I've been using a GTX 770 for about i would say 3 months now, and so far in the gaming department its excellent.
However in the Overclocking Department not so much, now to be fair this was my first Nvidia GPU I've ever used, coming from a Crossfire Setup when I "Killed My Console" then Crossfire Frustrating me so I sold one of my 2 R9-270x's at the time then. then finally grabbing a 770.
Now Using a GTX 770, the hatred I'm starting to develop with Nvidia GPUs or just maybe this specific generation of Nvidia GPUS at least from my experience and maybe from other complaints I've read about are the following,
Lack of decent Voltage Control
Low Power Limits
Temperature Settings, I personally feel that this setting is useless cause it ignores whatever i set it to anyways.
Boost Clocking, this is a Double-Edged Sword for me, cause yes its awesome when overclocking when it boosts the core clock a bit farther after an overclock but to in some games it can sometimes be just stupid. in my case after an overclock boosting the core clock a bit more and making games crash sometimes, actually rarely but it happens a bit more often after incredibly tiny overclocks.
Nvidia being cheap with the VRAM Count. this bothers me slightly, a tiny bit. now to be fair my specific GTX 770 that i own is EVGA's Classified Series GPU. which comes with 4GBS VRAM. and yes I'm also aware this 770 is sort of Re-badged 680 on Steroids. however if i actually were running a dual monitor setup which i'm not, but i did plan on it in the near future, maybe grab a 21:9 Monitor, i wouldn't have felt comfortable with the 2GB VRAM count that the 770 originally was built around. even though its an insanely capable card of running the good majority of my games on ultra.
These are my reasons that maybe sometime in the near future i probably won't grab an Nvidia card and probably stick with AMD.
Do you this my reasons are valid? i would like constructive criticism on this cause to be honest I'm in-between Satisfied and Disappointed with Nvidia on these points.
I've noticed lol, i stopped using Precision X after awhile i started to use GPU Tweak, then using Kombustor, and Unigine heaven and Valley to check if my card was stable during set overclocks. and that link that's pretty surprising. i really wouldnt have expected that.
The VRAM really can be an issue in heavily modded Skyrim or on higher resolutions (see 780 Ti SLI vs 290x CFX @ 4k).
I do feel like AMD cards have been better overclockers, especially recently (my HD 7950 was almost able to hit a 50% OC on the core, assuming from the default 800 Mhz as opposed to my stock 925 mhz).
In terms of drivers, I think it has really become that both nVidia and AMD have great drivers, just nVidia's have more features (game optimization, shadowplay, etc.). But, of course, not all of those features are necessary for all users.
yeah i do love shadow-play a lot and to be honest Geforce Experience to me is just better than AMD's Raptr thing that they have going on, i don't know why, i think cause its more Intrusive, like when i load up a game and that little bar thing comes up or telling me how i can always join a contest or something, i feel like Raptr is just advertisements in my games.
I personally don't really have much of a use for Shadowplay, but I've heard it's really good. As for Geforce Experience and Raptr, well, I used Raptr for a bit but ended up uninstalling just because I felt like it was eating a ton of my system's resources. I'm not a huge fan of either, simply because I like picking settings for my games on my own to figure out what works best.
Edit: I do have Geforce Experience on my laptop, and I never really use it, but I don't uninstall either since it notifies me of driver updates, and it's less obstrusive.
I do applaud nVidia for their software, they seem to being a lot of good in that area. I just feel they've become a bit complacent in terms of hardware, and AMD is really starting to pull ahead in that area. At least from my understanding, the Titan-z has been delayed twice, presumably because of the 295x2.
Edit: well in terms of hardware, nVidia still very much has the better reference coolers. But cards with non-reference coolers, which are the only ones worth buying imo, make that irrelevant.
What other criticisms could you really make? Dumb stuff like the Titan-z falls under the category of poor pricing, and in terms of power consumption and heat they're quite a bit ahead of AMD, especially with Maxwell.
That was a hilarious video. Thanks for posting it.
nVidia really seems to be price gouging on their high end cards. The Titan Z is so bad that it makes the $1500 295x2 look like an amazing deal, when in the past that would be pretty awful too.
I was reading above about criticisms about raptr. What does Raptr have to do with AMD or Nvidia? it is independent of both companies. AMD is paying raptr money to put their name on Raptr's utility because AMD can't be bothered to create something similar to Geforce Experience themselves. Raptr was not created nor is it run by AMD. Considering that I have had a raptr account long before AMD had anything to do with it and I have always used Nvidia graphics cards.
That is a good point. But considering it called "AMD gaming evolved" (at least formally, by AMD), it is basically the equivalent to Geforce Experience. It's not the same by any means, but I think it's the best comparison that can be made.
Though I think it's been time and time repeated, the Titan Z was never supposed to compete as a gaming card with the 295x2, it just so happened that the CEO decided to use hype rhetoric and the media and public at large misunderstood what the Titan Z was. It's a professional CUDA card for a professional user, sure you can buy 2 Titans for 2 grand but if you want them stuck on the same PCB engineering had to go into that.
You would be surprised how well Nvidia GPUs overclock with a custom BIOS. They have so much thermal headroom that even extreme overvolting is no problem at all, even on air. That said, Nvidia doesn't allow it of course. They want to control the user experience, and they're probably afraid of people frying their cards. I definitely feel you there, you shouldn't have to do this in order to overclock properly, but that doesn't mean that they don't overclock well (the exact opposite is the case).
The amount of VRAM is no real problem, 2GB are totally fine even for 1440p gaming. Yes, you could argue with Skyrim and 100+ mods, but let's be realistic: That game does not actually need huge amounts of VRAM, it's just not optimized properly because you're throwing hundreds of mods at it. Also, actually running skyrim with these extreme presets on a gtx 770 makes no sense. You are playing at 20-ish fps, which nobody would do IRL, forcing a bottleenck that would never occur for 99% of games and applications out there does not count. It's just unrealistic. The actual problem with the 770 is the small memory bus, but that can't be helped since it is a 680 refresh after all.
I'm extremely happy with my 770 and I'm actually a bit disappointed with AMD this generation. Yes, they provide lots of raw power, but the extreme heat and noise levels + the power consumption are something that I don't want to deal with. If they had non-reference coolers sooner I would have considered them, but that wasn't the case. I want my PC to be quiet and cool, throwing something like a 290x in there doesn't make too much sense.
There is little room for OC after the factory superclock on that card. Maybe 1250 gpu and 7.5 ish ram? It's really pointless anyway if you plat a variety of games. Some games will be stable while others you have to adjust again. I'd just leave it stock. In the future if you want evga just go for FTW instead and save the $20. They kinda blurred everything with how close they made both cards over $20. Otherthan that it's fantastic at 1080p and 1440p.