AMD or Nvidia - DX11/12/Vulkan/OpenGL

[geordiejc]

I, like many others have skipped the 1070/80 in the wait for the 1080 Ti or AMD's equivalent.

Usually it would be a simple choice for me, nvidia... however the development of API's are making me reconsider my initial thought of buying 1080 ti - allow me to explain...

My new cards performance in games will be impacted by certain factors;

• DX11 - Nvidia wins majority
• DX12 - Depends on game e.g. AOTS/Hitman (AMD > NV) - Tombraider (NV > AMD)
• Developers optimisation fairness - Games are coded to perform better on AMD and NV GPU's
• Vulcan/OpenGL - im not educated enough to fully understand but i believe Vulcan works better on AMD hardware.

NV said pascal has Async Compute, but its not as good?

if i'm going to spend £800+ on a GPU i want to buy the one which will perform better under these API's, DX11 will be redundant soon, Is AMD going to beat NV due to the new API's ??

 

[geordiejc]

I think the RX480 vs 1060 is a good topic for debate as these card are essentially a real world example of DX12/Vulkan performance in it's infancy.

In DX12/Vulcan (AOTS/Hitman/Doom) the cheaper RX 480 is better than the more expensive 1060 by upto 30%, however Tombraider the 1060 is better than the cheaper RX 480.

As you say, it may simply boil down to DX12 being game developer dependant.

 

[geordiejc]

A major factor is that the XBox One probably uses DX12(or something close to it),and the PS4 Neo looks to have a Polaris 10 based GPU and there is noise of a refreshed XBox to compete with the new PS4. If that has a Polaris 10 or Vega based based GPU,it will help AMD as many cross platform games will be developed on both GCN1.1 and GCN1.2 uarch GPUs.

Is there an API which runs across all platforms yet? I watched a video on youtube where a scottish guy explained that amd won contracts for ps4/xbox and although didnt make much profit, their API's being developed on their hardware may shape the future of gaming as a whole.