Price aside, why Nvidia over AMD GPUs? (or viceversa)

[Hi P]

So if we were to absolutely ignore the prices, why would you pick one over the other?

 

I'm just curious

[Ryuikko]

For what uses? In general nvidia is a more rounded card with more support for Adobe, so I'd probably go with nvidia if I had to choose between the 2. 

[Zando_]

I've had a shit time with drivers on AMD since AD2020 and a bit salty over how the Radeon VII just got completely forgotten after being a flagship card. Also heavily use DLSS and it's only very recently that FSR versions have become an actual competitor. Nvidia cards also give me more options if I ever move into 3D modeling or video editing or anything (as they're typically better supported), but then tbf I'd only be at a hobby level so being super optimal wouldn't really be important. 

[GameRetro]

I'd prefer an AMD GPU since I think they are overall better for gaming, but I need the NVENC magic for now and also RTX VOICE and similar benefits. For actual gaming I really don't care, but the encoding and RTX benefits for various applications has me stick to nVidia as a preference for now. Mind you I really really strongly dislike nVidia politics and pricing decision - the continuous increase of price and power consumption more than anything else.

[Shimejii]

Encoding for streaming still has Nvidia ahead, although probably not for long as thats mostly just software. The Dual encoder with 4000 is interesting.

 

For most of the AMD Vs NVidia history, AMD had always been a Budget option and NV would be the performance option. This has changed recently where both are pretty competitive and it comes down to what features or gimmicks you want.

 

Ray Tracing is still a waste to me, but some people like it.

 

Most people just like sticking with what works. Learning a new software suite and recording can be a pain, so some dont like the swap. 

[Hi P]

15 minutes ago, Ryuikko said:

For what uses? In general nvidia is a more rounded card with more support for Adobe, so I'd probably go with nvidia if I had to choose between the 2. 

General usage, anything

 

14 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

The Dual encoder with 4000 is interesting.

Ray Tracing is still a waste to me, but some people like it.

Haven't heard about the dual encoder, I will look it up

Also, wasn't something like "Path Tracing" coming up? I think I saw a video on it, it will still take years for adoption...

 

 

I find it interesting nobody has mentioned to prefer AMD

[DildorTheDecent]

My balls are firmly in the G-SYNC vice.

[Giannak]

probaly nvidia becuase there names sound cooler. Radeon 5700xt vs GEFORCE RTX 3080

[FeIIex]

Mostly comes down to weird quirks when I had AMD. Minecraft with shaders would have bad frametimes, every couple seconds my FPS drops to sub 10 for a second, then back up. The nvidia gpu at the exact same settings runs at a constant 144 fps (16 view distance, complementary shaders with shadows set to 16, Versions 1.17 and 1.18) Even the 1080 Ti I used to have didn't have these issues.

 

7 days to die runs like crap regardless of hardware, but in Alpha 19, the AMD gpu would have sub 20 fps while either moving your character or your camera, even when set to 1080p. Coil whine was abnormally loud only in this instance as well. Turning shadows off had the game run as expected. Fixed in alpha 20, but that issue was never present in Alpha 19 with the nvidia card.

 

Left 4 Dead 2 at this point should be a CPU bound game, running at hundreds of frames per second with any modern system. The AMD card would drop down to 50 fps during hordes (90 with Vulkan enabled), where the nvidia card only drops down to 295 in the same situations.

 

When the AMD GPU worked as intended, I loved it. Borderlands 3, Metro Edodus Enhanced and heavily modded Skyrim ran like a dream. Unfortunately for most of what I played it was unable to deliver consistent framerates. All of this said, the issues, minus 7DTD as alpha 20 was out at the time, I had were completely absent when I demoed Manjaro Linux for two months. Leading me to believe AMD's Windows drivers are to blame. Had to DDU AMD's drivers a few times due to failed updates, or Windows breaking the adrenaline software.

 

GPUs in question are the 6900 XT and 3080 Ti, paired with a 5900x running at 3840 x 1600. Had a chance to side grade for a few hundred bucks and took it.

[fisterkev]

First... why would we ignore price? It matters *a lot* to most people. And there is a difference.

 

Now that that's out of the way, the rest.

 

1) AMD's driver support has in the past been... spotty, let's say. I do think, though, that they're pretty much fixed that with RDNA 2. Adrenalin is actually a superior suite IMHO compared to Nvidia's offering, and driver updates are typically coming at 1-2 per month now. My current Radeon cards have been hiccup-free for quite a while now. I can't say the same about RDNA 1 and previous offerings. But, even though this has largely been fixed, there's still a perception that Nvidia has superior software/driver support. That'll probably remain the perception for a while, until AMD demonstrates that they can maintain what they've done with RDNA 2.

 

2) If you care about ray tracing, then Nvidia is superior. Hands down, it's not even close.

 

3) If you care about DLSS or FSR, Nvidia still has the edge there, too. 

 

4) If you care about rasterization and the pure FPS you're gonna get per dollar or per watt, then AMD has the edge with the current gen. That may or may not change with next gen. 

 

But really, you can't take the cost out of this equation. How do you even compare cards without that? If you're not using cost, then you're arbitrarily lumping cards into tiers, but that's not how 99.9% of people evaluate cards. Cost has to factor in.

[Sat1600]

You can't ignore price. I would take an rx 6800 xt over an rtx 3050 any day. But those are wildly different classes of cards.

 

In general Nvida has a better feature set and more refined drivers. AMD is usually better priced frame per frame. AMDs user interface is way better than Nvidia's. And AMD until now has usually supported their GPUs for much longer than Nvidia. 

[Hi P]

20 minutes ago, fisterkev said:

First... why would we ignore price? It matters *a lot* to most people. And there is a difference.

19 minutes ago, Sat1600 said:

You can't ignore price.

 

I purposely mentioned to ignore the price so that people could focus on the performance / features / etc

[xg32]

2 hours ago, Hi P said:

 

.

nvidia's faster for 4k in general, for 1440p and 1080pamd is way better bang for buck, better color sharpness out of box (maybe im just crazy, not trying to debate this), but the amount of work it takes to get the amd driver to function in individual games is more than what the average consumer should do.

[fisterkev]

1 hour ago, Hi P said:

 

I purposely mentioned to ignore the price so that people could focus on the performance / features / etc

It's sort of a meaningless comparison when you take the price out of consideration. You could end up comparing a RX 550 and a RTX 3090 Ti...

 

You really, truly can't compare specific cards - especially performance - without factoring in price. All that you can do is talk generalities like "Nvidia is generally better at ray tracing" or "AMD is better at pure rasterization". But again, how do you even say that without comparing like to like - and how do you do that if you don't consider price?

 

Because a RX 6900 XT is gonna trace those rays better than a RTX 2060, and a RTX 3090 Ti is gonna push more pixels than a RX 550...

 

It's a meaningless discussion without considering price, really.

[Birblover12]

I like Nvidia cards because of Nvidia NVEC (Nvidia's special encoder) because using it with OBS really makes a difference. Nvidia Broadcast is also nice, as it genuinely makes a HUGE difference if you have a lot of background noise in your mic. There's also some creator level stuff you get, but I don't care for it personally.

 

Ray Tracing is a waste of time imo, there's just not enough games that support it. I like using it because I have a 1080P 60HZ monitor so might as well turn it on as long as I hit 60 FPS.

 

Main thing is DLSS, it makes a night and day difference in supported games compared to stock GPU performance. AMD has FSR but I haven't seen it implemented in as many games as DLSS does.

 

 

[Hi P]

46 minutes ago, fisterkev said:

You could end up comparing a RX 550 and a RTX 3090 Ti...

I mean you could compare flagships from same gen, which would be the best from both companies... then call it a day

[Slizzo]

RTX, DLSS, G-Sync. I've been on G-Sync monitors for a while though (with module) so I was locked to NVIDIA up until my current X34S.

 

Still, will buy NVIDIA since I don't want to deal with the hassle of swapping out monitors when I don't need to.

[DeerDK]

I currently have a MSI 3060, but i really wanted a Sapphire card. (thanks GPU crisis)

Reason: Noise and size. I used to have an ITX build but the new GPU is too thick for my Node 304 case. I had shopped long and hard to find a quiet card that could fit, and the Sapphire x600 cards seems to fit the bill. They are AMD only, so thats why i wish for an AMD card for christmas (JK, i have to buy it myself - my wife is not getting me one xD )

[ewitte]

Its usually features that have kept me with Nvidia.  I was really big on DLSS with the 3000 series but if FSR 2.0 gets good support and a 7900xt can hit 4k120 frequently I don't need anything more as that is my limit.  I also like to enable ray tracing hopefully they are in the ballpark this generation.  If they can get at least twice as fast as a 3090ti in ray tracing I'm fine.

 

EDIT: I may find I need the encoding I haven't done too much editing yet but I got a much better camera that does up to 400Mbit 4k60 h265

[XxCyrexX]

I do a lot of emulation and most emulators just run better on Nvidia cards.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Nvidia has the edge on most CGI applications.

 

Intel and AMD better start catching up soon.

[X-System]

I pick Nvidia for RTX and DLSS.

[Hi P]

8 hours ago, ewitte said:

I was really big on DLSS with the 3000 series but if FSR 2.0 gets good support and a 7900xt can hit 4k120 frequently I don't need anything more as that is my limit.

Are you interested in the DLS 3.0? IIRC it will only be available for 4000 series, right?

[BuzzingBee]

Unfortunately price difference is the main reason me and my siblings went with AMD instead of Nvidia. In Australia the price gap between two brands is worse and our main priority is cost per frame. 

 

There's also unique reasons as well. For me I still use Eyefinity for some games but with weirdo setup which AMD can do but Nvidia can't. For my sister she swapped 2080 for 6600XT because she had difficulty getting G-sync to work on particular game while viewing stream/discord (other games were fine though).

 

If Nvidia and AMD priced around the same I would mostly go with Nvidia for extra gimmicks. DLSS, RT and NVENC would be nice to have. But instead back in early 2021 I chose 6800XT over 3080 10G because of Eyefinity and fear of lacking vram. Coming from AMD Fury I did lack vram despite still performing well for 1080p, so in my mindset I prefer not doing the same mistake again. 

[AkikoKumagara]

On 9/20/2022 at 6:27 PM, Hi P said:

I find it interesting nobody has mentioned to prefer AMD

I prefer AMD, but I have intentionally been avoiding RDNA since the first gen of the new architecture, opting instead to grab a Radeon VII when they were available for $550 USD.

 

I like AMD for the more optimal Linux experience and the option to use with macOS, both things I personally benefit from. While Nvidia's gimmicks are nice, and their drivers are unarguably better *in Windows*, that's not what's important to me.

 

I plan to stick with AMD for my next upgrade, as I always have, but I tend to recommend Nvidia GPUs to most people I give build advice to, or those who I build for. I also hope to get a fully matured arch when I do upgrade, as I felt I more or less managed to do with the Radeon VII.