Nvidia: Are they losing the hardcore pc gaming battle?

So after issues, time and time again, with AMD hardware/drivers and a non-trivial amount of games, I decided to go Nvidia. Games like Rage, Saints Row: The Third, etc, ran more consistently than they had before, so I was fairly relieved.

I had, for a long time, been a huge fan of AMD. They've consistently been the inexpensive solution for gamers, with performance that was pretty competitive. Yet after one too many weird driver problems, and one too many games that ran like garbage on even low, I made the switch.

Fast forward to today, where Nvidia has nothing to say about future PC hardware plans, I made an observation. From what we know, both new consoles will run AMD hardware. If this generation is even close to the last one, most games will be built to utilize the console hardware features, and then have a few bells and whistles for pc. Basically this cuts out PhysX, and cuda support (to be fair, those things were hardly used as it is.).

I guess where I'm coming from, is that Games will be built best on AMD now, and there will be little reason to do anything Nvidia related for multi-platform. Nvidia has gone to the point of not talking about PC hardware at all, AND Battlefield 4 (aka, Frostbite in general) is AMD focused. I guess this is all great news for AMD users, and to some degree all gamers. I'm just wondering if my decision to go Nvidia has been swiftly nullified.

Honestly I am facing a similar dilemma myself. My current PC runs an AMD GPU, and after my first year I thought it was a huge mistake. It seemed Nvidia just had better support and performance for their chips. Fast forward to today where I am starting to look into building a new PC, or at least upgrade, and I am conflicted on switching to Nvidia or not. Honestly with things like Titan and project SHIELD, I don't think Nvidia is leaving the PC landscape anytime soon, but AMD dominating the console landscape should offer better PC support for AMD equipped machines.

I think it's a question that will be answered within a year or two.

Currently on AMD too, I switch to where the best products are. For a long time Nvidia cards were better now AMD cards are better. I wouldn't think too much of it, I don't know what kind of card you have but Nvidia cards aren't bad and in some price ranges the best option.

Drivers were always the issue for me as well but recently quite a few new games have been better on amd cards. I've been pretty happy with the fairly regular update to nvidia drivers for new releases, I got a pretty good increase in performance on Bioshock infinite as a recent example.

It's a great thing that AMD have become more competitive as it should force Nvidia to be less complacent but that is yet to be seen.

It seems to me a matter of preference. I enjoy that Nvidia does update their drivers constantly and from my experience, I had trouble with AMD GPUs in the past. (Doesn't mean that they are bad.)

It would be unhealthy if either Nvidia or AMD went out of the Graphics Hardware. The reason is that they (both Nvidia or AMD) may become complacence and never push out newer hardware. Oh, Nvidia has already stated that they do not want to have anything to do with consoles. Especially with the entire PS4 debacle.

I want to make a point. The previous systems; the 360, PS3, and Wii all had AMD chipsets. With your logic, Nvidia should have been pushed out of the market since 2007. Yet, they are still here. Who really knows, I certainly cannot predict the future of either companies. Maybe both will go under in the next two years.

If I do sound like a pretentious fanboi for Nvidia. Trust me, I am not. I could care less about Nvidia or AMD. I want the most bang for the buck, regardless if it is Nvidia or AMD. However, I want to have both companies still to exist and create the competition that is between them.

It has been quite slow in terms of news from both AMD and Nvidia. I have no problem that competition bounces back and forth, it just means to me that I can get better products for my hobby.

advice: go where the performance/value is. watch for benchmarks of the games you want to play, make an informed decision. leave the platform/brand wars to the microsoft/apple kids on tech sites. right now amd is knee deep in games, but we'll see if nvidia mounts a comeback. i've gotten tremendous value out of the 5850 i've had for years now, but it's better for everyone if nvidia continues to provide competition for amd.

@wasabicurry: I thought the PS3 was based on an Nvidia chipset? EDIT: Just looked, RSX is co developed by nvidia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_'Reality_Synthesizer'

@mellotronrules: Good point, I guess if AMD ends up on top, there's no reason NOT to buy the more utilized, less expensive vendor.

I too have avoided ATI because of their checkered past with support and stability.

In general though I have never found the "Made for NNNN" to mean anything beyond some additional tweaks. I have never found a decernable difference in speed or quality playing games that were "Made for ATI" on an Nvidia or vice versa. Always go for price and stick to your budget.

@clstirens: Yeah, you are right. I had my mind of the PS4 and forgot about the chipset of the PS3.

@extomar: Pretty much. ACTUALLY, I've noticed quite a few of the games i struggled with when I had AMD were "amd optimized"

A quick look at support forums are waves of angry amd users with issues, and very little nvidia users with issues.

700 series are expected to be announced in May. You don't hear them talking about new hardware much cuz their main focus is mobile laptop GPU's and Tegra for phones/tablets. That's where they plan on making their money. I'm sticking with Nvidia unless there really will be some major difference between the two once the next gen rolls around but I doubt it.

Nvidia has always been solid with driver updates and the only difference I expect happening is that Nvidia will be releasing new drivers later than sooner because AMD will have the game builds before Nvidia does.

@clstirens: Physx runs on non-Nvidia cards, just like TressFx runs on Nvidia.

Also, where do you get the idea that Frostbite is AMD focused? BF3 had way more AMD issues at launch.

I'm not sure how much of a difference this will make. It will depend on how similar the APUs in the next consoles are to stand alone AMD GPUs. I went with Nvidia last time because their cards run quieter. Unless there is a massive performance difference compared to the price, I'm going to stick with quieter cards.

No, Physx is only possible with nVidia GPUs unless you want to run it in software mode, which will make your framerate enter single digit range.

I'm using Intel and Nvidia, the best :cool:

I am and have always been an Intel/Nvidia guy and it has done me well thus far with zero complaints. I have heard nothing but horror stories about drivers and compatibility problems from people that went ati/amd with their builds over the years and I have no desire to go with them. I'm a good 3-4+ years from an upgrade as I just built this PC a few months back, but unless something major happens during that time I plan to stick with them. Seems all the consoles are going AMD this gen so we will see if that translates into better performance for AMD parts on PC if it makes it easier and more optimized for devs to port games from consoles to PC.

I used to stick with Nvidia, but in the past couple years I've been strictly purchasing AMD cards. Their price / performance ratio is just so much more competitive and while I do occasionally have the odd hiccup here and there, it's been getting better and fast too.

Considering just about everyone still buys Nvidia and AMD is saddled with horrible driver issues, nah. I think they're fine.

AMD has always had spotty OpenGL support, lagging behind and only half-implementing some features in their drivers. For that reason it's always been NVidia for me without a second thought. NVidia has made it a priority to get their OpenGL correct and complete. If you do more than games it's a big deal.

I prefer AMD, but Nvidia is still leading the ultra high end, they do seem to be shifting their focus to mobile right now but it's understandable seeing how the current crop of games aren't really pushing PC hardware.

AMD is really busting their butt right now with developers and it shows, between that and locking down all 3 next gen consoles, things are looking pretty good going forward.

They are both great, and anyone still clinging to driver issues from 10 years ago is talking out their ass and should be made fun of.

While it's true that AMD still has some issues here and there, it's vastly better than what is used to be.

@sinkjaer said:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/07/nvidia-rolls-out-apex-and-physx-developer-support-for-the-ps4/

Nvidia is making sure next gen consoles will be able to run physx according to that.

I've mostly used NVidia GPU's in my PC since I started worrying about what GPU was in my PC, once however, I did buy a laptop with ATI Radeon Express GPU in 2006, they dropped support full stop for the drivers 1 year later leaving it unsupported for new OSs/Kernels (I always dual boot my PCs), that has really soured my interest to ever try ATI/AMD again plus their drivers are atrocious .net framework garbage.

I might one day give AMD another try... but I still prefer Nvidia and Intel

Nvidia is more expensive normally sure. But they always push out drivers constantly, have very few if any driver issues, and normally win card vs card benchmarks. I promise you the top performing cards at the top end level right now do not have AMD logo's on them. Yes a lot of games have the AMD logo lately. I care why? They play fine on Nvidia and it is ridiculous to think that the future will change in that regard. Why is ATI/AMD in consoles? Uh... ATI/AMD costs less. They want to produce and sell the console for as little as possible, it makes it more likely that you will buy it. It has nothing to do with "whose the better hardware manufacturer". That and the aforementioned Nvidia wants nothing to do with consoles thing.

Do a price for performance comparison and go with what the numbers say. In my experience the numbers always say Nvidia.

@karkarov: Technically you get more bang for your buck with ATI cards, but Nvidia is just more reliable.

@clstirens:@ssully: i dont get what you guys are saying about amd cards performing worse than nvidia ones.

A graphics card for $300 is going to perform a set amount regardless of the brand, give and take a little.
If your card gets sluggish after a year, the chances are it would do just the same even if it had an nvidia sticker on it.

I've had three amd cards in a row now, a 4890, 5870 and a 7970.
I can only remember two issues, since 2008.

1. Long loadingtimes in BF:BC2 that were resolved 3-4 months after launch.
2. laggy mouse in the top right corner, which also got resolved after a couple of months, but could be fixed immediately by disabling mouse shadows in windows.

gaming evolved and TWIMTBP, isnt really that crucial, there are games that are amd "sponsored" that run better on nvidia cards, and the other way around.

I've always preferred Nvidia, but I can't really explain why.

nVidia for life!

They have been constantly the go to card for me once they learned their lesson from those shitty FX cards years ago and came out with their 6800GT. Until Nvidia fucks up again (which I don't see happening for a long time) I will always buy their cards. AMD would need to pump out more power and be a lot cheaper for me to consider otherwise. This thread and many other horror stories about drivers and release day games has always made me want to slap myself even considering AMD/ATI.

Being the type of person who really doesn't give a shit about the brand name on my card and has switched between Nvidia and ATI/AMD depending entirely on price and performance, hell I had a Hercules card at one point. I can honestly say, I've never experienced game breaking issues with either. The differences and issues as always are over exaggerated, the drivers from AMD haven't been absolutely offensively awful in ages, and neither really gains huge advantages from having their logo's pop up t the start of the game.

Nvidia will be fine, AMD will be helped immensely from the console business.

I was also having problems with my laptop that had an ati (now amd) graphics card. My new laptop has a nvidia card and I never want to look back. Personally, I think it will be fine, what ever optimizations that come with consoles will not hurt the performance of the pc version. This is because Nvidia still has a huge segment of the audience. People with graphics cards I assume are more plugged into the appropriate news outlets to be aware of major problems, so it would be very bad for games to start screwing over nvidia owners.

So from what it sounds like Nvidia is going more into the mobile market and thinking of downplaying pc/console market. They are making more money in mobile so thats the focus of nvidia now. I mean if your card is good than its still good, they won't stop making drivers for a while so your fine. Just go with whatever is the best who cares who makes the products as long as it works well and it has good support thats what matters.

Well the 360 and Wii and now Wii U have AMD graphics cards and that hasn't slowed Nvidia down. I had a ton of problems with AMD drivers when I had a Radeon a couple years ago. Switched to Nvidia and haven't had an issue since. AMD has worked really hard to improve their drivers with the 7000 series, though, and they are getting much more competitive performance now. In some ways they are getting better performance than the 600 series. I personally plan on sticking with Nvidia for now. We'll see what happens down the line.

I bought a 7950 before Christmas. Easily the worst gaming related decision I've made last year, maybe aside from Guildwars 2.

The thing is pretty fast, don't get me wrong- but it has too many issues with different games. Some of the worst driver problems I've ever seen, subpar performance on older games, the list goes on. I have 4 additional tools installed at all times, because different games require different "force vsync" or "force refresh rate" stuff to run without constantly hitching like crazy.

Won´t buy an AMD card ever again. Judging from this console generation, the graphics hardware in those boxes doesn't necessarily translate to good PC ports on similar hardware. Take Saints Row 3, or GTA IV.. those still have issues on AMD hardware, yet the 360 can run them fairly well.

Frame Lag Comparison Between ATI and Nvidia

Basically when you compare ATI and Nvidia in single GPU measurements then the two companies offer the same performance; well ATI is a bit ahead. Yet, that article comes with a warning. Essentially crossfire is a broken piece of shit that usually provides a worse experience than if you had a single GPU (crossfire introduces excess amounts of stuttering and screen tearing that v-sync can not fix). Since the difference is in the way the hardware is designed there is nothing that ATI can actually do with this generation of video cards. So, right now at least, if you will ever consider putting in a second video card, Nvidia is the only option.

Edit: I believe that Nvidias presence in mobile could be a big factor for the company. The market for desktop computers is shrinking and I think that the next gen consoles are not going to be doing the numbers they are expecting. I know that I am not buying a new console this winter.

Plus, I have a feeling that Unreal Engine 4 is going to be almost as large this generation as it was last generation. Every Unreal Engine demo they have shown has been done on a single 680.

@toowalrus: well recently they've thrown more money and support towards devs, so on the PC nvidia has had a lot less issues than AMD has. Unless I'm just missing a lot.

Come next year with the Next Gen doors fully open and PC games not being bottlenecked as they currently are (well ok, as bottlenecked,) PC gamers are going to find themselves in the same position they were in the early to mid 2000s. Games will finally be power hungry again and the need for high end (and multiple in some cases) will exist again. So during that time NVdia just needs to deliver on the power and efficiency and they will be able to sell cards. After a few years however PCs may find themselves back to where we were last year, where console ports run fine on pretty much anything because cards have all caught up. By then NVidia needs to deliver on price.

There is a reason Nvidia said no to the big consoles. Part of that has to do with the cost it's just plain expensive to design and manufacture console specific hardware, I'm willing to bet another factor in making those decisions is the growing market for PC Games, things like DIablo III and SimCity have shown (Even with such public and serious issues as they've had) that there is serious money waiting to be spent on the right PC titles.

I would expect that in the wake of AMD picking up these Console contracts Nvidia will implement plans to double down on the PC market. Whether that is by providing the right performance or the right price will depend on what players want. I wouldn't be surprised to hear Nvidia working on Linux optimised drivers and possibly even Hardware down the line for the multitude of Steam boxes that are being planned for market.

One way or the other, I've never come across a performance disparity that would make it worthwhile to put up with AMD's drivers or interface. Consoles seem like the perfect place for AMD; good, powerful, purpose built hardware in a platform where the operating environment is identical for every machine, that's a field AMD could dominate.

Nvidia (2012)

• Revenue $3.99 billion UP
• Operating income $648 million UP
• Net income $581 million UP
• Total assets $5.55 billion UP
• Total equity $4.14 billion UP
• Employees 7,133

Advanced Micro Devices (2012)

• Revenue $5.422 billion DOWN
• Operating income $-1.056 billion DOWN
• Net income $-1.183 billion DOWN
• Total assets $4.00 billion DOWN
• Total equity $538 million DOWN
• Employees 11,705

AMD being in the next gen of consoles is a thing, Nvidia going big into mobile is a thing.

I feel its the opposite, having passed on the consoles I think Nvidia is going to be pushing nothing but hardcore PC support as it has stated it doesn't see much for the future of consoles.

i dont understand what the thing is here about nvidia losing the battle, they have the next level technology like PhysX that others dont have. . . . are people arguing that theyre losing the PC battle because the consoles chose AMD? that makes no sense .

@tarsier: Yeah, the question was a bit skewed in a way. It really should have said "Is Nvidia losing too much ground by allowing AMD to own the console market this gen"

I would rather have a smooth experience than a small increase in performance, so whoever can give me that will get my money.

On another note I have switchable AMD graphics card on my laptop, AMD relegated the support to the manufacturers so the latest driver update was from a year ago. Now I have to use not official drivers from leshcat to update. Could anybody with switchable Nvidia cards tell me how good the driver support is?

@philantrophy: While AMD may stop support for some of their products, Nvidia has a great library for all of their drivers. Here is a link to those drivers on their site.

Linky

I do not have a switchable card. I do have a Nvidia 335 mt (which is a laptop card) and updates are fairly regular. Especially when they are new games coming out.

note that the graphics division , formerly ATI isnt AMD's whole bussiness.
I tried to find figures on this, and 2006, just before the acqusition, ATI had about 3000 employees.

I have AMD card and gaming wise it is good. However, when I use Adobe products or Blender, I cry a bit. Right now I see Nvidia cards as whole lot more attractive thanks to the CUDA.

Yeah, on ps4 and without full hardware support. So I don't really see what it has to do with this tread in the PC section.

No full or partly Phyxs acceleration on currently or announced AMD PC hardware.

Sure it may be possible in the future, or not, but saying that Physx runs on non-Nvidia cards, just like TressFx runs on Nvidia is just spreading misinformation at this time.

@clstirens: Consoles are going to be AMD only (maybe) because AMD raced to the bottom. The winner of something like that? Not really a winner. nVidia is fine. They are doing far better in the actual market that you are talking about, and in my opinion makes better products for that market. And the AMD architecture that is being used is NOTHING like the desktop hardware. It's similar enough to make cross development relatively free of pain, but not close enough to just magically make AMD stuff better. It's not like PS3 games are better ported to nVidia video cards and 360 games are better ported to AMD cards (in fact, I can think of a number of examples of the exact opposite).

I wouldn't worry. nVidia is doing fine. They won't be developing hardware to be as cheap as humanly possible, like AMD will be for the next 10 years.

Except it isn't, and TressFX doesn't use AMD specific anything, other than having been given some money. TressFX uses an open language that has jack shit to do with AMD other than this: nVidia cut down the compute power of the 600 series because it didn't see it as being important this generation. With stuff like the PS4 coming out with compute physics, UE4 having GPU accelerated particles, and Battlefield 4 having directcompute effects, I'm guessing that they will put a lot more compute 'oomph' in the next generation, or generation after that.

Interestingly enough, the same issue is the reason that most people render on the 500 series instead of the 600 series. It's sort of pulling a console move and focusing on what's important, and compromising on stuff like directcompute performance.

PhysX, by the way, is a physics engine. When nVidia says "PhysX will work on the PS4!" means that some part of the PhysX line of products will work. That may not include... GPU ACCELERATED PARTICLES. But probably will, because der. But it will certainly mean games like ArmA 3, which uses PhysX for stuff like Vehicle Physics, or other game using PhysX just for real time rigid body physics. PhysX also has deformation tech, APEX destruction/cloth, etc.

Not that it matters for fuck all. nVidia was cool with its PhysX this generation, and I love having a PhysX card because the effects can be pretty startling. But directcompute is the freakin' future. It's open and everyone will be doing it, consoles and PCs alike. Which is great, because it means more games with awesome GPU accelerated stuff. Which I freakin' love, so bring it on!

You can still get decent acceleration from an AMD card (assuming it's fairly beefy) in both of those. It's been getting much better in Blender over time.

Blender and Premiere with a GTX 680 are pretty awesome though.

Really? Because I still think that GPU rendering is not available for AMD-cards with Adobe products (specially when heavy rendering is needed; AE, Premiere) and with Blender Cycles GPU rendering.

Actually the press release says it would be accelerated on the PS4. Probably not all features will be available but still, Physx won't be Nvidia-only now.

back in the days you could run physx on AMD cards with glitched drivers and stuff like that,

There isnt really a limitation in any hardware regarding it, it just that nvidia uses it as a selling point, and therefore keeps it closed.
If they want to make it run on the ps4, to tout how awesome physx is, they sure can.

I can sort of see where the OP and others might get the impression that AMD could be so called "winning" but really their not. AMD is about bankrupt if all the money they've sinked into consoles doesn't pay off, hence why they have closed half their factorys recently. To be honest, I cant see them failing in the console market, but it depends how well PS4 and the 720 actually sell... When you double dip into 2 completely different projects like having your hardware in both competing consoles, one is going to out sell the other, and depends how much AMD have actually spent on each console to see if they warrent a massive loss on one of the consoles. Details on xbox720 are still very sketchy at best !! while we know pretty much the whole shebang with the PS4's hardware. Its a MASSIVE risk and I hope it pays off, why do you think nvidia snubbed box microsoft and sony when fronted with the same idea of having nvidia in the consoles? Nvidia is going mobile instead of the consoles, Nvidia is the one company thats making massive amounts of proffit and while they still do that, they'll be around forever. AMD have been falling rapidly since the birth of the Intel Core2 Quad and even more further behind with the i7 and i5. Nvidia aren't in a CPU war either, which makes them a much more healthy company in general.

Nvidia have taken a big risk on their new hand-held device, when everything is going to tablet, I think their a little behind in the market, the 3DS is still a vallid piece of hardware but its really showing its age now next to no competition until the power of tablets have come to rise. I always hear tablets are the death of the desktop PC as well, when in fact thats wrong, It will be the death of laptops. Laptops are big, and heavy if you want one that can do anything like gaming on it with reasonible performance, and tablets are about on par with those now, but when it comes to an actual desktop, no matter what, there is no mobile piece of hardware they will come even remotely close to the raw power a full desktop machine will have and the core components of those are the graphics cards. So long as new games, new generations of entertainment keep on comming, nvidia and amd will always be at the forefront. There is NO WINNER!! everything goes in cycles, and right now, AMD are behind which could change rather rapidly in the next 1-2 yrs if the console sales are a complete success with the extra money and resources to get back on track competing with Nvidia and Intel. Nvidia will continue to grow and will eventually be the dominant force is powering mobile GPUs to new limits.....