Devil's advocate, the 6000 series competitor, the 500 series, is still getting driver updates. Heck, even the 400 series, the 5000 series competitor, is still getting regular updates. By that metric, AMD's performance in terms of support is much worse than nvidia's.
And AMD really had no choice but to continue optimization of GCN 1, since they were still selling them 4 years later, while nvidia had moved onto maxwell. And kepler didnt have to wait 3 years for full performance, it was performing that well days after a game came out.
To answer the OG question, I've tried red team 4 times personally. first was the 9800 pro(constantly defaulted to the wrong driver causing black screen), then the 2600xt(driver refused to install until SP3 was uninstalled), then the llano APUs(features in CCC would randomly dissapear and/or reappear on different driver revisions, auto hybrid crossfire destroyed performance), then the 5770's(crossfire issues in many newer games took weeks, sometimes months longer than nvidia to fix, random issues would pop up from time to time). Every time driver issues have popped up that were far rarer in nvidia's camp. the 5770s (in a machine I built and supported for my friend) were closest to being stable, but my 550ti's in SLI had far fewer issues, and what issues did pop up were fixed much faster than AMD's.
This was back in 2012/2013, so take it with some salt. Things may be different now, but IME, AMD has never been as stable as nvidia.
here in the US, the 770 launched at $400, the 970 launched at $330, and now the 1070 launches at $379 ($450 for sucker edition). Considering the 1070 comes in on a much more expensive process, I dont understand the hatred for the price. it IS the same tier as the 970 and 770. Even the 670 launched at $400, so why is everyone complaining?
Now you've done it. If you're not already sitting, please sit down before reading this post. I'm not sure if it was the post
@TheinsanegamerN wrote or the beer but, work with me here for a minute while I lay it all out for you.
Alright everyone, it's story time. Time to get nostalgic!
<dissertation>
I hear you but, let me contrast your experience with mine and maybe we'll see uncover why despite having several ATi/AMD cards, we've come to different conclusions.
When I first started building my own tower, I started with a Radeon 9200. In fact, I still have it in the attic with my first CPU, motherboard, and chassis. It wasn't the fastest but, it was 10x better than Intel's integrated graphics which I was using prior to that machine, so I loved it. Heck it even overclocked without external power (Woo!) After that, I had a GeForce 6800 OC. It was better than the 9200 but, I was kind of expecting more out of it and mine didn't overclock very well. I ended up selling it to a friend at school. After that I had a x800 SE which had some pipelines cut but, overclocked really well which I was very happy with, I also sold that to a friend when I was done with it. After that I had a GeForce 7900 GT where the VRAM eventually failed and XFX replaced that with a GeForce 8600 GTS which was without a doubt the best card I've ever overclocked, I don't remember the exactly numbers very well but I think the core was at 950Mhz and shaders at 1950Mhz and performance was up something like 30% over stock. I got a Radeon HD 2600 XT to compare it to since I could get it pretty cheap and found them to be on par at stock but, the 8600 GTS wiped the floor after being overclocked. I think that 8600 GTS is burried in the attic and I still have the 2600 XT which is sitting behind me as a memento of the fact it had GDDR4 which very few GPUs used. After that I upgraded to a Radeon HD 4850 which was pretty nice. It didn't overclock well but, at the time I didn't really need to. I ended up giving that away in a machine to a friend. I replaced the 4850 with a Radeon HD 6870 on release day. I still have that GPU and it still runs great, it's sitting in a box with static-proof wrap. I paired that with a second 6870 3 years later which gave me (at the time,) 7970-like performance (when it was new) at half of the cost (since I already had the first 6870,) so long as I could deal with CFX and drivers (which I did to primary positive effect.) About 9 months ago, I decided it was time for an upgrade and chose the Radeon R9 390. The 6870s were suffering because they only had 1GB of VRAM but, they had plenty of compute power that was being untouched, so I opted for the 390 with 8GB over the 970 with 3.5GB+.5GB despite the 970s OC advantage thinking that the extra VRAM would give me more longevity should I need to buy a second one and run CFX again. While the 390 was en-route to my house, my newer 6870 failed catastrophically so clearly it was a good time to upgrade. Since then I've used the 390 primarily for work but when I game with it, I so far haven't been disappointed.
So that's my story, the only commonality is that we both owned the 2600 XT and I think we can both agree that it wasn't a very good card. It could have been great with that GDDR4 but, it ended up being pretty weak. For what it's worth though, the 2600 XT (at least mine,) didn't have external power where the 8600 GTS did so, it may not really be a fair comparison. I would argue that you shouldn't let you experience with the 2600 XT to form an opinion around AMD/ATi. I feel like between the 9000 series Radeons and the x*** Radeons that there was a shift where the higher end was better than the mainstream GPUs where nVidia had a clear advantage. I do think that the 8600 GTS was a clear indicator of that over the 2600 XT however, the 4850 was a nice card but, the 4870 ran kind of hot (I came across one of those in my travels, gave that away too,) but, the area between mainstream and high-end has always (to me, ) seems to be a strength for AMD for the last decade or so. It hasn't always been the best but, it's been comparable.
So, I will leave you with this. Not every GPU in either camp is great but, depending on the way you use a GPU, if you think it was monetarily worth it, and if something goes wrong, is up to you. Experiences vary greatly and I will tell a short story that's an example of that: Remember that XFX GeForce 8600 GTS that overclocked like hell? It also was using a proprietary MOLEX to PCI-E-like connector on the GPU which provided both +12v and +5v. Without knowing this at the time, I used a PCI-E power connector to power it since the key was the same and tried using it (for those of you who don't know, PCI-E power connectors only provide +12v.) The GPU was fine but, it ended up frying DDC on one of my monitors. I bet you not many other people will have that kind of story but, I'm sure it has influenced my upgrade decisions since. That isn't to say it's nVidia's fault but, it was a negative experience that has pushed me away from nVidia (to a lesser extent than...) and XFX to this day.
tl;dr: We may all own cards from both camps but, depending on experience, you could own the same cards and come to different conclusions. Either way, it's dumb to not acknowledge that both camps have worked hard to produce good GPUs but, that isn't always the case where sometimes there are GPUs that don't quite meet the satisfaction of consumers depending on what you bought, when you bought it, and if something went wrong.
</dissertation>
You can blame
Sierra Nevada's Torpedo Extra IPA for this rant.
