Confused.... current gfx card dilemma?

Monstermunch · 14 May 2017 at 14:27

Hey all

Been out of it for a bit but just upgrading my main rig at the moment to the one now listed in my sig.

I bought a GTX970 last year and decided not to upgrade that at the same time as everything else due to many things but mainly the performance difference between a GTX970 and a 1070 seemed not enough to warrant a £400 purchase.

I've always preferred the image quality of Radeon over GeForce but with the raw power difference between the 2 over the last 5+ years I've always opted for the better performing option and since the Radeon 9000series many years ago that has been Nvidia.

I've also been waiting for the AMD Vega, but is the Vega the RX500 series or not? Ad if so, WTF AMD!!! The RX580 isn't any better than my 970 on average and that tech is nearly 3 years old!

So can anyone enlighten me to what's going on? Why are Nvidia so overpriced and is there another AMD release due in the next few months or what?

Wrinkly · 14 May 2017 at 14:32

No, Vega is a completely new design.

Monstermunch · 14 May 2017 at 15:08

Wrinkly said:
No, Vega is a completely new design.

Still due by June 30th?

Just confused cos the RX500 has only just been released and from what i've read not really any different to the RX400 series? So with Vega looming why bother with the 500 series at all?

ibpalle · 14 May 2017 at 16:25

Monstermunch said:
So with Vega looming why bother with the 500 series at all?

Different performance and price points. Vega will be a 1070/1080 class card, the 480/580 is a 1060 class card. The 580 was a refresh of the 480 series.

Monstermunch · 14 May 2017 at 17:45

ibpalle said:
Different performance and price points. Vega will be a 1070/1080 class card, the 480/580 is a 1060 class card. The 580 was a refresh of the 480 series.

Don't Nvidia also have a refresh/new series planned for later this year?

Jono8 · 14 May 2017 at 23:23

Monstermunch said:
Don't Nvidia also have a refresh/new series planned for later this year?

Probably. We might even see Geforce volta before the year is out. The 1070/1080 have been out a a few weeks shy of a year now. That is a fair amount of time in the tech world.

opethdisciple · 14 May 2017 at 23:56

If Vega is good them I imagine Nvidia will be keen to get Volta out as soon as they can.

Angilion · 15 May 2017 at 00:40

opethdisciple said:
If Vega is good them I imagine Nvidia will be keen to get Volta out as soon as they can.

They're keen to get Volta out as soon as they can anyway because the first market is full monty Volta chips for the high end server market for stuff like AI, where money is not a serious limiting factor. The first Volta product is priced at US$150,000 because nvidia can sell them at that price and no doubt they're keen to do so. nvidia have said they'll be shipping those servers in Q3. It would be a bad idea to give any kind of shipping date to those customers without being really sure it can be met, so Volta chips already exist.

I bet nvidia could rustle up some production of Volta-based graphics cards quickly enough to rain on AMD's parade if Vega is really good. Probably not significant volume given that it's a huge new chip on a new process, but enough for a not entirely paper launch. Enough for at least some of the people in the market for a £500+ graphics card to be able to buy one.

As for the OP's question of "Why are Nvidia so overpriced"...because they can. If someone wants a top end graphics card, their choice is limited to different cards with Nvidia GPUs. With no competition at all, the price is whatever the market will bear.

Disco_P · 15 May 2017 at 01:53

Monstermunch said:
I've always preferred the image quality of Radeon over GeForce

But in all seriousness, can someone explain?

V F · 15 May 2017 at 03:49

Geez, Disco P! Scarred for life.

FloppyPoppy · 15 May 2017 at 04:28

Disco_P said:
But in all seriousness, can someone explain?

Im glad im not the only one scratching my head at this. The only logical thing i can come up with is those few gimmicky features available in some titles exclusive to red/green respectively like physx and what not. But image quality?????

Brazo · 15 May 2017 at 07:49

Image quality will depend far more on the source material and the screen used to watch it on.

I understand some people think AMD looks warmer for example or the other way around but it's nothing that a few sliders won't change if you really want to emulate a certain look.

Wrinkly · 15 May 2017 at 08:26

Monstermunch said:
Still due by June 30th?

Just confused cos the RX500 has only just been released and from what i've read not really any different to the RX400 series? So with Vega looming why bother with the 500 series at all?

Yes, still due for 1st half of 2017.

The 500 series has a small bump in performance over the 400. Vega will cost a bit more, 500 series will be for the move cost conscious.

Monstermunch · 15 May 2017 at 11:00

Disco_P said:
But in all seriousness, can someone explain?

Like I said above, i've been out of it for a while but back to the Radeon 7000 series and 9000 series was a time when I used to test a lot of hardware and had around 50+ different cards over a 3-4 year period. During this time Radeon had the performance edge slightly so they were my preferred card but I noticed a few differences between the way Radeon and GeForce made their images.

For some reason I always found that the GeForce cards added a lot of motion blur to images and often blurred textures when you got really close to them but the Radeon cards didn't do this and although the difference was minimal GeForce was kinda cheating in a way to maintain the performance over image quality.

I've been running a 970 for about 12-18 months (can't remember exactly when I bought it), it's not blatant anymore like it used to be but i'm fairly certain if I got hold of a 580 (probs around the same performance as my 970) then I would prefer the image quality.

It's all down to preference, i'm no AMD fanboi and will generally go for the best performance based on my needs hence the recent Ryzen upgrade. I need my PC to be a workstation by day and a gaming rig at night, so the additional cores and minimal performance loss compared to kaby lake seemed worth it to me. When the Vega comes out, it will be the same again. If the performance and price is equal to the Nvidia I will go with the Radeon but if the GeForce is still better i'll probably get a 1080 or wait for Volta.

nashathedog · 15 May 2017 at 11:11

harry5522 said:
Im glad im not the only one scratching my head at this. The only logical thing i can come up with is those few gimmicky features available in some titles exclusive to red/green respectively like physx and what not. But image quality?????

There's been plenty of people saying iq is lower on Nvidia graphics cards than it is on AMD's at the default settings,
It's a simple enough fix though so hardly worth avoiding Nvidia for.
I can think of a myriad of reasons more damning than that.

Brazo said:
I understand some people think AMD looks warmer for example or the other way around but it's nothing that a few sliders won't change if you really want to emulate a certain look.

Exactly.

Journey · 15 May 2017 at 11:38

Guess you all weren't around during the days of CRT's and VGA outputs.

Image quality was a big deal due to DAC/ADC etc, and the Radeon cards from ATI generally speaking always were praised for their 2D image quality and processing, second only to Matrox. Things have obviously changed now that most of the outputs used are digital these days, the IQ falls to the display device primarily.

Monstermunch · 15 May 2017 at 12:31

Now I feel old!

Reminds me, I need to get my DX2-66 out of the loft and try and OC it

V F · 15 May 2017 at 13:09

Journey said:
Guess you all weren't around during the days of CRT's and VGA outputs.

Image quality was a big deal due to DAC/ADC etc, and the Radeon cards from ATI generally speaking always were praised for their 2D image quality and processing, second only to Matrox. Things have obviously changed now that most of the outputs used are digital these days, the IQ falls to the display device primarily.

Is that still a topic today? The red teams desktop looks better than the green's...

Journey · 15 May 2017 at 13:15

V F said:
Is that still a topic today? The red teams desktop looks better than the green's...

No idea, like I said people were asking about the OP's weird image quality question. I've not noticed much difference, but like i said it's all about the monitor and DP/HDMI output now.

V F · 15 May 2017 at 13:19

I remember the talk about Matrox sadly I never got to see it. Though if a screen is correctly hardware calibrated both red and green cards should look the same.