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ATI or NVIDIA? Which is Better?

Ejizz said:
Yeh, like it's not economically viable like I described earlier.
Did you even watch the video I posted Rroff?
The guy had quad SLI 480's and had to get an electrician to re-wire his computer room with new breakers to prevent tripping the electrics...

By the below chart folks would have to call in the electrician if the wanted to run SLI GTX480 512's? Is this not a HARD TDP LIMIT Rroff?

"As we had expected, the stand-by power consumption of 512SP GTX 480 was 17W higher.
Under full load the GPU voltage of reference GTX 480 was 1.0V, while 512SP edition was 1.056V. Surprisingly, the full spec’ed GTX 480 sucked 644W power, which was 204W higher than 480SP GTX 480!"



http://en.expreview.com/2010/08/09/world-exclusive-review-512sp-geforce-gtx-480/9070.html/6




That's not true Rroff, GF100 particularly the GTX470 offer(ed) ALLOT of performance for it's money yet it's market share is terrible, even the 480 offers great value, but it's DX11 market share % is decreasing.
Even with the delay it's market share should be much better than it is.
While the 460 market share did look positive when it first released, it has somewhat slowed down considerably looking at steam, maybe it's a blip, who knows?.
Click to expand...

I thought he had Tri SLi but was talking about a Quad SLI that was on offer using a 1200W PSU & that he thought that one of those PSU should not be enough seeing as his TRI SLI was using just over 1200W of power.
 
i will probably never buy another nvidia card again, a faulty nvidia gpu was the reason my old laptop packed in!

i can accept a fault is random, but this was a known issue, the only way i will go nvidia again is if ati drop to significantly worse performance than nvidia, increase significantly in cost, or nvidia are the sole manufacturer..by significantly i mean like 30%
 
Rroff said:
Quad SLI is a whole different ball game...
"we’re not sure about the power consumption of final product."
Click to expand...

I doubt there will be a final product other than a marketing stunt maybe.
They need to at the very least half the power consumption for it to be any other than the above, and that's ignoring yields...
 
al4x said:
i will probably never buy another nvidia card again, a faulty nvidia gpu was the reason my old laptop packed in!

i can accept a fault is random, but this was a known issue.
Click to expand...

Funny you should mention that!
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/07/12/nvidia-backpedals-gf100gtx480-underfill/

Apparently according to Charlie GF100's appear to have a higher than normal rate of failure in the field, although the problem is unlikely to be as bad as the original 'Bumpgate' due to vastly lower volumes.
 
Ejizz said:
Funny you should mention that!
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/07/12/nvidia-backpedals-gf100gtx480-underfill/

Apparently according to Charlie GF100's appear to have a higher than normal rate of failure in the field, although the problem is unlikely to be as bad as the original 'Bumpgate' due to vastly lower volumes.
Click to expand...

nowhere does he claim they have a higher than normal failure rate in the wild... I love how every time you can take a shot at nVidia you take the worst possible scenario and then embelish it more...

Theres 2 key things he mentions... that the process (Namics 8439-1) used in the past was responsible for high failure rates and that a hot lot - that charlie himself claimed was unfixable and unmanufacturable anyway - exhibited symptoms that would indicate similiar failure... Charlie doesn't consider there was enough time to fix these issues yet somehow nVidia has managed to get cards out to retail that don't have these unfixable, unmanufacturable problems...

Now I won't rule out the possibility of failures like those seen on the G86, etc. however we can safely assume that the solder process* has at the very least been looked at if not fixed entirely as Fermi is an order of magnitude worse at creating the conditions that caused failure with the soldering on the G86 based cards and if the same process was being used unchanged we'd see absolutely catastrophic failure rates within weeks of the cards being released... which simply hasn't happened.

I would like to assume the problem process has been fixed given the number of people running Fermi cards with massive clocks, bumped up voltage, etc. without failure or indications of failure so far tho being nVidia I'm not holding my breath.



* Charlie can't even confirm that Namics 8439-1 is actually used on retail 400 series cards so the whole thing could be a moot point anyhow.
 
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what is better, only you can decide that, but if you can i would wait for the 6*** series.
if not get
460/470/480 you can always buy another if needed

or get a cheap 460 and sell it when the 6*** are out

or go ati,but as you like nvidia you might as well stay with them, unless you get a 6*** series card.

prices and speed wise
5970( i wouldn't get one now because of the 6*** and they cost a lot i would think 2x470 would be better if your psu can handle them.)
480
5870
470
5850
460 1gb
460 768mb
any lower and 2 cards will not be much better than your 295
 
If your comparing it to a 295GTX then I wouldn't bother with anything less than a GTX470.

Going GTX295 (or in my case overclocked GTX260 SLI) to a GTX470 is an interesting one... at stock the GTX470 is slower - not by much tho - when overclocked its atleast on par and often a bit quicker... but thats not the whole story...

I noticed straight off the bat that games felt smoother and more consistant - some might put that down to "mictostutter" with the SLI setup(s) but infact its not the case.

Using graphs of the framerate over time with some common games and benchmarks I found that not only did the GTX470 often have higher minimum framerates but the SLI setups were often being pulled up by ridiculously high framerates (sometimes well above the GTX470) in specific areas where the fps was far above what was needed but were struggling in some areas where you really needed the extra framerate - where the GTX470 was doing better. So while the SLI systems were putting up as good or higher average and great max fps infact they weren't giving as good a gaming experience.
 
Stanners said:
Just get what you fancy at the time, i think any of the high end new cards would suit anyone fine, unless you have a bias.
Click to expand...

4 pages in and finally we get a sensible reply. Wish you could have posted on page 1 to save all the 'this gen' 'that gen' bs.
Please be quicker next time.:D
 
Never seen that issue before - from a quick scan it looks like the game hard caps at 29.4 fps due to being a console port? if so off the top of my head wouldn't that cause issues with VSync - as it would keep missing the 30fps sync and drop down to 20fps or even lower depending.
 
I did wonder - I don't use ATI that much but IIRC the default settings with ATI and VSync is to disable it unless the application specifies? and nVidia default tries to enable it unless the application specifically disables it.


EDIT: From a quick glance the problem seems to be due to the way nVidia is handling threading and shaders, still I can't imagine that game works too well with VSync.
 
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Thanks for all the great comments and advice but the information and opinions you have all provided still hasn't summarised the threads title question "ATI or NVIDIA? Which is Better?" it has however made me question a lot of the loyalties I have for Nvidia. On the other hand with ATI breaking even with Nvidia e.g always ether a step behind or a step in front of the Graphics arms race. So I think I will be staying with Nvidia, at least until ATI holds a clear and noticable lead over Nvidia or unless they supply a must have feature that Nvidia doesn't or can't provide.

I have seen a lot of people mention the 4x 480 sli (and it's issues) but no one has mentioned the 4x 5970 crossfire. I have been searching for a comparison site that compares the two but to no avail. Does anyone know a site that does or know where I could find information that compares the two? The 4x 480 sli or 4x 5970 crossfire two possible set-ups that I am interested in buying, so any help you can provide would be most appreciated.
 
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