Graphics Card Buying Guide Spring 2015

What does AMD and NVIDIA offer that’s different?

AMD vs NVIDIA is an age old argument, with die hard fans on each side of the fence proclaiming why AMD is better or NVIDIA is better. In truth, both are as good as each other in the mid-range market, AMD has a higher presence below £300 where NVIDIA have their presence above £300. So what about the features, let’s take a look.

As you can see, both parties offer primarily the same features, things get more interesting when looking at what each offers specifically.

AMD has Mantle, which is extremely good when playing games like BattleField 4; this technology allows console ported games based on AMD architecture to have a massive performance boost, LiquidVR gives unprecedented VR support, AMP technology gives control of AMP enabled memory modules and utilises the performance to the graphics cards advantage and TrueAudio offers crystal clear audio to the user.

NVIDIA on the other hand, concentrates more on the visual appeal of games; TXAA, MFAA and PhysX all work together to give the user the best visual experience with as little performance penalty as possible. NVLink allows the GPU’s to communicate better with each other (when used in SLI) and with the CPU; giving faster feedback and performance. DSR is an odd one, this scales the image up to 4k, renders at that level and then condenses back to your resolution; offering ultra high detail at lower resolutions.