ATI geared for anything in particular?

[gc511]

Hello,

I was just reading some reviews on Nvidia Geforce (various models) and Radeon (various numbers). Seems like the Nvidia cards most always beat out the ATI's in FPS for games. So yeah, seems like Nvidia has the fastest cards.

That being said, other than money, for what reason would a person get an ATI card over an Nvidia? Is there something ATI is geared more towards?

Sorry if this is a bad question, but I just wondered about it.

 

[DClark]

As recently as 2001, you could simply explain it as "nVidia makes graphics cards, while ATi makes video cards", meaning that nVidia cards played games very fast and well, while ATi cards would play games, decode MPEG-2 (ie DVD playback), and offer quality 2D and 3D imaging.

ATi has gotten faster, while nVidia has added some additional features and are trying to improve 2D image quality, so deciding on the right card for you is a matter of what you need your card to do and how much you can afford. The two companies still have their different mindsets (ATi as an overall video card, while nVidia as a hardcore gamer's card), but they've started to overlap recently.

To say "other than money, for what reason would a person get an ATI card..." is like saying "Other than breathing, what's the importance of the lungs?". If money is no object, then I can stop right now and say "Everyone buy a Ti4600". ATi has never specifically tried to produce the fastest card with zero regard to what it would cost the consumer. That's nVidia's niche, and will probably continue to be nVidia's niche because ATi has the mindset that the upper-performance echelon is not a desireable price range for ATi to be.

ATi is currently competing very favourably against nVidia in the important $150 or less price range, a price range in which they want to compete well against nVidia (the majority of general consumers won't spend much more than $150 on a graphics card no matter how good it is). A retail 64mb Radeon 8500 can be bought for between $125 and $150, and an LE or OEM version for $110 to $125. The 128mb Radeon 8500LE can also be bought for around $150. The only nVidia cards in that price range are the GeForce3 Ti200 and the GeForce4 MX460.

 

[Rand]

ATi is geared for MultiMedia functions. Relative to nVidia ATI has until recently a much better MultiMonitor implementation, they still have a better TV-Out implementation through the drivers.... though actual hardware capabilities are generally similar. ATi has the industry's best DVD playback capabilities.
Their 2D visual quality has long been considered to be superior to even the best of nVidia boards.

ATi has significantly more experience with designing MultiMedia boards like the 'All In Wonder' series, which has been mentioned numerous times to be vastly superior to nVidia's competing 'Personal Cinema'.

ATi also owns the FireGL brand name, and much of the origtinal team that designed the famed FireGL series is still there. Hence they have significantly more experienced designers, and more advanced hardware and superiuor driver support in the high end 3D rendering market.
nVidia has relied greatly upon Elsa engineers to make headway in this market segment, and the Quadro series drivers were developed with significant contribution from Elsa.

From a purely consumer 3D standpoint, ATi has a superior FSAA implementation yielding quite a bit better image quality, and for most price points in the market ATi also has a better fully featured 3D feature set.
As an example the R8500 has a 3D feature set that is comparable in most areas to that of the much newer GF4 and is in a few areas actually still more advanced.

So, yes I can certainly understand why many would prefer ATi over nVidia, and vice versa. Both manufacturers have their weaknesses and strengths and netiher has any single card that is superior in every respect that the competitor.

Hell, there are a few aspects in which I consider the old ATi Rage 128 superior to an Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4600. On the other hand, there are areas in which I consider the old nVidia GeForce 256 superior to the ATi Radeon 8500.

On the whole though, if there was any single area in which I'd say ATi is specifically targeting it's multimedia functionality.