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AMD Challenges NVIDIA To Graphics Throw-Down

Posted by Soulskill on from the fight-to-the-death dept.

MojoKid writes "Over the last couple of weeks, the two most powerful graphics cards released for the PC to date made their respective debuts, the dual-Cayman GPU powered AMD Radeon HD 6990 and the dual-GF110 GPU powered NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590. With such powerful products in their line-ups, both AMD and NVIDIA have claimed they offer 'the world's fastest graphics card.' AMD says it's theirs. Dave Erskine, the Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD, challenged NVIDIA directly. 'So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don't just say it. Show us the substantiation.'"

30 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Anysufficiently advanced technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    is indistinguishable from a rigged benchmark

    1. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Who wants to see two computers running the same game at 10 frames/second at 640x480?

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    2. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Give it a week. It will be on http://www.phoronix.com/ And it will be more likely to be accurate. Of course it will have real god and useful data soon at http://openbenchmarking.org/ but that is actually helpful and will not be reported by anyone.

    3. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by jd · · Score: 2

      Elastons are the "new thing" in computer graphics, so a benchmark that involves running the software used to create the APS' video would seem "fair".

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    4. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Informative

      On Linux? Yes, although they have given out the full specs so it should be better soon. On Windows? you couldn't be more wrong as both the new IGPs and discrete have been kicking serious ass AND have been both stable and cheap!

      After the Nvidia Bumpgate and Intel bribing OEMs and rigging compilers came out I've been selling AMD/ATI exclusively in my shop and the customers couldn't be happy. The triple and quad core CPUs are cheap and plentiful and take everything they throw at them and come back for more, and the IGPs and discrete chips seriously crank out the pretty while giving a hell of a bang for the buck.

      The new hotness at the shop has been the dirt cheap HD48xx series which has gotten so low anybody that wants HD gaming or large screens can just have me drop one in for a little of nothing ($60 for the 4830 and $80 for the 4850) and the drivers are solid as a rock on both XP and 7 and the framerates are just nuts. I personally love my HD4850 and haven't had so much as a single driver error, but then again since AMD bought them out I haven't had a single problem with a single build.

      So personally I'm all for AMD and I hope they keep it up. Their new business plan of making mainstream GPUs and then simply adding a second with HT connect when they need to ramp up is the smart way to do it, as they don't have to waste time finding ways to cripple cards for the midrange market, and the cards just keep getting faster and cheaper. Now thanks to AMD buying ATI anybody can enjoy games and hardware acceleration even on the low end IGPs, hell I was playing Bioshock I and II and L4D on my onboard while I waited for my card to arrive and they played fine.

      So if any AMD employees are reading this, thanks. Your bang for the buck mantra has made it so even my low end customers can afford triples and quads, and made it easier than ever for everyone to have decent framerates without breaking their wallets. In these tough times that really helps out the working folks out here in middle America, so thanks, we appreciate it. And this is one builder that will shop with you first and foremost, your quality and low prices have earned my business. Thanks again.

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    5. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by smallfries · · Score: 2

      Oh look, it's only been ten years and someone has reinvented Hypermatter. Almost looks as good as the original.

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    6. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      Can you show a problem one? They routinely show Windows beating Linux in graphics driver benchmarks, and they are Linux geeks. The Openbenchmark program is based on cross platform, natively compiled games and apps used by many people.

      So do you have an actual, valid complaint? A reading comprehension problem? Or a love of the troll flag?

    7. Re:Anysufficiently advanced technology by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      If you are really too fucking stupid (which is a possibility seeing how the quality has gone down here at /.) to tell the difference between a real post and a shill, let your old pal Hairyfeet point out the differences:

      1.-The shill will bring up the product no matter whether the post has anything to do with it or not. Example: Look at the first post on the Nook hack, what does it say? "I wish Microsoft would have come out with the Courier" complete with link for those that don't know what the fuck that piece of bullshit vaporware was. Now did that have a God damned thing to do with Nooks? Nope but the guy is being paid by the post (and probably getting a bonus for first posts) so dammit he's getting his plug in. Now show me a single post in a non AMD/ATI story where I bring up either company? you can't because I speak about whatever topic is at hand, in this case it was AMD because that's the topic dipshit or can't you RTFS?

      2.- first posts at any cost even when they make NO sense. See example #1. My post on the other hand was answering a guy who was spouting the old "ATI drivers suck!" meme, which is like saying "Windows BSODs all the time!" as they are both about the same age.

      3.-NEVER say anything bad about the product EVER. See the post history of the Nook guy as an example, whereas I said "once AMD bought them out the drivers have been rock solid" implying quite clearly that before AMD bought them out their drivers sucked because you know what? They really did. They sucked massive amounts.

      4.-Give NO reason why you have a preference, if required to give a preference use marketing speak and be sure to hit the bullet points. See the MSFT shills we've had the past week for a good example of "buzzword bingo". Personally all I need is Synergy to get a diagonal and maybe win the crockpot. Now compare to mine where I pointed out malfeasance on the part of the competitors in the rigging of compilers on the Intel side along with bribery, and on Nvidia's side we have trying to shaft customers who got burnt by their bad GPUs. As someone who has supported a fair and open free market this kind of dirty shit don't fly, just as I argued MSFT should have been broken up over bribing OEMs.

      So in conclusion please use the above handy checklist for the stupid so that even total dipshits such as yourself can easily tell the difference between someone who is happy with a product and a paid shill. For the record I have gotten exactly ZERO in terms of cash, hardware, or even discounts, from either company, hell they haven't even offered me a T-Shirt. I sell AMD/ATI because they give prices any of my customers can afford (show me where I can get quad core Intel with a decent amount of RAM in a full kit for under $260 after MIR like this deal) while having damned good performance and being rock solid stable. Will Intel kill them in the top end? Hell yes, and 4-6 times the price! My customers are working folks, they need a good machine that will last at a price that won't break them, and AMD gives them that while giving them the ability to upgrade. The Intel socket bingo is frankly getting nuts. What are they up to now, something like FOUR sockets all active ATM?

      So thanks AMD, I've been selling your desktops and laptops and have had NO complaints. They're cheap, may not be the fastest but are more than fast enough for a good 90% of those that walk through my door, and the new IGPs and discrete chips are awesome. And BTW if you have read my past posting you know I put my money where my mouth is...AMD 925 X4, 8 Gb of DDR 2 800MHz, dual 500Gb HDDs, and I just replaced my old workhorse HD4650 (which still works great and will be handed down to a nephew) for an HD4850 thanks to my GF deciding she wanted to "support my inner geek". Personally I think its bribery as the grandbaby will be here next month and I bet she's planning on us doing a lot of babysitting, but gift horses and mouths and all.

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  2. Big words... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Funny

    (disclosure: I have Radeons stashed in various machinery throughout the house - especially the Macs)

    Anyrate, them are pretty big words, but I'd take them more seriously if they agreed on a neutral testing lab and benchmarks that aren't geared towards one over the other.

    Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, please provide comic relief by including an Intel video chipset. Pretty please?
    (please insert evil grin here)

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Big words... by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2

      Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, please provide comic relief by including an Intel video chipset. Pretty please? (please insert evil grin here)

      If you are going to pick on an integrated video solution then you don't have to bother with Intel. None of the integrated chipsets would stack up at all against these top of the line cards.

      If you want a comparison, try showing what other things you could have bought for $700+. Perhaps an XBox AND a PS3 plus a mainstream video card? Or maybe just one console, a few games, a mainstream card and a vacuum cleaner to run while playing (to simulate the sound of the high end cards).

    2. Re:Big words... by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you are going to pick on an integrated video solution then you don't have to bother with Intel. None of the integrated chipsets would stack up at all against these top of the line cards.

      If you want a comparison, try showing what other things you could have bought for $700+. Perhaps an XBox AND a PS3 plus a mainstream video card? Or maybe just one console, a few games, a mainstream card and a vacuum cleaner to run while playing (to simulate the sound of the high end cards).

      Three hours with a mid range hooker? I know you still get screwed longer with the PS3, but it is more fun with a hooker.

  3. Browser war by freakingme · · Score: 2

    This is gonna be as interesting as Browser benchmarks are. Chrome, IE9, FF and Opera all win in their own benchmark. What does it mean to the enduser? Nothing.

  4. Hope their drivers have improved by Bigbutt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yea, I'm still getting blue screens on my AMDs. Yea, I'll get modded down by the AMD fanbois. Such is life.

    [John]

    --
    Shit better not happen!
    1. Re:Hope their drivers have improved by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      Drivers interface with the kernel. When you have a poorly written driver that steps in the wrong place in memory, a kernel panic will occur. In the Windows world, that's called a BSOD. Mind you, that any device driver can cause this. In fact, so can anti-virus software being they install their own software drivers for kernel access.

      Yes, faulty hardware can cause a host of issues. But don't discount sloppy coding either.

      --
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    2. Re:Hope their drivers have improved by KamuZ · · Score: 2

      I always hear this with AMD drivers but I have been using their cards (as a gamer) for years now and never had any problems.

    3. Re:Hope their drivers have improved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The bulk of Vista and 7 graphics driver code is implemented as user-mode driver DLLs. No BSODs normally, just an app crash or driver restart.

    4. Re:Hope their drivers have improved by Xest · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah but how many systems have you and the parent had? If you're talking a handful then your personal anecdotes are meaningless.

      I did tech support for local government/schools for 7 years and we had over 5000 PCs to look after at any one time, and of course over that period we went through a number of hardware refreshes so I saw closed to 15,000 machines of various configurations.

      I can tell you now that the number of times we had widespread issues with nVidia cards was one due to one bad driver release, but rolling back to old drivers was rediculously easy with nVidia.

      In contrast ATI cards were a constant persistent headache, and sure there were some ATI based systems that never really caused a problem, but there were literally hundreds that did. The issues ranged from instability due to shit drivers, through to perhaps one of the most annoying issues- the fact that you could download the right drivers for a card from the ATI site and sometimes they just would not work with the only way to get graphics working properly to find the original CD that came with the system/card and install the version from that because later versions of drivers for a specific card didn't always work right with those older cards. Even when you found the old driver CD if those original drivers were shit- i.e. poor performing, or unstable then you were left with a choice between an unstable/poor performing system or, well, no drivers at all.

      ATI cards don't have a poor reputation because the odd gamer has had a dodgy system, they have a poor reputation for drivers because people like me who have dealt with large sample sizes of systems have seen that ATI cards over the years have consistently had these problems whereas nVidia's screwups have been relatively few and far beween in contrast.

      I can similarly tell you from my experience of such a large sample size that whilst HP printers are generally some of the best hardware, they have equally had some terrible driver releases through the years. I can tell you that Maxtor drives have a drastically higher failure rate than that of other manufacturers.

      It's not fanboyism if a particular product or manufacturer has a bad reputation for some reason, no it's generally based on the fact there's a lot of truth in that reputation. If it was as you say individuals building questionable systems then why don't nVidia equally have a bad rep, or are you suggesting nVidia users are more competent at selecting good components and configurations than ATI/AMD users? Obviously that seems unlikely.

  5. Drivers by _merlin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't give a shit about which is faster. Neither seem to be able to consistently write stable drivers. Video driver stability issues are far more of a problem than being 0.1% slower than the competition.

    1. Re:Drivers by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Informative

      I haven't had a video driver issue with any video card from either NVIDIA or ATI/AMD for at least a few generations.. What systems and hardware are all these people with driver problems running?

      MSI motherboards? :)

    2. Re:Drivers by AbRASiON · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ahhh my mod points, do I rate you flamebait or just call you out?
      I used to be silly enough to believe what you just wrote. Infact! What you just wrote was absoloutely true - about a good TEN years ago,.. not 6, not 8 - 10 goddamn years.

      I believed the silly rumours you just posted up until about 4 or 5 years ago and my boss (who is actually a fanboy of ATI) suggested I get one, still I refused - eventually I read some reviews, saw the cost to speed ratio at that time was superior to nvidia and I caved and got an ATI card.
      Surprise surprise, no driver screwups, no faulty cards and I think I'm on my 3rd card since then. Generally the top end ATI cards are 90% as fast as the top end Nvidia but for 75% of the price. It's a completely logical choice when we're arguing about "do I want 140 fps or 120?"

      Also, nvidia just went through a terrible spell about 18 months back where they had nothing to offer and AMD thrashed them soundly, when nvidia did finally release a card which caught up, ATI was so far ahead they just released their next one - they missed an entire generation. I believe it was between the 2xx series and the 4xx series.

      Long story short, your post has far too many insightful points and an insufficient amount of overrated or flamebait points.

  6. Driver quality by kimvette · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about a driver stability shootout? Include the major platforms (Windows, OS X, and Linux) and compare:

      * Stability in desktop environments (Windows Aero/OS X/KDE/Gnome)
      * Stability in the major productivity apps (Office suites, Photoshop/Gimp/etc., Lightroom/Aperture/etc, Final Cut/Premiere, AutoCAD)
      * Stability in games
      * Ease of installation

    THAT is a shootout I would like to see. Even entry-level cards are "good enough" for casual gaming, and mid-range cards are great for even newer games at high resolution.

    --
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  7. Re:the only problem with these state of the art ca by Auroch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These sorts of cards are designed to run 3 x 30" 2560x1600 monitors at a decent frame rate.

    ...so gamers can get closer to the real life they don't have.

    I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. People play video games to avoid "real" life, so ... yeah, some gamers *are* looking for a life they don't have. Temporarily, to be sure. No one wants to be a black ops marine for any length of time when it involves torture and such. But in a game? Make that as lifelike as possible ... that's *why* I play games. To avoid real life. Because if real life was as interesting as, say, dragon age, I think I'd just go play that.

    --
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  8. Re:That's absolutely true, but... by EdIII · · Score: 4, Funny

    What do Slashdot readers think about the scientific butter that awards crack addicted babies with even more?

    Thank You. Your comment, coupled with a couple of glasses of wine, just caused my brain to reboot.

    You are the equivalent of the crazy person that has uncontrolled outbursts on the subway that make the Mad Hatter seem cogent and lucid.

    +5 W.T.F

  9. They have, kinda by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    So I have a 5870 and the drivers are for sure better than when it came out. Also ATi drivers are lots better than they were years ago. Used to be a time when I wouldn't touch ATi, they were crap. Now, as is obvious, I don't have a problem with them. I do not prefer them but I'll get them if they have an offering I like and nVidia does not (when I bought the card, nVidia did not have DX11 cards).

    So the drivers aren't horrible, but they aren't nVidia quality IMO. This is not only in terms of stability, but also features. nVidia provides some really excellent per-application profile support. You set stuff up and it just works. ATi's is a good deal more complex and not as smooth.

    1. Re:They have, kinda by Vacuous · · Score: 2

      It's true ATI doesn't have NVIDIA quality drivers; I've never heard of ATI drivers destroying a card. The GTX 590 drivers, however, have a driver issue with their "power limiter" that is supposed to prevent card damaging overvolts. Then there is the whole fan debacle from the 196.75 drivers. I realize people are going say it's what they get for overclocking, but if you add a feature it isn't the user's fault for using it.

      [Sources]
      http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_590/26.html
      http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/13710-geforce-gtx-590-brinner-i-sweclockers-testlabb-drivrutin-boven-i-dramat [Swedish]
      http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/53563/Nvidia-196-75-GPU-Drivers-Bugged-Causing-Fans-To-Fail-Cards-To-Overheat

  10. If I were nVidia by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd say sure, and lay out a set of OpenGL benchmarks and utilities to try. Reason is ATi's OpenGL drivers have never been as good. They aren't horrible, but they are not as good as their DX drivers. nVidia, however, supports both APIs as native and they are both just as fast.

    Rigged? Sure, but it makes a point: It is all in what you want to do that determines what is the fastest.

    In terms of Windows games it looks like the 6990 is the faster card. Of course it is something where if ti matters at all is really questionable. You are talking like "Which card lets you get slightly higher FSAA settings with a game running at max quality in 5,760x1200?" HardOCP generally found the 6990 was the winner, but it was small things like that. The 590 would have no FSAA, they 6990 could have 2x FSAA or whatever.

    So maybe it matters if you have 3 24" monitors, but if not the real meat of it is that both cards are way faster than you need and will run things great.

    Either marketing department can find things to claim they are the "Fastest" I'm sure. If you care depends on what you do.

    1. Re:If I were nVidia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft can both run in OpenGL.

  11. Yeah but, ATI still unstable... by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Informative

    OK, to be fair it's been over a year since I ran ATI hardware (a 4650), but I replaced it with nvidia hardware because I couldn't get the darn thing to stop crashing. I miss my ATI hardware. It has nicer image quality and better tv out/in support for my old TV card and games. I ran a 1650 for years, but than again that was just an overclocked 9800, and every bug under the sun was worked out 10 times over on that. Maybe it's my fault for running less popular games, but come 'on. Psychonauts should not crash like clockwork just because the floaty neon things are on screen...

    I guess what I'm saying it, AMD, call me when you're drivers can run something other than this years Call of Duty game & WoW

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  12. GTX 590 burning due to bad driver support by davFr · · Score: 2

    Want to see a GTX 590 burning because of some shitty nVidia drivers? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo-1VFMcbc&feature=player_embedded
    Now I am wondering who has bad drivers .... ATI, really?
    Anyway, I am running Linux most of the time, and nVidia Linux support is really shitty. Sometimes, I am wondering if they still hire software engineers.

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  13. AMD and Nvidia, Take a FOSS challange by xiando · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I own a AMD chip which I use. I also own a useless Nvidia chip. I use GNU/Linux and I use the free r600g driver with KMS. I really don't care how the cards are doing in the Windows world. I also don't care about their closed source binary blob Linux drivers. What I do care about is the support and performance of the free drivers.
    The only thing I would like to see is a free software/free driver challenge between the two. Everything else does not matter. I never tried how any of them are doing in the Windows world, but my impression from what I have read is that it comes down to drivers there too and Nvidia seems to be doing better than AMD in the windows world.
    Hardware really doesn't matter if there's not software to utilize it.

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