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Why Nvidia?

The way I see it now:


Reasons for nvidia 4xx series:
Cuda
Physx
3d Vision
Drivers (interface?)
SLi mainboard ( if you want 2, or more, or want more in the future).
Better performance in games Y and Z.

Reasons for ati 5xxx series:
Value for money.
Overclocking.
Cooler ( will require less case cooling, will radiate less heat at other components in the area, etc...)
Drivers ( interface?) ( subjective, one person might like nv drivers more, the other might like ati's drivers more, so I included this on both sides)
Less stress on psu ( eg. you might have to upgrade your psu for the nvidia cards while you don't for the ati card).
Crossfire mainboard ( if you want 2, or more, or want more in the future).
Better performance in games W and X...


Have I missed anything ?
 
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Parsley said:
This will never grow stale will it? nVidia have had the same amount of time to play with their drivers, they have had working samples to play with for months and they won't have been sitting around going "nah we we will sort our drivers out after we release the card".

The thing in no way matches up to being the amazing performance monster they made out to be when they were singing its praises in late 2009, they will have been working on the drivers already so it wasn't a total loss on release.

I'm not saying their won't be more peformance gains, there probably will be, but saying that their driver team hasn't already had a copious amount of time to work on the cards strikes me as daft.
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Using that logic you could say that ATI have had over a year to "optimise" their drivers though. Its all swings and roundabouts
 
These NVIDIA vs ATI can go on forever. Lets face it, ATI have done a great job with their 5000 range of cards in terms of value and performance. I for one was hoping for a lot more from NVIDIA considering the 6-8 month gap. I have used NVIDIA many times in the past because they had the best cards and their prices were within a reasonable budget.

You have to remember that it is a good thing that there is competition otherwise NVIDIA or ATI could charge silly money for silly performance and it would not push the technology to the level we have today.
 
James J said:
Using that logic you could say that ATI have had over a year to "optimise" their drivers though. Its all swings and roundabouts
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I wouldn't say a year, as ATI didn't have the production problems nVidia had and went into full scale manufacturing much earlier leaving the driver team with less time to work on the cards pre-release. Time from the driver team getting the first working models, to the cards sitting on store shelves was much greater for nVidia... heck they still aren't out on the shelves yet.

But yes you are right with regards to that, I just don't think the "driver maturity" advantage ATI have that people keep mentioning is really quite as large as some folk think.

I just hope the next incarnation of the Fermi architecture is better so we have closer competition. If and when they release a card that is similarly priced to available equivalents at the time, is faster and doesn't suffer from the current drawbacks it has I will have no qualms about buying one. As a side note Cuda and PhysX are of no real use to me either so those aren't selling points for myself :).
 
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Parsley said:
I wouldn't say a year, as ATI didn't have the production problems nVidia had and went into full scale manufacturing much earlier leaving the driver team with less time to work on the cards pre-release. Time from the driver team getting the first working models, to the cards sitting on store shelves was much greater for nVidia... heck they still aren't out on the shelves yet.

But yes you are right with regards to that, I just don't think the "driver maturity" advantage ATI have that people keep mentioning is really quite as large as some folk think.

I just hope the next incarnation of the Fermi architecture is better so we have closer competition. If and when they release a card that is similarly priced to available equivalents at the time, is faster and doesn't suffer from the current drawbacks it has I will have no qualms about buying one. As a side note Cuda and PhysX are of no real use to me either so those aren't selling points for myself :).
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Aye I know what your saying. The thing that really puts me off the current fermi chips is the temperatures they run at as it means they'll be quite loud where as my 5870 isn't at all. New architecture is usually a nightmare to get off the ground where as the 5000 series was based on the 4000 series architecture so should have given ATI abit of a headstart when it comes to software. I remember the launch of the 9700 pro which had truly awful drivers which broke most games on the market but as soon as they started getting them right it became a seriously good piece of kit!

Sadly half of my games have physicsx on it so I would notice a difference in FPS in some of the titles I own and using a nvidia card just for the physics isn't an option due to the lack of a second pci slot on my mobo (midi case).

The next few months will be interesting though
 
Out of curiosity what games do you have that use PhysX? I can only think of a few off the top of my head myself and in games like "Batman : Workhorse of nVidia Advertising" I didn't miss it when using my 5870.

I played it on a friends computer with a 280 in and sure, the PhysX was nice but it wasn't mindblowing beyond "Oooo flappy paper on the floor!... ok lets move on".
 
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Mass effect, Batman, Age of Empires 3, UT3, Turok, Shadowgrounds, Metro 2033, Borderlands and alpha prime to name a few just looking at my games list
 
James J said:
Mass effect, Batman, Age of Empires 3, UT3, Turok, Shadowgrounds, Metro 2033, Borderlands and alpha prime to name a few just looking at my games list
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I'm not going to go into nitpicking but I have afew of those and I honestly can't say my experiance with the game has been ruined by not having PhysX :).
 
snowdog said:
The way I see it now:


Reasons for nvidia 4xx series:
Cuda
Physx
3d Vision
Drivers (interface?)
SLi mainboard ( if you want 2, or more, or want more in the future).
Better performance in games Y and Z.
480 - Same Idle and practically Full Load Power consumption as GTX295
Both 470/480 Both quieter than a GTX285 at Idle
480 - Quieter than a 2GB 5870 at full load and quieter than a GTX295
Not much diff with 470/480 at full load temps, they sit around 93/94oC, the 5870 at around 89-90oC.

Reasons for ati 5xxx series:
Value for money.
Overclocking.
Cooler ( will require less case cooling, will radiate less heat at other components in the area, etc...)
Drivers ( interface?) ( subjective, one person might like nv drivers more, the other might like ati's drivers more, so I included this on both sides)
Less stress on psu ( eg. you might have to upgrade your psu for the nvidia cards while you don't for the ati card).
Crossfire mainboard ( if you want 2, or more, or want more in the future).
Better performance in games W and X...


Have I missed anything ?
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My bits in bold.
 
Nivek said:
My bits in bold.
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Can't say my 5870 hits near 90 with the auto fan control. If I crank it up with manual fan control so it sounds like a hairdryer as the cooler on the 480 does, it would be even further off 90. I could even try it with furmark when I am back home with my pc.

It's also overclocked :).
 
Parsley said:
I'm not going to go into nitpicking but I have afew of those and I honestly can't say my experiance with the game has been ruined by not having PhysX :).
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Aye didnt say it was ruined without having it, you just lose FPS due to not having it meaning you can't ram the AA levels as high as you probably could if you have a dedicated card for it. Without benchmarking though its sterile conjecture
 
James J said:
Aye didnt say it was ruined without having it, you just lose FPS due to not having it meaning you can't ram the AA levels as high as you probably could if you have a dedicated card for it. Without benchmarking though its sterile conjecture
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Not strictly true, when you turn physx off, the there isn't an FPS drop, however there are benchmarks where the CPU has been overloaded with PhysX thus slowing the whole game down to less than 1 FPS.
 
most reviews iv read show the gtx285 to be on par with the 5870 and the 470 to be considerably faster.

unless there is any competition nvidia will continue to charge high prices for thier video cards.
 
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