Why would you purchase AMD over Nvidia?

[mr moose]

Why?  just why?  There is no intrinsic or universal reason to choose one company over the other,  time of purchase, country of purchase and budget play a bigger role than any brand specific issues.

 

So unless all of a sudden one company starts producing absolute shit (breaks down all the time and drivers crash mid game every half an hour) then all you need is a budget and minimum requirements,  get the card that meets your requirements the closest and that you can afford.  End of story, you don't need to worry if its red or green anymore. Drivers are hardly an issue, power draw is not going to be that much higher that you'll have to change PSU's and the end result will, in all honesty, not be notably different.

 

I recommend AMD more than nividia, I am still using a fermi,  my next card will probably be either the 290x or the 970 (it'll be next year so no idea which will be cheaper).

[Mush Brain]

Just want to say thanks for keeping this thread clean so far, a good read.

[szomeret]

It was cheap and good enough. I still play all the games I want, they are plenty fast and look OK.

I don't have much else than that. I've never had issues with AMD products in the past. Evaluation determined price vs. performance was slightly in favor of AMD at the time. Why change it up?

[Sargent Mustard]

To be fair, I am an AMD fanboy. I love my AMD cards. My current being a Sapphire 280x Toxic that cost me way to much than it should of have (simply because of where I live) and my old HD6850 that couldn't play any modern game beyond 720p.

But with recent developments, Nvidia has the upper hand. Unless the 300 series coming in February can obliterate the new 970 and 980 whilst consuming less power while also costing less, I'd say AMD are starting to slip behind. AMD needs to step up their tech instead of just adding 'more' to everything and hoping developers will work around them.

[anterosnim]

Rolling crossfire R9 280 but am looking at the green team possibly for my next upgrade. Rolling a tipple monitor setup so we will see what works best for my situation.

 

I need some good games to make the upgrade worth while because at the moment with my options its just not worth while.

[Syraz]

This is one of most calm cool collected amd vs nvidia threads I have seen in awhile...

that being said

what about 3dFX!

[mr moose]

@Syraz

 

As a 3dfx owner it makes me sad every time I am reminded of their demise.   Still they live on deep inside Nvidia's SLI technology.

[mark201200]

Better Price

[Syraz]

Sad about 3dfx...memories of them and DFI will always remind me of my roots..

[DildorTheDecent]

At the moment, Nvidia personally for me. Most of their cards run cooler, suck less power, are more efficent, and the new GTX 980 can go 4-way SLI. Nvidia has Shadowplay, and as you mentioned, PhysX. (Though I haven't looked into PhysX much.).

But the power and cooling issue shouldn't effect anybody these days. Evebeybidy usually has at least 500-600Ws sitting about. The 290 can do four way xfire. Four way xfire and SLi are both crap.

[Briggsy]

@DildorTheDecent 

 

so true. with SLI/Crossfire, even a 3-way is messy at times. 

[minicale]

Currently I see no reason to go for any AMD card over Nvidia because now Nvidia is priced competitivly but  before the 900 series though it was pretty neck and neck in my opinion AMD was the better value but Nvidia has gsync, better frame timings and drivers etc.

[eelnico09]

Before the 900 series AMD all the way, much cheaper for similar performance, right now, i'd get a 970 over a 290x (and i did) any day of the week.

 

I have a 7950, and i've been with AMD since 2010, last nvidia gpu i got was a 8500gt in 2009, a 7850 from 2010 to 2013 when i bought the 7950 vapor-x i now have, which lasted untill i get the 970 i ordered which will arrive next week. Also i've heard that SLI runs better than Crossfire, idk if it's because of drivers ir whatever, and a bunch of stuff that would give nvidia the lead, but in the end, we'll need to wait for the R9 300 series to see if amd is still the king of the price-performance, or if nvidia took that spot(a very strong, important, spot that amd had, at least on the high end gpus)

[Guest]

Better price/performance ratio, better performance at higher resolutions (right now), I want to support the underdog and keep the competition healthy, they promote open and free standards over Nvidias proprietary stuff that tries to lock you down all the time, they're way more liberal with VRAM on their cards, they have not introduced an "inbetween" card like the titan that gates more VRAM (something that could be useful in games) behind a 1000$ pricepoint and tries to justify it by saying it's a cuda developer card while still marketing it as a gaming GPU. I think that's about it, CF R9 290s are amazing value right now and I love 'em.

[Paul_VB]

I prefer AMD because of ther prices and open standards (like freesync). also, ive had MUCH better overclocking exepriences with amd cards.

 

story time: My first gaming graphics card was a GTX 570. brand new, a pretty high-end gpu for its day. it was like $300. i couldnt overclock it AT ALL. it would crash with a 20mhz OC on minecraft. (and yes, i did try everything to OC it. overvolting, undervolting, flashing custom bioss, even buying an $80 aftermarket cooler: the Accelero Xtreme III). then i got a pair of refurbished HD 7850s. Used mid-range cards mind you. these babies overclock like the bee's knees. it was as easy as moving the gpu clock rate slider in afterburner from  860MHz to 1050Mhz and it was rock stable. i got 'em to 1075 by bumping the voltage a smidge from 1.138v to 1.145v

 

TL:DR, amd overclocks and Nvidia can't

 

As for power consumption, i really don't care. the power differences with these cards is like $7 per year in terms of extra power costs

[Mush Brain]

@Paul_VB My GTX 480 was a crazy overclocker...  725mhz stock clock, i hit a max of 950mhz, and it was stable under BF3 LOL.

 

 

[hadesjoy72]

I have had both camp's cards in multiple rigs over the years....just prefer AMD.  Mainly the price is my deciding factor only second by performance indicators.  My current 290 is perfect for what I do....waiting on the 300 series and after about six months of them being out, if the marks look ok, I will give my son the 290 (currently, he uses a 7970)  and move to a 300 series card.  Not saying I would not use Nvidia, but their price needs to roll down some.....

[Paul_VB]

nvm.. wrong forum post lol

[Scarymonkeys]

But the power and cooling issue shouldn't effect anybody these days. Evebeybidy usually has at least 500-600Ws sitting about. The 290 can do four way xfire. Four way xfire and SLi are both crap.

I actually didn't know that. That's good to know..Also, just curious and not starting a fight, what causes 4-way SLI to be so messy?

[D3MON]

Nvidia overclocks higher.

"clockspeed doesn't matter"

 

@D3MON Fix your grammar and punctuation please.

Sorrry, I forgot to care.

[DildorTheDecent]

I actually didn't know that. That's good to know..Also, just curious and not starting a fight, what causes 4-way SLI to be so messy?

Games not taking advantage of it. Also the amount of money spent on the cards would be rather silly. 

[boboman342]

When I saw the gtx 970 beat out the r9 290x in all benchmarks but at 4k medium settings (while being cooler/drawing less power), I knew amd was fucked. I dunno if I should grab an r9 290 for $190, or 970, or wait and see what the future holds...my r9 270x is fine for now.

[Pomfinator]

I actually didn't know that. That's good to know..Also, just curious and not starting a fight, what causes 4-way SLI to be so messy?

I think anything higher than regular SLI will need to go through something other than PCIe, can't remember it off the top of my head, causing additional latency.

[rockmassif]

AMD Advantages: Provides 3-4GB VRAM(which is something I really need) for their high end cards, cheaper, AMD fanboys

NVIDIA Advantages: Got more partners in the industry, better driver support, much better utility compared to shitty CCC, NVIDIA fanboys, Overclocks much better

 

For me the story is just like this.

 

I ain't gonna like, if 780Ti had 4GB VRAM, I wouldn't even consider with going 290X.

[xAcid9]

So this is my story. 

 

Before i got my 7950, i had few choices between Sapphire 7950 Vapor-X ($330), MSI GTX660Ti PE ($360), Leadtek GTX670 Ref ($360). That time the driver for 7950 was below average, it performed below 660 Ti most of the times and the frametime was a mess.

I picked the 7950 because it overclock better than the other 2 and gambled that AMD will fix their driver. Not to mention it come with the 1st Never Settle Game Bundle which i want for FC3 & Hitman. 

 

A week after i got my card, AMD released Never Settle Reloaded. They posted in Facebook that any purchase made a week before was eligible for that bundle. So i email them my receipt and they gave me Never Settle Reloaded coupon. In the end i got a total of 6 free games that will cost me around $200. At the same time, AMD released a new performance driver that fixed the frametime on a single card. I couldn't be happier, now my card perform better than a 660Ti at boost clock. When fully overclock, it perform better than a GTX680 and with that extra VRAM i can play newer games with higher setting. 

 

Around Q4 2013, i tried coin mining for a couple of months, made a profit of $350. Used all that money to buy more steam games. lel