nvidia vs amd for skyrim differences?

[mystlineid]

I have tried both and i always end up picking Nvidia these days, maybe i am just unlucky but everytime i pruchase ATI / AMD products they are broken, and everytime i purchase Nvidia/Intel products they work so smooth and awesome i could die happy. Tried 3 different ATI cards through the times and they always had some issues like overheating, artifact glitching and stuff like that. i won't hide the fact i have become very jaded about ATI/AMD Products and prefer Nvidia/Intel. So i would highly recommend getting a Nvidia gfx card, i also feel like Nvidia cards offer more quality with performance, where ATI offers only performance, and often makes games look worse than nvidia cards do.

[Gremxula]

@ OP keep your cash for as long as you can things are changing fast. A week ago I would have said go for AMD all the way, but now I don't Know what to say after reading this http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/148944-nvidias-gtx-titan-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-gaming-and-amd .

 

If you are on a budget slightly older graphics from AMD still have the best "bang for buck" IMHO.

[Bloodinfested]

For sometime now Nvidia has been smashing AMD in benchmarks, I owned 2 AMD and I normally had problems with the drivers mainly because of the games itself. They take their merry old time optimizing the drivers.

 

I also owned 2 Nvidia they are both now used in my 2 comps never once had any problems with them even when using dated drivers. I got a lifetime warranty on both my Nvidia EVGA so I took my AMD out 2+ years ago and I'm still waiting on my 8 year old card to die one day just so I can get a new one. The EVGA brand reminds me of the old 351 Cleveland motors they will not die.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Bloodinfested

[FiftyTifty]

For sometime now Nvidia has been smashing AMD in benchmarks, I owned 2 AMD and I normally had problems with the drivers mainly because of the games itself. They take their merry old time optimizing the drivers.

 

I also owned 2 Nvidia they are both now used in my 2 comps never once had any problems with them even when using dated drivers. I got a lifetime warranty on both my Nvidia EVGA so I took my AMD out 2+ years ago and I'm still waiting on my 8 year old card to die one day just so I can get a new one. The EVGA brand reminds me of the old 351 Cleveland motors they will not die.

 

Fanboy.

 

Check out anandtech for benches. You'll find AMD kills NVidia in practically all games when you pick cards at the same price-point.

 

And bad drivers? AMD comes out bi-monthly with new drivers, sometimes even monthly with hotfixes.

[Echoside]

I've ran both types cards and both have their quirks and flaws. It all really just comes down to the individual cards and what your looking to spend imo.

 

That being said, AMD processor's are garbage compared to Intels. :P

[dragonslayer2k12]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I am going to wait minium of one month or end of march max end of april and then buy an amd card. I have a gtx560ti but it is only 1gb vram and skyrim stutters a lot outside with HD texture packs and ugrids7 going and some HD texture mods of my own too. The main thing I am looking at is large amount of vram like 3gb or 4gb depending on prices in a month time and what amd driver support team is doing lately. The thing with amd is they KNOW their drivers have always sucked but they either just didn't care or could not justify spending as much money on driver support as nvidia has been spending. But now some heads have rolled and things have changed at amd!

 

I have always depended on an nvidia card but I can't justify buying another one with their crap looking coolers and high prices. I am concerned that nvidia will try to keep prices high for whatever reason throughout the year thanks to titan. I keep up with some brand names in pc tech and I consider myself "lucky" because so far in the last 15 years I have never had a bad motherboard in my main pcand I have bought many of them, plus I have built many pc for other people using asus motherboards too and never had problems with them either. I have always used asus brand for that part and my current video card is asus but I have been staying away from asus now since they seem to have some kind of odd on again off again bad parts problem.

 

People have been complaining about them for the last year or more as having terrible warranty service and declining quality. I am already concerned that my current video card could probably die out at any time but considering it has lasted since I got it in late 2011 and never had artifacts I think I am ok for now. I currently run a gigabyte brand motherboard and have no problems with it. I have owned xfx brand video cards in the past when they still made nvidia products and never had problems with them but I am seeing a lot of complaints about them for amd cards. I was looking at a sapphire card here on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

 

The thing I like the most is the exhaust design is what it is supposed to be. Most cards have a second monitor plug covering HALF of that exhaust so I know this thing will cool good. Now I just have to wait the price down. This has to be the only card made by ANYONE that I have seen with a good exhaust on it like that so far this year. I don't and won't water cool a video card there is just too much involved in that and I don't have the time or money for it so the cooler matters a lot to me.

 

I have seen some of the worst that amd has to offer in the driver dept over the last 15 years as I was in and out of various computer shops and small companies. Nvidia is not innocent in this problem either, their disaster with adobe flash player throughout the entire year of 2011 will not be forgotten lol. So for me to go amd is a big leap, I also plan on building a secondary system all amd for browsing the web and fixing the occasional computer problem for others. I am going A-10 5800k and mini itx for that with asrock board. I wish that gigabyte had a mini itx board for A-10 processors but they don't. I might be able to sell off my 560ti to someone after this month but even if I don't I could throw it in the secondary system and use it until it drops and then switch over the the built in amd video. If anyone could post their driver problems with skyrim here for amd 7000 series and latest drivers that would be great thanks. It would be helpful in trying to figure out what I have to deal with under amd drivers.

 

EDIT

 

Look at this review of the gtx titan: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/02/21/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_video_card_review#.USrI5leuVKU

 

Some of the benchmarks show an older gtx680 is actually faster than the titan and in those same benchmarks amd 7970 seems to be just as good or slightly faster! Even when the 7970 is slow in some cases it still hangs in there pretty close to the titan and for much less money too. I think the price of titan is a large factor in my decision to buy amd.

Edited February 25, 2013 by dragonslayer2k12

[ProjectVRD]

AMD 7970 is currently the best on the market for the price, for real world gaming anyway. Only the 680 excels it but that is for benchmarking. AMD drivers for that card are making it a beast.

 

690 is too expensive for minimal gain while Titan is a waste of people's time and hard earned cash.

Edited February 25, 2013 by ProjectVRD

[dragonslayer2k12]

Well I bought that hd7950 card from newegg and it works great! Only problem so far is this weird double stripe that can only be seen on the ebony blade when looking at it in the menu, rotating the sword around there is some kind of grey and white vertical stripe that shows up on the whole sword as it rotates around. Looking at it in 3rd person no problems and looking at it from 1st person view no problems just menu. I have not yet finished optimizing my system for this card just getting into it. I miss the nvidia profiles for games it was so much easier. With amd ccc I have no idea what to do for game profiles and a quick google search turns up none for my card.

 

I am gonna leave ugrids stuff alone since dragonborn doesn't like any changes there and I might get that dlc soon. Just want to pump up the shadows and exterior details like shadows on trees etc. When everything is set and working good then I will try a slight overclock and see what happens. My core is 925 stock and memory is 1250. My idle temps are 32c so far and I ran this card through some games and didn't go above 48c the whole time but probably because not overclocking it yet.

[dragonslayer2k12]

There is a switch on this card with two settings, 1 and 2. By default the card comes with the setting at 1 but I found out the switch is for increasing the voltage to overclock! I tried overclocking with the amd ccc overdrive and it was ok but trixxx software is much better. Trixxx lets the user set a fan control curve so the fan will throttle down when the card is below a certain tempurature. This way the fans are only loud when gaming. I have been slowly increasing the settings in amd overdrive and then switched to trixxx and managed to get my core up to 1200 and my memory up to 1600 but to run stable I had to flip that switch and run the voltage at 1262. I had it set at 1260 and when I clicked apply in trixxx the voltage moved by itself to 1262 so I just left it there. I just use coc command to move around and I can crash the game at markarth under the waterfall by understone keep if I stick to stock voltage of 1250 or 1.25v.

 

Here is what I have loaded for skyrim...

 

HD texture pack and two mods that I made, ebony mod and thanes reward HD because they both add hi res textures.

 

My settings in skyrimprefs.ini that strain the system right now...

 

iShadowMapResolution=8192

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32

 

bShadowsOnGrass=1

 

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

bDrawLandShadows=1

 

fGrassStartFadeDistance=14000

 

 

I have NOT messed with ugrids at all. Whatever the game uses by default that is what it is.

 

I left everything else at default but before changing anything in there I set the graphics options to ultra! I changed my AA to 8x and my AF to 8x too.

 

Under ccc my AA settings are just multisampling. When I increase them to adaptive or supersampling the game gets slow. Morph filtering is off and texture filtering quality is standard. Surface format is off too. Everything else is set to application controlled and I am using vsync, by default skyrim has it set to on so I never changed that.

 

With these settings I can get ok to good movement outside whiterun no major skipping or jumping just micro skipping really small skipping. Going to a place like markarth it is about the same.

 

My fan is set by trixxx to increase to 60% after 50c and my temps are 48c just after exiting skyrim.