AMD or NVIDIA video cards?

Technology and Gaming
#1

I’m using an AMD whats or something right now, and it’s about time to upgrade. What are the pros and cons to each company in general, and what is a good video card to look for? I want something GOOD, but I’m not shelling out a grand for a vid card if I can help it. Something around the $400 to $600 mark? I’m open for all suggestions even if they fall outside the price range though.

Oh, and if any side has advantages for Skyrim, DO WANT.

EDIT: Alright, and at the risk of looking like I have no idea what I’m doing here are the system specs I could scrounge up. Let me know if you need more and where I can find it.

System Model: nForce 750i SLI
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

#2

Well generally, as most people are well aware of, AMD has better prices for the power of their cards compared to Nvidia, but that’s also offset by their poor driver support and in many cases AMD cards simply perform below what they should even though some are superior physically to their Nvidia counterparts.

I can’t help you with AMD current gen though, as after I went through my HD 4870 x2 driver hell I switched to Nvidia.

Since your price range is $400-$600 on the nvidia side I’d recommend maybe a GTX 680 since that is just under $500 I believe.

If you want to hear from experience I have a friend who bought a GTX 580 and it’s more than capable of running current and past gen games as well as probably most new releases: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130587

It’s probably the only card I’ve ever seen that almost managed to get 100 fps in part of the island map in Crysis - which is saying a lot.

If you don’t mind going cheaper, a good budget card is the GTX 560 Ti. It’s an excellent card for the price, and I can also pretty much max out everything I own including BF3 (minus DX11 Crysis 2 - it dips down to the 30s in a lot of places on max, but that’s not really optimized so I don’t think I can go by that)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130683

And Nvidia has several skyrim advantages, such as different types of AA and driver-enforced SSAO - if you like SSAO that is.

I would definitely research some more of the newly released GFX cards though, as I’m sure many are in your price range.

#3

I pick Nvidia simply for the kickass driver advantages (FXAA and Adaptive V-Sync in all games) and GPU Phys-X.

#4

I always stick to Nvidia never had any problems and drivers are (almost) always good. I actually play alot of old games and find I can always run whats I need on Nvidia, sometimes a tweak is needed in the control panel, but there is always a way to make a game work.

I use to run a computer business, granted it was a while ago and I used some (back then) ATI cards (now AMD) and I had a few go down and had to replace under warranty and I hated the driver/software package. This was a while ago, but bad experiences put me off. Never had a single glitch with Nvidia cards with customers. When you run a business, you cant afford to mess about!

If you only want to play new-ish games and worried about cost, maybe AMD, but if you want better compatibility and decent drivers go for Nvidia.

People may disagree, but you asked, thats my opinion :slight_smile:

At the end of the day, they have all proven them selves one way or anther, so you cant go too wrong! Look at what you play? Do you need Direct x 11 support, do you run at high resolution and need more VRAM??

#5

I myself am using nvidia now since I feel amd has lost all of its advantages.
400-600$ you should be able to get the beastiest of single gpu card from both companies, that said the rest of your rig would be a huge bottleneck. The gtx680 and hd7970 are almost exactly the same in price and performance, but the nvida card is smaller, quieter and less power consuming. + the better drivers.

#6

FXAA is outdated though and doesn’t look even good. AMD has a similar technique that delivers the same poor quality. Nvidia has introduced TXAA with the new 6series which is basicly a mix between MSAA and FXAA. The quality and performance is much more better than simple 8XMSAA and of course FXAA.
Edit: The game specifically needs to support TXAA.

#7

Bloodshot has your answer right there. I agree 100% with him.
If you did manage to get an AMD that was perfect it would out-perform it’s Nvidia counterpart.

The only thing i would add to Bloodshots detail is, if you are running more than 1 especialy 3 monitors i would go for the 3gig 580 rather than the 1.5gig. I did a lot of searching when i was thinking of getting my 580, and yes the 3 gig does outperform the 1.5 580GTX but only very marginaly. The 3 gig one only comes into its own when using more than 1 monitor when running the latest games “apparently”. I guess this is just on the games right now, maybe later a year or so and games use more it may outperform the 1.5gig by a bigger margin.

I can also confirm that the 580 is more than capable of running the latest games with everything on… and no gittering that i have seen.
Also keep in mind that the new 600 series isnt always going to be better than the 580-590 card. I think i read that the 660 is probably on par with the 580, anything lower is not. Check yourself to confirm that though, i do remember reading something to that effect but im not 100% sure about the cards involved in the test.

#8

Okay, I’ll start having a browse around. Skyrim is pretty well my main game right now, just like Oblivion was for years prior. I’d like a card/system that can handle obscene amounts of modding.

With that said, it brings me to my other question; What other parts of this machine should I be upgrading here? I know I bought a simple little motherboard, is that going to cause me problems? If I were to upgrade Ram or CPU, which would I get a better performance boost out of?

EDIT: Also, my monitor is a 1920x1080, if that matters any.

EDIT: EDIT: Would anyone be recommending the gtx590 over the gtx680 (price aside)?

#9

Hmm…your specs look pretty good, so I think you’d be ok. Your motherboard is fine, getting an expensive motherboard pretty much only matters if you want to overclock or if you want a ton of features.

The thing is, if you want to upgrade anything besides your GPU, you might as well just upgrade it all, since the stuff worth buying now is on the 1155 chipset. That would require a new motherboard, CPU and RAM altogether, but for your money, I think you’ll find it would be a lot better than slapping some more RAM or a somewhat faster CPU onto your existing PC.

In the end though, I think you’re fine just getting a new GPU. As for the 590, besides price, I think you’d have to find it still…newegg doesn’t even have it anymore. I’d say go with the 680. My friend has modded out Skyrim with all sorts of ridiculous graphics mods and it still runs the game great.

#10

Okay, that sounds awesome then. I’m pretty new to the hardware side of computers, thanks everyone for your help.

I’ll go with the 680, I’ll even save a few bucks on NCIX if I order it now. I don’t know when I’ll get it though, it’s out of stock everywhere.

#11

Get Nvidia. AMD’s Catalyst crap is broke as hell.

#12

This isn’t necessarily related to the main topic of this thread but I read some benchmarks of the 680 and, hardware wise, it is the best GPU out now, but it apparently underperforms some GPUs out now. Is it possible for that performance to improve with better drivers, or is it stuck like that?

#13

Nvidia regularly releases beta drivers that improve performance in many games so it’s not unlikely

#14

It’s hardly outdated, but whether it looks good or not is for the eyes of the beholder to decide. For many Unreal Engine games that use transparency textures, MSAA just will not work for them, so we are left without an AA alternative aside from ones that Nvidia provides with their drivers. I find FXAA much more appealing to the eyes than the jaggies in this case.

#15

I own a Xfire of 6950HD’s

Never had any problem on any game atm but sometimes they seem to heat alot, and sometimes when running a poor game (The sims 3) I have 100 GPU usage, so yea, drivers are pretty bad.

Next GFX I get will be Nvidia, cos I want to try the 3D stuff soon, I heard it works really nice on PC’s.

#16

I have an HD5870 and can’t decide whether I want to upgrade or not :confused: .

Edit: I have an i5 760 @ 3.5GHz, would that be a bottleneck if I got a 680?

#17

Actually, I really like catalyst for what it is worth.

Oh, there’s one other thing that I’d like to know, does steam automatically find and install Nvidia drivers like it does with AMD, or am I going to have to find those myself? Not a big issue but still, it’s one thing I really do like about this current card.

Also, I read a while ago about having to use a driver sweeper program if you are changing cards, is that true, or will just uninstalling them from the control panel work?

#18

No. The 760 is still a champ in current games and will probably last you for quite a while still.

There’s the same option in Steam to check for graphics driver updates, but it just sends you to the driver download page of Nvidia’s site. No worries though, as long as you know what your card is, downloading and installing the drivers is a breeze.

Regarding the driver sweeper, I wouldn’t say you HAVE to, just that it might be a good idea. There can sometimes be problems if the old drivers get improperly uninstalled, but in my experience it’s quite rare. I swapped from a Radeon 4890 to a GTX 560 ti about a month ago and I just uninstalled from the control panel, haven’t had any issues whatsoever.

#19

My tip: you get what you pay for
AMD is cheaper, but Nvidia is better quality.

#20

Nvidia control panel has a auto update feature now. If that refuses to work just subscribe to the newsletter to find out when new drivers have dropped.
As someone said there are more powerful cards than the 680 and the 7970, that’s because these cards are multi gpu, basically 2 cards in one. 590 is essentially two down clocked 580s in one. &80 is still best performance for the money in my mind, with physx and such.

And for 3dvision, it does look great sometimes, but many games look weird or are much harder to play with in turned on + the performance hit is sually huge.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.