Graphics Card Woes

Rainshine

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Nov 13, 2014
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RainingLight
Allright you degenerates, let's talk GFX Cards!

I've been on Red Team for the better part of a decade and am thinking it's time to switch. NVidia beats AMD out in nearly every category, except price, but honestly as someone who's dumped over a grand into an internet spaceship game that hasn't even been released yet, I don't have a leg to stand on :P

In any case, here's my current rig;
AMD FX-8320, 8 Core CPU (OC to 3.8 GHz)
32GB Corsair 2400MHz Memory
AMD R9 290x 4GB GFX Card
1200 Watt PS (can handle any new tech rolling along!)

Obviously, my CPU and GPU are a bit dated. I recently upgraded my memory (got a good deal on some high performance RAM) and dropped a new PS in there to get ready for a(some?) new cards.

Now, I like AMD from a company and marketing point of view. I always felt they are more fair to the consumer, less gimicky and are generally more consumer friendly. NVidia has been rolling with some shady business practices lately, particularly with their proprietary platforms that inevitably are sold to game developers. AMD, I feel, tends to have better business ethics. Unfortunately, AMD cards are usually a) seemingly more powerful for the dollar, but less stables, and b) generate more heat and cost more power. Stability is pretty big for me. From a sheer power point of view, I think NVidia has the edge, not only that but with the larger market share, more developers seem to cater to them.

The FINAL point, is that the partnership between CiG and AMD is murky since Mantle is gone. I'm not sure what, if any, benefits we'll see from the partnership now that Mantle is dead and DX12 and Vulkan took it's place. Has anyone heard anything?

Anyhow, the whole point of the thread is; NVidia vs. AMD? What's your preference and why? Specifically, if anyone is running a Crossfire or SLI setup, I'd love to hear your general gaming experience with it.
 

Frisbeerocker

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May 31, 2014
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I have alternated every other card. In my experience, nvidia has been better on drivers and temperature. These are the only real difference I've experienced, and it's enough to keep me on green team in the future. My 970 is brilliant.
 
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Serious Table

Admiral
Nov 29, 2014
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The FINAL point, is that the partnership between CiG and AMD is murky since Mantle is gone. I'm not sure what, if any, benefits we'll see from the partnership now that Mantle is dead and DX12 and Vulkan took it's place. Has anyone heard anything?

Anyhow, the whole point of the thread is; NVidia vs. AMD? What's your preference and why? Specifically, if anyone is running a Crossfire or SLI setup, I'd love to hear your general gaming experience with it.
From what I've heard, in one of the games that is presently making heavy use of DX12 (don't remember the name), AMD is kicking the crap out of Nvidia specifically because Nvidia's cards don't actually work with that one specific part of DX12. Async something or other, I don't remember. So if you're looking for DX12 performance right this very second, you'll want the red team.

If you're looking for budget, all of the research I did to replace my faulty graphics card pointed me at the R9 390 out performing the GTX 970. I've had it for about a week and am loving how much of a difference it made over my GTX 760.

That said, I've heard that the 980 Ti is still outdoing anything that AMD has put out, so if you want to splurge, that's probably the way to do it.

Given the choice, I'd probably stay green side just from past experience, but I got more bang for less bucks with my R9 390 than the 970. I'll upgrade once more when SC is a bit closer to release.
 

thanatos73

Space Marshal
Nov 21, 2014
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thanatos1973
I've always been a Red team guy, from the beginning, when ATI was its own company, and AMD had 3 numbers in its processor model numbers(486 DX). I have a R9 270x, and it runs smooth as silk. I do believe the manufacturer has a lot to do with stability, and if you are using their drivers(if they have any) or AMD's drivers.
 

Serious Table

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Nov 29, 2014
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I've always been a Red team guy, from the beginning, when ATI was its own company, and AMD had 3 numbers in its processor model numbers(486 DX). I have a R9 270x, and it runs smooth as silk. I do believe the manufacturer has a lot to do with stability, and if you are using their drivers(if they have any) or AMD's drivers.
Which manufacturer do you generally run with?
 

Serious Table

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Nov 29, 2014
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for the GFX... XFX
for motherboards, I try to stick with MSI, so far, in my experience, they are bomb proof
Pleased to heard that, then. XFX has always been my favorite, but wasn't certain what other people thought in comparison to other brands, mostly because they're so uncommonly reviewed!
 

Rainshine

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Nov 13, 2014
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Well, I had a few hundred extra bucks, decided to grab a GTX 980 Ti to hold me over till Pascal drops.

I did a host of tests on my system, I couldn't actually find anything wrong with any of my hardware. I did memory tests, on both system and GPU, hdd test and defrags, fresh installs of windows and SC...I even tested my ASIC quality on my card, which turned out to be an astounding 86%! Never owned a card with ASIC quality that high. I'm not sure what the deal is, but I decided to do some upgrades.

I got 32GB of some upgraded 2400MHz memory, a new power supply rated for 1200 watts instead of 800, and I ordered an MSI GTX 980 Ti. Some users did the same upgrade I just did, with the video card, and reported a night and day difference in performance. Should be a couple weeks for my card to get here (Newegg takes ages to ship to military posts offices), but I'll report back when it arrives.
 

glockjs

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Feb 26, 2015
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ur rig is still fine x.O and i don't give a shit what brand i buy. i buy whatever gives me the best bang for the buck in the price range im looking at the time...
 

Rainshine

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Nov 13, 2014
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Just to give some followup, the new card is TONS better. Went from ~20-30 FPS to 60-80 in AC, over 100 in Hangar. All on mostly highest setting, though I have it tweaked because some of the stuff I don't like. If I put everything on max and get crazy with the AA and NVidia DSR at 4x, it drops a lot, which I don't like. I'd prefer to run at a smooth FPS than have crazy graphics, but this card does both!

For reference, I went with an MSI GTX 980 Ti (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127889). Works like a beast, significantly cooler running than my AMD card.
 

Gearen

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Jan 27, 2015
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I have alternated every other card. In my experience, nvidia has been better on drivers and temperature. These are the only real difference I've experienced, and it's enough to keep me on green team in the future. My 970 is brilliant.
Same here
 

Elsa

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Aug 1, 2015
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I buy both brands and do dual cards. I have to say sli this generation has been a nightmare and proper decent nvidia drivers for w10 have been shit.

My co-worker with his fury has been far happier with drivers in w10 and it seems im not the only nvidia user with w10 driver issues.

I would not use star citizen as a litmus test for drivers. Until recent patch my performance with dual 980 Ti's was also stuttering and pausing. Newest patch fixed performance a lot in SC but now I can't leave the hangar for social module. I can do the arena commander but social module CTDs non stop now.


If you are able to play other games fine and stability is good. Then I'd just stick with the setup a bit longer for now.


As for mantle being gone, don't worry DX12 will still give huge boost to ATI/AMD cards. AMD Driver overhead is huge and inefficient, going close to a bare metal api like DX12 and Vulkan will still see h uge gains on AMD cards in comparison to dx11/driver performance.

Some tests have already shown the boosts in dx12 on some synthetic dx12 benchmarks for AMD cards.


Plus I really don't expect either Nvidia or AMD to taylor current drivers for a game in alpha/pre-alpha. So I expect issues with SC at least until beta.
 

Rainshine

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If anyone is curious about before/after benchmarks, here's what the upgrade from a R9 290 -> NVidia 980Ti looks like
beforeafter.jpg
 

Rainshine

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Yeah, honestly I'm not yet ready to deal with all the SLI crap. Too many problems :P What R9s are you running?

In either case, I have enough expendable income that as soon as Pascal drops I can grab a bleeding edge card. The 980 Ti was to hold me over till then.
 

Krystal LeChuck

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Rainshine

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You are doing it wrong... R9 290 & FX-6300
Would you do me a favor and upload a dxdiag of your system for me? Do you overclock?

On my 290, I had a great ASIC quality(84%), however increasing my clock speed by even 50mhz caused TONS of graphical artifacts. Seriously, the geometry of the Heaven Benchmark started going crazy ^_^ I think there was something actually wrong with my card. In my first posts, I talked about my far sub-par framerate that I experienced, far lower than I should have. I never identified an issue with any of my other hardware, so the card was probably at fault.

In either case, I'd love to have an in depth look at your specs so I can compare.
 

Krystal LeChuck

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EDIT: I'm not running an X version (R9 290X) but the simple R9 290.
EDIT2: I added a HWInfo screenshot after running that benchmark.


No need for dx diag. I'm running at 1139Mhz Core, 1451Mhz Mem, with a +56mV GPU Voltage.
I'm under water both CPU and GPU (CPU is OC'd at 4.6Mhz from 3.5Mhz stock).

I had extreme trouble overclocking without increasing voltage and frankly I wouldn't even try it without watercooling.

I made my own watercooling solution (using an AC condenser as radiator with 1.5kw thermal capacity, Einheiser 600lt/hour aquarium submersible pump, cannibalised the reference air cooler of the 290 to keep the fan for VRM and mem cooling and stuck an AIO gpu waterblock on the core) which lets me run at 58'C at those clocks and voltages with a VRM max temp of 75'C.

Any market full card waterblock would work better than I have and you would experience much better temps and you could push it even further but I am cheap and the whole watercooling loop cost me somewhere around 40$. (had the waterpump from an old aquarium, the reservoir is a jam jar, the AC condenser was 20$ brand new and the waterblock was 20$ and I removed it from my old 6750. The rest of the expenses were tubes, CPU waterblock (ebay chinese crap worth 5$) and fittings.





 
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