Age old question: Nvidia or AMD?

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high_lander

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Oct 10, 2005
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I am currently running a GTX 460 and apparently BF3 won't play on it. So if I want to upgrade my card, which road to go down? I haven't used an ATI card since having a 1600XT. I would like to keep under 300. Not sure what models to get. Any pro tips?

Thanks.
 
If BF3 won't play on a 460, then EA is going to sell about six copies of the game.
 
regardless id be looking into a 2 gig card for future proofing your card for now. AMD is releasing there new 7xxx 28 nm chips this dec 6th to my knowledge. nvidia isnt and will be late to the game if you can hold off for a new card and maybe by then BF# will cost 60 bucks LULZ Happy Gaming :D
 
high_lander said:
I am currently running a GTX 460 and apparently BF3 won't play on it. So if I want to upgrade my card, which road to go down? I haven't used an ATI card since having a 1600XT. I would like to keep under 300. Not sure what models to get. Any pro tips?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

It will play it, it just doesn't meet the recommended settings.
 
1680x1050(native) the settings were on auto, i tried ultra and it was playable at 10-15 fps
 
Last edited:
Actually haven't played the demo. But will grab the game when it comes out and give it a shot. Thanks everyone.
 
Nauseous said:
1680x1050(native) the settings were on auto
Click to expand...

So low then, which is fairly doable. At Ultra detail but without AA or AO, a G80 8800GTS should be getting an average of 17fps. To get to 30 you'd just need to halve the demand again - going from the beta's "ultra" setting down to minimum should cover that.
 
high_lander said:
I am currently running a GTX 460 and apparently BF3 won't play on it. So if I want to upgrade my card, which road to go down? I haven't used an ATI card since having a 1600XT. I would like to keep under 300. Not sure what models to get. Any pro tips?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

How do you connect and to what? If you use or are planning HDMI to a TV you might want to think twice about ATi cards. I'm using a 6870.

Their drivers assume your TV does not have overscan settings and every resolution and refresh defaults to a small image. You have to go into the Control Center and adjust the overscan for every res. and refresh. It's a huge PITA.

For example I set my deskstop for 1920x1080 @ 60, but when I fired up Crysis, screen was small again because the default refresh is 24. Small screen again. Jump out of the game, set desktop to 1920@24, then resize again. nV cards don't do this.

Also, video color and contrast are crazy strong. Any time I play video of any kind it looks like sh1t. I haven't found a way around this yet as the Control Center video settings don't seem to have an affect. I end up watching all my movies on another nV based machine.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 6870 for games. Its just I haven't used an ATi card for a long time either and these are some things I ran into that I didn't expect that you may want to consider if you switch brands.
 
Once I changed the overscan settings for my HDTV with my HD4830 that was it, set and forget. It was pretty straightforward. Given that nvidia had some colour problems with HDTVs, neither brand is better than the other for TV use.
 
What? 30 FPS on a 8800...lol
I was getting less FPS on my old 8900 on BFBC2...

are you running sli?

I was getting 27-33 FPS approx on high settings not ULTRA with a GTX 275 on BF3 beta.

Just purchased my EVGA 570 gtx 1280mb and you dont need 2 gigs.
My bro's rig was only using 900Mb max on his 570 when running BF3 beta on ultra with
all the bells and whistles.

On the highend AMD has better performance cards, but best bang for your money
you cant beat the 570 right now. If you get EVGA card then you get life time warranty.
 
I think that he means the driver lvl MLAA, which sucks donkey ballz performance wise and does blur a bit (although i still use it sometimes).

Nvidia has FXAA for OpenGL, and for most of everything else we have to use the injector and try to get proper quality settings for the game.

And i wish i had the slightless idea of how to make an injector with Jiménez SMAA code, it is the real deal on quality//performance >.< bah :p hahaha

As about the OP, a 460 does run BF3, maybe not at the speeds that you want with the settings you want, but it does run.
 
Sucks is the right word, I find it absolutely unusable. The 30-50% performance hit from MSAA is bad enough, but forced MLAA can be in excess of 200%, that's just too much.
 
Well it depends a lot from title to title, you see, the main point of AMD's MLAA is to be used when you are already memory constrained and at that point the use of MSAA would put you over the capacity of your vidcard and slow you to a crawl.


Btw do provide a link support for that 65/19fps number with MLAA, if you try and use MSAA with MLAA then yeah, you are making the system work way more and in a way that isn't quite effective (honestly MLAA oughta be used alone, using it with MSAA doesn't really tend to increase IQ and does a great number on speed, almost like if it applied MLAA to each sample...)


edit to add:

also proper math, 62fps is the base, so to get 19fps you are actually seeing a (62-19)*100/(62)= 69% performance hit.
 
Nauseous said:
1680x1050(native) the settings were on auto, i tried ultra and it was playable at 10-15 fps
Click to expand...

how can you think 10-15fps is palyable?? i cant bare the fact that my crysis 2 runs at 40fps on ultra/dx11/hi res pack.... and i have gtx 480 2-way sli OC'ed...and im buying 2 more soon to go quad sli... tbh games starts to get annoying below 60fps...60+ and we are all goood
 
Wow! As you can see, on this hardware forum (and many others) you can't mention advantages of AMD GPUs without a bunch of insecure Nvidia fans jumping all over it.

That right there tells you AMD must be doing something right with their GPUs. Otherwise, there wouldn't always be this instant knee-jerk reaction from Nvidia fans.
 
?
dude you do act like a shill, in any case samuelmorris and i actually use AMD cards, and i did ask for where did he pull the numbers from since they are quite odd from my experience.

So, just grab a beer and chill out in the meantime :p

And edit to add and be nitpicky:
MLAA is actually the only current AA that works in ALL games.
So there you go :p ;)
 
VIC-20 said:
How do you connect and to what? If you use or are planning HDMI to a TV you might want to think twice about ATi cards. I'm using a 6870.

Their drivers assume your TV does not have overscan settings and every resolution and refresh defaults to a small image. You have to go into the Control Center and adjust the overscan for every res. and refresh. It's a huge PITA.

For example I set my deskstop for 1920x1080 @ 60, but when I fired up Crysis, screen was small again because the default refresh is 24. Small screen again. Jump out of the game, set desktop to 1920@24, then resize again. nV cards don't do this.

Also, video color and contrast are crazy strong. Any time I play video of any kind it looks like sh1t. I haven't found a way around this yet as the Control Center video settings don't seem to have an affect. I end up watching all my movies on another nV based machine.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 6870 for games. Its just I haven't used an ATi card for a long time either and these are some things I ran into that I didn't expect that you may want to consider if you switch brands.
Click to expand...

I have none of the problems you are describing on my 5870. With the possible exception of having to change the overscan setting. I had to do it exactly once, res changes and refreshes don't bother it at all.
 
xivlia said:
how can you think 10-15fps is palyable?? i cant bare the fact that my crysis 2 runs at 40fps on ultra/dx11/hi res pack.... and i have gtx 480 2-way sli OC'ed...and im buying 2 more soon to go quad sli
Click to expand...


I think the greater question is how do you think buying 4 video cards to play games is acceptable. If it comes to that point i'll buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 and call it a day for for $1000 cheaper lol
 
xivlia said:
how can you think 10-15fps is palyable?? i cant bare the fact that my crysis 2 runs at 40fps on ultra/dx11/hi res pack.... and i have gtx 480 2-way sli OC'ed...and im buying 2 more soon to go quad sli... tbh games starts to get annoying below 60fps...60+ and we are all goood
Click to expand...

10-15 fps is very playable, not sure how you feel 40 is not good enough. Guess everyones playable is different.
 
PsychoAMD said:
I think the greater question is how do you think buying 4 video cards to play games is acceptable. If it comes to that point i'll buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 and call it a day for for $1000 cheaper lol
Click to expand...

...

Hand in your [H] card please, sir. :p


Nah, but seriously, I would agree. However I don't think there will ever be a day where you need that much power. It's all dependent on what graphical settings and resolutions you are willing to live with.


Nauseous said:
10-15 fps is very playable, not sure how you feel 40 is not good enough. Guess everyones playable is different.
Click to expand...

In an RTS or something turn-based? Sure. In a fast-paced FPS? Hell no, not even close. I play a lot of ArmA2 which is notorious for framerate drops at various times, and I'm willing to put up with 20-25 FPS occasionally in that game, but anything less is completely unplayable.
 
Nauseous said:
10-15 fps is very playable, not sure how you feel 40 is not good enough. Guess everyones playable is different.
Click to expand...

The only game where 10-15fps is playable (the word playable meaning the performance of the game is sufficient such that your ability at playing the game is not impaired) would be a turn based strategy game. In RTS games you can get away with 15-20, but if it drops below 15-16, even they become difficult to make decisions and react quickly enough. FPS games should be considered unplayable below 25fps as a rule. Anyone who says they are playable below that frame rate clearly doesn't realise how much better they would be with proper hardware.
 
NastyNative said:
Just purchased my EVGA 570 gtx 1280mb and you dont need 2 gigs.
My bro's rig was only using 900Mb max on his 570 when running BF3 beta on ultra with
all the bells and whistles.
Click to expand...

I hope you are right. The beta supposedly did not have "ultra" textures, so it will be close.
 
The recommended is a GTX560. Overclock your GTX460 to 820Mhz and you have a GTX560. :cool:
 
To the person saying 10-15fps is playable, not every game is the same. Try Metro 2033. Its a horrible slideshow below 50fps.
 
lol. I find it very funny. People think only high end systems will run BF3 because the leaked copy of it states the min system requirement as (Video: DIRECTX 11 COMPATIBLE WITH 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 OR ATI RADEON 6950). That's actually the recommended vid card not the min requirement.
 
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