From AMD to Nvidia

Crackatoah · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:26

Just thought I would share my thoughts after coming from AMD to Nvidia.

Nvidia is smoother at lower frame rates and slightly smoother overall.
Nvidia has lots and lots of usefull options in the control panel and better support for games and better drivers in more games and more unpopular/old games aswell which AMD seem to ignore.

AMD has better picture/image quality.
AMD has noticeably better AA.
AMD has more vivid and accurate colours.

I wish we could have best of both.... Really like Nvidia but its SSAA and regular AA is very poor in comparison to AMD's, but it does perform better (I suppose Nvidia go for max fps and sacrifice image quality that most people dont realise)
Nvidia is definitely smoother at lower frame rates too which is really nice, but again overall image quality is slightly worse and noticable.

I WANT THEM TO COLLABORATE! OR ONE TO JUST OWN SO WE GET THE BEST POSSIBLE!

Rusty0611 · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:38

Do you have any actual considered evidence for these claims or are you just guessing?

Crackatoah · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:43

Same monitor and 2 PC's, always wanted to compare.
The differences are pretty clear.

7970 (which has now been sold) and a 680

Its not really just claims or guessing but a direct comparison, if you compared yourself like I said the differences are pretty clear, Nvidia is definitely smoother at lower fps and overall and better drivers for certain games, and AMD has definitely got better picture quality and AA (the AA dfference is very noticeable )

Rusty0611 · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:47

No I mean proper evidence. As in before and afters, side by side comparisons of the same scenarios. Screenshots of both etc. Not just your own subjective impressions.

There's nothing wrong in itself with this but it's just generalising statements like your original post don't really mean much without evidence to back them up.

arc@css · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:48

My experiences so far :

AMD - thicker, softer image / stronger colour contrasts and vivid colours, hence maybe that's why you'll more often hear that people tend to regard AMD gpu's have slightly superior / noticeably better IQ.

Nvidia - crisper, harder image / better performance overall, particularly when AA is applied.

With some titles there doesn't appear to be any real difference at all.

Rusty0611 · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:56

I went from a 6870 to a 680 and I also felt that my image quality was a teeny weeny bit more dull afterwards. I only noticed it at the very start and it was small. Not enough to be sure though. The difference in IQ from having the settings maxed was far more noticeable

Crackatoah · 16 Apr 2012 at 20:56

Rusty0611 said:
No I mean proper evidence. As in before and afters, side by side comparisons of the same scenarios. Screenshots of both etc. Not just your own subjective impressions.

There's nothing wrong in itself with this but it's just generalising statements like your original post don't really mean much without evidence to back them up.

I didnt think of that, that would have been a really good write up, someone else should do it.
I cant do it now as the cards been sold but I didnt think to do it at the time because with the screen infront of me and switching between each card/pc its was easy to tell the slight differences.

arc@css said:
My experiences so far :

AMD - stronger colour contrasts and vivid colours, hence maybe that's why you'll more often hear that people tend to regard AMD gpu's with slightly superior / noticeably better IQ.

Nvidia - better performance overall, particularly when AA is applied.

Yeh thats exactly what I experienced, I do really prefer the AMD colour pallet.
And Nvidia is better performing out of all the games and with AA, but their own AA is poor compared to AMD's.

Is there a way you can get Super Sampling like AMD's on an Nvidia card? because on older games like TF2 with AMD's SSAA it looks very nice, but with Nvidia's SS it doesn't look very good atall compared but you get more fps (which isnt needed as its like 300)

An ideal card would be an Nvidia card with AMD's picture quality/colour pallet and their AA

opethdisciple · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:16

This is what scares me. I too heard that AMD have better IQ.

I have only ever owned one Nvidia card in my life, and that gave me huge issues.

So I play it safe and always go AMD with an upgrade.

I bet these IQ rumors is from the same fountain of bs that the rumor that Nvdia have better drivers is from.

In other words its just misinformation that has been spread around and become fact over time as more and more people believe it and spread the rumor.

Rusty0611 · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:20

opethdisciple said:
This is what scares me. I too heard that AMD have better IQ.

I have only ever owned one Nvidia card in my life, and that gave me huge issues.

So I play it safe and always go AMD with an upgrade.

I bet these IQ rumors is from the same fountain of bs that the rumor that Nvdia have better drivers is from.

In other words its just misinformation that has been spread around and become fact over time as more and more people believe it and spread the rumor.

It's no more crazy than sticking to AMD because of one bad experience that could have easily been just the same on the other side.

Crackatoah · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:22

I never listen to rumour's or what pathetic fanboy's spout out.

I just go by what I can see infront of me, I have always noticed the slight colour difference going from AMD to Nvidia a few times in the past, but directly comparing them there a few differences and they are noticeable, each card company has their pro's and con's.

IMO AMD is best for professional use like photography ect. or a HTPC.
And Nvidia is for best for gamers, but I would like to see the super sampling sorted out because as it is I swear its not proper 'super sampling' or its just a poor quality adaption made for performance

opethdisciple · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:39

Rusty0611 said:
It's no more crazy than sticking to AMD because of one bad experience that could have easily been just the same on the other side.

I agree with you. I want to go Nvidia this time around, but then a thread like this appears..

Varsh · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:54

Crackatoah said:
IMO AMD is best for professional use

CUDA says hello. Sorry but AMD GPUs can't compete with Nvidia on most of the media production based applications on the market. I've tried an AMD 5970 and an Nvidia GTX285 (my current card) and while the 5970 trounces my card in every way possible, when it comes to development work (Photoshop, After Effects, 3ds Max, MudBox, ZBrush) it's the complete opposite.

Crackatoah · 16 Apr 2012 at 23:08

No need to say sorry

everyone has their own opinion

buchtis · 16 Apr 2012 at 23:10

I've also gone from Nvidia to ATi and the image seems a lot sharper with better colors. I've had no driver issues so for the time being and possibly the future i'll be sticking to ATi.

Crackatoah · 17 Apr 2012 at 00:07

Yeh thats one thing I really miss, the colours arent as 'appealing' and even if you tinker in the control panel it just messes up the collaboration. I suppose ill get used to it though.

Other than that really happy, for example in BF3 if the 680 is at 80 fps (with higher settings) compared to the 7970 at 100 fps the 680 feels smoother for some reaon even though its lower fps, so I can have higher settings and the game still feel smooth.

I just really want to find a way to get better SSAA like AMD has because I play TF2 and a few old games quite allot and they looked noticeably better on the 7970, there must be a way surely?

Rroff · 17 Apr 2012 at 00:19

For me the AA is the opposite - but IMO different techniques for AA work differently on a subtle level of perception - AMD doesn't tend to hide the jaggies I notice as well as nVidia does but I can see how it would be different for someone else.

no_1_dave · 17 Apr 2012 at 00:20

Go into Nvidia control panel and add some digital vibrance if you want more vivid colours.
The only time AMD had better IQ was against Nvidias FX range. Since then it is widely accepted that they are on par.

Have you tried using transparency AA?

Randomface74 · 17 Apr 2012 at 00:21

Right, so nobody has evidence of anything. nn then

Rroff · 17 Apr 2012 at 00:24

Even with digital vibrance it doesn't have quite the same vividness as AMD - you end up with more solid patches of color on blends where AMD are still managing higher resolution granularity.

IQ goes around and around up until the 6 series AMD had some filtering issues that could quite badly reduce the IQ on certain angles and for awhile tho I think its no longer the case the default "quality" setting was using an adaptive system that reduced IQ slightly when it shouldn't have done for that particular setting which gave them a slight performance edge when comparing "like for like" for awhile. At a glance I can't really see any IQ differences between a 7970 and GTX680 tho.

Purgatory · 17 Apr 2012 at 02:28

opethdisciple said:
This is what scares me. I too heard that AMD have better IQ.

I have only ever owned one Nvidia card in my life, and that gave me huge issues.

So I play it safe and always go AMD with an upgrade.

I bet these IQ rumors is from the same fountain of bs that the rumor that Nvdia have better drivers is from.

In other words its just misinformation that has been spread around and become fact over time as more and more people believe it and spread the rumor.

The image quality is different mate, you can test it yourself. I have found the same, AMD's 2D quality is nicer on the eyes and Nvidia to my eyes has a touch better 3D quality in some cases. I noticed it on movies, pictures I have taken with my DSLR and the desktop that Nvidia had a worse quality image than the AMD in these cases. (You can adjust the Nvidia to almost look as good with a bit of tweaking, but out of the box and a standard driver install it can be seen clearly, this is before any tweaking is done of course).

Only way to see it is to use the same monitor and computer then swap out the cards and compare and you will see it. It's a fact, but I went Nvidia to get away from the poor drivers AMD were creating at the time for my 5870 and they were breaking old games and applications to make new ones work, also I use FSX and a big fan of that and as we know Nvidia cards work better with that title. Nvidia I have found all my old and new stuff work as they were designed so far. We will see how long that lasts too, if Nvidia go the route AMD has taken I will probably jump ship again and go back to AMD on the desktops if AMD get their act together again.

I use both AMD and Nvidia GPUs on my systems so there is no fanboy rubbish going on here, my laptop which also acts as a media player and game system is used on my Plasma TV and produces a nicer image than the Nvidia 580M which I tested with a friends alienware top end laptop and we both saw it, in the end he flogged the alienware and purchased the Samsung gamer series 7 as I have with the 6970m in it, he also liked the screen more on the Samsung than his alienware. So far happy with both companies in the way I use their GPUs currently.