ATI or NVidia ? [/Poll]

BlackDog · Post by **BlackDog** » Tue May 27, 2003 11:06 pm

Spazmo wrote:Ah, hell, BlackDog, if you like NVIDIA, then good for you. ATI does need some competition in order for them not to get complacent. To each his own, really.

Actually, I like both cards. I just prefer nVidia since they have a good track record. Whatever people want in their machines is what I put in for them. I don't recommend they get either. I tell them to get what they want - as long as they want to deal with the consequences if they have bad drivers in the present or future, or if the company goes belly-up. :/

spyder07 · Post by **spyder07** » Wed May 28, 2003 8:09 pm

I just bought a 9100 ATI 128 Mg Xtasy card. Haven't put it in yet. I've only had Nvidia up now.

Spazmo · Post by **Spazmo** » Wed May 28, 2003 9:00 pm

9100? Bad choice. That's essentially a repackaged 8500. I don't have anything against the 8500; I have a 128 MB 8500, but a 9500 is the way to go for a card that balances value and performance.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Wed May 28, 2003 10:50 pm

spyder07 wrote:I just bought a 9100 ATI 128 Mg Xtasy card. Haven't put it in yet. I've only had Nvidia up now.

Get a refund, make a bit more money, and buy a 9700PRO.

Carib · Post by **Carib** » Wed May 28, 2003 11:20 pm

ATI 9800 128mb or the latest NVIDIA... I am at odds... what should I buy?

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Wed May 28, 2003 11:49 pm

Nvidia, NVidia releases good driver updates consistently ATI release shit then a good driver every blue moon.

BlackDog · Post by **BlackDog** » Wed May 28, 2003 11:50 pm

Rama Stryfe wrote:ATI 9800 128mb or the latest NVIDIA... I am at odds... what should I buy?

get the 5900 from nVidia.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Thu May 29, 2003 12:02 am

Rama Stryfe wrote:ATI 9800 128mb or the latest NVIDIA... I am at odds... what should I buy?

I recommend you ignore Carrot-brain, and take a look for yourself att he different benchmarks out there...

You can trust Tom's Hardware Guide I've yet to see an article about anything favored because of the brand!

And for god's sake, don't use AnandTech... They have a real hard time keeping their nvidia-fanaticism out of their reviews!

Also, take the last news into account if you think that's important...
If you read the previous posts I've written, you can see what stupidity both companies have done over the last couple of months...

I like ATI better myself, because they've proved to be far more realiable than they were, and the new drivers astound me everytime there's a new release.

The new NVidia cards are pretty good as well, the biggest issue, the jet-engine-sound, has been cleared long ago, and their cards perform excellent. The only thing I know about their drivers is that they never seemed to do anything for me before.
I hope they've fixed that up a lot...
I rarely used their official drivers since they sucked, bad.
But luckily, there's a horde of good people out there who make their own... You should be able to find them easily.

Mr. Carrotte wrote:Nvidia, NVidia releases good driver updates consistently ATI release shit then a good driver every blue moon.

Discussions don't need fanboy-stupidity like that.
But of course, if you come up with the proof, then sure, I'll take a minute to listen to you, until then, you're nothing better than Spazmo's blundering.

Sorry Spaz, but I just don't exactly see you try to be reasonable about any of this... it seems to me you're just interested in a brand-war.

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Thu May 29, 2003 12:27 am

You can fuck off in all, dont talk down to me like that you cretin.

For your information Toms Hardware rates the Nvidia 5900 as better. Also benchmarks arnt the be all and end all of graphics cards, Nvidia and ATI both cheat the fuck out of all tests (everyone seems so shocked by NVidias 3dmark cheating theyve forgotten ATIs Quake III shenanigans).

I gave up on ATI because i got pissed of with dire driver support, since switching to Nvidia with the GF4 ive been impressed with the consistent (and visable in game) peformance increase that each set of Detenator drivers gives. Thats not fanboyism thats personal experience.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Thu May 29, 2003 12:59 pm

Mr Carrot wrote:You can fuck off in all, dont talk down to me like that you cretin.

Stop acting like you need to be talked down to then.

Mr Carrot wrote:For your information Toms Hardware rates the Nvidia 5900 as better. Also benchmarks arnt the be all and end all of graphics cards, Nvidia and ATI both cheat the fuck out of all tests (everyone seems so shocked by NVidias 3dmark cheating theyve forgotten ATIs Quake III shenanigans).

"As we were made painfully aware with the FX 5800 Ultra, more is definitely not better where noise is concerned. While still not exactly what we would consider quiet, the new cooler, which operates at three different speeds depending on application type, produces a much more acceptable amount of noise."

My Machine is loud enough as it is, I don't need another turbine.
Other than that the card seems better than the 9800.
Especially in the Doom III benchmarks. (Wasn't D3 optimized for NVidia? Where's the HL2 test?)
So far it seems the 9800 is superior, in only the Splinter Cell game.

"Today, NVIDIA is once again proving that it is a company that can learn from its mistakes. A mere three months after the troubled launch of the FX 5800 Ultra, we are seeing the introduction of a successor that addresses and fixes all of the weaknesses of the original part. The memory bus has been widened to 256 bits and the GPU has been treated to a number of refinements. Although NV35 runs 50 MHz slower than its older sibling, this is virtually unnoticeable. The fact is that the enormous bandwidth of the improved 256-bit memory interface can easily pick up the slack and then some. Now, the FX 5900 is able to outpace the Radeon 9800 PRO in all relevant benchmarks and can reclaim the performance throne for NVIDIA. The card offers unrivaled FSAA speed combined with very good anisotropic filtering image quality and performance, thanks to the new Detonator FX driver, giving it a comfortable lead over its rival. Only the quality of its ordered-grid FSAA implementation remains inferior to that of ATi's card, a disadvantage it can more than make up for in sheer speed. "

Congrats to NVidia =D nice to see that you can keep more than up!

"That isn't to say that the FX 5900 Ultra doesn't also have some drawbacks compared to the Radeon 9800 PRO. The NVIDIA design calls for a much larger board , which can lead to problems in certain smaller computer cases and on some mainboards. Even though the cooler has been redesigned, it still blocks the first PCI slot next to the AGP connector. And lastly, it is still by far the louder of the two cards."

Uh-Oh. e.e BIG trouble...

"You could say that the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra is everything the original FX 5800 Ultra should have been or, to use NVIDIA's slogan, it's "the way the FX is meant to be played!" Thanks to the numerous tweaks, improvements and refinements, the card is finally able to beat the Radeon 9800 PRO. Power users and enthusiasts will have a hard time finding a better alternative. We were also pleased to hear that NVIDIA will offer value versions of the FX 5900 as well. This will close the performance gap to the FX 5600, an idea that is reminiscent of the immensely popular GeForce4 Ti4200."

Let's see what ATI will come up with next.
I'm interested in the prices though... let's see...
I'm using the standard danish base for the lowest prices available:

Radeon 9800 PRO AGP / 128MB DDR / 2048x1536 / Radeon 9800 PRO:

3.425 kr. = $543,6

GeforceFX 5800Ultra/TD (MS-8904) TV-Out / DVI AGP / 128MB / 2048x1536 / GeForceFX 5800 Ultra

3.995 kr. = $643,1

That's the 5800.... So we can expect a large increase....
Any guesses? $700?

(Note, that these prices are probably extreme for you, because we have a 25% tax-rate on top of our prices.....)
But the sheer difference is enough to make one wonder...

Mr Carrot wrote:I gave up on ATI because i got pissed of with dire driver support, since switching to Nvidia with the GF4 ive been impressed with the consistent (and visable in game) peformance increase that each set of Detenator drivers gives. Thats not fanboyism thats personal experience.

Again with the drivers... What card did you have? 8500? 8100?
DRIVERS FOR THOSE CARDS SUCKED, the drivers for ATI cards today are far superior.

And to think you have a GF4 card is imo laughable, because it's hardly an improvement.

That's not fanboyism, that's experience.

edited by Stainless

Red · Post by **Red** » Thu May 29, 2003 4:04 pm

ATI having crappy drivers dates back to the pre-3D era. They had amazingly crappy drivers. Since they introduced the Catalyst series drivers (simlar to the nVidia Detonator series) ATI's drivers FOR RELEASED CARDs has been closse to perfect and introduced improvements much in the same way the Detonator did.

On top of it they still cater the "average user" market by offering a bunch of useless crap along with their "Wonder" series of cards - which even though I don't use these cards assures them a nice cozy spot on the top sellers chart specially with OEM deals. Proving that actually giving features to the end users pays more then trying to milk high FPS scores - but it still a good idea to stay in the tops hence their competition.

All in all, it doesn't matter though - for the end-users it's a good thing both NVDA and ATI fight it off as it means that the 3D processing is ever evolving (and for those of us who can't afford the latest technology, the prices of non-mainstrain cards ever dropping).

Being a fanboy of either parts would be stupid since either company can come up with a clever product beating each other (for now anyway) - and a developer playing their cards specifically for a single card means it'll fail with the card if it does happen (see STALKER thread...)

Doom3 was NOT specifially designed for NVDA nor ATI, however it does probably use some special features (ie: diffrent shader ops) for each card since that's been the latest debate of late.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Thu May 29, 2003 4:48 pm

Ah I see..

Strange though, you'd think id-Software would've buddied up with one of them.

Well said though =)

Red · Post by **Red** » Thu May 29, 2003 5:10 pm

Here's a nice article at Dan's explaining "Average user's probable best buy", spotted on www.bluesnews.com

http://www.dansdata.com/cardchoice.htm

spyder07 · Post by **spyder07** » Thu May 29, 2003 8:35 pm

I knew some one was going to say "just spend a bit more and by the best most super duper card out there". The thing is I got my 9100 on sell for 80 bucks. That's way less expensive than any of the ones you guys are talking about.

the guardian · Post by **the guardian** » Thu May 29, 2003 8:36 pm

So its agreed: We should all just buy a Mac.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Thu May 29, 2003 8:45 pm

the guardian wrote:So its agreed: We should all just buy a Mac.

I wholly agree! Now we just need to make those damn companies realease ALL games for Macs!!!

=(

Seriously though, the two only things keeping me from buying a new mac, is that they're not superb at gaming, and that they're expensive as hell....

the guardian · Post by **the guardian** » Thu May 29, 2003 8:46 pm

Please stop.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Thu May 29, 2003 9:06 pm

WE NEED iMACS!!

huff....huff....huff....

Hmm afaik, the first GF3 card was released for Mac, wasn't it?

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Thu May 29, 2003 9:10 pm

They supposedly had a 2 month "premier" of the cards which they paid several million for it, it Europe at least it was a big fuck up and Guillemont/Hercules released their GF3 cards before the Mac one was even released.

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Thu May 29, 2003 9:40 pm

the guardian wrote:God, you're so fucking hypocritical.

*sigh* What did I do now?

Mr Carrot wrote:They supposedly had a 2 month "premier" of the cards which they paid several million for it, it Europe at least it was a big fuck up and Guillemont/Hercules released their GF3 cards before the Mac one was even released.

I see. lol... I remember my friend getting so damn pissed over the fact that the GF-card came to a Mac first! xD

Duck and Cover

ATI or NVidia ? [/Poll]

Alright... FanATIc or NV-Fan?