ATI V's Nvidia not the obvious question

[MoD_Callidus]

Ok goodfellows

It occoured to me the other night that if we ignore the current range of GPU's and taking all things being equal. ATI lose out to Nvidia on depreciation and resale value.

It seem's as I trawl through MM that many ati cards are available at great prices ( with the exception of 9800's which flumax me still selling @ £30-35 ) where the nv cards seem to generate better s/h values.

Let's say for example a 6800Gt pcie will fetch around £50+ del whereas an ati X800/850 might go for £40 yet back in the day they were pretty much neck and neck with ati taking the IQ crown.

Is there an underlying reason for this or simply pot luck ?

 

[Mortster]

Ok goodfellows

Let's say for example a 6800Gt pcie will fetch around £50+ del whereas an ati X800/850 might go for £40 yet back in the day they were pretty much neck and neck with ati taking the IQ crown.

Is there an underlying reason for this or simply pot luck ?

I would imagine with that example with those particular cards it would be down to the fact that NVidia's 6 series supported Shader Model 3.0 , whereby the X800/X850 only supported up to Shader Model 2.0b.

..possibly.

 

[chaparral]

edit

 

[MoD_Callidus]

Fair point Mortster but tbh although back then a big play was made about SM3 it's proven to be little or no use so I wouldn't expect it to have any bearing on the resale of a card. but cheers for the input mate.

it also seem's evident with 7800/X1800 range though which strikes me as odd

 

[Mortster]

Fair point Mortster but tbh although back then a big play was made about SM3 it's proven to be little or no use so I wouldn't expect it to have any bearing on the resale of a card. but cheers for the input mate.

it also seem's evident with 7800/X1800 range though which strikes me as odd

I would tend to agree on that. SM3 hardly set the graphics world alight, it's only now that we are seeing more and more games adopt SM3 as standard. I had an X800 back in the day and it was a cracking card.

I just believe that the large majority of people, take the regular joe-public, recognise the name 'NVidia' over and above 'ATI'.

A quick look at the most recent steam survey shows a larger proportion of NVidia users to ATI.

 

[marc2003]

I just believe that the large majority of people, take the regular joe-public, recognise the name 'NVidia' over and above 'ATI'.

i guess it's down to the nvidia logo splashed all over the games. which is ironic considering some games i've had, the iq has been much better on ati cards. gta:sa being one example.

 

[bfar]

I was looking at the Valve hardware survey the other day and it seems Nivida owners are in the majority.

They used to be such a reliable company. Its hard to make that claim now

 

[red_avatar]

Hmm I think it's more than the shaders. From what I see around the net, people trust ATI less. I think people believe that games will be more compatible with Nvidia cards. And, to be honest, most are.

The only ATI card I had was a 9800 Pro which was the best selling ATI card ever as far as I know (the 5XXX series sucked at the time so no surprise it got popular). But even with that card being so popular and game designers clearly making an effort to make it fully compatible, I still had plenty of issues with older games. Metal Gear Solid II & Singles 2 spring to mind as two examples. In Singles 2, the characters would be invisible except for their mouth or so. In Metal Gear Solid 2, you couldn't see any faces when you were being contacted.

And then there was a lot of talk about the 9800 Pro series tending to overheat and artifacting. Which is what happened with mine pretty early on and saw it die after little over a year just outside warantee. Considering I paid £270 for it, this was a pretty expensive joke.

Besides the 5XXX series being notoriously crap, Nvidia didn't have many (well known) lapses though. Backward compatibility is very admirable, new games are unlikely to have any issues (with Vista as exceptions but drivers have become pretty good).

So yeah, I think the reason Nvidia does better is because people trust the brand more. I also never had an Nvidia card die on me (although it's a bit deceiving to talk about Nivida/ATI when they just make the chipsets and architecture of the cards, not the components).

 

[marc2003]

<snip>

nvidia have been just as bad if not worse with reliability. certain brand 6800gt and 7900gs were notorious for their abnormally high failure rates. and i used to own a 6800gt some 18 months ago. at the time the drivers were woeful. i found i was having to remove and re-install different leaked driver versions on a game per game basis just to be able to play games without major on-screen corruption or poor image quality. ok that was a long time ago and you might argue that driver support is better now? wrong. there are endless threads complaining of non-existant nvidia support especially in vista. meanwhile ati drivers have been great no matter what windows OS you run.

i guess you pick and choose based on your own experiences and it doesn't really matter what the masses have to say about a certain brand/card, but for me, i can't see myself going nvidia anytime soon.

which reminds me, i'm still on agp so yes i'm behind the times but look how nvidia stitched up their own customers on agp. the prices for their top end agp cards have been outrageous. ok they were first to market with their 7800gs+ card but they were well over priced and under specced compared to their pci-e counterparts. at least when ati released the x1950pro on agp, it was the same spec as the pci-e card and only a few pounds more in price.

 

[red_avatar]

nvidia have been just as bad if not worse with reliability. certain brand 6800gt and 7900gs were notorious for their abnormally high failure rates. and i used to own a 6800gt some 18 months ago. at the time the drivers were woeful. i found i was having to remove and re-install different leaked driver versions on a game per game basis just to be able to play games without major on-screen corruption or poor image quality. ok that was a long time ago and you might argue that driver support is better now? wrong. there are endless threads complaining of non-existant nvidia support especially in vista. meanwhile ati drivers have been great no matter what windows OS you run.

i guess you pick and choose based on your own experiences and it doesn't really matter what the masses have to say about a certain brand/card, but for me, i can't see myself going nvidia anytime soon.

which reminds me, i'm still on agp so yes i'm behind the times but look how nvidia stitched up their own customers on agp. the prices for their top end agp cards have been outrageous. ok they were first to market with their 7800gs+ card but they were well over priced and under specced compared to their pci-e counterparts. at least when ati released the x1950pro on agp, it was the same spec as the pci-e card and only a few pounds more in price.

It's the perceived reliability that counts though. ATI was known to be unreliable before the 9800 Pro - I remember that was the general idea about ATI. As I said, Nvidia didn't have many *well known* lapses.

Personally, I have had a GeForce 2MX, a GeForce 3, a Geforce Ti4200, a Geforce 6600GT, a Geforce 7800GT and a Geforce 8800GTS. And to be honest, not a single one of those cards ever gave me any real problems and none of the computers I built for friends ever had any problems too. Put next to that my 9800 Pro that broke after a year, and I find myself leaning toward Nvidia myself.

Also, the 6600GT and newer cards were all PCI-E - maybe your problems were related with AGP foremost.

But yeah, the masses perceive Nvidia as more reliable - ATI got a bad rep when it started to break through and Nvidia always had a slight edge in hardware so I don't see me going to Ati. Plus, Nvidia drivers allow me to scale resolutions for my LCD screen and from what I heard, ATI drivers don't allow this so there's no choice even if there had been one otherwise.

 

[Jack Bauer]

If there is a branding issue, by that I mean more people known about nvidia on the high street, maybe the AMD/ATI merge will even this out as AMD is resonable well known these days.

 

[red_avatar]

In any case, ATI need to brush up their image. Maybe ditch their old fashioned logo and pick a new, modern one (I never liked ATI's logo myself). If you consider how many games advertise nvidia and how little attention ATI is getting ... ATI needs to work on it.

 

[bfar]

I also had a lot of compatibiliy issues with my old 9800Pro. Don't get me wrong, it was a great card, but a lot of hassle. I don't care who disagrees with me, I know what i had - the drivers were just awful at the time.

I had a 1900xt before christmas. That was a lot better. I think ATI have finally got on the ball, and I'll be looking at they're range very carefully next time i upgrade. The trouble for ATI is that it will take a lot longer for general customer perception to change...

Nivida seemed to be going the opposite direction until they finally got a decent driver out last week. The last 6 months were nothing short of awful. I hope it's just a blip. They have a habit of doing that sometimes. Remember the 5xxx series?