Brand Loyalty or Agnosticism?

[geoxile]

Used to be a massive Nvidia fanboy. I had one bad experience with a Sapphire x800 I think and after that I only bought Nvidia cards, up to the 580, after which I finally got a 7950.

The consumer should only look out for himself as far as I'm concerned. I got the 7950 because Nvidia didn't have any solutions for locking color profiles in full screen programs that apply their own gamma correction (like games), for AMD there is a 3rd party program called PowerStrip that does just that.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Price is also a big concern for many people.

 

[Lord XenoTeK]

Started with an nVidia TNT2 and stuck with them until the Radeon 9700 came out. I then preferred ATI up through the X1900 series and switched back to nVidia during the GTX 8800 generation. I've used nVidia ever since.

I used to care about price/ performance/ IQ/ etc, now I just think it's because green is my favorite color.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

I'd identify myself as agnostic ...

Both performance AND perf/price are the most important factors to my purchasing decision ...

 

[DooKey]

I purchase from both companies every generation because I'm an enthusiast. Frankly the narrow-minded meme around here that cost/performance is the only important metric amuses me.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Agnostic. Nvidia was my first "real" grapichics card with the geforce 2 MX 440, and I've bounced around between the two primary manufactures over the years.

Ultimately, whoever can double my performance for $200 or has the better performing product at that price point when I am forced to upgrade gets my money. If price and performance are equal, then I start going into fringe benefits like card size, power, heat, cooling solutions etc...

 

[OlyAR15]

I don't usually limit myself to certain brands, I've purchased both AMD/ATI and Nvidia in the past. Now that I have a Gsync monitor, guess I'll be staying with nvidia for the foreseeable future.

 

[garagisti]

Had Nvidia agp, then pcie cards, they were the first cards I used, and I was told by some around me that nothing beats it. Now though, I must say I find it funny that we are all reluctant to go green. Too much burn we all went through on greener side of the fence. In over a dozen cards, we saw all but 1 die.

Erm, now though I think I will not be recommending or using Nvidia, well not after how they have handled their paying customers as they have. Sure mining prices were not much fun, it has been much better than some here suggest about red aide of the fence. To me, the fact that they are not actively involved in crippling games, screwing customers, it also helps making the decision rather obvious.

 

[el etro]

First was the vRAM madness, now we come to the efficiency madness!!



Want efficiency? buy a phone!

 

[Black Octagon]

I'm on Tapatalk so the poll is invisible to me...but anyway, for me the main factor is performance/dollar

 

[SolMiester]

I don't game anywhere near as much as I used too, so cards last me years before I upgrade now, so its really a moot point. However, if building for family or friends, or doing recommendations, I always prefer NV.

 

[Cookie Monster]

I've become more prone to buying certain AIB's vs. gpu maker. Msi and Gigabyte are my current personal fav's but I will go with others depending on what's going on.

Over the years too many companies have both shined and faded to get too loyal to anything though.

Same for me.

I've become more prone to buying the video card with the best blower type coolers (as long as the GPU is a great performer overall).

If AMD produced something thats better than maxwell especially in its home turf (power consumption) id jump in a heart beat if I was to do an upgrade.

 

[Silverforce11]

Judge a product on its merits & not the brand.

Though saying that, for cars, I do have a brand preference... I wonder if its because cars are so visible, to all, so part of that perhaps is due to vanity. What's inside my PC, only I know.

 

[Anteaus]

I follow tech trends, and I don't mean PR. Nvidia and ATI/AMD used to be more competitive in the early days and the pendulum would swing back and forth to the company with the better hardware. I can't think of the specific time period, but after the awesome 9800 GT ATI kinda lost steam and Nvidia started releasing some great single GPU solutions which begin a long run of being on top. ATI/AMD released some solid multi-GPU solutions but couldn't really keep up. Even today, Nvidia is still hammering away with the strongest single GPU card solutions and no matter how much we would like to think SLI/Crossfire is where its at, many people still want high raw numbers with a solid baseline. I'm specifically excluding those power users who spends thousands on multi-GPU setups. ATI/AMD has since reprioritized into mobile markets so I think even they realized they had to change their tactics.

Ironically, much the same thing happened to AMD compared to Intel. To date, nothing AMD can do can topple the huge success of the i7 chips. They are far more competitive at the low to moderate power range, but Intel completely owns in high end consumers CPUS.

Due to what I said above, I've been predominately a Intel/Nvidia users for years now, but if AMD offered me something worth buying, I'd bite. Please note I'm describing my experiences and actual market conditions could be perceived differently. AMD has had it's opportunities to shine at various times...they just don't have consistency. I won't even go into the well publicized blunders (Bulldozer).

I'm still using my i7-2600K because I honestly haven't had a compelling reason to upgrade.

 

[dn7309]

I buy whatever give me the most performance and feature for less money.

I don't care for power/watt.

 

[nsafreak]

Quite agnostic. First 3D video card for me was the Riva TNT, but I've had various AMD/ATi & nVidia cards over the years.

 

[tential]

Judge a product on its merits & not the brand.

Though saying that, for cars, I do have a brand preference... I wonder if its because cars are so visible, to all, so part of that perhaps is due to vanity. What's inside my PC, only I know.

I don't post or share my PC so I don't care about specs. My PC stays out of site/hidden most of the time so why would I care?

A car though.... I am extremely vane so I'm very biased.

 

[BFG10K]

I'm brand loyal as long as the equipment continues to work fine for my needs. I do have a current preference for nVidia.

I should've definitely skipped the Fermi line though, and waited for the GTX580. That whole line was poor for DX9/OpenGL and for heat/noise in general.

 

[desprado]

I will go with Nvidia and because not just for performance but many other factors as well.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I go with whichever company has annoyed me less recently.

Currently on nvidia for all of my computers because of the monitor sleep bug that cropped up with the 7000 series and affected two of my machines.

I'll probably go back to AMD for my next purchase because of the 970 scandal. Whether or not the potential performance hit is a big deal to any given individual 970 owner, their handling of the situation and general lack of respect/ethics is troubling.

Generally AMD seems sorta incompetent (while turning out some great products) and nvidia is kinda evil (while also turning out some great products).

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I go with whichever company has annoyed me less recently.

Currently on nvidia for all of my computers because of the monitor sleep bug that cropped up with the 7000 series and affected two of my machines.

I'll probably go back to AMD for my next purchase because of the 970 scandal. Whether or not the potential performance hit is a big deal to any given individual 970 owner, their handling of the situation and general lack of respect/ethics is troubling.

Generally AMD seems sorta incompetent (while turning out some great products) and nvidia is kinda evil (while also turning out some great products).

Marketing people. It's all about the big sale. The tech people would say the board was equipped with 4GB of VRAM. If they said that it's used with a 3.5 GB segment and a 500MB segment, or if they tried to explain it to the Marketing jerks, it would complicate the advertising. And if the Marketing people didn't understand what it was EXACTLY that enthusiasts wanted as to how that memory was used, it would be their ignorance of how an important segment of the customer base would respond.

There must be about six threads ablaze with posts on this and related topics. I went back to the cus reviews where I bought my own 970. Now some guy is stating that 1440p might show stuttering (for one card), so he pronounces that this is therefore indicative of a 2x SLI configuration, and we should better get the 2x 980. Yet the benchies show the 970 in SLI falling behind the 980 SLI by less than 20% -- I'd have to consult the charts again, and it may be better. You would get 80% @ $700 as opposed to 100% for $1,100.

I'd say that's a pretty half-witted assessment in the cus-review.

Generally, I think of marketing types like I think of the hot-lookin' "Boss" in the Acura "Drive Like the Boss" commercial. With the exception that the marketing types don't look so hot. They just seem twice as vapid.

 

[jackstar7]

Add option 4:
Brand Agnostic (purchase based on performance/$. regardless of brand)
Because option 1 sounds like poor nv trolling - Buy only the most efficient card now. A year ago purchased the card with best smoothness/dB, and even before that only features like physx counted.

I do not understand what this means. You think I'm trolling for? or against nV?

I also had an "etc." for other similar reasons not covered.

Also:

Agreed. Words straight out of the argument people make to justify over paying for nVidia.

Did you guys not read my sig... or my experiences? I'm with AMD because of feature-set. They were first to Eyefinity the way I wanted it and (used to) have more varied port layouts across AIBs.

I swear some people see a fight in anything...

 

[96Firebird]

Generally AMD seems sorta incompetent (while turning out some great products) and nvidia is kinda evil (while also turning out some great products).

Great statement. :thumbsup:

 

[Mondozei]

I've purchased 4 GPUs. Three of those have been Nvidia. I'm not sure if that makes me an Nvidia fanboy, although I own two 290s right now.

Honestly, I think it is more about timing. When I bought my cards, I always look for the best performance to value. I got my 560 Ti in October 2011 and it had served me really well for the relatively cheap price it cost me. When I got my 290, it was just cheaper than the alternatives and I wanted more peak performance. Then I got another 290 during a black friday sale for just slightly above 200 dollars, which has given me a beastly GPU setup that will last me some time.

I'll likely upgrade in 2017, four years after my original 290 purchase, and I'm guessing it will be Big Pascal by then. (I'm assuming Nvidia will continue their pattern of releasing two versions of their new arch in each successive year, with the full fat version released a year after the initial release of the smaller die).

I'd probably be going for Big Pascal simply because of timing but if AMD releases a better card, of course I'll keep that in mind.

 

[boozzer]

I thought we all buy with best bang for buck or the few(super rich) best of the best in performance no matter what?