Pros and CONS of ATI vs Nvidia GPU

[jnelsoninjax]

I have always been a fan of Nvidia and honestly would like to remain that way, but I am open to a discussion about the pros and cons of each. The biggest thing I am noticing is that the ATI cards see,m to be cheaper than the 3000 series Nvidia cards, I am interested in the differences between the two brands. Can I get some feedback on this matter? Please keep it civil.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

well for one ATI cards are all going to be super old as that branding hasn't been used in years  

 

lol but in all seriousness the AMD 7000 series looks promising as long as you don't care about Ray Tracing yet. Nvidia is now the one that's in the 'throw more power at it' phase instead of optimizing, and their drivers have been suffering lately too. If AMD can nail the drivers for the 7000 series then I think they'll handily dominate the early market this generation until MSRP prices come down.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

There's a lot of videos on YT about this exact same thing.

Might be off topic, but with Linux Arch, NVIDIA is a BIG problem. I'm on several Linux Forums, and I always hear of the horror stories. ATI/AMD are put into the kernel. So you don't need any drivers for it.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 22/11/2022 at 08:37, Mindovermaster said:

There's a lot of videos on YT about this exact same thing.

Might be off topic, but with Linux Arch, NVIDIA is a BIG problem. I'm on several Linux Forums, and I always hear of the horror stories. ATI/AMD are put into the kernel. So you don't need any drivers for it.

Yeah Nvidia is NOT friendly to the open-source community. They finally open sourced a portion of the drivers earlier this year but not the whole thing so the package is nearly useless to most people. CUDA cores are another piece, they're proprietary to Nvidia and that's why you don't see them in AMD cards.

AMD is the exact opposite in this regard; they fully support most open-source initiatives

[ThaCrip]

On 22/11/2022 at 09:37, Mindovermaster said:

ATI/AMD are put into the kernel. So you don't need any drivers for it.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of things. because on Linux Mint I know that with NVIDIA you basically need to use the 'Driver Manager' to install the proper NVIDIA proprietary driver as by default it will be using the open-source nouveau driver which does not give as good of performance. but on the AMD GPU side of things, like you said, it's built into the kernel so you don't need to do anything as it's already using a good GPU driver.

so given that info... I would imagine long term AMD might be a bit safer than NVIDIA on Linux. because with a NVIDIA GPU there will eventually come a time to where NVIDIA no longer supports it and then a person will be stuck on a weaker performing GPU driver (unless they just buy another GPU at this point) where as that won't be a issue with AMD.

p.s. I got a 1050 Ti 4GB GPU and I should be good for many years to come given the current Mint 21 series will be supported until April 2027 and I would imagine by mid-2024 or so, which is when Mint 22 will be released, will be supported until April 2029. my guess is my 1050 Ti 4GB will be supported on at least one more version past Mint 21. so if I am roughly correct here, and say Mint 23 does not support my current GPU, I can basically use my GPU until basically 2029 at which point ill have had it nearly 12 years at that point since I got it in July 2017. hell, my motherboard will be nearly 17 years old at that point (in May 2029 it will be 17 years old) to, assuming it continues to work well as it's already 10.5 years old and I leave it running pretty much all of the time.

Edited November 22, 2022 by ThaCrip

[NinjaGinger]

Although on paper Nvidea are faster, ATI are cheaper and for the price difference, the AMD are so close in performance, its not worth spending the extra for so little difference. And I heard horror stories abouit the software not being as good, but Ive never had a probl;lem with it.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

On 22/11/2022 at 09:17, NinjaGinger said:

Although on paper Nvidea are faster, ATI are cheaper and for the price difference, the AMD are so close in performance, its not worth spending the extra for so little difference. And I heard horror stories abouit the software not being as good, but Ive never had a probl;lem with it.

AMD software or NVIDIA software? Never had that problem with either..

[adrynalyne]

Depends on use case. For Windows, I’ve found Nvidia cards are more stable. For Linux, well any Linux user knows that AMD is the way to go there. If you plan on using both OSes, go AMD and learn to live with its driver quirks. 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 22/11/2022 at 09:33, Mindovermaster said:

AMD software or NVIDIA software? Never had that problem with either..

AMD; there are a lot of complaints around the Adrenaline control panel but I've personally never had an issue either

[hellowalkman Reporter]

this article should give you a fair idea about how each tier of the current gen GPUs (RTX 3000 vs RX 6000) perform:

https://www.neowin.net/deals/black-friday-2022-absolutely-insane-amd-rx-6900-xt-6800-6700-6600-gpu-deals/

 

And this is what the performance of the upcoming AMD and Nvidia flagship cards is expected to be: https://www.neowin.net/news/rx-7900-xtx-7900-xt-vs-nvidia-rtx-4090-vs-rtx-4080-performance-preview-using-amds-own-data/

[adrynalyne]

On 22/11/2022 at 08:39, Brandon H said:

AMD; there are a lot of complaints around how the Adrenaline control panel work but I've personally never had an issue either

Nor I. However, I can reliably reproduce driver crashes with MS Teams across multiple GPU models and machines when using hardware acceleration.  Not really blaming AMD but it only happens on my AMD machines. 

[cooky560 Veteran]

Right now the GPU I've got my eye on is the 7900xtx, if it keeps up with the 4080 (and the numbers so far suggest it might) the fact it's a 2 slot card for $200 less makes it mighty interesting.

 

That said it's really scary to a person who bought the 3080 for $650, to consider a $1000 part as the "value proposition"

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

On 22/11/2022 at 09:39, Brandon H said:

AMD; there are a lot of complaints around the Adrenaline control panel but I've personally never had an issue either

Oh, that. Yeah, never had that issue.

[jnelsoninjax]

So, bottom line, does it boil down to personal preference? ATI cards seem to be cheaper, but Nvidia cards seem to have better performance, is that the general gist of the whole thing?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 22/11/2022 at 12:19, jnelsoninjax said:

So, bottom line, does it boil down to personal preference? ATI cards seem to be cheaper, but Nvidia cards seem to have better performance, is that the general gist of the whole thing?

I'd say it comes down to your needs and budget constraint. If you want superior Ray Tracing and/or have need of the CUDA cores then Nvidia will suit you better. If you don't care for either of those things then I'd say save a few hundred bucks and go for AMD.

https://www.neowin.net/news/rx-7900-xtx-7900-xt-vs-nvidia-rtx-4090-vs-rtx-4080-performance-preview-using-amds-own-data/

For standard rasterized games (non-Ray Tracing) they look to be neck and neck with this new generation of cards. AMD cards will be less power hungry compared to the Nvidia GTX 4000 series as well.

I'm personally interested to see what the mid range cards will be like for the AMD RX 7000 series when they get announced probably early next year.

[Dick Montage]

On 22/11/2022 at 18:23, Brandon H said:

If you want superior Ray Tracing

So, not to be a dick but... is it just me that sees ray tracing in games and thinks "meh - you pay how much extra for this?"

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 23/11/2022 at 02:01, Dick Montage said:

So, not to be a dick but... is it just me that sees ray tracing in games and thinks "meh - you pay how much extra for this?"

You're not alone. Remember Nvidia gameworks?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 22/11/2022 at 14:31, Dick Montage said:

So, not to be a dick but... is it just me that sees ray tracing in games and thinks "meh - you pay how much extra for this?"

it's a great advancement for lighting control but I still consider the tech in its infancy. give it a few more years/generations and it'll start to be more useful/optimized.

the new Unreal Engine is a big step towards that reality since it's baking in support.

[Noir Angel]

I recently had an RX480 and had to replace with a used GTX 1080 (old I know but it was the best price-perf I could get during the mining boom). All I can say is that in general I've found the nVidia drivers to be a touch more stable, and to cause less in game issues, but the control panel itself is dated, lacking in features and painfully slow to enumerate game profiles. Unless you're going to play a lot of games using ray tracing I'd just buy whatever performs the best in your price bracket.

[sinetheo]

I was an AMD GPU fanboy back when it was still called ATI. In 2009 in the golden era of PC MR when it was still young you could get a top end GPU for $300. An AIT 5780 was the second most powerful graphics card in the world for only $249. Nvidia GT 8800 was faster but was an OUTRAGOUSLY $$$ $400 so it was a no go. lol. 

My have times change.

ATI/AMD Pros:

1. Graphics driver and utilities years ahead of Nvidia. The Geforce control panel looks straight out of XP from 2005 with IE 6 style buttons. AMD has fan curves and features that are inside MSI after burner in the driver software which is pretty cool. I like the AMD UI and features built inside

2. Very long support. My 2017 era RX 470 which I have on the shelf got Direct X 12 years after they stopped selling it. Nvidia does not support cards as long. I believe the RX 470 not only got DirectX 12 ultimate but has Windows 11 support (I could be wrong on that). They care about their customers

3. It is historically cheaper

4. Color looks more vivid as the default saturation settings are optimized out of the box where in Nvidia you have to turn these on and do things like set full color 0 - 255 (not limited color range etc)

5. Historically AMD worked well with Adobe products as their OpenCL and features

6. You are supporting the little guy and keeping the PC master race ecosystem healthy by limiting developers from using gimpworks and other nvidia features and price gouging

7. Async compute. Only the 2xxx series were able to outmatch it by ineffecient brute force with int32 cudas which is cheating. AMD works great with Vulcan as a result and professional workloads

ATI/AMD Cons

1. They run very very hot (though have improved as my experience is 1/2 a decade old now)

2. Quality is not as good as Intel/Nvidia. AMD to this day is fixing drivers and chipsets on its cpu to make it work better on Windows 11 and Linux while Intel just works

3. Drivers were ok then reeked. ATI Cataylst was so bad AMD had to delete them and start fresh with Adrenaline. They wiped those too as they would black screen on some 5700s. They now have a new driver utility and have continued to drastically improve. Historically this was a problem and might still be. They do update their stuff often at least if you do hit a problem

4. Some developers only test on Nvidia and call it a day. SWTOR to this day has flickering in some lights and on the loading bar which work fine on Nvidia

5. Nvidia uses monopolistic tricks with gimpowrks and flies in developers to make games function like garbage on ATI to make their nvidia look better. An example is Nvidia encourages triangles and not boxes for models because it makes AMD look bad. A door knob in a game made of squares has more fps on AMD than Nvidia and game developers short on cash take Nvidia money to cripple their games to make nvidia look better on benchmarks

 

Nvidia Pros:

1. They just work. However this past year I would say I have seen lots of crashes and driver problems/bugs too on Nvidia side

2. AI and machine learning is written just for CUDA as Nvidia crippled their own OpenCL to encourage developers to write just for their card compared to AMD

3. It's what everyone else uses so it's better supported by gamers, Microsoft, and game developers

4. Nvenc and CUDA extensions have made Adobe products finally catch up and surpass AMD support in the past 5 years

5. DLSS and Raytracing. Need I say more? FSR may continue to improve if it's hardware based but for now DLSS is superior in quality and performance. Raytracing AMD is catching up next gen

 

Nvidia COn:

1. Expensive

2. Monopolistic and harmful long term to the pc community and ecosystem

 

If you buy an AMD product it will work good and the drivers have vastly improved to where they are quite stable now! The utilities are nicer and you save money and feel good helping the ecoystem. You will have long term 5 to 7 years of new features being added unlike Nvidia. Downside is some games like Cyperpunk will get quite a hit with ray tracing on and FSR does work but it won't be as clear as DLSS. If you game at 1080p I wouldn't worry. When my income started approaching 70K did I start buying Nvidia more. 

That is my 2 cents from someone who owns both.

[sinetheo]

On 22/11/2022 at 12:19, jnelsoninjax said:

So, bottom line, does it boil down to personal preference? ATI cards seem to be cheaper, but Nvidia cards seem to have better performance, is that the general gist of the whole thing?

Since you are the creator of this thread I have to say Nvidia is the fastest if you buy the very very top end ala 4090 etc. If you want medium to medium high you can get that with an AMD for cheaper. As I posted I find the driver utility far superior over Nvidia and it has stuff from MSI afterburner and you can select electrical and fan curves with ease to tinker. Pretty cool stuff. 

Raytracing rumor his it is catching up to last gen Nvidia 3000 series but it is behind 4000 series and FSR is not quite as performant or sharp as DLSS. DLSS distorts stuff too regardless of what the fanboys say it is best to avoid using it if you don't have too. Cyberpunk and WatchDogs work best with Nvidia for this reason. Other games you can get features fine with AMD.

AMD will probably support Windows 12 while I bet Nvidia will drop support. They keep updating drivers for older hardware for years which is good if you don't update hardware as often. That is another factor to consider. So Nvidia = if you have $$ and update often and want latest stuff and stability. AMD = If you upgrade every few years and have 1440p or lower and love value then it's a better buy

[jnelsoninjax]

Does anybody have any insights on the Intel Arc GPU's?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 23/11/2022 at 10:38, jnelsoninjax said:

Does anybody have any insights on the Intel Arc GPU's?

They're great cards on paper but have a long way to go in the driver space. If you're just going to play DX12 games then you'll fair fine but DX9-11 suffers pretty badly on them right now.

Intel hasn't been in the GPU space in any serious matter in years and that lack of driver maturity in the older DX9-11 space really shows.

edit: LTT did a whole stream where they tested how various games perform on ARC right now; definitely worth skimming through if you're interested in the cards 

 

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 23/11/2022 at 22:08, jnelsoninjax said:

Does anybody have any insights on the Intel Arc GPU's?

not worth it yet. too many issues and drawbacks.

https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-confirms-arc-gpus-must-have-amd-sam--pcie-resizable-bar-for-optimal-performance/

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-windows-11-performance-tips-are-helping-intel-in-a-bit-unexpected-way/

[spaceelf]

On 22/11/2022 at 14:31, Dick Montage said:

So, not to be a dick but... is it just me that sees ray tracing in games and thinks "meh - you pay how much extra for this?"

Hence why I'm still not even remotely interested in it.  If I have to spend as much as the rest of the machine on a GPU....nope.

On 23/11/2022 at 10:38, jnelsoninjax said:

Does anybody have any insights on the Intel Arc GPU's?

What they said, but I'm still glad they're here.  So far, they're working in the segments that AMD and NV seem to be ignoring.