I know many are diehard Team Green but these new prices and specs of cards like 6800xt/6900xt make it hard.

[TexasBulldog74]

I had the Sapphire Nitro+ 5700xt that i sold about 6 weeks ago for over $600 somehow (people bid it up on ebay) and I bought the EVGA 3080 FTW3 Ultra and don't get me wrong its an amazing card... Paid $999 for it but less than 6 weeks later im seeing Saphire's water cooled Toxic 6900xt going for $1,099... Man If I could do it all over again I would of gone with that.  

 

16gb ram vs 12gb, 2600mhz vs 2200mhz for $100 more... Man that card is a beast.

 

Also now knowing I really wasn't missing out on much considering ray tracing going with Nvidia this time around unless prices are closer during my next upgrade id likely go back to AMD.  That being said I don't plan on an upgrade to my GPU for at least 2 years minimum.  Hopefully by then the GPU market is NORMAL and better competition from AMD to Nvidia will benefit us all no matter what brand we go with.

 

 

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, TexasBulldog74 said:

16gb ram vs 12gb, 2600mhz vs 2200mhz for $100 more... Man that card is a beast.

Not comparable. 3080 uses GDDR6X, not GDDR6. Core clocks aren't comparable as they're different architectures. 

 

Now on to more personal opinion stuff: 

 

The 6900XT is a beast, I believe it has higher raw raster performance than Nvidia's cards, but AMD's software support usually lags behind, making them at best competitive when averaged across multiple titles. Nvidia puts in the money + work on their software and drivers, and work with 3rd party software devs to make sure their stuff is supported, AMD just.. doesn't. Not sure why, as their hardware is usually fuckin wicked. 

 

That's actually why I am diehard Team Green currently, bad experience with my RVII drivers (wicked hardware, had it overnighted on launch, beast of a card until 8-ish months later when AMD shit out AD2020 drivers and fucked over my card, OCs unstable and regular full system crashes even when idling) being the main reason. And now I do regularly use DLSS in a few games I have that support it, and AMD's alternative does not seem as good or as well supported. Hopefully AMD will up their software/driver game in future, they gotta have the money for it by now with how competitive and successful their CPU side is. 

 

 

[Levent]

Used AMD graphics from 2009 to 2020. Here is what I have to say.

 

My first AMD graphics card: HD4650 (2009) in a laptop. Overheated like crazy, overall my first actually capable device that could play 3d games. Didnt have much issues with drivers back then, hardware was shit.

 

HD5770 (2010): Great card, great overclocking experience, didnt have any issues with drivers as far as I can remember. I only played games back then so I did not need any special features.

 

Then I got my first HD7850 1G in 2012, AMD Catalyst 12.X drivers were rock solid and I was extremely satisfied my purchase. Back then I was also mining cryptos so I had a chance to get a HD7850 2G and two HD7950s. New year arrives and AMD releases Catalyst 13.x drivers and issues start popping up left and right, games crashing, dwm crashing, hardware acceleration being broken, weird artifacts in games, cards would be stable with one driver and other would require reducing overclocks by 200mhz in the next.

It took AMD over TWO years to iron out those issues and by that point I killed off my first HD7850 and my first HD7950. Overall I tripled my investment on those cards (HD7850 1G and HD7950 refunded under warranty, crypto mining also yielded more than what I paid for all the cards combined). By the midsummer of 2013,I sold my HD7950 and continued using my HD7850 2G (I was going to upgrade my entire system but that money went towards my car).

 

I used my HD7850 2G for 8 years, it served me extremely well and eclipsed all the Nvidia cards that were priced the same from that era but I constantly had to deal with software issues.

 

Dont get me wrong GCN architecture is the best thing AMD's graphics division ever released and it even carried their entire company through AM3+ era, however their software and drivers ALWAYS been lackluster and they have showed no signs of improvements yet.

 

2020, sold my HD7850 2G. Got a GTX970 Strix and realized how much I have been missing. Significantly improved media encoder, Game streaming, smoother driver experience. Literally every driver update with AMD graphics REQUIRED me to use DDU (even AMD had to release tool for that LUL).

 

Nowadays DLSS is amazing, AMD's FSR 1.0 is garbage its like an VFX that just sharpens the image, it is yet to be seen if FSR2.0 can compete with DLSS. Nvidia's RT performance is also superior and it is clear that RT is going to be the next thing with games. Geforce Experience is also great for people who just want to click once to run the game at its appropriate settings, AMD attempted atleast twice to make a clone and at the end they gave up ditched their shitty rebranded app.

[TexasBulldog74]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

Never get a watercooled graphics card.

I have never owned a water cool anything, is there a specific reason why a GPU water-cooled would be a problem?  

[TexasBulldog74]

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

AIO will give up after a couple years, 3 if you're lucky, and you'll end up with an expensive PCIe paperweight that will need an aftermarket cooler to work again. Not worth it unless you run a custom loop with proper parts, plus if the pump on that one dies you can easily replace it and have it working again in no time.

oh i see... so by doing a custom loop it has more chance of being repairable/rebuildable as opposed to a closed system.  Good t know, I didn't consider that.

[jaslion]

23 hours ago, Caroline said:

Never get a watercooled graphics card.

I will always recommend it if you want silence. BUT only diy ones. Like the alphacool ones as they are VERY serviceable and have a great trackrecord.

[Gorn21]

It dosent matter if you are for nvidia or AMD in the end this cometetive environment is the best case for us consumers. The worst thing that can happen is that one brand dominates the market and progress stagantes because of that or prices ramp up. At the moment there are solid reasons to purchase AMD cards over nvidia even if i just upgraded to a 3080 instead of an AMD card myself.
But still i klike the direction this is going and if this trnd continues i will probably get an AMD card again with my next upgrade.

[Gorn21]

One last thing i would recommend to not make such an big purchase on Amazon. There are alot of scammers who either ship the completly wrong product or no product at all there even was a post about it not so lang agon on this forum.