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AMD vs NVIDIA: Which one is right for your new build?

By Gaming, Tech Tips No Comments
Introduction:

For years the two giants of the PC gaming world of graphics cards, AMD and NVIDIA, have enjoyed competition with their continuous innovation and cutting edge design. Comparisons of these companies and the GPU’s they produce are guaranteed to bring any observer to conclude this though, NVIDIA is on another level. Their top tier GPUs, the RTX Titan, the 2080 Ti and the 2080 simply put are better. NVIDIA’s GPUs produce higher frame rates, draw less power, produce less heat and come with better optimized software. However, this does not mean that AMD should be dismissed, they produce some excellent GPUs at a more affordable price killing it in the mid and low tier of cards. Priced at $449.99, AMD’s new 5700’s (pictured in the image below) are a great deal and are quite capable of rendering some quality frames.

AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary
Price vs Performance:

Diving deeper into this comparison, we begin to consider just how much bang for your buck the respective GPUs provide. NVIDIA’s best performing GPU, the RTX Titan blows all the competition out of the water, these GPUs boast 4608 NVIDIA CUDA cores running at 1770 MegaHertZ boost clock on NVIDIA Turing architecture featuring 72 RT cores for ray tracing, 576 Tensor Cores for AI acceleration and 24 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 14 Gigabits per second for up to 672 GB/s of memory bandwidth. All at the insane price tag of $2,499.99. For comparison the best AMD consumer GPU you can buy is the RX 5700 which costs a whopping $449.99 if you opt for the AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary and can be purchased for as low as $349.99 if you go with the standard 5700 edition. This card still boasts a boost frequency up to 1980 MHz running on 2560 stream processors  and 8GB of GDDR6 256-bit memory and works great for 2K gaming.

Software:

While AMD software is catching up with NVIDIA, launching competing versions of most software NVIDIA offers, AMD’s software is a little behind the ball. NVIDIA software just works better, for example let’s compare their different software products for adaptive sync and video streaming.

G Sync vs. Free Sync

Both products are a version of adaptive sync designed to reduce screen tearing and improve video quality. G Sync is NVIDIA’s stellar program for this and it is a better product. Better optimized designed with better quality control, it does have one draw back. Same as always with NVIDIA, its just plain more expensive, because it only works with their own specialized monitors designed for this software and specially equipped to handle it. These monitors are not surprisingly more expensive than most but they seem to boast some of the best graphics we can render currently. AMD’s software has the distinct advantage of working with any monitors, it is just not as well optimized and does not seem to work as well, once again it comes down to a question of how much of your hard earned paycheck you are willing to drop on your new rig.

ShadowPlay VS ReLive

Not too much to say about these two products, once again NVIDIA is on top, as their streaming software again takes the cake. Both are capable of streaming your gaming sessions using your GPU without a capture card, but ShadowPlay has better video quality and a higher bit rate, ranging from 1-18mbps vs AMD’s ReLive which can only run at a bit rate between 1-10 mbps. Both are capped at 60 FPS and 1080p though so you may want a capture card for serious 4K streaming.

Power vs Optimization:

By now I’m sure that you’ve heard about AMD’s GPUs and their problem with high temperatures, and while this is true, the simple explanation for this is a difference in the architecture of the cards. NVIDIA’s Turing architecture is better designed and uses less power more efficiently in order to push out more frames. Meanwhile AMD GPUs are juiced up and need the extra power to make up for the lack of efficiency in their cards due to poor architecture. It’s as simple as that, it doesn’t make one necessarily better but when it comes to computing lower temperatures are generally preferred as heat and computers do not mix well. Funny enough it is a fact that, when your PC over heats it freezes, and that is something we all hope to avoid.

MSI RTX 2080 Ti LIGHTNING Z
Conclusion:

In the end, it comes down to your personal preference and price range when determining which GPU to choose. Whether you choose the RTX 2080 Ti which will provide the best performance that money can buy, or an AMD 5700 which will give you exceptional performance without breaking the bank, you’re sure to enjoy endless hours of high-performance pc gaming.

Troubleshooting Tips

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General Tips

Graphics card won’t post? Artifacting issues? Over heating? Computer Crashes? Loud Fan Sounds? Driver Crashes? Sound familiar? We have seen it all during our last nine years in business. Graphics cards have issues, break or plain stop working, that’s why are here to help. Check out our guide below and hopefully some of these tips can resolve your card issues without need for an RMA!

Here are some troubleshooting tips to help isolate the issue to the graphics card:

1) First, try re-seating the graphics card and ensure the power and video cables are installed properly.
2) If a second PCI-E slot is available, try installing the graphics card in another PCI-E slot and re-test.
3) Check your video cables to make sure they are not faulty and that they are the same video standard as the graphics card (DisplayPort 1.4 / 1.4a versus 1.2, HDMI 2.0 versus 1.4, etc.).
4) Check your monitor’s video input standards to make sure they are the same as the graphics card.
5) Install a known good graphics card in your system to insure that there is nothing else wrong (or install the potentially bad graphics card in another known good system to see if the issues replicate).
6) Sweep all old drivers and install new ones.
7) If that does not help, re-image entire system.
8) Other items that will cause artifacting: bad PSU, bad memory, bad video cable and/or video adapter.

No Display - Updating BIOS on Your Nvidia GPU

Here are some steps for flashing the BIOS of your NVIDIA GPU:

Tools that you will need:

-**GPU-Z** found here: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1709/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.3.8.html

-**NiBiTor** found here:  https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-bios-editor-download-nibitor.html

-**nvflash** found here:  https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-nvflash/

**Once you have these tools downloaded, follow this guide for flashing the BIOS:** http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/guide-for-flashing-bios-of-nvidia-gpu.119955/

It’s very important to save a copy of your current BIOS (Step 1) in case anything happens during the flashing process.

No Video - Run Display Driver Uninstaller W10 (AMD)

1) Please run Display Driver Uninstaller: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

2) Run it in Safe Mode. To put Windows 10 into Safe Mode: http://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10

3) After clearing drivers, re-install the AMD graphics card into system and download the AMD driver for W10 64-bit: https://www.amd.com/en/support

4) Reboot system.

No Video - Run Display Driver Uninstaller W10 (NVIDIA)

1) Please run Display Driver Uninstaller:
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

2) Run it in Safe Mode. To put Windows 10 into Safe Mode:
http://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10

3) After clearing drivers, re-install the NVIDIA graphics card into system and download the NVIDIA driver for Windows 10:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers

4) Reboot system.

 

Hopefully one of those tips was able to solve your issue. If not, you can always reach out to us via our support tickets and we can help you with our 3-5 day RMA service.