Thinking about jumping ship on nVidia

[Barnacules]

Hey Guys/Gals,

 

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to possibly ditching nVidia as my GPU of choice and moving to the dark side (AMD/ATI). I have been having non-stop driver problems with nVidia fro what seems like the last year and they simply just have too many problems with 4 monitor scenarios w/ surround enabled on Windows 8+. nVidia is aware of the bugs and claim they are looking for fixes but then multiple driver drops occur and nothing has been gained. I keep hearing that AMD has had a lot better multiple-monitor experience overall and that is what I'm all about!

 

I keep hearing that SLI > XFire so if you want multiple GPU's nVidia is king but I would like to hear some thoughts from you guys on the matter. Also I've recently got into LiteCoin mining just for fun and I hear that AMD cards excel at it hugely which also makes me think they might excel at some other tasks like 3D rendering, video rendering, etc. What are your thoughts on this?

 

I would like to know what you guys think the ideal setup would be for stability and performance with 4 monitors (3 of them as a single display in game)? Right now I have twin EVGA GTX 680 FTW+ editions in SLI and I run Windows 8.1 64bit.

[whatthe_fuzz]

In about 5-6days time of casual mining, I've gotten around 1.2LTC with a single 7970. 

Now's probably the worst time to buy AMD. All prices have skyrocketed due to mining. 

[CwGoh]

SLI is indeed better as it has hardware on the cards that pace the frames properly so that the animation will not stutter. Whereas AMD traditionally just let the frames go out when they are ready, creating inconsistent frame times. They only started fixing it early this year, and has it improved for single monitor scenarios. Triple monitor frame pacing is expected to come out in January, but software will still lose out to hardware solutions.

 

The way AMD handles Eyefinity with triple displays is better than Nvidia Surround as AMD has been working on drivers with triple monitors and is ahead of Nvidia right now. However, if you want to play games at that high of a resolution you may have to go SLI/XFire and in that case, go Nvidia.

 

AMD cards' pricing has also skyrocketed due to Litecoin mining. Wait for prices to stabilize before buying.

[PillowSmoke]

Hey Guys/Gals,

 

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to possibly ditching nVidia as my GPU of choice and moving to the dark side (AMD/ATI). I have been having non-stop driver problems with nVidia fro what seems like the last year and they simply just have too many problems with 4 monitor scenarios w/ surround enabled on Windows 8+. nVidia is aware of the bugs and claim they are looking for fixes but then multiple driver drops occur and nothing has been gained. I keep hearing that AMD has had a lot better multiple-monitor experience overall and that is what I'm all about!

 

I keep hearing that SLI > XFire so if you want multiple GPU's nVidia is king but I would like to hear some thoughts from you guys on the matter. Also I've recently got into LiteCoin mining just for fun and I hear that AMD cards excel at it hugely which also makes me think they might excel at some other tasks like 3D rendering, video rendering, etc. What are your thoughts on this?

 

I would like to know what you guys think the ideal setup would be for stability and performance with 4 monitors (3 of them as a single display in game)? Right now I have twin EVGA GTX 680 FTW+ editions in SLI and I run Windows 8.1 64bit.

 

yea first off, right now is like the worst time to head over to the dark side. The prices of card have been driven up due to the popularity of litecoin mining. Talk for example a 7970, they would normally be selling for eh maybe around $350 or so, but now the prices have skyrocketed to somewhere around +$400.

 

If you do plan on buying a amd card I suggest getting a R9 290x with a aftermarket cooler preferably from Asus or something. Anyways I welcome you to the dark side, where we are ever-so improving with drivers. 

[MegaTechPC]

You should go with whatever works best in your system for you.  Both Nvidia and AMD make fantastic products but one will always work better for you and your setup better than the other and the trick is figuring out which that is.  There is no superior video card manufacturer; just superior for you...

[Barnacules]

All great information guys, thank you! I didn't realize that whole BitCoin mining fad had driven up prices on AMD GPU's that is actually kind of funny I'm surprised nVidia isn't working on making their own digital currency that nVidia cards excel at mining hehe.

[TechFan@ic]

I want to point out that both the R9 290X & R9 290 have a hardware XDMA engine for frame pacing and it works in eyefinity and single monitor modes.
You will want to wait for a few weeks until non-reference designs are out and pricing is back in order.

UPDATE : Holy crap, I've only just noticed that it's Barnacules !

[DeViLzzz]

Nvidia has physX.  If you want to play games the way they are meant to be played go with the Green Team.

[TheProfosist]

All I can say is ive been having my own issues with 3+ monitors and not running surround to the point where I got a 640 to run the 3 auxilary monitors. I know its not the same but nvidias really got to step up as its ones of the areas amd is doing better in.

[S1lentThund3r]

Nvidia has physX.  If you want to play games the way they are meant to be played go with the Green Team.

That's like the worst advice I've ever seen. That's a small feature out of a much bigger purchase, for a technology that can be done on the CPU. And isn't anything to do with his question. And doesn't address his desire to go into mining. 

[fojacko]

Nvidia has physX.  If you want to play games the way they are meant to be played go with the Green Team.

 

As someone who has only owned nvidia cards. I can safely say that physx really doesn't change your experience, with Borderlands 2, i looked at the effects, said "cool" then noticed my reduced framerate so i turned it off.

 

Also, wait a few months or so for people to buy cards for mining, after that, LTC (i have no idea if that's the right abrieveation) will be harder to earn so demand will drop.

[Titanicium]

As someone who has only owned nvidia cards. I can safely say that physx really doesn't change your experience, with Borderlands 2, i looked at the effects, said "cool" then noticed my reduced framerate so i turned it off.

 

Also, wait a few months or so for people to buy cards for mining, after that, LTC (i have no idea if that's the right abrieveation) will be harder to earn so demand will drop.

 

I mainly agree with what you say, but in games which is "sponsored" by Nvidia like Borderlands 2, Batman: Arkham Origins, AC4, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and so on PhysX makes the game look better.

 

And for some that matters so saying that you should go Nvidia because of PhysX may be a weak argument, but it´s still a plus for Nvidia.