My video card (Geforce 9800 GTX+ 1GB) died and now I'm deciding between a Geforce GTX 560 and a Radeon 6870.

 

Besides Mass Effect 3, SWTOR will likely be the last major PC game I buy for quite some time. With that in mind, does SWTOR run better on AMD or Nvidia graphics cards?

This is pretty much all I play right now.

 

I had 2 GTX 460's that I traded in for 570's. I heard ATI has issues with this game, and from experiences in Rift, WoW, Aion, Witcher2 and a plethora of others I stay away from ATI, but that's not a knock on their hardware. It seems developers for MMO's are partial to nVidia, I am just partial to EVGA since their customer service is absurdly awesome.

 

If you were running a 9800... for this game going all the way up to a 560+ might be overkill for your PC though.

 

Do you know if your mobo is even has 16x PCIe? If it does you could go that route.

 

Another GREAT upgrade to help this game with loading time is an SSD. NewEgg has been having constant sales on them every day, a different one. Last week the 80 GB Intel's were 80 bucks with MIR.

 

Post your full box specs and we can see about sharing some knowledge. Just no pictures, don't want to give SOPA proponents a hardon.

Always NVidia. For every game. Period.

My video card (Geforce 9800 GTX+ 1GB) died and now I'm deciding between a Geforce GTX 560 and a Radeon 6870.

 

Besides Mass Effect 3, SWTOR will likely be the last major PC game I buy for quite some time. With that in mind, does SWTOR run better on AMD or Nvidia graphics cards?

 

I have and am using a Radeon 6870 black edition. With a bottle neck being my memory (DDR2 1066) im getting between 25-60fps with EVERYTHING on high settings, even shadows. So for a cheaper card i love it and works great. Hope this helps.

Matter of small things and opinion. Ofc, at times by statistic either nvidias most expensive is better than ATI's most expensive, and visa versa.

 

I've had both, and for last year or two I've rolled with 5870 and it's been a beatufy, and was worth it's money. I'll probably research a bit on next gen cards after they come and have proper estimates on heat and performance. I am running everything high except shadow, and I am rolling at 90-100 fps mostly on Alderaan as it is. I haven't paid much attention to it as I've never felt it slows below 60 to start being notable.

 

Wow, skyrim, left for dead games, counter strike, mass effect and witcher series, I haven't found any issues with ATI on any, from my experience. More than most, there is often a solution to be found even if something small appears, and normal users rarely have strength to find it if such surfaces. Once in these years I noted newest drivers were poor on some games, because of a bug, and I simply converted to previous ones and later went for newer beta drivers.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Rethan

All my guildies with ATI cannot play right now. After last night Patch 1.1 they have cloudy screen ... He told me his ATI card is top of the line cost $700 and he cannot play right now with high settings ... setting low worked.

 

While my lowly Nvidia 9800 card works awesome. Thanks Nvidia ... Glad I bought your stock at $8.10

ATI always. ALWAYS has problems with games.

All my guildies with ATI cannot play right now. After last night Patch 1.1 they have cloudy screen ... He told me his ATI card is top of the line cost $700 and he cannot play right now with high settings ... setting low worked.

 

While my lowly Nvidia 9800 card works awesome. Thanks Nvidia ... Glad I bought your stock at $8.10

 

You got stock at $8.10?

 

You.

Suck.

 

( In the best possible manner of course... I'm just jealous. )

Be prepared for significant bias in people's opinions on graphics cards. There is a real flamewar at times between Nvidia & AMD fans.

 

That's not to say that everything you hear will be wrong - just take things with a pinch of salt.

 

I've run games with Nvidia without much in the way of issues. TOR runs well with Nvidia from my personal experience. Speaking purely now about 3D, rather than games specifically, I can say that at our company we see a lot more ATI driver crashes, but that's not a statistic to bet the farm on.

 

Whatever card you get, be careful to read up about them and make sure you're not getting a rebrand of an older chipset etc. Both manufacturers have done that at one time or another. Read multiple reviews about your intended card.

Using two 570's (although ATM not in SLI) with a 256 gig SSD. Except for the occasional flaring, having NO problems with the graphics (including FPS), load times, etc.. Everything on High and 2x AA.

I'm running a XFX HD6870 on 12.1 drivers and am having zero issues at all to be honest.

I just upgraded recently to ATI, and it works fine for me. I didn't have any problems with my previous nvidia card either. Don't listen to the propaganda. It's just like WoW vs. latest MMO talk, and the typical low brow binary view points.

100% Nvidia. I had 2 ATI cards and it caused major stability issues with swtor. I replaced them with a single Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 and have not a single issue since.

AMD 7970 just went public.

hands down nVidia, but this is always going to be a very polarized, and opinionated question (just like AMD/Intel). Fanboys of either side will come out of the woodwork.

 

Personally, I've used nVidia exclusively (EVGA) for the past few years, had a number of card upgrades, and they're just the best of the best. Can't say the same for my few cards which were ATI (before they were picked up by AMD), as they took forever to process updates and just broke with almost every Windows update. Gets tiring after a while.

What issues do AMD have with this game?

I have always purchased Nvidia cards.

 

My dad had ONE ATI card that died within 3 months and it was top of the line at the time, there was nothing better then it. Needless to say he got his money back and purchased the equivilent Nvidia version card.

 

That computer is at this very monent STILL running. It is a Dell NXP Generation 2. It has 1 GB ddr ram, and a pentium 4. The game to this day still plays world of warcraft on almost full settings.

 

Did I mention that the card and the computer is now going on 11 years with all original parts save the GFX card. Nothing has been replaced and the compy is still going strong.

 

With an old old agp card like that, still going strong, I can only tell you that Nvidia cards seem to be working great with me and the rest of my family.

 

For those curious about the XPS Generation 2

 

http://www.lyberty.com/tech/sysspecs/XPS/index.html

Edited January 19, 2012 by Darth_Grissom

Honestly I would go with Nvidia, I have heard of issues with ATI and SWTOR(along with other games) and their support for the cards are not as good as NVidia from personal experience(use to have a ATI card a few years back, took forever for them to put out drivers). ATI also seems to have fallen behind a bit in terms of performance = price. Edited January 19, 2012 by MaGicBush

I don't have a bias, I go with whatever is the fastest usually.

 

AMD, or ATI as I still prefer to call them does make great hardware, I did go from the 5000 series radeon to dual gtx 580s because at the time the 580 was hands down the fastest. And since doing so, I would have to rate my experience with Nvidia a little better.

 

This wasn't always the case. I've had Nvidia cards I was unhappy with in the past too. Likewise you get faster driver updates with the AMD cards, but some would argue that the quality of them is lesser.

 

Even though I like AMD's products, I would have to agree at this point they still tend to suffer from more problems. Developers still favor Nvidia in my experience. Plus Nvidia supports opengl better which is nice.

 

Still all said, people who have brand loyalty based on name alone have become slaves to marketing. You generally won't go wrong if you stick to trusted information sources and reviews and do your own research.

Edited January 19, 2012 by savagepotato

I switched from ATI to nvidia and love my nvidia 560ti. I say Nvidia. The support is better.

Speaking personally, my first three video cards were ATI cards. One performed well for years, another burned out and was physically destroyed after a year, and the third had consistent driver problems with every release from ATI. I am currently using an EVGA Nvidia GTX 260 and have had it for over 3 years now and it works flawlessly to this day. SWTOR performance is a little low on highest settings, but if I turn down character detail and take off AA/shadows it runs at a steady 40 FPS, most games that came out in 2011 handle similarly as long as you turn off the bells and whistles.

 

I'd recommend Nvidia personally, but I'm sure other people have opposite stories in dealing with ATI

Honestly I would go with Nvidia, I have heard of issues with ATI and SWTOR(along with other games) and their support for the cards are not as good as NVidia from personal experience(use to have a ATI card a few years back, took forever for them to put out drivers). ATI also seems to have fallen behind a bit in terms of performance = price.

 

This is bad advice on drivers...

 

AMD methodically releases a driver update each and every month. Nvidia does take longer to update drivers. I use Nvidia cards, but let's be accurate shall we.

Thanks, for the feedback. I was content with the performance of the 9800. It got between 20-50 fps with everything at 'high', bloom off, tree detail at 50%, and 1920x1200 resolution. I have an older Geforce 6600 filling in atm and the game is actually playable (everything at low/off, 800x600 resolution), but I'd rather scoop my eyes out with a rusty spoon than look at the game with those settings.

 

I've always gone with Nvidia cards, but I've read some good things about recent AMD cards and their support for games so I'm considering jumping ship if it makes a difference for SWTOR.

 

...

Post your full box specs and we can see about sharing some knowledge. ...

 

I'm at work right now, but from memory (and newegg order history , this order was nearly 4 years old!):

 

MB: ASUS P5Q Pro (Intel P45 Chipset)

CPU: Intel Core 2 DUO 8400 3.0GHZ

RAM: G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 1066

Power Supply: Corsair HX520W

Hard Drive: Western Digital SATA II Caviar 300GB Green

 

Whether or not my power supply can handle the extra draw of a new graphics card is my biggest concern. The only other parts in the computer are a tv tuner card and a dvd-rw. Based on a little research, I think the Geforce 560 and Radeon 6870 should fit power wise (size wise they're actually smaller than my old card).

 

Any additional input will be appreciated.

You will get a lot of really bad advice about graphics cards on a forum, as a rule. Far too many armchair experts that will feed you a lot of nonsense and hocus pocus based on their own limited experience and personal bias.

 

Stick to reliable sources like anandtech or other quality hardware sites.

This is bad advice on drivers...

 

AMD methodically releases a driver update each and every month. Nvidia does take longer to update drivers. I use Nvidia cards, but let's be accurate shall we.

 

Also, I have had a couple games in the past year or so where there were nvidia driver issues. I can't really remember the games at this point. I remember waiting for a patch on a couple games at least.

 

In my opinion, both companies these days have their issues with drivers. It's a complicated process, so I don't really fault them.