NVDIA or AMD gpu best for modded Skyrim?

[Valamyr]

Hello guys!

 

I've read over the last couple years the odd person commenting NVDIA gpus might be better for modded Skyrim than AMD ones, and I wanted to know if that holds any water. This isn't a general 'what brand is better' nor even a 'what will give me more FPS' card, but more specifically whether one of the two brands might result in less crashes, vram-driven infinite loading screens, better performance with ENBs and ENBoost; this kind of thing.

 

My current install of Skyrim is heavily modded, and generally stable, but I have to flush my VRAM constantly with ENBoost before loading screens and my performance with Phinix ENB is below what I'd like it to be given I'm playing in 1440p. I'm thinking it'll be time to upgrade soon. I've traditionally been leaning more towards AMD/ATI for GPUs, and I have one of those right now (6950HD, OC'd, with the 6970 shaders hack) - but I wanted advice from other heavy modders, perhaps people who've played Skyrim on both; should I lean naturally towards NVIDIA when picking a new card, or is what I've read mostly the 'usual' hardware wars and both are equally stable?

[TechAngel85]

Oh no you didn't! :ohmy: AMD vs nVidia is one of the age old feuds and you just poured some gasoline on the wood and struck a match...

 

My opinion from what I've seen over my course of being with STEP is that nVidia tends to be more reliable when it comes to Skyrim, but you shouldn't base a video card purchase on how well it plays a game built around 6 year old technology.

[Aiyen]

Only real difference is that ENB is slightly more optimized for Nvidia, since that is what it is being developed on first and foremost. But many people play it without any issues what so ever on AMD as well.

 

Any stability issue due to GFX choice is going to be extremely minimal compared to the issues with the game engine due to massive mod lists.

 

Get the one that offers the best bang for the buck...However also keep in mind that AMD is going to release their next versions soon.. so buying one now is kinda a waste of money.

[Valamyr]

Yeah, I know the 9000 series are coming soon, will probably be waiting a month for that... I want the next card to be somewhat future-proof and get great performance in GTA V (whenever we lowly PC users get it).

 

As for basing a decision on this game, I know it may seem weird, but its mostly that its the only game I really have some issues with (once modded ofc), and I know both major brands generally work well enough with any game. If ENB is the only concern, though, I can probably live without that. I read people claiming ATI users had more VRAM ILS issues but I assume they were mistaken.

[Garfink]

Bottleneck is the Skryim Engine. So either is fine. I've gone Nvidia simply because of slightly better game support in general.