Why are so many dumping ati back to nvidia?

[Powermoloch]

Why would people care if other guys want to pay $$$ to try a new product?

Besides, it's their money/choice and let them be.

 

[at80eighty]

youre confusing submission spamming by one guy with many people dumping ATI.

as for me : the 460 is a good card, im interested, but Im still sticking with my ATI till the 6xxx shows up so I can decide between the two by the holidays.

 

[BD231]

It's because ATI hardware is overpriced and you can still get top dollar for cards that have been out for quite some time now.

 

[RussianSensation]

Also Nvidia cards actually work better with AMD CPUs than AMD's own cards do, because Nvidia's drivers are more efficient in CPU-limited situations.

Actually, Anandtech, Tom's Hardware and Xbitlabs have shown that ATI cards are less demanding when it comes to CPU performance than NV cards. It has been shown many times that Intel Core i5/i7 processors are faster than AMD processors in gaming (esp for minimum framerates and CF/SLI setups). Therefore, this alone would imply that pairing a faster Intel CPU over a Phenom II is going to provide faster framerates for NV graphics cards.

Secondly, it has also been shown that GTX4xx series are also picky about CPU speeds: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpus-and-games-2010_4.html#sect1

OP, I don't think many people are switching from 5830/5850/5870 to GTX460. BD231 made a good point: I can see someone selling a 5870 for $330 or so and getting a GTX470 for $230-240 and pocketing the difference.

If one is upgrading from an old graphics card, NV does have some better priced cards at the moment.

 

[sandorski]

Nvidia fans who went ATI because Nvidia had nothing. Now that Nvidia has something, they're going back. Nothing more than that.

 

[solaris54]

we arent................just sell me your unwanted ATI cards....

 

[Scali]

Why would anyone change cards in the same generation? And specially one where they offer similar performance? Probably just enthusiasts who love trying new stuff, thats about it

Well, in my case, I had no choice really
I had an 8800GTS 320 in my main development machine. I wanted to stick it out until Fermi arrived... Not sure if I would buy it, but I wanted to at least make sure that I'd make the right choice.

However, in October last year, my 8800GTS died, probably a victim of Bumpgate(tm).
Fermi wasn't around yet, so I could either buy an nVidia DX10 card again, basically the same as my 8800GTS, just slightly faster... but for a developer, speed isn't all that important. Or... I could get a Radeon and have DX11 support, although I'd have to give up on Cuda (and as it later turned out, OpenCL), PhysX and some of the nice developer tools and documentation that nVidia provides.

So I got a Radeon 5770... A cheap 'in between' card for me. If Fermi turned out to be a success, I would have no problems tossing the 5770 out. And if not, it'd be good enough to play with until either nVidia or AMD came up with something newer and better.

But, after years of developing with the 8800GTS, going back to AMD was a bit of a let-down for me. I wasn't entirely happy with the driver support. Especially OpenCL, but also OpenGL wasn't that great... not to mention under linux.

When Fermi finally arrived, I was in two minds. I loved the improvements they've made to the architecture, allowing C++ in Cuda, running multiple kernels concurrently, and having a parallel tessellation unit (I was using Cuda/OpenCL to make my own tessellation anyway, I want to do a Reyes renderer like Pixar... but the Radeon's tessellator is not very powerful).
But heat and noise are things you don't want in a development machine. You don't want a noisy machine so you can't hear yourself think. It's very difficult to concentrate if there's a constant droning of fans.

So I decided not to go for Fermi, and stick with the Radeon. But with the GTX460, the heat/noise problems seem to be solved... So now I can have my cake and eat it too... It does everything my Radeon does, and gives me the developer benefits of nVidia aswell (better OpenCL/OpenGL/linux support, Cuda, Visual Studio debugging plugins, performance profiling, very good SDKs with lots of sample code and documentation etc).

 

[Xarick]

When I bought my 5850 a few months ago I did so because the 5850 was $270 with mw2 (a $40 game then) vs a 470 for $310. I kinda feel now like I made a bad choice given the performance now of the 470. So when I see people jumping back to nvidia it really makes me feel that way and I begin to wonder if I should do the same.
and then I see stuff like this:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty-gpu-graphics-performance/8
and I think.. wtf ati.. the 5850 is getting stomped by 30fps. That is a huge difference.

 

[3DVagabond]

Oh my! Only 93fps! How will you stand it? LOL

I hear what you are saying. ATI hasn't even begun driver optimization for SCII. But, in reality, it doesn't matter.

 

[Qbah]

Oh my! Only 93fps! How will you stand it? LOL

I hear what you are saying. ATI hasn't even begun driver optimization for SCII. But, in reality, it doesn't matter.

That's without AA. And it's a DX9 engine. I hope ATi does enable AA in the game (as I own a HD5850) and that the average will be above 60FPS for my card at 1080p. Otherwise I will be very very disappointed.

 

[Scali]

I hear what you are saying. ATI hasn't even begun driver optimization for SCII. But, in reality, it doesn't matter.

I guess that's the problem...
These days we've pretty much grown accustomed to the fact that drivers may not perform well, or even have rendering bugs in new titles, and that these will be solved on a per-application basis.

However, if the overall driver quality is better, there is less need for application-specific bugfixes and performance tweaks.
A company shouldn't need to "begin driver optimizations" if their drivers are just more mature out-of-the-box.

This culture of "fixing applications when they break" is rather counter-productive. Bugs and performance issues can always happen ofcourse, but they should be exception rather than rule... What else is the point of having standardized APIs such as D3D and OGL?

(Not saying nVidia does it better... they're both guilty of this... just that this is not how things should be done).

 

[Gikaseixas]

I'm keeping my 5870, it serves me very well indeed. My PC plays every game silky smooth so i will wait and see what Radeons 6870 or Geforces GTX580 bring to the table to decide.

I always buy what's best at the moment and when i got my 5780 Nvidia had nothing that could compete against it. If the GTX480 was not so hot and did not consume that much i would consider buying two of them given the great scalability of SLI. It's amazing the advances Nvidia did in multiple card tech.

 

[Dribble]

I guess that's the problem...
These days we've pretty much grown accustomed to the fact that drivers may not perform well, or even have rendering bugs in new titles, and that these will be solved on a per-application basis.

However, if the overall driver quality is better, there is less need for application-specific bugfixes and performance tweaks.
A company shouldn't need to "begin driver optimizations" if their drivers are just more mature out-of-the-box.

This culture of "fixing applications when they break" is rather counter-productive. Bugs and performance issues can always happen ofcourse, but they should be exception rather than rule... What else is the point of having standardized APIs such as D3D and OGL?

(Not saying nVidia does it better... they're both guilty of this... just that this is not how things should be done).

It all went down hill after specific game driver optimisations arrived. The core driver suffers because it is not the focus - the focus is always trying to get that extra 10% by optimising for a certain game. If the driver team just made a rock solid core driver then all our games would run 20% slower but crash 100% less imo. A good trade off in my book.

That said reason star craft will initially work better on nvidia is almost certainly TWIMTBP, basically nvidia will have much more thoroughly tested and debugged the game for their cards then ati will. Ati don't seem to have the manpower doing that sort of thing so they tend to firefight more.

 

[Modelworks]

I have both. The primary reason I buy nvidia is I use a lot of graphics apps that make use of CUDA and ATI is still dragging their feet in that department. If I didn't care about cuda I would buy whatever was the cheapest.

 

[SlowSpyder]

AMD ruled from Sept 09 until recently. Nvidia just released a very good card in the lower $200 price range. A lot of people buy around there and don't want to spend $400 on a 5870. AMD has a big hole around there, at least they did until they dropped the 5830 price. I don't think many people are dumping AMD if they have 58xx cards, but for 57xx users the GTX460 is an upgrade at a decent price. So I think you're just seeing more Nvidia threads now that Nvidia finally has a good all around card out at a price people buy at. The GTX470 and GTX480 were big let downs to many people, a little faster and a lot warmer/more power hungry/nosier. Now they just have a good part in a popular price range.

 

[thilanliyan]

I just picked up a GTX460 but I would have been happier I think if I had picked up a 5850 at launch. As it is right now, I just did not feel like paying $300+CAD for a card that used to cost $270. The 460 will do until I make a bigger upgrade.

 

[Arkaign]

I have a 5770 and will probably stick with it a while, as I'm not a huge gamer. I do have a 25.5" 1920x1200 monitor though, so if something really gets me interested that needs more power I will definitely go with a 460. It looks like the 1GB model can just about keep up with a 5870 once overclocked, according to AT review. That's a killer value for $, and I decided a long time ago never to spend more than around $200ish on a card. If price drops happen across the board, I might consider a 5850 as well.

 

[Wreckage]

Maybe they want to play StarCraft II with AA
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=958&type=expert&pid=3

While I was excited to learn that NVIDIA had been working on a way to get AA working with StarCraft II even if the developer didn't take the time to implement one, I was disappointed to basically see no response from AMD and its driver team when I asked about the possibility of seeing it for users of ATI cards as well.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty-gpu-graphics-performance/4

 

[Zap]

I see a lot of threads on other sites about people dropping their 5850s and 5870s for 460s and 470s?

The pendulum swingeth.

 

[airdata]

I'll be rocking my 2gb 4870 until the wheels fall off.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Maybe they want to play StarCraft II with AA
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=958&type=expert&pid=3



http://www.guru3d.com/article/starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty-gpu-graphics-performance/4

I'd have to say AMD is really dropping the ball if they are not optimizing for this game. It's going to be a huge release, if they just ignore this it'll be a big problem for many gamers. I wonder if it'll be able to be forced with CCC?

 

[Scali]

The pendulum swingeth.

Does it ever
If I skip the pre-ATi/nVidia era, my chronological list of cards in my main machine is something like this:
nVidia GeForce2 GTS
ATi Radeon 8500
ATi Radeon 9600
nVidia GeForce 7600
nVidia GeForce 8800
ATi Radeon 5770
nVidia GeForce GTX460

 

[Genx87]

I'd have to say AMD is really dropping the ball if they are not optimizing for this game. It's going to be a huge release, if they just ignore this it'll be a big problem for many gamers. I wonder if it'll be able to be forced with CCC?

Really makes you wonder who the hell is running the show at AMD. This is a no fucking brainer imo. This release is going to be huge. To not devote resources to making sure your hardware looks its best for the release is simply retarded.

 

[edplayer]

. . but I have seen the xfx 5770 hd cars on ebay from 80-110 in completed auctions. People can ask $150+ all they want. but why pay they much when you can get new for $150-190 depending on the card.

You must have typed in the wrong search terms. I just checked right now and the cheapest XFX 5770 sold for $127.50. I checked the last 50 auctions.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Really makes you wonder who the hell is running the show at AMD. This is a no fucking brainer imo. This release is going to be huge. To not devote resources to making sure your hardware looks its best for the release is simply retarded.

Maybe they'll have a hotfix, or Cat 10.7 will take care of the issue. But this would be a big feather in Nvidia's cap if they can run AA on what might be the biggest release of the year and AMD can't. I really, really like my 5870, but you generally don't buy a $400 graphics card to not run AA on a AAA game...