is Physx a big factor?

[Sh3rlock]

Call me daft but this is how I see it.

ATI are better and faster than Nvidia.

The reason Nvidia seem better at the moment is because they have tied up deals with game developers to optimise the games to work better on their cards. If both cards shared the same tech then I do believe ATI would be the greater.

The best comparison I can see is the Schumacher, Ferrari, Bridge-stone (Nvidia, Physx, Game developers) package making Ferrari virtually untouchable. You introduce rules and regulations which mean the cars are more evenly matched and all of a sudden you see other teams making them sweat.

 

[HW91]

Call me daft but this is how I see it.

ATI are better and faster than Nvidia.

The reason Nvidia seem better at the moment is because they have tied up deals with game developers to optimise the games to work better on their cards. If both cards shared the same tech then I do believe ATI would be the greater.

The best comparison I can see is the Schumacher, Ferrari, Bridge-stone (Nvidia, Physx, Game developers) package making Ferrari virtually untouchable. You introduce rules and regulations which mean the cars are more evenly matched and all of a sudden you see other teams making them sweat.

it's a competition, you do whatever you can to get ahead, like ATi lowers prices a lot, uses smaller chips and doesn't spend as much eradicating driver related bugs while nvidia pays game devs which in turn means their cards usually perform better with those games and they use nvidia's tech.

Nvidia's way pays off better for consumers overall, the money that nvidia pays them goes towards more devs which means a better game and also more eye candy like PhysX, 3D vision and Surround along with better performance on nvidia's cards.

I know some people will say that they enabled the huge resolutions for eyefinity because it was there first but I think it's more likely nvidia payed them off to do it which is why dual 480's are better at surround despite a single 480 starting to fall behind at higher resolutions(except BC2 and Dirt 2 of course)

 

[Stanners]

Call me daft but this is how I see it.

ATI are better and faster than Nvidia.

The reason Nvidia seem better at the moment is because they have tied up deals with game developers to optimise the games to work better on their cards. If both cards shared the same tech then I do believe ATI would be the greater.

The best comparison I can see is the Schumacher, Ferrari, Bridge-stone (Nvidia, Physx, Game developers) package making Ferrari virtually untouchable. You introduce rules and regulations which mean the cars are more evenly matched and all of a sudden you see other teams making them sweat.

Are ATI faster than Nvidia ?

Card range for card range i would give the edge to Nvidia

 

[kylew]

Call me daft but this is how I see it.

ATI are more efficient than Nvidia.

The reason Nvidia seem better at the moment is because they have tied up deals with game developers to optimise the games to work better on their cards. If both cards shared the same tech then I do believe ATI would be the greater.

The best comparison I can see is the Schumacher, Ferrari, Bridge-stone (Nvidia, Physx, Game developers) package making Ferrari virtually untouchable. You introduce rules and regulations which mean the cars are more evenly matched and all of a sudden you see other teams making them sweat.

That's probably more accurate. nVidia rely very heavily on brand loyality when it comes to their top end cards. As a company, they're very inefficient, their GPU designs, while fast, are extremely ineffecient in terms of size/power draw/heat output (as for the whole argument about heat output, two cards with the same "GPU" temperature can actually be kicking out different levels of heat, if one has a heatsink with a higher rating of heat dissipation in wattage for example).

nVidia seem to need to rely on these little gimmicks to lock their customers in to their "platform", such as "PhysX" and "3D Vision", for the people out there they feel like they're left out, it really works on them (and no I'm not knocking 3D vision itself, but just how nVidia have implemented it in their usual way).

They are claiming innovation when they're actually masking gimmicks as innovation, and then slagging everyone else off. They basically bloated, sluggest and are in some serious need of refining. I've heard the nVidia spin and PR first hand and know that they're not entirely truthful about the claims that they make (for those that remember my posts about speaking to the nVidia guy at OcUK store).

 

[gwr3850]

My question is that how heavily is PhysX utilised in Railworks. As My 5830 can't cope with the amount of particles not sure if this is PhysX related or because it has half the ROPs of a GTX460 or the 5850. I am going to return the 5830 and swap for either an MSI GTX460 or the HIS turbo 5850. Just wondering which would give best performance

 

[kylew]

it's a competition, you do whatever you can to get ahead, like ATi lowers prices a lot, uses smaller chips and doesn't spend as much eradicating driver related bugs while nvidia pays game devs which in turn means their cards usually perform better with those games and they use nvidia's tech.

It has been shown many times that they mask their underhanded actions with such claims. Batman AA anti aliasing is a perfect example of that, where when probed, nVidia and Eidos ended up blaming eachother, when it was in fact nVidia trying to gain a performance edge with dodgy coding.

As for driver bugs, I seriously wish people would get over that, it's simply not true. People will ignore when nVidia comes out with some awful drivers, but don't forget it when ATi does the same.

That's not good for anyone.

Nvidia's way pays off better for consumers overall, the money that nvidia pays them goes towards more devs which means a better game and also more eye candy like PhysX, 3D vision and Surround along with better performance on nvidia's cards.

It's not better for consumers overall if firstly, they're not being used very well like PhysX, and secondly, you need to be tied in to a hardware manufacturer to use them. That's no good to the consumer at all.

It's like ATi trying to patent "Eyefinity", sure they've implemented it and made it more accessible, but it's by no means only usable on their hardware. nVidia have their own version, which is probably better for people with older cards at least (people with GTX200 SLi for example).

I know some people will say that they enabled the huge resolutions for eyefinity because it was there first but I think it's more likely nvidia payed them off to do it which is why dual 480s are better at surround despite a single 480 starting to fall behind at higher resolutions(except BC2 and Dirt 2 of course)

What? :S are you saying that you think nVidia "paid off" ATi to add "Eyefinity" to their 5 series?

You are aware that matrox have been doing this for a lot longer than nVidia and ATi? I've had hardware boxes out for a long time now that essentially do the same thing. What ATi has done is somewhat made it easier and a lot cheaper to do as well as it being more mainstream. Think of it as an example of what should be done with 3D Vision and PhysX.

 

[HW91]

^ driver bugs are true, it's not exactly hard to find evidence

and people don't ignore it when nvidia comes out with crappy drivers, in fact it usually hits Engadget or Gizmodo within a day of early reports, and PC gaming related stuff isn't exactly priority stuff for them.

It is good for consumers overall, as Apple has clearly shown having a system which is as closed down as possible gives the least number of problems because it is much more controlled

I'm trying to say Nvidia paid off devs to support higher resolutions, I know matrox have being doing it a lot longer than ATi or Nvidia but they didn't exactly push it to devs, whereas ATI pushed it to a few devs and Nvidia push their tech to as many devs as they can pay off.

 

[razer1978]

Physx would never be a deciding factor in buying a card, things like power consumption, heat output, image quality have a far higher priority for me. All of which ATi have the upper had atm.

i decided on ATI for just this reason, my room is hot enough so any heat i can remove is a bonus, hence the decision to get the 5850 over the Nvidia equivalent it even uses less power and kick's out less heat than my old GTX260, i can't really comment on the image quality as until i got the 5850 i didn't game on my pc for a while

Mafia II is going to be the test but until it's out nobody knows if Physx is a must and if it is i'll just have to run a 2nd card with the 257.15 beta drivers along side my 5850, but then your back to the problem of more heat and power used....... maybe i should just upgrade to an i7 as from what i've read they do a pretty dam good job of Physx without the need for an Nvidia card

 

[kylew]

^ driver bugs are true, it's not exactly hard to find evidence

No, it's not hard to find evidence at all, there's loads of evidence for nVidia drivers being shoddy, but you've kinda proven my point, you're just focusing on one side claiming they've got terrible drivers. There have been tests to show that nVidia drivers are actually worse than ATi drivers, however, I know that in terms of the average PC, both sides are just as good or bad as eachother, and a lot of "driver" problems are actually PEBKAC.

and people don't ignore it when nvidia comes out with crappy drivers, in fact it usually hits Engadget or Gizmodo within a day of early reports, and PC gaming related stuff isn't exactly priority stuff for them.

Being reported on, and people ignoring it, as you did yourself, aren't the same thing. What I mean by ignoring it is simply acting like bad drivers is a trait of ATi, when nVidia have some nasty stinkers out.

It is good for consumers overall, as Apple has clearly shown having a system which is as closed down as possible gives the least number of problems because it is much more controlled

Really really bad example, Apple aren't exactly known for value for money when it comes to such things, but then what is that arguing against? PCs versus Macs? Because that example doesn't really add validity to nVidia having "Better" drivers.

I'm trying to say Nvidia paid off devs to support higher resolutions, I know matrox have being doing it a lot longer than ATi or Nvidia but they didn't exactly push it to devs, whereas ATI pushed it to a few devs and Nvidia push their tech to as many devs as they can pay off.

Just think about it for a moment, nVidia "releasing" surround gaming was entirely in response to Eyefinity. They already had the technology there on their Quadro line of cards, it was/is called "SLi mosaic". They haven't been paying devs to support higher resolutions and or wide aspect ratios, firstly because if that was true, you wouldn't see any where near the amount of third party wide aspect patches/fixes for quite a lot of modern games, which clearly haven't been made with wide aspects in mind.

nVidia's surround was a response to Eyefinity, they couldn't keep it as a quadro only feature because they needed to compete on surround gaming.

Now that's what's good for everyone.

 

[Mr Krugga]

Apple moved towards ATI cards recently so you failed a big one here, HW91.

I had some driver issues with both Nvidia and ATI cards, those were easily solved anyway...

Can't stand the marketing BS we're being fed up with on daily basis regarding PhysX/CUDA/3D Vision/Surround. It's not like Nvidia has invented and patented physics in games, hardware acceleration for parallel processing, 3D in general or multi-monitor setups, right? Why the hell do we get these brand names coming up every ****ing day?

It's like marketing HT or Turbo Boost for Intel CPUs, wtf, people shouldn't eat up marketing brands but rather focus on the raw performance and real outcomes of owning one or another brand.

And sure, Nvidia GeForces have their advantages but hell no, I wouldn't call PhysX one of them. It's hardly ever used and I'm surprised Nvidia hasn't abandoned it yet. Anyone had a thought how it would be like to have PC Nvidia and ATI exclusives?

 

[HW91]

@kylew I never ignored the fact that nvidia comes out with crappy drivers

also based on your responses, I'd say you need to actually read all of it and not focus on one piece of information or you need to lower the brand protecting ego down a notch

 

[kylew]

@kylew I never ignored the fact that nvidia comes out with crappy drivers

also based on your responses, I'd say you need to actually read all of it and not focus on one piece of information or you need to lower the brand protecting ego down a notch

I responded to all your points, additionally, I'm not "brand defending" at all. I keep pointing out that you seem like you're ignoring nVidia's driver fails, nVidia and ATi have both had big driver fails at times, yet you're saying that nVidia have the better drivers, therefore, acknowledging their driver fails, but discounting them.

"Shoddy drivers are problem that ATi need to fix" is what I mean, you say that as if it's only ATi's problem and not nVidia's also. As I've said, they're both as good and as bad as eachother, and most "driver" problems are simply user error.

 

[Stanners]

@kylew I never ignored the fact that nvidia comes out with crappy drivers

also based on your responses, I'd say you need to actually read all of it and not focus on one piece of information or you need to lower the brand protecting ego down a notch

I would not worry about it, he takes a vacation from these parts now and then

I do not think either of them make perfect drivers, it just comes down to which side of the fence your on as to what you want to read in to it.

 

[kylew]

I would not worry about it, he takes a vacation from these parts now and then

I do not think either of them make perfect drivers, it just comes down to which side of the fence your on as to what you want to read in to it.

are you unable to read my posts properly either?

Isn't that what I Said? Both have driver issues? He needs to stop acting like while they do have driver issues, it's only ATi that have them as a "disadvantage".

"doesn't spend as much eradicating driver related bugs" and "driver bugs are true, it's not exactly hard to find evidence" clearly shows that he's trying to imply that it's an issue for ATi but not nVidia (could be construed as ignoring one and exagerating the other).

 

[HW91]

you have to agree though that bugs with nvidia drivers usually only last one driver whereas with ati it's usually more than that

 

[Vince]

blurry mess? never noticed it with my GeForce 3 - think there was something wrong - the only time nVidia has been a blurry mess is attempting to render directx 9 shaders with the GeForce FX (5) series...


EDIT: Tho I have to admit the GeForce 3 didn't have as nice filtering quality in farcry as the cards that came after it - but your talking the next generation of cards.

I still have very fond memories of my gf3 ti500, there was no doubt it was an animal of its time, likeweise I don't remember any bad image quality issues with it. However it did get replaced with a radeon 9700pro which was epic in comparison.

Forgot to say, Physx doesn't come into it when I decide what to buy.

 

[kylew]

That's my point exactly! There are driver issues that have lasted for MONTHS. Look at how bad nVidia's drivers were when Vista was released. For some reason, you believe that ATi driver problems go on for months, while nVidia's don't. I keep saying they're as good and as bad as each other. The nvlddmkm.sys has been going on for years.

You know there are people who say the exact same thing you say about ATi drivers, except about nVidia's, and won't touch their cards with a bargepole?

I'm not saying that's true either, I'd just wish people would get over "ATI DRIVERS ARE SUCK LOL" because that's all they hear from misinformed people.

 

[Vince]

That's my point exactly! There are driver issues that have lasted for MONTHS. Look at how bad nVidia's drivers were when Vista was released. For some reason, you believe that ATi driver problems go on for months, while nVidia's don't. I keep saying they're as good and as bad as each other. The nvlddmkm.sys has been going on for years.

You know there are people who say the exact same thing you say about ATi drivers, except about nVidia's, and won't touch their cards with a bargepole?

I'm not saying that's true either, I'd just wish people would get over "ATI DRIVERS ARE SUCK LOL" because that's all they hear from misinformed people.

Exactly what they should really be saying is - neither drivers really suck... your just a noob!

 

[95thrifles]

I wouldnt choose a card purely cos of physx, I would choose a card based on best price/performance for your budget, typically this has been ATI over the past few years, however right now its NVidia (460/470 vs 5850/5870 certainly), thats my opinion anyway

 

[Mojo]

Physx is utterly useless until Nvidia allow other cards to make use of it. Until then, developers will not risk using it too pervasively in major titles, as cutting off a large chunk of the potential market probably isn't in their business plan.

I always make my purchases based on how they perform based on their price, and at the moment it is a relatively linear progression:

Model: 5770<5830<GTX460 768mb<GTX460 1gb<5850<GTX470<5870<GTX480

Price: 120 <140 <155 <175 <200 < 235 <280 <370