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I've come to determine for the best here and now choose Nvidia, but if you want the card to last and be future proof (if there is such a thing in this market) then go AMD.
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How do you choose between AMD And Nvidia Cards
- Thread starter sy-core
- Start date
Yep, this.
I used Nvidia for the past decade, but went to AMD last year because I kept getting Geforce cards that were not 100% stable on boost clocks (and my 780 fried itself one day). Also the 3.5gb ram thing on the 970 ****ed me off, since I had one :/
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nVidia control panel usually opens very quickly for me. Prefer the plain, functional look as I can find and adjust things very quickly.
Personally won't buy AMD as I dislike how often they talk a big game and fail to deliver, or are in a position to push something forward but when its actually time to execute are nowhere to be seen, same with open source stuff - a lot of talk but rarely capitalise on the capabilities - about the only one is adaptive sync/FreeSync.
Despite the perception some have I'm not a big fan of nVidia, I detest their business practises but there is a lack of other options - with nVidia usually I pay my money and get what I want for the here and now instead of talk of how "great" things are going to be in the future.
5 Gameworks games exist, and was "add-on" for few graphics, not the core game engine, which is optimised to run on AMD GPUs the two consoles are using.
The Division, Fallout 4, Witcher 3, GTA 5 and War Thunder.
And no rumours for future games in 2017.
That's it.
Also 10 years of NV PhysX, less than 60 games came out supporting it, of which around 10 are AAA titles worth to play. (3 of them Batman).
And I can point at you to The Division and Fallout 4. Having played it with both GTX1080 and R9 Nano, the latter even if weaker, runs as good, especially paired with Freesync monitor, and haven't seen any difference in effects related to missing Gameworks.
And the funny bit. More games have AMD logo on these days days than NV.
@OP
Depends the budget and monitor. And if you have Freesync or Gsync monitor matters also.
Saying that, I bought a GTX1080 for my bday, and went back to the Nano few months later, for no other reason other than some games, like TW Warhammer, The Division, Fallout 4, look much more better with Freesync ON than not, regardless if the 1080 was much more powerful card. (around 50% while overclocked).
However, lets see what would happen later this year. If the 2730Z dies again, and is out of warranty after April, I will make a decision of what to get and it will affect my future graphic cards also.
True to that.
It took Nvidia 5 months and more than 10 drivers to fix the issue some 144hz monitors had, with flickering on desktop due to default low clocks they implement to save power.
While between August and November drivers, my 1080 lost 7% perf on benchmarks on same overclock.
On top, lets not forget the gif files issue that took them 3 drivers and more than one week to fix. Couldn't open a damn webpage without rolling back to previous drivers.
On the contrary, 3 years of AMD drivers, only had issue this August (2016), with a Freesync flickering bug in the drivers. And AMD fixed it three working days later.
^^ A lot of games use features of the GameWorks platform or PhysX API (a lot less use hardware features) than are listed i.e. Deus Ex Mankind Divided uses PhysX, lots of games use ApeX which often isn't mentioned and there are a huge amount of "shareware" or Indie type games that use those as well.
EDIT: RE the 144Hz flicker/issues - despite the impression often due to how vocal a small number affected by it were, the larger majority of people with those setups were completely unaffected by it (which can be seen even on these forums given how many people run that setup compared to the small number that complained about it) and the problem wasn't a trivial one to track down or fix.
EDIT: RE the 144Hz flicker/issues - despite the impression often due to how vocal a small number affected by it were, the larger majority of people with those setups were completely unaffected by it (which can be seen even on these forums given how many people run that setup compared to the small number that complained about it) and the problem wasn't a trivial one to track down or fix.
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+1 to this. Cards from both teams will give you a good experience, they're as good as each other.
... Although I'm slightly more tempted to AMD due to support for older cards.
Caporegime
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I just look at performance(and potential future performance)for my pound,then card length and whether my PSU is enough.
Man of Honour
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Usually I buy whatever gives me the best for my money so I have gone from one to the other over the years. This time around AMD didn't have anything that was a worthwhile upgrade from the EVGA GTX 780 FTW that I had so I went with the GTX 1070. I was also planning on upgrading my screen to a 2560x1440 144hz G-sync screen but that looks to be on indefiante hold with the current crazy pricing.
That crazy pricing is only going to get worse, not better.
If I am not in the loop, I do a lot of research on the architectures of the cards and other aspects affecting performance such as drivers. I tend to play the long game and get the card which I think will last me the longest in terms of performance for 2-3 years. Price/perf also factors strongly so I will never buy the likes of the Titan X even if it was quite futureproof. I'd rather buy a £500 card every 2-3 years than buy a £1000 card every 3-4 years.
Soldato
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I have a budget and then decide what's the best I can get for this budget. It's usually Amd but my experience has been good with them so I am often happy with my purchase. The 290 I currently use just keeps giving. It's probably my Favorite card ever for just how it keeps pushing good settings in the latest games at 60fps.
I have had more issues with Nvidia drivers (don't get me started on my ex-560ti lockups that took a year to fix from Nvidia) then AMD(in my case none) over the years.
My first Nvidia card was the TNT model for the very old timers here, my first AMD card was ATI 9700 (good card back then).
Drivers nowadays is not an issue if I'm honest, you always get those on both sides that have the issue or two.
I've also seen and had an OC factory cards that gave issues (I had a Nvidia GT7800 OC) that was not stable at default factory overclock and had to reduce memory by 10mhz.
Nowadays I look at both sides ie when I was deciding between 1060 and 480 I looked at pros and cons on both sides, the extra ram, pricing, DX12 performance and improved performance of latest AMD drivers with 480(against 1060 in general) were deciding factors, another was it had dual card support (an option 1060 does not have). Throw in Vulkan and XFX features on my 480 GTR Black edition like fan swap in seconds to replace and clean fans/heatsink became no brainer for me.
Power and cooling have never been an issue for me with my Seasonic 850w based PSU and 3x 140mm, 1x 120mm case fans.
Another main thing I looked at was card length since it does matter regardless of AMD or Nvidia, my XFX just about fitted in my case.
As for Nvidia PhysX, don't give a damn about it, never had even when I had my Nvidia cards (my current laptop is Nvidia based).
Last point there is still some FUD (not as bad as it use to be) about AMD/ATI, sad really.
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One of the key differences for me over the years is that when there have been issues with nVidia drivers there is almost always a close driver version that works fine - with ATI and AMD pre 2009 that was often not the case at all especially with their release schedules. People either seem very quick to forget that and/or don't have as broad experience with both sides as they think or try to portray.
These days it is a much less remarked story - infact last few months nVidia drivers have demanded more of my time support wise. To really compare driver quality you have to look a lot deeper than just the fact that both have issues with factors like how many people out of the entire user base are effected, how long issues take to be sorted, playability of new release games, availability of relevant drivers to rollback to, etc. i.e. its no good if a game release driver degrades your experience and no older driver supports the game and you are waiting a month or more for a fix and so on.
Yeah not a fan of the changes in approach to GeForce experience especially ShadowPlay which has made it much less useful than it used to be and the telemetry stuff.