Choice of Card Vendor Thoughts?

[Dienekes78]

Been reading the discussions, and given that NVIDIA seems to have better drivers for similar price performance chip sets, I’ve settled on a 580 GTX graphics card for my new machine – also plan to wait for the upcoming new pricing based on the recent Raedon release. Two things are of interest in my new card – reducing heat and looking for a smaller footprint on the card (got a GTX 280 now). My questions regard car manufacturers:
1. Are there significant differences in card performance, heat, size amongst the various vendors – I see EVGA, MSI, ASUS, ZOTAC, GIGABYTE –(might have missed one or two others)?
2. Is this just looking for the best price once you choose a chip-set vendor or are there clear choices that matter – not meaning to spawn a my dog is better than your dog discussion, just wanting to have a bit more guidance for my card choice.

 

[ilysaml]

Well there's a difference. First of all there's a reference design card and a non reference design card, the ref designed one always run hotter and noisy the non ref designed one comes with a great cooling, runs quietly, has a great OCing potentiality....

All the brands you mentioned are great...each of them has advantages and disadvantages, you better link the cards you're looking for and i'll give you my opinion based on the reviews on it.

 

[geekapproved]

Going with the manufacturer with the best warranty is always a smart idea....

Chipset vendor? HUH? I can't help but think your confused about what a chipset is.....

Not sure what u mean by "Nvidia seems to have better drivers for similiar price performance chips sets....." HUH? Chipset has zero to do with GPU or GPU drivers.

Fact is AMD has better perfomance per dollar, and they are more efficient, put out less heat and require less power. I go with whatever is the best performance per dollar at the time of purchase, no matter if thats Intel, AMD, or Nvidia.

Refer to Tom's best video cards for the money articles.

 

[pure_drivel]

Going with the manufacturer with the best warranty is always a smart idea....

Chipset vendor? HUH? I can't help but think your confused about what a chipset is.....

Not sure what u mean by "Nvidia seems to have better drivers for similiar price performance chips sets....." HUH? Chipset has zero to do with GPU or GPU drivers.

Fact is AMD has better perfomance per dollar, and they are more efficient, put out less heat and require less power. I go with whatever is the best performance per dollar at the time of purchase, no matter if thats Intel, AMD, or Nvidia.

Refer to Tom's best video cards for the money articles.

THIS.

 

[swifty_morgan]

before you plunk money down on an old card why not wait a couple of weeks for the new stuff. should be great performers for less money.. ??

 

[Dienekes78]

I may be confused, but I thought that Nvidia and AMD make the graphic chip sets and the card vendors use those chips in building their cards. So that a ZOTAC GTX 580 and a EVGA GTX 580 both use the same graphic chips to build their cards - I would then think that maybe one vendor or another might use better components or tweak the card design a bit else why would someone choose one vendor over another (except warrantee or pure price). As to Drivers, an earlier post here indicated that NVIDIA seemed to have less buggy drivers than AMD, and the pro AMD responder seemed to acknowledge that short coming - perhaps I didn't understand the comment properly.
My sole objective is to acquire a high end gaming card that performs well and generated less heat than my current ZOTAC GTX280, all for around $350. I expect to make my purchase sometime in the next two months - I'm specking a new gaming machine that will be based on the ivybridge equivalent of the i5 2500K sandy bridge chip that is out there now. As one can tell from my posts I have the skills to assemble parts but not to spec – I come here for that help.

Fact is AMD has better perfomance per dollar, and they are more efficient, put out less heat and require less power. I go with whatever is the best performance per dollar at the time of purchase, no matter if thats Intel, AMD, or Nvidia.

Refer to Tom's best video cards for the money articles.[/quotemsg]

 

[Dienekes78]

before you plunk money down on an old card why not wait a couple of weeks for the new stuff. should be great performers for less money.. ??

I have two months to make my selection. I'm not plugged into what's on the horizon, so can wait if something better for the same price point will be available in a reasonable time frame. I really don't care who makes the card or who makes the gpu - I care about ease of use (e.g. non buggy drivers) and the more perfromace for a $350 +- $20 price point. I classic end-user... I come here because folks here understand the technology and can guide my choices.

 

[ilysaml]

@Dienekes78
You're right. AMD or nVidia make the GPU and the 3rd party manufacturers design the chipsets and the cooling layout on a PCB, that's why a MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozzer III is different than Gigabyte & EVGA GTX 570...and so on.

Again, there are tons of great cards from each manufacture if you have a preference to one of them you could say and get the opinions on it. For the equivalent to the GTX 580 there are HD 7870 and 7950... don't know how the prices are going to be in the next 2 months....

@Geekapproved

Going with the manufacturer with the best warranty is always a smart idea....

No, Evga has a lifetime warranty but their GPUs are reference design cards they run hotter than any card out there, for example the Twin Frozer III is cooler by 18C and quieter by 7.6 db.

 

[Dienekes78]

Well there's a difference. First of all there's a reference design card and a non reference design card, the ref designed one always run hotter and noisy the non ref designed one comes with a great cooling, runs quietly, has a great OCing potentiality....

All the brands you mentioned are great...each of them has advantages and disadvantages, you better link the cards you're looking for and i'll give you my opinion based on the reviews on it.

Thanks for your response, I have not yet seriously looked at New Egg except to see that ther were a lot of choices in the 580 GTX world - someone later in this thread said wait two weeks... I can wait two months, I just went looking at the GPU comparison charts and saw a recomendation to chose two levels higher if I want something to last a few years and where I could really tell a difference in performance (hence the 580 GTX). I picked the 580 GTX vice the AMD equivalent 7950 because I read here that AMD rleases more buggy drivers..... So that is the extent of my thinking. If $350 buys me more card in a month, I'll wait, but will still have the same basic question - which is price performance/quality based. One thing I know is there is always, always, always be something newer, better out on the horizon, but at some poin,t one has to pull the trigger, two weeks, a month = NADA, but one can wait forever for Nervana and stil not arrive. My inclination is to go wiht the EVGA GTX580 - my current card is a ZOTAC and ne could use it as grill to fry fish it generates a bunch o hear - my ANTEC 900 case wiht fans apears to handle it, but...

 

[Rockdpm]

The new NVIDIA Kepler cards, NVIDIA does have good drivers and ease of installation.

 

[ilysaml]

Best GTX 580s by order
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125399
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121429
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130590
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162073

Have you checked out the new article of the HD 7850/70?!!
The HD 7870 is almost a GTX 580 and will be for $350 only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AMD drivers bug and such hassle was long time ago, i own a HD 6950 and never experienced a problem. Even Tom's articles didn't state any disorder or bugs during the reviews of different HD models Unlike, the newer drivers always improve the performance.

 

[Onus]

The only vendor I won't touch is Diamond. It's a long story, but with all the incompetence they demonstrated, considering their competition, I have no reason to ever buy Diamond. I'm also suspicious of Jaton, but have no direct experience with them.

 

[Dienekes78]

Best GTX 580s by order
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125399
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121429
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130590
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162073

Have you checked out the new article of the HD 7850/70?!!
The HD 7870 is almost a GTX 580 and will be for $350 only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AMD drivers bug and such hassle was long time ago, i own a HD 6950 and never experienced a problem. Even Tom's articles didn't state any disorder or bugs during the reviews of different HD models Unlike, the newer drivers always improve the performance.

Thank you I will check it out - the HD 7870 - should I still wait 2 weeks or a month for a price drop?

 

[Rockdpm]

Thanks for your response, I have not yet seriously looked at New Egg except to see that ther were a lot of choices in the 580 GTX world - someone later in this thread said wait two weeks... I can wait two months, I just went looking at the GPU comparison charts and saw a recomendation to chose two levels higher if I want something to last a few years and where I could really tell a difference in performance (hence the 580 GTX). I picked the 580 GTX vice the AMD equivalent 7950 because I read here that AMD rleases more buggy drivers..... So that is the extent of my thinking. If $350 buys me more card in a month, I'll wait, but will still have the same basic question - which is price performance/quality based. One thing I know is there is always, always, always be something newer, better out on the horizon, but at some poin,t one has to pull the trigger, two weeks, a month = NADA, but one can wait forever for Nervana and stil not arrive. My inclination is to go wiht the EVGA GTX580 - my current card is a ZOTAC and ne could use it as grill to fry fish it generates a bunch o hear - my ANTEC 900 case wiht fans apears to handle it, but...

Dude i am telling you, the pricing for current cards aren't gonna change for at least a month or so. The GTX 580 is a good card, but in 2 weeks its gonna be obsolete and 3-4 year old technology slowly degrading. compared to the kepler cards. the starting kepler cards are gonna have 512 CUDA cores or more and probably kick the GTX 580 in the butt because of updated cuda core programming and just in general better GPU Chip.

 

[Dienekes78]

Dude i am telling you, the pricing for current cards aren't gonna change for at least a month or so. The GTX 580 is a good card, but in 2 weeks its gonna be obsolete and 3-4 year old technology slowly degrading. compared to the kepler cards. the starting kepler cards are gonna have 512 CUDA cores or more and probably kick the GTX 580 in the butt because of updated cuda core programming and just in general better GPU Chip.

I can wait two weeks or even 4 for that matter. I'll be back in 2-3 weeks to ask which card to buy knowing that I wanted at least 580 GTX perfromance but only have $350 or so to spend... I don't have to have the highest end card out there just smething I can ride for games like SKYRIM, SWTOR, WOW - which are not even stressing my 280 GTX - I just know that it's time to move on. Thank you, all! I think I'm informed, for now, and when the Kepler is available will return for some more info.

Darest I ask is Kepler a competitor of NVIDIA and AMD or is it a competitor of ZOTAC and EVGA etc?

 

[Rockdpm]

No, Kepler is NVIDIA's new line of Graphics Cards. EVGA, and ZOTAC are its Production Partners

 

[Rockdpm]

Also if your done with this post. Select one of us as best Answer so the Forum Moderators and close it!

Thanks!. Hope we have given you the best of help and made a good impact in your purchase choice!

 

[Dienekes78]

Best answer selected by Dienekes78.

 

[Dienekes78]

No, Kepler is NVIDIA's new line of Graphics Cards. EVGA, and ZOTAC are its Production Partners

Thanks for taking to time to bring me up to speed. Unless one has very deep pockets or is is a fanatic, a good higher-end card will do nicely for all the things I need to do. Even with my old card and build (exception - heat), the speed of my internet connection as impacted by the Game Vendor's governors (Blizzard, Bioware etc) is the limiting factor, not the hardware (up to a point). The most dramatic impact I saw from hardware was putting in a Crucial 128 GB SSD.
Thanks Again - All

 

[Rockdpm]

Thanks for taking to time to bring me up to speed. Unless one has very deep pockets or is is a fanatic, a good higher-end card will do nicely for all the things I need to do. Even with my old card and build (exception - heat), the speed of my internet connection as impacted by the Game Vendor's governors (Blizzard, Bioware etc) is the limiting factor, not the hardware (up to a point). The most dramatic impact I saw from hardware was putting in a Crucial 128 GB SSD.
Thanks Again - All

Good to hear i made a big impact in the choice of your purchase. good luck. Just keep watch newegg or any other pages that give updates on tech. Once Kepler is out. Stop back by us and we can tell you what cards will be best for the money ok?