Your thoughts on a GPU


Garrett

Garrett

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I'm looking to build a new rig soon & was originally going to get one of the 970's but have been chatting with a few that have a Radeon R9 390 and the consensus seems to be it's the better card, that is what most reviews are saying too.. this seems like a great price to me, I don't know of anything better in the same price range.

I'd appreciate people's thoughts, does anyone have either card?
 
Voice of experience here, AMD cards and Linux will only end in tears... They haven't had a driver in the last couple years that I haven't had to manually hack the kernel module code in order to successfully compile a working kernel module. Performance wise it hasn't been that horrible, but the amount of effort needed every time I upgrade the kernel is not worth it.
 
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Also talking from experience: Strongly disagree with the folks above me. Even the closed Catalyst driver is improving, but what you really want to use is the open source one. It is amazingly good, being competitive with the closed source one on performance for several cards already and in general consistently staying above 50%, and the most trouble-free and feature-packed Linux graphics driver by far (yes, even comparing it to the Intel one, for those in the know). It's also getting more and more focus from AMD.


Can't say anything about Windows, but being the biggest market for them I guess the driver is also in very good shape.
 
I have a 970 and heavily recommend it. nVidia drivers are so much ahead of the pack. Plus its power consumption is very low, and the card is very silent (Zotac model). Perfect for gaming in the living room. 

Never buy AMD. 
 
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From reading around and general experience I'd tend to stick to NVidia if in game performance is your main concern. AMD cards may have good benchmarks but tend to not work as well in game as their NVidia counterparts.

However I'm pretty sure that either card you mentioned would provide a great gaming experience overall, do you have a particular 'must have' game in mind, if so then do a bit of checking as to how well it runs with both cards before buying.

+1 for what Ekianjo said about the Nvidia card being a lot cooler & quieter, if that's important then it's NVidia all the way.
 
960GTX  would be my next GFX board, decent card but still a little bit on the expensive side imho.
 
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OK a lot of people devolve into fanboism with your question so take that in mind.

The NVidia and AMD cards are trading blows.  The line about Nvidia having better drivers is mostly untrue as both companies have released terrible drivers in the past and well AMD has picked up their game in the driver department from almost a decade ago when the drivers were fairly poor.  Nvidia has a slight edge but only because they have a closer relationship with most developers so can build better drivers quicker for some games before AMD gets a look at it but after a few weeks its usually back to business as usual.  (You know that nvidia logo that pops up when a lot of games start that pretty much means nvidia had a head start making drivers for it, same with AMD logos but they are far fewer)

Having said that with AMD owning the console space I think that edge of Nvidias won't be so great any more and it seems that unless the game is using gameworks or relying on phys x it really doesn't have much impact any more, however that is just an opinion.           

So what you need to consider is price, performance, power and heat, and do you really require day 1 better drivers.  Personally I don't care about day 1 amazing drivers because you just whack the graphics down a notch and you are fine most times.  How important these factors are to you will determine the card you get.  AMD is generally best price for performance, if you have heat issues or bad airflow or concerned with power draw Nvidia is the better choice atm.  If you want better day 1 drivers Nvidia is also the way to go.
 
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The thread starter actualy never sayed he want to use the GFX card under Linux, so if he uses Windows, the "driver question" is actualy quite uninteresting. I personaly prefer NVidia because of my good experience with these Cards but I also handled AMD7ATI GPU's.  Besides that I look more into the price/performance direction, I also prefer cards that don't need an nuclear power station to run stable.  The (german) 3D Center has a nice overview about that aspect, including performacne comparings in a couple of spread sheets

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/stromverbrauch-aktueller-und-vergangener-grafikkarten

(Idle/max TDP from various sources, plus "3DC Performance-Index" at the right but not sure what their 100% is based on)
 
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The 970 launched with false advertising galore, and nvidia resently launched drivers that may permanently destroy your panel, and your card if we go back to the 680.

It is true that both companies dont know how to make drivers, but they differ slightly.

On linux your options are limited since with the 970+ it wont work with nouveau because nvidia insists that be the case. So you get the proprietary nvidia one, which is a mixed blessing in many ways.

I'm using a 6970 with the open driver which is fine, less performance than the proprietary, but hey, catalyst is never good. Some things will probably not run, and some new games dont have AMD support on linux at all.

AMD has something going for it, on newer cards (no, not the low-end rebrands) you can use the open AMDGPU driver for kernelspace regardless of what driver you go with. So they have some things right, even though older nvidia has the option of being fully free. Make sure it supports reclocking in nouveau if you go that route though, because performance can be severely limited just running stock.

Curiously, I don't think the 390 is supported with AMDGPU, being based on GCN 1.1

But the 380 and R9 Fury are GCN 1.2, so maybe consider those.

What kind of a rig is it, and what is the form-factor?  Screens, resolution, OS, overclocking, function?
 
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I'll give you my two pieces of NVIDIA fanboyism. (I play on Windows by the way, so Linux might be troublesome driver-wise)

I've stuck to the brand for more than a decade, and I've always been satisfied. It may cost a little more compared to AMD, and when DX10 showed up, NVIDIA has been a bit slow to upgrade.

But I've always seen NVIDIA push further when it comes to dev techniques. The most known one is PhysX (yeah, they basically bought Ageia and integrated their technology into the GeForce), but there are many more.

Most games today have a special something added with either NVIDIA or AMD cards. But the later one is less represented.

So with a GeForce, you unlock a bit more graphical options. But there is more to it : they are also a bit better in power consumption and the price-to-performance ratio.

When it comes to the special card, I'd say get the 970 if you can.

I've been using x60 series before (260 then 560), but the 960 is so much less performing than the 970 that I've bought the later one. Its memory bus and GDDR quantity are quite limited for a modern gamer setup, and it's not worth the price anymore because of this.

If you don't play much on high settings or don't train on simulators, then a 950 is fine enough. Just don't waste your money or time on the 960.

Otherwise, I'd recommend the 970, which comes with enough performance for the upcoming years, unless you really want 4K and/or 60fps on intensive games (GTA V for example).

Then the 980, 980Ti and TITANs are awe-inspiring, but I think the price is just prohibitive for a piece of hardware destined to be replaced in two to five years.

This was my opinion on the current NVIDIA cards. You are free to choose AMD (they have their perks too), but then I couldn't really give you any good advice.  ;)
 
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Kev2442 said:
When it comes to the special card, I'd say get the 970 if you can.

I've been using x60 series before (260 then 560), but the 960 is so much less performing than the 970 that I've bought the later one. It memory bus and GDDR quantity is quite limited for a modern gamer setup, and it's not worth the price anymore because of this.

If you don't play much on high settings or don't train on simulators, then a 950 is fine enough. Just don't waste your money or time on the 960.
Click to expand...
True, the x60 may not be the b est option if there is also a x50 comming up that is not much slower but cheaper and consums less power. I'm also disappointed that all these "medium range" 900 cards only have a 128bit wide memory bus nowadays, even my old GTX460 has a 256 Bit wide bus.
 
Geforce GTX 750 is the best solution for me. Very efficient when it comes to power usage and performance, but I guess most people don't care for power usage and just want a beast.

I'll never go back to ATI if they don't change their drivers and Linux support behaviour completely, drivers were bad in WinXP already but the Linux drivers really suck.

I'm using Nvidias own drivers on Mint 17.2 and the card works like a charm while being quite silent.
 
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My buddy has a very nice 750TI, passive cooled, low power consumption (~50W max or so) but still decent gaming performance. A good card if you want to keep your PC quiet and the electricity bill low.
 
The x50 series has always been a fair deal. I've always thought of them as the cheapest gamer cards. Otherwise I've been mostly looking for x60s, but this time, the 128b memory bus and 2GBs of GDDR just weren't good for me. I'm more and more into 3d rendering and heavy sims, and I could make use of 4GBs.

So that's it for me. If you buy NVIDIA, get a 950 (much better performing yet not that more expensive compared to a 750), or if you can and want more, get a 970. Just avoid the 960 please.
 
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This is good news. Usually I'm an NVIDIA fanboy, but as ED had AMD interested in the Pyra's future SoCs, this is hoping for a Radeon-based Pyra hitting the shelves someday.

Someday...
 
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