Print
We all know competition is great for consumers, but AMD appears to be jonesing for an all an all-out war with Nvidia over the title “World’s Fastest Graphics Card”. Both companies recently released dual GPU masterpieces, but both AMD and Nvidia are laying claim to crown, and AMD’s Public Relations Manager Dave Erskine is asking them to prove it. With reference to the AMD Radeon HD 6990 Erskine claims it was “designed to be a game-changer”, and they can back this up with benchmarks.
“Yesterday our competitor also issued a press release, announcing the launch of what they claim to be the “World’s Fastest Graphics Card”– the Nvidia GTX 590. We combed through their announcement to understand how it was that such a claim could be made and why there was no substantiation based on industry-standard benchmarks, similar to what AMD did with industry benchmark 3DMark 11, the latest DirectX® 11 benchmark from FutureMark.”
“So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don’t just say it.”
Those are definitely fighting words, a while we are hesitate to pick a side, we feel compelled to point out our review did give the slight edge to AMD, at least using the drivers available to us at launch. Given how narrow the victory was however, we would respectfully like to abstain from expressing an opinion in a debate that is only slightly less controversial than cats vs. dogs.
Given that these cards are likely to trade title of “World’s Fastest” simply through driver revisions in the coming months, your still better to buy from your preferred vendor, and leave the hair splitting to the marketing guys.
Is AMD justified in calling out Nvidia on its claim? Or is this an attempt at free marketing at its finest?
Comments are closed on this article
gruvsf
March 29, 2011 at 1:36pm
I used to run nVidia cards in my PC; they were great. However, I tend to drop a particular vendor if I find that I got royally screwed by them (looking at you, Asus). Once I get screwed by a vendor I tend to never look back and drop them from consideration for all of my future builds. I really liked nVidia until the 8400M fiasco that left me with a nice and almost new but useless laptop. I have also seen nVidia cheat on video quality benchmarks in the past where you can literally see how nVidia will drop quality in favor of more frames versus a similarly performing ATI card. After those two incidents, I no longer use nVidia or purchase anything that has nVidia products in them, and I go out of my way to convince others to not buy their stuff (I get asked a lot at my work about these things).
I guess to sum it up. Screw me once, that's on you, screw me twice, well, er, you won't get to screw me again.
immersive
March 28, 2011 at 8:49pm
This is not a battle for best graphics card setup, most cost effective graphics card setup, most energy efficient graphics card setup, coolest graphics card setup, or best graphics card with the most friendly drivers. It IS a battle for “World’s Fastest Graphics Card”. That is card not cards.
MPC please take a 6990 and a GTX 590 and use every GAME you have used in the past 10 years to benchmark these cards for us. Why? Becuse that is what we are reading your site or mag for. Probably 90% of us can not afforde even 1 of them cards and if we could yes we would probably go with a more effecient duel card setup but we want to see who is “World’s Fastest Graphics Card”!
On top of installing previous games don't just install them games, ran them the way you would play them! Mod the crap out of them. Also if its possable to OC eather card we would like to see that done also. Why! This is MPC for crying out loud. Your readers run nothing stock! We want to see what card is Fastest even if it takes a week of modding.
Edit: Use that 6 screen setup.
kiaghi7
March 28, 2011 at 2:39pm
In the end, it's the afore mentioned drivers that are the end-all-be-all of this...
And let's be brutally honest, I've seen them come and go for many generations of 3D cards since the literal inception of discrete graphics cards, and since day one ATi (now AMD/ATi, or just AMD) has been notorious for sloppy drivers.
I don't care if its faster or slower, I want a piece of hardware that works, and the necessary software for it to interface and work as intended... ATi has been infamously lax on their drivers since they were competing with 3Dfx's Voodoo series!!!
ChatterboxChuck
March 28, 2011 at 8:38am
Can't help but finding funny how so many here are like "this one is better", "buy 2 of these and it's better". Does anyone truly notice the difference if you go from a 570 to a 590 or a 6970 to a 6990? Come on, it's not like it's going from a VW to a Ferrari here. So some people prefer AMD over nVidia or viceverse, who cares. Both comapnies seem to provide excellent video cards that kick asses. The problem is how they put out excellent cards but terrible drivers which we have to become guinea pigs first for them before they try a few times and eventually give us a decent set of drivers for thiese expensive cards we bought a while before.
Until recently I had an 8800 GTX on my PC and recently upgraded to a 550. It may not be a 590, but it's one hell of a jump, almost from a VW to a Ferrari. Maybe a VW to a Mustang. LOL.
essjay22
March 28, 2011 at 2:59pm
Oh man, why you dissin' on my VW??? Give the bug some respekt !!
How 'bout a saying a pinto?? Edsel? Pacer?
srysly d00d
Agree, both cards rock, drivers are the issue and both Co's are guilty of putting out less than optimal driver packages
MattyMattMatt
March 27, 2011 at 9:57pm
The 6990 is the better of the two cards (right now), but you can buy two 6950s, unlock them, stick them in crossfire and beat them both.
Just saying.
We really need to wait a month or two, drivers will have fully matured and then we'll know, but all things considered AMD should come out on top as they can still optimise more for their new architecture than Nvidia for their old one.
Caboose
March 28, 2011 at 8:17am
That's what I find funny about some people in the nVidia and Intel camp. They tell you to buy multiple of the top nVidia cards, or the top Intel CPU because it beats the pants off of whatever they're comparing it to.
Sure, you could do that, but unless you have a lot of disposable income, you won't have much money left over for the rest of your PC. Get 2 or 3 of those 580's and then you're left over with 2GB of RAM, a dual-core CPU and a 500GB hard drive on a budget board. WOO! POWERFUL SYSTEM YOU GOT THERE!
Or with Intel, get their top end CPU and you can then MAYBE afford to get a motherboard, with little RAM, a budget GPU and a tiny HDD. ROCKIN' THE CLOCKS THERE EH!
AMD has always held the price to performance crown.
CaptainFabulous
March 28, 2011 at 8:05am
For the price of 2 GTX 580s you can get THREE 6970s that will utterly destroy those 580s.
bpstone
March 28, 2011 at 8:17am
Neither brand is bad. lol The 6990 is very fast this time around. $700.00 for a dual-gpu without PCI-e 3.0 is pointless to me. I'd much rather purchase two crossfire/sli cards that easily exceed ultra settings. The 6990 is awesome, but there aren't that many games that would benefit from it. I'd imagine it'll have a tough time running Tetris on ultra settings, but ya'know what card hasn't these days. lol Seriously, a GPU that powerful on a 1080p screen is major overkill unless you're a graphics designer. (^_^)
tiger8sugar
March 27, 2011 at 9:56pm
Both ATI/ADM and Nvida have battled for top spot for many years. Both continue to push the envelope. Nvida will get the bugs out. This is a rivaly that benefits us all. Both are great examples that make tech fun. With that said, I've been an ATI/ADM fan since the 9700. Go ADM!
silent975x
March 28, 2011 at 10:35am
ADM huh? I read over it the first time as a typo, but when you spell it that way 3x in one post... real loyal "AMD" fan are we?
aarcane
March 27, 2011 at 9:38pm
Why doesn't Maximum PC do a side-by-side Synthetic Benchmark comparison for all us readers to see once and for all who wins this round?
It won't change my opinion, I still love NVidia, and always will, but maybe it'll show that AMD actually can eek out a few points of performance at the cost of image quality.
Neufeldt2002
March 28, 2011 at 8:28am
They don't do many synthetic benchmarks because they can be unreliable. Back when nVidia released the 5000 series cards, they were caught fudging the numbers on the synthetic benchmarks to claim they were faster than ATI's cards, since then most reviewers steer clear of the synthetic benchmarks.
acidic
March 27, 2011 at 6:48pm
did i mention that the 590s are prone to exploding ? there are numerous reports that they explode with voltage increases even some reports at stock speeds. there are also some videos of it happening on youtube. they shouldnt use cheap mosfets and vrms with their high end cards. hopefully they will fix this in future revisions. alot of sites are saying that its the 267.52 drivers. now the whole delaying the release by 2 days over "driver issues" is becoming more clearly and they actually didnt fix the problem and wanted to give everyone a false sense of relief that it was "fixed"
Neufeldt2002
March 27, 2011 at 7:57pm
After doing a quick search on google for gtx 590 exploding I found quite a few links. I think if I was in the market for a dual gpu card I would go with AMD. Disclaimer, I have never owned a AMD/ATI card.
acidic
March 27, 2011 at 6:26pm
im no fanyboy as ive owned my share of both amd/nvidia. im really pleased to see that nvidia took the back seat in this battle. they talk so much smack constantly and needed a reality check and amd delivered it with the 6990. im hoping that amd does the same to intel with their upcoming procs. nvidia really took a back seat with quad gpu scaling with the 590. all giants eventually fall and im sure they are working around the clock with new drivers to improve the performance and maybe even working on their next gen cards. it will be an interesting next 6 months or so
Marcbman
March 27, 2011 at 6:25pm
In my opinion, the simple benefit of Nvidia's Stereoscopic vision and Nvidia enhanced programs (stuff like vReveal) alone make the 590 better. Also, I have had bad experiences dealing with AMD products. Nvidia has always worked flawlessly for me. So if they are tied for speed, Nvidia beats them with convenience and product quality.
Arlips
March 27, 2011 at 9:51pm
I have to agree on 3D Vision. It is by far the best stereoscopic PC gaming solution when compared to iZ3D and DDD, whom rarely update their drivers. I don't like being restricted to Nvidia GPUs to use it, but what are you gonna do. I can't really expect Nvidia to make drivers for a competitor's GPU. IZ3D and DDD do because they are third parties not trying to sell video cards, but their drivers aren't the best and they rarely release new versions that add specific support for new games like Nvidia do.
This alone makes me happy to stick with Nvidia even if their cards aren't always the best. Granted, neither are AMD's. Right now I have a measly GTX 280 though which is being absolutely murdered in recent games when playing in stereoscopic 3D. I've been thinking about a GTX 590 but I'd like to wait for some new drivers to come out and I'd have to upgrade my 550w PSU first.
Caboose
March 27, 2011 at 9:12pm
However, Stereoscopic takes a hit on your framerate, I believe that you need at minimum, a 120Hz monitor (which are upwards of $400), plus all the extra hardware. And the nVidia enhanced stuff doesn't work with everything. Same with PhysX. Sure there are more and more games coming out to support it, but its still a very small amount in the grand scheme of things.
I wouldn't say that nVidia beats AMD with product quality as nVidia has had a LOT of major issues, including a huge recall that affected a lot of mobile computers. Plus their desktop GPUs generate an abnormal amount of heat (not to mention nVidia PR had told its customers to pretty much suck it up and live with it).
Buying a GPU based on 1 feature that requires you to replace your screen, and buy additional hardware, and some random software support is not a good financial decision. It should be part of your overall decision, not the only thing.
majorsuave
April 18, 2011 at 11:54am
so... out of curiosity, did nVidia ever fulfilled the challenge?
