ATI or NVIDIA

[Lordbob75]

Well I have heard people say that if you run AMD with ATI it seems to work best so this may be the thing to remember. Personaly I cannot say never really looked into it as I have also always only been with Intel

NO NO NO.

Just to reiterate (AGAIN), this has absolutely no basis in fact.
PLEASE stop spreading this.

~Lordbob

 

[thefabe]

Out of the over the dozen or so XFX cards I've had I've only had to RMA 2 of then and since I live only 40 miles from their headquarters I could send it out on Monday and get it back by Friday.
But to be perfectly honest my prefered brand is Evga. Fabe

 

[smarteyeball]

Well I have heard people say that if you run AMD with ATI it seems to work best so this may be the thing to remember. Personaly I cannot say never really looked into it as I have also always only been with Intel

NO NO NO.

Just to reiterate (AGAIN), this has absolutely no basis in fact.
PLEASE stop spreading this.

~Lordbob

Actually there was one CAT release that claimed an X% performance increase on AMD+ATI systems (9.12?) compared to an Intel+ATI system.

Whether that was just ATI marketing hype that actually panned out or not is a matter of conjecture.

It didn't make any difference to bugs however.


The thing with ATI drivers and issues varies a lot between games. One release may work with title A,B,C but not D,E,F.

If you are playing title A,B,C with driver X that works - you'll never notice an issue. And thus be one of the lucky users that 'has never' had an issue with any of the drivers.

But if you try A,B,C,D,E,F with driver X - where d,E,F is broken/flawed - you're going to notice an issue.

Then again being a crossfire user just adds fuel to the fire.

Just last night, I fired up Dirt 2 for the first time in ages on Cat 10.7a and it was woeful - jumping and flickering and unplayable. Reverted back to 10.5a = perfect.

But single GPU's aren't immune to issues, but if you lucky enough not to notice any issues - then you are lucky

 

[windows7user]

I think ATI offers the most bang for the buck. NVidia cards usually get better framerates (performance) while ATI cards render graphics more beautifully (quality), when comparing cards in respective price ranges. For me, I don't care whether I get 50FPS or 75FPS, can't really tell the difference. I just want a card that will give me good graphics for the buck, so I go with ATI. Also, ATI cards tend to be more power efficient and don't heat up your system that bad.

Also, if I remember correctly, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest and most powerful graphics card out right now and is of WAY better value than NVidia's fastest. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 performs at 4640 GFLOPS and costs around $650. NVidia's fastest, the GeForce GTX 480 performs at 1344.96 GFLOPS and costs around $490. So with ATI, you're getting 3.5 times more performance for only 1.4 times the price of NVidia. Now, that's what more bang for the buck is. Plus, even though the ATI HD 5970 is 3.5 times more powerful, it only uses ~50 more watts than Nvidia's fastest (or only 1.2 times more power). Talk about high efficiency. So in price, performance and power efficiency, ATI holds the lead right now.

Now, ATI is planning the new ATI HD 5970 Eyefinity which will add about almost another 1000 GFLOPS of graphics processing power.

My sources:
Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comparison of AMD graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[CarlTR6]

I had plenty of trouble with Nvida cards. I stuck with Nvidia because my card was under warranty. After upgrading the card (and paying the difference in price), I played with five different drivers before I got rid of the freezes and blue screens. I have had no problems since then. It was an older driver that worked for me, the third one down on the list. The latest drivers, including the beta, did not work.

 

[DirtRider]

Well it has been said over and over that ATI is cheaper than NIVDIA. Personally I would rather pay double the price and know when I get behind my monitor and play a game I don't have to spend 90% of that time tuning the card in just for that game or never getting that game to run correctly at all as I had with the ATI card

 

[cloud8521]

Well it has been said over and over that ATI is cheaper than NIVDIA. Personally I would rather pay double the price and know when I get behind my monitor and play a game I don't have to spend 90% of that time tuning the card in just for that game or never getting that game to run correctly at all as I had with the ATI card

yet again, i have never done that for any game and they all work great

 

[Zepher]

Well it has been said over and over that ATI is cheaper than NIVDIA. Personally I would rather pay double the price and know when I get behind my monitor and play a game I don't have to spend 90% of that time tuning the card in just for that game or never getting that game to run correctly at all as I had with the ATI card

yet again, i have never done that for any game and they all work great

Same here.
I just got the 5850 about 6 weeks ago. I removed the GTX285 and 9600GT and put in the 5850 and booted up, loaded the drivers, and it's been fine.
Played a few games in Eyefinity, Crysis, Counterstrike, and Borderlands.
Been playing Just Cause 2 as well, just with 1 screen though, should try it in Eyefinity sometime.

 

[WindowsStar]

Currently I am an ATI fan:

The last 3 nVidia cards I had all did not work for one reason or another. One card BSOD my machine at the end of the Vista days and BSOD my Windows 7 machine, nothing would fix it and Support had no clue.

I now have an ATI card in the same machine not a single BSOD so I know for sure it was the video card.

I feel each have their pros and cons.

 

[kurahk7]

IMO Both AMD and Nvidia have made great graphics card, both of them were easy to install. However I tend to lean towards ATI as my first choice but I would buy whichever card is on sale(I was aiming at the 5770/5750 and caught the 9800gt for $70)
Graphic Cards that I owned:
Nvidia Tiva TNT2
Nvidia Geforce 6150SE (onboard)
ATI Radeon HD 3650
ATI Radeon HD 3200 (onboard)
ATI Radeon HD 4650
Nvidia Geforce 9800gt
I think Intel IGPs and their new Intel HD Graphics should also be thrown into the comparison .

 

[cloud8521]

Im just not sure why people seem to be having so much trouble with ATI drivers. the only time (yes one time since their radon 7000 line) i have had a problem was with The Witcher, sidewalks were see-though. but they patched it and it was all good. that was the only time for many, many years that i have used the ATI line.

 

[smarteyeball]

I would rather pay double the price and know when I get behind my monitor and play a game I don't have to spend 90% of that time tuning the card in just for that game or never getting that game to run correctly at all as I had with the ATI card

That's why I have three different installations of Seven with a different driverset for each installation

Im just not sure why people seem to be having so much trouble with ATI drivers.

That's because they keep bloody fixing issues and then bloody well go and break them again in subsequent releases... It tends to wear thin after a while.

So too does the promise of 'it will be fixed in the next release' response - sometimes it actually is, but more often than not it's several releases later that some issues are addressed.


My last nvidia card was a 7600GS so admittedly, my personal experience with current forceware drivers is outdated - but from memory there was a lot less flapping about overall.


Aside from game breaking bugs, it's also the little niggling things that also add up to an irritating experience overall.

For example, I have several manually created profiles depending on need.

ie A desktop profile with 3 monitors in extended mode, a single screen games/movie profile and an Eyefinity profile.

Going from Eyefinity back to my 3 monitor profile, 50% of the time I have to activate the desktop profile twice because it gets the monitor placement wrong.

I can't select portrait mode with 3 monitors, vsync is still 120FPS for Eyefinity and not 60 for 60hz monitors and so on and so forth etc.

So it's actually quite easy to understand the problems people have when you personally and consistently experience them. Particularly for the 5xxx series.


Conversely however, my other machine which is no longer a gaming rig which has a single 4850 has no problems. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it's not exposed to the areas which expose the driver flaws.



When I purchased my 5970, the 470/480 had literally just been released and I was disappointed with nvidias new offerings. That's why I stayed with ATI and tbh, it's a decision I regret.

 

[mpcrsc562]

Just my two cents:

I didn't participate in the poll as I don't have any reference between the cards. I have stuck with ATI, however, because I have never had any problems with their products.

 

[smarteyeball]

Kudos to all who have never had a problem with either camp.

 

[CarlTR6]

Kudos to all who have never had a problem with either camp.

Agreed. And that seems to be rare.

 

[smurof7neves]

NVIDIA because it's the only card I've ever used in my custom PCs (I had nothing to do with the selection, however)

 

[Braveheart099]

I used Nvidia GTX 470 but sold and bought ASUS ATI Radeon 5870 V2 included new ASUS Crosshair IV Formula with X6 1090T as Ive gone back to AMD from Nvidia.. I would say ATI seem better with big fan to give 17% cooler as Nvidia card as smaller fan that can cause hot when play in heavy gaming - when I load in heavy gaming it was over 95oC but for ATI 5870 it much cooler at 58oC all way...

 

[Mellon Head]

I like both. At home, we use ATI, but at work it's Nvidia. Both work well for me, and if I have to replace anything, I look at both brands of chipset. I usually buy ATI because they are a little cheaper overall.

The whole "You must use an ATI card on an AMD platform" is total BS, but I do have a personal rule of thumb. I use the brand of card that matches the motherboard's chipset, and the only reason I do that is that so I have no stupid little problems with drivers - both GPU and mobo drivers. But that's a personal choice of mine, it is not a system requirement.

 

[kurahk7]

I like both. At home, we use ATI, but at work it's Nvidia. Both work well for me, and if I have to replace anything, I look at both brands of chipset. I usually buy ATI because they are a little cheaper overall.

The whole "You must use an ATI card on an AMD platform" is total BS, but I do have a personal rule of thumb. I use the brand of card that matches the motherboard's chipset, and the only reason I do that is that so I have no stupid little problems with drivers - both GPU and mobo drivers. But that's a personal choice of mine, it is not a system requirement.

lol I usually use the same GPU as the mobo chipset as well simply because drivers are easier to install

 

[Jester45]

sli GTX 260(core 216) with a GTX 9800 as a extra CUDA card(little bit of physx) i love all three