Nvidia or AMD GPU?

[solomaniac85]

My current build is this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fbNw with the antec 300 illusion case.

I heard today that since the release of the Nvidia 660TI AMD has slashed the prices of 7000 series. I currently want to play(all on max settings with a resolution of 1920x1080) Gw2,Skyrim,BF3,Minecraft with sonic ethers shaders,Garrys mod,Dragons Nest,World of warcraft,TF2, and Blacklight:Retribution, also I will be recording some of these games to put on youtube. I currently have a tight budget but I am really contemplating on getting the 660TI for the extra 80$ or keep my 7850. I want my system to not need an upgrade for a while. I may plan on crossfiring or SLI'ing in the future but that will probably not be until late 2013. So should I keep on and save up for a 7850 or 660TI. I've seen a lot of videos on the 660TI and I see that it is a very good card, but I know some games have trouble with nvidia drivers. Please give me good feedback on which one to get please!

 

[master_chen]

Skyrim, Butthurt Field, Boringlands, MAFIA, Crysis, Far Cry, Max Payne

All of these heavily benefit from PhysX, so if you wish to REALLY max them out, I highly suggest that you get Nvidia. If you don't care about absolute maximizing or don't care about PhysX at all, then get Radeon. But remember this: Unreal Engine 4 is coming. It would heavily utilize PhysX, and there would be a ton of Unreal Engine 4-based games in the next several years, so if you really take the future for consideration, then you'll want to get a card that can support PhysX. I suggest you thoroughly think about it, before you'll make your final decision.
Of course, this only applies in the case if AMD wouldn't bring it's own PhysX-equivalent in the next couple of years.

 

[refillable]

7870? For now, I won't really care on Unreal Engine 4. Because I can buy any nvidia card and make it a dedicated PhysX unit if I want PhysX. In my opinion, for now, price /performance matter most and the 7870 is the best in that department.

 

[Ironslice]

GTX 660 ti

 

[blazorthon]

Unreal 4 also has some very advanced Direct3D lighting that Nvidia's cards suck at badly whereas AMD cards can be supplemented by a GTS 450 and get great PhysX performance while still having great Direct3D lighting performance.

The 7950 actually beats the 7870 in overclocking performance per dollar and so does the 7850, but the 7870 does beat the 660 TI. The 660 Ti is easily the worst of the high-end graphics cards because it has very low memory bandwidth and not much room for increasing it. It overclocks poorly and be it at stock or overclocked, it sucks at AA and tessellation.

 

[i7470]

My current build is this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fbNw with the antec 300 illusion case.

I heard today that since the release of the Nvidia 660TI AMD has slashed the prices of 7000 series. I currently want to play(all on max settings with a resolution of 1920x1080) Gw2,Skyrim,BF3,Minecraft with sonic ethers shaders,Garrys mod,Dragons Nest,World of warcraft,TF2, and Blacklight:Retribution, also I will be recording some of these games to put on youtube. I currently have a tight budget but I am really contemplating on getting the 660TI for the extra 80$ or keep my 7850. I want my system to not need an upgrade for a while. I may plan on crossfiring or SLI'ing in the future but that will probably not be until late 2013. So should I keep on and save up for a 7850 or 660TI. I've seen a lot of videos on the 660TI and I see that it is a very good card, but I know some games have trouble with nvidia drivers. Please give me good feedback on which one to get please!

if you want an answer from a person who used both nvidia and amd, my answer would be to get an nvidia 660ti. i presently use 7000 card too but 660ti absolutely smokes all the games at 1920x1080 and 1920x1200. be informed that any resolution higher is not recommended for 660ti with ultra settings(as per official information from nvidia). physx completely changes the environments and you can see more and more games come with physx optimized and has nvidia as a partner in their development. another big advantage is nvidia's driver support. even its beta versions are as solid as whql version and they continuously updates their drivers and they extend their support to older cards too.

my personal rig has amd phenom and 7000 series card. the 7000 series were facing some serious driver issues. they send the card out for retail even before even having a driver tested and i waited months for the drivers 12.4,12.6 12.7beta didnt solve the issues. the latest 12.8 looks somewhat stable. but it stll has issues.

my friend has opted for 560ti after seeing my trouble with amd and he is very happy.

so i highly recommend you to get a 660ti with a factory overclocked version from msi as it comes with a over clocking software called afterburner which is fantastic. it will cost you may be 20 or 30 bugs more but is a good choice than the reference cards.

 

[blazorthon]

if you want an answer from a person who used both nvidia and amd, my answer would be to get an nvidia 660ti. i presently use 7000 card too but 660ti absolutely smokes all the games at 1920x1080 and 1920x1200. be informed that any resolution higher is not recommended for 660ti with ultra settings(as per official information from nvidia). physx completely changes the environments and you can see more and more games come with physx optimized and has nvidia as a partner in their development. another big advantage is nvidia's driver support. even its beta versions are as solid as whql version and they continuously updates their drivers and they extend their support to older cards too.

my personal rig has amd phenom and 7000 series card. the 7000 series were facing some serious driver issues. they send the card out for retail even before even having a driver tested and i waited months for the drivers 12.4,12.6 12.7beta didnt solve the issues. the latest 12.8 looks somewhat stable. but it stll has issues.

my friend has opted for 560ti after seeing my trouble with amd and he is very happy.

so i highly recommend you to get a 660ti with a factory overclocked version from msi as it comes with a over clocking software called afterburner which is fantastic. it will cost you may be 20 or 30 bugs more but is a good choice than the reference cards.

I haven't had any driver issues with my 7850 since Catalyst 12.6 launched, the 660 TI doesn't even come beat the 7850 in overclocking performance, let alone come close to the 7870 and especially the 7950, it doesn't even smoke them at stock because it has crap minimum FPS and AA/tessellation efficiency even at 1080p, and PhysX can be had on the AMD cards with a GTS 450 (or an even weaker card, the GTS 450 is more than necessary for this) supplementing them (with the 7850 and 7870, this is still as cheap as or cheaper than the GTX 660 TI).

Very few games are optimized for PhysX and that isn't going to change. Not many developers go for a technology that many of their customers don't use. Direct3D lighting features are becoming more common than PhysX and Nvidia can't use them and still have playable performance.

Also, Nvidia has had several driver issues recently. I'm also someone who has used both Nvidia and AMD/Ati cards (mostly Nvidia). I upgraded from a GTX 560 TI to a Radeon 7850 and once Catalyst 12.6 came out, I never had any complaints left about the upgrade.

 

[i7470]

if you have doubt check out the the 660ti review here at toms and you can see it smokes 7870 and competes somewhat with 7950 on some titles. check out other sites like techpowerup.com too. i would recommend gtx 670 if you can somehow afford it. it gives the perfect price/performance/watt in history.

 

[i7470]

I haven't had any driver issues with my 7850 since Catalyst 12.6 launched, the 660 TI doesn't even come beat the 7850 in overclocking performance, let alone come close to the 7870 and especially the 7950, it doesn't even smoke them at stock because it has crap minimum FPS and AA/tessellation efficiency even at 1080p, and PhysX can be had on the AMD cards with a GTS 450 (or an even weaker card, the GTS 450 is more than necessary for this) supplementing them (with the 7850 and 7870, this is still as cheap as or cheaper than the GTX 660 TI).

Very few games are optimized for PhysX and that isn't going to change. Not many developers go for a technology that many of their customers don't use. Direct3D lighting features are becoming more common than PhysX and Nvidia can't use them and still have playable performance.

Also, Nvidia has had several driver issues recently. I'm also someone who has used both Nvidia and AMD/Ati cards (mostly Nvidia). I upgraded from a GTX 560 TI to a Radeon 7850 and once Catalyst 12.6 came out, I never had any complaints left about the upgrade.

well i still have some issues occasionally like my screen goes blank and comes with a grey dotted white lines and sometimes hangs the system. i reported this issue with amd 's driver reporting form and still havent heard anything from them.

 

[solomaniac85]

Best answer selected by solomaniac85.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey