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How do you choose between AMD And Nvidia Cards

Elevon said:
Funny how some people forget about the famous driver issues with Nvidia over the years.
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+1

So many people living in the past and so many rose tinted glasses users in here :D Either that or certain people don't know how to install drivers correctly and/or operate a computer correctly or they just want to clutch to their very last straw :p

Been with AMD since the 4850 and not had any serious issues, biggest issue, which "might" have been down to AMD... was when I got my 290, my PC was incredibly unstable, no idea if it was the 290 and/or AMD drivers in the end as the problem just seemed to solve itself.

As for games, only one game in all this time that I can recall of having an issue with, which has been directly because of AMD and that is battlefront and missing textures on certain maps, they did take a good few weeks to fix it... Any other issues have either been down to the game or/and something else on my PC acting up.

Over the last 1-2 years, I would say that AMD have had the more stable drivers than nvidia if forums like these are anything to go by... The countless hot fixes nvida release to fix problems in their supposedly latest stable driver is hilarious and then all the comments of "rolled back, all good again" is shockingly high, iirc, the likes of neil79 etc. are sticking to the developer drivers as they find them to be the most stable.

Saying that, AMD's latest relive drivers have been shocking for me (not too surprising given how many new features and under the hood changes they contain) but hey, you can always "roll back"...
 
fs123 said:
And if AMD fail and Nvidia is the only option on the market are you going to be happy to stump up the extortionate prices Nvidia is charging? A lose lose situation for the consumer perpetuated by such fanboyism.
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Judging by sales of the 1080 I would say they are happy to pay gouging.
 
Things I look for:

1. Price to performance ratio
2. Future proof

I've been with AMD for a while now since it had better support for audio via HDMI. I remember Nvidia having issues with PCM audio via HDMI where it will only give you the option of 2 channel PCM whereas AMD supported 5.1 PCM audio. I don't know if Nvidia now supports 5.1 PCM audio.

Since I have a 5.1 audio setup using a receiver, I've been with AMD since the 5 series as it had offered me better support for audio.

I've never had major issues with drive either with AMD or Nvidia. Been a solid experience with drives for both AMD and Nvidia. I sometimes think people with driver issues are usually caused by user error or they have something installed on their machine that is causing a the issue.
 
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I don't understand staunch loyalism to brands. Go for whatever one offers the best performance at your budget. I also wouldn't read too much into AMD's drivers as this no longer appears to be an issue.
 
fs123 said:
And if AMD fail and Nvidia is the only option on the market are you going to be happy to stump up the extortionate prices Nvidia is charging? A lose lose situation for the consumer perpetuated by such fanboyism.
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Nvidia already prices the high end irrespective of AMD because guess what, AMD aren't competing in the high end right now. Want a 1070 or 1080, well that is the price Nvidia want to charge regardless of AMD's existence.



This kind of scaremongering it is not useful to anyone. Nvidia's sole purpose of existence is to maximize return for shareholders. It would be illegal for the CEO of s company to attempt anything differently. Business 101 is product pricing. Increasing prices reduces sales and there is an optimal point every company tries to reach regardless of competition. Without AMD prices wont change that much at all.

A few things would happen in a world without AMD:

Release schedules would liekly lengthen a little. This gives more time to tune designed and fix issues with new stepping so the final silicon performs better with less failures. that in itself can reduce production costs This will also mean hard launches are the norm, with more advanced drivers. There might even be a shift to increase the architectural changes between each revision, so instead of smaller evolution to make sure there is always a new shiny product every year, there a fewer but bigger steps. This is cheaper long term. Without direct competent there may be more risks in design changes to try to revolutionize technology, instead of making the N+1 changes we are accustomed to.
The PC gaming world would turn very similar to consoles with more stable hardware and a single vendor meaning game devs can better optimize games and things turn more generational. Instead of smaller incremental changes the bigger changes come along.


There is still plenty of competition form Intel though. The low end is where nvidia really has to focus in the future to keep intel at bay. Furthermore, NVidia have huge competition in the compute space. Nvidia are industry leaders here and this is allowing them to expand in to autonomous vehicles and dedicated deep learning farms. But Intel, google and a host of start-ups are all coming out with very powerful solutions. Some of this technology benefits gaming, some doesn't. I also hope n the future deep-learning will be applied to game engines, obviously for character AI but in theory it can be used for making realistic graphics, designing massive and realistic worlds that are too expensive to create by artists etc. Deep-learning is having a massive impact on areas like texture synthesis.

So even without AMD Nvidia still have competition, but they might become more compute focused. High end GPUS might be released less frequently but will be bigger increments with plenty of supply.
 
Just want to say, I've owned both AMD and Nvidia cards and while the AMD card (HD6770) wasn't anytime recent, I never had issues with the drivers. However I've had major issues with drivers on my 970. Which is why I stopped upgrading to latest Nvidia drivers... things stop working so well if I do.
 
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I pick a budget and buy the card that offers the most performance and stability in that price range. Don't care about future proofing and I have zero brand loyalty.
 
Whatever meets my needs and criteria. Right now however, like a few others I suspect, having invested in a G-Sync panel which I plan to keep for a bit, my main rig will likely stick with Nvidia for a few more cycles. I do however on the other hand have a R9 Nano in my HTPC as at the time offered the most grunt in a small form factor.

Going forward I would never buy a panel without a sync tech again and if it continues as it does of AMD/FreeSync and Nvidia/Gsync then will kind of drive my decision somewhat, annoyingly.
 
I buy whatever interests me most, or if something special comes along. I bought the 680GTX because I had been given a 3D monitor and wanted to get the most out of it. Then I purchased the R9 290 because it was interesting with Mantle and GCN getting more mature. And the 290 was so good that I never really felt the need to upgrade and it's life was further extended when I purchased a Freesync monitor. But, last July, I purchased an Oculus Rift and decided to get a 1070 GTX because Nvidia does VR better at the moment.

Whether the card is made by AMD or Nvidia has never been a factor in my decision making. I just buy the best card I can afford within my budget.
 
DONOHUE07 said:
AMD's drivers are better than NVIDIA 's at the moment, but all I keep reading is 'AMD's drivers are bad' it's absolute nonsense.
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I was AMD for about 5 years. Their drivers ruined my 7990 and i got two 970's. Like an idiot I cashed in on the whole 3.5Gb scandal and got two 8Gb 290x's. They ran so hot I could not run them in crossfire. I then ran a 980 for a month (still got it) without issue and was in a postion to buy a Titan-X.
I got it and got another 2 months later. I'm still running them nearly 2 years down the line.
The fact that AMD's drivers are "better" now makes no difference to me whatsoever. I'll keep my titans for at least another generation and then make my decision.
Good drivers for 2 years is not a long time in the grand scheme of things. Not everyone changes their cards every generation. If they keep them good for another 12 months then it will greatly influence my decision on my next card though, as it was the only reason I switched to Nvidia the last time round.
 
DONOHUE07 said:
AMD's drivers are better than NVIDIA 's at the moment, but all I keep reading is 'AMD's drivers are bad' it's absolute nonsense.
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well people go off personal experience.yours is you have had a good experience. last time i tried on another pc i have another amd card in they wouldnt even work in the brand new pc card win 10 configuration.:p

ive had great amd cards in the past aswell. 4850/5830/5850/6950/7950.so its not brand loyalty.or ignorance.its just more hassle than nvidias.

amd drivers were better before they added all the other crap aswell.every prog does this really is annoying.they make a nice lean prog to start with and its like they have to keep added unnescesary stuff.for the sake of it.:p
 
Gregster said:
How so? Using me as an example, I have not had a single issue in months and months with NVidia.
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+1

I don't tend to get problems when using single cards from either AMD or NVidia.

I also don't think it is fair for people to criticize a vendors drivers if they don't regularly use both vendors cards.
 
Gregster said:
How so? Using me as an example, I have not had a single issue in months and months with NVidia.
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Same here. Like my 290 previous the games just work.

I do think AMDs drivers visually and in terms of speed are a lot better since they updated last year vs Nvidia though. Nvidia control panel feels so slow and old in comparison. Also I do prefer AMDs standard colour setting, desktop looks nicer somehow on it, but that is more a subjective thing.

That said nvidia has fast sync which I really like as I do not have a freesync/g-sync monitor. It really does help make a difference. Even in games where I cannot hit above my monitors 60hz refresh rate, somehow enabling fast sync makes a big difference. Not looked into it, but my guess is that when using fast-sync and not going over monitors refresh rate, it uses adaptive v-sync. AMD do not have such a feature in their drivers as far as I know which for me overall gives Nvidia drivers an edge for us non adaptive sync monitor owners.

I am hoping Vega delivers though, that way I can get a freesync 2 monitor and save bucks on that. At which point I obviously will not need the fast sync feature anyway :D
 
Fast Sync renders as fast as possible - but buffers up as many frames as it can and only renders the frames that fit the V-Sync window - this can mean it is rendering frames closer to the user input and doesn't limit rendering to multiples of the refresh rate - but can cause stutter - in situations where it works optimally it is pretty sweet - if you have say a 75Hz IPS type non-g/free sync panel and a fast GPU it can completely transform the experience.
 
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