If you’re looking for a graphics card today, the decision is more diffi cult than ever. The two primary suppliers of graphics processors, AMD and Nvidia, have taken decidedly diff erent paths, even as they add more robust support for new graphics and GPU-compute programming interfaces.
DIRECTX 11
Both AMD and Nvidia support Microsoft’s latest DirectX 11 graphics standard. So far, all DirectX 11 games have run well on both, though some run faster on Nvidia and others faster on AMD. So, you can feel comfortable that either AMD or Nvidia should be fine if you’re looking to run the latest games.
DISPLAY SUPPORT
On the AMD side, the Radeon HD 6000 line of graphics chips continues to support a minimum of three displays with a single card, just as the older HD 5000 series did. However, all HD 6000 cards have DisplayPort 1.2 built in. What that means is that monitors with DisplayPort 1.2 support can be daisy-chained, so that one card can drive up to six LCD panels. Nvidia’s support for DisplayPort has been lukewarm on consumer graphics cards, but individual card manufacturers have occasionally added DisplayPort connectors. Almost all monitors still ship with DVI connectors, though, so if you’re running one or two monitors, you’re in good shape with a single Nvidia card.
STEREOSCOPIC 3D
AMD has just begun adding stereoscopic 3D capability; the new Radeon HD 6000 series cards support stereoscopic 3D. In both games and Bluray movies, though, glasses must be obtained from third parties. Nvidia’s 3DVision off ers robust stereoscopic 3D support, provided you’ve also got a PC monitor capable of running at the required 120Hz refresh rate. In addition, if you’re running an SLI setup, you can use 3DVision across three monitors, and the effect can be pretty startling. A system with an Nvidia card can connect to an HDTV and allow that TV’s native stereoscopic capability to work with the PC.
GPU COMPUTE
If you’re into GPU-compute applications, Nvidia still has the edge here. While newer applications are moving toward multi-vendor standards like DirectCompute and OpenCL, a large library of applications exists for Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA GPU-compute architecture, including the recently released Adobe Premiere Pro CS5’s Mercury Playback Engine.
PHYSICS
Nvidia has worked mightily to get game programmers to incorporate its PhysX technology, but only a few games really support it well. We’re starting to see more open APIs that support OpenCL, like Bullet Physics, arrive on the scene. Already, 3DMark 2011 is shipping with Bullet Physics support, and it’s likely we’ll see a variety of new games ship with Bullet Physics.
POWER CONSUMPTION
Nvidia’s made some substantial strides in improving power efficiency, but cards using AMD GPUs still tend to consume less power. If you can save $50 a year in electricity, that could mean an additional game you can buy.
HD VIDEO ENCODING
While both cards support HD video decoding, AMD’s thirdgeneration Unified Video Decoder (UVD3) offers hardware decoding of key HD codecs, including VC-1 and H.264. It also handles MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Part 2, including DivX and xVid in hardware. AMD also supports hardware-accelerated transcoding in its fixed-function UVD3, with the ability to convert H.264 and MPEG-2 1080p streams to a different H.264 or MPEG-2 target bitrate and resolution.
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