nVidia vs AMD, stability and driver-wise.

[xByakko]

Hey guys, so my previous GPU died about 2~3 years ago and I've been reverted to my old GTX 550Ti for the time. I wanted to get a new GPU back then but I was fresh out of university so I didn't have to the time/funds for one. 

 

Long story short, I'm deciding on a value GPU until the next gen comes out whenever they will be. I'm eyeing the GTX 1060 or the RX 570/580. Not really looking at other GPU models. So my deciding factor right now is reliability and stability, in both hardware (i.e. known bugs or incompatibility) and software (i.e. driver issues).

 

If you have any experience you can share or reliable sources of information, please share below!

 

My local PC hardware stores are all in stock and I've done my research on pricing so I'm only looking to see if there are any reliability/stability concerns.

 

My usage scenario is fairly gentle. Mostly MMORPGs like Maplestory 2 and Black Desert Online, or MOBA games (i.e. LoL, DoTA 2). I also enjoy my Diablo 3. I am also expecting to play Monster Hunter: World on PC when it launches and assuming next gen GPU isn't out yet. I will play AAA games if any of them catches my eyes, but generally they aren't my cup of tea. I don't do any creative work nor any GPU based workloads other than games. 

 

I will be using 2x Dell P2418D 1440p Monitors at 60Hz, 1 main and 1 auxiliary.

 

Thanks in advance, cheers!

[Jurrunio]

They are somehow priced closely as well? Usually not the case, just asking.

 

Recently Nvidia does have a driver that causes gtx 1060 machines to fail to boot, but that's just an accident and newer drivers fixed the issue. It's equally possible for AMD to screw up their next driver update.

 

Hardware reliability-wise, it depends a lot more than AIB partner's QC than AMD and Nvidia's.

[AlTech]

Reliability and Stability wise, RX 480/580 is pretty decent. AMD drivers work well and I do quite like Radeon Software.

 

Occasionally Radeon Software may crash. In my experience, GFE also crashes. Generally, Nvidia drivers are less stable than AMD in my experience.

[cj09beira]

in the last few months nvidea has had many more driver problems that would affect your daily usage, and in consequence they have released a few hot fix drivers, so at least right now it seems amd is on top on the driver side

[samcool55]

Driver quality wise, basically equal i would say.

They all get regular updates (multiple updates every month) but that means they also mess up from time to time.

Function wise they are also similar, nvidia has shadowplay, amd has relive.

 

However (this is probably just me but i want to mention it), Nvidia has geforce experience, which requires an account. I really don't like that. 

If you don't mind creating an account for updating your driver, that's fine, it's something you need to decide for yourself.

 

Hardware wise, you can always get a dead card, sh*t happens. Haven't heard of any hardware issues. There is an issue with 780ti's and 980ti's blowing up their VRM as time goes on but it's rare and an older gen, up to you to decide if that matters or not.

[Bearded_Ed]

As someone who uses 3 different Nvidia cards a lot. Two at work - 1050 Ti and a Quadro K4000 plus My GTX 970 at home, I have noticed a huge amount on instability over the last few months directly related to GPU drivers.  However that doesn't mean there aren't sometimes issues with AMD GPUs as well. 

 

I'd say go with a either a 1060 6GB or a 580 4/8GB and be done with it. Which ever is best value in terms of cooling. 

[xByakko]

20 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

They are somehow priced closely as well? Usually not the case, just asking.

 

Recently Nvidia does have a driver that causes gtx 1060 machines to fail to boot, but that's just an accident and newer drivers fixed the issue. It's equally possible for AMD to screw up their next driver update.

 

Hardware reliability-wise, it depends a lot more than AIB partner's QC than AMD and Nvidia's.

They aren't that close, but it's in a close enough price bracket that I would consider. On promo, the pricing difference between the cheapest GTX1060 3GB and RX 570 is about $50 here (Just under $35 USD). I would say the difference in performance should justify the price difference. The price difference between 1060 6GB and RX580 8GB is just $20, so I consider it close enough as a purchase.

 

16 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Driver quality wise, basically equal i would say.

They all get regular updates (multiple updates every month) but that means they also mess up from time to time.

Function wise they are also similar, nvidia has shadowplay, amd has relive.

 

However (this is probably just me but i want to mention it), Nvidia has geforce experience, which requires an account. I really don't like that. 

If you don't mind creating an account for updating your driver, that's fine, it's something you need to decide for yourself.

 

Hardware wise, you can always get a dead card, sh*t happens. Haven't heard of any hardware issues. There is an issue with 780ti's and 980ti's blowing up their VRM as time goes on but it's rare and an older gen, up to you to decide if that matters or not.

 Yeah personally I've also had issues with GFE and wasn't too fond of it, but I just don't install it. I haven't experienced Radeon Software since my last AMD card was a 7870 from 5 years ago, and I sold it when I got an upgrade (which is the now dead GPU).

[O9B0666]

I have dual rx470's, at just 1 in my case and any game i've thrown at it in crossfire ive been happy with FPS and quality. I'd imagine the 580 8gb would be even better. But, amd's top card, doesnt compare to nvdia's top card where i believe nvdia out performs amd cards, and i've never owned anything but amd cards (until this 1180 or 2080 comes out, ill be making the switch.) I think you'd be happy with a 580 as i am with 2 lesser cards, and even 1 handles gta5 great, battlfefield 1 good.

[samcool55]

4 minutes ago, xByakko said:

They aren't that close, but it's in a close enough price bracket that I would consider. On promo, the pricing difference between the cheapest GTX1060 3GB and RX 570 is about $50 here (Just under $35 USD). I would say the difference in performance should justify the price difference. The price difference between 1060 6GB and RX580 8GB is just $20, so I consider it close enough as a purchase.

 

 Yeah personally I've also had issues with GFE and wasn't too fond of it, but I just don't install it. I haven't experienced Radeon Software since my last AMD card was a 7870 from 5 years ago, and I sold it when I got an upgrade (which is the now dead GPU).

I have atm 3 systems with RX 480's and the only driver issues i had in over a year is the corrupt cursor bug so i'm happy with the drivers actually. Especially since the relive stuff and in-game monitorring/ color adjusting i can do now, one of the systems has a freesync monitor and that works fine as well so that was a nice bonus too.

 

What i would do is compare the features they offer, decide which one you like and get that one.

I have amd cards, i'm happy with it and recommend them. 

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

idk why ppl talk bout nvidia bad drivers, havent had an driver issue in 15years time :v

 

amd i got bsod as soon i even tried one of the cards

[porina]

I've a selection of recent-ish nvidia and AMD GPUs (currently 970, 980 Ti, 1030, 1060 3GB, 1070, 1080Ti, RX 580, Vega 56).

 

For gaming stability, there isn't anything between them. nvidia occasionally release a duff driver but it feels like they do release a LOT more drivers than AMD do. I haven't had desktop stability problems with either.

 

Both have problems in other ways. Crossfire is just plain broken. It can be got to work, kinda, if you jump through the right hoops every time. Makes SLI seem like a breeze in comparison, although that's not perfect either. Also on the Wattman OC profiles, they seem highly hit or miss if they apply properly. It also feels like to me Win7 is 2nd class on AMD side and they those drivers miss the compute/graphical setting present in Win10.

 

Given all the above, I prefer nvidia overall but do have and use both.

[Shannon Chou]

1 hour ago, samcool55 said:

Driver quality wise, basically equal i would say.

They all get regular updates (multiple updates every month) but that means they also mess up from time to time.

Function wise they are also similar, nvidia has shadowplay, amd has relive.

 

However (this is probably just me but i want to mention it), Nvidia has geforce experience, which requires an account. I really don't like that. 

If you don't mind creating an account for updating your driver, that's fine, it's something you need to decide for yourself.

 

Hardware wise, you can always get a dead card, sh*t happens. Haven't heard of any hardware issues. There is an issue with 780ti's and 980ti's blowing up their VRM as time goes on but it's rare and an older gen, up to you to decide if that matters or not.

you don't even need to install GFE either way, i only use GFE for streaming or recording as i feel that it has less performance impact. Btw, you basically won't use GFE to update the driver as you'll need to DDU the older driver in order to install the new driver to prevent some issues, so update a new driver on top of the old driver is really not recommended. In addition to that, you basically won't even update your driver everytime they release a new driver build. They might even f**k up some game's performance on the newer driver, which they say "optimized".

[samcool55]

9 minutes ago, Shannon Chou said:

you don't even need to install GFE either way, i only use GFE for streaming or recording as i feel that it has less performance impact. Btw, you basically won't use GFE to update the driver as you'll need to DDU the older driver in order to install the new driver to prevent some issues, so update a new driver on top of the old driver is really not recommended. In addition to that, you basically won't even update your driver everytime they release a new driver build. They might even f**k up some game's performance on the newer driver, which they say "optimized".

Well i haven't used DDU since i got my cards and had no issues so far...

It can mess up, true, but i prefer to take the risk and upgrade right away, if it does mess up i can always do DDU.

Most people don't do DDU before they upgrade their drivers anyway. 

 

Crappy drivers can always happen but that can happen to both of them. I think this is more of a discussion of how and when you should update your drivers instead 

[xByakko]

Hm ok, these are some really good input. Thanks guys. So far it seems both side are fairly comparable in terms of driver quality/reliability. Some further chat with friends and looking at the links I was provided, it's given me some rather contradictory data in terms of performance between the GTX1060 6Gb and the RX580 8GB. So rather than asking for numbers since that seems to vary from source to source, I would like to know if anyone has tried both cards in various gaming situations and their experience with the cards. Or if you have used any one card for any period, what are your experiences with it? Any notable hiccups or issues that you've ran into, regardless of whether it's been resolved or not. So issues like artifacts, weird frame drops, unusual stutter/tearing, crashes, cursors disappearing, conflict with windows, etc, are what I would like to look into. Nothing frustrates a gamer more than when random things pop up and stop you from enjoying the game right?  

[S w a t s o n]

Personally I've had some problems with my switch to AMD from Nvidia, multiple DDU and driver reinstalls didn't help but I'm also using a beta driver because that's the only one for the April 2018 update. Youtube for instance just shits the bed for no reason, especially if i'm playing a demanding game.

 

My 770 had no problem playing a youtube video while playing a demanding game. On my RX 580 it will cause game crashes on boot if I have youtube playing at the same time or if I play the video after starting the game the video just stutters like crazy. Even a youtube video by itself will often freeze on a frame but continue playing audio. This happens at stock clocks or overclocked. Twitch is fine however.

I've also noticed more hitching in games that I previously played on my 680/770. I am playing at higher settings and higher frame rates but I get hitches noticeably more often. So far the AMD driver team has not impressed me, but the raw power of the card is good. They need to fix youtube and multimonitor and then I'll be happy. I'll reserve full judgement for their next WQHL driver.

Today I'll test if it's just Firefox Quantum with the youtube issue but even if it is, Nvidia seemed to be able to support it. Not a chrome fan but it might work for now.

Edit: Chrome at least doesn't crash but uses 10-20% more CPU resources and still struggles a bit.  I did test with a 4k 60fps video, but it was crashing on 1080p 30fps videos even. I hope the non-beta driver adds some stability
 

3 hours ago, xByakko said:

So issues like artifacts, weird frame drops, unusual stutter/tearing, crashes, cursors disappearing, conflict with windows, etc, are what I would like to look into.

[Humbug]

Stability and driver wise personally I have had better experiences with AMD.

 

But I would purchase the best card which you like in your price range, regardless of AMD or Nvidia. To be honest you can't go wrong with either one: GTX 1060 or RX 580.

[asus killer]

4 hours ago, xByakko said:

They aren't that close, but it's in a close enough price bracket that I would consider. On promo, the pricing difference between the cheapest GTX1060 3GB and RX 570 is about $50 here (Just under $35 USD). I would say the difference in performance should justify the price difference. The price difference between 1060 6GB and RX580 8GB is just $20, so I consider it close enough as a purchase.

 

 

rx570 is more comparable to 1050ti, not 1060 3gb

[Humbug]

4 minutes ago, asus killer said:

rx570 is more comparable to 1050ti, not 1060 3gb

Nope, 1050ti is way slower than rx570. Not comparable at all.

 

Even though the GTX 1060 is faster than a RX 570.

[asus killer]

13 minutes ago, Humbug said:

Nope, 1050ti is way slower than rx570. Not comparable at all.

 

Even though the GTX 1060 is faster than a RX 570.

i really thought 570 was closer to the 1050ti. My bad.