Nvidia vs. AMD: Who's on top right now?

JohnJSal

JohnJSal

Active Member
I've just begun the process of researching the hardware for my PC upgrade, and today I'm checking out the GeForce line. I'm more familiar with Nvidia's cards and for some reason I tend to gravitate more toward them than AMD (probably because at the time of my first build Nvidia's cards were better).

After a quick review of the current Nvidia lineup, it seems like the GeForce GTX660 Ti is the best card for me, and other than the very expensive alternatives (670/680/690), the best one out right now. The ones to be released soon (650/660) seem to be more on the budget end.

So my question is, are there any Radeon cards that are significantly better than the GTX660 Ti? Am I even right in singling this one out as being a good upgrade choice?

Thanks.

(P.S. I think another reason I tend to prefer Nvidia is that I sometimes hear about, and experienced myself at least once, problems with compatibility with ATI/AMD cards. I often see recommendations from game companies or on game boxes for Nvidia graphics, but I don't know if this is just a marketing thing or not.)

Edit: I just noticed that the bus width for the 660 Ti is 192. This is less than my old 9800GT at 256. Does this even matter given the rest of the 660 Ti's specs? How important is this one spec?
 
Last edited:
nVidia is the higher performer for a higher cost. I went back to nVidia because I wanted PhysX. If you want to look into the AMD cards, look at the 7870 or the 6970/6990.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
nVidia is the higher performer for a higher cost. I went back to nVidia because I wanted PhysX. If you want to look into the AMD cards, look at the 7870 or the 6970/6990.
Click to expand...

actually not including the dual gpu 690 they are equal if not AMD on top. The 7970 GHz Edition is about equal with the 680 and they are like 450 instead of 500
 
NyxCharon said:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
I'm going to ignore the firepro at the top of this list because:
1) it's $2800
2) it's a workstation card.

That aside, the next 3 cards are Nvidia, then 2 AMD, then 3 more Nvidia.
So, out of the top eight, only 2 are AMD.

So i'd say Nvidia is on top.
Click to expand...

Nice chart, but some weird results. The 670 is higher than the 680? The 690 is that low? Even some 500 series cards scored higher than the 660 Ti.
 
JohnJSal said:
My goal is to play some of the newer games, although at this point they aren't that new anymore. Like Skyrim and such, but of course any future games for the next year or two as well.
Click to expand...

660ti is the best bet, and a 7870 for a bit less is still a great performer.
 
jonnyp11 said:
660ti is the best bet, and a 7870 for a bit less is still a great performer.
Click to expand...

What am I missing that makes the 660 Ti better? I thought it was, but I just checked some of the specs for the 7870 and it seems better in pretty much every way (that I could tell).
 
JohnJSal said:
What am I missing that makes the 660 Ti better? I thought it was, but I just checked some of the specs for the 7870 and it seems better in pretty much every way (that I could tell).
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=647

the processor in the graphics cards are different, nvidia's just perform better with a mixture of more raw power and better drivers. Different games work better with different cards, of course many of the most popular prefer nvidia, but the drivers for nvidia make their modeling capabilities better so there is a good chance the developers used them so it would make sense or the game to work better with nvidia cards.
 
jonnyp11 said:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=647

the processor in the graphics cards are different, nvidia's just perform better with a mixture of more raw power and better drivers. Different games work better with different cards, of course many of the most popular prefer nvidia, but the drivers for nvidia make their modeling capabilities better so there is a good chance the developers used them so it would make sense or the game to work better with nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much. That helps explain my impression that games are sometimes "made for" Nvidia cards. I think I'll probably go with the 660 Ti, then, unless something better happens to be released any time soon (or unless I decide to bump it up to the 670!).
 
JohnJSal said:
Thanks very much. That helps explain my impression that games are sometimes "made for" Nvidia cards. I think I'll probably go with the 660 Ti, then, unless something better happens to be released any time soon (or unless I decide to bump it up to the 670!).
Click to expand...

well a 7950 wouldn't be bad, think they are less than the 670, and no worry about new cards, the 600 and 7000 series are only a few month old, will be early to mid next year soonest for anything new
 
jonnyp11 said:
well a 7950 wouldn't be bad, think they are less than the 670, and no worry about new cards, the 600 and 7000 series are only a few month old, will be early to mid next year soonest for anything new
Click to expand...

I know there won't be any new series, but I meant new cards within the series. I saw that there's a 650 and a 660 card coming out later this month, but neither one seems to be better than the 660 Ti or the others with higher numbers.
 
why would they be, they're supposed to be in order numerically so it easy to see that the 670 beats the 660ti, and 660 beats 650, all the high end cards are already out on the market other than the 7990 which will cost about 1k. High end cards are always the first to launch, the 7970 was the first card out this year, then the 7950, then idk if it was the 680 or the 7870, but you can see that they release them from the top down, other than they did release the uber slow low end 610-640 cards about a month or 2 ago.
 
jonnyp11 said:
why would they be, they're supposed to be in order numerically so it easy to see that the 670 beats the 660ti, and 660 beats 650, all the high end cards are already out on the market other than the 7990 which will cost about 1k. High end cards are always the first to launch, the 7970 was the first card out this year, then the 7950, then idk if it was the 680 or the 7870, but you can see that they release them from the top down, other than they did release the uber slow low end 610-640 cards about a month or 2 ago.
Click to expand...

I was partly thrown off by the "Ti" designation. I didn't know if that meant a better or worse version for the 660, until I looked at the specs.
 
JohnJSal said:
I was partly thrown off by the "Ti" designation. I didn't know if that meant a better or worse version for the 660, until I looked at the specs.
Click to expand...

There are no regular 660s out. The previous generation had a 560 and a 560ti. The ti is faster.

And for $200 after rebate, and a free game you could sell for $40, $160 is insanely cheap for this performance. If I was building now, I'd get two. Out of stock now, but its been varying day to day:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161404
 
Toms hardware just did a comparison on the 660ti with MSAA enabled...apparently the 192-bit interface really chokes them down...so if your looking to use MSAA get the 670 or 7800s or 7900 cards.
 
claptonman said:
There are no regular 660s out. The previous generation had a 560 and a 560ti. The ti is faster.

And for $200 after rebate, and a free game you could sell for $40, $160 is insanely cheap for this performance. If I was building now, I'd get two. Out of stock now, but its been varying day to day:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161404
Click to expand...

damn, after nvidia released the 660ti i know amd dropped the msrp but god that's so much cheaper, the 7870 is supposed to list for like 250! i know the 6950 was very close in performance to the 7850 and the 7870 is a bit stronger so the value is amazing!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top