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PCIe nVidia against PCIe ATi

L

Like a Fox Yet Again

Member
I am in the midst of a build for a client of mine, and as is the usual case he wants the fastest and most powerful card and setup on the market. I would like to know, which is better: nVidia's BFG 6800 Ultra OC, or ATi's X850XT ? Try to keep this as clean as possible, no fanboy wars. Also, any information regarding as to why one card is better than the other would be greatly appreciated.
 
Neither. Both are overpriced given very good performance by X800XL and 6800GT. Spending $500 right now on a videocard isnt really a good idea in my eyes given these cards will drop 2x in price once R520 comes out in June. Also, they dont even offer enough performance improvement over the mid-high end cards given their price premium.
 
Is it me or are nVidia's cards being trumpted a lot lately? If you look at everything but the 6600GT, ATI has a much better card. If you look at the benchmarks the X800 and X850 series seem to easily handle anything nVidia has (comparing respective card levels), with the exception being Doom3. The only thing that keeps nVidia from being completely beaten is SLI. Once ATI releases the R520 I'm not so sure nVidia SLI will be able to hold up (especially if they AMR/MVP R520s together).

This is coming from a current SLI user. Sure it is fast but I bought it more for the novelty. Just something of having two cards in one system was too cool to pass up. But nVidia had better release a fresh card rather than a patch like SLI and 512MB Ultras. /rant
 
um no...ATI currently has no card that ups nvidia cards...why? have you seen an ATI card with SM3.0 yet? i dont think so...ok, Sm3.0 isn't that big of a deal, you say...it is though, as next gen games will most likely run in Sm3.0 only (either that or very bad looking 2.0 with decent speeds, or good looking 2.0 with bad fps)...without HDR, Sm3.0 looks better and runs better than 2.0...have you seen the newest splinter cell game? A 6600gt runs Sm3.0 (without hdr) smoothly...in fact, it probably gets a constant 50fps (prolly around 30 on 10x7)

Nvidia cards are more future oriented...when UE3 games come out, even if the 6800 runs slow on them (which it is said will run easily), the x850 will run even slow (and look worse)...if you upgrade often, usually ATI has better now cards and usually better future cards, but in this case, to be future proof, you'd want a 6800gt/ultra.
 
Actually, the 6800U will be better to your budget if you decide to upgrade later. Just add another video card for a 50-70% increase overall. No ATI junkie can state that, yet.
 
Ya we can Kensai. It's called upgrading, just you don't run both, you run a card from the next generation that will most likely perform 1.5 or 2* as well as a 6800U. I'm sure many of us have been doing this for some time now.
 
Originally posted by: hans030390
um no...ATI currently has no card that ups nvidia cards...why? have you seen an ATI card with SM3.0 yet? i dont think so...ok, Sm3.0 isn't that big of a deal, you say...it is though, as next gen games will most likely run in Sm3.0 only (either that or very bad looking 2.0 with decent speeds, or good looking 2.0 with bad fps)...without HDR, Sm3.0 looks better and runs better than 2.0...have you seen the newest splinter cell game? A 6600gt runs Sm3.0 (without hdr) smoothly...in fact, it probably gets a constant 50fps (prolly around 30 on 10x7)
Click to expand...

I dunno....

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Screenshots

The difference in image quality between the 2 screenshots is minimal. Sure some better lighting..meh...

Sure there is a performance advantage as seen Here
Again this is nothing to write home about.

HDR performance? Can't be used with AA. And incurs a HUGE performance drop:
Here

OK but which cards are faster at the end???
ATI You can also see ati cards provide a smoother gaming experience due to higher minimum frames.

Now lets look at Anisotropic Filtering performance hit:
ATI is more efficient

Now we already know ATI has more efficient algorithm for Anti-Aliasing as seen in any review for any shader intensive game where ati is faster than Nvidia.

So again, how exactly are Nvidia cards more futureproof? All current benchmarks show that in most shader intensive games with AA/AF enabled, ATi cards are faster. Except for Riddick and Doom 3 which use stencil shadows, Nvidia cards are actually slower than ATI in the most demanding games. I have a feeling once full features of SM3.0 are enabled, Nvidia cards will be brought to their knees due to higher demands of SM3.0.
 
Originally posted by: hans030390
um no...ATI currently has no card that ups nvidia cards...why? have you seen an ATI card with SM3.0 yet? i dont think so...ok, Sm3.0 isn't that big of a deal, you say...it is though, as next gen games will most likely run in Sm3.0 only (either that or very bad looking 2.0 with decent speeds, or good looking 2.0 with bad fps)...without HDR, Sm3.0 looks better and runs better than 2.0...have you seen the newest splinter cell game? A 6600gt runs Sm3.0 (without hdr) smoothly...in fact, it probably gets a constant 50fps (prolly around 30 on 10x7)

Nvidia cards are more future oriented...when UE3 games come out, even if the 6800 runs slow on them (which it is said will run easily), the x850 will run even slow (and look worse)...if you upgrade often, usually ATI has better now cards and usually better future cards, but in this case, to be future proof, you'd want a 6800gt/ultra.
Click to expand...

I can understand the whole SM3 thing but until I see some good games with very noticable improvements (without the huge performance hit) then it will be interesting. By that time ATI will have flooded the market with their own SM3 card in all price ranges and those will be much faster than their current bunch. If you do the math, the current X850XT PE is much faster than the 6800U in most benchmarks, and if everyone's theories of the R520 being about twice as fast it may make the nVidia cards look outdated. Then stick two of the R520s together and no SLI rig could touch it. This is why I say that nVidia better come up with something more than SLIed 6800Ultras. I heard they will retail for $700-$800, ridiculous.

BTW: I don't buy my hardware or games to run at 30fps at 1024x768.
 
hans030390, we all know your opinions (that's all they are) on SM 3.0 😛

We also know by the time SM 3.0 actually matters, any card you have purchased today will need to be upgraded, so your futureproof theory gets flushed down the toilet 😉

 
Originally posted by: hans030390
next gen games will most likely run in Sm3.0 only (either that or very bad looking 2.0 with decent speeds, or good looking 2.0 with bad fps
Click to expand...

So you're saying that new games will automatically be "very bad looking" or "good looking 2.0 with bad fps" if they use SM2.0 simply because SM3.0 is out? Are Far Cry, Half Life 2 and Doom 3 "very bad looking" or have "bad fps" just because they're using SM2.0?

The answer is "No".

It's up to the developers/programmers to make the most out of the tools/features at their disposal. I'm sure there will be plenty of future SM3.0 "dogs" that won't visually measure up to HL2, D3 or Far Cry. Saying that SM3.0 games will automatically look better than SM2.0 games is just plain ridiculous.

And as far as "next gen games will most likely run in Sm3.0 only" I'd like to see where you got the proof for that statement.
 
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