Quality & Longevity - AMD 7970 vs. Nvidia 680

[BlockheadBrown]

This is for single card solutions. For argument's sake, let's stick with the newer flagships and what your thoughts are based on your experience with their products in the past.

As with most of my threads:
This is NOT meant to start a flame war. Everyone's contributions are meant to be valued as-is. There is no right/wrong here. There's only your experience and your beliefs based on that.

Please keep in mind the following:
Physical components
Build quality
Driver quality
Single card solutions (no SLi/Crossfire)
Leave PhysX out (only because it is not available for both)

 

[BlockheadBrown]

FWIW: My personal experience doesn't really lean one way or another. I've had several cards from several chips/manufacturers. I am lucky that only one or two of my cards have gone out over the past 17 or so years.

There was a time where I'd take an ATI made card over any others. That was a long time ago though (9800Pro).

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Physical components - Nvidia has a hard cap on power just like AMD now, so those overclocking past the components limits is no longer going to cause problems.

Build quality - Dunno, Nvidia has EVGA... Best CS, best warranty.

Driver quality - Single card isn't a major issue, both companies release driver updates with performance increases though. So it's going to be hit or miss, typically top end titles come out of the gate better with Nvidia with AMD catching up if they're having some performance issues later. Metro 2033 took AMD almost a year to fix for instance.

AMD has lower image quality at the base level within the drivers. They have a lower quality AF setting by default, and reduce tessellation by default to appear faster in benchmarks.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Hardware:
The only nvidia or ATI/AMD cards that I've had die, died in the first month or two. But I only run at the factory speed (stock or card manufacturer overclock).

So: based on personal experience going back to 1988, for the hardware part both are about the same.

Drivers:
AMD - under Windows XP the drivers for my 4870 were fine, but unreliable for my 6850. Under Windows 7 32-bit the 6850 drivers are fine.
nvidia - under Windows 7 the drivers for my GTX 560 ti are fine. Ask me about the 680 next week since I don't get it until tomorrow.

So: under a modern OS both seem to have decent drivers now. For XP I'd pick nividia over AMD.

 

[thilanliyan]

Here is some data, but it is from 2009.

http://www.techpowerup.com/88515/Study_Modern_Graphics_Card_Failure_Rates.html

There are a lot of GTX2XX and 8800/9800 cards listed as failed BUT that could just be because so many of them were sold. I have heard of a lot of people baking 8800/9800 series cards on this forum though.

In terms of build quality (including physical components) I trust AMD reference cards more than nV reference cards, at least for single GPU cards (I have no experience with dual-GPU cards). I have not had showstopper driver errors from either camp (only somewhat major one I had was with a 8800GTS 640 in Splinter Cell: Double Agent).

 

[Ferzerp]

I have never had a desktop video chip failure from either company. I've never had a desktop video card failure on a card powered by a chip from either company.


I did have one of my work laptop's video fail though. It was a Quadro 2700M in a Dell Precision though. I think it was shortly after the switch to lead-free solder.

 

[Silverforce11]

For reference card, AMD always over-engineer theirs so its unlikely to fail. Look at their cards, always having extra VRMs than is needed. NV reference design has just enough.

In terms of quality/longevity of the hardware itself, NV is severely lacking in this area since they are the only ones known to have cards die due to overheating in games, driver updates, overclocking explosions, and in notebooks overheating and dying. History speaks loudly on this issue.

If you buy NV, go with custom cards from their partners, those are very good.

 

[Golgatha]

Never had a video card fail within its warranty period and several that are still going strong well beyond their warranty period in friend and family computers I've built. 13-14 years of experience with video cards tells me build quality is high from both manufacturers.

Driver Quality - nVidia hands down wins. Most improved - ATI/AMD (not a compliment)

PhysX - Why leave it out? It's a nice feature. Not a deal breaker to make me buy a severely lower performing card mind you, but nice feature nonetheless.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

PhysX - Why leave it out? It's a nice feature. Not a deal breaker to make me buy a severely lower performing card mind you, but nice feature nonetheless.

PhysX's importance depends on the user. Regardless, that shouldn't be a basis for build quality. One could argue driver quality, but that opens up the door for using features as the basis of difference rather than overall build quality.

 

[amenx]

Missed this thread. Just posted this in another:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-5/components-returns-rates.html

 

[sandorski]

Who knows? As long as Nvidia doesn't add a Card Kill feature to their Drivers, they should be ok.

 

[amenx]

Btw, get a laugh here. The extremes some fanbois would go through to blemish the other side...

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=360473

 

[BlockheadBrown]

Missed this thread. Just posted this in another:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-5/components-returns-rates.html

This is a fantastic link! Thank you very much for this!

 

[brandonb]

I've had about 10 - 15 cards since 2000ish (i build for other people sometimes, I have not had that many myself) and except for 1 bad sapphire that artifacted and was bad from the factory with factory settings, I've not had a single problem with any of them as far as build quality goes.

Driver stuff can be fixed, but honestly had more problems with Nvidia around the time Vista was released than any other time from either manufacturer, as I remember that time being the biggest headache with games/drivers crashing all the time. ATI I am starting to have trouble with with the latest drivers with the HTPC, sometimes hardware acceleration works, othertimes everything is green with video playback. Not sure what is causing that.

Both have been very good to me over the years, all things considered.

 

[amenx]

This is a fantastic link! Thank you very much for this!

Its inconclusive though. Its just a narrow sample of some cards over a given period.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

Its inconclusive though. Its just a narrow sample of some cards over a given period.

It does a decent job of helping steer where I get my next card from though (regardless of AMD/Nv).

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Its inconclusive though. Its just a narrow sample of some cards over a given period.

It's a photoshop, that has been reposted on several tech sites by a mysterious single post user.


Notice I didn't say by an AMD viral marketing employee.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I feel out the gate,nvidia is the better of the two for quality driver support.

Still rocking rc11 with my 7970 and all the other drivers just give issues the moment they are installed...rc11 appears stable but after yesterday for the third time since ownership when my monitor failed to wake up from sleepmode and manually resetting my pc,i encountered a ton of issues from my trixx program not starting with the machine,to ccc resetting my oc...among other crap.

Now have to use ab 2.2 again and now am limited to 1125/1575 as the mod to get higher clocks fails to work,nor the option for the program to start with my machine...amd driver support is slowly trying my patience.

 

[amenx]

It's a photoshop, that has been reposted on several tech sites by a mysterious single post user.


Notice I didn't say by an AMD viral marketing employee.

I think you quoted the wrong post.

But yeah I'm aware of the photoshopped 'damaged' 680 that fellow was spreading over several sites. He may not have been an AMD employee, but you know where he stood with his "fxck Nvidia", yay AMD spiel.

 

[Skurge]

Any single GPU card should last you years if you don't do any heavy OC. Although the 6990 is pretty heavily engineered so that is the exception.

 

[SolMiester]

I've had about 10 - 15 cards since 2000ish (i build for other people sometimes, I have not had that many myself) and except for 1 bad sapphire that artifacted and was bad from the factory with factory settings, I've not had a single problem with any of them as far as build quality goes.

Driver stuff can be fixed, but honestly had more problems with Nvidia around the time Vista was released than any other time from either manufacturer, as I remember that time being the biggest headache with games/drivers crashing all the time. ATI I am starting to have trouble with with the latest drivers with the HTPC, sometimes hardware acceleration works, othertimes everything is green with video playback. Not sure what is causing that.

Both have been very good to me over the years, all things considered.

You do realise that NV was the only manufacturer to have a DX10 card for Vista O/S yes!....all new driver API!?

 

[Barfo]

Well Nvidia is the green team which is the color of life and ecologic stuff so they have an advantage there, but they are also corporate douches who sold faulty mobile cards and then they settled with some crappy AMD laptops with Bumpgate. They also have physx which let's you have extra shards of glass and dust particles in your games which AMD fanbois say it's worthless but it's totally sweet, unless you can't have it in which case you'll try to make up reasons why it sucks. Also, nvidia's CEO frequently opens cans of whoop-ass on it's rivals, whereas AMD's CEOs are only good for driving the company depper and deeper into debt.

AMD on the other hand is also green, but they kinda suck, especially after Bulldozer so we should just take into account ATI's color, which is red, the color of fiery passion. AMD is also the underdog, struggling to bring sweet hardware at affordable prices to the masses, fighting the corporate greedy capitalistic corporations Intel and Nvidia, they only want your money while AMD is the Robin Hood of computer hardware, plus they spun their foundry business off to the arabs, and what would we do without arabs to use as villains for our Call of Duty games? thank god for AMD.

 

[batmang]

Honestly, I don't think you can go wrong with either card when it comes to quality and longevity. Performance wise, 680 wins.

 

[Will Robinson]

Physical components - Nvidia has a hard cap on power just like AMD now, so those overclocking past the components limits is no longer going to cause problems.

Build quality - Dunno, Nvidia has EVGA... Best CS, best warranty.

Driver quality - Single card isn't a major issue, both companies release driver updates with performance increases though. So it's going to be hit or miss, typically top end titles come out of the gate better with Nvidia with AMD catching up if they're having some performance issues later. Metro 2033 took AMD almost a year to fix for instance.

AMD has lower image quality at the base level within the drivers. They have a lower quality AF setting by default, and reduce tessellation by default to appear faster in benchmarks.

Ummm....that's a load of tosh been disproved many times...nice try tho

 

[bononos]

VRM design/cooling/quality is getting overlooked in discussion over which is better/best. Reviews don't normally measure heat or discuss the components of vrms except for psu reviews. MSI got a bad rap recently when they had lots of vrm failures on their motherboards.

For reference card, AMD always over-engineer theirs so its unlikely to fail. Look at their cards, always having extra VRMs than is needed. NV reference design has just enough.

In terms of quality/longevity of the hardware itself, NV is severely lacking in this area since they are the only ones known to have cards die due to overheating in games, driver updates, overclocking explosions, and in notebooks overheating and dying. History speaks loudly on this issue.

If you buy NV, go with custom cards from their partners, those are very good.

Getting away from reference is sometimes a dicey thing when attention is overly focused on gpu temps. The XFX 7970 actually did worse with their double width cooling setup, the vrm temps were much higher than reference (infra red photo).

Watercooling might inadvertently cause vrms to heat up as well since there is no air blowing over the vrms. The tower type cpu coolers to a lesser extent have the same problem unless the fan is situated low enough to cool the vrm heatsinks on the mb.