AMD owners, what's it like living with Radeon?

[JBIZZL3Y]

Currently planning a new pc build .. I've been using the same laptop with an Nvidia 970m for a few years now and have to say I like the geforce experience app.. from regular driver updates, shadowplay etc etc.  

 

Now with todays AMD announcement there's a good chance the new build could be all team red but I'd love to hear from AMD users what it's like living with the hardware day in, day out..

 

[minibois]

My previous videocard was an RX 580 and I encountered no issues with it at all, switched to a 2070 Super because I was interested in some of the Nvidia exclusive features.

Not counting those exclusive features, the general user experience of either card is identical.

 

But of course I cannot vouch for the quality of the RX 5000 series drivers, or the upcoming cards.

[Levent]

AMD drivers are usually not that great at launch. Besides than that, gaming wise its that identical.

[Donut417]

14 minutes ago, JBIZZL3Y said:

Currently planning a new pc build .. I've been using the same laptop with an Nvidia 970m for a few years now and have to say I like the geforce experience app.. from regular driver updates, shadowplay etc etc.  

 

Now with todays AMD announcement there's a good chance the new build could be all team red but I'd love to hear from AMD users what it's like living with the hardware day in, day out..

 

There GPU's work. The question will be driver quality. AMD has been known to have poor drivers in the past. I haven't seen any driver issues with my 5700, but I have had issues with drivers on previous AMD cards in the past. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

I had AMD (GCN) GPUs before (7950, R9 290) and they were just fine, never a problem. Even used the 7950 in CrossFireX, and while inefficient, that also worked great.

Last year i got a Vega 56, and while the card itself is fine, driver stability has been unbearable. Random crashes and black screens, no driver update ever fixed it, and it doesn't look like they ever will. I'll have to see at least one good driver for my GPU before considering buying a new one.

[JBIZZL3Y]

13 minutes ago, minibois said:

My previous videocard was an RX 580 and I encountered no issues with it at all, switched to a 2070 Super because I was interested in some of the Nvidia exclusive features.

Not counting those exclusive features, the general user experience of either card is identical.

 

But of course I cannot vouch for the quality of the RX 5000 series drivers, or the upcoming cards.

Thanks for the info! 

Which features were you missing on amd? It looks like most of the things that nvidea was offering over the past couple of years amd now has their own version of (support for ray tracing, DLSS etc etc) 

 

Obviously we'll have to wait for the release and review to see exactly what the new cards are capable of and what new features are like. 

 

2 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

There GPU's work. The question will be driver quality. AMD has been known to have poor drivers in the past. I haven't seen any driver issues with my 5700, but I have had issues with drivers on previous AMD cards in the past. 

 

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I had AMD (GCN) GPUs before (7950, R9 290) and they were just fine, never a problem. Even used the 7950 in CrossFireX, and while inefficient, that also worked great.

Last year i got a Vega 56, and while the card itself is fine, driver stability has been unbearable. Random crashes and black screens, no driver update ever fixed it, and it doesn't look like they ever will. I'll have to see at least one good driver for my GPU before considering buying a new one.

thanks for the info.. seems to be a fairly mixed bag which is probably true of anything.. I guess ill just have to be patient and wait and see! 

Exciting times!

[minibois]

Just now, JBIZZL3Y said:

Which features were you missing on amd? It looks like most of the things that nvidea was offering over the past couple of years amd now has their own version of (support for ray tracing, DLSS etc etc) 

Three things (2 & 3 are very specific/niche, which won't apply to most; but I included these to show my point, that everyone has their own niche uses):

1. Geforce Experience recording: I like recording gameplay, never had much luck with OBS for games though. Geforce Experience just allows me to press record and that's it, "it just works".

 

2. CUDA. Image upscaling is something I would consider a small hobby of mine, the program I use (Waifu2X) only supports two modes: CPU mode, or CUDA mode. CUDA being Nvidia exclusive. 

The difference between how quick CUDA is vs. CPU is enormous:

Spoiler

Close to 25 minutes vs. 50 seconds on certain settings I use often. That's a decrease in time of 96%, which means doing these edits are way faster

But that's a super niche workload, which can leverage videocard power on the Nvidia side, but not AMD (although supposedly there are forks with AMD support.. But I digress).

 

3. Folding@Home. F@H is a distributed network of computers, where volunteers 'donate' compute power of their CPU/GPU to fold proteins, the data of which scientists can use in their research. At the time of buying a new videocard, equivalent AMD videocards did not yet have support for this software and I was quite into this, which influenced my decision.

 

If I had to make an "Nvidia vs. AMD" decision today, points 1 & 2 still apply, point 3 does not (as of right now, who knows what will happen when AMD RX 6000 is out).

[dizmo]

Do you plan on doing a lot of streaming?
If so, I'd probably take a hard look at the Nvidia Broadcast software and what it offers. It'd be an easy choice if you are IMO; it's amazing stuff.

[SpriggsyUK]

I used AMD from around 2007-2018 when I jumped to a 1080 Ti. Over those years I've had the full range of great times and weird issues.

 

Overall I'd say the driver stack has improved a lot since they moved away from the old catalyst driver and started on the path with their current. there have been some terrible drivers but overall I never felt left out against friends who had Nvidia cards.

 

Heck I'm thinking I'll go back and have a full team red build for the first time.

[lidua]

Only had problems with Fortnite which stopped working every couple of game/drivers update but now it's fixed and I stopped playing.

Every other game I played works just fine. I don't like the new radeon software interface, the old one was simpler

[BTGbullseye]

25 minutes ago, minibois said:

1. Geforce Experience recording: I like recording gameplay, never had much luck with OBS for games though. Geforce Experience just allows me to press record and that's it, "it just works".

AMD has that as well. It's a tab in the driver software called "streaming". Simple, easy, and works with all the common services. As a bonus, it doesn't require you to make an account, and connect to AMD's servers to run it.

[Mark Kaine]

35 minutes ago, minibois said:

Geforce Experience recording: I like recording gameplay, never had much luck with OBS for games though. Geforce Experience just allows me to press record and that's it, "it just works".

 

This is my biggest fear... I also hate OBS, it's clunky, no overlay and laggy as hell (and lower quality than shadow play) 

 

From my little experience with AMD they're even worse than OBS, it works (sometimes) but there's a rather huge performance hit and quality is low. 

 

Thats the thing with shadow play, it barely uses any resources, it's a 1-3 fps hit, at max! 

 

 

36 minutes ago, minibois said:

(Waifu2X)

OK, I'm intrigued in "picture upscaling" now as well

 

 

9 minutes ago, BTGbullseye said:

it doesn't require you to make an account, and connect to AMD's servers to run it.

 

Yeah that's really shady from nvidia - however like I said above it's crazy how easy it all works, even streaming to yt or something, it "just works" and is very (*very*) easy to setup and control. 

 

I think AMD needs to improve here a lot, and hopefully they are able to... 

[ev1lchris]

1 hour ago, JBIZZL3Y said:

Currently planning a new pc build .. I've been using the same laptop with an Nvidia 970m for a few years now and have to say I like the geforce experience app.. from regular driver updates, shadowplay etc etc.  

 

Now with todays AMD announcement there's a good chance the new build could be all team red but I'd love to hear from AMD users what it's like living with the hardware day in, day out..

 

Recently went from Nvidia to Radeon.  I swore off Radeon when it was ATI due to poor design and overheating issues.  Decided to give them a try because AMD was at the helm.

 

I have an RX 570 8 GB.  I would say it was a great value.  However, it still runs hot.  I love the AMD Radeon software.  However, my next GPU will most likely be Nvidia.  I'm definitely an Nvidia fanboy.

[JBIZZL3Y]

 

1 hour ago, minibois said:

Three things (2 & 3 are very specific/niche, which won't apply to most; but I included these to show my point, that everyone has their own niche uses):

1. Geforce Experience recording: I like recording gameplay, never had much luck with OBS for games though. Geforce Experience just allows me to press record and that's it, "it just works".

 

2. CUDA. Image upscaling is something I would consider a small hobby of mine, the program I use (Waifu2X) only supports two modes: CPU mode, or CUDA mode. CUDA being Nvidia exclusive. 

The difference between how quick CUDA is vs. CPU is enormous:

  Reveal hidden contents

Close to 25 minutes vs. 50 seconds on certain settings I use often. That's a decrease in time of 96%, which means doing these edits are way faster

But that's a super niche workload, which can leverage videocard power on the Nvidia side, but not AMD (although supposedly there are forks with AMD support.. But I digress).

 

3. Folding@Home. F@H is a distributed network of computers, where volunteers 'donate' compute power of their CPU/GPU to fold proteins, the data of which scientists can use in their research. At the time of buying a new videocard, equivalent AMD videocards did not yet have support for this software and I was quite into this, which influenced my decision.

 

If I had to make an "Nvidia vs. AMD" decision today, points 1 & 2 still apply, point 3 does not (as of right now, who knows what will happen when AMD RX 6000 is out).

That is a huge difference in time! 

 

shadowplay is super nice to have, its so straightforward to record/stream.. over the past few years as my system has slowed down I've used it less and less.. but having a much more capable system it'd be great to be streaming/recordding again.. I've never had any luck with OBS either lol.

 

I do a little bit of video editing but have lately switched from premiere pro to Rush as it suited my workflow better, I know premiere seems to prefer nvidea cards but I'd be looking at such a huge jump in performance from my laptop I cant see it making a big difference one card or the other.

 

does anyone know if nvidea game works features work on AMD gpu's? I'm sure this is a no but wasn't sure? I remember seeing settings in games like the witcher 3 etc

[Bitter]

Back when they were ATI I completely swore off their graphics cards strictly because of the abysmal driver experiences I had with several of their products (Rage series stuff). I had another bad go with a late ATI product and drivers as well. I used only Nvidia for like 20 years, finally gave them a go a while back with some really budget cards (R7 250, 7570, etc) for basic display use. They worked great so I took a bigger gamble and got a RX580 8GB and had a lot of fun tuning it and playing with OC and undervolt and it performed really well for it's price in the used market. I took a bigger gamble and got a used Sapphire Vega56 Nitro+LE, it's bee super stable and super fun to play around with. I don't play modern top tier games so I haven't ran into driver issues with it, it really punches above it's class in my opinion. I run folding on it and it performs around 1080ti level for compute work with an undervolt and stock clocks, actually making some great ppd/watt at about 1M PPD on average. For gaming it's somewhere between a 1070 and a 1080 in most games which is good enough for me. It can be a real power hog but never gets that hot or loud thanks to the insanely large cooler from Sapphire.

 

I have been put back off by the 5000 series driver issues, haven't had first hand experience but seeing how that whole mess went down it was disappointing. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again with the 6000 series cards.

[minibois]

8 hours ago, BTGbullseye said:

AMD has that as well. It's a tab in the driver software called "streaming". Simple, easy, and works with all the common services. As a bonus, it doesn't require you to make an account, and connect to AMD's servers to run it.

I only use it for local recording. Of course I tried AMD's recording software on my RX 580, where I noticed it didn't work that good. That was likely because because of the resolution was too high for the hardware encoder and the equivalent AMD videocard to my current videocard may have worked too, but I had just seen a lot of positive experiences with Geforce Experience and it works well for me now.

 

While I dislike the Nvidia account stuff, it isn't something I actively avoid. A necessary evil, I suppose.

8 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

This is my biggest fear... I also hate OBS, it's clunky, no overlay and laggy as hell (and lower quality than shadow play) 

From my little experience with AMD they're even worse than OBS, it works (sometimes) but there's a rather huge performance hit and quality is low. 

Thats the thing with shadow play, it barely uses any resources, it's a 1-3 fps hit, at max! 

Yea that was my experience with AMD's recording software too, it just had worse quality and a big quality hit.

I could make OBS work for me, but I had to assign certain cores to it and such.. Plus I still use OBS for certain recording tasks, those where there isn't a game and a recording software fighting over my CPU.

7 hours ago, JBIZZL3Y said:

does anyone know if nvidea game works features work on AMD gpu's? I'm sure this is a no but wasn't sure? I remember seeing settings in games like the witcher 3 etc

from what I have read over the years, it can often be enabled through .ini files, but AMD videocards take a bigger hit in fps than Nvidia cards.

Personally from the limited time of playing the Witcher 3, on both AMD and Nvidia, I didn't miss any hair features or whatever  

[novarasi]

Hello Im planning to build a new computer before the end of the year and I was wondering how is Radeon cards with regards to support for industries like animation and 3d (softwares like Maya, Blender, Houdini etc) . I have always been an NVIDIA user and but with the new announcement and plus the fact that the CPUS could work together with the cards, and the price. This seems to be really attractive to me. Could someonegive me their educated opinion. . 

[BTGbullseye]

9 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

From my little experience with AMD they're even worse than OBS, it works (sometimes) but there's a rather huge performance hit and quality is low. 

On which GPU, and what driver version?

54 minutes ago, minibois said:

Of course I tried AMD's recording software on my RX 580, where I noticed it didn't work that good.

That's because the hardware encoder on the RX 580 sucked. Pre-RDNA hardware encoders were abysmal for both performance and quality.

[BTGbullseye]

33 minutes ago, novarasi said:

Hello Im planning to build a new computer before the end of the year and I was wondering how is Radeon cards with regards to support for industries like animation and 3d (softwares like Maya, Blender, Houdini etc) . I have always been an NVIDIA user and but with the new announcement and plus the fact that the CPUS could work together with the cards, and the price. This seems to be really attractive to me. Could someonegive me their educated opinion. . 

It depends on the specific software. Some prefer Nvidia, some won't care, some will prefer AMD.

[miagisan]

I am using a 5700xt, no complaints.   The only issue I have with it is I can't record gameplay in hdr using adrenalin software (looks oversaturated). I just use windows dvr to record and it's all good.  

 

I had also before this a rtx 2060 (gave it to my son), gtx 1660i (now in an htpc), r9 290x, r9 280x, gtx 260, and some older ati cards.  

 

Drivers can be hit or miss for both over the years for both camps, but I honestly like the software for the radeon cards better.  I don't do anything that takes advantage of cuda (mostly engineering and environmental programs that are cpu intensive) so can't comment on that.   

[idontlikephysx]

Dealing with the headaches of drivers has been the real pain.  I never had any experience with Nvidia where I had to think about driver issues.  The RX 5700 XT was my first experience with AMD in my own rig and well with them also producing hardware I guess that many say is good but not living up to expectations well that also hasn't sat well with me.  : S 

[Sabarok]

I have a question on this topic; What's the build quality on Radeons? How long do they last?

 

I've bought a few "brand new" NVIDIA GPUs from the x80, and each of them died after only 4 years. How well do the newly released high end Radeons hold up over time?

[jeanluckpiccard]

13 hours ago, JBIZZL3Y said:

Currently planning a new pc build .. I've been using the same laptop with an Nvidia 970m for a few years now and have to say I like the geforce experience app.. from regular driver updates, shadowplay etc etc.  

 

Now with todays AMD announcement there's a good chance the new build could be all team red but I'd love to hear from AMD users what it's like living with the hardware day in, day out..

 

I'm using a RX 5700 (non XT) and previously had a RX 570...my biggest complaint are the AMD drivers. Sometimes the updates cause strange errors, but I have never had anything serious.

 

Both have served me quite well. The RX 570 is about 2 years old and currently in my wifes PC...no issues. My RX 5700 is a beast and runs VR and other AAA games beautifully.

[Marasmic]

My experience with my wife's computer hasn't been quite as rosy as everyone else's experience here. It's running an RX580 paired with a Samsung CFG73. I have constant VIDEO_TDR blue screens and I have to fight with the graphics card for 30 minutes to get Freesync to work every time the display port cable gets disconnected. I still have no clue which combination of unplugging the monitor and restarting the computer actually fixes the Displayport black screen issue. But, once it's working I don't dare touch it because it will break again if I look at it wrong.

[ishapli8]

15 hours ago, JBIZZL3Y said:

Currently planning a new pc build .. I've been using the same laptop with an Nvidia 970m for a few years now and have to say I like the geforce experience app.. from regular driver updates, shadowplay etc etc.  

 

Now with todays AMD announcement there's a good chance the new build could be all team red but I'd love to hear from AMD users what it's like living with the hardware day in, day out..

 

I have a rx 480 and have had less driver issues than my gtx 1050 I used to have. The rx 480 drivers worked fine I've never hade an issue.