nVidia vs ATI

By Alley Cat
in Hardware Hangout

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Tom Bonez

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I myself would always go for nVidia, it maybe more expensive but you get what you pay for (IMO)

Plus they also have Physx and 3D Vision for most video games (which is amazing btw, if you have a supported monitor :D)

If price is a factor however and the above two features are not something you'd be bothered about I'd go with ATI

I myself am currently holding out for the next series of nVidia cards (am really looking forward to testing out the next generation CUDA architecture :D)

Grand Master

Digitalx

Posted
Posted
Yes, but fact is that most games which are optimized for a brand is Nvidia.

Actually the optimization does do a lot. PhysX is not used a lot yet. But in games like Batman AA, it does give the game a completely different atmosphere.

So though it might not mean or do a lot for YOU doesn't mean it doesn't do it!

Actually it doesn't. Most QA testers and developers wipe out any advantage otherwise it's going against consumers as a whole to provide better experience on one platform and not another all because of corporate sponsorship. PhysX is hardly used due to it's roots, not only that but it's advantages have been proven very minimal time and time again since its inception as dedicated card and now on nvidia cards. It's like saying havok physics provide better physics for ati cards just because it's got optimized code to take advantage of the power of ati cards - fact is havok provides equally balanced physics engine for both ati and nvidia cards just as most if not all propitiatory physics and game engines do unless they are in bed with nvidia or ati which is rare now. Physx/cuda as I said is even more invalidated by fact that it's other purpose GPGPU processing is now a feature of DX11 which defeats any need for it other then a different api.

In the end when you see a company logo at beginning of a game even if it says best view/played/whatever on nvidia or ati it doesn't it's just merely corporate sponsorship or endorsement with no real bias performance.

Collaborator

PhillAholic

Posted
Posted

someone else may have to verify that this is a trusworthy source, but I've been using this generally to compare. It's a nice interface to work with.

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

How is ATI's linux support? Last time I checked, you were better off hanging yourself than trying to get it to work. ATI also rubbed me the wrong way when back in 2005 we needed to download third party windows drivers to get a couple Valve Games working on my friends laptop. Textures didn't load correctly with the official ones no matter what version of the driver we used.

Grand Master

Digitalx

Posted
Posted
someone else may have to verify that this is a trusworthy source, but I've been using this generally to compare. It's a nice interface to work with.

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

How is ATI's linux support? Last time I checked, you were better off hanging yourself than trying to get it to work. ATI also rubbed me the wrong way when back in 2005 we needed to download third party windows drivers to get a couple Valve Games working on my friends laptop. Textures didn't load correctly with the official ones no matter what version of the driver we used.

I believe starting with R600 ATi opened up their hardware for better linux support. I've had good experiences since with ubuntu on occasion when tried it.

Can see list of new articles and forums on the open up which occured in 2007 I think here

Windows drivers recently are being nearly solid month on month releases which are also solid specially for windows 7/vista.

Grand Master

Subject Delta

Posted
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Nvidia ofcourse. A lot of games gets optimized for their graphic chips and they are very persistent in updating their drivers with a lot of performance gains from many different Nvidia "powered" games.

Also the fact that PhysX is available to all Nvidia customers (9000-series <) is a really big plus. Especially since more and more developers are beginning to use it in their games.

That doesn't really hold true any more, games that are supposedly optimised for nVidia cards run just fine on ATI cards, those "the way it should be played" ads are pure marketing, and nothing more and it has obviously sucked you in.

Actually the optimization does do a lot. PhysX is not used a lot yet. But in games like Batman AA, it does give the game a completely different atmosphere.

PhysX is actually a pile of rubbish, all it does is takes graphical processing power away from actual in game rendering. Before I switched to my ATI card, I noted that playing UT3 on my 8600 GT all normal maps played smooth as anything, but when I played the PhysX maps with it actually enabled, it cut the framerate by 50-60% which for me is unacceptable. Modern CPUs are more than powerful enough to perform physics calculations, it really is unnecessary to even have PhysX

Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
My price range was about $200.

I was at Future Shop today, the guy told me if I get a better graphics card, my 300 W Power supply will not be able to handle it. Is this true ?

A 300W PSU might be pushing it. I'd go for at least 450W, especially if you want a high-end video card. Since your budget is $200, I recommend the Radeon HD 5770. You can get it for ~$180 on NCIX.com or newegg.ca.

Experienced

John.D

Posted
Posted

Used to use Nvidia, but the drivers were hopeless / kept crashing. So, I changed to ATI for the 3 PC's here. This card isnt too bad (it was pretty cheap, and its got VGA / HDMi and DVI on it). It lets me connect via DVI and I use the HDMI connection on the monitor for the Xbox. Not really worried about games, dont have any. I'll use the Xbox instead

Grand Master

Nagisan

Posted
Posted
Don't the physx games work with ati cards still?

I think the only way to get PhysX when running an ATI main card is to have an nVidia secondary card with modified nVidia drivers (on a certain driver release nVidia made it so you had to have an nVidia primary card to run PhysX, theres some modified drivers that get around that though).....may be wrong as its not something I keep up to date on but thats how it worked last I read about it.

Grand Master

ViperAFK

Posted
Posted
Yes, but fact is that most games which are optimized for a brand is Nvidia.

Actually the optimization does do a lot. PhysX is not used a lot yet. But in games like Batman AA, it does give the game a completely different atmosphere.

So though it might not mean or do a lot for YOU doesn't mean it doesn't do it!

Games for nvidia is marketing bull**** and you are buying right into it.

And physx sucks. I hated it even when I had an nvidia card. It rapes your fps unless you have a TOP end card or a dedicated physx card and it doesn't even do much in games that support it.

its stupid, your vid card is already usually doing more work in games, why the hell do you need to add running physics on it as well? I have a quad core cpu for that.

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