• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

AMD Owners - how is your experience?

bfar

bfar

bfar

Soldato
Joined
14 Jul 2004
Posts
2,554
Still rocking a gtx 1080 and in the market for a new card. What with the 3080's like hens teeth atm, it seems prudent to keep an eye out for AMD's next big thing, which I gather is only a few weeks away, and could potentially be a good value proposition.

I haven't used an AMD card in a long time. Genuine question, without any agenda, or trying to fan any flame wars.. how is the user experience with AMD cards nowadays?
 
I have had 3 AMD and 3 Nvidia cards to date. I have been very lucky to have had no issues with either side across the last 15 years, but I have never bought a GPU on release. I usually wait 2 months to smooth out any driver issues (was bigger problem for AMD in the last release in July 2019 and has been mostly fixed)

I prefer the AMD Radeon software as it looks nicer from a UI point of view. Consideration of which card has an effective cooler, warranty and retailer customer service would be my main consideration along with performance.
 
For me: previously 295X2, brief stint of a 480, and currently Vega 64 the drivers have been overall really good, there's the odd lemon that might not work well with a particular game etc but then you just roll back and wait for the next. They've done well on the Radeon software overall.

The one complaint I might have that I think though I'm not sure it's on AMD, is that I have sporadic system hangs (screens going a solid colour, sound playing usually starts looping). memtest revealed nothing, drivers are up to date, Windows install isn't all that old, and I'm not currently overclocked trying to minimise any possible causes. Dumps shows it is somewhere in ntoskrnl.exe, but no obvious driver is causing it. I'm not saying it is the drivers, but it could be. Changed the memory dump setting in Windows in the hope of finding more, and since changing that it hasn't crashed yet. Really annoying.
 
I have an RTX 2080 in my PC but my son's PC has a 5700XT.

The AMD software suite is much better and more modern to use than Nvidia's current offering. What is actually good is the ability to tweak clocks and power targets within the official AMD software. As far as stability goes I have not had issues with AMD in a while now but the Nvidia drivers have not being playing nice with my Freesync monitor. For example I use Photoshop almost daily and I was getting random CTDs. I found out I needed to disable G-Sync with 2D apps individually within the Nvidia S/W suite. I was also getting random reboots just watching streaming videos. The problem was solved by turning off PCIE 4.0 in my X570 motherboard BIOS.

So stability wise the AMD drivers are perfectly fine, Nvidia ones (for me) slightly less so. Functionality is good on both. This is not getting at Nvidia drivers, just pointing out that there are nuances with drivers that don't instantly mean they suck.
 
Last edited:
I've lost count of the AMD cards I've had, or put into builds for other people. I only had a couple of hiccups with the drivers in the past inasmuch as I couldn't play older games, would just black screen. This appears to have been fixed and I'm even playing C&C tiberium Sun without "too many" problems (can't control the mouse scroll speed, cant get the res above 1024 x 768) other than , no problems.
Currently using a sapphire rx5700xt and its been flawless so far in everything I've thrown at it (C&C not withstanding) , even Crysis 2020 remastered is running sweet with most settings on high at 1440p, frames around the 65-70 mark.
Looking forwards to seeing how the RDNA2 works out and I'll probably go for one of those "providing" its good value, I ain't over spending just to play at 1440p and I don't have any intention to 4K as I can't be bothered, too old!
 
Have had my 5700XT for 8 months.
No driver issues what so ever at my end.
I do think the AMD control panel is much better than Nvidias though. It just looks a lot better.
 
I have had lots and supported them in clients for just over 20 years now. Personally, the last five have been (oldest>newest) AMD / AMD / AMD / nVidia / AMD.

No issues from drivers myself for them cards in my own rigs.
 
I've had from AMD, in no order other than what cards I remember as I type this...

4870, 5870, 6870, 7950, 270x, vega 56, vega 64, 7990, 580, 590, 390X - only once had a driver issue that was fixed with I rolled back to an earlier driver. AMD get flack but their cards age better with drivers, IMO, than Nvidia (got a temp GTX980 here now while I wait for new Navi)
 
Last edited:
Fine, last one I had was a Fury X while the performance was a little disappointing I had no complaints about the card honestly same with the R9 390, 290, HD 7950 or the X800XT. The reference 4870x2 ran hot but it was a blower card with two gpu cores other than that I've no complaints. Probably won't be getting one of the new cards as I have a Gsync monitor (yeah Nvidia got me locked in good and proper).

Oh nearly forgot the RX480 nitro on the other PC no problems with that either. Generally speaking it used to be case to avoid the reference cards as they were noisy blowers but that doesn't seem to be case with the new cards if the leaks are anything to go by.

ICDP said:
The AMD software suite is much better and more modern to use than Nvidia's current offering.
Click to expand...

Aye NVCP is antiquated
 
Last edited:
running a vega 64 .. nothing problem wise .. sweet as silk .. but under water .. might upgrade if there showing me the right card .. at the right price .. but atm nothing is stressed
 
The last AMD cards i had were 2x280x's in Crossfire and i only ever got problems with them when i decided to start flashing the firmware versions (Self inflicted issues...) Before that i never had any problems. :)

Since then i've had a 1080 and that too has been ok albeit has lots of driver updates. Which also haven't caused issues but can be annoying. Haha!
 
Had nothing but Radeon - very positive experience overall. That being said I hold no hope that their stock situation will be better, only worse (because all those 7nm fab wafers have to go to consoles, and CPUs, and gpus (lowest margins) - yeah, good luck).
 
subbytna said:
only once had a driver issue that was fixed with I rolled back to an earlier driver. AMD get flack but their cards age better with drivers, IMO, than Nvidia (got a temp GTX980 here now while I wait for new Navi)
Click to expand...

Seconded. Performance generally increases and the cards dont get forgot about when a new range is released. The Software is pretty decent, lots of choice - if it presents any glitches just go back to the one you were on.
 
Best amd card I remember was the ATI 9700pro. Was up against the GTX 4200ti was it? I think the ti beat 9700 slightly until AA was applied and the gtx performance tanked and the 9700 just dipped a couple of frames. Then there was the 9800pro, the 4870, 5870, 290x, oh happy days:)
 
Plus you get to use the Chill software which is a superb bit of free kit.

Set the card to stay between 2 FPS ranges in a game, the card won't go above or below the range. Great to have profiles for types of games. Footy manager I've a 30-35fps range, Battlefield it's set to 60-70fps range, etc Means you don't have card spinning fans any faster or drawing as much power as not using Chill
 
No major issues from my end. Now and then I have had bugs but they get fixed over time. I am using VEGA 64 so the optimisation for games and drivers is very much complete now its all about NAVI and 2020
 
I regularly go back and forth between AMD and Nvidia and have had no issues with either in terms of driver instability (well, that I haven't caused with dodgy overclocks anyway). I really like AMD's current software package as well. It's very slick and fully-featured, and allows you to turn just about everything off if you don't want it.
 
Fine for the most part, though my vega strix is probably the worst card I've owned due to asus cheaping out on the heatsink and thermal pads (pads were replaced voiding the warranty), it's meant to clock to 1600 or so out of the box, even with tweaking settings its lucky to get 1400 for any length of time.
 
I have a couple of machines on radeon cards right now, mine on a radeon 7 which for me has been problem free ownership bar a few sketchy driver releases with the oculus and weirdly an issue I had with teams but which has been absolutely fine for the last 6 months or more. In the wifes machine she has a sapphire rx470 and again I have never had an issue with that. To be honest though im not a massive fiddler I just install a driver and unless something is wrong that's the driver ill be using. The 7 for me has been a great card. If I upgrade ill stick it in the mrs machine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom