Georgia is hard on decks. We get intense sun, long humid stretches, heavy afternoon storms, and just enough winter to matter. That combination pushes wood through repeated wet-dry cycles, which is what causes the cupping, checking, and popped fasteners you see on a five-year-old deck that nobody has touched.
Pressure-treated pine is the value choice, and it's a legitimate one. It's roughly a third of the material cost of composite, it can be stained any color you want, and a well-built PT deck lasts a long time. The catch is that it needs maintenance: a clean and re-seal every two to three years, and the honest truth is that most homeowners do it once and then stop. A neglected PT deck looks tired by year six.
Composite costs more up front and asks almost nothing of you afterward. It won't splinter, it won't need staining, and it holds its color. The two things people underestimate are heat and installation tolerance. Dark composite in full southern sun gets genuinely hot underfoot in August, so if the deck faces west and gets no shade, go lighter on the color. And composite is far less forgiving than wood about joist spacing, board gapping, and fastener systems. Build it outside the manufacturer's printed spec and you get movement, and you lose the warranty that justified the price.
Here's the part that matters more than the decking choice: the frame. Both surfaces sit on pressure-treated framing, and that framing is what fails first on almost every deck we tear out. The ledger board where the deck attaches to the house is the single most common failure point in residential construction, and it fails because someone lagged it through the siding without flashing it. Water gets behind, the band board rots quietly for a decade, and then the deck comes off the house with people on it.
So spend the decision energy on the frame. Footings below frost depth, a properly flashed ledger, joist tape over the beams, and hardware rated for contact with treated lumber. Get that right and either decking material will serve you well. Get it wrong and the nicest composite in the catalog is sitting on a countdown.