personally I think Nvidia blows away ATI. It seems to me an Nvidia GPU just performs infinitely better...
I've always had better experience with Nvidia, and i find their drivers are much better, i also hate ATi's naming scheme for their GPU's
since they're both continually coming out with products that one up the others I'm going with neither. This is how it works, nvidia comes out with the next gen product first, then ATi comes out with a better next gen product, then both do revisions. Most of the time, ATi mantains price/performance on their older products(x800GTO) and nvidia mantains the best marketting/gimmicks. which... is exactly hwo it is now, when R600 is out with will one up G80, but a lot of people will allready have G80 parts... also note software optimizations, since nVidia has mroe market share, more titles are optimized towards them. Then take in the next gen consoles, the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The xbox has a dumbed down version of R600 and the PS3 has RSX(a dumbed down G70) Even though RSX has a one year development advantage, most developers are finding that when code is optimized, Xenos is just better. Then there is the fact that R520 is a MUCH better GPGPU than anything nVidia has out... but nVidia is soon to release it's own GPGPU language which will give it the upper hand(see it's never ending) so in short, Anyone who votes on this list is stupid, and a fanboy both companies release chips which have strengths and weaknesses and you should base your purchase descision on the following - Cost - performance in the games/applications you use(not in obscure games you can't/never will use which make critics rave) - upgrade value/features and other values the end. Merged Post: all true, nVidia's drivers are better and ATi's naming scheme is crap. Who cares though it's overall performance that matters, and if you set the image quality on nVidia card to HQ, to make the image quality closer to that on the ATI side(ATi has better image quality due to lack of excessive driver optimizations) the performance takes a small hit(1-15% depending) again overallm eprformance, check benchmarks for games with settings you plan on using.
I honestly don't have a need for a super powerful card, but in the past 4 years, I have tried both ATI and Nvidia, and Nvidia simply just seems like a more powerful GPU all around...I have started to mess around with 3DS Max 8 and my GeForce 6600 LE (128mb PCIe) is enough for me....speaking of which, does anyone have any recommendations for getting started with 3DS???
well... if you're comparing a 2 year old nvidia cad against a 4 year old ATi card, there will be a huge diference. The age of the cards matters, as newer more efficient manufacturing manufacturing technologies become available and chip clock and frequency so in short, unless you compared two cards which were targetted at the same market segment which were similarly priced and released at around the same time, I would beleive that your experience might be akey to upgrading from a 4.66Mhz 8086 to a 100mhz 80586(also known as Pentium 1), it's nto that the 286 sucked in specific, it's that newer tech is almsot always better, and in this example, it's better about 100fold. so can I ask you, what ATi card were you comparing to that GeForce 6200(err wait 6600LE which has the exact same specs) which si probably the ----tiest card nvidia's made in a while outside of the FX series? again, a highend ATi radeon x1950XTX will asrape your ----ty 6200/6600LE, it's around 5-50 times as powerful depending on the application. example of performance with last generations card http://www.gamespot.com/features/6156171/p-2.html take a good look at some performance comaprisons which seem reasonable http://www.futuremark.com/forum/showthread.php?t=164
It has been a long time, I was not talking about comparing my ****ty 6600 LE, although I have, to the ATI Radeon X200, which is in fact the closest thing to the Nvidia 6600 LE, and the performance difference was quite noticeable. in the past I have compared other cards, relatively close to the same supposed Specs...although, I cannot say specifically which cards, cuz to be honest, I don't remeber.... I respect you intelligence and you obvious knowledge of these subjects, and raining down on people like the "god of knowledge" is not at all intimidating, at least not to me...
so you're basing your views on ATis weakest chip against a bargain card from nVidia... damn... Maybe I should compare a 4.66MHz Intel 8086 chip from 1985 to a 450mhz AMD K6III from 1997 and give AMD a stunning victory of a thousand fold even though Intel has new products over a ten-thousand times more powerful than the 8086 which is no longer in production. EDIT: I'm not trying to be intimidating, i'm just trying to make you see that your conclusion was very narrowly based and is too broad. You're comparing a chip aimed at peopel who do not require 3d accelertion against an entry level card. In every aspect the entry level card will dominate, but it's the same scenario who you switch the products(say GeForce 6150integrated GFX vs. ATi x600) for the record, every graphics card I've bought in the last year and a half has been nVidia based, I found good deals on them, I'm neither anti-nVidia nor --- ATi, I just Don't think it's really accurate to compare companies who have products which are neck/neck in performance and pricing and overwhelmingly declare on the victor when three months ago the other had a significance performance lead and has a new product due in a month.
my problem is not the price of the cards themselves, my problem is the stats that ATI claims to have on that particular GPU, if you look at the Specs. comparatively, you will find that ATI claims to have the SAME specs as this 6600 LE and yet, the Nvidia card is more powerful... once again, I appreciate you intelligence, I am actually challenged when "talking" to you, I am tired of all of the stupid people in the world, and I think they should all go to hell...=) The sarcasm is also a nice touch, it show me that you have a passion for what you are, for lack of a better word, preaching... Thank you for being intelligent... Merged Post: "I'm neither anti-nVidia nor --- ATi" I honestly do not have a great enough passion for this topic to say I am either, the way I see it, if it works, use it...especially in my case, where monster power is not necessary. I am a conflict seeker, I will start things just to see where the argument will go and how far I can take it before I start pulling "facts" out of nowhere... I enjoy talking to people of a high intellect of my own, it gives me a chance to grow as a thinker...
the x200 has the same core clock. it also has the same number of pipelines. they can utilize the same amount of memory. but it's only been released as an integrated graphics chip. This means that it has no RAM nor a memory controller. This means that data must be sent to your systems northbridge then relayed to your system memory(which is slow and of low powerformance), then back to the northbridge, and then back to the chip. This results in a huge performance hit. It's an unlike comparison. If you want to compare integrated graphics, compare INT GFX, comparing a real card to an int GFX chip is far off. Nvidia wins in this category, their solution is just better overall. If you compare the entry level, mainstreme and performance segments you'de see that it's very competative overall. video cards/chips are very sensative to memory performance. so ATi's chip is about as powerful as nVidia's, it's just that everything else is slower in this case and that kills it. Also, the GeForce 6 series was slightly mroe powerful per MHz than the radeons. The radeons hit higher MHz though. Again... it all evens out, if you were capabel of overclocking the x200 youd'e be amazed at how well it scales. if I reduce the speed of my RAM by 50%, i will note somewhere around a 40% drop in performance.
I believe I may have given the wrong model number...haha I appologize, the correct card is the x550 which is not an integrated chip, if I am not mistaken..
ahh... well that is diferent. the x550 has a marginalyl faster core speed and the same memory speed. it's also based on the R300 achitecture and was meant for use in budget systems. ATi launched the R420 architecture to compete with the GeForce 6 series, so you're really looking at left over Radeon 9 series chip coupled which are rebadged. Anyone who bought those were not well researched. compare the midrange GeForce 6 series with the midrange x series, as Nvidia really did wipe the floor on the lowend of the x series since they weren't even the same architecture. Also, the x series sucks at openGL so if that's your omparison, I'm not surprised, the X1k series is a lot better in that aspect, beating even nvidias 9 series 8800GTX in DOOMIII
are you an IT ----- in some way? you seem like the kind of person that should have a really good job RIGHT NOW!...haha I really have nothing else to say from here.. you have pretty much covered everything I could possibly come back on....=) I have one more question, then I am going to sleep...its like 2AM what is the best possible way to earn Rep Points?
no, I'm a high school senior who just does a lto of research on hardware and hardware theory. I have a ----ty job, I push carts at a Target for $7.50 an hour. as for the best way to earn rep, just be helpful.
