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

[Brink]

You might say 2015 hasn't been the most exciting year for graphics cards, though in many ways it was more eventful than 2014. The only big highlight last year was the arrival high-end Maxwell GPUs in the form of the GeForce GTX 980 and 970. Then this year Maxwell did what many thought was impossible: becoming considerably faster.

Last year's GTX 980 featured 2048 CUDA cores, which now looks underwhelming put against the Titan X's whopping 3072 CUDA cores, a nice 50% bump for the architecture. Nvidia also went the other way, releasing the $160 GTX 950 which sports just 768 CUDA cores.

All told, Nvidia released four new GPUs in 2015, while AMD delivered eight cards if you're willing to be loose with the definition of "new" and three if you're not, namely the Radeon R9 Fury X, Fury and Nano.



Some of you are probably shouting that the 390X and 390 are new as well. Yes, the Radeon R9 390X and 390 received double the VRAM, but they are essentially the same GCN 1.1 GPUs -- 290X and 290, respectively. Thus far, the larger 8GB memory buffer has proven to be of little benefit, so we prefer the cheaper 290s anyway.

At this point, it looks like AMD and Nvidia have finally squeezed the most out of the 28nm design process. Before moving on, AMD will release a dual-GPU version of the Fury X which should become the Fury X2. Nvidia could also return fire with a dual-GPU monster of its own.



Something we haven't seen a lot of this year has been price cuts. AMD was forced into aggressive discounts last year to compete, but this year the company has been competitive at the upper end of the high-performance GPU market and has therefore felt less pressure to reduce prices.

As shown in the table above, the key battles are currently being played out between the GTX 750 Ti and R7 360 at ~$100, the GTX 950 and R7 370 at $150, the GTX 960 and R9 380 at $200, the R9 390 and GTX 970 at $300, the R9 390X and GTX 980 at $450 and finally the GTX 980 Ti and R9 Fury X at $650. By the end of this article we should have figured out what are the best buys at every price point...

Read more: The Best Graphics Cards: Nvidia vs. AMD at Every Price Point - TechSpot

• Page 2: Benchmarks: Battlefield 4, Thief
• Page 3: Benchmarks: Watch Dogs, Far Cry 4
• Page 4: Benchmarks: Civilization, Total War Attila
• Page 5: Benchmarks: Assassin's Creed Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Page 6: Power Consumption
• Page 7: Wrap Up: Making Some Picks

   Tip

GPU - The Core Basics for Choosing One

 

[RoasterMen]

As an Average Gamer, I don't really care much how fast the card is. If it can play the games I play at over 30 FPS, it's fine.

 

[unifex]

As a non-gamer, I need a completely different info on graphics cards. I really don't care about gaming benchmarks. What I'm interested in, is about multi-monitor performance. Too bad such information is hard to come by.

 

[Hellriser]

No idea about multi-monitor performance, but I would make an uneducated guess that both nVidia and AMD should have some GPUs dedicated to this.

As a passionate gamer (when time allows it, of course), I currently have a GTX770 that works very well with any game, so I don't see the need for an upgrade to GTX970, but I'm very curious what the next years will bring in terms of technology and graphic engines. Unfortunately, AMD is lagging so much behind nVidia (at least in up-to-date drivers), and I don't really like a monopoly on the whole GPU business.

Thanks for the article, I like keeping up to speed with what's new in the hardware world.

 

[Layback Bear]

Their would be no chance of a monopoly by nVidia if AMD would get their act together.

 

[A Guy]

GPU Hierarchy Chart - 2015 GPU Comparisons

Best Graphics Cards for the Money - Tom's Hardware

A Guy

 

[hami]

yes smart pointing

 

[Layback Bear]

I hope my video card doesn't see this threat because it isn't even mentioned in the article.

 

[ThrashZone]

Pretty odd they show a gtx 690 next to a gtx 980
EVGA GeForce GTX 690 04G-P4-2690-KR 4GB 512-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Newegg.com

 

[margrave]

Who writes this junk?

"You might say 2015 hasn't been the most exciting year for graphics cards ..."
Is there anything "exciting" about graphics cards?

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

 

[A Guy]

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

Nvidia and AMD do

A Guy

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea they do

 

[Mellon Head]

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.

 

[Swizz]

Did somebody say 4K gaming? I've been thinking about upgrading my video card

 

[Laith]

Well, i have one thing to say, AMD is made for those who go cheap. NVidia/Intel are the ones who bring quality.

Just look at how many people has their AMD graphics cards targeted in the BSOD section.

 

[RoasterMen]

Who writes this junk?

Do video cards do "battle"?

Yes they do but they were seen working together nicely with DirectX 12

 

[pupsealdeluxe]

Who writes this junk?

"You might say 2015 hasn't been the most exciting year for graphics cards ..."
Is there anything "exciting" about graphics cards?

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

YES i just got my amd sabertooth build done. and my dissapered off the shelves because it was too awesome 8gig sapphire 290x [ with lights on the ram thank you ] vapor x is very exciteing. and it does do battle. with the graphics turned all the way up and the view dist at 75% Arma 3 is donig 35 to 43 fps. And it has buttons on it.