• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Why Nvidia?

For me, 3 things are important.

1. 3D Vision. I recently got the equipment and I'm so impressed I would hate going back to normal (i.e. without stereoscopic) 3D.

2. CUDA. I'm a software developer and as such I love experimenting with code. I've managed to increase the speed of some of my DLLs by syphoning off certain bits with CUDA code. Massively parallel processing is definitely the way of the future of code and I want to be a part of that.

3. Drivers. Nvidia have always been the top when it comes to regular driver releases and significant improvements in performance due to drivers. Also, their support section on their site (especially the discussion forum for software developers) is a very handy resource.
 
Odhran said:
For me, 3 things are important.

1. 3D Vision. I recently got the equipment and I'm so impressed I would hate going back to normal (i.e. without stereoscopic) 3D.

2. CUDA. I'm a software developer and as such I love experimenting with code. I've managed to increase the speed of some of my DLLs by syphoning off certain bits with CUDA code. Massively parallel processing is definitely the way of the future of code and I want to be a part of that.

3. Drivers. Nvidia have always been the top when it comes to regular driver releases and significant improvements in performance due to drivers. Also, their support section on their site (especially the discussion forum for software developers) is a very handy resource.
Click to expand...

1 and 2, fair enough.

3 however is completely untrue, you can't even claim that it's your "opinion" because it's factually incorrect.

nVidia don't release drivers regularly at all, and a lot of their latest ones were simply borked.
 
i think the single fastest CPU is definately debateable.

If ATI were cavalier enough to set 'stock' performance to run at a suicidal 300W 95C, then the 5870 would be faster as is proved by overclock comparisons.

However, silicon is simply not designed to run at those temps for prolonged periods of time. 95C wont even be the hottest part of the chip as there will be local 'hotspots'.

I dread to think what the lifetime of a 480 will be.
 
As far as I can tell there are very few sites which seem to be saying that Fermi has beaten the 5000 series, and the blind love for Fermi on the part of anandtech seems questionable to say the least.

3d vision: Bumps up the price take for the same performance, needs irritating active shutter glasses which you need to buy over and over if you want to play or watch movies with friends, monitors cost more, and the performance drop essentially means graphics cards cost more:

iz3d: slightly buggy, just as convincing 3d effect, much more comfortable and normal looking glasses, no need for expensive active shutter glasses, a community which isn't stuffed full of nvidia fanboys and actually answer questions helpfully.

ATi 3D: Hadn't heard too much of this, but to be honest I'm not too bothered about 3d right now, I'd rather put the money to components than a visual treat which only makes a difference when gaming and hampers playability of a game (refocusing your eyes etc.)

PhysX: I agree mostly with ATi's opinion on this, that Nvidia are just pushing PhysX this hard so they can say they have PhysX and shift their lower end cards, and developers are only implementing it (with a few exceptions) because Nvidia is throwing money at them. In a game I'm not really going to be blown away by paper flying around rather than photorealistic graphics, and I'm certainly not willing to pay extra for a feature like that which hampers performance, costs more and doesn't really add anything to the experience.

Drivers: That's been a common nvidia arguement from what I've heard, but as far as I can tell they're pretty much the same as ATi, and even if they're better, the ultimate performance still goes to ATi.

Overall it just seems that what I've got from this thread is that Nvidia is only worth it if you can justify gimmicks as features. 3d gaming is all well and good, but I sure as hell am not dropping £500 to get a set up which will be improved and removed from production by this time next year, rather than just improved is the case with graphics but totally made redundant.

And I've started a fanboy war, but even the massively biased fanboy comments from the nvidia fans haven't convinced me, even if I took them as valid sources, I'm not going to pay more for support for something that'll require me to spend more on hardware to get the same performance (i.e. a physX 3d vision card, then drop more money on a secondary PhysX card and 3d setup, then realise to get the original performance you need to get a whole new card)
 
Does anyone still read this section of the forums? Beyond the same 4-5 posters permanently engaged in a flame war with each other? :D

Seriously, it gets old.
 
Drivers? don't start that again So have AMD.

CUDA yes but not all of us do that sort of thing do we?

3D vision AMD will be getting a it soon enough

and don't mention physX as most games use something simlier to havok.

and we are interested in is how the thing performances

and its okay for you Nv people to hand select bencis isnt it ?

hell if we wanted to way not get them all benchmarks and put it in one big post than get a lot of users moaning cos thier internet can't take it.

You have been told plenty of times why its not the fastest card in the world plenty of times and yet you won't take any notice.
 
Last edited:
At the end of the day ATI cards were released around 6 months ago, Nvidia comes along and only just starts releasing the new cards which the high end 480 only really matches the 5870.

It may be the greatest GPU of all time but it doesn't really matter as if you want more performance you get a second GPU anyways.

Another thing is that the price of a 480 is 100 quid more than a 5870! Thats coming on the the 5970 which rapes it in benchmarks. 480SLI is pretty pointless you might as well spend a bit more and get 5970s 4 GPUS! Benchmarks aren't real life situations, there more just to see what it can do, not what it will constantly do.

Drivers are a pig with Nvidia, countless times people getting issues just to remove the dam things. I had to go and sort my m8s computer out cause the nvidia drivers were still installed after he tryed to unistall them, so he could install his ATI drivers. People say ATI's drivers are buggy as hell and all this ****, I've used ATI for around about 5-6 years with about 4 different cards and not once have I had an issue with them, I orginally changed from a Nvidia card to an ATI card due to BSOD with the Nvidia drivers.

If you want features, yes the Nvidia cards have all this fancy rubbish, Tbh who really cares about 3D out of the cinemas. Physx is a cool feature though and would like to give that a try.

The next refresh of ATI cards will just blow Nvidia out of the water!
 
Nickg said:
h264 1080p profile l5.1

run some of those clips and see how you get on?
Click to expand...
Interesting, I didn't know that. While it's certainly a bit annoying if you download a lot of 1080p video (if you rip your own Blu-Rays it isn't a problem since BD is 4.1), it's not exactly a deal breaker except for HTPC applications. Going from that to:
thats one reason to ditch ATI forever really
Click to expand...
is a bit extreme don't you think? Especially since it could be added to the driver at a future date.
 
AMG said:
Drivers? don't start that again So have AMD.
Click to expand...
I was on about the driver interface myself, and the ability to force AA on games without having to rename .exe's on various UE3 games or getting any 3rd party apps. Not sure if it has changed by now, but having to rename the .exe of Mass Effect just to get AA is stupid, which is what you had to do ( have they fixed that by now ?) with an ati card to get aa.
and don't mention physX as most games use something simlier to havok.
Click to expand...
What do you mean don't mention it? There are games that use physx, if you play one of them it's a valid reason to pick an nvidia card...
3D vision AMD will be getting a it soon enough
Click to expand...
What about now, this moment, if you want 3d ?

''soon enough'' there might be new gfx cards out which will be even faster than anything out at the mo.

Don't think the rest of your post is aimed at me.
 
Last edited:
FoxEye said:
Does anyone still read this section of the forums? Beyond the same 4-5 posters permanently engaged in a flame war with each other? :D

Seriously, it gets old.
Click to expand...

so true! come on guys you lot must have something better to do than complaining about ati and nvidia
 
well i think its too difficult to compare the 2 really, when the arguments on cpu's were about we always compared like for like core speed to get a realistic comparison, on these 2 gpus its impossible mainly due to 480's being too hot, what i would like to see when better cooling options come out is a 480 v's 5870 at the same core speed, as i believe the core speed of a 480 is nearly 250mhz slower than a 5870, personally i dont care about power draw, and only worry about heat because it causes other problems inside the pc.
 
How many people are going to go the 3d route on newer more demanding games knowing that it halves their framerate? As for physx in most games so far its just a gimmicky addition. Look at batman, ooh papers fly about the place...and...well thats it really.
 
Last edited:
3D is a gimmick IMO on the PC, I can't see many gamers sitting in front of their 24" monitor, it would be rather sad to see that really, yeah on a massive screen, that's OK. Physx is dying, support is dwindling by the day.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom