nVidia vs ATI

[David J.]

So, what do you all prefer?

I used to be a nVidia fan, and indifferent towards ATi... but I got sick of their shit with product renaming and confusing lineup that I still don't fully understand among other reasons I forget. Plus I don't game too much these days, and I am more concerned about media features and ATi was kicking ass in that regard... will say that they have gotten better with their drivers and hardware.

So I've been using ATi exclusvily in my desktop for the past year or so, and curiousity got the best of me, and I bought a nVidia card for my spare rig which is out of comission due to a faulty power supply that is getting replaced. It has a HD4670, but the damn fan is stuck at 100% and not even rivatuner can help, and it really is a shame. Anyone want a sapphire HD4670 1GB with all of the saphire logos removed from the card and I put some artic silver 5 on when I took the fan off to clean it?

I always wanted a 8800 card... bought a used EVGA 8800GTS 640MB KO today for a bit too much, but oh well. I wanted a good looking card, and a dual slot one. Yes, I am dumb to care about how a card looks. Seems the 8800 cards still catch decent bank. Hopefully it'll be just as fast, if not a bit faster than the HD4670 1GB (the extra 512mb doesn't do shit other than waste space. Hopefully it won't be bottlednecked by a 5000+ but I am putting a Phenom II X2 555 down the line when it comes out, and I have the money. Yes I know the 550 is out, and I can just bump the multiplier up to get the extra 100mhz, but I want that new stepping damnit, and I'm broke too. I think my 4770 beats it woo hoo.

Plus it feels dirty to use an nVidia card on an AMD system! So we will see..

[Knuckle Duster]

It's no secret that nvidia are dropping more balls lately than a teenage football team hitting puberty, but I'll always stick with using their products.

ATI haven't been particularly 'friendly' with the FLOSS scene for the past decade or so, & I'm slow to adapt to their new support.

[Rusty Venture]

I believe nVidia has better Linux support than ATI, so I gotta roll with nVidia.

[Chilly Willy]

ATi has released programming info about there GPUs, so EVENTUALLY they'll have better support in linux. nVidia is still better right now.

[Rusty Venture]

I'm dealing with "the right now" as I currently have a NVidia video card.

Nothing fancy, an 8500GT

[TmEE]

nVidia has lot of driver problems, or used to have.... I have a poor 8600GT in my other PC...

[Devil N]

I've had more problems with ATI drivers in the past than with Nvidia drivers. Especially when you're using Linux, Nvidia cards generally work just fine there, while ATI is considerably more problematic. OpenGL support in general has always been spotty with ATI, which sucks if you're into 3D graphics research and development.

Of course, if you're still running Windows 98, then driver problems are to be expected with newer graphics cards. I'm surprised they work at all, to be honest.

[David J.]

I wanna see how well this 8800GTS is... I can't find a good comparison between it and a HD4670.

[Rusty Venture]

nVidia has lot of driver problems, or used to have.... I have a poor 8600GT in my other PC...

I know you add tweaks and stuff to Win98 to do XP and beyond things, but I'm puzzled how you got an 8600GT to work with Win98.

Is this a newer computer (parts wise) that runs Win98? PCI-E didn't exist when Win98 was in widespread use.

[MN12BIRD]

ATi all the way dude. Actually I've had both and they both have their ups and downs.

ATi has 7.1 Realtek audio on the GPU for audio out HDMI without any extra cables (Some NVidia cards can do this by splicing the SPDIF output off the motherboard to the card on an extra cable) but the newest 5K series ATi cards even bitstream witch until now was something only a few expensive sound cards could do.

NVidia has PhysX (but I think ATi will be able to do the same thing soon)

ATi has DX11 support on the newest 5K series cards. NVidia hasn't yet.

NVidia has the fastest card money can buy the GTX295

ATi has some of the better values. Price to performance.

NVidia has better driver support, some games like Resident Evil 5 run much better on NVidia drivers. These games are optimized for NVidia drivers first as NVidia has more advertising money to game developers.

ATi has the best 40nm GPUs for awesome performance per watt. Less heat, less power.

Right now ATi is walking all over NVidia. NVidia has made alot of mistakes in the last little while, they are also having issues getting the yeilds up on the new 300 series GPU's. These cards will be NVidias first DX11 cards. They should be great when they come out but they have been delayed over and over. Who really knows when they'll come out!!

[GriskaGyoran]

Well Nvidia is known to make monster videocards and had the edge over ATi in performance since the Geforce 6 series. However ATi made up for that by having lower prices. However the GTX 3 series is supposed to be an absolute monster in performance. Perhaps Stalker Call of Pripyat will be tamed by this series. In other words, I stick with NVidia based on their good performance record. I mean ATi doesn't suck, but GTX 295 is good and I can't wait for the 395 to come out.

[gamevet]

I wanna see how well this 8800GTS is... I can't find a good comparison between it and a HD4670.

Here's a chart that shows benchmark performance for the high end video cards and processors. The HD4670 is slightly better than the 8800GTS.

I have the nVidia GeForce GTS 250 overclocked; it's basically the 9800 GTX with a new nVidia product name.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

[TmEE]

Is this a newer computer (parts wise) that runs Win98? PCI-E didn't exist when Win98 was in widespread use.

I never said I run the 8600GT on 98SE... that one is used in my XP box :P
98SE box is currently using a shitty ATI 9200SE :P

[Rusty Venture]

I didn't know you had XP, all I remember you saying is that you liked 98 and that it has some "fixes" that allow it to do some XP-ish things.