Nvidia vs ATI/AMD

[rubin1961]

I have had top end cards from both nv and ati both are good

 

[deusexlumina]

Always found Nvidia drivers to be better than ATI.

*Sees this.*

* Leaves thread.*

 

[atmax1]

I have had both ATI and Nvidia, drivers seem to be as bad as each other but I would go with nvidia for the cuda but if that dont matter then pick what does better in the games you play.

 

[ubersonic]

Depends on the games your thinking off, i.e WoW and HAWX both run ~20% faster on Nvidia hardware than on comparable ATI hardware.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Depends on the games your thinking off, i.e WoW and HAWX both run ~20% faster on Nvidia hardware than on comparable ATI hardware.

Agreed, but it's not as if those games are pushing the hardware to their limits. It's probably also worth mentioning that AMD's tessellation optimisation should cure any performance issues when it comes to HAWX 2 or other heavily tessellated games. If you were going to cite any game that benefits from the Fermi architecture most over AMD's VLIW-5/4, it would be Civilization V.

Citing large performance deltas on games that are already typically running above 60fps isn't a good reason to choose one card over another, what matters is what card can run the most demanding games you play at the resolution you desire while keeping within your budget. After that, it doesn't really matter, the card could be made by Mongolian Basket Weavers - care one should not.

 

[Rroff]

Theres a lot more to it than performance when choosing a GPU tho, no good buying a GPU thats in your budget and has adequate performance if it only get say for instance driver updates once a year.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Theres a lot more to it than performance when choosing a GPU tho, no good buying a GPU thats in your budget and has adequate performance if it only get say for instance driver updates once a year.

thats the truth and also applies to other hardware, like wifi routers which i have had a problem with crappy firmware support. decided to buy from ubiquiti in the end. they provide lesser hardware but the firmware makes all the difference.

also with gpu drivers pointless to have updates every month if the updates dont do much or make things worse.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

Theres a lot more to it than performance when choosing a GPU tho, no good buying a GPU thats in your budget and has adequate performance if it only get say for instance driver updates once a year.

But that doesn't happen with the two brands of graphics cards that are available anyway, so what's your point?

If you need CUDA, then you need CUDA, but let's not pretend that for the vast majority of cases/uses that both companies are on par with each other in almost every regard, otherwise they wouldn't sell anything at all.

 

[Kotu]

1) Pick a price.
2) Find whichever card looks the best.
3) Check RMA location/warranty length, go back to 2 if outside Europe or less than 2years.
4) Buy.

 

[Lunawolfy]

Vague, I love it.

Praline Lattes. Had one and thought it was great. But then the goldfish hoovered up all my shark bait and I was left on a burger king as my helicopter sunk in custard...

 

[Rroff]

My point is your approaching it as if everything is equal when its not, and thats ignoring specific features like CUDA which are irrelevant to this topic. Some people may be trying to use multi monitor setups for instance that work better with one company or another or a game thats better supported by one and so on.

 

[J.D]

Go team Green/Red = Team GREED

I'm joking, they both have your thoughts at heart first then profit second .

 

[Marine-RX179]

Go team Green/Red = Team GREED

If new gen cards are as high price as rumours have them to be in this recession, then they certainly would deserve that title

 

[ALXAndy]

Money talks and BS walks.

I don't care who has what so long as I get my money's worth.

Price to performance, price to performance.. It's all about that.

You get yourself a base ballpark figure (using a low end card) then calculate what sits where in terms of performance and price, and then make a very educated decision on what's worth what.

At the end? you will usually find cards from both Nvidia and AMD that warrant a purchase and are, most importantly, worth the ticket price.

Over the past three years my set ups have been as follows.

GTX 280 (great beta driver made it go pop !)
Xfire 5770 (quick when it worked, sweary swear swear when it didn't)
GTX 470
R6970L.

280 was £185 on a clearout when they were selling for £300+
Radeons were partial replacement for said 280 (Nvidia had conveniently stopped making cards for a bit and XFX didn't know what else to give me)
GTX 470 was on one day sale on here for £187, plus a £25 Zalman V3000F and the 6970L is another display of OCUK's buying power.

So, green/red/green/red.