Why do some people prefer gtx 780ti over r9 290x?

Recently I obtained two 7970 GHz edition cards, to add to my benchmarking info collection. Been wanting
to try them for a while, to compare to multiple GTX 580s.

My experience of using the 7970s once again affirms the main reason why I prefer NVIDIA: driver quality
and stability.

Again and again I kept seeing weird issues with the setup, especially in CF. Nothing to do with the
cards themselves, neither is inherantly faulty, it's just the drivers, issue after issue which simply never
happens with NVIDIA cards, for example:

- GPU-Z frozen after a settings change,
- Afterburner not working properly after a settings change,
- Unstable when running in CF mode (Futuremark, Crysis, etc.),
- Graphics glitches in CF mode,
- Poor performance with CF/DX9 in some cases (1 card is faster), and so on.

As I say, these sorts of things don't happen when I'm working with NVIDIA cards.


So why buy AMD? Because they're often cheaper, faster, have more RAM, etc. The 7970 is a
really quick card, basically the same as a 280X (and Futuremark identifies them as such), with
a single 7970 easily beating a good 580 most of the time, and two 7970s often coming close
to three 580s (depends on the game, etc., but sometimes the difference is quite large). Thing
is, all the performance in the world is useless if the platform isn't stable, and that's down to
the driver quality. I couldn't get 7970 CF working at all with Crysis, way too much graphics
corruption. Even with one card, it would occasionally do something odd; OTOH, it was certainly
quick, about 40 to 60fps at 2560x1440, max detail.

So, it's a tradeoff: AMD cards often have price/performance advantages and other features,
eg. supporting a larger number of displays, and atm they certainly have a VRAM edge that
can make all the difference at 4K res (have to say I'm surprised that the GTX 880 is only
going to have 4GB RAM, assuming the spec rumours are true).

So the 780 Ti is expensive. Absolutely. And it has less RAM. Yep. But if you want to minimise
driver issues, buy the 780 Ti for sure.

Note that other games are probably less sensitive to AMD's CF issues & suchlike, eg. I was
able to run all my FC2 tests ok, so in some cases I expect the driver woes are less of a
problem. Thus, if someone on a budget did want to buy AMD cards atm, I'd have no hesitation
in recommending two used 7970 GHz editions - very quick, easily enough RAM up to 2560x1440,
even 4K in some cases (remember this is the same as 280X CF).

Beyond gaming though, there are other factors that come into play, eg. those who use their PCs
for video where CUDA can be useful in apps such as After Effects, Blender, etc.

To the OP: decide what matters more to you: absolute cost & performance, or a reliable & stable
platform. Right now, if you want the former, then buy AMD; if you want the latter, then buy NVIDIA.
My guess is NVIDIA knows that people who prefer the latter are happy to pay extra for the higher
driver quality, and thus the cards cost more. If AMD could improve its drivers, I doubt the final price
differences would be anywhere near as large as they are.

For my benchmarking efforts I've obtained a significant collection of both cards (more than 40 so far),
hence why I see the contrast so much between the driver quality.

Ian.