ATi or Nvidia?

[Rroff]

Uh... I've been building and supporting PCs based on ATI/AMD and nVidia GPUs for years - my bro has a 6950 crossfire setup, yada yada... I have plenty of experience... not quite sure what you know about my life that I don't that compelled you to make an absolute statment like "as you have not had enough recent cards & drivers from both brands long enough to make such a statement.".

 

[Final8y]

Uh... I've been building and supporting PCs based on ATI/AMD and nVidia GPUs for years - my bro has a 6950 crossfire setup, yada yada... I have plenty of experience... not quite sure what you know about my life that I don't that compelled you to make an absolute statment like "as you have not had enough recent cards & drivers from both brands long enough to make such a statement.".

So have i & your brothers PC does not represent everyone else's which can have its own unique problems.
And its your statement that was absolute because im not trying to claim anything of which have better drivers unlike you.

 

[Rroff]

It was just an example... I have tons of experience with both sides, tho admittedly more with nVidia... if you look through some of my recent posts in the GPU forum you can see I've helped troubleshoot and solve several issues that would require upto date experience with AMD drivers/GPUs as well as nVidia depending on the thread for me to have made the suggestions I have.

 

[Final8y]

It was just an example... I have tons of experience with both sides, tho admittedly more with nVidia... if you look through some of my recent posts in the GPU forum you can see I've helped troubleshoot and solve several issues that would require upto date experience with AMD drivers/GPUs as well as nVidia depending on the thread for me to have made the suggestions I have.

So have i & my experience is contradicting to yours so that cancels both out don't it & that's why i would never bother making claims over who has the best drivers because its different for everyone.

 

[Combat Fighter]

Never had any issue either

Same here.

 

[Skeng]

ok so take it from a guy who currently owns two 5870s and before that has only ever bought Nvidia.

ATI is better value for the performance.
ATI Drivers are twice to thrice as buggy as Nvidia one's.
A single ATI card can run 3 - 6 monitors (depending on which version you buy).

If you don't mind now and then having to fanny around with driver fixes etc then ATI is your man! Otherwise Nvidia is probably the better bet.

End of the day I've moved to ATI mainly because I am now using three monitors so any upgrade in the future would cost less If I choose a ATI card over two nvidia, secondly I don't mind playing around switching to older/newer drivers to get the game I want to play to work.

Hope this helps =]

 

[Final8y]

ok so take it from a guy who currently owns two 5870s and before that has only ever bought Nvidia.

ATI is better value for the performance.
ATI Drivers are twice to thrice as buggy as Nvidia one's.
A single ATI card can run 3 - 6 monitors (depending on which version you buy).

If you don't mind now and then having to fanny around with driver fixes etc then ATI is your man! Otherwise Nvidia is probably the better bet.

End of the day I've moved to ATI mainly because I am now using three monitors so any upgrade in the future would cost less If I choose a ATI card over two nvidia, secondly I don't mind playing around switching to older/newer drivers to get the game I want to play to work.

Hope this helps =]

All well & good but apples & oranges again as your now using CF & 3 monitors which would only be a fair comparison if you were coming from SLI & 3 monitors.

If i had only ever used ATI cards & moved over to NV just when vista hit & NV had 6 months of issues for many people then i switched back then my view will be skewed purely by the timing of my switching.
There are allot of factors to consider.

 

[Rroff]

So have i & my experience is contradicting to yours so that cancels both out don't it & that's why i would never bother making claims over who has the best drivers because its different for everyone.

Google a good nVidia release and the vast majority of people will be happy with it, there will be the odd person it doesn't work too well for or someone finds some obscure function thats broken that won't affect most people... compare to AMD - google a good driver release and for every person who says "works perfectly fine for me" you'll find another person saying something like "sticky cursor bug back in this release for me" or "getting flickering shadows in game <x>" or "corrupt textures back in WoW again - rolling back to xx.x".

 

[Evoss]

Just go for best price for performance. Although... I am an Nvidia fan boy xD

 

[arc@css]

Concentrating on the positives for each firm, I mostly hear about AMD's IQ / value and nVidia's performance / technologies being among their greater strengths.

 

[hyperst]

I ran crossfire 5770 for quite a while, switched to a gtx480 a month or two ago, couldn't be happier with NV, performance is better than my previous crossfire, game is super smooth, drivers are not buggy at all for me with NV, ATI/AMD drivers was buggy as hell, I was usuing 10.4b for about twelve months as every release after that was down hill for crossfire and bfbc2, medal of honor all ways flickered no matter what ATI/AMD driver was used, couldn't be happier now though with NV

 

[Final8y]

Google a good nVidia release and the vast majority of people will be happy with it, there will be the odd person it doesn't work too well for or someone finds some obscure function thats broken that won't affect most people... compare to AMD - google a good driver release and for every person who says "works perfectly fine for me" you'll find another person saying something like "sticky cursor bug back in this release for me" or "getting flickering shadows in game <x>" or "corrupt textures back in WoW again - rolling back to xx.x".

I very much doubt that half of all ATI users are having major issues, because that's what your statement is saying with for every good then you will find a bad, AMD have the market share ATM & just like when NV had the market share MS released the pie chart & showed that NV was responsible for the most crashes & errors.

As for games then both NV & ATI have issues in particular games & i also see NV users rolling back drivers as well even on this forum.

ATI have a sticky cursor bug ATM but i hope your not trying to say that NV have no bugs ATM & as i said its all about timing because we could go back to when vista came out, the card killers & say well ATI don't have card killers ATM so ATI make the better drivers.

Both card drivers have bug & its swings & roundabouts as both sides have their turn & its a pedantic subject for hair splitters.

 

[Rroff]

Both companies have good and bad driver releases yes... you won't find a single AMD driver release that is as well regarded as a good nVidia release tho simple fact that even searching these forums, let alone a wider google, and looking at the threads for noteworthy driver releases will show.

Don't get me wrong - I've used good nVidia beta releases for months on end at times and would rate a good AMD/ATI release about the same, I certainly can't think of a single AMD driver I would rate as highly as a good nVidia release tho.

 

[Final8y]

Both companies have good and bad driver releases yes... you won't find a single AMD driver release that is as well regarded as a good nVidia release tho simple fact that even searching these forums, let alone a wider google, and looking at the threads for noteworthy driver releases will show.
Don't get me wrong - I've used good nVidia beta releases for months on end at times and would rate a good AMD/ATI release about the same, I certainly can't think of a single AMD driver I would rate as highly as a good nVidia release tho.

That's a matter of opinion & you have a right to it but dont claim fact because even with me having Quad fire for years i still have allot less issues than some people even with single GPUs..

Because i see a trend with Apple, Intel & NV that many of its users praise them as being better no matter what because of the marketing & hype machine that they run even when they are actually worse people still see them as better.

 

[Rroff]

That's a matter of opinion & you have a right to it but dont claim fact because even with me having Quad fire for years i still have allot less issues than some people even with single GPUs..

Because i see a trend with Apple, Intel & NV that many of its users praise them as being better no matter what because of the marketing & hype machine that they run even when they are actually worse people still see them as better.

If your gonna rebuke me for opinion... why even mention your experiences with quad fire in the same sentence as some kinda counter point? somewhat double standards there

 

[Final8y]

I ran crossfire 5770 for quite a while, switched to a gtx480 a month or two ago, couldn't be happier with NV, performance is better than my previous crossfire, game is super smooth, drivers are not buggy at all for me with NV, ATI/AMD drivers was buggy as hell, I was usuing 10.4b for about twelve months as every release after that was down hill for crossfire and bfbc2, medal of honor all ways flickered no matter what ATI/AMD driver was used, couldn't be happier now though with NV

And again the same flaw.

You went from Multi GPU to single on another brand.

Did you have those issues with just a single ATI card ?
Did those issues disappear with gtx480 SLI for comparison, but you didn't go from multi GPU to multi GPU from brand to brand so apples & oranges again.

 

[Final8y]

If your gonna rebuke me for opinion... why even mention your experiences with quad fire in the same sentence as some kinda counter point? somewhat double standards there

The point is seeing as you cant work it out is that my set-up is likely to suffer more issues than most others & if I'm not getting that many then there are other issues involved.

The problem with many enthusiasts that they mess around too much with the hardware with unofficial 3rd party hacks & the OS & make problems for themselves & have more problem gaming than many PC illiterate users who i make Gaming rigs for but yet i don't hear any issues from them when they update the drivers & play the latest games.

 

[Rroff]

The point is seeing as you cant work it out is that my set-up is likely to suffer more issues than most others

Depends on a lot of factors, i.e. purely as an example if you only played 1-2 games that happened to work perfectly with your setup you'd never experience the potential dozens of issues that could affect other people. Whereas I'm basing my opinion amongst other things from the nature of the posts that spring up on a new driver release with the opinions of dozens of users - and even searching this forum will show you that both have their problem drivers and issues but also the responses to better releases too.

 

[Phil2008]

Most of the probs are with multiple gpu's, if you cancel that out ATi and nVidia drivers are roughly the same

 

[Final8y]

Depends on a lot of factors, i.e. purely as an example if you only played 1-2 games that happened to work perfectly with your setup you'd never experience the potential dozens of issues that could affect other people. Whereas I'm basing my opinion amongst other things from the nature of the posts that spring up on a new driver release with the opinions of dozens of users - and even searching this forum will show you that both have their problem drivers and issues but also the responses to better releases too.

And as i said its all about timing & particular games for both brands & we will see what the next MS pie chart says as from that chart NV are anything but better but im not going to hold NV to that because as i have said its swings and roundabouts for both & there is no claim to be made.