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Has ATI jsut destroyed the green team?

Shorterm yes ATI destroyed Nvidia's pricing structure. Why else would they slash prices so dramatically. The consumer has a lot to thank ATI for as it meant cheap high end cards all round.

When you use lots of AA (most gamers do as they want maximum image quality) the 4870 is the best choice in a lot of games it slightly edges out the GTX280 and is now a lot cheaper.

GTX280 is the best choice if you want the max FPS but lots of AA is not a concern, however now its price has shot back up you would be insane to get one as 4870X2 is not much more but a lot faster in most games.

4850 is probably the best overall buy as it balances strong performance with amazing pricing and 4850CF is quicker than GTX280 in many games and better IQ as well with more AA for same FPS.

For the future ATI will probably be on top until Nvidia can die shrink and overcome heat issues. This cannot happen overnight going to a smaller fab is very costly and they need to run down their existing product lines before doing so otherwise they will take an even bigger financial hit.
 
I'm very happy with the market at the moment. Both companies have great offerings at each price point; all Nvidia need to do is release an uber card to compete with the 4870X2.

And I'd seriously like to hear fewer people bashing SLi or CrossFire solutions when they don't know what they're on about. I've had a 9800GX2 and a 4870X2, and I can quite confidently tell you they ROCK.
 
JTrickle said:
Its a bit like the current are you better just staying with 2 cores debate. Not that much stuff yet makes proper use of an Intel quad. Enough does to interest those with phat wads, but those with tight wads are not really too bothered. Same goes for sli/crossfire.



I bought a reference design 4850 because of the hype here. The cooler was $&%*^£. Not fit for purpose. A couple of weeks later there were still no decent OEM 2 slot versions and Nvidia had then reduced their 9800GTX+ to the same price as the 4850 + aftermarket £20 coolers. I could have bought one of those instead of voiding my warranty.

Interestingly, OCUK seemed to have stopped selling the £140 9800GTX+'s, where as you can still buy the HIS two slot 4850 (the only one worth buying imho). So to answer your question, yes, ATI does seem to have won that £110 - £150 battleground.

I'd sooner take a 260 over a 4870 at the next level, though. But even thats a tough call, as there are fractionally more reliability concerns over the 260s than the ATI cards.
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The fact is the 4870X2 IS faster than the GTX 280. I am talking about adding criteria to suit your own bias, like "GTX 280 is the fastest single gpu card" when it really should just be "GTX 280 is the second fastest single slot solution".

ATi have won most the battlegrounds, not just the £110-150 one, and the 4870 is faster than a 260 :p. For £200 odd, you can get 2x4850. For £300 odd, 2x4870, over, 4870X2. At all pricepoints, if you have a Intel motherboard (which most do) the ATi choices are superior to the Nvidia ones.

The only reason not to go CF is if you have a Nividia mobo...
 
No doubt they are great cards (heatsink/fan problems aside), but a lot of people will still go NVidia for the more solid drivers, you only have to look at this forum and others to see the amount of driver problems on ATI cards.

I owned a 9700 Pro during the time when NVidia were getting obliterated with their rubbish FX series, as bad as the FX was I was tempted to switch at times just because of the problems ATI drivers gave me.
 
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mmj_uk said:
No doubt they are great cards (heatsink/fan problems aside), but a lot of people will still go NVidia for the more solid drivers, you only have to look at this forum and others to see the amount of driver problems on ATI cards.

I owned a 9700 Pro during the time when NVidia were getting obliterated with their rubbish FX series, as bad as the FX was I was tempted to switch at times just because of the problems ATI drivers gave me.
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Drivers are hit and miss though as some people (like me) have never had any issues with either driver set.
 
I personally do not have a preference to either Nvidia or ATI I just tend to buy the best bang for buck at the time of purchase. I do like the fact you seem to get more driver updates with ati though :)
 
Destroyed - No

Damaged - Undoubtably- but probably only slightly.

Do remember someone (*)xplaining on a similar thread that the top end of gpu's e.g 4850/8800 upwards are very small earners for the companies so that they will not lose so much sleep over winning /losing this 'one' battle.

Nice to have the bragging rights , of course, but for bottom line ?.

Personally I switched to AMD (4870) after many years (10 + I think) with nvidia - why ? Simply much better bang for your buck :D

Nvidia had been top of the heap, without real competition , for so long that their prices were becoming/had become extortionate !! Amd's prices saw to that litle game :D:D:D:D

What I do not want is for either company to fold - then we would have sky high prices without any hope of reductions. :(:(:(

(*) Sorry for any Plagiarism - I have not been able to find/remember the person who wrote the comments & who , obviously, knows a lot more than I do about comps. industry
 
sarge78 said:
All quoted for truth (with a minor fix :D)
Although it looks like Nvidia is killing Ati in the GPGPU niche segment.
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uhhhh? :eek:

AA worked well for me with my 2900XT, contrary to what most people say, the 2900s didn't have such a huge hit with AA enabled with the later drivers.

The actual problem they suffered wasn't AA anyway it was texture filtering as far as I can remember. But either way, the 'issue' was sorted for the most part with a few driver packages down the line.
 
AWPC said:
Shorterm yes ATI destroyed Nvidia's pricing structure. Why else would they slash prices so dramatically. The consumer has a lot to thank ATI for as it meant cheap high end cards all round.

When you use lots of AA (most gamers do as they want maximum image quality) the 4870 is the best choice in a lot of games it slightly edges out the GTX280 and is now a lot cheaper.

GTX280 is the best choice if you want the max FPS but lots of AA is not a concern, however now its price has shot back up you would be insane to get one as 4870X2 is not much more but a lot faster in most games.

4850 is probably the best overall buy as it balances strong performance with amazing pricing and 4850CF is quicker than GTX280 in many games and better IQ as well with more AA for same FPS.

For the future ATI will probably be on top until Nvidia can die shrink and overcome heat issues. This cannot happen overnight going to a smaller fab is very costly and they need to run down their existing product lines before doing so otherwise they will take an even bigger financial hit.
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But the ATI only does 24x and the NV 32x.

So much for "better at AA" then.

Are you telling me that if I sell my 280 and get a 4870 all my games will look better AND run better? What about that that use 32x?
 
Nvidia wasted a golden opportunity after g80 - they'd left ATI so far behind they had plenty of time for loads of r&d and should have developed an amazing, power efficient next gen card.

I couldn't believe the g200 series was the best they could come up with after 2 years? A rehashed g80 on a massive die with no dx10.1? Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic card (i own one!) but we were all expecting a bit more from this gen. ATI have capitalized very well, and they've brought pricing back down to sensible levels too.

One thing that is better is Nvidia's vista drivers. At least they're rock solid now. As someone noted above, that's a big selling point for me.
 
rafster said:
The fact is the 4870X2 IS faster than the GTX 280. I am talking about adding criteria to suit your own bias, like "GTX 280 is the fastest single gpu card" when it really should just be "GTX 280 is the second fastest single slot solution".
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So the GTX 280 isn't the fastest single gpu? I think you will find it is.

rafster said:
ATi have won most the battlegrounds, not just the £110-150 one, and the 4870 is faster than a 260 :p.
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I've had both, benchmarked thoroughly and it is not. Bang per buck it is certainly better but the 260 just edges it in the performance stakes.

rafster said:
For £200 odd, you can get 2x4850. For £300 odd, 2x4870, over, 4870X2. At all pricepoints, if you have a Intel motherboard (which most do) the ATi choices are superior to the Nvidia ones.
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Well thats from your point of view. The motherboard makes no difference whatsoever in a GPU choice unless you are going SLI or crossfire and the only motherboards that run crossfire to there full potential are x38/48 where most people have p35 or p45.

rafster said:
The only reason not to go CF is if you have a Nividia mobo...
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Unless you want a single GPU that dosn't suffer from microstuttering. Both NV and ATI are guilty of this in dual GPU cards.
 
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w3bbo said:
Well thats from your point of view. The motherboard makes no difference whatsoever in a GPU choice unless you are going SLI or crossfire and the only motherboards that run crossfire to there full potential are x38/48 where most people have p35 or p45.
.
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P45 does not hinder Xfire perfromance at 2 8x speed enough to worry about it.

A cheap P45 mobo and 2 x 4850's are faster than a 280 for less money.
 
easyrider said:
P45 does not hinder Xfire perfromance at 2 8x speed enough to worry about it.
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True, but I wouldn't spend £700 on a multi GPU crossfire setup to be restricted. If you are spending that amount of money then it makes sense to go to the hilt. 4850's would be used in a setup with a budget so yeah I wouldn't worry about using P45 with them at all.

4850's are certainly the bargain GPU atm and in crossfire they do rock, especially when you factor in the cost per frame. However :

The 4850, price aside, is a competitor to the GTX260.
The 4870 , price aside, is a competitor to the GTX280.
Both cards are the highest single gpu solutions each company has to offer. NVidia have dropped a massive clanger on pricing as they just did not expect ATI to come back with such architectural improvements and so its only natural to compare price to price but the true comparisons should really be made as above.

The 4870x2 is out on its own as, being a dual GPU card, it has no competition from NVidia...yet. The 9800GX2 was a competitor to the 3870x2 (last gen) and we know which was the better there. With no NV dual card set to replace the GX2 yet it seems the 4870x2 will be top dog for a while and deservedly so, at least until NV stick there top end gpu's onto a single slot solution (maybe when they change fabrication to 55nm?). I cringe at the thought of how much NV would charge for that though :(.
 
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Nvidia could just pay off developers to optimise their games for Geforce cards ("The Way Its Meant To Be Played" being an example). They still have the larger market share. I'm not saying this is a good thing, merely that ATI haven't quite dethroned Nvidia like they did with the 9700 Pro, 9500 Pro and 9500 around 6 years ago.
 
I just hope NVidia don't come back and kick ATI back into touch just yet. ATI/AMD need the money much more than NVidia atm and would hate to see NVidia dominate again like they did last year.
 
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