What drives your GPU buying decisions?

[Arachnotronic]

I am curious...to the members of VC&G, what are the main factors that drive your GPU purchase decisions? Do you have a GPU vendor brand preference? Is perf/watt more important to you than strictly raw performance?

Personally, raw performance is what I'm interested in (barring, say, an obscenely hot GPU or unreasonably loud fan like the FX 5800 "dust buster").

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would say first and foremost, price, followed by performance.

But kind of both. Power third.

I've bought many different GPUs, from both AMD/ATI and NV.

6870s, which I used in my BIL's PC, to GTX460s, that I used in my AM3+ PC with a Thuban. (Tried SLI for the first time, it ran, but it sucked. Made the top card way too hot, had stability and compatibility issues. Don't plan on ever doing that again.)

Sold off / gave away my GTX460 cards to friends, eventually.

Bought some 7950 3GB HIS cards at Newegg last year, or maybe the year before, on firesale for $130 ea, no rebate. (I considered that quite a good deal, as the R9 280 was selling for $180-200 at the same time.)

Bought some 270X, 260X, 250X, on clearance from BestBuy through ebay. (XFX clearance stock.)

Most recently, bought three MSI GTX950 cards for $120 ea, from Newegg through ebay.

Was toying with swapping the 7950 3GB cards for GTX950 2GB cards, to save power in the warmer months, but I think that's step back for gaming, for the most part. But I would gain H.265 / HEVC decoding, and HDMI2.0. Which, if I get a 4K monitor, might be a win. (7950 also has DisplayPort, and can do 4K too, just not 4K@60 over HDMI.)

Also bought like 7 GT630 Zotac 1GB cards (Kepler, 384CC), because they were $35 ea. Works good for "just need a display" purposes, and watching videos, and HDMI output. The same exact cards, with a GT730 label on them, are like $60-70!

So, maybe I'm all over the place for my GPU purchased, but I love to snag a deal.

 

[DooKey]

Raw performance and features. Perf/watt comes after raw performance since I do BOINC with my cards. The less heat output the better for a given performance.

I have no brand preference. I buy from both companies and purchased far more AMD cards than NV cards in the 28nm generation.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Performance/watt is the most important for me. And wattage must be in the 150W area give or take.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I would say first and foremost, price, followed by performance.

But kind of both. Power third.

I've bought many different GPUs, from both AMD/ATI and NV.

6870s, which I used in my BIL's PC, to GTX460s, that I used in my AM3+ PC with a Thuban. (Tried SLI for the first time, it ran, but it sucked. Made the top card way too hot, had stability and compatibility issues. Don't plan on ever doing that again.)

Sold off / gave away my GTX460 cards to friends, eventually.

Bought some 7950 3GB HIS cards at Newegg last year, or maybe the year before, on firesale for $130 ea, no rebate. (I considered that quite a good deal, as the R9 280 was selling for $180-200 at the same time.)

Bought some 270X, 260X, 250X, on clearance from BestBuy through ebay. (XFX clearance stock.)

Most recently, bought three MSI GTX950 cards for $120 ea, from Newegg through ebay.

Was toying with swapping the 7950 3GB cards for GTX950 2GB cards, to save power in the warmer months, but I think that's step back for gaming, for the most part. But I would gain H.265 / HEVC decoding, and HDMI2.0. Which, if I get a 4K monitor, might be a win. (7950 also has DisplayPort, and can do 4K too, just not 4K@60 over HDMI.)

Also bought like 7 GT630 Zotac 1GB cards (Kepler, 384CC), because they were $35 ea. Works good for "just need a display" purposes, and watching videos, and HDMI output. The same exact cards, with a GT730 label on them, are like $60-70!

So, maybe I'm all over the place for my GPU purchased, but I love to snag a deal.

Nice. During the GeForce 400-series' lifetime I generally recommended AMD GPUs to friends because perf/watt was solid and so was perf/$, although the GTX 460 and GTX 580 were solid (I owned a 580 personally after suffering with Tri-SLI GTX 470!; the 580 card was given to a friend and was just recently decommissioned in favor of a GTX 970).

I built a lot of systems with Radeon HD5xxx and HD6xxx cards back in the day, many of those systems are actually still in commission AFAIK. I suspect that I'll be getting some phone calls soon about upgrading them, though. Hope those calls don't come in until 14/16nm GPUs are out, though...

 

[kondziowy]

For me it's
1) scalability across all resolutions - so I know there is no bottleneck in bus width
2) raw performance vs $$ price
3) I gather predictions about it's architecture longevity from the web, and future support from manufacturer

then I search for
4) best cooler for the GPU chip I selected

I DO NOT:
care about power draw, partnership with game developers - I actually hate to see them

 

[crisium]

Historically price to performance. But Nvidia has soured me with their proprietary push and I choose not to support this. My last card was Fermi and I was very pleased with it though, so I'll be happy to reconsider them if they embrace open standards again or AMD also turns proprietary.

 

[Gikaseixas]

I care a lot
1 - raw performance
2 - longevity, staying power
3 - drivers
4 - robust specs

Don't care
1 - power consumption as long as it performs
2 - gimmick features that i'll most likely never use

 

[Gikaseixas]

Double post

 

[amenx]

Cool, quiet, reliability, drivers. Power draw is important only because it has an impact on GPU being cool and quiet. Raw performance not ultimate decider. If another GPU is same price but a little faster, noisier, hotter, I will not choose it.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Depends on the circumstances for me, I usually prefer pure performance then next comes given budget and finally comes power consumption ...

 

[Game_dev]

Performance
Features
Drivers
Power Draw
Heat
Noise
Support for games on release
Reliability

There is a lot to consider

 

[NTMBK]

Bang for my buck. I want to get decent performance, but I'm not going to spend £1000 to do it. I just go for the midrange card that seems like the best value.

 

[moonbogg]

It is a purely emotional decision for me and that's how I like it. I keep it that way in an effort to not ruin the magic. I typically skip a cycle since I get attached to my hardware and want to keep it, but get excited when I see an opportunity for a big performance increase. The performance has to be great or else I just won't upgrade, but it helps if there is an exciting new game coming out or if it comes at the same time as a new CPU upgrade and things like that. When several factors all come together to make the experience as exciting as possible, those are the upgrades I really love.

 

[lehtv]

What you get for what you pay is what matters the most, though the most important factor there is price/perf. I never buy the highest end due to the price premium and the fact that mid range cards still run any game just fine.

I'm fine with both AMD and NV and any graphics card brand is fine too, though I value cool and quiet coolers and I also value warranty. Given the same price, I'd rather buy a 3 year warranty card with a decent enough cooler than a 2 year warranty card with a top end cooler.

Power consumption is a non issue as long as the card runs relatively quiet at load. Usually I tend to settle around the 170-180W mark due to this.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Performance per watt usually gets my vote but as of lately i would take a AMD gpu that uses 300 watts over a equally faster Nvidia even if it used 180 watts if there was a considerable price difference.I got a Corsair TX 650 so it could power anything single gpu wise i would think.

Years before,i usually had some budget psu in my rig that worked fine and considering wattage was damn important,Nvidia usually always won there.

 

[Innokentij]

Performance OC'ed on air 24/7 operation singel card only. If it aint the best it aint worth my time.

 

[funboy6942]

Money, and most out of it. Dont care who the makers are, just who gives me the most out of it.

 

[96Firebird]

Bang for buck here as well, which includes potential loss of resale value on my current card (if I don't plan on re-purposing it).

 

[railven]

I am curious...to the members of VC&G, what are the main factors that drive your GPU purchase decisions? Do you have a GPU vendor brand preference? Is perf/watt more important to you than strictly raw performance?

Personally, raw performance is what I'm interested in (barring, say, an obscenely hot GPU or unreasonably loud fan like the FX 5800 "dust buster").

I'd say I still lean more for Radeons. But I'd like to think I'm a little more neutral now.

I never cared about power consumption until I had to start paying the electricity bill in an all electric house. Haha. You can definitely see the difference in power consumption when you have two rigs going probably 12-14hrs a day. I've even debating buying us each a tablet for web surfing.

I forgot I told someone I'd post my "report card" to compare to other neighbors:

(And I've had NG come up twice to check, at first I thought it was a neighbor stealing power. Turns out our PC's use a lot of power even if just surfing the net haha).


Anyways, long story short, I just care about perf / $$. I had no issues paying a little less for AMD's top tier GPU when it performed slower. I even paid a little more for AMD's top tier GPU when it was faster. But if performance and price are rather close, power is going to factor in a lot for me.

 

[TheRyuu]

I'd say I still lean more for Radeons. But I'd like to think I'm a little more neutral now.

I never cared about power consumption until I had to start paying the electricity bill in an all electric house. Haha. You can definitely see the difference in power consumption when you have two rigs going probably 12-14hrs a day. I've even debating buying us each a tablet for web surfing.

I forgot I told someone I'd post my "report card" to compare to other neighbors:

(And I've had NG come up twice to check, at first I thought it was a neighbor stealing power. Turns out our PC's use a lot of power even if just surfing the net haha).


Anyways, long story short, I just care about perf / $$. I had no issues paying a little less for AMD's top tier GPU when it performed slower. I even paid a little more for AMD's top tier GPU when it was faster. But if performance and price are rather close, power is going to factor in a lot for me.

Are both of those under some sort of full load during that 12-14 hours/day? If they're idle most of the time they shouldn't be drawing that much power provided you haven't disabled any of the power saving stuff.

 

[UaVaj]

single gpu - bang for buck
tough to beat 7970/280x.


multi gpu - definitely feature
290x xdma crossfire is single gpu smooth.

 

[Mahigan]

Performance/$,
Forward looking architecture since I keep my GPUs for 2-3 years,
Open standard support because I like ethics,
Compute performance because of my OpenCL work,
Color reproduction for family photo editing.

Seeing as I have Solar Panels and a Wind Turbine, I'm not one who cares much about power usage. I do dislike heat and noise though and that's why I watercool.

 

[sandorski]

Significant performance improvement over what I have
Price
Will be usable for 3+ years
Is AMD(for various practical and fanboy reasons)

 

[MrTeal]

This generation, it will be primarily performance based. That will be tempered somewhat by value (I wouldn't buy a Titan X over a 980Ti at 60% of the cost), but I wouldn't move down a tier to get better Perf/$ unless the drop was substantial.
Cooler is relatively unimportant, though availability of water blocks will probably keep me with a reference PCB.

Performance will primarily be based on good and consistent performance in the early DX12 games, as well as scaling for multi-GPU. Obviously, chances are the cards will launch before a good sample of true DX12 games, so information will be imperfect. Overclocking is assumed, so conservative clocks hurting launch performance will be adjusted if the cards are known good overclockers.