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Head count: Do you own an AMD or NVIDIA GPU?

What brand of discrete GPU do you use in your primary gaming computer?


Results are only viewable after voting.

Arkanius

Member
By the way, since it's very important to reference this:

Most people here have no loyalties to each brand, they might prefer one to another, but if one has the superior product, the market responds favorably to them.
 

llehuty

Member
I have an average AMD Radeon Graphics card in my laptop.

I'm really not that into PC gaming to really care about this, since I mostly play my games on handhelds or consoles, leaving the PCfor the ocassional indie little game that pics my interest.
 

Jin

Member
I'm not. AMD likes to whine a lot about things that NV has and they don't. As a result we have these beautiful threads with NV bashing.

Take the latest Hairworks whining for example - it is a perfect mirror of the situation with TressFX in Tomb Raider but I can't remember any public comments on that issue made by NV back then.

And recommending the underdog is making you feel better I think. It's something of "NV can cope on their own but AMD needs my help" mentality. Which is kinda true to a degree.

My log of GPU changes is too long to remember but let me try:
Rage II + Voodoo 2
GeForce 2 GTS
GeForce 3
GeForce 4 Ti 4600
Radeon 9700 Pro
GeForce 5900 Ultra
Radeon 9800 Pro
GeForce 6800 Ultra
Radeon X800 Pro
GeForce 7800 GTX
Radeon X1900XT
GeForce 8800 Ultra
Radeon HD2900
GeForce 9800 GX2
Radeon 3870 X2
GeForce GTX 280
Radeon HD4870
GeForce GTX 470
Radeon HD5850
GeForce GTX 680
Radeon HD 7970
GeForce GTX 770
GeForce GTX 970
(GeForce GTX 980Ti probably)

Is there a particular reason why you flip flop on AMD and Nvidia cards? Just curious.
 

chippy13

Member
I have an Nvidia 980m in my laptop. Main reason for Nvidia is that I do a lot of GPU based rendering for work and it works better with CUDA in a lot of cases. My work computers are all Nvidia as well which makes it easier for them to play nice with each other.
 
I've been in the NVIDIA camp since the GeForce 256 series cards. The only times where I went AMD was with the Radeon 9700 pro and Radeon 1900x.


There needs to be an Intel integrated option for this survey.
 

Madridy

Member
GTX 980

Which i think is dying, got some weird flickering while playing witcher 2 last night after about 15min of gameplay... :(

Will see how it does on TW3
 

finalflame

Member
Is there a particular reason why you flip flop on AMD and Nvidia cards? Just curious.

Seems like he chooses whichever card is the best performer/value for the generation. His history indicates that pretty heavily. There's nothing to be gained by being "loyal" to one brand despite clear advantages for that generation from the other manufacturer.
 

Karanlos

Member
Had a Geforce in my first computer. Then went AMD with a Radeon 9800 XT and got a CD-Key for Half Life 2, which only released a couple of years later :p
Had a Gefore 8800 which acted wierd and it made rebooting my computer impossible as it stalled the system. Also bought a laptop with an nVidia GPU which basically fried the motherboard 3 times without even gaming(One fix was to open the laptop and use a torch on the gpu die, luckily I had insurance). Bought a Radeon 5770 and later a Radeon 6950 for a new pc build which i still have. Waiting to see what AMD has to offer this time around and will decide when they finally release the new cards.
 

Kevyt

Member
I have a Zotac GTX 970, a Sapphire 290x and a Sapphire 270 (non x)

I had a an EVGA 760 which I gave to a friend.

Currently only using the 290x. My 970 is just lying on my desk gathering dust.

I switched that sucker right after the VRAM fiasco. Originally the 970 was meant as a replacement for my 290 (non-x) which I RMA'd to sapphire but they sent me back a 290x and I couldn't be happier.

I could never get DSR to work on my 970. Oh well, at least I got a free game with it.
 

sector4

Member
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB in my MacBook Pro.

If I were to build a gaming PC it'd be an Intel / NVIDIA build too. Just always preferred those.
 

STARHOUND

Neo Member
NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti

It's served me well these past few years, but I'll be looking to upgrade to the 980 once the Ti hits in a few months. Hopefully it knocks the price down a tad
 

Bytes

Member
Sapphire Radeon 7970 Ghz Edition with 6GB of VRAM.

I am holding off on upgrading until another Radeon comes out with at least 6GB of VRAM. I thought that much VRAM was superfluous when I bought it, but the trend for games now since to be huge VRAM usage for the best settings.

I am running Witcher 3 on Ultra nicely, so I see no need to upgrade now anyway.
 

Zaru

Member
Considering how little this poll changed in percentage after the first 100-200 votes, it illustrates nicely why studies with a few hundred participants (or even below 100) can provide accurate estimates for the entire group.
 
Looking at the responses it's likely that the split here favors high-end and especially the top end is extremely overrepresented compared to something like Steam statistics. Especially the amount of 980's and Titan X's seems way out of proportion compared to what you'd think the real percentage is, which is probably negligible compared to more mainstream cards.

The reality is that there are now about 2,000 votes but there are not 2,000 posts in this thread. If you only look at the responses, you'll see that it's mostly people who own the high-end hardware who are posting, because of you know SHAME CUBE. The real percentage is pretty much exactly as the poll results indicate, since it tracks so closely to the Steam Hardware Survey which asks millions of people the same question.

Considering how little this poll changed in percentage after the first 100-200 votes, it illustrates nicely why studies with a few hundred participants (or even below 100) can provide accurate estimates for the entire group.

It's proof that in statistical theory, if you get a representative population sample, you don't need to poll the entire population. It's how Presidential election polling and Nielsen ratings work, although those numbers are famous for being controversial because of how hard it is to get a truly representative sample of the entire population.
 
I bought a 570 when I put my PC together just before BF3 came out which - jesus christ - was back in August 2011 now! I am actually finding it hard to believe my baby's almost 4 years old!!

That said, I have a PS4 and I don't think I'll bother upgrading my PC until I need it for work now. The only games I still play on here are not that demanding.
 

dr_rus

Member
Is there a particular reason why you flip flop on AMD and Nvidia cards? Just curious.

Used to work for a hardware website plus I'm generally interested in what's available from any IHV. Sticking exclusively to NV GPUs lately though. AMD's software ecosystem isn't on the same level so they need to sell a much better hardware for the same money for me to be interested and I can think of only one time that happened during these years -- with 9700/9800 Radeon cards. These were simply amazing.
 
Used to work for a hardware website plus I'm generally interested in what's available from any IHV. Sticking exclusively to NV GPUs lately though. AMD's software ecosystem isn't on the same level so they need to sell a much better hardware for the same money for me to be interested and I can think of only one time that happened during these years -- with 9700/9800 Radeon cards. These were simply amazing.

They certainly were. Weren't they also the ones where a bunch of the 9700's could be modded into 9800's?

Edit: Nope, a tiny bit of research suggests I'm thinking of the 9500 into a 9700.
 
Drivers don't run the code, they run compiled binaries. You can't optimize drivers to the source code - especially since you don't have any way of telling if this is the code which was actually compiled into the application.

Care to provide any quote on CD helping NV with TressFX optimization?

There's nothing in Gameworks preventing any developer to do whatever he want with any IHV. The source codes are accessible to them. What they can't do is change this code without NV's permission. This is essentially the exact same as what AMD does as you too can't change their code without their permission since they are holding the sources. NV's not playing with "open" word as much - that's the main difference between the two.
Here's a quote from Andrew burns.
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/ar...14-14-beta-drivers-released#comment-820105287
We are aware of performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings. Unfortunately, NVIDIA didn’t receive final game code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible.

Please be advised that these issues cannot be completely resolved by an NVIDIA driver. The developer will need to make code changes on their end to fix the issues on GeForce GPUs as well. As a result, we recommend you do not play Tomb Raider until all of the above issues have been resolved.

In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games.

Four days later, CD released a game patch that ...
http://www.pcgamer.com/tomb-raider-patch-provides-hair-care-for-nvidia-users/
. Think of this latest Tomb Raider patch as the conditioner for AMD's fancy hair tech TressFX. Owners of Nvidia cards had been experiencing extreme optimisation issues when choosing to let Lara's hair wave free and loose. The update should smooth out those issues, bringing specific stability fixes for Nvidia and Intel cards, as well as "small" improvements to TressFX rendering.


Crystal Dynamics and Nvidia were both able to look at the TressFX code, Nvidia made changes on their driver side and CD made changes on the game side so that TressFX could work on the Nvidia cards. 30 seconds and Google would have shown you this. I thought this was common knowledge, so I didn't bother with a source originally.

To my knowledge, this type of assistance isn't available with Hairworks.


For instance...
http://www.overclock3d.net/articles...nvidia_hairworks_unoptimizable_for_amd_gpus/1

CD Project Red were unable to optimize HairWorks on order to play nicely with AMD GPUs, giving Nvidia a distinct advantage when playing the Witcher 3. The feature may be hard coded to not work well with AMD GPUs, rather than simply unoptimized.
There is a chance that AMD will release a driver update which will help AMD perform better when using HairWorks, but without access to the programs code it may take some time.
Like many other titles which use GameWorks, Nvidia are the performance leaders, but this again raises the question of Nvidia artificially giving their GPUs an advantage over the competition. Nvidia need to promote fairness with their GameWork's Library for it to be truly beneficial to the gaming world, as right now it is doing a great job of promoting Nvidia over AMD, via questionable methods, rather than simpler game development.

And this quote from CDProject's Marcin Momot...
Many of you have asked us if AMD Radeon GPUs would be able to run NVIDIA’s HairWorks technology – the answer is yes! However, unsatisfactory performance may be experienced as the code of this feature cannot be optimized for AMD products. Radeon users are encouraged to disable NVIDIA HairWorks if the performance is below expectations.

So unlike Tomb Raider and TressFX in which Crystal Dynamics were able to optimize so that it could work better with Nvidia cards(and even Intel IGPU), CD Project and AMD cannot do the same with Hairworks.

We're getting pretty far off topic at this point. If you'd like to discuss this further or if you have access to any other information on the topic please PM.
 
Used to work for a hardware website plus I'm generally interested in what's available from any IHV. Sticking exclusively to NV GPUs lately though. AMD's software ecosystem isn't on the same level so they need to sell a much better hardware for the same money for me to be interested and I can think of only one time that happened during these years -- with 9700/9800 Radeon cards. These were simply amazing.

The X1900 series were pretty awesome too, they were able to implement a driver hack which forced AA in Oblivion. The Nvidia equivalent at the time had no such function. I pretty much bought the X1900XTX just to play Oblivion back in the day.

Come to think of it the only 2 ATI/AMD cards I've ever owned are the 9800 Pro during the Half-Life 2 era and the X1900XTX.
 

liunli

Neo Member
Amd r7 250x
I find amd cards better at overclocking and can take more abuse/are tougher to break.
That's why i like them. Their drivers can be a nightmare sometime, but my current gpu is flawless.
 

Patchy

Banned
Sapphire Radeon 7970 Ghz Edition with 6GB of VRAM.

I am holding off on upgrading until another Radeon comes out with at least 6GB of VRAM. I thought that much VRAM was superfluous when I bought it, but the trend for games now since to be huge VRAM usage for the best settings.

I am running Witcher 3 on Ultra nicely, so I see no need to upgrade now anyway.

There's an 8GB 290X out at the moment. :)
 

anothertech

Member
AMD r9 290x

Will prob upgrade to 390x on release depending on price.

I was always invidia card buyer until the r9 series.

I was so impressed with their pricing and turned off by Titan pricing I decided to go with them for the foreseeable future to keep competition going.

Also very excited abou HBM future. Def want to invest in that.
 

Smokey

Member
I'm actually surprised about this, I know that the market is like that too (Steam Survey results/AMD/NVIDIA market-share graph), but I thought PC GAF will be more on AMD.

I mean maybe just me but I see/read more AMD threads around here, in PC thread many people recommend AMD GPUs over Nvidia and we even got a "Return of the King" thread when R9 290 got released and Mantle, and in general more hype toward AMD new products so I felt/thought that most people here like AMD more seeing thatthe reactions on Nvidia threads mostly on the negative side (3.5, Nvidia press confs, Shield, salts posts..ect) but in the end it wasn't really that.

Are we reading the same forum?
 
Still rolling with the 600 Ti. Next GPU will be whatever Nvidia's best laptop GPU <= 50W TDP is this fall.

By the way, since it's very important to reference this:

Most people here have no loyalties to each brand, they might prefer one to another, but if one has the superior product, the market responds favorably to them.
I have no loyalty to Nvidia, but I do have a deep-seated loathing of AMD due to their years of fucking over Linux users (e.g.: me).
 
By the way, since it's very important to reference this:

Most people here have no loyalties to each brand, they might prefer one to another, but if one has the superior product, the market responds favorably to them.

Zero loyalty here, for me its just a matter of cost/benefit, both are just fine and i think you need to be really picky to favor one or another.
 

Jin

Member
Used to work for a hardware website plus I'm generally interested in what's available from any IHV. Sticking exclusively to NV GPUs lately though. AMD's software ecosystem isn't on the same level so they need to sell a much better hardware for the same money for me to be interested and I can think of only one time that happened during these years -- with 9700/9800 Radeon cards. These were simply amazing.

Loved my ATI 9800. What got me really interested was that Half-Life 2 demo during E3 where Gabe was saying they had it running on ATI.
 

Arm73

Member
nVidia here, always had one since 3d graphics card were needed.
I believe I had a 5200 fx, then with doom 3 boundle I got an 6800 GT ( not too sure now ) then two 9800 GT in SLI and now a 780 GTX.
I'll upgrade when something substantial better comes out and new games struggle to run on my system.
I'm so used to the nVidia control panel and frequent updates that I couldn't imagine switching to something else.
 
R9 290x 4GB. The price to power ratio is excellent. I've no brand loyalty once or ever, but Nvidia needs to bring their prices down a few notches before I can move in that direction.

Things look pretty Nvidia heavy around here.
 

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
By the way, since it's very important to reference this:

Most people here have no loyalties to each brand, they might prefer one to another, but if one has the superior product, the market responds favorably to them.
If this was true the AMD numbers would be lower. I understand outliers existing, but most of the time I can't help but think you'd need some weird bias to stick with AMD right now.
 
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