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Amd or nvidia for gaming ?

picking the right gpu depends on the rest of the pc as its all about balance imo, i mean putting a titan z in a pc with low end cpu,mobo and ram is just plain stupid like fitting a racing car engine in a reliant robin, its all about what hardware you already have plus screen res and then pick the right tool for the job be it nvidia or amd
 
i mean putting a titan z in a pc with low end cpu,mobo and ram is just plain stupid like fitting a racing car engine in a reliant robin,

But would still give you nice, racey performance well over and above the usual Robin Reliant performance and would continue to be of service when you can afford to upgrade to a race car chassis... ;)
 
I buy whats the cheapest that has the features i want when i'm buying it, AMD or Nvidia is fine i'm not biased either way
 
I've owned cards from both camps, but from personal experience in terms of issues, etc, I'll always favour Nvidia. I'd also always recommend Nvidia for people building their first ever rig and that the higher price compared to AMD is worth paying for.

I've nothing against AMD, but in my perception at least (probably unfairly) they have a sketchy reputation when it comes to drivers, etc, and I've just had better experiences with Nvidia overall, even though they offer less value for money than their AMD equivalents.
 
for me its just what gives the best performance for the money when i want a new card. i usually want the best but end up going for the 2nd best in each generation because the best is usually 100 pound more for like 5% gain. so when i wanted a new gfx card i was between the nvidia gtx 780 (rather than 780ti) or radeon r9 290 (rather than 290x) i ended up going for the 290 because it was similar price to the 780 but beat it in 90% of benchmarks. these days custom cooled 290s are cheaper than 780s by a fair bit so its even better value
 
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I have used Nvidia and AMD in my gaming life, i'm equally happy with both, i tend just to go what offers me more GPU for my money.
Mantle is very good, Free-Sync doesn't exist yet while G-Sync does, you tend to get more performance and vRam with AMD than Nvidia, so for me its AMD at the moment.
 
for me its just what gives the best performance for the money when i want a new card. i usually want the best but end up going for the 2nd best in each generation because the best is usually 100 pound more for like 5% gain. so when i wanted a new gfx card i was between the nvidia gtx 780 (rather than 780ti) or radeon r9 290 (rather than 290x) i ended up going for the 290 because it was similar price to the 780 but beat it in 90% of benchmarks. these days custom cooled 290s are cheaper than 780s by a fair bit so its even better value

How does your system perform in games ? Got a similar spec regarding mobo CPU and ram but my gpu isn't as good !
 
I'm not after a new card I was just wondering which you guys preferred really .. I've seen loads of people switching recently , probably only because of the price for performance like..

who are these loads exactly? I see the odd thread but it's been balanced between swapping, not exactly a mass exodus.

In some cases you will have brand loyalty / past experience / whatever issues are known / price points...etc

Nearly all of it is personal perspective, used to go ati, back in the 9700 pro days and after some horrendous experience with crossfire and drivers I went nvidia - has it been trouble free? Not always, a few RMA's along the way but for me that is my preference.

Am I against ATI? Not at all, gone are they days of constant driver issues...etc.. but for me I've not had any recent problems from 460/460sli/580/680 and now a 780 so see no reason to swap.
 
All good and well saying you get the "best performance for the money", and all.... but how might us Noob ascertain exactly what 'good performance' actually means in the real world, though?

For example, I see the R9 290X has 1050MHz core and 4GB RAM, but the latter only runs at 5400MHz and yet it has 2816 stream processors. No value on the shader clock, though.

The GTX 780 Lightning has a 980MHz core and only 3GB RAM, but it runs faster at 6008MHz and while it only has 2304 stream processors, its 1960 shader clock beats a number of 780Ti models.

So which is 'better'... or is that part the actual can of worms everyone hates opening?

I know from fiddling with my HD6950 that a high core clock and shader count is desirable... but how can we noobs find a reasonable comparison between AMD 280-290X range and the 780-780Ti range?

I haven't mentioned the Titan, as it's usually well-expensive compared to these others! :D
 
who are these loads exactly? I see the odd thread but it's been balanced between swapping, not exactly a mass exodus.

In some cases you will have brand loyalty / past experience / whatever issues are known / price points...etc

Nearly all of it is personal perspective, used to go ati, back in the 9700 pro days and after some horrendous experience with crossfire and drivers I went nvidia - has it been trouble free? Not always, a few RMA's along the way but for me that is my preference.

Am I against ATI? Not at all, gone are they days of constant driver issues...etc.. but for me I've not had any recent problems from 460/460sli/580/680 and now a 780 so see no reason to swap.

Haha I never said it was a mass exodus I was just saying what I've seen mainly on forums when building new rigs up etc saying there going to switch from 780 to 290 due to price/performance, and a quite a few switching due to mantle support for bf4 :)
 
Can't help but feel the OP motives are suspect..no offence.

I think he also needs to start up a thread 'More people bought PS4 than Xbox One and I personally think PS4 is better for gaming, what do you guys think?', possibly with a Sally Bercow-like *innocent face* at the end of it.
 
All good and well saying you get the "best performance for the money", and all.... but how might us Noob ascertain exactly what 'good performance' actually means in the real world, though?

For example, I see the R9 290X has 1050MHz core and 4GB RAM, but the latter only runs at 5400MHz and yet it has 2816 stream processors. No value on the shader clock, though.

The GTX 780 Lightning has a 980MHz core and only 3GB RAM, but it runs faster at 6008MHz and while it only has 2304 stream processors, its 1960 shader clock beats a number of 780Ti models.

So which is 'better'... or is that part the actual can of worms everyone hates opening?

I know from fiddling with my HD6950 that a high core clock and shader count is desirable... but how can we noobs find a reasonable comparison between AMD 280-290X range and the 780-780Ti range?

I haven't mentioned the Titan, as it's usually well-expensive compared to these others! :D

As you can't directly compare GPU numbers across different manufacturers/generations, this will always come down to looking at reviews for the cards you want and comparing results. This is why so many websites run graphics cards reviews/tables/charts to help buyers.

For example, my 290s run at 947 on core and 1250 on memory, where my old 7970s used to run at 1125/1575 respectively. On numbers, the 7970 appears quicker, but actually the core on the 290 is larger so even though it runs "slower", it actually produces faster graphics - this is a little like having a 2 litre engine revving to 5000rpm being faster than a 1.8 litre revving to 6000rpm. Similarly the memory on my 290 is quicker even through it's "revs" lower because it's attached to a wider bus (512bit rather than 384bit) so the memory doesn't need to be clocked as high to achieve higher bandwidth and hence performance!

All this is basically to say that comparing GPUs by looking at specs is very, very difficult, and I will ALWAYS rely on websites and other users to provide their real-world performance via games and benchmarks to decide which GPU is quicker.
 
maybe someone swapped a 680 for a 290, but only a total tool would swap a 780 - It wouldn't be worth the hassle - mantle or not.... what are they going to do if nvidias new driver rocks? swap back?

No quite a few are swapping for mantle support, you do not see lots of threads as you imply.

I'm just going to call troll on this.

You have 1 thing right, this has been covered a million times before, yet you still post anyway. (insert random stupid smiley here)
 
I used to be in the amd camp had 9700s, x800s etc, I swapped to nvidia when they released the 8800gtx as amd were about a year behind at the time, since then ive used nvidia currently with 2 670s but as I use 3dvision now I suspect i will have to stick with it, if not for that my next buy would probably be amd but as at 144hz 1080 twin 670s are still overkill in most things that wont be something I need to worry about at least till 20nm possibly 16 and with the way its being battled out at the moment between camps who know what will be top dog by then
 
How does your system perform in games ? Got a similar spec regarding mobo CPU and ram but my gpu isn't as good !

battlefield 4 all maxed out at 1920x1200 gets between 50 and 80 fps online multiplayer.
Heaven Benchmark gets 50 fps average all maxed at 1920x1200 inc extreme tesselation and 8xaa.
most recent games stay above 60 fps maxed out, a lot are way above!
This is a big improvement from my previous radeon 6950 that struggled to maintain 30 fps on bf4 with settings toned down a bit

I dont feel like i have a much of a cpu bottleneck at all and in games my ram usage is barely above 4gb so 6gb is fine for now also if running tripple channel.
 
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battlefield 4 all maxed out at 1920x1200 gets between 50 and 80 fps online multiplayer.
Heaven Benchmark gets 50 fps average all maxed at 1920x1200 inc extreme tesselation and 8xaa.
most recent games stay above 60 fps maxed out, a lot are way above!
This is a big improvement from my previous radeon 6950 that struggled to maintain 30 fps on bf4 with settings toned down a bit

I dont feel like i have a much of a cpu bottleneck at all and in games my ram usage is barely above 4gb so 6gb is fine for now also if running tripple channel.

Nice ! I have same CPU as you and the triple channel ram but my i7 oc is @ 4ghz .. But I have r9 270x so I get nearly all ultra settings on bf4 without msaa and it stays above 60 fps :) ..

Maybe should have saved a bit more and got the 290 but I couldn't wait haha plus I'll be upgrading my system in a couple of years anyway hoping to get a 4k set up :)
 
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