[Ars] Nvidia or AMD: Who makes the best budget graphics card?

[AtenRa]

Not with a overclocked AMD cpu, that's the point.

Not with an Intel 5GHz cpu, thats the point also

 

[raghu78]

This may well be the most ridiculous argument I have seen on this forum. What on earth is the point of even typing that. You might as well question if someone could run 4 fx9350s, 2 Titans, and a 1500w space heater using only a hamster on a treadmill and a pinwheel shoved out a window. It's insane and a complete threadcrapping.

A 470 and a comparable cpu can run on a 300-400w psu.

well said. Right now a Rx 480 8GB is on par on avg across all titles and clearly faster on avg in DX12 titles against GTX 1060 6GB. This is an undeniable fact. More importantly Rx 470 4GB is on par with GTX 1060 3GB and the better option with higher VRAM. Rx 470 4GB provides performance better than GTX 970 at less than half the initial launch price of GTX 970. Truly incredible value for money and a true generational leap of 2x in perf/$ .

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hardwarecanucks
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[tential]

I really don't think the 480 is that special. It's the 470 that's the best value. As always cut down chips from amd provide way more value for their cost compared to the full chop. It's a massive pricing discrepancy that you should take advantage of. Im interested in seeing how it plays out with Vega and whether the cut down chip unlocks or not.

 

[IEC]

The RX480 4GB has been on sale recently for as low as $150 AR and $155 AR. Which is insanely high bang for the buck. Of course, if you don't need that last 10% of performance, the RX470 4GB has been on sale for as low as $120 AR, and is only roughly 10% behind the RX480/GTX1060 counterparts.

Budget gaming is great again!

 

[mohit9206]

Seeing these $130 RX470s with free game makes me want to kill myself.
They cost almost twice as much here!
A million types of taxes are applied before we can buy the damn card.
Even the cheapest 1050Ti is $185.

 

[tamz_msc]

Taking AtenRa's point a bit further, I think the reason why you have the GTX 1060 in different form-factors might be due to its lower TDP. That allows the AIBs to experiment with different sizes of the PCB and it might be the reason why you have 'mini' versions of those cards.

I think AMD is losing potential market share here - time and again tests have shown that being a bit more modest with voltages leads to much better thermal and power characteristics, albeit with a little performance differential, and yet they insist on keeping stock voltages on the higher side that causes inconsistent clock speeds with the added drawback of the thermals and power draw. On the CPU side, with RYZEN they are battling this perception that AMD equals hot and power-hungry, but on the GPU side they are not doing enough. If NVIDIA's AIBs come up with a single slot GTX1060 - which would be a very nice proposition for a lot of people, then AMD won't be in a position to respond to such a product.

 

[tential]

AMD has an issue clocking and setting a correct stock voltage.
There is no good reason for some of what amd has done in this regard

 

[Arachnotronic]

AMD has an issue clocking and setting a correct stock voltage.
There is no good reason for some of what amd has done in this regard

Yield.

 

[tential]

Yield.

No. This is absolutely NOT an excuse. We saw it with Polaris. AMD simply just has zero idea of how to provide the correct voltage and clocks for a card at launch. Nvidia has this down to a science. It's not even hard....
AMD had voltage so high it HURT performance. That is a special kind of incompetence.

 

[crisium]

Hopefully they have Vega done right after learning from Polaris 10. But they do seem to struggle learning this. IIRC, Tahiti had such a high stock voltage that there were 7970GHz models with lower voltage than 7970 vanilla. And Fiji chips could be undervolted at stock too; even Asus was wise enough to factory undervolt their Fury Strix and that chip came out at Fury launch (little later than Fury X though).

Maybe the millionth time's the charm.

 

[Arachnotronic]

No. This is absolutely NOT an excuse. We saw it with Polaris. AMD simply just has zero idea of how to provide the correct voltage and clocks for a card at launch. Nvidia has this down to a science. It's not even hard....
AMD had voltage so high it HURT performance. That is a special kind of incompetence.

They set the voltages high across the board so that more GPUs would meet spec, ultimately boosting their effective yields.

 

[tential]

Setting the voltage so high that the GPU downclocks would mean that less GPUs meet spec.

So your argument holds no merit at all in this specific case.

 

[frozentundra123456]

This may well be the most ridiculous argument I have seen on this forum. What on earth is the point of even typing that. You might as well question if someone could run 4 fx9350s, 2 Titans, and a 1500w space heater using only a hamster on a treadmill and a pinwheel shoved out a window. It's insane and a complete threadcrapping.

A 470 and a comparable cpu can run on a 300-400w psu.

Here we go again, pushing the 470 as a low power card. It would for sure run on a good quality 350 or 400 watt PSU with a six pin connector. I also most certainly *would not* try to run it on a low quality OEM 300 watt PSU with some jerry-rigged Molex adapter.

 

[tviceman]

They set the voltages high across the board so that more GPUs would meet spec, ultimately boosting their effective yields.

This makes very little sense. You're saying they're over-volting their GPU's so they can meet a certain spec, thus hurting good samples from being spec'd slightly higher at lower power consumption (aka more competitive in every metric) while simultaneously making their entire product stack look worse. Create a third sku if necessary and raise the price of the top tier, higher performing sku. If you're right on this, AMD's cutbacks in engineering are reflecting their incompetent marketing and Vega stands no chance at all at being anything close to competitive.

 

[IEC]

I don't know why you guys are blaming AMD for voltage binning when it's the AIB partners that set voltages in their BIOSes. The old blame AMD game is way past old and typical of know-nothing forum posters. You have no idea if the AIBs are targeting a 99th percentile, 95th percentile, some idealized MTBF, or some unknown metric.

As we've seen from the RyZen/Vega previews, it looks like AMD is bringing more hardware automatic voltage controls so I expect this "issue" to be moot going forward.

 

[Bacon1]

Here we go again, pushing the 470 as a low power card. It would for sure run on a good quality 350 or 400 watt PSU with a six pin connector. I also most certainly *would not* try to run it on a low quality OEM 300 watt PSU with some jerry-rigged Molex adapter.

Yet you'd trust a 1060 on that PSU?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yet you'd trust a 1060 on that PSU?

Did I say that?

 

[tamz_msc]

Even the reference RX 480 has trouble maintaining clock speeds, so it is definitely not just the AIB partners who are setting the voltages high to meet a targeted clock-speed.

AMD needs to understand that at the sub 200$ price point, there are a lot of people who are looking for a GPU upgrade for an older system for whom the extra hassle of buying a better PSU ultimately tips the balance towards NVIDIA.
For them, a small form-factor without the need to get a new PSU will offset the extra cost of getting a GTX 1060 3GB over an RX 470, even if the RX 470 is better in terms of performance/price.

I don't see any reason why AMD cannot release some of those embedded Polaris chips for the consumer GPU market to make them a viable alternative for these people.

 

[Bacon1]

Did I say that?

Well considering the original assertion was that a 1060 could be used in systems where a 470 couldn't, it was implied by your post.

Why not just say "I wouldn't use any video card that required external power with a low end PSU"?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well considering the original assertion was that a 1060 could be used in systems where a 470 couldn't, it was implied by your post.

Why not just say "I wouldn't use any video card that required external power with a low end PSU"?

Because I was replying to a post specifically concerning to a 470, and it seems like there is a concerted effort in this forum to promote a 470 as suitable with low end psus.

 

[AtenRa]

Because I was replying to a post specifically concerning to a 470, and it seems like there is a concerted effort in this forum to promote a 470 as suitable with low end psus.

The conversation was that we can use the RX 470 4GB (120W TDP) with a 300W SFX PSU like the Silverstone ST30SF 80+ Bronze, not any low end 300W psu. This thing has 25A at 12V, capable of 300W with efficiency of 87% at 200W and 85% at 250W. Even at extreme hot conditions it reached an efficiency of 84% at the maximum 300W load.

We can use any up to 95W TDP CPU (no OC) + RX 470/GTX1060 with those PSUs no problem.

ps. Silverstone ST30SF has a 6-pin GPU cable, there are 6-pin RX 470 from XFX, ASUS etc.

 

[Mezzanine]

Nvidia wins by default due to having much better drivers and support.

 

[whm1974]

Nvidia wins by default due to having much better drivers and support.

And better Linux support(for now).

 

[tamz_msc]

Let's not digress to the debate over who has the better drivers - there is no way to settle this conclusively as opinions on this issue are purely anecdotal.

Bottom-line: AMD's drivers are nowhere as bad as they are often claimed to be, while NVIDIA's drivers are not always as great as they're supposed to be either.

At least AMD has shown the desire to improve, though personally I cannot say the same for NVIDIA - I mean the NVIDIA Control Panel is well over 10 years old at this point.

 

[Stormflux]

AMD drivers have been amazing for the past 6 months, while nVidia has had more blunders than normal. It honestly feels like the ill-informed meme people parrot has been reversed, outside of Linux.

However, if we're bringing in secondary factors beyond the video card into this... The option for a FreeSync Monitor should push the win for any "Budget" argument. None of these cards would be able to push a consistent 60fps at decent settings on modern games. FreeSync would allow people to push higher fidelity, remove tearing and enjoy the smooth variable frame rates that these cards would inevitably offer between 30 and 60fps. Disguising a card to be punching a class above.