AMD vs. Nvidia

[Grooveriding]

This poll confirms something I've always thought about Anandtech. There are a whole lot of AMD users on this forum....more than NVidia perhaps, which is quite strange given that NVidia supposedly has the much greater marketshare.

Or is it just that AMD users are more vocal?

It's more likely that on a tech forum you'll have people more informed about hardware. So they'll be more aware of how cards all genuinely perform when stacked up against one another and how much they cost. From that context AMD cards usually make a lot more sense.

This is backed up by if looking closer at who is running AMD GPUs and you see that many of the AMD users, even in this thread, are not running AMD CPUs but using Intel. If they were all gung-ho AMD they would be running an AMD CPU as well, but most aren't because as they are informed they know Intel offer better performance and the price also makes sense.

The majority of PC gamers are not going to be hardware tech enthusiasts but just enjoy gaming. In those cases nvidia has that Apple type brand power, better marketing and winds up in more machines due to that. They also generally carry the halo card crown which contributes to that brand power and marketing, but most don't actually buy those halo cards, they will buy a lower-nvidia card partly just because they have the best card around. I think it makes quite a bit of sense. On these forums when you do see nvidia, often it's people using X80 cards because they are the fastest available not because it's nvidia. Considering the $500+ cards make up a very tiny sliver of the market, it's reasonable that informed graphics cards buyers like you'd find on this forum who are not going for the top tier cards will go AMD as AMD GPUs make a lot more sense than nvidia when you are considering price/perf.

Source: myself. For my machine I have nvidia because I want what is fastest, but for my wife's computer where she needs a decent card to play a few DX9 games, there is a 7950 in it. Because it makes a hell of a lot more sense to get an AMD card when you are spending $300(at the time) and not looking for the best performance, but the best performance for your $.

People tend to see this sort of conspiracy about AMD and video cards here, but when you're not emotionally invested in one brand or the other, it's hard to miss that AMD cards are almost always a better choice when you are trying to get the fastest card for your money. So long as you're not interested in having the penultimate best card available, in which case you don't care about perf/$. Even then AMD has its moments where they do have the best, but nvidia historically has sat in that chair for longer durations than AMD.

 

[Kenmitch]

I'm going to agree with Tential here. If you were to ask 10 people on the street which company they would chose for a graphics card, the statistics say that 6-7 out of those 10 would reply "nVidia", but your average AT forum poster is probably more informed than your average joe about the state of the graphics card market. In other words, your informed consumer would be able to see through the marketing hype from both companies and chose a card which meets their personal requirements, one of which is definitely value. For those in the know, AMD typically provides more bang per buck than their nVidia counterparts. Without this knowledge, your average consumer has nothing else to base their decision on besides what they've heard from friends and peers, and that is where having great marketing rakes in the big bucks.

The average Joe/Jane you'd ask on the street would most likely not have a clue what your talking about. Of course a study like this could be swayed by choosing people exiting a special event, microcenter, frys, etc.

Bang for buck at time of need is the logical way to purchase gpus. When I purchased it was mostly just because I wanted to play Tomb Raider. The 7870 was good bang for buck at the time and included Tomb Raider for free. Comparable nvidia card wasn't cost effective at the time.

 

[MBrown]

AMD. Rig is sig.

 

[Mastercommander]

I haven't had any issues with the newest Nvidia release on my 780, but imo GPU boost 2.0 [is ineffective] for overclocking, and these things basically require an modded vbios if you want to get the most out of them.

Nvidia BIOSes are pretty easy to mod

 

[railven]

The average Joe/Jane you'd ask on the street would most likely not have a clue what your talking about. Of course a study like this could be swayed by choosing people exiting a special event, microcenter, frys, etc.

Bang for buck at time of need is the logical way to purchase gpus. When I purchased it was mostly just because I wanted to play Tomb Raider. The 7870 was good bang for buck at the time and included Tomb Raider for free. Comparable nvidia card wasn't cost effective at the time.

If my Microcenter was used, 9/10 would come out foaming at the mouth about Nvidia, while the last one would come out confused and disappointed at the Apple selection.

Soon as you walk into my Microcenter there is a nice Nvidia kiosk to greet you. Right next to it the Intel CPUs on display. Walk around into the "gaming section" and there is another Nvidia Kiosk.

Flip through their adverts and Nvidia and Intel have one page each dedicated to them. AMD cpu shares half it's page with Intel CPUs and AMD gpu section mostly puts their <$100 line up in bold. They never carried HD 7970.

In other words, that place is hardcore NV/Intel territory.

 

[Face2Face]

I have gamed on many Nvidia cards, way more than ATI/AMD. I still have to say my favorite video card I have ever owned was my 9500 Pro. That coupled with an XP 2500 CPU was a nice gaming machine for back in the day... anyway, I bought my 7950 primarily because I wanted 3GB of VRAM for modded Skyrim and at the time they were cheaper than the 670/680 and could be overclocked to beat both pretty easily.

 

[Anarchist420]

I'm not an nvidia fanboy (just the lesser of the two evils IMO) but I have a 660Ti, and I'm going to sell it and get a GTX 780 soon. Before that I had a 560 Ti 2GB, before that I had a reference 460 768GB.

In 5/98, I bought and installed a 3Dfx Voodoo 2 chipset (Diamond Monster 3DII 8 MB) into my parents' PC at the time which had a nvidia Riva 128 (STB Velocity something) in it which had IQ so terrible in the first Turok that I actually cried... the colors were awful, the textures were unfiltered, I just can't believe that nvidia remained in business after that bomb to be honest.

In 2002, I bought a Hypersonic PC with a 9700 Pro in it and I couldn't stand it... maybe the fact that I was forcing 6x MSAA in drivers and in applications had something to do with it (I never tried the 4x MSAA when I had it because I assumed that more samples was better). The only good thing about it really was the fact that it had excellent performance and rotated grid sample patterns... ATi was almost completely performance-focused on their transistor budget with it... only partial floating point precision for the pixel shaders (instead of having FX32 and FP32), only a 24 bit fixed point z-buffer (should've had 32 bit fixed point z-buffer and D24FS8), and the texture filtering being limited to 5 bit... it was simply a joke when it came to feature set.

I always had the drivers set to the highest quality, but the games I played on it looked a lot worse than they did on a friend's Ti 4400.

In 2003, I bought a monarch computer systems PC with a Geforce FX 5900 Ultra and I didn't like that too much either although I thought it was a little bit better than the 9700 Pro (the main thing I didn't like about the Geforce FX 5900 Ultra was the analog output quality and the lack of a rotated grid sampling pattern as well as the fact that the 50.xx drivers substantially reduced filtering quality while some games wouldn't work on the 40.xx drivers). Then, in '04 I replaced it with a 6800 GT which I would've liked a lot more if I had ever disabled AF (couldn't stand the texture shimmering), if it had had better analog output quality, and if it had kept the w-buffer and shadow buffering or replaced them with something sufficient.

A few years ago I had a 5770 for like a month, I bought it to see if AMD was worth another try, but sadly they weren't. About 2-3 years before that I had a 4850 for a few months and sold that because it just didn't have very good image quality.

 

[bystander36]

It's more likely that on a tech forum you'll have people more informed about hardware. So they'll be more aware of how cards all genuinely perform when stacked up against one another and how much they cost. From that context AMD cards usually make a lot more sense.

This is backed up by if looking closer at who is running AMD GPUs and you see that many of the AMD users, even in this thread, are not running AMD CPUs but using Intel. If they were all gung-ho AMD they would be running an AMD CPU as well, but most aren't because as they are informed they know Intel offer better performance and the price also makes sense.

The majority of PC gamers are not going to be hardware tech enthusiasts but just enjoy gaming. In those cases nvidia has that Apple type brand power, better marketing and winds up in more machines due to that. They also generally carry the halo card crown which contributes to that brand power and marketing, but most don't actually buy those halo cards, they will buy a lower-nvidia card partly just because they have the best card around. I think it makes quite a bit of sense. On these forums when you do see nvidia, often it's people using X80 cards because they are the fastest available not because it's nvidia. Considering the $500+ cards make up a very tiny sliver of the market, it's reasonable that informed graphics cards buyers like you'd find on this forum who are not going for the top tier cards will go AMD as AMD GPUs make a lot more sense than nvidia when you are considering price/perf.

Source: myself. For my machine I have nvidia because I want what is fastest, but for my wife's computer where she needs a decent card to play a few DX9 games, there is a 7950 in it. Because it makes a hell of a lot more sense to get an AMD card when you are spending $300(at the time) and not looking for the best performance, but the best performance for your $.

People tend to see this sort of conspiracy about AMD and video cards here, but when you're not emotionally invested in one brand or the other, it's hard to miss that AMD cards are almost always a better choice when you are trying to get the fastest card for your money. So long as you're not interested in having the penultimate best card available, in which case you don't care about perf/$. Even then AMD has its moments where they do have the best, but nvidia historically has sat in that chair for longer durations than AMD.

I think you find more on the forums because they tend to look at the benchmarks a lot more. However, I also feel a lot of people on the forums discount non-FPS related features and issues too easily. Of course enthusiasts are more able to find work around for their problems.

 

[Deders]

Asus 670 DirectCUII, overvolted to 1.187 to reach 1202 MHz (most can do this on standard voltages I know) 6980MHz Memory, peaking at around 60c in game. Could probably overvolt some more!

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

It's more likely that on a tech forum you'll have people more informed about hardware. So they'll be more aware of how cards all genuinely perform when stacked up against one another and how much they cost. From that context AMD cards usually make a lot more sense.

This is backed up by if looking closer at who is running AMD GPUs and you see that many of the AMD users, even in this thread, are not running AMD CPUs but using Intel. If they were all gung-ho AMD they would be running an AMD CPU as well, but most aren't because as they are informed they know Intel offer better performance and the price also makes sense.

The majority of PC gamers are not going to be hardware tech enthusiasts but just enjoy gaming. In those cases nvidia has that Apple type brand power, better marketing and winds up in more machines due to that. They also generally carry the halo card crown which contributes to that brand power and marketing, but most don't actually buy those halo cards, they will buy a lower-nvidia card partly just because they have the best card around. I think it makes quite a bit of sense. On these forums when you do see nvidia, often it's people using X80 cards because they are the fastest available not because it's nvidia. Considering the $500+ cards make up a very tiny sliver of the market, it's reasonable that informed graphics cards buyers like you'd find on this forum who are not going for the top tier cards will go AMD as AMD GPUs make a lot more sense than nvidia when you are considering price/perf.

Source: myself. For my machine I have nvidia because I want what is fastest, but for my wife's computer where she needs a decent card to play a few DX9 games, there is a 7950 in it. Because it makes a hell of a lot more sense to get an AMD card when you are spending $300(at the time) and not looking for the best performance, but the best performance for your $.

People tend to see this sort of conspiracy about AMD and video cards here, but when you're not emotionally invested in one brand or the other, it's hard to miss that AMD cards are almost always a better choice when you are trying to get the fastest card for your money. So long as you're not interested in having the penultimate best card available, in which case you don't care about perf/$. Even then AMD has its moments where they do have the best, but nvidia historically has sat in that chair for longer durations than AMD.

This. I'll buy nvidia or amd. I don't prefer one over the other. Whatever gives me the most for my money wins.
I'll pull up benchmarks for my resolution, compare cards, compare prices, etc.. Whichever card gives me the most fps for the money I'm spending wins. Period. I don't care what brand the card is, what color it is, etc.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I think you find more on the forums because they tend to look at the benchmarks a lot more. However, I also feel a lot of people on the forums discount non-FPS related features and issues too easily. Of course enthusiasts are more able to find work around for their problems.

Not sure if serious? You have used both brands or are you using the same spiel about amd drivers from 7 years ago?

 

[DooKey]

Currently running 7990 quadfire. Started this gen with 7970 crossfire, then GTX 680 SLI, followed by Titan SLI. What can I say? I love shiny stuff.

 

[bystander36]

Not sure if serious? You have used both brands or are you using the same spiel about amd drivers from 7 years ago?

I used 6950 CF and 5870 CF. I also had a ATI 9800 Pro. There have been others, but those are the ones I remember most clear (I've been gaming since the 80's).

FPS is not the only thing that matters, as was found a few times recently.

 

[parvadomus]

7870 here, has been an excelent upgrade over 6770, which in turn was a good upgrade over 9800GTX+ (at least it didnt blown up like that garbage).

 

[cmdrdredd]

There is not a single GPU card produced today that can do what I require in regards to performance so it must be mGPU. Since AMD still has issues with runt frames and such and their framepacing still doesn't work in every title, Nvidia is clear winner for me.

 

[fixbsod]

1x580

 

[AnandThenMan]

I'm surprised how few people are running SLI.

 

[bystander36]

I'm surprised how few people are running SLI.

It appears the percentage of AMD or Nvidia users going with multi-GPU setups is similar, only there are twice as many AMD users on this forum.

I suspect there are a lot of enthusiasts who use AMD, as they tend to always be wanting the best buy, and have knowledge of what has the best benchmarks, more than the average. That said, being too focused on benchmarks can lead to overlooking other flaws, such as microstutter. I have fallen in that category a few times, but always end up changing later.

 

[Elfear]

Using Crossfire now and have used AMD for the last three generations. Before that I switched between Nvidia and AMD a lot. Had 6800GT, X800XT PE, X850XT, 6800GT SLI, 7800GT SLI, 8800GTX, 8800GT, X1900XT Xfire, 4890, 4850 Xfire, 5850 Xfire, 6950 Xfire, etc.

I've enjoyed gaming on both brands but AMD has given me the best bang for my buck since the 4800 series so I've stuck with them. I wouldn't have any problem switching though if the roles reverse.

 

[Zanovar]

Using both and enjoying both.7950(non overclocked)and card in my sig*shrugs*.i game on gfs rig mostly so voted amd single.

 

[amenx]

Lower priced cards will always sell more than higher priced ones - economics, pure and simple..

 

[Zanovar]

Lower priced cards will always sell more than higher priced ones - economics, pure and simple..

Erm,so which card are you gaming on?its not difficult

 

[JBT]

Had a single eVGA GTX680 down graded to a Sapphire 7850.

 

[Final8ty]

There is not a single GPU card produced today that can do what I require in regards to performance so it must be mGPU. Since AMD still has issues with runt frames and such and their framepacing still doesn't work in every title, Nvidia is clear winner for me.

NVs frame pacing does not work in every title either.

 

[FalseChristian]

I guess I'm a rare breed running SLI. Who woulda thunk it.