I am coming to the guild for advice concerning a new video card for my computer. Currently, those who do not know me, I am in Canada. I am looking at only purchasing from a local store as there is a very good one near me called Memory Express. After looking through at what cards cost and watching a few vids on them, I have basically come down to a choice between two cards. One is Nvidia and the other is AMD.
I am thinking the AMD card as it is a bit cheaper but from all the comparison videos I have watched, it is equal or sometimes better then the Nvidia. I have never gone with AMD before for a video card. Always Nvidia. The current specs for my computer are:
Gigabyte X470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING
AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor (12 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
16384MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
I like Nvidia over AMD.
Every AMD card I replaced was because card went bad.
Every Nvidia card I replaced was because I was upgrading to a newer card.
570 to 1080 to a 2080 in my computer which is an i7 6 core and I get 60fps for everything except SC 30fps.
BUT I stopped using AMD over 10 years ago.
The one I have is an nVidia. I’ve used nVidia for years and have only upgraded and never had a problem with any of them. My technician who built my machine even recommended it over the AMD for exactly the same reasons Talos mentioned…they tend to die on you. My current one is really working quite well and I am very pleased with it.
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 Super GAMING OC 3X 8G Graphics Card, 3 x WINDFORCE Fans, 8GB 256-Bit GDDR6, GV-N207SGAMING OC-8GD Video Card
My personal experience was similar to Talos’. While AMD is often a better bang for your buck, I consistently had problems with their cards. After a while it just wasn’t worth the hassle. I switched to Intel/nVidia exclusively and haven’t looked back. You’ll pay a little more, but it’s worth it in the end in my opinion.
To be fair, that was over 10 years ago. AMD may very well have improved to the point where it compares to nVidia-based offerings, not only in performance, but in stability/reliability too. But, unless the potential savings is dramatic, I’d opt for the nVidia to be safe. Just my $0.02.
As others have mentioned above, I have used one AMD card in my life, but have been using Nvidia for 4 or more generations and have been happy. I personally get the ASUS brand but I also like Gigabyte.
There is an Nvidia event coming soon, Sept 1st. Expected to announce/release their 3080, etc series, so you may want to wait a few weeks to see what happens.
Your main problem with AMD videocards is, quite frankly, that their drivers suck. If you’re going to be mainly use it for gaming, there will be a lot of games that are going to have issues, especially the newer ones.
If you get an older (2+ years) model AMD videocard, you might be fine, but staying at something resembling cutting edge with AMD videocards is generally a losing proposition.
As far as the 3080 release from Nvidia goes, I’ll believe it’s ‘better’ when I see it. There really isn’t a whole lot of improvement that’s currently realistic, unless they go up yet another price bracket. (I have a 2080ti, and from everything I’m reading, replacing that with a 3080 is utterly pointless)
Now. For your cards. If you have about $50 or so extra (or 100? Not sure how it translates to CAD get a 2060 Super. They’re basically 2060’s but with much much better RAM, making for some great baseline improvement.
The RX5600 and 5800 have given serious problems in several games I’ve been in lately (Dual Universe being the prime example), so I’d probably not get either of those.
He has a good point. I love my "RTX 2070 Super " and chose it over the regular RTX 2070 because my tech said it would work much better for my gaming than the regular one, although he said both were good cards. But he definitely favored the super.
I don’t plan on replacing it yet since I’m not looking to upgrade my rig. But since I upgraded to this super card and included a new SSD this past December, they are still ‘young’ and healthy. And since I upgraded my rig only in 2016, its probably going to last me a few more years before I need to replace anything.
Throwing my 2 cents in, which echoes comments above just built a new computer, and tried an AMD card that never did work right, then switched to Nvidia (and in the interim, pulled a 10 year old Nvidia card out of an old machine and it still worked great).
I believe AMD are not as reliable as they run hotter as they try and squeeze every bit of performance out of them by factory overclocking . I have also had more issues with new AMD drivers than Nvidia ones. I stopped using AMD products in my shop (many years ago now ) as we got far too many returns
Thank you all for the responses. Sadly I can not afford beyond those two choices, trying to keep it as close to the $400 cad range. That is why I posted the two I did. Seems no one is running radeon after the software fixes they did beginning of the year so I will have to go with the 2060. Main reason I was thinking the 5600XT is it outperforms the 2060’s on average and yes runs a little hotter. I asked as one side is the new navi and the other is rtx heh. Thanks.
Oh and a 2060 SU hits the 500+ mark so a bit more then I can do.
get a 2060 Super. They’re basically 2060’s but with much much better RAM, making for some great baseline improvement.