Why is it that Nvidia holds value more over AMD?

[SiliconWars]

My single GPU AMD experience is similar to my dual GPU nvidia experience.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing-explorer-cat138 - this clearly shows AMD's single card on top in terms of frame delta. The 7970 GHz loses (vs the 680) in Shogun 2, wins in Hitman, draws in Sleeping Dogs, draws in Battlefield 3, wins in Bioshock, wins in Crysis 3 and is clearly ahead of any multi-gpu setup (Nvidia or AMD) in all games.

Just rather miffed when something works for months then I update the driver because I need it for a new title but it breaks something I've used and enjoyed for months previous.

I'm pretty sure Nvidia breaks something every time they fix an issue as well.

 

[Elfear]

Crossfire may be a limited subset of users but it will be even more limited without the fix. Right now it is unusable

Why do you say that?

 

[KingFatty]

Most of that only affects the <1% of people crazy enough to go dual gpu in the first place. I just don't see the point in spending more money for a worse experience, which any dual gpu setup surely is.

This appears to be an unsupported claim, I don't understand how this could be true? I would think dual GPU can be a better experience in many situations, such as when you bump up from 20 FPS to over 35? Also, when you say <1%, are you including the entire human population, even 3rd world countries? That's irrelevant, I would think it's better to consider computer enthusiasts specifically, and I believe more than 1% of enthusiasts use multi-GPU (AMD or NVidia).

 

[SiliconWars]

This appears to be an unsupported claim, I don't understand how this could be true? I would think dual GPU can be a better experience in many situations, such as when you bump up from 20 FPS to over 35?

In that case you drop settings for single-gpu to get higher fps instead of adding another layer of problems just to get the fraps total higher at the expense of experience. Dual gpu is just bad in so many ways. I'd take 60 fps and medium details over 30fps and high details as well, and I'm sure most of what I consider "enthusiasts" would too.

Also, when you say <1%, are you including the entire human population, even 3rd world countries? That's irrelevant, I would think it's better to consider computer enthusiasts specifically, and I believe more than 1% of enthusiasts use multi-GPU (AMD or NVidia).

That depends entirely on how you decide who is and isn't an enthusiast.

 

[Elfear]

In that case you drop settings for single-gpu to get higher fps instead of adding another layer of problems just to get the fraps total higher at the expense of experience. Dual gpu is just bad in so many ways. I'd take 60 fps and medium details over 30fps and high details as well, and I'm sure most of what I consider "enthusiasts" would too.

In my experience multi-GPU allows you to increase IQ at the same fps or increase fps at the same IQ. There are inherent downsides to running more than one video card but the upsides easily outweigh them IMO. Especially if you game at 120hz or 1440p+.

 

[SiliconWars]

The fps isn't the issue though, it's the minimums, stutter etc. It depends on each person how much they are open to it but I've tried a few sli/crossfire setups and I honestly believe the overall experience to be worse in nearly all cases.

 

[KingFatty]

The fps isn't the issue though, it's the minimums, stutter etc. It depends on each person how much they are open to it but I've tried a few sli/crossfire setups and I honestly believe the overall experience to be worse in nearly all cases.

It's nice to speak in absolutes, but don't fall for the Nirvana fallacy when it comes to multi-GPU. I think it's much more helpful to think in terms of Elfear, where you have definite pros and cons and then seek a happy balance of those.

 

[brag.yondide]

It is a marketing truism that buyer preference has more to do with the perceived values of the manufacturer or brand than the product itself. (See the very good BBC documentary 'The Century of Self' for an exposition of this.)

This would explain why there are so many "yes it is" "no it isn't" post here from both sides, each trying to find facts to justify their biases.

My take is that the marketing agenda has been dominated by nVidia and fans of either side see this in opposite lights. nVidia fans see it as innovative and cool as nVidia intended. AMD fans see aspects of sleazy and unethical. Both sides see AMD marketing as less important. And facts be damned!

I find myself taking it one step further by transferring the attitudes of posters here and elsewhere onto their preferred brand, and guess I'm not alone. nVidia fans see AMD fans as whiny; AMD fans see nVidia fans as dickish. By extension, AMD is is whiny and nVidia is dickish.

So, to the OP's question, why nVidia over AMD? Most video card buyers are probably unaware of the reasons why nVidia are seen by some as sleazy and unethical, so are left with the marketing 'innovative and cool' message with no counter from AMD.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'm pretty sure Nvidia breaks something every time they fix an issue as well.

Perhaps, but I only speak for myself I don't do broad terms and cruse tech support forums for issues.

With Nvidia things just worked for me, even with mGPU. With AMD even single I have a new issue every time I try to do something new or different.

Like UEFI bios, what a mess. Better yet, running a screen off my HD4600, works with my 6+6, doesn't work with my 6+8, no longer works with 13.10

Every time something happens it's a few more hours I waste troubleshooting.

It might be the same for Nvidia, I don't know I don't own a Kepler card. Like I said I only speak for myself from my own experiences.

Another example is overclocking, it's a mess with my 7950s, stable all day one game, crashing another. It's just more time wasted for me, that's how I see it anyways.

I'm not trying to bag on AMD here, just being honest about my experience. I'd buy AMD again, but they have to offer more for less.

 

[el etro]

I think Nvidia is sightly better at the doing less system crashes. I'm talking this comparing my GTS450(314.x driver) with my HD7770(12.x drivers experience - the ZeroCore technology always make my system crash until 13.x drivers(knowing i'm jumped from 12.4 to 13.1) -).

But my GTX 670 caused me more issues in two months that i have with mine HD6850 and HD7770 together all the time.

Based on my experiences i still found Nvidia superior on drivers, but what makes me sad about AMD drivers is their late game performance fixes in some games, and shamefully loses in benchmarks of some games like Portal 2 and Starcraft 2.

 

[BrightCandle]

I don't know if its even true. Its a fact nvidia has more market share but that could largely be because they did better in the earlier days and now the difference in market is more about people being happy with the brand they buy, they don't deeply look at the cards they buy unless nvidia really messes up, which on the whole it hasn't done. You don't take down a brand with a 5% performance advantage or 5% cheaper price it needs to be much more dramatic than that to change a history of happy customers.

I think the value of cards this time around is largely based on the history of card prices. Both companies came in high and have lowered their prices but AMD has just done it a bit more. For quite a few generations they have sold similar performance a little cheaper and they have positioned themselves there again in some territories (but not everywhere) presumably to slowly take market share. But I see very similar products with marginal advantage and hence no general market shift is likely. Neither has sufficient advantage nor have their overall market positions really changed.

 

[monstercameron]

my first card was a 9600gt which still works today. bought a xfx radeon hd6850[when they first switched to amd i believe] for a new amd box, the qc on the card was horrible[dead fan, overheating, loud fan, dead card, slow cust service] so i replaced my then $200+ card with a gtx650...quiet as a mofo. Why? I just felt the qc on an nv card would hold up better due to past experiences.
aside: kinda miss maxing out everything[save for a few unoptimized piles of ...]

 

[tigersty1e]

cause the nvidia fanboys are foolish. they remind me of beats audio fanboys.

Warning issued for thread crapping.
-- stahlhart

 

[MrK6]

Marketing > no marketing. AMD didn't even have a marketing department for its cards until "Gaming Evolved," and even then that sucked until maybe a year ago. People will buy what the know or what they've heard of more than anything else.

 

[cmdrdredd]

cause the nvidia fanboys are foolish. they remind me of beats audio fanboys.

More like AMD trolls are like Apple zealots. Everything else sucks, even when it's got unique features you can't use on your hardware. Same arguments too "we were first". Laughable...

Warning issued for thread crapping.
-- stahlhart

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I also think it was foolish for AMD to remove the ATI branding.

It's not like AMD has strong brand recognition for excellence in the first place, whereas ATI had years of brand recognition (specifically in GPUs) going for it.


All in all I don't think you can point your finger at one single thing, there is no magic bullet. At least I don't think there is, it would seem to me that it's a combination of many different factors.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I also think it was foolish for AMD to remove the ATI branding.

It's not like AMD has strong brand recognition for excellence in the first place, whereas ATI had years of brand recognition (specifically in GPUs) going for it.


All in all I don't think you can point your finger at one single thing, there is no magic bullet. At least I don't think there is, it would seem to me that it's a combination of many different factors.

Never thought about that, removing the ATI name. I did say once a few years back that people equate AMD with a budget brand due to it's CPU division doing poorly against Intel in the benchmarks people see online.

 

[3DVagabond]

I also think it was foolish for AMD to remove the ATI branding.

It's not like AMD has strong brand recognition for excellence in the first place, whereas ATI had years of brand recognition (specifically in GPUs) going for it.


All in all I don't think you can point your finger at one single thing, there is no magic bullet. At least I don't think there is, it would seem to me that it's a combination of many different factors.

I was always under the impression that the rep for crap drivers was from the ATI days. Likewise, I'm sure there are people who suffered through bumpgate who think brand nVidia is rubbish.

 

[SiliconWars]

Some of you are giving the average person far too much credit. Note that the following slide is for "discrete graphics aware" people, which already puts them in a different league to the vast majority of the populace.

What is important is brand - ANY brand that is known. AMD is bigger brand overall than Nvidia simply due to the fact that AMD sells millions of cheap laptops and cheap PC's every year.

This is why comments like "AMD being known as the cheap brand" are uninformed. AMD are known as a brand, most people out there are not even comparing prices brand to brand, they just remember seeing the actual name.

Most people have no idea what Nvidia is. They know Intel as "they make PC's don't they?". That's how AMD is also known, as a "PC maker". Nvidia is generally only known by these "discrete graphics aware" people (and gamers obviously), which in comparison is a small percentage of the people who know what a PC is, and who builds them.

In short - more people have heard of AMD than they have heard of Nvidia. Sure more people who know a bit about PC's might think Nvidia is a better brand, but that's mostly down to confirmation bias.

 

[Gunbuster]

My reasons: The broken Enduro cover-up and needing serious hand holding to even discover they had an SLI frame pacing issue.

 

[ams23]

AMD sells millions of cheap laptops and cheap PC's every year.

This is why comments like "AMD being known as the cheap brand" are uninformed.

I think you proved their point with your very own words!

 

[SiliconWars]

I think you proved their point with your very own words!

My point here would be that it's better to be known - even as cheap (which may or may not be true) - than not known at all. What's the saying, "no such thing as bad publicity".

Most people do not see cheap as being bad btw (but people who drop $1K on Titan's probably do, which was my original point)

 

[ams23]

The concept of being "known" or "unknown" is pretty vague. Anyway, IIRC, NVIDIA's biggest market is actually China. ~ 90% of internet cafes in China use NVIDIA graphics.

 

[KingFatty]

Some of you are giving the average person far too much credit. Note that the following slide is for "discrete graphics aware" people, which already puts them in a different league to the vast majority of the populace.

What is important is brand - ANY brand that is known. AMD is bigger brand overall than Nvidia simply due to the fact that AMD sells millions of cheap laptops and cheap PC's every year.

This is why comments like "AMD being known as the cheap brand" are uninformed. AMD are known as a brand, most people out there are not even comparing prices brand to brand, they just remember seeing the actual name.

Most people have no idea what Nvidia is. They know Intel as "they make PC's don't they?". That's how AMD is also known, as a "PC maker". Nvidia is generally only known by these "discrete graphics aware" people (and gamers obviously), which in comparison is a small percentage of the people who know what a PC is, and who builds them.

In short - more people have heard of AMD than they have heard of Nvidia. Sure more people who know a bit about PC's might think Nvidia is a better brand, but that's mostly down to confirmation bias.

But isn't this all irrelevant to the issue - take a look at the prices for graphics cards.

If what you say above is true, it still fails to explain the observed behavior of retail and aftermarket prices for Nvidia vs AMD video cards.

 

[SiliconWars]

But isn't this all irrelevant to the issue - take a look at the prices for graphics cards.

I showed the slide mostly to put the "ATI would be better than AMD" point to rest. They ran the numbers on it, AMD won out for better or worse. There was solid evidence behind that decision.

If what you say above is true, it still fails to explain the observed behavior of retail and aftermarket prices for Nvidia vs AMD video cards.

It's a very complex issue. Truth is the graphics card market runs in cycles where one is on top, then the other. We are getting very close to another run of AMD on top.

I do agree that Nvidia holds prices better in general, but it's not quite as dominating an advantage as it appears to be. Very few people buy the really expensive cards, so it's easy to hold prices on them. I mean the number of people with Titans is in the tens of thousands - why even bother dropping prices on those when the competition is faster? This has always been Nvidia's tactic at the extreme high end, but the numbers we're talking about are insignificant.

AMD on the other hand? They are selling a lot of 7970's, and want to get them all sold off before Hawaii lands. Market share just keeps increasing every quarter, and they need that just now as well. Sometimes it's worth gaining share at the cost of profits. Really it's complicated, far more so than just "Nvidia has the better brand" or anything like that.

Nvidia *does* have a brand advantage in graphics, but it's not set in stone, and AMD is eroding it fast with Never Settle. These things take time.