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How do you choose between AMD And Nvidia Cards

sy-core

sy-core

sy-core

Associate
Joined
4 Feb 2015
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123
Location
London
What sways your choice between the 2 companies.

I have never owned an AMD card always Nvidia. (6800, 9800, 970), call me a fan boy sure.

But one thing I've noticed time and time again is the higher core count with AMD cards, now I know a little about lack of physic engines, higher power draw, less driver optimization, less sli support. just random things I can think of off the top of my head.

Now these things may not hold true any more today, this is just random information I've picked up over the years.

So to the public crowd .. what is your say so on the graphic card wars.
 
I've always gone with nvidia as since I truly got into custom pc builds they have offered the best performance it's simply as that. The rig I am about to build picking up temporary case Monday will have Titan Pascal SLI wanted to try 4K and AMD even with the upcoming Vega don't have anything which is the same ballpark.

If they offered a good card for my parameters maybe I would go with them but they don't at moment.
 
Best idea is to do your own research every time you need a card.

Questions to ask yourself :

what do you need it for
how long you going to keep it
size
temps
what monitor you have,
budget

everything that matters to you basically. Don't let yourself be fooled by any marketing crap and don't believe any benchmarks running just one game.
 
BubbySoup said:
The sensible way is to choose the fastest card within your budget, that's it.
Click to expand...

Griffildur said:
Best idea is to do your own research every time you need a card.

Questions to ask yourself :

what do you need it for
how long you going to keep it
size
temps
what monitor you have,
budget

everything that matters to you basically. Don't let yourself be fooled by any marketing crap and don't believe any benchmarks running just one game.
Click to expand...



+1

I buy both. There is no such thing as Nvidia is better than AMD cards or vice versa IMO. Each offer a wide range of cards at different performances and all you have to do is look at what offers best price for performance for the range of card you want and buy that.

The old information that Nvidia drivers are better than AMD are nonsense btw. If anything I prefer AMD's UI since they changed it over a year ago. Nvidia control panel looks old now and takes ages to launch in comparison. But stability and performance wise both seem equal to me.
 
I'm excited for Vega.... but only a little. I prefer Nvidia mostly due to Gameworks.

There are a lot of studios that do indeed partner with Nvidia and deploy Gameworks in their titles.

My last AMD card was a 5870 and I just thought the whole driver experience was terrible.

Since then it's just been Nvidia.

----

The thing I like about AMD is they are more supportive of open source technologies which is something that excites me.
 
I weigh up what I'm willing to spend and look at what will give me the best bang for buck and longevity at that price range.

ATI/AMD have been my go to cards but I was almost swayed by the GTX1060 this time around.

Nvidia are great performance wise but they usually make you pay for it.
 
sy-core said:
What sways your choice between the 2 companies.

I have never owned an AMD card always Nvidia. (6800, 9800, 970), call me a fan boy sure.

But one thing I've noticed time and time again is the higher core count with AMD cards, now I know a little about lack of physic engines, higher power draw, less driver optimization, less sli support. just random things I can think of off the top of my head.

Now these things may not hold true any more today, this is just random information I've picked up over the years.

So to the public crowd .. what is your say so on the graphic card wars.
Click to expand...


I don't have any preconceptions like this, i just buy what is the best i can get for my budget, as i result i have own Nvidia and AMD cards in the past several years, i have been very happy with all of them.
 
I used to always go with NVIDIA, but more recently I've stuck with AMD because of their better driver support for ageing cards. I find they perform well in new titles for longer.

I had a GTX780Ti Matrix Platinum which was overclocked, it died on me, and I bought an AMD 390 (non X) on an OcUK Today Only, expecting it to be slightly worse. But not only was it better, it was significantly better!
 
I buy cards to play the newest games at the best settings on a 4k screen, namely BF1, Mass effect 4, CoD, now keeping most of these at 1440p with upping the render scale works well sometimes.

But now you say the fastest card, which means nothing to me. How can you say one card is faster than another, when you have cores and clocks to combine, I mean sure a card with faster clocks and more cores will out do lesser cards, but I swear todays cards are literally all over the place with cards with more cores but slower clocks, less cores faster clocks and that's just Nvidia cards, I can't double up on the AMD.

So I was playing around with on BF the other night when I realized it was 0c outside, i'm playing with the settings anyway. 1440p with 115% scaling res, card hitting 70c. So I open up both my windows empty any heat in my room and start messing about. Scaling res right up to 150%, settings on ultra. So card drops to mid 60's and i'm bumping a few more fps. I think it was about a 20% increase in FPS with lower overall temps. I haven't even thought about a full water cooled set up, although a very nice idea, now if only I lived in the arctic.
 
Past few gens I went for AMD just because their comparable cards were cheaper and had more vram. 6950 was the same price as the 560ti, and I unlocked it to a 6970 and it had 2gb vram vs 1gb on the 560ti. I knew the 1gb on the 560ti wouldn't last, at the time people were saying its enough like they always do.

Then I got a 7950 for £230 when the 670 was £300~ and the 680 was £400~. That card also held up way better partly because of 3gb vs 2gb vram.

Currently running a 980 because I just wanted the best card available for Witcher 3 launch. My future purchases will always be AMD from now on though, I dont like the way nvidia works it just seems like they try to suck every last penny from the customer.
 
Past experiences, features, expected performance levels. Experiences with AMD cards in the past haven't been good. Even had a lower performing Nvidia card according to the flawed benchmarks out there at the time that actually was better in games (the AMD card seemed to have very low minimums and often hit them so gaming wasn't smooth) and also had two AMD cards that struggled to play movies smoothly which took a few driver releases to fix. I also believe AMD sometimes just put technology on their cards to help sell than being required, marketing gimmicks. Nvidia IMO provide a better optimised solution for the here and now, so for example, they'll provide new tech memory when it's really gonna make a difference. Only ever had one DOA card, that was an AMD one too although just down to bad luck but still added to my disappointment with their products.

I may try an AMD card in the future, I always check out their products but nothing seems to have changed enough so far to move away from the things I don't like. I don't care about pricing personally, if a card is worth it I'll pay up. I'm a believer in usually getting what we pay for in life with of course some exceptions at times (I wont be ripped :) ).

A lot of people rely on benchmarks run and put up on the various websites but I see them as flawed, usually only providing a single figure at the end of it for average FPS and sometimes includes a single figure for min and max. We don't even know how many times they ran the benchmark (was an average taken?). I'd like to see a chart of the entire period with all three plotted. I'd also like to see benchmarks run for much longer but with random events too. Some will disagree with that as that will lead to uncomparable results but not if the benchmark is long and run a number of times. When gaming a game usually doesn't follow a scripted sequence which is what benchmarks follow and for which drivers could be optimised for. I'd want to see how a card performs under sudden random load spikes for example and also if heat soak has an effect, ie, after a period of use which could affect component performance, and even if the card simply slows down after a while due to firmware/driver issues. THis is the stuff that will really show how a card performs, not a single average FPS figure produced after a 5-10 minute scripted benchmark.

buying the best you can afford/justify paying is a good idea.At the moment that's easy if you have say £400+ to spend
 
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Used to buy AMD/ATI then went back and forth before switching to Nvidia with the 400 series. Due a switch back really but not familiar with AMD anymore.
 
Always went for best bang for buck at the time of the upgrade.

No point having any brand loyalty, they are both faceless corporations who just want your cash. :)
 
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