Question Switched to Nvidia, blurry games

[rh71]

My kid just got a GTX 3060 for his birthday, upgrading from a Radeon 580. So it's a decent improvement in terms of FPS, but he's saying there's a noticeable blurriness (lack of sharpness) compared to before even when not moving, on game menu screens, etc. in games like Warzone and Fortnite. He's already tried tweaking 3D settings. He's asking to go back to AMD but I'm not sure that's the issue.
Is there a subtle difference that maybe he's picking up since he's in front of these games all day? CPU is an i5-9400F and an LG monitor (https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27gk65s-b-gaming-monitor), and he's already tried turning on/off Nvidia G-Sync.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Never seen Device Lab's channel before. Subscribed, thanks!

And I think everyone offering advice agrees; Spartan kick that 3060 down the well.

 

[Leeea]

Very tempting. We got the 3060 for $420 on Amazon and so this may be a worthwhile exchange if this take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt comparison is accurate: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-3060-vs-AMD-RX-6700-XT/4105vs4109.

What's with the marketshare discrepancy? People afraid of AMD for support reasons, brand name, or what?

so, userbenchmark.com has a reputation. Like they hate AMD and sandbag it on their graphs. See:
https://www.google.com/search?q=userbenchmark+controversy

or to quote Tom's Hardware:
"It doesn't take a degree in computer science to see the obvious disconnect here."



alternate website that is likely better:

GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon RX 6700 XT

We compare the GeForce RTX 3060 against the Radeon RX 6700 XT across a wide set of games and benchmarks to help you choose which you should get.

hwbench.com

 

[MrPickins]

actually some of the 3060's are so overpriced, it would probably even qualified for a cheaper AIB 6700xt like a gigabyte Eagle, or a xfx speedster.

This for example:

https://www.amazon.com/Graphics-WINDFORCE-Cooling-192-bit-GV-R67XTEAGLE-12GD/dp/B08Z4J6NHW/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3B3LT8Y75FEX7&keywords=6700&qid=1658040305&sprefix=6700%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-3

And a 6700XT vs a 3060 (non ti) is not even a competition.... its SPARTA, AMD being the Spartans.

I'm not sure if I'm still traumatized or if that's actually a good deal.

Damn tempting, though.

Has there been any word at all about the timeframe for the release of the new midrange cards from AMD/Nvidia? Trying to decide if I should just bite the bullet and replace my RX580 now or wait longer.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I'm not sure if I'm still traumatized or if that's actually a good deal.

Damn tempting, though.

Has there been any word at all about the timeframe for the release of the new midrange cards from AMD/Nvidia? Trying to decide if I should just bite the bullet and replace my RX580 now or wait longer.

I'd wait. We are headed towards a buyers market. Low demand, stock sitting on shelves, mining boom subsiding, and the subsequent possibility of an attractive used market, will all have an impact. I feel like we are playing chicken with the IHVs and their board partners right now. We can't flinch first.

 

[aigomorla]

Trying to decide if I should just bite the bullet and replace my RX580 now or wait longer.

Once the 7000 series hits, the 6750XT and the 6800XT prices should implode on itself.
The OP has a return window he needs to keep.
You on the other hand is doing a wait and hold see.

So unless miners magically gobble up all the 6000 series because some new crypto coin has come out which pays out more then what Celsius did on and not end up as a Ponzi scheme, id hold and keep at least an eye on the 6750XT and the 6800XT.

Even the 6900XT have fallen way below what normal people call a bottom floor.
You can actually find them quite easy below launch MSRP right now.

 

[rh71]

Well I did swap the 3060 for a 6700XT. Graphics are slightly nicer but games are crashing to desktop (presumably drivers/Adrenalin settings)...

Much time has been spent on troubleshooting. Latest issue after tweaking is he's stuck on low frames (like 30fps) for some reason...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If you used DDU in safe mode for removing Nvidia drivers, then the next suspect is the power supply.

 

[Leeea]

Well I did swap the 3060 for a 6700XT. Graphics are slightly nicer but games are crashing to desktop (presumably drivers/Adrenalin settings)...

Much time has been spent on troubleshooting. Latest issue after tweaking is he's stuck on low frames (like 30fps) for some reason...

You have the worse luck.

step 1: DDU
step 2: dial back the power settings on the rx6700xt to see if it is a power supply issue. Remove any overclock on the CPU.

Where did you get your rx6700xt? Was it used?

 

[DiogoDX]

I always reinstall the windows when changing from Nvidia to AMD cards.

 

[Krteq]

If you used DDU in safe mode for removing Nvidia drivers, then the next suspect is the power supply.

Not really, this is working for Radeon -> GeForce.

This DDU approach isn't working for NV drivers. Those are still causing issues when you are switching to Radeon. Windows reinstall is required due to some mess/hacks GeForce drivers causing on system level

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Not really, this is working for Radeon -> GeForce.

This DDU approach isn't working for NV drivers. Those are still causing issues when you are switching to Radeon. Windows reinstall is required due to some mess/hacks GeForce drivers causing on system level

Interesting. Have not seen anyone complaining about it, so this is new info to me. I have watched streamers swap between them live when testing new release games too, and none of them have run into trouble either.

I don't use DDU myself. I manually uninstall everything, do a OS drive search for all software and delete it, and use regedit to delete keys, when switching between brands. Have yet to have any issues, and I swap on several different test systems.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Sometimes its just a question of how long you've had your OS install going.

Multiple driver updates and program installation and uninstallations and windows updates etc. Sometimes programs end up with weird dependencies, system updates don't take although they say they do, things that should be removed aren't.

My windows on my desktop is a continuously updated OG install of Windows 7 that got upgraded to 10 somewhere along the way and its bizarre and missing some features of my laptop Windows install despite the two technically being the same OS version number, only the laptop came with a newer build of 10 rather than being an upgrade build off of 7.

I look forward to a new computer build somewhere soon here so I can put a fresh, fully packaged Win 10 install in there.

 

[DeathReborn]

Sometimes its just a question of how long you've had your OS install going.

Multiple driver updates and program installation and uninstallations and windows updates etc. Sometimes programs end up with weird dependencies, system updates don't take although they say they do, things that should be removed aren't.

My windows on my desktop is a continuously updated OG install of Windows 7 that got upgraded to 10 somewhere along the way and its bizarre and missing some features of my laptop Windows install despite the two technically being the same OS version number, only the laptop came with a newer build of 10 rather than being an upgrade build off of 7.

I look forward to a new computer build somewhere soon here so I can put a fresh, fully packaged Win 10 install in there.

I have one system that I use for general tasks that Windows Updates have been failing 100% of the time for over a year, that is a sytem that went from Windows 7 to 10 to 20H1 update and then just refused to update anymore. No issues with drivers Nvidia or AMD over the years with DDU between brands.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I have one system that I use for general tasks that Windows Updates have been failing 100% of the time for over a year, that is a sytem that went from Windows 7 to 10 to 20H1 update and then just refused to update anymore. No issues with drivers Nvidia or AMD over the years with DDU between brands.

- Funny, I've been running the same core hardware from win 7 through now, and I went through a period of enormous PC instability, like I'd be playing Witcher 2 and it would be crashing ALL OVER THE PLACE and it was frankly concerning because I thought "drivers are bad, GPU is old and going bad, everything is bad".

But when I really started digging around with the blue screen error code I got, the issue was actually related to a bad windows hotfix. I had to go to command line and do some funky stuff to completely scalpel out the bad hotfix and manually go and download from a safe location, but once I did that, computer was rock solid, actually more stable than it was before (I always attributed sporadic crashing in some of my games to the fact that I tend to play older games).

So as a counterpoint, I had absolutely 0 hardware changes and crappy updates borked my PC just enough to make me think it was a failing HW issue when it was actually a bad OS patch.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have one system that I use for general tasks that Windows Updates have been failing 100% of the time for over a year, that is a sytem that went from Windows 7 to 10 to 20H1 update and then just refused to update anymore. No issues with drivers Nvidia or AMD over the years with DDU between brands.

Interesting, I have a buddy with the same issues. (WU fail 100% of the time.) He likewise was on 7 upgraded to 10 to 20H1, I believe. It was the 20H1 upgrade the hosed him. He may have had bad RAM, though. Had BSODs on/during boot, that didn't go away till we swapped RAM kits. It was GSkill DDR4, on a 1200 / B350.

 

[Fallen Kell]

-Oh my god userbenchmark's vendetta against AMD strikes again.

AMD isn't the brand name in GPUs and often times are excellent when what you're looking to do is play video games but lacking in cool secondary features that Nvidia tends to promote.

AMD drivers by all accounts have been very solid in recent memory and on this latest generation of cards.

To some extant, but AMD's drivers still leave a lot of performance on the floor most of the time and it takes years for them to correct. I don't see that typically happening with Nvidia (i.e. the performance for the hardware is usually relatively stable across the driver updates). That might be because Nvidia also leaves performance on the floor and never fixes the drivers to unlock it, but I seriously doubt that is the case. My case and point with AMD drivers is even from just a few weeks ago: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-fine-wine-gpu-driver

I feel a lot of this has to due with the driver philosophy between the two companies. AMD tends to have drivers for each generation of cards, while Nvidia has essentially a unified driver for all their cards. Due to the generational nature, I feel AMD forgets a lot of things that they may have previously fixed on one gen of cards and misses it in the next, only to eventually realize later that they didn't include those previous optimizations when creating the next gen drivers and eventually port the changes back in.

That isn't an big an issue with Nvidia's driver philosophy, as all the previous cards are still supported in the new driver, meaning they took the entire driver base from the previous generation, and are simply adding tweaks for the new cards on top of it. This doesn't as easily allow for previous optimizations to be lost between generations of cards (so that all of a sudden they don't realize they have forgotten about all the performance tweaks for older game engines and graphics standards was when they wrote the new drivers).

 

[rh71]

Sorry just catching up to this thread again. DDU was indeed used to uninstall. FPS is not stuck to 30fps, but it's certainly lower than expected. Fortnite is also constantly crashing and even causing BSOD sometimes. That didn't happen with the RX 580. Warzone is around 70fps on medium settings, Far Cry 6 around 80fps on medium settings. Not seeing the "oh wow what a difference" from this GPU upgrade.

The PC is a i5-9400f, 16GB RAM, Corsair 550W PSU. Is this a problem (or could cause above symptoms)?

There's no way to tell how many watts it's using at any given time, is there?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Sorry just catching up to this thread again. DDU was indeed used to uninstall. FPS is not stuck to 30fps, but it's certainly lower than expected. Fortnite is also constantly crashing and even causing BSOD sometimes. That didn't happen with the RX 580. Other games aren't crashing but not seeing the "oh wow what a difference" from this GPU upgrade.

The PC is a i5-9400f, 16GB RAM, Corsair 550W PSU. Is this a problem?

650W is the recommended for a 6700xt. I would get a quality 650W or preferrably higher. If that fails to resolve the problems, return the card before the return period expires. The 3060 gave you no trouble, and you followed SOP on a card swap.That points to the PSU or the card. My money is still on the PSU.

 

[rh71]

650W is the recommended for a 6700xt. I would get a quality 650W or preferrably higher. If that fails to resolve the problems, return the card before the return period expires. The 3060 gave you no trouble, and you followed SOP on a card swap.That points to the PSU or the card. My money is still on the PSU.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07W956JBC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Arriving tomorrow. Only 1 day after that for the 6700XT return period haha.

Sidenote: I play Division 2 daily myself on a GTX 1060 (capped at 60fps with monitor) and I also installed the game on my kid's machine. The graphics are noticeably nicer, but I wouldn't spend +$500 to get there. Eesh. It's not that earth-shattering. Next time I'm going to say no to their upgrade demands.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sidenote: I play Division 2 daily myself on a GTX 1060 and I also installed the game on my kid's machine. The graphics are noticeably nicer, but I wouldn't spend +$500 to get there. Eesh. It's not that earth-shattering.

Hence why the GTX 1060 6GB and GTX 1660 (1650?) top Steam's current hardware survey list of cards.

 

[psolord]

Sorry just catching up to this thread again. DDU was indeed used to uninstall. FPS is not stuck to 30fps, but it's certainly lower than expected. Fortnite is also constantly crashing and even causing BSOD sometimes. That didn't happen with the RX 580. Warzone is around 70fps on medium settings, Far Cry 6 around 80fps on medium settings. Not seeing the "oh wow what a difference" from this GPU upgrade.

The PC is a i5-9400f, 16GB RAM, Corsair 550W PSU. Is this a problem (or could cause above symptoms)?

There's no way to tell how many watts it's using at any given time, is there?

You are probably cpu limited my friend. The 9400f is not bad per se, but its locked nature, hinder its performance, compared to its unlocked brethren. The importance of strong single thread performance for gaming, is often overseen by many.

I mean if you look at gamegpu's cpu test for far cry 6, you will see what's going on.



The i3-10100 is on par with the 2700X, having only half its cores. The 10600k and 5600x, are faster than the 3900X and so on. So the game prefers faster cores primarily. I believe however, you can aim for higher than medium, with a 3060.

 

[Indus]

Recently reinstalled a game and same problem happened. I think it was the default settings in the game.

Somehow the game and nvidia driver were both anti-aliasing and it made stuff super blurry.

Had to turn
Ambient Occlusion OFF
nvidia graphics to QUALITY and
game graphics to TAA over FXAA

 

[Leeea]

Fortnite is also constantly crashing and even causing BSOD sometimes.

Something is very wrong somewhere.

My guess:
either PSU or GPU

My suggestion:
RMA that GPU while you still can

additional thought:
Keep in mind even after you fix it, @psolord's excellent post applies:

The i3-10100 is on par with the 2700X, having only half it's cores. The 10600k and 5600x, are faster than the 3900X and so on. So the game prefers faster cores primarily. I believe however you can aim for higher than medium with a 3060.

 

[ArtoriusKing]

Guys, 10 years ago I switched from AMD 7770 to GTX 760 and immediately noticed bad colors (not saturated enough) and poorer anti-aliasing of distant textures (wires, tree branches). I thought it seemed to me. But recently I replaced the GTX760 with a RX6500 and I noticed an improvement in color reproduction and smoothing of distant textures! There is a slight difference that can be seen with the eyes. I searched for similar topics on the Internet and found one of them here.

 

[amenx]

Guys, 10 years ago I switched from AMD 7770 to GTX 760 and immediately noticed bad colors (not saturated enough) and poorer anti-aliasing of distant textures (wires, tree branches). I thought it seemed to me. But recently I replaced the GTX760 with a RX6500 and I noticed an improvement in color reproduction and smoothing of distant textures! There is a slight difference that can be seen with the eyes. I searched for similar topics on the Internet and found one of them here.

I would never buy an Nvidia card if that were the case. Image quality to me is more important than FPS. Tons of ppl switch back and forth between AMD and Nvidia and rarely mention this as an issue. Those unfamiliar with NV settings may occasionally encounter the odd issue (ie, HDMI bug) where colors default to limited (vs RGB full) upon driver changes or new card installation. If it was a general thing, it would be the end of Nvidia as a business and tech sites and reviewers would be all over this story (like they did with the 3dmark thing many years ago.