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ATi or Nvidia?

I had 2 Nvidia 6800GTs and what a waste of about £600. Endless of probs in games, never got double the speed, psu was always hot and you could cook a egg inbetween the cards. It was bliss when I changed to a single ATi X1900 about 6 months later, as all the problems vanished into thin air.

As they say "once bitten" and all that
 
billysielu said:
Just want to clarify about the whole "messing with drivers" thing.

ATI owners HAVE TO install the latest drivers, or their games DO NOT WORK.

It's not out of choice :(
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No, that is wrong(for me anyway), ATI/AMD users stick to a decent set of drivers that plays the game well, take 10.4b for example, I think I used that for nearly a year, glad I didn't need the later versions because they mostly had trouble in bfbc2 which 10.4b didn't but saying that 10.4b would render grass and foliage all over the place, now I would have been completely stuck if I had to install for a specific game, but nothing else really interest's me more than bfbc2.
 
mjones1 said:
Neither have I, I guess we are just lucky.:p
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The last time I had an Nvidia was back in 2005ish, the Geforce ti4800 card. I had numerous problems with it. From there on wards I decided to stick with ATI. Starting the the 9800 -> x800XT, now to the 5850.

All I can say the Nvidia card I had and other people I know who have had Nvidia cards have major problems with overheating, especially when overclocking.

Currently my Asus 5850 is running at 975Mhz core (from 745Mhz) Memory 1150Mhz and its very very stable. Playing Metro 2033 on Ultra heats the card to 60 - 65 degrees. Personally I've never had problems with ATI drivers. I have, however, always chosen the same brand of graphics card (Asus Gigabyte etc) with the same manufacture of motherboard,

Never failed me at all (YET...).
 
I have had Crossfire 4870's for 2 years and my verdict on crossfire is about 3/10, when it works its great, when it doesnt your left with a GPU that doesnt add basically anything and glitches. For example STALKER with my Crossfire enabled had flickering, BC2 did to. Witcher ran like crap, Necrovision started to bog down lait on in the game, the Total War games were God awful at times with Crossfire giving barely any performance increase. Maybe it was the earlier Crossfire cards that didnt scale well compared to these but basically when Crossfire doesnt work your just left with a dead card using power which is quite annoying to thing about.

For me now I am sticking with single GPUs, thats why tomorrow I am ordering a GTX580 and OCing the **** out of it with the Gigabyte OC cooler XD.
 
Blue160 said:
Strictly it does void the warranty. If you find one with the dual bios it's pretty foolproof though. See the sticky at the top of the forum.
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thats not 100% correct some cards have diff memory which runs at a lower v from what i have read , risk of damaging the memory with overvolting or something like that . not 100% sure what is what but somebody care to put it in black and white ?
 
billysielu said:
Just want to clarify about the whole "messing with drivers" thing.

ATI owners HAVE TO install the latest drivers, or their games DO NOT WORK.

It's not out of choice :(
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What rubbish. I only really update when I remember to (so normally once every 2-4 months) and I don't get problems.

If anything, nVidia have a poor track record for this as the best driver set seems to change from user to user depending on card, configuration etc.

Although i'll give them credit, that aspect has improved, a lot.
 
The only problems i've had is with crossfire and also installing the latest drivers, man they were a pain in the backside, freezing whilst installing.

I'd go Nvidia again though, i just think they're better.
 
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chaotic_uk said:
thats not 100% correct some cards have diff memory which runs at a lower v from what i have read , risk of damaging the memory with overvolting or something like that . not 100% sure what is what but somebody care to put it in black and white ?
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You already have done. 6970 runs at higher voltages than the 6950 and flashing to the 6970 can fry the VRAM and cause artifacts. I have done this and would recommend not doing the flash :( Unlock shaders only (still requires a bios flash but uses a modded 6950 bios).
 
ATI cards are currently a lot more energy efficient compared to the Nvidia ones. Not sure if that matters to you or not. Personally I've always had bad experiences with ATI drivers (HDMI output vsync tearing, not being fully compliant with the highest quality H264 compression settings, games always requiring hotfixes etc) so I prefer Nvidia.
 
I do prefer Nvidia, always had them and friends who have had ATI just seem to gather problems, probably due to miss use though.

Ive never spoken to customer support as ive never needed to.
 
SE-Lain said:
ATI cards are currently a lot more energy efficient compared to the Nvidia ones. Not sure if that matters to you or not. Personally I've always had bad experiences with ATI drivers (HDMI output vsync tearing, not being fully compliant with the highest quality H264 compression settings, games always requiring hotfixes etc) so I prefer Nvidia.
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Hotfixes are the same as NV betas, when a new game comes out between official driver releases, unless you would rather wait & go without until the official cycle.

Vsync tearing? never seen that ever because tearing is the result of no Vsync.

And both NV & ATI have their own HDMI issues even though i personally or my friends, collogues or clients have not & have not had any with the PC also being hooked up to the my Pioneer KURO.

ATI not fully compliant with this but NV is not fully compliant with that ect....
 
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At £200 I'd probably get a 480 SOC card to be honest as they have a better cooler than stock 480s, keeping the temps and noise down, plus being stock overclocked to not far off 580gtx speeds. Some people have had issues with them on this forum though, I won't lie, but for value for money, that is easily the best card you can buy at that price point.

If your dead set against that though, I'd probably go with a 6950 2gb card
 
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