The Best Graphics Cards: Nvidia vs. AMD at Every Price Point

margrave said:

"As shown in the table above, the key battles ..."
Do video cards do "battle"? :)

Nvidia and AMD do

A Guy

Yea they do

I think that one of the big reasons that AMD cards underperform is that if you plug one into most AMD based motherboards, they don't use PCIe 3.0, but use PCIe 2.0.

I got a nasty surprise when benchmarking my new R9 280. It only uses PCIe 2.0, reducing the bandwidth available to the card, and it severely underperformed. Some research proved that for most non-APU AMD chips (including the FX series), the PCIe bus controller doesn't support PCIe 3.0 on the motherboard. (FM1+ socketed motherboards do, for the most part, and my statements don't apply to them).

I don't know how this would apply on an Intel based motherboard, but I would expect it to perform at PCIe 3.0 bandwidth. My card is capable of it, it's my mobo that is holding me back.

I'm very suspicious of comparisons between Nvidia and AMD for that reason. I feel that if the AMD card is tested on an AMD board, then the resulting comparison is invalid. It's an apples to oranges kind of thing. A comparison of the boards tested on Intel hardware would be much more meaningful.

Another reason to buy Intel.