GPU's: Tales of reliability and brand loyalty

[Laughing Man]

Been a Nvidia owner since my first 6800GT. This is no brand loyalty thing, the reality has been that whenever I have been looking in to upgrading my GPUs Nvidia has been there with the combo of max bang for buck.

6800GT -> 8800GTX, the 8800GTX had an issue with Stalker that would result in a BSOD when level loading, it was a well known issue relating to the somewhat weird amount of RAM it had, 768Meg or a sort of strange value when most cards either had 512 or 1024.

8800 -> 260GTX, this was the only time I consider buying ATI, I had been looking to upgrade and was looking at one of the Sapphire numbers (sorry dunno which one, the number 1500 comes to mind!) Then Nvidia hit with the 200 series and it blew ATI out of the water.

260 -> 560GTX, again Nvidia came along with the 5 series at the right time, it was powerful, cool and used less juice than anything ATI had and the drivers were better. Had an issue with this card needing an overvolt mod otherwise BF3 would crash.

560 -> 670GTX, again the new Keplar tech came along and ATI had no answer, and here we had a card that was not only almost as powerful as the the then most power single GPU on the market, the 680GTX, but it used less power, was physically smaller, and ran cooler than my existing 560GTX.

Bang for buck, power consumption, heat production and driver stability all factor in and now I've gone full water cooling the ability to mod on a water block will also now count. Nvidia has hit the factors each time I've decided to upgrade and that's why I've stuck with them.

 

[sneakypenguin]

1st and only gpu purchase has been a evga gtx 560, its been on pretty much 247 with not one hiccup. I'm trying to drag this card out till maybe the 760 rolls around late 13-14(haven't tracked rumors much)

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I have an AMD Radeon HD 6550M running in my laptop, and I have to say I've been very impressed with it's performance. I've had this laptop for about 2 years, I got the laptop for $650 and the graphics card itself was about as mid-range as you can get, nothing particularly impressive, but MAN DOES IT PERFORM. So far I've been able to play every game I've bought (except for Witcher 2) on maxed out settings with a pretty decent framerate. In fact, at the moment I'm playing Bioshock Infinite at max settings and getting 80 FPS in most areas (though it dips to about 40 FPS when there's a lot of explosions or people in an area at once).

I have been completely astounded by the power of this cheap graphics card and I'm definitely going to be buying AMD again when I build a new desktop. I don't think there's any way in hell I could have gotten an nVidia card that played half as well for the same price.

 

[Silly Hats]

I've been a fan of Nvidia for years, a tiny bit more expensive than AMD - they run fast and a little bit cooler. Went from a 8600GT which served me well for years, to a GTX560 and now i'm using a GTX670ftw stock and I couldn't be happier.

I do prefer EVGA branded GPUs.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I've been an Nvidia-user for somewhere around 12 years. When it became time to switch out the old Voodoo 5 I went for a Geforce 3 and have stuck with Nvidia since. I've run computers with a Geforce 2 (technically my mothers computer), geforce 3, geforce 4, geforce 8800 and my current Geforce GTX460 and they've all been working splendidly for me. None of them ever broke down, but there was one instance of the Geforce 4 cards built-in fan getting clogged with dust which made it overheat within a few minutes of booting up any graphics intensive game, it was quickly solved with a can of compressed air, thankfully.

I am kind of cookie-cutter that way, all my gaming computers have been Intel/Nvidia set-ups. They've always done good by me so I've seen no reason to try out AMD-tech. My sisters ATI/AMD performed really well back in the days though, so I've got nothing bad to say about AMD either.

 

[Yuuki]

My first GPU ever was a Sapphire ATI Radeon 1800XT, served me well for some time and then I swapped it out for an Asus nVidia 8600 GTS. Smooth sailing with that card too! Actually that card is still running in my family PC lol.

Later I upgraded that to a Sapphire AMD HD5770. The HD5770 served me splendidly through my WoW and Call of Duty days, good memories with that card. Although it did give me some rather annoying artifacting in BFBC2, but I'll put it down to AMD's shoddy drivers (back then) and not the actual hardware, the 5770 was still a champ IMO.

Then I finally went all-for-nothing (lots of cash saved up) and bought an Asus GTX580 DirectCU II. Jesus hell, what a monster of a card. I had to prop it up with a whiteboard marker to stop it from warping my PCI slot. This thing ran absolutely flawlessly through every game I played, nVidia's drivers really had zero hiccups in my case.
After the GTX600 series released I finally decided that keeping the 580 around would be more trouble than it's worth, because I may not be able to get rid of it further down the line. I put it on sale and got $350 for it - enough for an Asus GTX660 Ti DCII which performs a solid 15-20% faster than a 580!

I'm still rocking the 660 Ti, patiently waiting for GTX780. Not making the mistake of buying triple-slot again, but I don't really blame Asus.

My "brand loyalties" (if you could call it that) mostly lie with nVidia and Asus today when it comes to GPU's. nVidia's GTX600 series run cool/power-efficient and Asus's DirectCUII coolers are renowned for their quietness - I highly value acoustics and getting the PC as quiet as possible is one of my top priorities. I don't really like blower-type fans, aftermarket all the way!

The only thing that stopped me buying an HD6970/7870 is because I started hearing more and more stories about AMD's drivers, and while I'm sure it was just a minority being very vocal, the fact that I was seeing so many people across multiple computer/gaming forums running into driver issues with AMD cards was the final decision-making point for me.

Lately I saw AMD really step-up their drivers with Gaming Evolved (a dedicated driver team, about fucking time eh AMD?) and the release of HD7000 series...but then a new benchmarking method was introduced called "frame rating". Frame-rating is basically a method of recording (in milliseconds) the amount of time each frame takes to be rendered by the GPU, it is drastically more accurate than raw framerate benchmarks because it can highlight things like micro-stuttering - a phenomenon that up till recently was almost a mystery, because so many people debated that it either existed or it didn't, whether they could feel it or couldn't.
Unfortunately AMD GPU's are showing worse frame-rating results than nVidia GPU's, while the longer rendering time is not that much of a big deal, timings are highly inconsistent (i.e. not smooth) indicating constant micro-stuttering. When you put two AMD GPU's in crossfire the frame-rating graph turns into an ocean of spikes, the stuttering is so obvious that AMD fan can no longer debate it's existence. Stutter also exists with nVidia GPU's and SLI but it is nowhere near as bad as the AMD side, and now there are results to prove it.

Sooo yeah, going by the history of odd drivers and now frame-rating results, I'm sticking with nVidia for now. After all, I'm going to give my "loyalty" to whichever company has the fewest problems. nVidia isn't perfect, they've also had their dark times, they've had fewer issues (in general, not just for me) so there you go : /

As for brand manufacturers, ultimately it doesn't really matter to me. Sapphire, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, etc are all great in my eyes so I tend to just go for the one with the lowest noise and best looks - so go Asus!

 

[cookyy2k]

I had a saphire x300, x800 and x1800 all fail one me back in the day. I switched to Nvidia and have only had one failure from them, an Asus gtx560ti. Now I have an EVGA GTX680 and that's proving solid.

Oh and as for brand loyalty. I've always used gigabyte motherboards so as long as I can remember. My latest one failed and was warranty replaced 3 times, with the same problem on each new board. The last time it failed I bought as Asrock instead and it has been solid ever since, it will take a lot to convince me to buy a gigabyte again.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

I was an ATI-only user for years. During those years, I experienced occasional hardware failures, near-constant shoddy driver releases, and lackadaisical customer support. Then I got smart and switched over to nVidia with the purchase of the supremely fucking awesome BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC, and I haven't looked back. Aside from the more recent GeForce driver issues, I haven't had a single problem any of the nVidia cards I've owned. They're stable, they're built well, and they last forever.

I'm a nVidia customer for life. I generally dislike fanboyism in all its forms, but in the case of nVidia I have to make an exception. You'll never convince me that AMD makes a superior video card.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I've never had a graphics card fail on me yet[footnote]PC's graphics card will die now after me saying that in 5...4...3...[/footnote]. I've mainly had ATI cards over the years, mainly because they came with the computers. However the PC I have now, which I built myself has a Nvidia card in which I am very happy with.

I see myself sticking with Nvidia for quite awhile at the moment, as aside from gaming I also use Linux operating systems a lot and AMD's support for Linux is not brilliant to put it kindly.

 

[loc978]

In my experience, card failure has a lot less to do with ATI/AMD vs Nvidia (honestly, the reliability problem with ATI cards was always in the drivers, not the hardware... and even then it was most often a case of PEBKAC) and more to do with EVGA vs Sapphire vs XFX et cetera... and that varies by the card and the cooling system attached to said card.

Hell, even some failed companies made good cards. My ol' BFGTech 7950GT is still going strong after 6 years of abuse.
...yet Sapphire is still making cards. Sad.

 

[Sealpower]

Speaking of old crap, anyone remember having a 3dfx Voodoo 2 and literally drooling over Geforce ads? (or similar)

 

[Clowndoe]

I've got no brand loyalty, probably owned an equal number of Nvidias and ATI's, and they've got the same fail-rate as well.

Currently on an all-AMD machine, simply because for my price range (i.e. mid) they happened to have the best performance in CPU's and GPU's.

 

[Silvianoshei]

Currently running on a EVGA GTX 680, and it's a beastly beast of a card. My first ever PC with a graphics card was and old Sapphire Radeon (yeah, we're talkin' old) of some variety. After that (high school) I was broke and living off of dedicated graphics until I started working and got up some cash to buy a decent PC. I really love my 680, but I still have fond memories of my orignial radeon.

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

I'm not loyal to either. If my current card was stolen (and they left the rest of my system ), I'd probably replace it with a AMD 7950, or just buy a $120 AMD 7770 and wait it out until new cards come out. AMD tends to win it for me because they're cheaper. Price is usually king for me, unless an unacceptable amount of quality is lost over the price difference.

I haven't bought many video cards but here they are:
-Something old that was Nvidia: It was the best of Nvidia's budget cards that I could afford at the time. It allowed me to play Counter Strike and WarCraft 3 properly, so I was happy.
-Nvidia 7800GS: I think I bought it because it was the fastest AGP slot card I could find. I was tired of playing TF2 with sub 20 FPS . The latest game I remember it running well was Left 4 Dead 2, I think. Never had any issues. It wasn't its fault it was slow AGP
-AMD 4650: Came with a custom pre-built I bought. I sold it within a few weeks, as it didn't have the power I wanted. Had no issues though.
-AMD 4870 1GB: What I replaced the previous card with. Only issue it had was that it constantly made me nervous. It got crazy hot, but after it not exploding for months and after reading countless forum threads about how it was normal for the 4870 to be a volcano, I stopped worrying. Sold it eventually, to reduce cost of next upgrade.
-AMD 6950 2GB: Current card. Only issue I've had is that AMD couldn't figure out how to get Saint's Row 3 to run on their cards. Over a year later, and the game finally runs properly. I beat it with it running about as well as the 360 version, sometimes worse.

I clean my cards and try to be delicate when handling them. I have had almost no issues with either company, and haven't heard any bad things from friends about either one. Price will continue to be the winning factor in my decisions between Nvidia and AMD. I do have one caveat actually, if I wanted to go with a multiple-GPU setup, I'd use Nvidia; AMD allegedly has serious issues with Crossfire from time to time.

 

[drednoahl]

Currently running a 7950, but my next card will be whatever works best on linux - I strongly suspect that will be a Nvidia card. I'll be keeping this box for windows stuff (ports of PS4 and 720 games "should" work pretty well since both consoles are using AMD hardware, but that's a massive guess on my part.) I've not had any problems at all with the 7950 and I'd like to be thinking of giving AMD my future custom, but I'm very worried about future driver compatibility with my old games. Scratch that - I do have a problem with my 7950; DX9 games are a bit glitchy, with weird shadow pop ins.

 

[veloper]

In the past 10 years only one of the videocards I bought failed and that was a geforce 6800 and that a little while after I gave it away to a relative already.

Vaccuum clean those dusty fans every two or three months!

 

[Laughing Man]

Vaccuum clean those dusty fans every two or three months!

Bad advise mate, do not put a vacuum cleaner anywhere near the internal components of your PC. The air rushing past the plastic hoover nozzle is a perfect way to make static electricity and in turn is a great way to kill PC parts.

Use a cloth and wipe the fans clean or use compressed air but to be honest cleaning fans is a massive waste of time it has a very low real world effect on how well they work, unless you live in a hugely dusty environment.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Currently Rocking SLI GTX 580s

Will look to upgrade in the GTX 8/900 series rollout.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

My first card was a GTX 8800, which never failed for the 4 years I had it. I stashed it when I got myself a GTX 560ti which have worked perfectly now for two years or so.

The GTX 8800 is still working perfectly in a friends comp which I helped build with my old processor, motherboard and gpu.
That card just refuses to die.

I like nVidia simply because I haven't had any problems with them.
The only bad experience I know of when it comes to ATI cards is when my brother had problems with his card, which probably had something to do with him having got it from a friend who bought a new one.