Need the run-down on nvidia vs ati these days

[Koudelka]

Hey all,

I know these vs topics get old quick but i've been gone a little while. Its about that time to build a system again and i havent kept up to date on the battle between the two cards.

Last time i bought a card, nvidia gtx 260 was nvidia's 2nd top card, with 280 i think being its best. I bought nvidia last time because i wanted an i7 processor/nvida combo in my rig.

I'm thinking this time i may go ATI and AMD, i remember when i bought the gtx 260 that ati cards were generally better performers and more bang for your buck, generally cheaper as well. But the ATI cards kept havin serious problems with a lot of games.

Last time i checked benchmarks when gtx 280 was their top card, ATI's top 3 cards were beating the gtx 280 hands down and were cheaper as well. I would normally go at this on my own but i realized i needed the down and dirty from someone else when i went on newegg to price compare performance/price of my current gtx 260 to other top cards and found out gtx 260 isnt even produced anymore... (which i do consider strange because its not that old and it was a very good card for your money at the time.)


I'm just hoping to find out the situation with ATI, if you still get more bang for buck and if theyre a bit more stable now? Or if nvidia caught up again and their cards are doing well now. The last ATI card i had was.. their x800 platinum.. maybe 6 or more years ago lol. I'm way out of the loop on ATI but i've been hearing and seeing lots of good things over the years.

 

[zerocool84]

Uh oh here we go. Also where did you get that ATI was unstable???

 

[sandorski]

Uh oh here we go. Also where did you get that ATI was unstable???

This and what Games had serious problems? :\

 

[Annisman*]

you bought Nvidia last time because you "wanted an i7 processor" .... what ?

 

[Koudelka]

My god..

Half of the games i bought 3-2 years ago most of the technical support in their forums were full of ATI users having problems specific to ATI cards.

@annisman - wanted an intel/nvidia combo.

Now on topic.. I just want to know if AMD/ATI still have the top-performing cards and better bang for buck?

If you dont know or you're gonna post something else totally irrelevant please dont.

 

[Koudelka]

Uh oh here we go. Also where did you get that ATI was unstable???

how ironic your post is. 'uh oh here we go' and then you ask a question COMPLETELY un-related to the original question asked.

I always come to Anandtech when i need an actual answer and not a flame war or de-railing, please dont ruin that..

 

[Spikesoldier]

in these type of arguements, its going to boil down to whoever has the better card.

it sounds like you want a green card. let me suggest a gtx 580.

 

[Barfo]

I think it's a better idea to base your decision on the res you play at, your budget, if you have some specific games in mind and if you plan to use extra features like eyefinity or cuda rather than nvidia/amd.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Still 5 years with ATI...still zero problems...

 

[brencat]

This is a great time to be in the market for a vid card. There are choices galore at various price points depending on the games you like to play and the resolution you intend to play at. Your background story sounds a lot like mine.

My last ATI card was an X800XL...around 6 yrs ago too. Back then, I remember CCC being so bloated and so bad that I switched to the Omega drivers which were faster and more streamlined at the time. Then I bought 2 nvidia cards for a while. I liked the nvidia control panel and drivers were never an issue for me. I stayed away from ATI during this time, mostly because I liked how easy nv drivers and the control panel were to use.

However, my latest purchase decision came down to GTX 570 vs 6950 2GB. I wanted to finally be able to max my games at 1920x1200, so that pretty much ruled out the GTX 560...just wouldn't have power enough long term. The GTX 570 was just a tad out of reach for me ~ $322 shipped. But the 6950 2gb @ $260 AR shipped (Newegg) was too good to pass up and is likely the best value on the market right now. Did the shader unlock + a modest overclock (so far) and it turned out to be a quantum leap upgrade from my most recent card...the GTX 260.

Been using this new card for a week. You know what? All that hesitation and concern on my part these past 6 years about going ATI, with CCC and ATI's drivers was nonsense. Everything is running super smooth (I am using 11.1 drivers, fyi). Hope that helps in your decision.

 

[blastingcap]

NVDA = CUDA, PhysX, better tessellation, but no single-card multi-monitor. NVDA's software fix is to use two cards in SLI to output to 3 or 4 monitors.

AMD/ATI = single-card multi-monitor, but no CUDA or PhysX (who actually uses ATI's Stream? CUDA is far ahead), and AMD/ATI's tessellation is good enough for now but not spectacular.

Given how few programs actually make use of PhysX and how few games will really push tessellation (until consoles get DX11 capabilities), those two factors sorta don't matter. Similarly, CUDA is nice, but do you really use programs that utilize it, perhaps special audio/visual programs or supercomputing or something? Single-card multi-monitor is extremely useful for those with three or more monitors, but most people do not have 3 or more monitors. So for most people, none of these features are dealbreakers.

Both companies have fairly good SLI/Crossfire drivers (nearly equally good scaling) and single-GPU drivers at this point.

As for bang for buck, they are so close in bang-for-buck that it kind of depends on who is running a sale or has a bigger rebate or whatever.

NVDA has even closed the gap in energy efficiency and thermals and sound, so AMD/ATI isn't that far ahead anymore.

Personally I am planning to limp along with my 6850 until NVDA comes out with a single-GPU, single-card solution for triple monitors, at which point I will probably jump over to NVDA, because NVDA will by then have undisputedly the broader feature set. I've hardly gamed at all in the last few months, so the single-GPU triple-monitor feature is a MUST HAVE for me, while other stuff like CUDA, PhysX, etc. hardly matter to me. The only way NVDA would lose my sale is if they overcharged for the card or if it had power/noise/thermals that were too unattractive.

Hey all,

I know these vs topics get old quick but i've been gone a little while. Its about that time to build a system again and i havent kept up to date on the battle between the two cards.

Last time i bought a card, nvidia gtx 260 was nvidia's 2nd top card, with 280 i think being its best. I bought nvidia last time because i wanted an i7 processor/nvida combo in my rig.

I'm thinking this time i may go ATI and AMD, i remember when i bought the gtx 260 that ati cards were generally better performers and more bang for your buck, generally cheaper as well. But the ATI cards kept havin serious problems with a lot of games.

Last time i checked benchmarks when gtx 280 was their top card, ATI's top 3 cards were beating the gtx 280 hands down and were cheaper as well. I would normally go at this on my own but i realized i needed the down and dirty from someone else when i went on newegg to price compare performance/price of my current gtx 260 to other top cards and found out gtx 260 isnt even produced anymore... (which i do consider strange because its not that old and it was a very good card for your money at the time.)


I'm just hoping to find out the situation with ATI, if you still get more bang for buck and if theyre a bit more stable now? Or if nvidia caught up again and their cards are doing well now. The last ATI card i had was.. their x800 platinum.. maybe 6 or more years ago lol. I'm way out of the loop on ATI but i've been hearing and seeing lots of good things over the years.

 

[wuliheron]

Lots of good advice so far. I can only add that both have had their share of hardware and software problems in the past, but this year they seem to be doing great. Also, don't expect brand new cards that have just been released to have the greatest drivers and crossfire/sli drivers take even longer to get right.

 

[arkcom]

6950 is $216 after cashback and rebate at mwave.com.

 

[Powermoloch]

I own...(in order)

FX5200 (gone)
6600GT (gave it away)
x850xt pe (stored)
7600GT OC (still being used)
3650 HD (2 years of use dead)
4650 HD (1 1/2 yr use, sold)
250GT (in my browsing rig)
2 x 5770HD (replaced w/ 6850 HD)
2 x 6850 HD
5850HD toxic (stored)
460 GTX 768 (going to be in HTPC)

no problems from either side

 

[badb0y]

Had various cards from both vendors with zero issues over the years.

 

[Jacky60]

Have used cards from Nvidia and ATi for the last ten years and can't say there's a real difference other than the performance of specific models. Both companies drivers and everything else pretty much on a par with Nvidia offering a few more features you're unlikely to use while ATI offer better multi-monitor support. If green's you favourite colour buy green. I'd get a 6950 and flash it to a 6970.

 

[brandonb]

Not that I can really add much at this point:

ATI-
Seem to be a bit more powerful per watts. So more efficient.
Eyefinity. Can span games across multi monitors (up to 6).
Better quality during hardware decoding (blu rays, dvd, etc)

Nvidia-
A bit faster, but also less efficient. Requires more power to get these results.
Seems to have better driver quality the last few releases compared to ATI.
PhysX/Cuda if you have apps which take advantage of it.
A bit better default quality settings, and maybe slightly better quality during 3d rendering.

I've had ATI since I decommissioned my 8800gts 3-4 years ago. Overall, I had better luck with my drivers on the ATI side than I did with my 8800gts, but ATI's driver quality has dwindled a bit recently. And it's fairly compariable to the issues I had with my 8800gts.

When I upgrade (when Sandy Bridge is working again) I will probably buy the ATI 6950. Mainly: The performance/watt. I don't care to have the best performance. When ATI gets their driver issues figured out, I believe I'll have a solid card. The PhysX/Cuda means nothing to me as I have no apps or games which use it.

 

[Anarchist420]

I prefer nvidia for the following reasons:
they support old games (to a degree) while ATi doesn't support old games at all.
the the ATi 5000 series filtering isn't as good as nvidia's HQ mode (the 6000 series is fine as long as you set the LOD bias to +.65).
ATi has some z-range optimization that most people don't notice, although I notice it. I don't know what they do, but their z-range looks compressed.
nvidia has more developer support (CUDA/PhysX, games are more likely to work out of the box on nvidia hw, etc.)
nvidia has much faster tessellation.
nvidia has better opengl

The only 2 advantages ATi has is that they support scaling/centered timings over HDMI and they Edge Detect AA which is better than MLAA and is probably better than SRAA will be.

 

[Annisman*]

Not that I can really add much at this point:

ATI-
Seem to be a bit more powerful per watts. So more efficient.
Eyefinity. Can span games across multi monitors (up to 6).
Better quality during hardware decoding (blu rays, dvd, etc)

Nvidia-
A bit faster, but also less efficient. Requires more power to get these results.
Seems to have better driver quality the last few releases compared to ATI.
PhysX/Cuda if you have apps which take advantage of it.
A bit better default quality settings, and maybe slightly better quality during 3d rendering.

I've had ATI since I decommissioned my 8800gts 3-4 years ago. Overall, I had better luck with my drivers on the ATI side than I did with my 8800gts, but ATI's driver quality has dwindled a bit recently. And it's fairly compariable to the issues I had with my 8800gts.

When I upgrade (when Sandy Bridge is working again) I will probably buy the ATI 6950. Mainly: The performance/watt. I don't care to have the best performance. When ATI gets their driver issues figured out, I believe I'll have a solid card. The PhysX/Cuda means nothing to me as I have no apps or games which use it.

This ^

pretty much the state of ATI and Nvidia

 

[Creig]

My god..

Half of the games i bought 3-2 years ago most of the technical support in their forums were full of ATI users having problems specific to ATI cards.

Not that I noticed. I went from an 8800GT to a 4850 about 2-3 years ago and the only thing I noticed is that I no longer had to put up with "nvlddmkm has stopped responding" errors. No real issues with games with either card.

As others have pointed out, it would be helpful to know your exact system specs, monitor resolution and what current/future games & apps you intend to run the most.

 

[blastingcap]

Good point about the hardware video decoding.

I also forgot to mention that energy efficiency does translate back to dollars and cents, depending on how often you use your PC or leave it on idle, so that feeds back into price/performance somewhat. It's usually not a huge difference but could be a price/perf tiebreaker over time, especially idle watts if you leave your PC on 24/7.

Not that I can really add much at this point:

ATI-
Seem to be a bit more powerful per watts. So more efficient.
Eyefinity. Can span games across multi monitors (up to 6).
Better quality during hardware decoding (blu rays, dvd, etc)

Nvidia-
A bit faster, but also less efficient. Requires more power to get these results.
Seems to have better driver quality the last few releases compared to ATI.
PhysX/Cuda if you have apps which take advantage of it.
A bit better default quality settings, and maybe slightly better quality during 3d rendering.

I've had ATI since I decommissioned my 8800gts 3-4 years ago. Overall, I had better luck with my drivers on the ATI side than I did with my 8800gts, but ATI's driver quality has dwindled a bit recently. And it's fairly compariable to the issues I had with my 8800gts.

When I upgrade (when Sandy Bridge is working again) I will probably buy the ATI 6950. Mainly: The performance/watt. I don't care to have the best performance. When ATI gets their driver issues figured out, I believe I'll have a solid card. The PhysX/Cuda means nothing to me as I have no apps or games which use it.

 

[Seero]

Hey all,

I know these vs topics get old quick but i've been gone a little while. Its about that time to build a system again and i havent kept up to date on the battle between the two cards.

Last time i bought a card, nvidia gtx 260 was nvidia's 2nd top card, with 280 i think being its best. I bought nvidia last time because i wanted an i7 processor/nvida combo in my rig.

I'm thinking this time i may go ATI and AMD, i remember when i bought the gtx 260 that ati cards were generally better performers and more bang for your buck, generally cheaper as well. But the ATI cards kept havin serious problems with a lot of games.

Last time i checked benchmarks when gtx 280 was their top card, ATI's top 3 cards were beating the gtx 280 hands down and were cheaper as well. I would normally go at this on my own but i realized i needed the down and dirty from someone else when i went on newegg to price compare performance/price of my current gtx 260 to other top cards and found out gtx 260 isnt even produced anymore... (which i do consider strange because its not that old and it was a very good card for your money at the time.)


I'm just hoping to find out the situation with ATI, if you still get more bang for buck and if theyre a bit more stable now? Or if nvidia caught up again and their cards are doing well now. The last ATI card i had was.. their x800 platinum.. maybe 6 or more years ago lol. I'm way out of the loop on ATI but i've been hearing and seeing lots of good things over the years.

The timing and information aren't right. Upon the release of I7, the Top dog from Nvidia should be 285, not 280. At the time, 285 beats everything on the market but ATI is much better in price. At those times, 4870 is the top dog of ATI, and performance is not better than 260, and 260 was priced to match ATI.

ATI only gain ground with the release of Cypress, Sept 2009. 5870 had the performance crown for 6 months until Fermi arrives, but 480 had its technical problem which uses lots of electricity, and therefore can't release a dual core version like ATI did to 5970, which is 5850x2, and was insanely overpriced.

While ATI was busy downscaling Cypress, Nvidia was fixing their Fermi design, which ends up with 460. To answer 460, ATI come with the 6xxx series which they claimed to be a redesign, which ends up slower than 5xxx at better power consumption. In short, in terms of performance 6850 < 460 < 6870.

Due to better yield and the in fact that Nvidia was losing market quick, 460 is being sold at a stealing price which ATI didn't even try to match. Just a short while ago Nvidia released 580 as Fermi 2, which is what 480 intended to be, regaining performance crown. However, in terms of raw power, 580 < 5970. Experience speaking, single core solution is always better than multi core.

Unlike what people believed, 6970 ended up to be a single core CPU which is slower than 580. Because of that, ATI finally decided to match Nvidia's pricing lineups, but Nvidia already have cutdown version of 580, which is 570 and 560 Ti, which both out perform 6870.

So, in terms of performance, 5970 (dual core) < (580) < (570 = 6970 < 6950) < (560 < 6870 < 460 < 6850). The () represents the category in terms of price.

Other than performance, ATI had its new candy called Eyefinity, which supports multi display for gaming. As to Nvidia, aside from the usual, they now have nvidia 3d surround, which is 3x monitor in 3D, requires SLI. There is a difference on how ATI implement tessellation compare to Nvidia. ATI has a special unit on board to do that, while Nvidia uses CUDA cores for it. In short, ATI's tessellation unit does not scale like Nvidia. Having said that, Tessellation is more like a hype at the moment so no big loss here.

That is the history as I see it.

 

[Elfear]

The timing and information aren't right. Upon the release of I7, the Top dog from Nvidia should be 285, not 280. At the time, 285 beats everything on the market but ATI is much better in price. At those times, 4870 is the top dog of ATI, and performance is not better than 260, and 260 was priced to match ATI.

ATI only gain ground with the release of Cypress, Sept 2009. 5870 had the performance crown for 6 months until Fermi arrives, but 480 had its technical problem which uses lots of electricity, and therefore can't release a dual core version like ATI did to 5970, which is 5850x2, and was insanely overpriced.

While ATI was busy downscaling Cypress, Nvidia was fixing their Fermi design, which ends up with 460. To answer 460, ATI come with the 6xxx series which they claimed to be a redesign, which ends up slower than 5xxx at better power consumption. In short, in terms of performance 6850 < 460 < 6870.

Due to better yield and the in fact that Nvidia was losing market quick, 460 is being sold at a stealing price which ATI didn't even try to match. Just a short while ago Nvidia released 580 as Fermi 2, which is what 480 intended to be, regaining performance crown. However, in terms of raw power, 580 < 5970. Experience speaking, single core solution is always better than multi core.

Unlike what people believed, 6970 ended up to be a single core CPU which is slower than 580. Because of that, ATI finally decided to match Nvidia's pricing lineups, but Nvidia already have cutdown version of 580, which is 570 and 560 Ti, which both out perform 6870.

So, in terms of performance, 5970 (dual core) < (580) < (570 < 6970 < 6950) < (560 < 6870 < 460 < 6850). The () represents the category in terms of price.

Other than performance, ATI had its new candy called Eyefinity, which supports multi display for gaming. As to Nvidia, aside from the usual, they now have nvidia 3d surround, which is 3x monitor in 3D, requires SLI. There is a difference on how ATI implement tessellation compare to Nvidia. ATI has a special unit on board to do that, while Nvidia uses CUDA cores for it. In short, ATI's tessellation unit does not scale like Nvidia. Having said that, Tessellation is more like a hype at the moment so no big loss here.

That is the history as I see it.

Good history, although it should be noted that 6970 = 570.

 

[Seero]

Good history, although it should be noted that 6970 = 570.

better now?

 

[nOOky]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ATI+VERSUS+NVIDIA