a long time after release of the 7970/50 this happened.

Generally speaking though, I feel the stigmata that AMD drivers had has hopefully gone.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III OC V2 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Sleeping Dogs PC Game £249.95
Total : £260.75 (includes shipping : £9.00).



This would be my weapom of choice if I liked AMD

Damn I got that a couple days ago for 263 pounds . 14 pounds bumped :0 fml

 

[Rroff]

You mean the prices they set to originally undercut AMD's prices?

And since they are still selling well, they wont reduce them like AMD had to.

Its a bit complicated to explain but I'm looking at a specific "affordability" price point and the GPU you can get at that price point and what it gives you in increase over the GPU that was at the similiar affordability position in the last generation and how close it is to the highest end card in its generation.

And with the 600 series what you can get at that price point isn't a patch on the card you could get in any past generation in terms of its position in the current generation performance tier and increase over what you'd have been upgrading from - and thats even taking allowances for the economy.

 

[humbug]

Welcome to the forums.
There are a million threads on this & each one is like opening a can of worms.
Basically it is all down to personal preference.

With Nvidia you get more of a complete package, you get physx, 3D Vision support and better driver support (as in forums where the devs listen & actually post). However Nvidia at the moment is more expensive so you have to way up if the extra features are just gimmicks or if you will actually use them.

With ATI you get more of a dedicated 'this card is designed to play games' approach. They haven't used their money investing in things that maybe classed as gimmicks, so there is no physx, no 3D Vision (done by 3rd party software instead) and the driver support isn't quite as good (they tend to ignore issues & sometimes release a hotfix that then breaks something else). However, this means they are cheaper for the same level of performance.

Way up the pros & cons, each to their own

Nvidia drivers suffer just as many problems, ATI DO support 3D, Direct compute game enhancements like Physics advanced AA etc... and the surround is also good.

ATI also offer the best bang for £

Way up the pros & cons

 

[layte]

Nvidia drivers suffer just as many problems, ATI DO support 3D, Direct compute game enhancements like Physics advanced AA etc... and the surround is also good.

ATI also offer the best bang for £

Way up the pros & cons

As many? Maybe. As annoying? Not in my experience.

AMD's software suite just feels unpolished and thrown together with little care or testing. A good example would be the hilariously bad memory bug with Firefox (for multi GPU users) that five minutes of testing would have picked up. Why do I have to edit the registry to create custom display modes? Why can it never remember over/underscan setting and default to massive underscan every time I enable output to my Panasonic TV? Why cant xfire work in a window? Why does the audio output option lose devices requiring a reboot to bring them back? Where are the DC physics titles? Why are the custom per title profile options so limited (when they work )?

I own a 7950 (was two, but one went back as faulty) it replaced a pair of 480s, it is a good card, don't get me wrong. I just feel that Nvidia offer a more robust and complete package. Just a shame their pricing on the mid range (o-hohoho I don't mean what got re-branded as the 680) is a bit clown shoes right now, making recommending their cards over AMD a bit of a head scratcher.

Hopefully the noises they are making about actually putting some effort into 'Gaming Evolved' actually bear fruit.

 

[Rroff]

Just a shame their pricing on the mid range (o-hohoho I don't mean what got re-branded as the 680) is a bit clown shoes right now, making recommending their cards over AMD a bit of a head scratcher.

Thats the problem I have atm, fortunatly don't have any need to upgrade at the moment, but it makes it hard to reccomend a GPU to anyone else. Especially theres nothing that fits the slot of the 8800GT, GTX260/275, GTX470, etc.

 

[no_1_dave]

Nvidia drivers suffer just as many problems

I didn't mention problems. I mentioned support. You were ts quick to jump on the "he mentioned the word "drivers" in his post, he must be dissing AMD" train that you didn't even read the post properly.

If you post about a problem on the Nvidia forums they will read it and respond. There are even Nvidia driver devs regularly active on the forums & fix bugs based on forum feedback. You do not get that with ATI at all. In fact, trying to advise AMD about a driver issue is about as useless as telling a brick wall the problems you are experiencing. It's a shame.

 

[Final8y]

I didn't mention problems. I mentioned support. You were ts quick to jump on the "he mentioned the word "drivers" in his post, he must be dissing AMD" train that you didn't even read the post properly.

If you post about a problem on the Nvidia forums they will read it and respond. There are even Nvidia driver devs regularly active on the forums & fix bugs based on forum feedback. You do not get that with ATI at all. In fact, trying to advise AMD about a driver issue is about as useless as telling a brick wall the problems you are experiencing. It's a shame.

Support on the official AMD forum is indeed poor and that's why most people go to other forums where there are official beta testers where you can put problems forward and get a response from them and AMD through them as well as using twitter and the AMD Issue Reporting Form for AMD Catalyst™http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EB8

 

[Gregster]

There is always something about AMD I just don't like but can't put my finger on it...It reminds me of when I was young and single and was out on the pull. I would set my target high with ideas of pulling Megan Fox (Nvidia) but as the night went on and time was running out, I knew I would end up with the Dot Cotton look alike (AMD).

 

[Marine-RX179]

To be fair I think the GTX660 ain't too bad on the price...it is on par with the 7870 and similiar in price. Shame that pretty much all other cards are overpriced beyond sense.

GTX660Ti need to be drop to £200, GTX670 need to be dropped to £250, and GTX680 need to drop to around £300~. As for GTX650 and GTX650Ti, they need to drop by around £30-£40....GTX650Ti at £120 is a joke, when 7850 1GB is at £130.