Why the hate on AMD?

[gespe]

I'm having a hard time understanding why almost everyone i know doesn't like AMD, when I ask "what's wrong about buying AMD?" They'll reply "Because AMD is such a cheap brand, it runs hot and has poor drivers. Get Nvidia or Intel if you want a good computer"

I must admit though, when i recently built my computer i was considering a Nvidia 670 just because it "felt right" not because it had any advantages over my 7950 (which is the best card i ever used).

And as you may know, the 7950 has 3GB vRAM and a 384-bit bus, while the 670 only has 2GB and a 256-bit bus. And the 7950 is around 100$ cheaper?!

Is there anyone that can tell me when and why Intel and Nvidia got such a good reputation in comparison to AMD?

And just to be clear i don't have anything against Intel or Nvidia, I would just like to know what makes most peoples prefer Nvidia and Intel, without any real "knowledge" to back it up.

 

[gespe]

You are bringing up a whole bunch of different issues, and I can't tell if you're being serious or tossing troll bait. The troll bait in your post is how you compare the 7950 and the 670. You can't compare specs that way at all - there is no "knowledge" in that comparison. You have to look at benchmarks. And unless you're including overclocking in the discussion, the 670 is hands down the better performing card than the 7950, which is why it costs more.

Anyways, on the one hand there are always fanboys who just like one brand and think the other brand is crap. Nvidia is a more popular brand for graphics cards than AMD, so statistically it probably has more fanboys.

AMD got creamed by Nvidia in the graphics card department for a little bit following Nvidia's release of the 8800 GTX, and along with a couple years of driver problems this earned AMD a bit of a negative reputation among some folks.

On the CPU side of things, AMD has been getting crushed by Intel for a few years now, and Bulldozer was just a colossal failure for them because of how they handled its launch and the marketing/hype up to it. They've made a lot of moves in the CPU space that has earned them a reputation for being cheap - and by and large that reputation is correct. Only in peculiar circumstances should a high end gaming rig contain an AMD CPU anymore. Their graphics cards are much more competitive than their CPUs for gaming.

Thanks for the answer
Wasn't trying to troll, but the cards performance is actually pretty similar http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/23/galaxy_gtx_660_ti_gc_oc_vs_670_hd_7950/3

 

[Spaniard United]

I love AMD. Up until my most recent build, all my PCs were 99% AMD parts. One PC had a P4 CPU and another had an Nvidia GPU, but the majority of my builds have consisted of AMD. Not necessarily because they offer the best components, but because they offer the best prices and (up until Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge) the power/cost comparison was in AMD's favor for me.

However with the advent of Sandy and Ivy Bridge, Intel took a major lead in the power section, with their CPUs able to do more faster than the comparable AMDs. AMD tried Bulldozer, which was a terrible letdown. They tried to tweak it and make Piledriver, which was better certainly, but still fell short of the i5s except in highly threaded applications, though the i7s kept their sizable lead. AMD's integrated graphics have progressed miles beyond Intel's, but short of laptops this advantage doesn't gain them much. And so more people began to migrate to Intel CPUs because even though you paid more of them, you got more for your dollar.

Nvidia vs AMD is an age old rivalry and will not die until one of the companies do. Some prefer Nvidia because they offer better driver support/stability. Some games, many of them popular titles, are engineered to play better with Nvidia than AMD, while others do the opposite. Up until the more recent GPU releases, multi-monitor support meant having to purchase and use multiple GPUs with Nvidia vs just 1 with AMD, which gained AMD a lot of favor. It really just all depends on what you're using it for. Play a game that's AMD optimized on an Nvidia card and you['ll find yourself a little disappointed. Flip it around and it's the same story. One GPU offers one type of computing, the other a different type. It's all up to which software or game you're on.

My current build sports an i5 3750k with an AMD Radeon HD 7950. You just have to sift through all the fanboys and choose what works well for you, and as always, haters are gonna hate.

 

[jaguarskx]

Regarding graphic cards, it really boils down to the following points / opinions:

1. nVidia provides better drivers or at least updates them more regularly than AMD.
2. Radeon cards generally offer a little better value in terms of price / performance compared to nVidia
3. nVidia cards supports Physx, but the number of games that supports Physx is very, very small in comparison to games that do not use Physx
4. Radeon cards tends to be more power efficient (especially mid-range mainstream) compared to nVidia cards.
5. Overall, AMD and nVidia cards trades places for the best extreme high end performance graphic card since they release graphic cards on different schedules.

 

[jaguarskx]

Comparing AMD vs. Intel should more or less be discussed in the CPU section if you are specifically talking about the CPU core. Otherwise, AMD iGPU (integrated graphics core) is more powerful than Intel's HD 4000. But that only applies to the 3 or 4 highest performing integrated Radeon HD 76xxD graphic cores in AMD's desktop Trinity APUs.

Intel does not release graphic drivers as frequently as AMD. Maybe 3 times per year. 4 at most I think.

 

[gespe]

I love AMD. Up until my most recent build, all my PCs were 99% AMD parts. One PC had a P4 CPU and another had an Nvidia GPU, but the majority of my builds have consisted of AMD. Not necessarily because they offer the best components, but because they offer the best prices and (up until Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge) the power/cost comparison was in AMD's favor for me.

However with the advent of Sandy and Ivy Bridge, Intel took a major lead in the power section, with their CPUs able to do more faster than the comparable AMDs. AMD tried Bulldozer, which was a terrible letdown. They tried to tweak it and make Piledriver, which was better certainly, but still fell short of the i5s except in highly threaded applications, though the i7s kept their sizable lead. AMD's integrated graphics have progressed miles beyond Intel's, but short of laptops this advantage doesn't gain them much. And so more people began to migrate to Intel CPUs because even though you paid more of them, you got more for your dollar.

Nvidia vs AMD is an age old rivalry and will not die until one of the companies do. Some prefer Nvidia because they offer better driver support/stability. Some games, many of them popular titles, are engineered to play better with Nvidia than AMD, while others do the opposite. Up until the more recent GPU releases, multi-monitor support meant having to purchase and use multiple GPUs with Nvidia vs just 1 with AMD, which gained AMD a lot of favor. It really just all depends on what you're using it for. Play a game that's AMD optimized on an Nvidia card and you['ll find yourself a little disappointed. Flip it around and it's the same story. One GPU offers one type of computing, the other a different type. It's all up to which software or game you're on.

My current build sports an i5 3750k with an AMD Radeon HD 7950. You just have to sift through all the fanboys and choose what works well for you, and as always, haters are gonna hate.

Thanks your answer was very helpful, and i also have the 3570k and the 7950 Great combination.

 

[bystander]

To add to the graphics discussion, it has been learned recently, that Crossfire has had a lot of issues, and continues to have issues when v-sync or possibly FPS limiters are not used. If you play this way, you probably have experienced problems.

Single AMD GPU's even had this issue (or pronounced issue) until just recently. Recent beta drivers have done a lot to fix the issues on single GPU configurations.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Thanks for the answer
Wasn't trying to troll, but the cards performance is actually pretty similar http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/23/galaxy_gtx_660_ti_gc_oc_vs_670_hd_7950/3

That article is based on overclocking, and you'll note that I was quite clear that the 670 is only the better card if overclocking is not considered. However, the majority of users do not want to overclock their card, so you can't just say the 670 and 7950 are equivalent because they are equivalent when overclocked. Out of the box, the 670 is on average significantly faster than the 7950 - enough to warrant the price difference, anyways.

The 7950 has been hands down the best card for overclockers concerned with value (e.g. they don't want a 7970) ever since it released, and that's still true today.

It's also worth mentioning that many of the people who think AMD is inferior to Nvidia weren't around 10-15 years ago to see things like Nvidia's epic FX 5xxx series fail compared to ATI's awesome 9xxx series cards. There is nothing inherently special about either brand - you have to compare each company's generation of cards to its direct competition.

Some of us were still using GF2 cards at that time and didn't bother changing until the GF6 series.

 

[shinte122305]

I love AMD i use an i7-3770k with a 7970 from asus overclocked to 1250 core and 1650 memory with 1.25 volts i have had it running at that since i got the card close to a year ago no driver problems at all i have tried all beta drivers and updated to all new drivers and i have NEVER experienced an issue so i am a very happy AMD customer and as for their CPU's i hope they come back strong so that their is competition and both companies intel and AMD can innovate and give us customers great new products.

 

[thijax]

I know it's been a few days since the last reply, but I'll toss in my .02.

From a performance perspective, as many others have brought up, over the past few years, AMD has been falling farther and farther behind in CPU performance. It's been years since I've touched an AMD chip, but I've been told that the current run of AMD processors do have their advantages, specifically in Linux operating environments, but I've got no concrete evidence to back that up - just word of mouth. I abandoned my experiments with Linux years ago, so I've never felt it a very relevant point.

Speaking from a practicality standpoint, I personally believe that it comes down to personal preference. Benchmarks aside, an AMD CPU or GPU is going to likely perform just fine for a casual gamer, or PC user, who has no interest in chasing top-end performance. From a cost perspective, AMD is more affordable 90% of the time, which is where I think a lot of the draw comes from. Even in the consumer PC market, if you walk into your local Best Buy, generally speaking, AMD based towers and notebooks will generally be considerably less expensive than their Intel based counterparts.

I personally stick to Intel and nVidia in my machines, because I prefer them. I've had better performance in my machines with Intel and nVidia than I ever have in any AMD rig I've owned. I built my wife a mid-range desktop with an AMD 6-core chip that I scored on sale (forgive me, I can't remember the exact chip), and was nothing short of disappointed when it couldn't outpace my 1st gen i7 in anything. The reviews I read at the time, from numerous sites and sources, raved about the chip, and that it was what was going to let AMD to bring the i-series to its knees, blah blah blah, and when it couldn't deliver, that's when I officially decided I was done with AMD. Then, follow that up with terrible execution of the Bulldozer line, and lackluster performance from its chips, and I just lost faith.

However, if I were building a budget PC, or a machine that wasn't intended for any "power" usage, I would happily drop the money on an AMD, because they're affordable. Although, since the Sandy and Ivy chips hit the market, that's become less and less of a real argument.

All in all, I think, like I said before, it's got to come down to personal preference.