ATI Versus Nvidia

[Siberys]

It has been apparent to me that these two video cards are obviously rivals. Another fact is, I don't own a single one of them, but will save some money to buy one. Now, I have looked over the stats and the features of the cards, and appear to be similar. Some things to know first off,

-I will save a good 500-600 dollars
-Planning on buying one of the newer ones for some upcoming games.
-I have seen an Nvidia and it seems confusing as hell to work with, but I have not seen an ATI in its works.

What I need to know from y'all, is the which and why's of these cards that I should buy. Any thoughts?

[Magrus]

I'm not big into technical stuff, so I'll keep this simple. I have an ATI Radeon card, 64 mb thing I got 2 years ago for $80 bucks. Nothing special, old now and I like it. It's a bit screwy with certain games designed for Nvidia cards and if they say they're made for both, chances are it means "made for Nvidia but works with ATI too" type deal. I've no experience with an Nvidia card, or any other card except the one my family got that came standard with the Compaq they bought 4 years ago so thats the limit of things for me.

So far, the only true problems I've had that I know is with my graphics is KOTOR, but I've heard a lot of people have had a problem with graphics and crashing with that. I'm trying to think of other situations its been a problem, and aside from me using ctrl+alt to switch to my desktop and back to the game and having problems arise from doing that too much, I haven't really had any problems that I can say are definately just from the graphics card and compatibility.

[dragon wench]

I looked into this some time ago and concluded that NVidia, on all counts, was the far better bet.

My first card for this (old) computer was a 32 bit Nvidia, and it held out incredibly well for a long time. I just upgraded to another Nvidia card and I've been extremely impressed. It turned my aged computer into something almost respectable.

Although, I'm not a techie, and undoubtedly some here will differ with the above view

[VonDondu]

You need to ask yourself several questions first. You've already answered the first question, "How much am I willing to spend?" The next few questions are:

What are you going to use it for? Be specific. Doom 3? (That's the most hardware-demanding game I'm familiar with.) Far Cry? AutoCAD? Some of the "latest" games don't require the most powerful video card in the world.

What kind of computer equipment do you have now? Do you have an AGP motherboard or a PCI-Express motherboard? Are you interested in SLI technology? If so, you might need to spend some of that $500-600 on a new motherboard. Also, if your computer case is cramped, you might not be able to install one of the larger video cards on the market. You'll also need an adequate power supply--some people recommend at least 500 Watts.

Does the video card have to be brand new, or are you willing to take a chance on a used one to save some money?

Personally, I have no use for the latest and greatest (and most expensive) hardware on the planet. Most of my computers have an NVidia GeForce4 MX440 video card. However, I just spent about $250 on a couple of video cards for me and my boyfriend because we want to go to Quake Con and I need to start playing some new games which require a decent video card. I bought them on eBay. They're made by Asus. They're based on the NVidia GeForce FX 5950 GPU with 256MB of memory. I expected them to sound like Dustbusters since powerful video cards need a lot of cooling, but they're actually very quiet because NVidia invented a very good cooling system for them. The cards themselves are huge, and they take up two slots. My computer case isn't huge, so I had to move my hard drive to a different drive bay to get it out of the way, and I had to tie up all of the wires inside my case to ensure good airflow (I used about 30 cable ties). I only have a 360W power supply, but it's made by Enlight (a good brand) and it seems to supply enough power.

Since the release of the 5900 series, NVidia has gone on to release the 6800 and 7800 series, so I guess you could say I have "old technology", but they are still excellent video cards, and they didn't cost $400 apiece, and I didn't have to buy a PCI-Express motherboard and a new CPU.

NVidia and ATI have a way of keeping up with each other at every turn, so I think you'd be happy with either one of them. As for ease of use, I'm not sure why you think that video cards are so complicated. To me, the most complicated thing about them are the model numbers. I think that NVidia and ATI have both made the names of their products deliberately confusing. The video cards and drivers are easy to install. You might have to tweak the drivers to get the best performance in your games, but the control panels are easy to use, and you can get the information you need online. So it's up to you which brand you think is the better deal.

If you choose NVidia, the least expensive card I'd recommend is the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, followed by the GeForce FX 5900, 5900 Ultra, or 5950. You'll have to look at the benchmarks to be sure, but I think the next step up would be the GeForce FX 6600 GT, followed by the 6800 series. I haven't bothered to keep up with the latest technology, so I couldn't really tell you "why" you should spend $500-600 on a video card.

Be careful with ATI's numbering scheme. The Radeon 9500 is actually more robust than the 9600, even though the 9500 is based on older technology. The 9700 was the best card on the market about three years ago, but it was supplanted by the 9800 series. Now ATI is marketing the "Radeon X", with the X800 cards being their "flagship" series, if I'm not mistaken. As I said, the model numbers are very confusing. Make sure you know exactly which model number you want to buy or you might buy the wrong one.

Hopefully someone here can give you links to benchmark results. You ought to look at those before you make your decision.

Good luck!

[Siberys]

DUDE, that is some awesome info for now.

Specs for PC (It is coming now, I don't have it yet.)-

Processor
AMD Athlon™ 64
3500+ Processor

Operating System
Microsoft® Windows®
XP Home Edition

Memory
512MB Single Channel DDR
PC-3200 SDRAM 400MHz

Hard Drive
80GB 7200RPM
SATA w/ 8MB Cache

Graphics Processor
ATI RADEON™
9550SE 128MB
(Yes, I know it says ATI, but I am planning on replacing it IF need be.)

Sound Card
Integrated 5.1
Audio with Digital Out



Games to Run-

Doom 3
ES4 Oblivion

games like those two basically.

Yes, if I find a RELIABLE place to sell used things, then yeah, I'd do that. But I am still iffy on that as the last time I bought something used, it fried, and I mean smoke started coming from it. I had all my files on that Western Digital.

Last time I tried to work with a vid card from Nvidia, it basically made me re-install the entire system.

But yeah, thanks for the info and stuff.

[VonDondu]

Unless I'm mistaken, the Radeon 9550SE has a 64-bit memory bus (the "SE" in the name is a giveaway). That's not good. Doom 3 is going to eat it up and spit it out. You want a video card that has a 128-bit or 256-bit memory bus.

The Athlon 64 3500+ is a great processor. That 80GB hard drive is a little on the small side by today's standards, but it's really up to you how much junk you want to stuff on your hard drive. Having a SATA connection might give you the opportunity to use a RAID array (that is, more than one hard drive), and that would improve performance.

But again, your motherboard, power supply, and expansion room will determine which new video card is right for you.

You could buy another Radeon video card, but you might have to uninstall the current driver and install a new driver. It's no big deal, and you certainly shouldn't have to reinstall the operating system. The same applies if you buy an NVidia card. Just uninstall the Radeon driver (preferably before you remove the Radeon card from your computer) and then install the NVidia driver. Make sure you have DirectX 9 installed before you install Doom 3.

[Rookierookie]

Quote:

I expected them to sound like Dustbusters since powerful video cards need a lot of cooling, but they're actually very quiet because NVidia invented a very good cooling system for them.

The cooling system on Asus cards are designed by Asus, not Nvidia. And in any case, this was only because the last Nvidia top-end card, the 5800 Ultra, was an absolute fiasco as far as the cooling went.

Your current card is AGP. With $500-600, you might want to consider replacing your motherboard as well as your video card, since AGP cards have limited upgradability. A cheap brand-name NForce 4 board costs about $100. You should have JUST enough money for a Geforce 7800GTX.

[VonDondu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rookierookie The cooling system on Asus cards are designed by Asus, not Nvidia...

I'm not sure exactly who designed this particular cooling design, but it is used on the NVidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Reference Board, and other manufacturers such as eVGA use the same cooling system. You can see pictures of it here. It's quite possible that Asus manufactured the reference board as well as boards for companies like eVGA, who then sold the product under their own brand names. The video cards I have were manufactured for Hewlett-Packard, but they do have the Asus name on them. Do you know for sure if Asus is responsible for the design?