[Question] AMD or nVIDIA Graphics Card?

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DISCLAIMER: If you are reading this and you just wanna comment something like "nobody cares" or "just google it", then please don't bother commenting I'm talking to you, Vinscool!
(Unless you wanna actually help, then please do)
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View attachment 160520
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Anyway, the title is pretty self explanatory.

I’m looking for a good GPU. The two GPUs (chipsets) I’m in between are these ones here:

RX Vega 64
vs.
RTX 2070

BUT HOLD UP,
The RTX 2070 would be the obvious choice on paper.
-I’m not going to be mining or anything, just gaming.
-Nearly identical preformance for nearly $100 less.
-Ray tracing stuff to be utilized in the future
-The list goes on.

I was only looking at RTX 2070 models for a while and found that the best one was an MSI model for $530.
(there are cheaper ones but they wear out and preform much worse (like windforce)).

HERES THE ISSUE;
The whole point of getting better GPUs is to have a smooth performance, right?
Well that’s why G-Sync exists. It prevents screen tearing and stutters without adding any input lag (like V-sync in games do).
G-sync is meant for use with high end nVidia cards (like the 2070). G-Sync does not work with AMD GPUs, they use Freesync

The issue here is that G-Sync Monitors cost a massive amount of money, while FreeSync monitors are way less expensive.

To put it in perspective, a 1080p 144hz curved monitor that has FreeSync costs $199, while a G-Sync monitor with the same 1080p 144hz spec costs $350.
It’s fucking awful.
It’s the reason why I started looking into AMDs GPUs in the first place. I want to dodge nVidia’s greedy G-Sync tax while still getting the preformance I want.

Thus, we got a Vega 64.

Here’s the thing; Vega 64 cards are really hard to shop for.
Here’s what i mean by that,

The RTX 2070 ranges in price from $475 to about $580. This is the manufacturers build different models of the card with the same chipset.
-Gigabyte’s cheaply made Windforce model is $475
-MSI’s enthusiast grade model is $580

This makes it pretty simple to pick your model in the 2070s lineup of cards.

VEGA 64 IS NOT LIKE THIS.
For these, the range in price goes from $450 - $850. What the fuck.
All the benchmarks look relatively balanced between the $450 model and the $850 model, so, why such dramatic price difference?

If I’m not mistaken, it’s purely because of GPU mining.
And the more expensive cards can mine better than the much cheaper ones.
That’s fine and all, but it makes it hard to find a Vega 64 that has good gaming preformance, lasts a long time, and ISNT meant for mining.

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SO HERE'S MY QUESTION TO YOU;

Is there a Vega 64 that I can get for $550 or under that is meant PURELY for gaming?
Or should I just get a RTX 2070 and pay $150 more as the G-Sync Tax (fucking nVidia greed).

If there is a Vega 64 that suits my needs but is, like, $600 then that’s fine too, as long as I can dodge that Monitor tax without over-paying then I am happy.

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[P.S.]: to make my blogs more cutesy I wanna make a song recommendation at the end of them all.
The song for today is:
“The One” - by LiMP BiZkiT.

[P.P.S.]: Ryzen is awesome, Intel can go piss on a wire.

[P.P.P.S.]: here’s my build as of now:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/jkyYFt

[P.P.P.P.S.]: Shoutout to Dionicio

[P.P.P.P.P.S.]: okay im done lol

Comments

Don't go Vega. If you can wait, AMD should be revealing their next lineup sometime in the summer. I'd go 2070 for the newer tech. Vega is alright, at best, these days.
 
@Memoir
Is there a particular reason why?
I saw benchmarks of Vega and it performed on point with the rtx 2070
 
I'm a big fan of what AMD has done lately. I will echo Memoir, though, and say hold off on getting a Vega card. Navi will be coming out later this year with a 7 nm process. Wait and see how the Navi release goes. If you can't wait, have you looked at the Vega 56? Most benchmarks I've seen have it not too far behind the 64 while being more affordable.
 
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Are you planning on dabbling in emulation, or just native PC gaming?

I'm asking because it's more of an even playing field between AMD and Nvidia with native PC games. They generally use DirectX (or rarely Vulkan), and that's generally well supported on either brand. But some emulators utilize or even require OpenGL, which performs extremely poorly on AMD GPUs on Windows. The Wii U emulator Cemu is an example of this, it currently only supports OpenGL (though they may add Vulkan support in the future). It runs great on Nvidia but has really horrible performance on AMD GPUs.

I don't have much advice beyond that, just figured i'd bring that up in case it was relevant to you. I think AMD OpenGL performance is supposedly much better using Linux drivers, but I can't speak from personal experience there.

Generally speaking i've never been crazy about Radeon cards and have always liked Nvidia better. I think hardware wise Radeons are very powerful and have a ton of potential, but i've often run into driver issues on the AMD side of things moreso than Nvidia.
 
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Cemu and Yuzu are both significant reasons why I am getting this pc in the first place, so it looks like I’ll have to pay the monitor tax after all...

I plan to build it at the end of summer though so maybe there will be better OpenGL bullcrap on AMDs third release.

Until then crosshairs still on nVidia
 
Okay hold up, why exactly is the Vega 64 bad?
Cause I’ve found cards that are cheaper than the RTX 2070 and bench higher!

I mean besides the whole OpenGL thingy, I know that’s a major strike against them
 
They're not bad, so to say. Just dated and AMD should be pushing new GPUs later this year.
 
Yuzu developers are apparently actively working on Vulkan support from what I understand. So in the likely near future, Yuzu should yield good performance on AMD cards.

As for Cemu, i'm not sure if or when it will get Vulkan. Cemu got a major texture cache rewrite recently which led people to think Vulkan would be supported sometime in the future. We'll see. But at this precise moment, an Nvidia card is kind of needed for decent performance. I have heard people say the AMD Mesa drivers via Linux are better than Windows, but I don't know by how much. I don't use Linux.
 
Is there any chance that AMDs next lineup will have better OpenGL support?
Or is it like a brand thing?
 
Vega cards aren't bad so much as they aren't as they didn't live up to their potential. They were a step in the right direction, but perhaps not a big enough step. Had a gtx 970 not fallen into my lap a couple years ago, I likely would've gotten a RX 580 as a great bang-for-your-buck option. Probably RX 590 for that position now, but I'd rather hold out and see what the GPU landscape looks like when Navi comes out.
 
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I am surprised no one has mentioned this, or that you are not even aware of this yourself, but you can get the RTX 2070 and avoid the G-Sync tax all together. You don't need a G-Sync monitor to take advantage of Adaptive Sync. Since January, Nvidia has supported G-Sync over FreeSync: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/g-sync-ces-2019-announcements/

There's a list of FreeSync "G-Sync Compatible" monitors, but you don't need to get one that's on that list. I recently got a FreeSync monitor not on that list, and it works really well with G-Sync (GTX 1070 ti). Here's the monitor in question, if you are interested: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-D2719...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2648

It has an Adaptive Sync range of 40Hz-144Hz, so it's pretty huge!
 
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Paolosworld, one of the big things for AMD is really driver support. They revamped their driver stack a couple years ago, moving to an open source stack called AMDGPU. The open source stack has been undergoing a lot of development and improvements. I expect the driver to continue improving thus improving OpenGL performance.
 
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If you want everything..... emulation (new and old games/consoles) as well as very old PC games and ofc new PC games I would recommend you a nVidia card from personal experience.

Currently I have a dual boot system with Win 10 x64 and Win XP x86 with (CPU 8700K, yes XP is possible with newer generation CPUs if you use the SATA slipstream method from Fernandos Win Raid Forums) and I own currently two GPUs, one currently older AMD Radeon R7 260X GPU and one nVidia 980 Ti and you know what?

Things are like these..... they say newer GPUs and newer drivers in general have some issues with older games running on older OSes like Win XP or older games running on modern OSes like Win 10 and especially 64bit OSes but most or many issues can be resolved if you install a XP OS on you modern PC and from my personal experience, ironically, the R7 260X from AMD which is an older GPU with proper official Win XP drivers have technical and graphical issues with older games like Richard Burns Rally:
- graphical artifacts in menus
- ingame graphics are mostly correct but there is some issues with the sun glare effect in the game and one technical issues I discovered, everytime you turn to the sun you receive for a second a strange microstutter.
The exact same game was tested with my nVidia GTX 980 Ti (yes, modified Win XP 32bit drivers for this GPU exists) and there are zero issues with this game on this GPU.


One more example is a very old game Hard Truck King of the Road and if you run this game under XP 32bit and Radeon R7 260X or GTX 980 Ti on your modern PC you will receive graphical issues with both GPUs but you will receive less graphical issues with the nVIdia GTX 980 Ti card. Thankfully you can play this game even on WIn 10 64bit with some special wrapper tools like dgVoodoo 2 perfectly fine without any issues with any CPU and any GPU.

Not to mention that nVidia is mostly better when it comes to emulation as well as Intel CPUs.
 
Supster, if I recall correctly, nVidia claimed it was impossible to support FreeSync on nVidia cards due to hardware limitations. And then the open-source driver team that receives practically no support from nVidia and has to reverse-engineer everything got freesync working in the nouveau driver proving nVidia's claims to be incorrect. After that, I guess nVidia didn't really have an excuse.
 
well Navi should be coming out eventually, and if you're able to wait I'm sure they will perform far better than all these polaris cards they're still putting out 3 years later
 
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You can use FreeSync monitors on Nvidia now I think, ever since they allowed Adaptive Sync monitors to be used (but maybe not all FreeSync monitors are compatible with Adaptive Sync, I'm not sure how that works), however the experience may not be as good as a G-Sync certified monitor since those come with strict restrictions. That's part of why it costs more, there's a whole certification process involved that likely isn't cheap for Nvidia.

With a budget of around $500 you might be able to get a used GTX 1080 Ti - that would be a better choice IMO. Real time raytracing right now is in early stages and is too slow to really be worth using until later generations when the technology improves, it currently has a big impact on FPS, so you aren't really missing out on much by not going RTX.
 
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Raytracing is also a massive gimmick. Couple that with what Jdbye said, and I'd say you should factor that into your purchase.
 
Raytracing might be a gimmick but it does have the potential to greatly increase graphics quality beyond what was previously possible. It's one of the major hurdles to overcome in order to get CGI-movie level quality of graphics in games.
 
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