Ati/Amd vs Nvidia

[Ottaman Emperor Mehmet]

with the current line up , which one is better and which one do you prefer?

[Jaketh]

NVIDIA, DOWN WITH ATI RARARJARKJSRKAJkjsdksad......Nvidias cards are slightly better and in the long run perform better then the 5000 series as more DX11 games come out

[Freddie]

Hmm this thread has zero chance of turning into a flame war.

It depends on what's important to you, speed, price, features, package, value, power usage, heat, noise etc. Another important factor is where you live as this can have a bearing on the value of the card.

Generally I buy whatever card represents the best value for money and that is determined by there performance in games for nothing else really matters. I don't care if my video card can now encode video or can be used for general purpose work, I bought the it to play games and nothing else.

At the moment living in the UK ATI has all the video cards worth buying at every price point - performance, value, price, heat, power and packages AMD has it spot on at the moment. What's telling about ATI dominance at the moment (other then the 8% increase market share in Q1) is Nvidia have released their brand new state of the art DX11 cards and AMD hasn't felt the need to slash prices and in some cases it's top card Hd5970 is selling well beyond it's MRSP since Fermi's arrival.

If you looking for the best video cards for your money check this out.

[Darkpriest667]

Hmm this thread has zero chance of turning into a flame war.

It depends on what's important to you, speed, price, features, package, value, power usage, heat, noise etc. Another important factor is where you live as this can have a bearing on the value of the card.

Generally I buy whatever card represents the best value for money and that is determined by there performance in games for nothing else really matters. I don't care if my video card can now encode video or can be used for general purpose work, I bought the it to play games and nothing else.

At the moment living in the UK ATI has all the video cards worth buying at every price point - performance, value, price, heat, power and packages AMD has it spot on at the moment. What's telling about ATI dominance at the moment (other then the 8% increase market share in Q1) is Nvidia have released their brand new state of the art DX11 cards and AMD hasn't felt the need to slash prices and in some cases it's top card Hd5970 is selling well beyond it's MRSP since Fermi's arrival.

If you looking for the best video cards for your money check this out.

ok.. first line.. epic... ill rep you for that when im done spewing


Ive owned.. a LOT of graphcis cards.. and up until 5 years ago bought the newest and shiniest (with fans) Lately I wait until a fanless production line card comes out cause ive had bad trouble with the fans dying. Personal Preference


Ive owned the voodoo3d, nvidia, and ati... and at their times each has performed brilliantly.. with the exception of heat sink fans which seem to have a bad time of dying out after a year or two.. hence why ive gone fanless. I think the quoted poster is right.. it just depends on who has it at the time.. each company is equally capable of producing awesome video cards that will do anything you could possibly want and more the day they roll off and make it to the product lines.

[Thanatos]

I have an ATI video card and an nVidia motherboard.

So there.

[mrmouth]

I love everything that ATI is doing hardware wise, and love everything that Nvidia does, engine, and software wise. Sucks to be me. Even more so when Mafia 2 will be so PhysX heavy. Been waiting years for that game.

I guess for the average person, even with the markup, ATI is still the way to go.

[HansDuet]

I prefer nVidia cards myself but I've heard (and seen) that ATi does good cards too. Haven't owned one for many years and last one was a disappointment.

[Legionary Jezza]

I have always had ATI and im not gonna change.

-Evil

[karamazovmm]

FLAME, burn!

I'm with the red team, I prefer bang for the buck, so there is none in the green offering, there is no need for me to get the best gpu, I'm concerned with the mainstream market, that is people who will spend 80~150 dollars, and seriously nvidia just loses there hands down, hands down. No new offerings at that area, the old ones just are to fill, they don't make profit from those.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

I own cards from both companies.

My ATI cards: 4550, 4770

My Nvidia cards: 8600GTS, 9600GSO, 2X GTX260



Heat & fans: Both companies make great cards, ATI's cards run cooler but not necessarily quieter although the quality of the fan is based largely on the card manufacturer.

Power consumption: ATI cards use less power especially when idle than Nvidia's similar offerings.

Drivers: Nvidia has better drivers. They work with game developers much closer than ATI does and therefore are able to push out more FPS. Nvidia's software is far, far, easier to work with if you need to use custom settings for certain games, ATI failed so miserably at this that users developed a program called "ATI tray tools" to make up for the missing feature. Nvidia's software has a better looking interface. Nvidia also has PhysX which comes into play on games like Mirror's Edge, Cryostasis, Batman Arkam Asylum etc. ATI's cards lack this feature altogether as PhysX was designed by Nvidia and is exclusive to them. Nvidia's drivers also provide acceleration for certain programs such as flash player which greatly improves their performance.

Price: ATI offers the best bang for your buck and Nvidia holds the performance crown with the most powerful single GPU for the last few years.


My personal preference is toward Nvidia. I use ATI cards on computers that I don't play games on.

[Big Boss]

Drivers: Nvidia has better drivers. They work with game developers much closer than ATI does and therefore are able to push out more FPS. Nvidia's software is far, far, easier to work with if you need to use custom settings for certain games, ATI failed so miserably at this that users developed a program called "ATI tray tools" to make up for the missing feature. Nvidia's software has a better looking interface. Nvidia also has PhysX which comes into play on games like Mirror's Edge, Cryostasis, Batman Arkam Asylum etc. ATI's cards lack this feature altogether as PhysX was designed by Nvidia and is exclusive to them. Nvidia's drivers also provide acceleration for certain programs such as flash player which greatly improves their performance.

Couple of corrections.

ATI's drivers do provide flash acceleration.

PhysX wasn't designed by nVidia, it was originally made by Ageia, then bought by nVidia.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Couple of corrections.

ATI's drivers do provide flash acceleration.

PhysX wasn't designed by nVidia, it was originally made by Ageia, then bought by nVidia.

1 Correction.

I didn't say ATI doesn't have flash acceleration, I gave that as an example of a program Nvidia accelerates. I believe Nvidia does so for more programs unless something has changed.

[Freddie]

PhysX wasn't designed by nVidia, it was originally made by Ageia, then bought by nVidia.

+1 addition.

And the guy who made PhysX for Ageia has now left Nvidia and is working for the red team. techeye

The main difference between Nvidia and ATI/AMD approach to development is Nvidia takes a vertical approach with developers, which means they would give a studio some code for what they feel would work well with there hardware (say PhysX or custom AA) and some cash for sponsorship then walks away. ATI's approach could be more described as a casual stroll since you rarely see there marketing in PC games however you only have to look at the API they support to see what there direction is - OpenCL, Bullet etc all of these are open source which will benefit everyone as you create and ecosphere for development which all developers can access and learn from. The best analogy to summarise the two approach is Nvidia would see a hungry man and give him a fish to feed him for the day whereas ATI would teach the man how to fish so he can feed himself for life.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

The best analogy to summarise the two approach is Nvidia would see a hungry man and give him a fish to feed him for the day whereas ATI would teach the man how to fish so he can feed himself for life.

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will start a multi million dollar business, will deplete natural resources, pollute the oceans, hire and oppress workers until no-one will even remember what living was like. So next time, just give the man a damn fish.

[mrmouth]

Yeah, I dont think you can bend that analogy to fit a multi-billion dollar industry. Developers, develop on Nvidia because it offers more, is easier to use, etc. And that will only continue until ATI provides better engines. But then you also have the issue of their strategy, which is to appeal to the gamer with a $1000 machine, that somehow feels victimized. Friend to the people, while still keeping their markup. The whole thing is silly. And the momentum that ATI has is severely hurt by not being able to release their next architecture on a new process, this year. It would have been significant if they could have.

Until ATI embraces what Nvidia already has, in GPGPU, they wont make much of a dent in the software development sector. And Nvidia's engines only continue to corner that market, where some people thought they wouldn't.

I mean, Nvidia progressed the GPU with fermi, they had some issues, but the next release should be much better.

[Space Wolves]

I prefer Nvidia, but i've been tempted to go ATI. To be honest, they both have pros and cons, why not they both just combine to form some super graphics company so there will be absolutely no competition in the market?


Nvideon lulz

[Thanatos]

My only real gripe with ATI is that they seem to be quite lackluster in providing decent patch/driver support. What a pain in the butt for me and my 4870.

[mukali]

For the current line-up I would go with ATI. I live in hot environment and heat is an issue for me.
But I have owned cards from both companies. I buy the card I think is best value in terms of price performance at the time. I still have a ATi 9500 pro running on a P4 system that I gave to my sister who only uses it for surfing the web. My Nvidia 8800 is still going strong in an Opteron system which is my secondary sytem now. My main rig has a ATI5770. When needed I may crossfire or replace it with a faster card; don't see that need for a year or so, by which time another 5770 will be really cheap or I might replace with new card at $150 price that performs as well as ATI 5850.

[Morrowind3]

I Use Nvidia.
Because of that 3D Glasses Function, PhsysX, And i've Heard rumors that they are creating a possibility to place 2 DIFFERENT video cards in the same PC at once, Atm, u can only double the same.
Also, ATI isnt good in Marketing and Advertising.
I mean, Just look at their Mascot. Graphics are as fugly as hell
But I aint saying ATI sucks, I just prefer Nvidia Much better then ATI.
Because ATI is generally cheaper

[karamazovmm]

actually you can already pair discrete card with an integrated card, most notable uses are in laptops (which were a complete fail, only apple uses that) and when you want to live a dedicated physx card which is a way to take that old card and put it to use