ATI or Nvidia?

[ariyamusafir]

Friends, in your opinion, which VGA brand is better. I always prefered ATI but people are telling me that Nvidia is better. Somehow, I am not sure for I have been a long supporter of ATI rather than Nvidia.

What you guys think?

[Dashken]

Until 14th of May, it will be NVIDIA. But after that, things may change.

[The_YongGrand]

nVidia's value GPUs are always interesting. Not sure about ATi, but they are geared towards intensive 2D-applications. (like those photoshops and video-editing...)

[1031982]

It depends on what you want. I found ATI handles 2D and basic text better. But, nVidia (right now) is better in 3D.
Note, that statement is on how fast my RAM count is at a cold boot and 2D benchmarks. The card I have now runs about 20% slower with anything not accelerated by the card where the ATI's I had before handled everything equally.
IE : ATI RAM count lasted about 1-3 seconds
nVidia RAM count lasts about 5-10 seconds
Now, if I have a splash screen up, the RAM count is exactly the same at 1-3 seconds as well as if I put in another card verifying the nVidia is not designed for extreme 2D stuff.
Now, it's just fine otherwise, and the speed it displays is barely noticeable because nothing updates as fast as the RAM count. that's usable

[Adrian Wong]

I honestly wouldn't bother too much about brand. Best determine your budget and NEED, then see what's the best card you can get for that price (irrespective of the brand).

These days, I'm more inclined towards NVIDIA, but only because of their better Vista drivers. To be fair, ATI has improved quite a bit in that department recently.

[Dashken]

Unfortunately, miracle didn't happen twice as the new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT lost out to NVIDIA's 8800GTS in almost every test except 3DMark06.

With the 8800 GTS $50 cheaper, the HD 2900 XT isn't going anywhere. A disappointment for the ATI fans who were expecting something like 9700 to happen again. In addition, they are 1/2 year late to the game.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...VudGh1c2lhc3Q=

For those who likes comparing 3DMark06, here's a quote from the review above.

3DMark Numbers Mean Squat
We have discovered something very interesting about this video card. Despite what may be commonly perceived we do actually use 3DMark internally for specific testing purposes. There are a few things we use this program to check for; first of all we make sure the video card is stable before we begin gaming, kind of like a "burn in" test. Then we check the fillrate numbers to make sure the core GPU frequency is set where it should be. Finally we use the program as part of our overclock stability testing. As such, we ran 3DMark06 on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and looked at the score in surprise.

In the above screenshot you will see the 3DMark06 score of 10723 on the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, 9105 on the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB and 11191 on the GeForce 8800 GTX. Yes, the 3DMark06 score and “game tests” are a good deal higher with the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT compared to the GeForce 8800 GTS and is just shy of the GeForce 8800 GTX. If you were a benchmark enthusiast you might think wow, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT has to be faster in games because it is faster in 3DMark! By looking at 3DMark alone you would think it is almost as fast as a GeForce 8800 GTX. Well, you would be wrong.

Despite what the numbers in 3DMark are showing our evaluation has proven that the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is slower than a GeForce 8800 GTS when it comes to actually gaming. Even our apples-to-apples real gaming tests confirmed that the 8800 GTS is faster than the HD 2900 XT and nowhere close to the GeForce 8800 GTX, yet here sits 3DMark showing us the opposite!

This goes out to anyone who puts any faith into 3DMark, or any other synthetic benchmark or scripted timedemo, those number simply mean nothing in relation to real gaming performance. If you care about knowing how these video cards compare in actual games there is no other way to get that information than playing the games themselves just as you would do as a gamer.

[Chai]

Haha...HardOCP and their hatred for synthetic benchmarks. Seriously there are other usage using synthetic benchmarks, but in this case, they are right. But like I've always say, we need both synthetic and real world benchmarks.

[Papercut]

I've noticed a trend since the X1K series, ATI seems to heavily optimise their cards for 3DMark06. Probably part of some marketing strategy...but it's really disappointing when it doesn't deliver in actual games.

[Chai]

I will wait for better drivers. Looks like really crappy drivers now.

[goldfries]

Originally Posted by ariyamusafir

Friends, in your opinion, which VGA brand is better. I always prefered ATI but people are telling me that Nvidia is better. Somehow, I am not sure for I have been a long supporter of ATI rather than Nvidia.

What you guys think?

which VGA brand.

ok. put it this way, nVidia and ATI are not exactly 'vga brands', they're GPU manufacturers - just like Intel and AMD.

when you say VGA brands, i actually think of the brands like Colorful, Palit, Inno3D, Asus, MSI, ABIT, PowerColor blablablablbala.

for me, ATI and nVidia perform equally well. sometimes one is better than the other and all hell breaks loose as people crowd either side as King but actual fact is the one that's not crowned doesn't loose out by far. they might even win on some benchmarks.

if someone has a better way of phrasing the above, feel free to do so. my point is, you don't see ATI or nVidia branded cards on sale or even on reviews.