By Sydney Butler
Publication Date: 2026-03-28 18:30:00
The first graphics card I ever bought with my own money was a 16MB Voodoo 3 2000. That card introduced me to the world of hardware acceleration on PC. No more software-rendered Quake, only “real” 3D objects with smooth frame rates and sharp resolutions.
Since then, I’ve bought many GPUs, but really there have only been two serious options: AMD (formerly ATI) and NVIDIA. Personally, I’m not much of a brand snob. I’ve always bought the best graphics for my budget when it’s time to upgrade, regardless of what brand it was.
Some of the time, that was ATI/AMD, and most of the time it was NVIDIA. However, while NVIDIA GPUs have generally been the right choice for me, I’ve seen people buy NVIDIA when, objectively, the AMD alternative would have been the better choice. I have some ideas as to why.
NVIDIA’s brand power outweighs rational comparisons
It’s about mindshare as much as market share
NVIDIA now commands the sort of brand recognition that most companies can only dream of. With a solid 95% discrete graphics market share (as per Yahoo Finance) AMD cards are a rarity in the wild. So imagine when someone’s looking to buy a new GPU for a computer and everyone is using NVIDIA.
We tend to look to other people to decide what a good choice might be. If nine out of ten people are using NVIDIA, and the only AMD users you see are pretty hardcore…