Do you prefer Nvidia or AMD GPU's?

Nvidia for life.

Well? :)

Doesn't matter that much , have had graphics card from both, if i wanna chose one, i'd go with Nvidia.

Neither. It depends on the price and performance of the particular card..

I personally don't care but my last two cards were from Nvidia because amd drivers are made by an 11y old. Also, how is it that they don't release day one drivers? Is AMD even trying?

Nvidia vs. AMD or Better Performance vs. Lower Price

Think my cards have been: voodoo-voodoo-geforce-geforce-amd-geforce-amd-geforce-geforce

I buy the best product for me, dont care which brand happens to deliver it.

I don't care about the brand, only about which card offers the best performance within my budget range.

Nvidia has always served me well.

i buy whichever card is the fastest for the amt of money i want to spend

I have no allegiances. I but whichever card is the best performance for the money. Usually Nvidia fills that slot for me, but I'd happily buy AMD.

Had both,always going with the best $/performance.

I get the best that I can for the money. Here's what I've ended up with over the last ten years or so..

256MB 7900GT -> 512MB 7950GT -> SLI 512MB 8800GTS -> 2GB 560Ti -> AMD 7870 XT -> AMD 7950

This 7950 pushes 4 TFLOPS at this speed, so I obviously haven't felt the need to upgrade yet...

I've always preferred AMD.

I prefer higher fps and resolutions regardless of the brand. I am usually using benchmarks in chosing my next gpu, not fanboyism.

I never cared until recently

My PC was using a HD7950 3GB. For some reason playing movies on he PC was bad, the pic was off. Blu Ray quality looked like 320p quality. It was something that I tried to fix, I asked everyone, on many boards.

I recently bought a 970 g1. Suddenly, the problem was fixed. What caused it? Not sure, but since the only thing I changed was the GPU. People suggested that one control panel for the GPU automatically changes the setting

Nvidia, AMD's drivers suck on Linux.

AMD for HDMI 2.0A with HDR.and FreeSync. I don't care about Linux. I have no problems with Blu-Ray movies i.e. the drivers must be WHQL status.

It's correlates with my 4K HDTV upgrade cycle.

Always bought AMD hardware due to them selling cheaper mid-high end cards. Same with CPU's Intel price themselves too high for me.

Pretty much been green team since Voodoo went tits up.

Neither last gpu I had was a pair of 7850s, I upgraded to a 970 Do key because it was best perofamnce for the price at the time.

Same here. I've historically preferred AMD, but I've had no problems with Nvidia, so either way. I recently decided to switch from 7950 xfire to single solution due to noise and stability issues. It came down to GTX 970 and R9 390. In the end, I felt more comfortable with 8GB VRAM, superior price, and better performance of the 390. This came at the price of power consumption, but I couldn't get past the 3.5GB VRAM pitfall.

Nvidia vs AMD gpu is basically a draw, unlike Intel vs AMD cpu.

Had AMD back in 2007. Went Nvidia 5 Months ago.

Nvidia, cause I have an obsession over performance and correct me if I'm wrong but I think most games are better optimized for Nvidia cards.

I prefer the nerdmatic 111 over the geekdip 1337.

Which was blown way out of proportion.....

I've always preferred Nvidia. I mean look at what AMD has done to our consoles!!!!!!!!

Concerning real-world impact it was, but it was deceitful on Nvidia's part and I was looking for a 4k/30fps baseline, so I opted for double the RAM and superior performance at $10 cheaper with 390 at $279 while 970 ran $289 and it was for an inferior brand(PNY single fan). I had PCS 7870 Myst and it was insanely overclockable with great HSF solution(very quiet). New PCS 390's HSF is quieter at load than the hyper evo 212 on my CPU and that's pretty damn important for me.

@skektek: hopefully that will change. FGLRX made pretty much no improvement last year but the open source driver made good progress and AMD seem to be more interested in that going forward.

but yeah....at the moment AMD need a lot of work on the software front on linux. my 5850 has been pretty rock solid overall but that is a try and tested card now at this stage. newer cards are very hit and miss and fury cards are a lost cause on linux at the moment.

more on topic though......i dont have a preference for either. i have used cards from both camps and both have served me very well over the years. software wise i have run into the same amount of issues roughly from both camps (and overall its been very rare).

the one thing that does irk me is Nvidias business practices though and, given equal cards at equal prices, i would probably side with AMD when making the choice. not that AMD are saints but their focus on open standards is far better for the PC as a whole.

just...er...please improve that openGL performance AMD :).

@silversix_: The driver thing really is not an issue anymore. AMD still releases drivers kinda slowly, granted, but with each driver update, I gain noticeable frames per second.

I haven't really had any terrible issues with either. My 670 has been serving me well for quite some time though

@gamecubepad:

Problem is that 390 isnt strong enough for solid 4k at 30 fps with graphically demanding games. That 8gb isnt going to help in that regard ie lack of processing power, however it will help the games that have higher or poor memory allocation in preventing the need for swapping data from system ram causing issues. Also depending on the time frame you bought that 390 you could have bought a 290x 8gb which us virtually the same as 390x with lower clockrate for less. also 970 and 390 are virtually on par in performance wise at 1080/1440p.

AMD really is beating a dead horse with rehashing gpus from previous series. We seen 7000 based gpu's in 200 series and seeing 200 series in the 300 series. Like 7970ghz as 280x or 290x as a 390x. And even later GCN 7000 series gpu architecture models in 200 and 300 series.

Then AMD with Fury as a 4k ready gpu when its 4gb vram buffer is a joke since once the 4gb buffer is full and has to dump data the gpu has to grab data from system memory and that removes any advantage HBM has over GDDR5. This effect causes major frametiming issues with Fury.

Having an allegiance to a single graphics card manufacturer is lame. I go with whatever card is the fastest at that time. Years ago it used to go back and fourth but now Nvidia seems to be on top every card release but I'd still go with AMD if they released a better card than Nvidias.

For me I like Nvidia's technologies and software. They bring a lot to the table.

I don't know, with AMD software issues and them repackaging the same graphics card architecture over and over. I just want a more exciting selling point than 'look we're cheaper'.

Same with their CPUs, nothing against AMD, but I'm not buying their shit just because it's budget, that's not a good reason. I'm not rich but I want to make sure I'm happy with what I'm getting. And from what I think I saw on Toms Hardware, their best CPUs are just catching up to decent Ivy Bridge i5s and Sandy Bridge i7s.

Because the fps was pathetically slow to begin with (compared to Nvidia day one patches).

Whichever has the best deal at upgrade time. Ive used plenty of cards from both, currently on Nvidia. If people think there is any sort of significant difference in driver quality then they are either fanboys or haven't used the other side in many years.

From what I hear, it could be Nvidia's fault AMD drivers suck. Either way though, it's AMDs problem, not ours. I can't wait around for them to get their shit together.

Ya know, I'm not a graphics card fanboy and it's not my job to take sides or some peculiar stance against stuff I'm not involved with, it's on them, not our business. AMD wants me to buy their products, they need to meet the standard of their competitors.

@indzman: Under normal circumstances, I would say that the one with the best performance for the price range that I'm looking in I will go with. However, I have decided to support AMD for now because I don't want them to die off and Nvidia to monopolize the GPU market causing prices to skyrocket.

Usually they are very close performance wise and the driver issues that people complain about with AMD usually are overblown fanboy nonsense.

Not really. Maybe back when you had an AMD or ATI card that was more of a problem, but I went from excellent framerates to 'OMG YES' framerates after that Novermber update from AMD.

AMD drivers are actually really good now. Not as frequent as nVidia's, but it's certainly much better than years past.

I usually look at Nvidia first since I am more familiar with them. Either one is good though, and the one with the better performance for the dollar is normally what I choose.

This is a lot to cover, but I'll try to be a short as a can with it...

Cheapest I saw 290x 8GB was $350 at the time, even new 290x 4GB was $325 at lowest. I paid $280 for PCS 390 8GB.

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4k benchmarks via guru3d:

Bioshock Infinite(Ultra): 970: 35fps | 980: 43fps | 390 PCS: 36fps | 290x: 30fps

Tomb Raider(Ultra): 970: 38fps | 980: 46fps | 390 PCS: 44fps | 290x: 42fps

Thief(VHQ): 970: 24fps | 980: 29fps | 390 PCS: 29fps | 290x: 26fps

BF Hardline(Ultra 4xAA): 970: 21fps | 980: 25fps | 390 PCS: 25fps | 290x: 25fps

GTA V(Max, 2xAA): 970: 27fps | 980: 31fps | 390 PCS: 31fps | 290x: 30fps

The Witcher 3(Ultra+AA): 970: 25fps | 980: 28fps | 390 PCS: 24fps | 290x: 24fps

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4k avg scores: 970: 28.3fps | 980: 33.6fps | 390 PCS: 31.5fps | 290x: 29.5fps

390 scores 11.3% victory over 970 at 4k with 31.5fps avg at Ultra settings. With easy 10% OC overhead, scores jump to ~34fps, 4K, Ultra Settings. So 390 is definitely a 30fps/4k card.

*Notes*

-PowerColor PCS already had won me over with 7870 Myst and OC to 1175/1575 core/mem WHILE managing ~70°C at 60-70% fan speed and very low fan volume.

-390 is a perf/price winner and more powerful than the 970.

-I wanted to avoid potential pitfalls of the 3.5GB VRAM the 970 had which manifests at high res and ultra settings.

-I am strictly mid-range gamer with inability to purchase Fury/980.

- Consistently low fan volume and low temps under load were top-tier concern.

Thoughts?

I tend to prefer Nvidia but AMD isn't bad either. I just have some bad experience with their drivers.

I've had my 970 for a year now and I've been very happy with it. I haven't had any issues with it and it's basically torn through everything I've chucked at it and spat it out in 1080p :3

I would like to try AMD in the future though.

which ever one that offers a highend card with the most power efficient or lowest power draw. :P

Used to be Nvidia in the past, until I bought a $170 1gb 4870 in early 2009. Not only the cheapest GPU I had bought, but the first that could max out most of my games then and for years to come. Will continue with AMD in the future unless Nvidia takes a drastic leap ahead.

Also I seem to have lucked out and have never had these driver problems that AMD supposedly has. Last driver trouble was with a GTX 755m laptop, man that was a pain in the ass.

Always been a fan of AMD GPU's for some reason, not sure why.

Mate of mine settled on Nvidia and we banter a lot about it hahaah. Funny thign was the role was reversed about 8 or so years ago, Nvidia was the super heated monster card that didn't offer any real gains and AMD was the much better performer. The crown must have swapped about 3 or 4 times in the last 10-12 years.

I see more people whinging about AMD drivers but see more real world issues with Nvidia cards though. Seems there update policy is like Apples, every driver update slowly makes previous generations obsolete by reducing there performance aye *nudge nudge, wink wink*.

Yeah i've heard that as well.

I've had both and Nividia seem to be more reliable in terms of driver updates etc. As always though if you're in the market for a new GPU do a lot of research, read all the reviews of cards within your budget on both sides and buy the best card you can afford the brand name on it is really the last thing you should be worried about.

This is particularly evidenced by the benchmarks of AMD cards when they released stacked up against nVidia cards and then benchmarks with the same cards years later. The AMD cards, while at first performing worse, end up years later performing better than the same cards they were stacked against.

I do not even have a gaming setup, but I say Nvidia for the sole reason that they produce high quality products. Everything they make appears to be well built and thought through.

do you mean like the GPU architecture and stuff? because the physical cards are made by the gpu manufacturers like EVGA, MSI, etc that come up with their own third party cooling designs