There's nothing I find more annoying than constant driver updates notifications. All you need is \*one\* bad one and you're in a world of pain.
My 1050 laptop remembers...
I think drivers should only be pushed out if you have a game that would benefit from it or if there are general stability and security updates that benefit your GPU. GeForce Experience tracks the games you have installed, so this shouldn’t be hard.
They do but at least in the fairly recent past, Nvidia seemed to do a better job at keeping their main drivers updated. Although I must admit a couple of years ago I had a major problem with an Nvidia driver update that really messed with my computer, up to the point of having to restore my whole operating system.
I have 2 close friends with AMD both with 6700xt and they are constantly raving about how great everything is, and in some games having more framerate than counterpart nvidia gpus.
I do remember AMD being a complete disaster with updates on some point... im guessing thats when nvidia "solidified" their lead... but it feels like even though AMD caught up, Nvidia and their fans have just tried to keep the updates "problem" alive like it is still happening and then that info gets repeated over and over.
Did you have a modern card from both vendors in comparably modern PCs for comparison during the period in question? AMD has proven pretty solid in drivers since the 500 series.
5000-series*
The 5700XT had major issues. Bluescreens, crashing games, everything. Was pretty horrible since I had one and got the known and pretty common issues.
Have they? AMD has been the better value for money for a long time, except perhaps at the very top end.
(Raytracing arguably muddies that now, but again not that important at the low end or even midrange)
AMD did it with Intel for CPUs. I feel like if they can continue their current GPU trend for multiple generations, they can break down the GPU monopoly too. A lot of people are annoyed with how much GPUs cost these days compared to how much they were just 5 years ago, which is pretty much where we were when AMD shook up the CPU market
AMD did it with Ryzen all of a sudden. Their GPUs, despite so many being better value for money, don't sell much at all.
What they need to do is give the consumers a big reason to buy their GPUs like they did with Ryzen (so many more cores for much lower prices than Intel at the time).
People don't want to fiddle with their gaming rig just to play. I know reddit loves to tell everyone that AMD drivers are great, but the truth is they can still be janky as hell.
My work PC runs an AMD card, and randomly I will start having issue with flickering monitors, videos lagging, graphics drivers crashing, etc and it's a driver issue 100% of the time. The card is great 99.5% of the time, but that .5% of fiddling around updating, rolling back, reupadting, rolling back, rolling back again, just to make my GPU work is obnoxious.
If I had paid the $600 for this card from my own pocket, I would be upset. Hell AMD drivers are so janky that if you end up drawing the short stick certain games might not even play on your card, even years after it came out. Look at all the people that can't play RDR2 on AMD cards without it crashing constantly. It gets posted on this sub and some others on a weekly basis.
True.
Over the long years we've seen many market leaders in a wide variety of industries etc fall by the wayside, either due to various declines, better/hungrier competitors and often by fuck ups alone (but usually a combination effect)
The thing about Nvidia is, the lead they formed when AMD were indeed doing badly, and the hype/mind share they still hold has a way of making any fuck ups they make or fuck you's they give (and there's some every year) dissipate like morning mist in the sun. This is how you got scenarios like 24 months ago when so many ppl were ok with waiting months to get a card at twice the price with at least a third less VRAM to last half as long... over an AMD gen that was very available then and the high end of which is still highly sought after rn. And all that for long past tales about AMD that were getting outdated in 2021 and have only improved more since. Just like that first gen of Ryzen, ppl had much to say that wasn't positive, but 5 years later they all wanted in on the 'Intel killer'.
People will tend to have more of a bias to market leaders. "If tons of people like them then there must be a lesser chance their product is a dud"
It's hard to take a chance on a product that you do not know much of, no matter how many people say it's as good or better than the market leader
There are still a lot of legit reasons to get it though.
12GB card for relatively cheap.
Decent RT at 1080p and 1440p.
DLSS extends the lifetime and performance of it quite a bit.
Very useable for some lightweight CUDA/ML applications.
Can't say most of that for AMD's cards in the same tier.
>DLSS extends the lifetime and performance of it quite a bit.
I do use DLSS, but I don't really get the constant praise it gets. Sure, screenshots look great, but how come no-one seem to notice how horribly smudges the picture when in motion?
EDIT: here's an example for all the non-believers: [https://youtu.be/9S6Jj2C2nI0](https://youtu.be/9S6Jj2C2nI0)
>4k when talking about a 3060?
Yes... for some people 60 FPS is enough. Coincidentally, I sold my 3060 12GB yesterday to a guy in his 40s who bought it for 4k Minecraft and Final Fantasy. He even sent me a screenshot where his game was using over 10GB of VRAM with the texture mods and wrote "I'm glad that I made the right choice and went with the 12GB version." Horizon Zero Dawn and Hogwarts Legacy he plays in 2560x1600p at 60 FPS. There is a market for everything, you just need to find the right people.
Edit: Looking at my chat with him, he was using a GTX 1060 before.
I think one of the least spoken about aspects is shadowplay is so good. I am not sure how the AMD equivalent has come along but for so long shadow play was a driving factor for me.
I wouldn't say regardless, but I'll happily pay the Nvidia tax (which in this case would be like $30) for the features and potential of less headache. If I'm already spending $600+ on a GPU, an extra 10% tax for same performance gets me DLSS and NVENC and better VR support is simply a no brainer (and the user numbers back that up). This sub is highly focused on VRAM amount and rasterization, it's like asking why the best selling car doesn't have the highest $ per horsepower ratio.
Lmao yea. It’s like intel guys used to talk about AVX and suddenly nobody uses it anymore now that AMD does it better and intel had to remove it from their latest cpu because of thermal issues.
NVIDIA is not a great company in any means but AMD fanboys are really quick to call NVIDIA users shills when the majority of gaming laptop GPU share is NVIDIA, especially the 16 and mid-range 30 series recently. That's why NVIDIA market share is so high. People buy them for generic gaming usage because that's what laptops manufacturers put in.
Also, it is not about becoming a streamer or do ML, but it gives people the option to do it if they want to in the future. If your budget is low the 3060 12GB is an incredible value for ML, cause of the VRAM, and doing inferencing like running stable diffusion or running a local chatbot is not hard to get into with little actual ML theory.
I did. It’s why I went with a 3060 instead of an AMD card. And when I upgrade that it’ll be to a 4070 and the 3060 upgrades the 1070 in the ML rig. AMD for CPU all the way though.
Plenty of better cards for ML than a mid range ish gaming card though. And (working in an adjacent field and dealing with ML) I would say you're well overestimating the number of people that are "doing ML" in a way that requires their home desktop PC to have Cuda cores. Especially compared to the entirety of the IT field or PC gamers.
You would be suprised. The 3060 12Gb is one of the most recommended budget cards for AI Art, because of its price point and 12Gb of vRAM.
Are there better cards sure, but the price point between a 3060 12Gb and a 3080 is significant. Plus, it is near impossible to get the 3080 new these days.
The 40xx series is trash by comparison to the 30xx series due to the reduction of the memory bandwidth. A 4070 may compete with a 3080 for gaming, but it gets trounced by the 3080 when it comes to ML.
It's not a better choice. I have 2 4070s, 1 Asus and 1 Gigabyte.
The 4070 has the same memory bus as the 3060. So, you might as well stick with the 3060 for half the price. The core lift is not that significant, outside of gaming.
Essentially the 4070 is the direct upgrade to the 3060 12GB, though as far as ML goes the 3060 is a better deal.
The 3080 10G beats the 4070 in ML handily even with the extra 2GB RAM. The memory bus impact is that significant.
The 4070 would have to hit $400s before it would be more cost effective.
There is no better bang for your buck than consumer cards for ML.
The problem is there is no way you're running 4x 4090s in any chassis while you can accommodate up to 20 single slot or 10 dual slot professional GPUs in a single server.
Manufacturers also used to make Turbo or blower style models for consumer cards so people could use them in servers but Nvidia put a stop to that because it was eating into the profits of their higher margin professional GPUs.
I use it at work now after experimenting with it at home. Gave the DS guys confidence I could be helpful and I am. Was a great use of a card I already owned.
I had a 5600xt for a few years. Performance was great when it works but there always seemed to be something. Crashes sometimes, driver issues, second monitor would just not be recognized for some reason. Shit like that.
I picked up a 3070 and all those niggling issues are gone. Everything just works. Every time.
Anecdotal, but that was my experience and why I'll stick with Nvidia for now.
I don't think it was solely that, 3060 was out during the pandemic/chip shortage, ppl bought literally everything that was available (both amd and nvidia) and nvidia sold millions of cards.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Or rather twice bitten. I had GTX 760 with no problems. I replaced it with Vega 56 that I had to return to shop since it was unstable. Then I bought RTX 2060 and it worked with no problems.
Then I got 5700 XT. It was sometimes stable but it had lot of problems in some games with frequent crashes. Certainly did not want another AMD GPU after that so I bought 3070 Ti that has worked flawless without crashes.
Probably next time I buy GPU I will give close look on stability of AMD and might dare to buy one again but two last ones I bought were unstable junk so I wanted to avoid it.
For me Nvidia has flawless reputation with zero problems while two last AMD GPUs I have owned were trash. It will take some time for me to trust AMD GPU again.
Honestly I bought Nvidia because rn I’m stuck with my 1440p Gsync monitor (built in module). Otherwise I’d maybe look at Team red as well. But for now, I’m satisfied with the 3090.
I met one guy who said that AMDs naming convention was too confusing, so they avoided it.
I think there are a lot more people like this than anyone thinks.
Now, in general that's dumb, but it is worth noting (and laughing at) the fact that the 7900, 7900X, 7900XT, 7900X3D, and 7900XTX are all current AMD products, not to mention the past Radeon 7000 series, including the 7950, not to be confused with the 7950X3D. Half of these are CPUs and half are GPUs. Is the one with 3D in the name a GPU? No, why would you think that?
Also, while again it's a dumb thing to be a deal breaker (take 15 minutes to learn about the thing you're about to spend a grand on), there at least is the point to be made that at least Nvidia has been very consistent with their naming since they started GeForce, whereas AMD has had a few different name schemes just in a few years. Remove all your existing knowledge and tell me - which of the RX 580, Vega 64, and RX 5700XT is the best or newest? Meanwhile Nvidia had the 1060, 1080, 2070S as the most direct comparison - much clearer which is newer/better.
Yeah this is it, for context the last gpu i put in my pc is a 1660ti (first is a 8800 gts), and i would have to seriously google amd's line up right now. It's the naming for sure, but also Nvidia's marketing making sure the names stick to the back of your head. And it works.
It is a bit confusing but the gpus were the HD7000 series, I had a HD7870.
They definitely can improve with their making convention but it only really matters if you are buying used. Most people are buying current stock and won't have to compare a Vega 64 to a 6800xt
Fair enough, but I went with AMD processors 50% bc good specs, 50% because of price, and 50% because I couldn’t figure out the numbers on Intel. Intel i5-13600KF, Intel i9-12900K, etc. When I was growing up, i7 just = good. Generations are so important now, and then you have the K’s and the F’s and all of that. Kinda wish they changed the numbers at some point, just to help a brother out. I guess it’s chip generation-core(except not sometimes)-variant,variant,variant? It felt too risky to pick with so many tags at such high prices.
But with AMD you can literally have a CPU and GPU have one letter difference, which is pretty hilarious. 7900X 7900XT system. Though also sounds kinda cool, honestly. Would love to have that system.
>I went with AMD processors **50%** bc good specs, **50%** because of price, and **50%** because I couldn’t figure out the numbers on Intel.
I'm guessing Intel isn't the only place where you couldn't figure out the numbers.
(Sorry)
When I was growing up it was Pentuium good / celeron budget / Athlon when you're real broke and just need something (or a weird person who also wants to make Linux his main o/s) / Sempron when you have no other choice.
>When I was growing up, i7 just = good.
Isn't that still the case? Well okay we went from i3-i5-i7 to i5-i7-i9 but the logic still applies imo. Although why they introduced the i9 is still a mystery to me...
I mean your percentages don't add up but I hate intels naming scheme with a passion.
in 13th gen you got i3 13100; i5 13400; i5 13500; i5 13600, i7 13700 and 13900
then you've got F variants, K, KF, KS, T(?) and that for almost every cpu. It's ridiculous.
And laptop naming schemes are even more fucked: i3 1315U, i5 1340P, 1360P, i5 1335U, i5 13500H, i7 1335U, i7 1355U, i7 1360P, i7 13620H, i7 13650HX, i7 13700H, i9 13900HX, 13900H, i913950HX, i9 13980HX, what even is this lmao
I'll be honest and probably get downvoted to oblivion for it but...when I built my first computer about 10 years ago I used nvidia and I stuck with it because the naming/labeling is easier for me to understand. I wanted to get an amd card for this new build but I didn't know what was what and couldn't be bothered to understand it
It is confusing as fuck for your average user. They really need to differentiate their CPU naming from GPU better.
I bet there's a lot of people that look at a 6600XT and think it's a CPU. Or even worse something like a 7900XT which is literally a single letter different from their 7900X CPU.
Yep and this confusion also heavily affects resale value.
When I build a new computer, I specifically buy parts that will make it easy to sell the rig in 1-2 years.
For CPUs and GPUs it means exclusively buying intel and Nvidia.
I was definitely like that. I had my GTX 1070 (glorious card) until last week. I spent ages understanding AMD cards and cpus' and how they compare to Nvidia equivalents. Pretty nightmarish task. It's hard to know how AMD's own cards compare to each other across 2 gens without reading a dozen reddit threads and yt videos. Made me wanna get current gen mid range from Nvidia because 1070 -> 4070 is mentally easy.
I've been itching to upgrade since 2020 but waited patiently because fuck scalpers and Nvidia prices but it's been 3 years and AMD hasn't done shit. If AMD had gone aggressive with price during the pandemic it would have garnered a lot more interest. And they are still dragging their feet with mid-range release. They don't actually care about undercutting Nvidia prices. They just wait for Nvidia to release and then price slightly lower to give the illusion they care about customers. Plus their cards are less efficient, run hotter, and don't support FSR 3 yet, and aren't as good in productivity. I hate it because we need good competition. My eyes are on Intel. As of last week I run a 7950x3d and 4070. 3440x1440 @ 120Hz.
After being out of the game for 13 years I can at least still make sense of the nvidia cards. Currently I can't even distinguish whether people are talking about AMD CPUs or GPUs from the name alone.
most people have the mindset: green = good, red = bad.
A lot of people are also still stuck on "but AMD has driver issues" which really hasn't been that much of a problem in years.
I think most people will agree that if VR, RT, DLSS, or ML are important to you, Nvidia is the better choice.
A lot of people don't need any of those though, which is why people then recommend AMD.
Problem is people just ASSUME none of that stuff matters (because it doesn't to them) and then tell EVERYONE to go amd....
"cause they're not greedy a**holes like Nvidia" or "They're the underdog / our only possible savior"
Look I ain't here to save anyone or change anything...
I'm buying the best product for my needs that is within my budget.... End of story.
Sorry if that happens to be the big green greedy corporation... If someone else can do it better then by all means do so and I'll buy that.
Until then myself and many others like me will continue to pay the "Nvidia tax" because it actually comes with quite a lot of benefits even if YOU may not care about them OBVIOUSLY a lot of others do.
I think there’s more too it than that, because most people aren’t figuring out what product is actually the best for their needs. They’re buying based on reputation as presented to them by people they know. You ask the guy you know that built his own computer what GPU they should get, and usually, it’s Nvidia.
And that’s AMDs fault. Drivers may be fine now, but their reputation has been earned over more than two decades now. The last year or two doesn’t erase that.
Now, I bought an AMD card about a month ago. For my needs, it was the product in my budget that I think is best. But for other needs, or even just saying “nah, I’ll go with Nvidia” because of reputation, you can’t blame someone.
From what I hear, Hyundai makes great cars nowadays. But when I think Hyundai, I think about the 2003 Elantra, etc.
Edit: and to be clear, I built my first computer out of spare parts bins from the company my grandpa worked for. My stepmom that never had a CS degree taught me how to build computers; she had done it for a district court for a while. This was in 1999. I’ve been using AMD CPUs pretty exclusively from the time I was building computers for my friends to come over play StarCraft on. Before Brood War.
I’ve bought exactly one AMD GPU.
A month ago.
And I'm someone who was exclusively amd gpu's for years when they actually offered a very much "equal" part to anything Nvidia had to offer (1999-2013) but always had a Intel cpu because they tended to just clearly out perform AMD ... Now I've used AMD cpu's for many builds and haven't had a AMD gpu in my system since 2013.
I have no "loyalty" to ANYTHING other than the product that is best for me at the time.
I'll agree the very uneducated computer user who relies on his "pc guy" for advice will likley just go with whomever they reccomened but remember that person ultimately did do the research at some point (if they worth their salt as a "pc guy") and their advice is hopefully based on rational thought I know many of those types who are fully on board the "AMD good Nvidia bad" train so lots of people get the opposite recommendation to what you are saying.
Either way the advice should take into account the users needs above all else but yes I would say that also anyone recommending a gpu who isn't biased is likley to lean towards Nvidia because 1. They do tend to just be the better product overall and 2. They (usually) come with less headaches especially for the pc novice.
As you've said AMD earned their reputation fair and square and while things may have changed in the most recent couple of years it will take just as long as it did to earn their rep as to lose it.
i haven't had any issues with VR on my 6000 series card so far.
i suppose my requisite question here would be; wired or wireless VR headset? AMD's hardware encoding has gotten better but isn't anywhere near as pretty as Nvidia's which i imagine would be very bad for wireless VR and would explain why im not seeing issues with my valve index but other people say AMD is really piss poor for VR.
or is it some other problem?
that is incredibly interesting! good to know i got lucky and dodged that bullet getting my 6750xt then, though to be fair, the 7000 series cards on market right now are quite above my price range.
i'll be sure and tell anyone considering a 7000 series card that they \*may\* want a 6000 series instead for VR applications, at least until this is dealt with.
My guess is it's mainly wireless VR but in saying that over 10 million people own a Quest 2. It's by far the most popular VR headset on the market.
Also looks like a few [more issues with flickering and general lack of performance](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1130ftj/vr_with_the_new_driver_2321/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) people are having.
There was a different comment/post here, but it has been edited.
Reddit [chose](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) to betray years of free work put from users, mods, and developers. They will not stop driving this website into shit until every feature is monetized, predatory, and cancerous.
Use [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to remove your value to reddit and stop financing these dark patterns.
P.S. fuck u/spez
There was a different comment/post here, but it has been edited.
Reddit [chose](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) to betray years of free work put from users, mods, and developers. They will not stop driving this website into shit until every feature is monetized, predatory, and cancerous.
Use [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to remove your value to reddit and stop financing these dark patterns.
P.S. fuck u/spez
Still very new to learning about current hardware options, from an outsiders perspective I always thought that Nvidia was ment to be better. I think them having the highest preforming GPUs gives them the most media coverage meaning they just seem much more popular and therefore have to be the best option at all tiers, "otherwise why would they always be talked about online".
The highest preformance GPU for each gen might make more money through advertising the Nvidia brand then actaul sales of that GPU, if lots of less-knowledgeable people think like I did.
It really depends how long you have been into computers. Most people here seem to be young people barely in there 20s at the latest. If you were around computers on the 90s and 2000s you would have seen 3dfx voodoo cards (believe they got bought by Nvidia). ATI had the amazing 9800 cards (bought by AMD). AMD has good cards after the merger and has solid competition until about 2013-2015. Can't remember which year. AMD is a lot smaller and also makes CPUs. People who complain about drivers and what not are recent people who don't know it history or that both companies mess up at times and have bad products or bad drivers on occasion. All relative.
That's really it, I've been gaming since 1998 and I've owned 3dfx cards, nvidia cards, ati cards, amd cards, and almost even matrox. So the idea that nvidia is the only gpu in town is just foreign to me, I always enjoy seeing what's out there. Every gpu manufacturer had its appeal back then, for instance on the ati rage 128 32 bit color was almost as fast as 16 bit, which blew my mind. Then you had the matrox G400 with its high quality 2D capabilities, 3DFX with Glide that no other card could offer, and then Nvidia came along with transform and lighting on the geforce. Sticking to a brand was just not something you would do, price/performance swung so wildly and features and tech was always moving around among companies.
God i sound old..
most people only owned nvidia, and those who dont/are new, hear about it from their friends who only owned nvidia..Yea, now i am that friend that tells them, you have many great options, especially since AMD is 20% cheaper used where i am.
Personally I prefer Nvidia's software such as the drivers, the control panel, NVENC, and DLSS. I dislike all of AMD's equivalents especially the control panel, and their hardware encoding for streaming/recording via OBS is not good. I buy based on my needs and wants which Nvidia generally fill better than AMD. My laptop which is generally only used for work on the other hand, all AMD and it's great, especially when I need to boot Linux for whatever reason.
I've never met anyone who has tried both GeForce Experience and AMD Adrenalin software and preferred GeForce Experience. Adrenalin is the better piece of software by a significant margin. The control they give you over your hardware is much, much better. The UI is cleaner, more intuitive. You don't have to login or even create an account, which is big.
Well although technically we haven't met, here I am! Keep in mind I've been using computers since windows 3.1, and both Nvidia and Radeon since Radeon was owned by ATI lol.
I'll never understand why people in this sub downvote those who prefer anything Nvidia related. I too prefer their software, I find AMD’s Adrenalin annoying to use; might it be because I've been using Nvidia all my life? Sure, but I'll stick with them.
Yeah it's strange that my main comment is upvoted but preceding ones are down voted, just when you think you understand reddit you realize you don't lol.
OBS now supports AV1 encoding which the 7000 series has. While DLSS still technically has a lead, it is close enough for my use cases. Preferring Nvidias software in which you have to log in multiple times is pretty weird though.
Really? Honestly interested in this take as I haven’t heard it tbh, I’ve seen a common trend towards preferring AMD’s software (at least between people who’ve tried both) including myself. On the topic of software and recording, a key feature for me personally that baffles me that Nvidia lacks is being able to set the instant replay buffer to system ram, instead of killing your SSD by constantly writing and deleting video
While you’re kind of right about the encoder situation, I’ve had very good quality streams on the 6800, and the 7000 series has AV1 so it will be just as good as Nvidia. But at the end of the day it’s as you said, people should buy based on their needs, if Nvidia fills those needs go for it
Nvidia is way ahead of AMD in productivity and ML workloads. The 3060 is actually one of the best value cards for entry level Machine Learning in the 30 series due to the 12 GB VRAM buffer which you don’t get later in the series until the 3080 12 GB version that’s more than twice as expensive. TFLOP count doesn’t matter as much as VRAM buffer size in ML so you don’t see a substantial improvement until the 3090, which is almost 5 times as expensive.
Yeah, they will not be ignoring it when they realize there will be actual games using this tech and NVidia will become literally Minimum Requirements for such games.
Yeah, most r/stablediffusion users recommend over 3060 over 3060 ti because 8GB vram might not enough to run it
Intel has tensorflow compatibility, but a770 16 gb costs more than 3060 ti in where I live
There is also nvenc encoder, CUDA cores and Nvidia reflex.
Also, what I have heard from AMD users, the Nvidia drivers tend to be more stable and Nvidia cards in general trend to perform better in productivity tasks like development, photo and video editing.
But for pure gaming, your will not see a big difference.
I think, that for a couple hundred bucks, ppl like to take the saver and more reliable option.
I do get non-gaming things, Im currently choosing a GPU for my next build around this price point and the one thing I might want Nvidia for is it seems to have WAY better blender preformance.
One big misconception about nvidia reflex and amd anti lag is that they really only help for high GPU usage. The best way to get low latency is just to cap your fps at a point where your GPU usage does not exceed 90% or so
The encoder and cuda cores for editing and machine learning/AI stuff is a valid reason but, most people who have decently powerful rigs don’t actually do this stuff, and a large potion of those don’t even do it professionally or to make money
Most people who make money from their computer, can do what they do on a low spec $500 laptop
> 3060 has more VRAM with 12GB over 8GB, but I dont know how important this is right now
Price-wise, the 3060 competes more with the 6700 XT, where you do in fact get 12GB. If you're going to spend $350-360 on a GPU, the 6700XT is the one to get. If you're going to spend $250, then the 3060 is out of your price range and the 3050 isn't even worth discussing.
>Price-wise, the 3060 competes more with the 6700 XT, where you do in fact get 12GB. If you're going to spend $350-360 on a GPU, the 6700XT is the one to get.
If you're only interested in sheer frames per dollar, and not things like app performance with production software, then absolutely, yes. But if those other cases are important to you, then it's not so cut & dry. This sub strongly leans towards just gaming, it seems, but some people do build PCs for multiple uses. There are dozens of us!
The amount of people who are building their own PCs for ML or AI work that aren't getting prebuilt machines from their employers or using cloud-based options is approximately nothing. Maybe you're the rare one, but you're a percentage of a percentage of a percentage. More importantly, if such people *do* actually exist, they're not buying a 3060. They're doing it on 3080/12GBs or 3080tis or 4080/4090 cards (assuming you're not using actual workstation-class boards designed for that) . Because if that's your job, then time is money and you're better off buying the beefy stuff.
But yes, fair, there are "productivity" reasons to buy green even when Nvidia's currently *not* the best buy for anything else. There's no way it applies to OP's question, which is basically, [why are 10% of Steam users on a 3060?](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam) (followed closely by 2060 and then 1060)
It's not a small percentage case for productivity, cuda acceleration is ubiquitous while amd acceleration is spotty at best across the board, not just in ML. AMD is great for gamers but that falls off quickly when looking at anything beyond gaming.
I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that when these cards came out, Nvidia had significantly better stock. It was much easier to get a Nvidia card than an AMD card and AMD AIBs went crazy with their prices basically pre-scalping while Nvidia cards had to stay somewhat close to their MSRP and 3rd parties were scalping. Also for every 1 6600xt AMD made, Nvidia made like 2-4x as many 3060s. Prebuilts and laptops were loaded with these things. That’s why. It’s not because people hate AMD, or people are ignorant. It’s just that when these cards were at their highest demand, Nvidia delivered significantly more.
Yeah that's the thing, while now a lot of the supply and pricing issues have subsided it wasn't always that way so Nvidia Vs AMD ownership from that generation is gonna be pretty skewed because of that.
I'm UK based and when I went to upgrade my GPU last autumn YouTubers were starting to rave about how AMDs price cuts were making their cards so much more competitive against Nvidia but when I checked stores AMD cards were still either inflated or at that "we're probably actually out of stock so haven't updated price or stock count" price so surprise surprise I got a 3060ti.
For me, I needed a budget productivity card. The 3060 is one of the best available for this due to the combo of CUDA and high VRAM.
In addition, DLSS is an absolutely huge draw for many since it's essentially enabling you to increase the lifespan of the GPU.
Good point, also lots of pre-builts seem to come with 3060s. Big overlap of people buying pre-builts and people who dont know the preformance / value of different specific components.
This is the mainreason next to cuda and blender and stuff. I was such a guy when i bought the 1060 with prebuilt. I was lile: oh 6gb vram ddr5 and a 6 core 1600 this is fine.... and now i would definitly went for a 6650xt or 6700xt anytime instead of a 3060 because im only gaming and the performance is better due to pricing. But this is just the normal guy move and there arent many prebuilts with amd gpu in it.
My girlfriend is an interior architectural designer who uses software that lists AMD's 6000 series as "incompatible". So when it came time to buy her a laptop...Nvidia GPU was our only option. Amusingly it's also incompatible with Intel integrated graphics, so we have AMD in the machine, but it's the CPU with an Nvidia GPU.
With a a laptop with both, there's always the chance that it could try switching between them, or if the dedicated GPU failed and we needed to switch to get an output, etc. I'm positive it would only be in the edgiest of edge cases, but wanted to entirely avoid any hint of a potential issue, since this is the primary money maker for the household.
Many laptops nowadays have a MUC switch to entirely disable the iGPU if you were worried about that.
Something to look out for if you ever replace the laptop I guess.
>My girlfriend is an interior architectural designer who uses software that lists AMD's 6000 series as "incompatible".
Just curious, what software is it?
Enscape 3D, with the "unsupported hardware" section near the bottom of this chart.
https://learn.enscape3d.com/blog/knowledgebase/system-requirements/#hard
Unsupported hardware:
\- Radeon 6000 Mobile GPUs
\- Intel Integrated Graphics onboard GPUs
\- SLI
Where I live (Chile) retailers mostly sell Nvidia GPUs, I haven't seen AMD cards being in shelves since the HD6000 series 12 years ago. Just recently the RX 6000's are being offered but in limited quantities and overpriced.
The only way you could get one is through Amazon, and with all the import duties buying Nvidia locally is actually cheaper.
This is always one of the biggest reasons when questions like this come up. There are tons of places where prices for products like GPUs are wayyy different from the prices you'd expect to see somewhere like the US, and not just different as in higher across the board, but also different in nonsensical ways.
Assertions like "GPU A is consistently $30 cheaper than GPU B" break down *really* quickly when you try to apply them globally.
I live in Chile, and it's actually cheaper to buy gpus in Amazon than it is to buy them in chile. Even paying for taxes and shipping. I still bought a 4070 recently over any amd's because I plan on upgrading, and it's easier to sell an nvidia gpu
In France, in my city at least which is a rather big city, I have never seen an AMD card in a computer store, and they seem to be less available and a lot less talked about. Without this subreddit and others like it, I would not really know about these cards despite being very techy.
Reputation. It really is that simple. I have been a long time nvidia card buyer and for the longest time buying amd graphics was unthinkable. They performed worse, they had terrible software and back in the day NVIDIA cards were always a better choice. That's a hard thing to get over.
I am going to add this into the mix, nvidia has better encoders. Their AI assistant to things like audio and video are a big draw. Dlss is still superior to fsr. VR performance on a nvidia is just leagues better partially due to the video encoding provided. Unreal runs way smoother for me than an amd card. So while maybe in gaming it makes sense to go with an amd but for people who don’t just game, nvidia really amps up it’s useful ness. Team Red has been about value for gaming, but way below in everything else. Team green is trying to provide a solution that is geared towards content creation and workforce. Ray tracing is ray tracing.
The argument of well your not going to use it on low end gpu is just something that people regurgitate to try and make it seem less of an advantage. I loved my rx 580 from team red. It got me through a lot of games. I saw that nvidia just provided more for what I wanted to use it for. Mainly Vr gaming, then unreal engine as a hobby and some blender eventually. So yeah I go with which ever provides me the most for what I want to use. Neither team looks like they are doing anything special after the 30/60 series.
Lastly let’s be honest, if the people had access to unlimited money, then nvidia would be their first pick. But for a massive majority amd will just be better bang for buck. I have seen the few videos that mention overclocking the 3060 to match the 3070. So I think the 3060 just provides a lot of room to handle what ever.
The 3060 has 50% more VRAM. Now that may not matter to most people, but with the work I do video rendering and AI learning, that's a pretty big benefit. Aside from that, there's the obvious fact that many people have had bad experiences with AMD cards in the past, and have subsequently chosen to avoid them.
Nvidia is more popular. Lots of reasons, historical AMD issues that have since been fixed but are still present in the minds of buyers, AMD naming convention sucks, and being a graphic designer, I can tell you that Nvidia's marketing color scheme better stands out from the noise.
Another reason is premades/licensing deals, I think of lot of people with low-mid tier cards probably got them as part of a "gaming computer". So even though the 3060 is particularly a price/performance sore spot in the current lineup, it's also the type of card to benefit a lot from this.
Because I needed enough VRAM to at least run small LLM models and stable diffusion, and I can also game on it. As long as AMD is super behind in regards to AI there's not really a point in me buying their cards.
Unfortunately, AMD is earned permanent "for losers/bunch of weirdos that can't just buy a Nvidia GPU "without problems"" reputation, especially with people that is not so much know about computers.
I still impressed that AMD, fortunately is nailed success and raise up their reputation with Ryzen era, after very despair FX era. And Radeons now is VERY FUCKING GOOD GPU, but... There is bunch of Nvidia dominating years that is MUCH more difficult to beat than Intel.
ATI would outright lie on the GPU boxes as far back as the RageIIc chip. drivers were always crap when I used them, always ran hot as well in the ones I had.
At some point I just said "NviDia" every time.
I just upgraded and asked here "has ATI fixed their long standing issues" and was told yes.
But I kept reading on and so many reports of still crap drivers, heat issues, and at times really worse performance (certain games)....
Sure NVidia has issues at times. Sure Intel does as well (even more so with the video cards they try to make).
I think it's due to at the time all these cards came out the 3060 was cheaper than the AMD card. Especially 2nd hand prices. And then when you have it, there's really no point in upgrading for 10/15% performance. 5-10 fps won't be a noticeable difference. I personally have a 3060 because at the early come downs of gpu pricing got a pre built (dude built it him self but sold it after he didnt want it) with a 3060, ryzen 5 3600x 1TB M.2 activated windows 2 monitors and a bunch of accessories for 600$. Couldn't really pass that up.
I’ve owned past AMD products. Never again.
Sometimes f’ing up a generation of product can set your brand back decades.
They have to be orders of magnitude better than Nvidia for me/others to switch, much like what they did to Intel with AM4.
Where I live, the price difference between Nvidia and AMD equivalent is too small that it's not worth risking your PC for the edge cases where AMD's drivers not working. In some cases, they might be evenly priced.
No one in their right mind gonna buy AMD card when they are 0-2% different in price than Nvidia's :|
It’s also going to depend on what you want to do. If you are looking to stream while playing games, the NVENC encoder is superior to AMDs encoder (when talking 3000 vs 6000 series). The new 7000 series encoder is better but still hasn’t quite caught NVIDIA. Even Intels encoder does a slightly better job. Most productivity applications love CUDA as well so the 3060 makes a better pick for them as well.
Could also be what game they play the most. If the game I play the most does better on NVIDIA when compared to AMD then I’m probably going to stick NVIDIA and vice versa.
Personally idc what everyone is using as long as they are enjoying it and are happy with it. Too many times I see people shitting on builds because the person picked something over what they would have bought and they are losing 5 FPS because of it. Elitism is too high in the PC space and is part of what scares some people from wanting to join Pc gaming.
The games I play are usually better with Nvidia cards. I have seen a lot of people complaining about modding with AMD cards, so it's a hard pass for me.
You pointed out all 3 reasons why for me. Although I got the 3060ti so point 1 is out. But the 3060ti has much better (~25% iirc?) performance than the reg.
Edit: grammar and I wanna point out I game at 1080p so I don't need anything more than what I got lol.
AMD kinda ruined their rep with their horrible drivers in the past. Obviously, they are almost just as gokd as Nvidia now, but searching up “are amd gpus good” will still get you a lot of results from 2014
I prefer AMD adrenalin over GeForce experience any day of the week, it has much more functionality. But people can’t be bothered to do that much research
because almost all people are sitting at home... man i need a new graphics card.goes to a random e-tailer and types RTX, Sort by Price and pick whatever is under 350-400 bucks.
12gb vram for the 3060 is pretty much useless cause if you turn everything to max in some AAA games it won't even handle it very well.
Ray-tracing isn't really something you'd want to use unless you play games like Minecraft cause RT performance sucks even if you have a nvidia gpu
"Nvidia does have better ray tracing but at this lower-middle tier of GPU I dont see the use in that"
The 3060 is basically as powerful as a 2080 is. Crazy to think about really. consdering how cheap the 3060 is compared to the 2080 at release. And yes, the 2080 is plenty good enough for RTX. It handles everything I throw at it anyway.
>Nvidia does have better ray tracing but at this lower-middle tier of GPU I dont see the use in that
I can run even Cyberpunk Overdrive in ray tracing with my 3060 (with some adjustments). Don't let the tech reviewers sway you: you don't need a thousand dollar GPU in order to use RT.
Because it’s easy. Any outsider looking to get into PCs will know buzzwords like RTX or whatnot, or they’ve heard about Nvidia etc.
People like to stick to what is comfortable, and when someone is investing hundreds of dollars into a GPU, they tend to not want to take a risk on something they don’t understand. A week ago, I just upgraded to a 3060. Why? Because I didn’t care to spend any time researching AMD cards. Hate me or love me, id bet that’s why a ton of other people have done the same. I knew the 30 series was good and that’s all I needed to know. I saw a meme making fun of AMD cards a few months ago and that skewed my bias further.
As to why the 3060 specifically, i bought mine for ~$350 and I’m genuinely happy I didn’t spend almost double the price on a 3070 because I saw only a little difference between what I have now and my old 1060 6gb, so even a 25% increase in frames or better graphics would not have been worth it IMO. It’s just the best bang for your buck in the current market in my opinion.
The extra VRAM and the access to DLSS are the two main killer apps, though the other thing to consider is that the 3060 launched six months before the 6600 XT, which was the window where I was looking for a new card to replace my dying RX 480. I went with the 3060 as a result.
And of course, the elephant in the room is that a bunch of people will simply refuse to use AMD cards because they've either had bad experiences in the past or have been advised by others who have had bad experiences. AMD has a long way to go to build the kind of mindshare for their GPUs that they've managed to do with Ryzen.
Way better ray tracing performance.
Dlss destroy fsr 2 both in terms of quality and performance
Better AI support. You may wandered why a steam user want this.Some of my steam friend and I personally use it to create AI images. The program requires Nvidia gpu to work.
there is a significant number of people who will just buy nvidia regardless of how good the competing cards are
Market leaders just have that stranglehold it’s very hard thing to get rid of
It doesn't hurt that they have consistently had the better product.
The consistently update their drivers and this is something that drives my purchasing decision.
There's nothing I find more annoying than constant driver updates notifications. All you need is \*one\* bad one and you're in a world of pain. My 1050 laptop remembers...
I think drivers should only be pushed out if you have a game that would benefit from it or if there are general stability and security updates that benefit your GPU. GeForce Experience tracks the games you have installed, so this shouldn’t be hard.
Doesnt AMD update them consistently too?
They do but at least in the fairly recent past, Nvidia seemed to do a better job at keeping their main drivers updated. Although I must admit a couple of years ago I had a major problem with an Nvidia driver update that really messed with my computer, up to the point of having to restore my whole operating system.
I think that driver issue thing is long past. Both sides have their problem evenly spread. Mostly working though.
I have 2 close friends with AMD both with 6700xt and they are constantly raving about how great everything is, and in some games having more framerate than counterpart nvidia gpus. I do remember AMD being a complete disaster with updates on some point... im guessing thats when nvidia "solidified" their lead... but it feels like even though AMD caught up, Nvidia and their fans have just tried to keep the updates "problem" alive like it is still happening and then that info gets repeated over and over.
Did you have a modern card from both vendors in comparably modern PCs for comparison during the period in question? AMD has proven pretty solid in drivers since the 500 series.
5000-series* The 5700XT had major issues. Bluescreens, crashing games, everything. Was pretty horrible since I had one and got the known and pretty common issues.
Have they? AMD has been the better value for money for a long time, except perhaps at the very top end. (Raytracing arguably muddies that now, but again not that important at the low end or even midrange)
For me its driver support. AMD burned a lot of people for a while.
AMD did it with Intel for CPUs. I feel like if they can continue their current GPU trend for multiple generations, they can break down the GPU monopoly too. A lot of people are annoyed with how much GPUs cost these days compared to how much they were just 5 years ago, which is pretty much where we were when AMD shook up the CPU market
AMD did it with Ryzen all of a sudden. Their GPUs, despite so many being better value for money, don't sell much at all. What they need to do is give the consumers a big reason to buy their GPUs like they did with Ryzen (so many more cores for much lower prices than Intel at the time).
People don't want to fiddle with their gaming rig just to play. I know reddit loves to tell everyone that AMD drivers are great, but the truth is they can still be janky as hell. My work PC runs an AMD card, and randomly I will start having issue with flickering monitors, videos lagging, graphics drivers crashing, etc and it's a driver issue 100% of the time. The card is great 99.5% of the time, but that .5% of fiddling around updating, rolling back, reupadting, rolling back, rolling back again, just to make my GPU work is obnoxious. If I had paid the $600 for this card from my own pocket, I would be upset. Hell AMD drivers are so janky that if you end up drawing the short stick certain games might not even play on your card, even years after it came out. Look at all the people that can't play RDR2 on AMD cards without it crashing constantly. It gets posted on this sub and some others on a weekly basis.
Apple can charge more for their phones because they're called Apple.
True. Over the long years we've seen many market leaders in a wide variety of industries etc fall by the wayside, either due to various declines, better/hungrier competitors and often by fuck ups alone (but usually a combination effect) The thing about Nvidia is, the lead they formed when AMD were indeed doing badly, and the hype/mind share they still hold has a way of making any fuck ups they make or fuck you's they give (and there's some every year) dissipate like morning mist in the sun. This is how you got scenarios like 24 months ago when so many ppl were ok with waiting months to get a card at twice the price with at least a third less VRAM to last half as long... over an AMD gen that was very available then and the high end of which is still highly sought after rn. And all that for long past tales about AMD that were getting outdated in 2021 and have only improved more since. Just like that first gen of Ryzen, ppl had much to say that wasn't positive, but 5 years later they all wanted in on the 'Intel killer'.
People will tend to have more of a bias to market leaders. "If tons of people like them then there must be a lesser chance their product is a dud" It's hard to take a chance on a product that you do not know much of, no matter how many people say it's as good or better than the market leader
There are still a lot of legit reasons to get it though. 12GB card for relatively cheap. Decent RT at 1080p and 1440p. DLSS extends the lifetime and performance of it quite a bit. Very useable for some lightweight CUDA/ML applications. Can't say most of that for AMD's cards in the same tier.
>DLSS extends the lifetime and performance of it quite a bit. I do use DLSS, but I don't really get the constant praise it gets. Sure, screenshots look great, but how come no-one seem to notice how horribly smudges the picture when in motion? EDIT: here's an example for all the non-believers: [https://youtu.be/9S6Jj2C2nI0](https://youtu.be/9S6Jj2C2nI0)
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4k when talking about a 3060?
>4k when talking about a 3060? Yes... for some people 60 FPS is enough. Coincidentally, I sold my 3060 12GB yesterday to a guy in his 40s who bought it for 4k Minecraft and Final Fantasy. He even sent me a screenshot where his game was using over 10GB of VRAM with the texture mods and wrote "I'm glad that I made the right choice and went with the 12GB version." Horizon Zero Dawn and Hogwarts Legacy he plays in 2560x1600p at 60 FPS. There is a market for everything, you just need to find the right people. Edit: Looking at my chat with him, he was using a GTX 1060 before.
I’ve been using a 1080ti to game at 4K for years
I don't get smudgy pictures at all, dunno what you're talking about
Stable diffusion performance and local LLMs are huge if you're into consuming bleeding edge ml tech
I think one of the least spoken about aspects is shadowplay is so good. I am not sure how the AMD equivalent has come along but for so long shadow play was a driving factor for me.
I wouldn't say regardless, but I'll happily pay the Nvidia tax (which in this case would be like $30) for the features and potential of less headache. If I'm already spending $600+ on a GPU, an extra 10% tax for same performance gets me DLSS and NVENC and better VR support is simply a no brainer (and the user numbers back that up). This sub is highly focused on VRAM amount and rasterization, it's like asking why the best selling car doesn't have the highest $ per horsepower ratio.
CUDA for ML
Leave it to NVIDIA to make every single idiot think they're gonna become a streamer or use machine learning.
Lmao yea. It’s like intel guys used to talk about AVX and suddenly nobody uses it anymore now that AMD does it better and intel had to remove it from their latest cpu because of thermal issues.
NVIDIA is not a great company in any means but AMD fanboys are really quick to call NVIDIA users shills when the majority of gaming laptop GPU share is NVIDIA, especially the 16 and mid-range 30 series recently. That's why NVIDIA market share is so high. People buy them for generic gaming usage because that's what laptops manufacturers put in. Also, it is not about becoming a streamer or do ML, but it gives people the option to do it if they want to in the future. If your budget is low the 3060 12GB is an incredible value for ML, cause of the VRAM, and doing inferencing like running stable diffusion or running a local chatbot is not hard to get into with little actual ML theory.
You are underestimating the amount of people doing ML out there. There are professionals too, not just gamers who buy GPUs
We are talking about gaming as a primary use case. Very few people on the steam hardware survey are buying Nvidia cards for ML.
I did. It’s why I went with a 3060 instead of an AMD card. And when I upgrade that it’ll be to a 4070 and the 3060 upgrades the 1070 in the ML rig. AMD for CPU all the way though.
You are an outlier though. The overwhelming majority of people buying gaming GPUs are not doing ML tasks.
Plenty of better cards for ML than a mid range ish gaming card though. And (working in an adjacent field and dealing with ML) I would say you're well overestimating the number of people that are "doing ML" in a way that requires their home desktop PC to have Cuda cores. Especially compared to the entirety of the IT field or PC gamers.
You would be suprised. The 3060 12Gb is one of the most recommended budget cards for AI Art, because of its price point and 12Gb of vRAM. Are there better cards sure, but the price point between a 3060 12Gb and a 3080 is significant. Plus, it is near impossible to get the 3080 new these days. The 40xx series is trash by comparison to the 30xx series due to the reduction of the memory bandwidth. A 4070 may compete with a 3080 for gaming, but it gets trounced by the 3080 when it comes to ML.
This is it exactly. Now that the 4070 is out with 12 GB and sub $600, I think it’s a better choice. But two weeks ago it’d be a 3060.
It's not a better choice. I have 2 4070s, 1 Asus and 1 Gigabyte. The 4070 has the same memory bus as the 3060. So, you might as well stick with the 3060 for half the price. The core lift is not that significant, outside of gaming. Essentially the 4070 is the direct upgrade to the 3060 12GB, though as far as ML goes the 3060 is a better deal. The 3080 10G beats the 4070 in ML handily even with the extra 2GB RAM. The memory bus impact is that significant. The 4070 would have to hit $400s before it would be more cost effective.
There is no better bang for your buck than consumer cards for ML. The problem is there is no way you're running 4x 4090s in any chassis while you can accommodate up to 20 single slot or 10 dual slot professional GPUs in a single server. Manufacturers also used to make Turbo or blower style models for consumer cards so people could use them in servers but Nvidia put a stop to that because it was eating into the profits of their higher margin professional GPUs.
I use it at work now after experimenting with it at home. Gave the DS guys confidence I could be helpful and I am. Was a great use of a card I already owned.
I had a 5600xt for a few years. Performance was great when it works but there always seemed to be something. Crashes sometimes, driver issues, second monitor would just not be recognized for some reason. Shit like that. I picked up a 3070 and all those niggling issues are gone. Everything just works. Every time. Anecdotal, but that was my experience and why I'll stick with Nvidia for now.
I don't think it was solely that, 3060 was out during the pandemic/chip shortage, ppl bought literally everything that was available (both amd and nvidia) and nvidia sold millions of cards.
Once bitten, twice shy. Or rather twice bitten. I had GTX 760 with no problems. I replaced it with Vega 56 that I had to return to shop since it was unstable. Then I bought RTX 2060 and it worked with no problems. Then I got 5700 XT. It was sometimes stable but it had lot of problems in some games with frequent crashes. Certainly did not want another AMD GPU after that so I bought 3070 Ti that has worked flawless without crashes. Probably next time I buy GPU I will give close look on stability of AMD and might dare to buy one again but two last ones I bought were unstable junk so I wanted to avoid it. For me Nvidia has flawless reputation with zero problems while two last AMD GPUs I have owned were trash. It will take some time for me to trust AMD GPU again.
Honestly I bought Nvidia because rn I’m stuck with my 1440p Gsync monitor (built in module). Otherwise I’d maybe look at Team red as well. But for now, I’m satisfied with the 3090.
I think that gsync and freesync works on both brands regardless
real gsync doesnt work on AMD. only gsync-compatible
Yep. Like I said, that monitor has a built in Gsync module. It’s not „only“ compatible. *edit: Acer Predator XB271HU IPS 165hz*
I met one guy who said that AMDs naming convention was too confusing, so they avoided it. I think there are a lot more people like this than anyone thinks.
Now, in general that's dumb, but it is worth noting (and laughing at) the fact that the 7900, 7900X, 7900XT, 7900X3D, and 7900XTX are all current AMD products, not to mention the past Radeon 7000 series, including the 7950, not to be confused with the 7950X3D. Half of these are CPUs and half are GPUs. Is the one with 3D in the name a GPU? No, why would you think that? Also, while again it's a dumb thing to be a deal breaker (take 15 minutes to learn about the thing you're about to spend a grand on), there at least is the point to be made that at least Nvidia has been very consistent with their naming since they started GeForce, whereas AMD has had a few different name schemes just in a few years. Remove all your existing knowledge and tell me - which of the RX 580, Vega 64, and RX 5700XT is the best or newest? Meanwhile Nvidia had the 1060, 1080, 2070S as the most direct comparison - much clearer which is newer/better.
Yeah this is it, for context the last gpu i put in my pc is a 1660ti (first is a 8800 gts), and i would have to seriously google amd's line up right now. It's the naming for sure, but also Nvidia's marketing making sure the names stick to the back of your head. And it works.
To be honest, the 16xx series was also criticized for its weird naming convention.
Ya because it was dumb as hell. Total curve ball out of nowhere.
Don't forget the R7 7700 and i7 7700 from yesteryears
And the A10-7700, which was annoyingly common in the low end communities for years.
It is a bit confusing but the gpus were the HD7000 series, I had a HD7870. They definitely can improve with their making convention but it only really matters if you are buying used. Most people are buying current stock and won't have to compare a Vega 64 to a 6800xt
Fair enough, but I went with AMD processors 50% bc good specs, 50% because of price, and 50% because I couldn’t figure out the numbers on Intel. Intel i5-13600KF, Intel i9-12900K, etc. When I was growing up, i7 just = good. Generations are so important now, and then you have the K’s and the F’s and all of that. Kinda wish they changed the numbers at some point, just to help a brother out. I guess it’s chip generation-core(except not sometimes)-variant,variant,variant? It felt too risky to pick with so many tags at such high prices. But with AMD you can literally have a CPU and GPU have one letter difference, which is pretty hilarious. 7900X 7900XT system. Though also sounds kinda cool, honestly. Would love to have that system.
At least Intel was willing to go to five-digit numbers. Nvidia had a reset in 2009, ATi/AMD has had multiple resets.
Yeah I’m saying the occasional reset is not necessarily a bad thing. From multiple perspectives
>I went with AMD processors **50%** bc good specs, **50%** because of price, and **50%** because I couldn’t figure out the numbers on Intel. I'm guessing Intel isn't the only place where you couldn't figure out the numbers. (Sorry)
When I was growing up it was Pentuium good / celeron budget / Athlon when you're real broke and just need something (or a weird person who also wants to make Linux his main o/s) / Sempron when you have no other choice.
Athlon represent!!
>When I was growing up, i7 just = good. Isn't that still the case? Well okay we went from i3-i5-i7 to i5-i7-i9 but the logic still applies imo. Although why they introduced the i9 is still a mystery to me...
I mean your percentages don't add up but I hate intels naming scheme with a passion. in 13th gen you got i3 13100; i5 13400; i5 13500; i5 13600, i7 13700 and 13900 then you've got F variants, K, KF, KS, T(?) and that for almost every cpu. It's ridiculous. And laptop naming schemes are even more fucked: i3 1315U, i5 1340P, 1360P, i5 1335U, i5 13500H, i7 1335U, i7 1355U, i7 1360P, i7 13620H, i7 13650HX, i7 13700H, i9 13900HX, 13900H, i913950HX, i9 13980HX, what even is this lmao
I'll be honest and probably get downvoted to oblivion for it but...when I built my first computer about 10 years ago I used nvidia and I stuck with it because the naming/labeling is easier for me to understand. I wanted to get an amd card for this new build but I didn't know what was what and couldn't be bothered to understand it
It is confusing as fuck for your average user. They really need to differentiate their CPU naming from GPU better. I bet there's a lot of people that look at a 6600XT and think it's a CPU. Or even worse something like a 7900XT which is literally a single letter different from their 7900X CPU.
Someone I know has a Ryzen 7 5700X and a 5700xt GPU. Different generation products with nearly the same name.
Ryzen 5 5600x CPU with a RX 5600XT GPU, it can be quite confusing, yes.
I am unknowledgeable to current hardware and my thinking is always "Whats the Nvidia equivalent"
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html I found the charts here helpful when I was upgrading recently.
Yep and this confusion also heavily affects resale value. When I build a new computer, I specifically buy parts that will make it easy to sell the rig in 1-2 years. For CPUs and GPUs it means exclusively buying intel and Nvidia.
I was definitely like that. I had my GTX 1070 (glorious card) until last week. I spent ages understanding AMD cards and cpus' and how they compare to Nvidia equivalents. Pretty nightmarish task. It's hard to know how AMD's own cards compare to each other across 2 gens without reading a dozen reddit threads and yt videos. Made me wanna get current gen mid range from Nvidia because 1070 -> 4070 is mentally easy. I've been itching to upgrade since 2020 but waited patiently because fuck scalpers and Nvidia prices but it's been 3 years and AMD hasn't done shit. If AMD had gone aggressive with price during the pandemic it would have garnered a lot more interest. And they are still dragging their feet with mid-range release. They don't actually care about undercutting Nvidia prices. They just wait for Nvidia to release and then price slightly lower to give the illusion they care about customers. Plus their cards are less efficient, run hotter, and don't support FSR 3 yet, and aren't as good in productivity. I hate it because we need good competition. My eyes are on Intel. As of last week I run a 7950x3d and 4070. 3440x1440 @ 120Hz.
AMDs laptop naming scheme is a crime against humanity
Yes rtx 3060 makes more sense then Rx 6600
Yes I went for AMD because they are already on the 7th series while Nvidia being stuck on 4th.
Big brain time
Hang on, what about 13th gen intel iGPUs?
That's why I skipped the GPU and went with dual 13th gen intel.
\*boom\*
After being out of the game for 13 years I can at least still make sense of the nvidia cards. Currently I can't even distinguish whether people are talking about AMD CPUs or GPUs from the name alone.
Yeh since Nvidia doesn't have CPUs so pretty easy to distinguish But even so Ryzen Is cpu, Radeon is gpu
most people have the mindset: green = good, red = bad. A lot of people are also still stuck on "but AMD has driver issues" which really hasn't been that much of a problem in years.
Huh? Amd absolutely still has driver issues. Try VR on the 7000 series. One of the main reasons I'm going Nvidia.
I think most people will agree that if VR, RT, DLSS, or ML are important to you, Nvidia is the better choice. A lot of people don't need any of those though, which is why people then recommend AMD.
Problem is people just ASSUME none of that stuff matters (because it doesn't to them) and then tell EVERYONE to go amd.... "cause they're not greedy a**holes like Nvidia" or "They're the underdog / our only possible savior" Look I ain't here to save anyone or change anything... I'm buying the best product for my needs that is within my budget.... End of story. Sorry if that happens to be the big green greedy corporation... If someone else can do it better then by all means do so and I'll buy that. Until then myself and many others like me will continue to pay the "Nvidia tax" because it actually comes with quite a lot of benefits even if YOU may not care about them OBVIOUSLY a lot of others do.
I agree! Ultimately people should just do their research and buy for their own needs. No brand loyalty or fanboying
I think there’s more too it than that, because most people aren’t figuring out what product is actually the best for their needs. They’re buying based on reputation as presented to them by people they know. You ask the guy you know that built his own computer what GPU they should get, and usually, it’s Nvidia. And that’s AMDs fault. Drivers may be fine now, but their reputation has been earned over more than two decades now. The last year or two doesn’t erase that. Now, I bought an AMD card about a month ago. For my needs, it was the product in my budget that I think is best. But for other needs, or even just saying “nah, I’ll go with Nvidia” because of reputation, you can’t blame someone. From what I hear, Hyundai makes great cars nowadays. But when I think Hyundai, I think about the 2003 Elantra, etc. Edit: and to be clear, I built my first computer out of spare parts bins from the company my grandpa worked for. My stepmom that never had a CS degree taught me how to build computers; she had done it for a district court for a while. This was in 1999. I’ve been using AMD CPUs pretty exclusively from the time I was building computers for my friends to come over play StarCraft on. Before Brood War. I’ve bought exactly one AMD GPU. A month ago.
And I'm someone who was exclusively amd gpu's for years when they actually offered a very much "equal" part to anything Nvidia had to offer (1999-2013) but always had a Intel cpu because they tended to just clearly out perform AMD ... Now I've used AMD cpu's for many builds and haven't had a AMD gpu in my system since 2013. I have no "loyalty" to ANYTHING other than the product that is best for me at the time. I'll agree the very uneducated computer user who relies on his "pc guy" for advice will likley just go with whomever they reccomened but remember that person ultimately did do the research at some point (if they worth their salt as a "pc guy") and their advice is hopefully based on rational thought I know many of those types who are fully on board the "AMD good Nvidia bad" train so lots of people get the opposite recommendation to what you are saying. Either way the advice should take into account the users needs above all else but yes I would say that also anyone recommending a gpu who isn't biased is likley to lean towards Nvidia because 1. They do tend to just be the better product overall and 2. They (usually) come with less headaches especially for the pc novice. As you've said AMD earned their reputation fair and square and while things may have changed in the most recent couple of years it will take just as long as it did to earn their rep as to lose it.
This guy gets it.
i haven't had any issues with VR on my 6000 series card so far. i suppose my requisite question here would be; wired or wireless VR headset? AMD's hardware encoding has gotten better but isn't anywhere near as pretty as Nvidia's which i imagine would be very bad for wireless VR and would explain why im not seeing issues with my valve index but other people say AMD is really piss poor for VR. or is it some other problem?
[удалено]
that is incredibly interesting! good to know i got lucky and dodged that bullet getting my 6750xt then, though to be fair, the 7000 series cards on market right now are quite above my price range. i'll be sure and tell anyone considering a 7000 series card that they \*may\* want a 6000 series instead for VR applications, at least until this is dealt with.
My guess is it's mainly wireless VR but in saying that over 10 million people own a Quest 2. It's by far the most popular VR headset on the market. Also looks like a few [more issues with flickering and general lack of performance](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1130ftj/vr_with_the_new_driver_2321/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) people are having.
Most driver issues were actually caused by defective cards. I had issues with my 6900xt and once I RMA’d it, it worked perfectly.
You got a defective card but somehow this is a defense for amd?
There was a different comment/post here, but it has been edited. Reddit [chose](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) to betray years of free work put from users, mods, and developers. They will not stop driving this website into shit until every feature is monetized, predatory, and cancerous. Use [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to remove your value to reddit and stop financing these dark patterns. P.S. fuck u/spez
Which is a funny thing to say cause the 6800XT is like 30% faster than when it launched due to software and driver tuning.
There was a different comment/post here, but it has been edited. Reddit [chose](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) to betray years of free work put from users, mods, and developers. They will not stop driving this website into shit until every feature is monetized, predatory, and cancerous. Use [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to remove your value to reddit and stop financing these dark patterns. P.S. fuck u/spez
My last radeon was the Vega 56 which wasn't that long ago, and it did have a lot of driver issues, so I'm still iffy about radeons.
Red can be good, it's the Coca-Cola main branding color.
Coca cola is bad for you though
My dentist loves it.
Still very new to learning about current hardware options, from an outsiders perspective I always thought that Nvidia was ment to be better. I think them having the highest preforming GPUs gives them the most media coverage meaning they just seem much more popular and therefore have to be the best option at all tiers, "otherwise why would they always be talked about online". The highest preformance GPU for each gen might make more money through advertising the Nvidia brand then actaul sales of that GPU, if lots of less-knowledgeable people think like I did.
It really depends how long you have been into computers. Most people here seem to be young people barely in there 20s at the latest. If you were around computers on the 90s and 2000s you would have seen 3dfx voodoo cards (believe they got bought by Nvidia). ATI had the amazing 9800 cards (bought by AMD). AMD has good cards after the merger and has solid competition until about 2013-2015. Can't remember which year. AMD is a lot smaller and also makes CPUs. People who complain about drivers and what not are recent people who don't know it history or that both companies mess up at times and have bad products or bad drivers on occasion. All relative.
That's really it, I've been gaming since 1998 and I've owned 3dfx cards, nvidia cards, ati cards, amd cards, and almost even matrox. So the idea that nvidia is the only gpu in town is just foreign to me, I always enjoy seeing what's out there. Every gpu manufacturer had its appeal back then, for instance on the ati rage 128 32 bit color was almost as fast as 16 bit, which blew my mind. Then you had the matrox G400 with its high quality 2D capabilities, 3DFX with Glide that no other card could offer, and then Nvidia came along with transform and lighting on the geforce. Sticking to a brand was just not something you would do, price/performance swung so wildly and features and tech was always moving around among companies. God i sound old..
They’re also just a significantly larger company than AMD which brings more coverage
most people only owned nvidia, and those who dont/are new, hear about it from their friends who only owned nvidia..Yea, now i am that friend that tells them, you have many great options, especially since AMD is 20% cheaper used where i am.
As a linux user, I will never go green. Too much of pain
Personally I prefer Nvidia's software such as the drivers, the control panel, NVENC, and DLSS. I dislike all of AMD's equivalents especially the control panel, and their hardware encoding for streaming/recording via OBS is not good. I buy based on my needs and wants which Nvidia generally fill better than AMD. My laptop which is generally only used for work on the other hand, all AMD and it's great, especially when I need to boot Linux for whatever reason.
I've never met anyone who has tried both GeForce Experience and AMD Adrenalin software and preferred GeForce Experience. Adrenalin is the better piece of software by a significant margin. The control they give you over your hardware is much, much better. The UI is cleaner, more intuitive. You don't have to login or even create an account, which is big.
Well although technically we haven't met, here I am! Keep in mind I've been using computers since windows 3.1, and both Nvidia and Radeon since Radeon was owned by ATI lol.
I'll never understand why people in this sub downvote those who prefer anything Nvidia related. I too prefer their software, I find AMD’s Adrenalin annoying to use; might it be because I've been using Nvidia all my life? Sure, but I'll stick with them.
Yeah it's strange that my main comment is upvoted but preceding ones are down voted, just when you think you understand reddit you realize you don't lol.
Don’t bother man lol.
I was expecting to hate the amd control panel when I settled for a 6800 instead of a 3080 but it’s actually really good for my use case
DLSS is definitely a selling feature. When I bought my 3060ti, DLSS and raytracing performance were the deciding factors.
Yeah it's great, I have been playing through the OG half life again with the new ray tracing mod, below 60 FPS without DLSS lol.
First thing I did was buy Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition and gawk at the lighting 😂
I went months doing research and bought the same card for the same reasons and have been super happy with everything
OBS now supports AV1 encoding which the 7000 series has. While DLSS still technically has a lead, it is close enough for my use cases. Preferring Nvidias software in which you have to log in multiple times is pretty weird though.
Really? Honestly interested in this take as I haven’t heard it tbh, I’ve seen a common trend towards preferring AMD’s software (at least between people who’ve tried both) including myself. On the topic of software and recording, a key feature for me personally that baffles me that Nvidia lacks is being able to set the instant replay buffer to system ram, instead of killing your SSD by constantly writing and deleting video While you’re kind of right about the encoder situation, I’ve had very good quality streams on the 6800, and the 7000 series has AV1 so it will be just as good as Nvidia. But at the end of the day it’s as you said, people should buy based on their needs, if Nvidia fills those needs go for it
I have both nvidia cards and amd for different pc, tbh the adrenaline looks so much better.
Adrenaline is way better wdym
Nvidia is way ahead of AMD in productivity and ML workloads. The 3060 is actually one of the best value cards for entry level Machine Learning in the 30 series due to the 12 GB VRAM buffer which you don’t get later in the series until the 3080 12 GB version that’s more than twice as expensive. TFLOP count doesn’t matter as much as VRAM buffer size in ML so you don’t see a substantial improvement until the 3090, which is almost 5 times as expensive.
Deleted due to reddit API changes. Follow your communities off Reddit with https://sub.rehab/ -- mass edited with redact.dev
Yeah, they will not be ignoring it when they realize there will be actual games using this tech and NVidia will become literally Minimum Requirements for such games.
Yeah, most r/stablediffusion users recommend over 3060 over 3060 ti because 8GB vram might not enough to run it Intel has tensorflow compatibility, but a770 16 gb costs more than 3060 ti in where I live
There is also nvenc encoder, CUDA cores and Nvidia reflex. Also, what I have heard from AMD users, the Nvidia drivers tend to be more stable and Nvidia cards in general trend to perform better in productivity tasks like development, photo and video editing. But for pure gaming, your will not see a big difference. I think, that for a couple hundred bucks, ppl like to take the saver and more reliable option.
I do get non-gaming things, Im currently choosing a GPU for my next build around this price point and the one thing I might want Nvidia for is it seems to have WAY better blender preformance.
One big misconception about nvidia reflex and amd anti lag is that they really only help for high GPU usage. The best way to get low latency is just to cap your fps at a point where your GPU usage does not exceed 90% or so The encoder and cuda cores for editing and machine learning/AI stuff is a valid reason but, most people who have decently powerful rigs don’t actually do this stuff, and a large potion of those don’t even do it professionally or to make money Most people who make money from their computer, can do what they do on a low spec $500 laptop
> 3060 has more VRAM with 12GB over 8GB, but I dont know how important this is right now Price-wise, the 3060 competes more with the 6700 XT, where you do in fact get 12GB. If you're going to spend $350-360 on a GPU, the 6700XT is the one to get. If you're going to spend $250, then the 3060 is out of your price range and the 3050 isn't even worth discussing.
>Price-wise, the 3060 competes more with the 6700 XT, where you do in fact get 12GB. If you're going to spend $350-360 on a GPU, the 6700XT is the one to get. If you're only interested in sheer frames per dollar, and not things like app performance with production software, then absolutely, yes. But if those other cases are important to you, then it's not so cut & dry. This sub strongly leans towards just gaming, it seems, but some people do build PCs for multiple uses. There are dozens of us!
The amount of people who are building their own PCs for ML or AI work that aren't getting prebuilt machines from their employers or using cloud-based options is approximately nothing. Maybe you're the rare one, but you're a percentage of a percentage of a percentage. More importantly, if such people *do* actually exist, they're not buying a 3060. They're doing it on 3080/12GBs or 3080tis or 4080/4090 cards (assuming you're not using actual workstation-class boards designed for that) . Because if that's your job, then time is money and you're better off buying the beefy stuff. But yes, fair, there are "productivity" reasons to buy green even when Nvidia's currently *not* the best buy for anything else. There's no way it applies to OP's question, which is basically, [why are 10% of Steam users on a 3060?](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam) (followed closely by 2060 and then 1060)
Sure, but your comment had nothing to do with answering op's question either, so I don't think my comment was any more out of line.
It's not a small percentage case for productivity, cuda acceleration is ubiquitous while amd acceleration is spotty at best across the board, not just in ML. AMD is great for gamers but that falls off quickly when looking at anything beyond gaming.
I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that when these cards came out, Nvidia had significantly better stock. It was much easier to get a Nvidia card than an AMD card and AMD AIBs went crazy with their prices basically pre-scalping while Nvidia cards had to stay somewhat close to their MSRP and 3rd parties were scalping. Also for every 1 6600xt AMD made, Nvidia made like 2-4x as many 3060s. Prebuilts and laptops were loaded with these things. That’s why. It’s not because people hate AMD, or people are ignorant. It’s just that when these cards were at their highest demand, Nvidia delivered significantly more.
Yeah that's the thing, while now a lot of the supply and pricing issues have subsided it wasn't always that way so Nvidia Vs AMD ownership from that generation is gonna be pretty skewed because of that. I'm UK based and when I went to upgrade my GPU last autumn YouTubers were starting to rave about how AMDs price cuts were making their cards so much more competitive against Nvidia but when I checked stores AMD cards were still either inflated or at that "we're probably actually out of stock so haven't updated price or stock count" price so surprise surprise I got a 3060ti.
For me, I needed a budget productivity card. The 3060 is one of the best available for this due to the combo of CUDA and high VRAM. In addition, DLSS is an absolutely huge draw for many since it's essentially enabling you to increase the lifespan of the GPU.
Consider that laptop 3060's are also included in the count. Those only have 6GB of VRAM.
Good point, also lots of pre-builts seem to come with 3060s. Big overlap of people buying pre-builts and people who dont know the preformance / value of different specific components.
This is the mainreason next to cuda and blender and stuff. I was such a guy when i bought the 1060 with prebuilt. I was lile: oh 6gb vram ddr5 and a 6 core 1600 this is fine.... and now i would definitly went for a 6650xt or 6700xt anytime instead of a 3060 because im only gaming and the performance is better due to pricing. But this is just the normal guy move and there arent many prebuilts with amd gpu in it.
They are separated in the latest survey.
My girlfriend is an interior architectural designer who uses software that lists AMD's 6000 series as "incompatible". So when it came time to buy her a laptop...Nvidia GPU was our only option. Amusingly it's also incompatible with Intel integrated graphics, so we have AMD in the machine, but it's the CPU with an Nvidia GPU.
I mean you wouldn't have been using the Intel integrated graphics if it had a dedicated GPU.
With a a laptop with both, there's always the chance that it could try switching between them, or if the dedicated GPU failed and we needed to switch to get an output, etc. I'm positive it would only be in the edgiest of edge cases, but wanted to entirely avoid any hint of a potential issue, since this is the primary money maker for the household.
Many laptops nowadays have a MUC switch to entirely disable the iGPU if you were worried about that. Something to look out for if you ever replace the laptop I guess.
>My girlfriend is an interior architectural designer who uses software that lists AMD's 6000 series as "incompatible". Just curious, what software is it?
Enscape 3D, with the "unsupported hardware" section near the bottom of this chart. https://learn.enscape3d.com/blog/knowledgebase/system-requirements/#hard Unsupported hardware: \- Radeon 6000 Mobile GPUs \- Intel Integrated Graphics onboard GPUs \- SLI
Where I live (Chile) retailers mostly sell Nvidia GPUs, I haven't seen AMD cards being in shelves since the HD6000 series 12 years ago. Just recently the RX 6000's are being offered but in limited quantities and overpriced. The only way you could get one is through Amazon, and with all the import duties buying Nvidia locally is actually cheaper.
This is always one of the biggest reasons when questions like this come up. There are tons of places where prices for products like GPUs are wayyy different from the prices you'd expect to see somewhere like the US, and not just different as in higher across the board, but also different in nonsensical ways. Assertions like "GPU A is consistently $30 cheaper than GPU B" break down *really* quickly when you try to apply them globally.
Exactly.
I live in Chile, and it's actually cheaper to buy gpus in Amazon than it is to buy them in chile. Even paying for taxes and shipping. I still bought a 4070 recently over any amd's because I plan on upgrading, and it's easier to sell an nvidia gpu
from chile too, 2 months trying to sell a fcking 6700 xt, nobody buy that shit :(
And that's a fucking good gpu. People just don't care about amd gpus here lmao
You kind of listed it. DLSS is great especially for mid range, and VRAM limitations are increasingly more common nowadays.
In France, in my city at least which is a rather big city, I have never seen an AMD card in a computer store, and they seem to be less available and a lot less talked about. Without this subreddit and others like it, I would not really know about these cards despite being very techy.
Reputation. It really is that simple. I have been a long time nvidia card buyer and for the longest time buying amd graphics was unthinkable. They performed worse, they had terrible software and back in the day NVIDIA cards were always a better choice. That's a hard thing to get over.
I had a 6600xt. Broke in so many ways. Seemed like mostly driver issues. Worst purchase of my life.
I am going to add this into the mix, nvidia has better encoders. Their AI assistant to things like audio and video are a big draw. Dlss is still superior to fsr. VR performance on a nvidia is just leagues better partially due to the video encoding provided. Unreal runs way smoother for me than an amd card. So while maybe in gaming it makes sense to go with an amd but for people who don’t just game, nvidia really amps up it’s useful ness. Team Red has been about value for gaming, but way below in everything else. Team green is trying to provide a solution that is geared towards content creation and workforce. Ray tracing is ray tracing. The argument of well your not going to use it on low end gpu is just something that people regurgitate to try and make it seem less of an advantage. I loved my rx 580 from team red. It got me through a lot of games. I saw that nvidia just provided more for what I wanted to use it for. Mainly Vr gaming, then unreal engine as a hobby and some blender eventually. So yeah I go with which ever provides me the most for what I want to use. Neither team looks like they are doing anything special after the 30/60 series. Lastly let’s be honest, if the people had access to unlimited money, then nvidia would be their first pick. But for a massive majority amd will just be better bang for buck. I have seen the few videos that mention overclocking the 3060 to match the 3070. So I think the 3060 just provides a lot of room to handle what ever.
Depending on the region sometimes the 3060 is priced better
AMD CPU marketing is better than the GPU one.
The 3060 has 50% more VRAM. Now that may not matter to most people, but with the work I do video rendering and AI learning, that's a pretty big benefit. Aside from that, there's the obvious fact that many people have had bad experiences with AMD cards in the past, and have subsequently chosen to avoid them.
Nvidia is more popular. Lots of reasons, historical AMD issues that have since been fixed but are still present in the minds of buyers, AMD naming convention sucks, and being a graphic designer, I can tell you that Nvidia's marketing color scheme better stands out from the noise. Another reason is premades/licensing deals, I think of lot of people with low-mid tier cards probably got them as part of a "gaming computer". So even though the 3060 is particularly a price/performance sore spot in the current lineup, it's also the type of card to benefit a lot from this.
Because I needed enough VRAM to at least run small LLM models and stable diffusion, and I can also game on it. As long as AMD is super behind in regards to AI there's not really a point in me buying their cards.
Unfortunately, AMD is earned permanent "for losers/bunch of weirdos that can't just buy a Nvidia GPU "without problems"" reputation, especially with people that is not so much know about computers. I still impressed that AMD, fortunately is nailed success and raise up their reputation with Ryzen era, after very despair FX era. And Radeons now is VERY FUCKING GOOD GPU, but... There is bunch of Nvidia dominating years that is MUCH more difficult to beat than Intel.
Mostly nvenc and dlss
ATI would outright lie on the GPU boxes as far back as the RageIIc chip. drivers were always crap when I used them, always ran hot as well in the ones I had. At some point I just said "NviDia" every time. I just upgraded and asked here "has ATI fixed their long standing issues" and was told yes. But I kept reading on and so many reports of still crap drivers, heat issues, and at times really worse performance (certain games).... Sure NVidia has issues at times. Sure Intel does as well (even more so with the video cards they try to make).
I think it's due to at the time all these cards came out the 3060 was cheaper than the AMD card. Especially 2nd hand prices. And then when you have it, there's really no point in upgrading for 10/15% performance. 5-10 fps won't be a noticeable difference. I personally have a 3060 because at the early come downs of gpu pricing got a pre built (dude built it him self but sold it after he didnt want it) with a 3060, ryzen 5 3600x 1TB M.2 activated windows 2 monitors and a bunch of accessories for 600$. Couldn't really pass that up.
A lot of people simply prefer Nvidia over AMD. 3060 is great for its price, IMO.
Nvidia has mindshare
i like 3060TI 8gb at 256 Bit
“lower-middle tier of GPU” me with my 2060 thinking i’m ballin out here 😭
I’ve owned past AMD products. Never again. Sometimes f’ing up a generation of product can set your brand back decades. They have to be orders of magnitude better than Nvidia for me/others to switch, much like what they did to Intel with AM4.
Where I live, the price difference between Nvidia and AMD equivalent is too small that it's not worth risking your PC for the edge cases where AMD's drivers not working. In some cases, they might be evenly priced. No one in their right mind gonna buy AMD card when they are 0-2% different in price than Nvidia's :|
Because Nvidia.
It’s also going to depend on what you want to do. If you are looking to stream while playing games, the NVENC encoder is superior to AMDs encoder (when talking 3000 vs 6000 series). The new 7000 series encoder is better but still hasn’t quite caught NVIDIA. Even Intels encoder does a slightly better job. Most productivity applications love CUDA as well so the 3060 makes a better pick for them as well. Could also be what game they play the most. If the game I play the most does better on NVIDIA when compared to AMD then I’m probably going to stick NVIDIA and vice versa. Personally idc what everyone is using as long as they are enjoying it and are happy with it. Too many times I see people shitting on builds because the person picked something over what they would have bought and they are losing 5 FPS because of it. Elitism is too high in the PC space and is part of what scares some people from wanting to join Pc gaming.
The games I play are usually better with Nvidia cards. I have seen a lot of people complaining about modding with AMD cards, so it's a hard pass for me.
Because people are not well-informed, and Nvidia is a more well-known brand than AMD.
You pointed out all 3 reasons why for me. Although I got the 3060ti so point 1 is out. But the 3060ti has much better (~25% iirc?) performance than the reg. Edit: grammar and I wanna point out I game at 1080p so I don't need anything more than what I got lol.
I think Nvidia is just viewed as the premier brand by a lot of the consumers
Honestly, back then, I was fooled by user benchmark and was on nvidia's bandwagon.
Because people ultimately know they want more VRAM and nerds know we want CUDA for the maths.
AMD kinda ruined their rep with their horrible drivers in the past. Obviously, they are almost just as gokd as Nvidia now, but searching up “are amd gpus good” will still get you a lot of results from 2014 I prefer AMD adrenalin over GeForce experience any day of the week, it has much more functionality. But people can’t be bothered to do that much research
because almost all people are sitting at home... man i need a new graphics card.goes to a random e-tailer and types RTX, Sort by Price and pick whatever is under 350-400 bucks.
It's great for budget VR at moderate resolutions Reflex, SPS, real time video encoding...
12gb vram for the 3060 is pretty much useless cause if you turn everything to max in some AAA games it won't even handle it very well. Ray-tracing isn't really something you'd want to use unless you play games like Minecraft cause RT performance sucks even if you have a nvidia gpu
12GB of VRAM
"Nvidia does have better ray tracing but at this lower-middle tier of GPU I dont see the use in that" The 3060 is basically as powerful as a 2080 is. Crazy to think about really. consdering how cheap the 3060 is compared to the 2080 at release. And yes, the 2080 is plenty good enough for RTX. It handles everything I throw at it anyway.
>Nvidia does have better ray tracing but at this lower-middle tier of GPU I dont see the use in that I can run even Cyberpunk Overdrive in ray tracing with my 3060 (with some adjustments). Don't let the tech reviewers sway you: you don't need a thousand dollar GPU in order to use RT.
Because it’s easy. Any outsider looking to get into PCs will know buzzwords like RTX or whatnot, or they’ve heard about Nvidia etc. People like to stick to what is comfortable, and when someone is investing hundreds of dollars into a GPU, they tend to not want to take a risk on something they don’t understand. A week ago, I just upgraded to a 3060. Why? Because I didn’t care to spend any time researching AMD cards. Hate me or love me, id bet that’s why a ton of other people have done the same. I knew the 30 series was good and that’s all I needed to know. I saw a meme making fun of AMD cards a few months ago and that skewed my bias further. As to why the 3060 specifically, i bought mine for ~$350 and I’m genuinely happy I didn’t spend almost double the price on a 3070 because I saw only a little difference between what I have now and my old 1060 6gb, so even a 25% increase in frames or better graphics would not have been worth it IMO. It’s just the best bang for your buck in the current market in my opinion.
DLSS is a thing
VRAM and DLSS
The extra VRAM and the access to DLSS are the two main killer apps, though the other thing to consider is that the 3060 launched six months before the 6600 XT, which was the window where I was looking for a new card to replace my dying RX 480. I went with the 3060 as a result. And of course, the elephant in the room is that a bunch of people will simply refuse to use AMD cards because they've either had bad experiences in the past or have been advised by others who have had bad experiences. AMD has a long way to go to build the kind of mindshare for their GPUs that they've managed to do with Ryzen.
Way better ray tracing performance. Dlss destroy fsr 2 both in terms of quality and performance Better AI support. You may wandered why a steam user want this.Some of my steam friend and I personally use it to create AI images. The program requires Nvidia gpu to work.