ATi & nVidia

[piromaneak]

First off, NO I'm not asking what's the best what I'm asking is what makes people pick nVidia and what makes people pick ATi. I'm trying to get a feel for the two before I make a decision on either or. Is it the APIs they use, the fancy driver interface, cool looking cards or what? And more importantly, what is ATi's and nVidia's "philosophy" on rendering. I guess that means why would one think the other is better.

(Ok, so maybe this is a VERY carefully worded "Which card is best" thread but hey you have to admit, I did an ok job of trying to cover it up 🙂

Anywho, feedback from both owners of ATi and nVidia welcome. Preferably ones that own either the X8xx line or the 6800 Ultras... Thanks in advance.

-Dave

 

[Fenuxx]

Right now, its really a toss up. I chose the 6800 because:

1.) SM3.0 support will eventually mean something, and I have it! 😀
2.) I've had problems with ATI's drivers in the past with an old Radeon card, though I've heard they've been since fixed, but I'm not willing to venture into "that" territory again.
2a.) NVIDIA's Detonator\ForceWare drivers are essentially the "Gold-Standard" for drivers, as they are rock-solid, and most people will agree.

Also, another thing to consider when thinking about an X8x0 or a 6x00 product, is that the new stuff is right around the corner (hopefully), so this generation will essentially become obsolete soon. Another is that the X8x0 is essentally a steroidodal version of the 9800Pro\XT that came before it, no real changes besides the addition of 4-8 more pipelines (depending on which version you get). Hope this helps.

Edit: Damn keyboard. Spelling mistakes. 😉

 

[VIAN]

What makes me pick ATI? Exellent performance/image quality. Monthly driver updates.

SM3.0 support will eventually mean something, and I have it!

If Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has anything to say about SM3.0 is that it is a performance hog without any apparent image quality increase.

NVIDIA's Detonator\ForceWare drivers are essentially the "Gold-Standard" for drivers, as they are rock-solid, and most people will agree.

They used to be considered that. And I disagree, Nvidia updates their drivers every 6 months or so and if you have a bug in your game, tough. Oh and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, a The Way It's Meant To Be Played game, says that it isn't compatible with my video card and at times doesn't boot up using the normal .exe. And the game defaults to Bilinear, even at High Quality in-game settings. You have to force it in the Nvidia driver control panel. In my opinion, Catalyst drivers are better, and have much better maintenance.

Another is that the X8x0 is essentally a steroidodal version of the 9800Pro\XT that came before it, no real changes besides the addition of 4-8 more pipelines (depending on which version you get).

This is the most lame excuse I've ever heard anybody, including Nvidia, say. And what makes it funny is that such an old architecture can compete with the "almighty" new architecture.

And ATI has much better default image quality.

The only reason I have a Nvidia card right now is because there was no ATI AGP counterpart. And I am not too happy with this card.

 

[yhelothar]

/me sits back and watch the bickering commence!

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: piromaneak
First off, NO I'm not asking what's the best what I'm asking is what makes people pick nVidia and what makes people pick ATi. I'm trying to get a feel for the two before I make a decision on either or. Is it the APIs they use, the fancy driver interface, cool looking cards or what? And more importantly, what is ATi's and nVidia's "philosophy" on rendering. I guess that means why would one think the other is better.

When I first went with ATI, it was with a 9700 PRO. At the time, the only competition was the nvidia FX line, which we all know now is straight up junk. So I was merely picking the best at the time. I had no previous experience with either(only 3dfx), so I didn't care, just wanted what was best. The 9700 PRO recieved the kick ass award from Maximum PC, while nvidia was found to be cheating on benchmarks intentionally. At the time my thoughts weren't necessarily for ATI, but rather against nvidia for bad business practices.

Later I found that nvidia often "cheats" in the visual department as well in order to gain more performance to keep up with ATI. However, with the naked eye I couldn't tell the difference. I didn't know what to think of it.

My 9700 PRO went strong for 2 years, no issues. So when it came down to upgrade, it was an easy choice. I got an x850XT PE. Not only is it the best card on the market, like the 9700 PRO was, it's recommended for several games I play. It's a no-brainer.

 

[n7]

I will be honest.

I am somehwhat disappointed nVidia re: my 6800 GT.

Mostly because of software, though.

I cannot figure out why people think ATi's drivers are not as good, expecially since they at least release new drivers every month, which means you know they are always trying to improve stuff.

Since i bought my card last summer, only one offical update has come out for nVidia drivers, which i find incredibly retarded.
nVidia seems to like "leaking" crappy beta drivers all the time, which many people have had issues with; yet using ancient drivers doesn't really appeal to people.

They haven't even bothered to fix the notorious UT engine + SP2 + DEP + A64 issue, which tells me just how much they care about their customers...
Instead, those of us with that problem have to disable DEP entirely, since just disabling it for the game doesn't seem to work.
That's just effing stupid that they couldn't figure out a way to fix that in a whole year of time.

I guess in terms of hardware, i think nVidia clearly won this gen's battle (though in PCI-e, the X800XL is really the best card for the money right now or will be very soon).
IMO, SM 3.0 doesn't mean sh!t all right now, & by the time it does, everyone will have new cards that have it.
nVidia drivers are the thing that leaves a sour tastes in my mouth though.

Unless they improve their drivers' mess or have an insanely better price on the next video card i buy, i will be looking for an ATi.

/n7's rant/$0.02

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: VIAN
If Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has anything to say about SM3.0 is that it is a performance hog without any apparent image quality increase.

First off, SM3.0 IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE BETTER IMAGE QUALITY!!! Get that out of your head now! All its meant to do is to allow developers to write fancier shaders with less code. As far as Splinter Cell goes, its probably the game, not SM3.0. What about Far Cry? You forgot to mention that conveniently Far Cry gets about a 5-10% performance increase on the 6800's from going to SM2.0-3.0, without a degradation in image quality. My own personal tests yielded about a 12fps increase over SM2.0 at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF. Thats not bad is it?

Originally posted by: VIAN
They used to be considered that. And I disagree, Nvidia updates their drivers every 6 months or so and if you have a bug in your game, tough. Oh and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, a The Way It's Meant To Be Played game, says that it isn't compatible with my video card and at times doesn't boot up using the normal .exe. In my opinion, Catalyst drivers are better, and have much better maintenance.

I, for one, don't like to upgrade drivers all the time. I personally think that the only reason ATI has to keep releasing driver updates is because they simply can't "get it right the first time". I, for one, have NEVER had a problem with NVIDIA's drivers, not a one! The only "problem" that I could mention is when I first got my 6800GT, and I had older drivers, and went to play KOTOR2. Some things looked goofy, but I went and grabbed the latest beta drivers, and BOOM, everything was fixed A-OK. Talk about lame excuses 😛

Lets get off this flaming right now, we don't need to turn this thread into another never ending flame war. 🙂

 

[VIAN]

Nvidia reminds me of a diner across town.

You will get great service from the waiters and the food seems to be in good condition and tastes pretty good, at least better than more than half a dozen other diners in the region, but their unsweetened iced teas almost always taste sour. I've complained but it's never fixed. It's been two years. Which makes me wonder...

(Just in case you didn't get it. It makes me wonder... if they don't care to fix this, that they themselves tasted and agreed to the sourness, what else do they do to their food to cut corners or present a fake image?)

 

[VIAN]

First off, SM3.0 IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE BETTER IMAGE QUALITY!!! Get that out of your head now! All its meant to do is to allow developers to write fancier shaders with less code. As far as Splinter Cell goes, its probably the game, not SM3.0. What about Far Cry? You forgot to mention that conveniently Far Cry gets about a 5-10% performance increase on the 6800's from going to SM2.0-3.0, without a degradation in image quality. My own personal tests yielded about a 12fps increase over SM2.0 at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF. Thats not bad is it?

I know that it's not to provide higher image quality. I just mentioned image quality because, if it's to take that big of a hit in performance, it should at least provide some image quality enhancements, but it doesn't. And this is a comparison between SM1.1 and SM3.0. 2.0 vs 3.0 is different. Chaos Theory says to me that it takes SM3.0 twice the amount of time to do what SM1.1 does.

I, for one, don't like to upgrade drivers all the time. I personally think that the only reason ATI has to keep releasing driver updates is because they simply can't "get it right the first time".

They make it a point to release every month with whatever updates ideas they've been up to since then.

 

[Cdubneeddeal]

Originally posted by: geforcetony

2.) I've had problems with ATI's drivers in the past with an old Radeon card, though I've heard they've been since fixed, but I'm not willing to venture into "that" territory again.

Yes...ATI's drivers have changed alot since back when. First ATI card was a 32meg Radeon SDR. Card and drivers were horrible. After that fiasco I went to Nvidia, that was until the 9500 came out. I was hesitant but I bit anyways...I was happy as hell. Even though I wasn't able to softmod it to the 9700 is still kicked the crap out the G2ti I had. Then after that I had a 9700 pro. Happy with that as well. Then after that I really wanted an x800 pro but the prices of those cards were just way to high for the minimal performance increase they offered over a BFG 6800 OC (which I have now) this was back in December. I think it's a toss up. IMO for performance and money wise Nvidia cards are the way to go. If ATi dropped their prices to a reasonable rate I would be all over them as I like them better (they just have a certain feel to them). Until that ever happens, Nvidia is pound for pound the best option.

 

[impemonk]

Nvidia at the moment is the best in terms of graphics quality and price. However, ATI in my eyes has always provided great graphics cards too, but it seems nowadays their prices for their cards is outrageous... Come on, who wouldn't go for the better deal of a 6800NU over an X800PRO. You get somewhat better performance for 100 dollars less... I don't know about you guys but ATI seriously needs to release their line of X800XL AGP cards to lower their current market priced cards. ATI is just way too damn expensive... and doesn't provide "the best bang for your buck".

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: geforcetony
I, for one, don't like to upgrade drivers all the time. I personally think that the only reason ATI has to keep releasing driver updates is because they simply can't "get it right the first time". I, for one, have NEVER had a problem with NVIDIA's drivers, not a one! The only "problem" that I could mention is when I first got my 6800GT, and I had older drivers, and went to play KOTOR2. Some things looked goofy, but I went and grabbed the latest beta drivers, and BOOM, everything was fixed A-OK. Talk about lame excuses 😛

They update as far as they've gone once a month so people are up to date. This is good for people who have bugs with latest drivers or even older drivers with new cards. They explain on their website that you shouldn't upgrade unless you are having issues, so it's not like you are forced or even encouraged to update all the time. It's simply a matter of always having up to date drivers, which apparently nvidia doesn't do nearly as well.

 

[CHfan4ever]

Nvidia because:

1)SM 3.0
2)Digital Vibrance
3)Its " The way its mean to be played"
4)Crappy driver problems with my old 9800 pro and games.
5)Im more a DOOM fanatic than a Half-Life fanatic and DOOM run better with nvidia( as half life run better with ati)
6)...
7)Profit?

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: geforcetony

Originally posted by: VIAN
If Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has anything to say about SM3.0 is that it is a performance hog without any apparent image quality increase.

First off, SM3.0 IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE BETTER IMAGE QUALITY!!! Get that out of your head now! All its meant to do is to allow developers to write fancier shaders with less code. As far as Splinter Cell goes, its probably the game, not SM3.0. What about Far Cry? You forgot to mention that conveniently Far Cry gets about a 5-10% performance increase on the 6800's from going to SM2.0-3.0, without a degradation in image quality. My own personal tests yielded about a 12fps increase over SM2.0 at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF. Thats not bad is it?

It's not bad... Though you payed a heafty price for 12 extra frames... I mean really... You need a loud, power hungry, huge video card for SM 3.0. Not to mention at least $400... Is it really worth it...

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: geforcetony


First off, SM3.0 IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE BETTER IMAGE QUALITY!!! Get that out of your head now! All its meant to do is to allow developers to write fancier shaders with less code. As far as Splinter Cell goes, its probably the game, not SM3.0. What about Far Cry? You forgot to mention that conveniently Far Cry gets about a 5-10% performance increase on the 6800's from going to SM2.0-3.0, without a degradation in image quality. My own personal tests yielded about a 12fps increase over SM2.0 at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF. Thats not bad is it?

Actually it is. Pixel Shader 3.0 is not meant to provide better image quality... but don't forget, SM3.0 is not JUST about Pixel Shader 3.0. Vertex Shader 3.0 is also part of SM3.0 and include displacement mapping, which is most definately an image quality enhancement.

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: Tabb
It's not bad... Though you payed a heafty price for 12 extra frames... I mean really... You need a loud, power hungry, huge video card for SM 3.0. Not to mention at least $400... Is it really worth it...

That was on the same card (6800GT). I actually only payed $180 for my 6800GT (eBay's great :laugh: ) What I went from, a GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, gave me about 200% better performance from what I had in just about everything.

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: Tabb
You need a loud, power hungry, huge video card for SM 3.0.

Well, my card isn't loud, it is big now (I now have an NV5 on it), and it hasn't impacted my system more than the FX did as far as power. I'm still using the same power supply as I was when I had a POS Celeron 2.4GHz w\512MB RAM and a POS VIA mobo with my FX 5700U.

 

[airborne82nd]

I used to have a 6800NU and I loved it for gaming. It is plenty powerful enough IMO but, I recently traded it along with my POS FX5900 for an X800 Pro. The X800 is only slightly faster in some games but the 2d quality is far superior. My desktop is crystal clear and that is why I went back to ATI. My 6800 always looked a little fuzzy.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I haven't had enough hands on time with the newer nVidia parts to comment but I have some good reasons to avoid ATi-

Their drivers are very poor at best. They have an update every month- gee great. What about bugs that have been in the drivers for years that they refuse to fix? It seems they take the approach that if they aren't getting a lot of bad PR from a particular bug- then they don't have to worry about ever fixing it. A few hundred/thousand customer complaints about it doesn't warrant it even making it on to the 'known issues' page. They tend to getting around to fixing bugs with major games, after a few months ususally, but if you like to buy a wide variety of titles including those that aren't going to come close to selling a million units do not have faith that they will release a driver that works flawlessly with those games ever.

Extremely poor texture filtering. ATi uses the lowest possible blending accuracy they can get away with for the texture blending operations. This creates significantly more aliasing then with any nV board I've ever seen. The fans will call it 'more detail'- but 3DCenter wrote up a pretty good article detailing exactly what they are doing(it is quite clearly visible, although a lot of people claim it is a benefit or deny it exists).

QC on ATi branded parts at least. Built by ATi boards seem to have an extremely high rate of faulty signal circuitry in them. You can check back when ATi sold a decent amount of add in boards about their 'rolling lines' issues that seemed to be a rather large percentage of people.

Sub par cooling solutions- not sure if this has been improved on the latest generation but the HS/F that shipped on the R9800Pro was not up to the task. Crashing to the desktop due to the chip overheating isn't uncommon unless you want to replace the inadequate HS/F with a decent third party solution. This again, seems to be limited to ATi branded parts or those that are duplicates of them.

As I stated before, I haven't had enough hands on time to say why you should purchase nVidia with the current generation. From what I have seen their IQ has taken a hit and seems now to be almost as poor as ATi's in terms of texture filtering(angle dependancy issues, at least their basic blending is solid and still far superior to that of ATi) and people seem to be talking about a bugs in their newer drivers(although I don't recall seeing talk about specifics honestly), oh and if the beta driver status bothers you you might want to stay away from them(never cared myself as long as they work).

 

[imported_Noob]

Originally posted by: VIAN
What makes me pick ATI? Exellent performance/image quality. Monthly driver updates.

SM3.0 support will eventually mean something, and I have it!

If Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has anything to say about SM3.0 is that it is a performance hog without any apparent image quality increase.

NVIDIA's Detonator\ForceWare drivers are essentially the "Gold-Standard" for drivers, as they are rock-solid, and most people will agree.

They used to be considered that. And I disagree, Nvidia updates their drivers every 6 months or so and if you have a bug in your game, tough. Oh and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, a The Way It's Meant To Be Played game, says that it isn't compatible with my video card and at times doesn't boot up using the normal .exe. And the game defaults to Bilinear, even at High Quality in-game settings. You have to force it in the Nvidia driver control panel. In my opinion, Catalyst drivers are better, and have much better maintenance.

Another is that the X8x0 is essentally a steroidodal version of the 9800Pro\XT that came before it, no real changes besides the addition of 4-8 more pipelines (depending on which version you get).

This is the most lame excuse I've ever heard anybody, including Nvidia, say. And what makes it funny is that such an old architecture can compete with the "almighty" new architecture.

And ATI has much better default image quality.

The only reason I have a Nvidia card right now is because there was no ATI AGP counterpart. And I am not too happy with this card.

What you just said makes the most sense that I have ever heard on there forums.

 

[imported_Noob]

Originally posted by: malak

Originally posted by: piromaneak
First off, NO I'm not asking what's the best what I'm asking is what makes people pick nVidia and what makes people pick ATi. I'm trying to get a feel for the two before I make a decision on either or. Is it the APIs they use, the fancy driver interface, cool looking cards or what? And more importantly, what is ATi's and nVidia's "philosophy" on rendering. I guess that means why would one think the other is better.

When I first went with ATI, it was with a 9700 PRO. At the time, the only competition was the nvidia FX line, which we all know now is straight up junk. So I was merely picking the best at the time. I had no previous experience with either(only 3dfx), so I didn't care, just wanted what was best. The 9700 PRO recieved the kick ass award from Maximum PC, while nvidia was found to be cheating on benchmarks intentionally. At the time my thoughts weren't necessarily for ATI, but rather against nvidia for bad business practices.

Later I found that nvidia often "cheats" in the visual department as well in order to gain more performance to keep up with ATI. However, with the naked eye I couldn't tell the difference. I didn't know what to think of it.

My 9700 PRO went strong for 2 years, no issues. So when it came down to upgrade, it was an easy choice. I got an x850XT PE. Not only is it the best card on the market, like the 9700 PRO was, it's recommended for several games I play. It's a no-brainer.

All I have to say is touche.

 

[tallman45]

Depends on the application and $$ available at the time

I have in use now

Ti4200 ($25 used great for young kids rig)
9700Pro ($125 clearance great deal)
9800Pro ($199 last yr)
6600Gt Pci-e (179 solid performance)
X800XL (high performance bargain at $279)

 

[piromaneak]

Wow, so it seems pretty neck and neck... Although I do have some fuel here to throw on you guys fire and give you something to think about... Now this might be becuase of the benches used or not but I have noticed that in games where the api DirectX is used, yes ATi usually has a lead on it but nVidia is not far behind but with games that run the OpenGL api, nVidia leads by a larger gap. So it seems to me that nVidia is best at running OpenGL (Hence Doom 3) but can also render DirectX games almost as good as ATi can. Can any of you confirm or deny this?

Also, about the driver and support issues, I think ATi and nVidia are about even IMO. I think they can both be blamed for ignoring the customers at one point in time or another, for releasing shoddy drivers and/or taking their time in releasing fixes for games. So we can't really make that a point in this thread anymore. Just my opinion. But it is interesting to note that nVidia was trying to be "Overly Optimisitic" on its benching of some of its cards. Which I'm sure ATi might have tried to stretch its abilities also. It's all in the name of the allmighty dollar. And both of them want YOURS 🙂

 

[gobucks]

basically, I think both companies make pretty good cards, and I don't have a problem buying either, but when faced with an even match, I generally choose nvidia. While they have been lacking in the driver department lately (like 20 different betas can be found on guru3d, but the last official driver was 66.93), their drivers are usually pretty good, and I really like the 71.84s. ATI's drivers have gotten a lot better, but I'm still not impressed with stuff like Hydravision when compared to nview (it's a big deal for my multi-LCD setup). Also, I think nvidia generally has better features. This time around, it's SM3.0, OpenGL 2.0 support, SLI, HDR support, hardware MPEG/WMA acceleration, and most of these things are even on the junior models, like the 6600/6200 series. And say what you will about SM3.0, it's gonna make a difference eventually. If chaos theory runs like crap with SM3.0, then it's not being implemented well in that game. All SM3.0 does is allow larger amounts of shading work to be done in fewer passes, so that an instruction that might have taken 2 passes with SM2.0 would only take 1 pass with 3.0. It will bring performance boosts, as is seen with farcry, even though it was just an add-on after the fact, and will allow game developers to take more liberties with shading effects. ATI clearly knows it's important, which is why R520 will have it.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: geforcetony


First off, SM3.0 IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE BETTER IMAGE QUALITY!!! Get that out of your head now! All its meant to do is to allow developers to write fancier shaders with less code. As far as Splinter Cell goes, its probably the game, not SM3.0. What about Far Cry? You forgot to mention that conveniently Far Cry gets about a 5-10% performance increase on the 6800's from going to SM2.0-3.0, without a degradation in image quality. My own personal tests yielded about a 12fps increase over SM2.0 at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF. Thats not bad is it?

Actually it is. Pixel Shader 3.0 is not meant to provide better image quality... but don't forget, SM3.0 is not JUST about Pixel Shader 3.0. Vertex Shader 3.0 is also part of SM3.0 and include displacement mapping, which is most definately an image quality enhancement.

Man you beat me to the post 😛

Well while last generation i would have chosen ATI hands down unless (1) i needed VIVO (which i did) and (2) ATI cards were still more expensive than the 5900XT's at the time. At any rate, both companies are great and i will buy whichever is better at the time.

Right now for pure framerate, pure muscle power, ATI wins. However, while ATI does have some neat features they are neither as prominent, nor as (i dont wanna say important but i think you get what i mean). Although i dislike the fact that the VPU still isn't working 100% on everything (due in part to MS) Nvidia has done a very nice job this generation; and they had to because last generation was a slaughter.

As for some of you quoting about the SM's do you really know how these work. You say there is no image quality and stuff (which is false as said above) but do you really know what is going on? For most of you... i didn't thinks so.

-Kevin