Ok, to start the first hardware debate thread... (debates are allowed in the forum description)

What is your opinion on AMD, Nvidia, and Intel? (video cards, and CPUs)

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Before the dual core Intels, I would have easily gone for AMD processors. Now with the new LGA1155 processors, Intel outperforms while being far less expensive.

ATI had great cards back in the day, but shortly after the GeForce 6200, Nvidia took (and still has) the lead on GFX quality. I wouldn't buy a Radeon if I could help it.

For comparison, each GeForce CUDA core is equivalent to 4 stream processors in the GTX 4XX series, and 4-8 stream processors in the GTX 5XX series.

I think it depends on your price range. Show me an Intel CPU that outperforms a comparable AMD one in the $80 - 120 range. While everyone's needs are different, most games are less CPU-dependent than GPU nowadays. While Intel rules the top end (and with Sandy Bridge, now the midrange), it's difficult for me to justify higher costs on a component that depreciates so rapidly anyway.

I'd argue unless the company has paid off a developer for special enhancements, ATI and Nvidia have equal video quality IF you don't enable antialiasing. With AA enabled, it's kind of give and take, though I think with Nvidia Inspector and some tweaking, Nvidia hands down beats ATI for AA options. ATI's MLAA mode is a good stopgap however, Nvidia needs a similar shader-based post processing AA method for games that just resist everything else. Really if you want the most performance for your money, I'd recommend ATI, but Nvidia has some goodies I prefer.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+G850+%40+2.90GHz

Beats an Athlon II X4 610e. $40 less.


Then there's also this one: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-2100+%40+3.10GHz

Beating a Phenom II X4 B95 for half the price, plus you can overclock the Intel by as much as 50% on stock cooling.



Intel owns the entire market right now.

Intel > AMD (Always.. ever since Intel came out with the dual cores, its been top flight ever since)

Nvidia > AMD (in the tip top market~)

AMD cannot beat Intel, Nvidia in the enthusiasts markets, but they keep their competitive edge, releasing the first 6 Core Processor, and APU for the consumer market. They also beat Intel & nvidia in Price per performance.

I rock the Intel & Nvidia because I have the money to XD

Never liked ATi (radeon graphics for that matter)~ My first ATi graphic card was the Rage 128 pro. Damn card crashed on almost every game I played (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Quake, Hexen). Switched to a Matrox G400 and all is well.

If you compare video cards model per model with the AMD (ATi) verisons, most of the nvidia cards perform better (I say most, because some AMD models do perform better).

Intel + NVIDIA = Win

This is true, though part of the reason I don't like Intel is because back when AMD was pummelling them with the first Athlon, they had faster CPUs for less money, but were gaining NO marketshare. Intel ended up engaging in a series of illegal business activites (like paying major vendors like Dell, HP, etc not to buy AMD processors, offering discounts below costs of manufacturing). This lasted for years and it's only just recently having some resolution (The European Union fined Intel 1 billion Euros, though it's kind of a slap on the wrist considering the damage). If Intel had actually obeyed the law over the past decade, the playing field could be much more even now with AMD perhaps having much better processors and both sides having more competitive pricing.

That's not even true now, they've been leapfrogging ever since 2002.

Case 1: In 2002, the Radeon 9700 blew away anything Nvidia had in every way imagineable, their Geforce 5 series was kind of a wash, and they didn't really come back until 2004 with the Geforce 6 series.

Case 2: In 2009, the Radeon 5870 once again, blew away anything Nvidia had and it remained this way for a year and a half until Nvidia got the Geforce 400 series out the door.

Case 3: RIGHT NOW, there's debate as to whether the Geforce 590 or the Radeon 6990 is the fastest card, so much so that AMD actually challenged Nvidia to a benchmarking throwdown between the two. The bottom line for these cards is it depends on the game, but the 6990 on average wins more game benchmarks than the 590 (though I believe the 590 gives better SLI results).


Don't get me wrong, I prefer Nvidia hardware at the moment (I've gone back and forth on both sides), but to say they're simply faster at the top end just isn't true these days and hasn't been for a while.

Holy crap when did that CPu come out? Guess I need to update myself :S

Came out Q1'11. (first quarter, this year)



Most do.

I usually ignore simulation benchmarks and just go for gaming ones, I think this is a fairer examination:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... 620_4.html

It looks like it's neck and neck (they exchange places in different benchmarks) with the X3 455, which is about $15 cheaper than the G850. For the G850's price range, the AMD equivalent would be either the Phenom II X2 560 or the Athlon II X3 460.

Also the Athlon II X4 610e is a 2.4ghz processor, for gaming, I don't see how that's an equivalent option since even within AMD you can get faster CPUs for less money.

I am surprised, since I think in maybe the past 10 years Intel has never had an equivalent or better performer as AMD for the same price range at the lower end until now. That's bad news for everyone if AMD can't compete in the CPU market, then Intel will turn back into a de facto monopoly.

AMD + ATI all the way.

The only thing is that those games that the AMD is better at is only because they have many AMD specific optimizations, and no Intel optimizations. That usually tends to put a bit of a bias to the test results.

Following Tom's Hardware (one of the only reviews I actually trust, considering I used to work for them XD) The 590 and the 6990 have some differences. The 6990 does do better at some games and at much higher res than Nvidia. But the fan is very loud, and there isn't any perks of CUDA (for video converting and some other neat things) (AMD actually stole Nvidia's CUDA guy away from them last year hehe-- who helped create the AMD's APUs)

As for models such as the 5870 ( I would only compared them to the 400 series as both were Directx 11 cards and in their generation). The 400 series for Nvidia was a vast disappointment (to say the very least).

But unless I am on a budget I prefer Nvidia and still will until something really bad happens, like Seagate's hard drive quality (the last few years).

I always found that NVIDIA's Physx software made my games run more smoothly. Because games like BFBC2 or games running the Source Enginge, need a lot of physics calculations, having an SLI setup where one card would be a physx processor made my games run really smoothly even with graphics on high settings. I also found that while AMD cards looked better on paper in terms of specs, when it came to actually testing them out, NVIDIA was more than competent. AMD cards can run the same games on really high graphics settings as well, but when it came to physics calcualations the game would start to lag (Like when a building blew up in BFBC2, which wouldn't happen when using NVIDA cards with Phys-X).
Forgive any errors I may have made, I'm not exactly an expert in this sort of thing.

Source engine games don't use PhysX for physics, it uses the Havok engine. Having an SLI setup will give you more speed period in games that support it, but only a minority of games will specifically offload physics work to the GPU like that, PhysX never really took off to the extent Nvidia was hoping. I believe most modern games try and use additional cores for physics now since most gaming machines are multi-core nowadays.

People don't want to buy a dedicated graphic adapter for something the CPU can do anyway.

PhysX does not have to be strictly GPU accelerated.

Havok strictly runs using the CPU.

PhysX can use both CPU & GPU, depending on the developer of the application.

Using PhysX
8-9 times out of 10, if you run any type of physics (benchmarks, etc) the GPU will have much more fluidity and runs less choppier than if you used the CPU. As for reasons of this, some say game developers use engines that intentionally require you to have a GPU, or w/e. AMD also accuses Nvidia of limiting PhysX on multi-core computers, relying only on the GPU to perform work rather than using individual threads on Quad Cores processors.

But the blame/accusation of Nvidia is without merit. It is up to the game developers' discretion on what the thread control is used by. So the developers can optimize their games to (in the best performance) use thread control in quad cores.

Many AMD users do complain, since Nvidia's PhysX will not run on their GPUs (without some tampering). HavokFX (Havok's verison of Physics running on the GPU) was created, but never implemented.

PhysX dominates alot of the game market on the PC back in 2006-2010, with the last great games including Mafia II and Metro 2033.

I am using ATI/AMD and though some games run choppy, it's never bothering me too much.

I've never seen objective evidence that one processor is better than the other. Some people say Intel is good, while other people swear by their lives AMD is better.

Look at this site, and you can choose which processors are better... http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

It utilizes comprehensive benchmarks for everything it tests, then categorizes them, even putting overclocked processors into their own category. Also has Video Card and HDD benchmarks. (the GTX 465 holds the best price-performance spot, and the GTX 470/480 & 570/580/590 cards hold the top 5 performance slots)