Nvidia vs ATI

All biases aside, one cant really say ATI is soooooo much better than nVidia or nVidia is sooooooo much better than ATi simply because, when comparing equally classed cards, both companies make exceptional products and it's really those out there who want to get into pissing contests that make such a big deal of it

 

I'll post this again

 

Let's not let this thread devolve into pointless and unsubstantiated pissing contest. I know I wont let it.

Like I said about unsubstantiated, anyone can say the equivalent: "I've had 2 ATI cards and they've sucked ass" too or even say a bit more without actually saying anything at all: "I've had 2 ATi cards and they were unstabled as hell". If one is going to get knee deep into pissing contests, let's make sure at least its a substantiated one.

Yes but there are different degrees to which they perform. Using cars as an example, all cars are supposed to get you from A to B but consider the Ferrari F50 and a Ford Focus, some cars will do so much faster. The same kind of hierarchy applies to video cards but perhaps a little more so: with cars, almost any car can drive on the highway (safety and other concerns aside), but with video cards, only certain qualified cards can play certain video games and some cards cant play certain video games.

It's not as simple as just the amount of memory however in most cases, a 256MB card will have a more advanced chip on it and cater to more premium users. I dont know the ATI equivalent or if one exists (Nephilim?), but with nVidia, consider the GeForceFX5200: it's a budget card and offers quite the performance for its price class however it is far behind the performance of its bigger brothers. So what does nVidia (rather the OEMs) try and do? They try and squeeze as much performance into the card and yet still keep it in the budget category. This is done by loading it up with 256MB of memory. Memory is cheap compared to a more advanced video chip. The total cost difference between the 128MB and 256MB versions of the GFX5200 is usually less than $20 and the 256MB performs ever so slightly better. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that the 256MB vs 128MB argument only works if you compare betweeen the same video cards: a lot of people may suggest that a 256MB GeForceFX5200 will outperform a 128MB GeForceFX5700 but that is wrong.

1. With the exception of the GeForceFX5200 (and ATI's 256MB equivalent), there are no "cheapo" 256MB video cards

Sapphire is the budget arm of ATI. Their cards are usually cheaper and perform slightly worse than stock ATI cards.

A video card is designed and required to do one thing: display 16 colours at 640x480 -- hardly optimal gaming there. Like my analogy with cars and highways, not all video cards can play them: consider FarCry and UT2004 for instance: with a performance oriented card (or even midrange) card, you can get good to excellent results playing however, try to play using a budget orient card and you may find that the game may not start and if it does, it runs horribly slow or, in order to improve the performance, you have to drop the quality level.

They do make cards ranging in all price ranged HOWEVER if you compare those cards made by Sapphire for a specific price bracket with, say, the stock ATI equivalent, you will notice the performance will be a tad less. Probably not horribly so (which is why Sapphire is so successful) but if you are looking for bragging rights, Sapphire wouldnt be the way to go.

I think Ive made the distinction clear for you about the different categories of video cards but to be honest what you are essentially saying is that "any car that is red is like this Ferrari that is red" and you and I both know that isnt the case.

To a degree yes. Hell if you spend enough time around computer hardware (especially from a more sale/retail oriented perspective), you may even be able to pin down the exact model and specifications of the card (based on trends and buying-personality). For instance: you can run UT2004 using an antiquated GeForce3Ti500 -- you can even run it at 1024x768 with the settings ramped to max. This however will results in very poor framerates (a measure of how 'smooth' a game looks when you are playing, the higher the better). I would think the framerate would be in the 10-20fps range using those settings. Now consider a GeForceFX5700, using those same settings, the framerates will probably be in the 40-60fps range. An eye-noticeable difference. Naturally there is a limit to which the eye will be able to estimate framerates and detect lag however this test is only really effective when you run the game at the maximum threshold of the card (i used an obvious example above to accentuate a point).

And most of those makers are quite competent programmers. Furthermore, in many cases (especially with RPG and FPS genres), games will license graphics engines from one or two major companies -- these companies have spent tons of time refining their graphics engine and as such, one can kinda say, "cutting edge graphics engines are in almost all major titles"

Consider the car example: "any red car should be able to drive at a speed that satisfies anyone" -- obviously not true. You'd be hard pressed to get a Radeon9800/GFX5950 with 128MB to run UT2004 at 2048x1536 with detail settings ramped to max ---- very difficult to the point of infeasible.

Like I said, Red Car A not neccessarily the same performer as Red Car B.

Well no crap -- they have to justify charging $500+ for a chunk of silicon, plastic, aluminum, copper and PCB somehow. That's like saying a Ferrari is faster than a Focus. And If you didnt realize it (after owning two GeForce cards), it applies to nVidia too .... oh and get this.. this is going to blow your mind: it's true virtually everywhere in life (gasp). It's what drives most economies.

Oh for crying out loud, NO SHIT. The X800 is current bleeding edge technology while the Radeon 7000 was circa 2000 -- four years ago. The Radeon9200 is a budget oriented card and the Radeon9800 was designed to be a performance at any cost card. That's like saying a current Ferrari F50 is faster than .... a ten year Honda Civic.

I get the idea that you've got your biases and I fully respect that. What I dont get is that your biases are wholly unsubstantiated --- other than "they sucked" or "ATI is just better". So like I said, I'll let this turn into a pissing contest but let's not make it an unsubstantated pissing contest: if you're gonna take a stand, be prepared to back it up.

Since you're and ATI guy I'll fill you in on something: consider the Radeon9700 and the Radeon9200SE. Obviously I can't compare those two because the cards fit into different roles

JSRife
Leave the pissing contests to (a) rich people and (b) people who dont actually have the cards but want to talk about the cards as if they did. If you're looking for a video card but dont want to break your budget, any midrange video card (Radeon9600/GFX5700) should be good enough for you.

EDIT:

Ok so you do see my point hee hee You cant go around complaining that ATI/nVidia cards suck when you are comparing a bleeding edge card to one that is 4 generations old. Just as the comparison of "Car A" to "Car B" makes absolutely no sense, a comparison of "Radeon9800" to "Radeon 7000" makes no sense -- just because they are both video cards doesnt mean they are worth comparing -- sure you can compare them but you're not going to get anything useful out of it.

Dont put too much faith into Tom's Hardware though .... with their review of the 6800 when they compared it with the current 9800 card, they used a Sapphire card -- not that noticeable of a difference but still a biased (and low) approach.

_X_X_X_X_X_[small]ASUS A7N8X-X, XP2500+ OC'd to XP3200+
Samsung 1024MB, PC2700 OC'd to PC3200
480GB [3x160GB, 7200, 8MB]
EVGA, GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB

Rules and Policies: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2487[/small]

 

That's just my point about completely unsubstiated claims. If you're going to get into or start a pissing contest, at least back up what you are saying. As I've said before, neither ATI nor nVidia is kicking the other's arse. Both companies offer superb cards. Now if you've got something useful to say regarding ATI or nVidia, by all means, let's hear it but lets hear something more intellectually stimulating than "it sucks" ... there's a term for talking about something without backing it up.... i cant quite remember what that was.....

 

Keep in mind that the manufacturers are very generous with their minimum requirements. Do you always believe manufacturer's claims with any product?

Sure you can run the any given game with the minimum requirements but you're going to have to compromise image quality and speed ina huge way to do so.

What I and Praetor are talking about and what you are talking about are two very different things.

We are discussing cards with enough horsepower to run ther newer games at a decent framerate with respecable visual quality.

What you are talking about is simply getting games to run.

 

Yes and no. The SE versions of ATi cards fill the sub-budget role superbly (the R9200 and G5200 are just budget boards). The SE offers, argueably, more performance per buck than its budget-based big brothers. Naturally, people who are interested in budget and subbudget cards are not out to play UT2004/FarCry (or if so, not at high framerates, or even that withstanding, dont complain when it lags out).

EXACTLY. It's for richass people who just wanna brag and show off to the rest of the world that they are all leet. Course there are those who buy it because of other reasons and dont go around getting into pissing contests -- not enough unfortunately.

Fiesty now. So you are essentially saying every single ATI card is better than every single nVidia card based on a comparison of a top-end four generation old card with a bottom end three generation old budget card. There's class for ya. How about this 'proof': the nVidia 6800 beats the ATI Mach32 ... does that now mean nVidia is the best ever? Hardly. I'm not here to start a war or a pissing contest -- merely to state that one cant fairly and objectively say ATI or nVidia completely and utterly better than the other.

Like I said before, you cant compare between generations and classes of video cards -- certainly not if you are going to make broad statements like ATI is the best period or nVidia is the best period. Well... of course you can do that, but there's not logic and structure to that line of thinking ... hence my comment earlier about unsubstantiated (or insignificantly so) claims.

Indeed there is a very insignificant drop in performance between the Sapphire and stock models. I only mentioned THG's review because of the noteable bias chosen by comparing the 6800 to a Sapphire model card.

Likewise actually (hehe, me... with an ATI based card -- shhhhhhhhhhh!) ... the only thing I've noticed is that the OCing headroom is noticeably less.

Dont think they make one(?)

Not entirely sure here but wouldnt the 9600SE (which is $10 cheaper, at least here in Canada), be a better choice?

Aye indeed.

JSRife
In reference to the Quadro (and ATI's equivalent, i believe its called the FireGL?), those workstation cards have a lot of processing power and usually come with a crapload of memory and memory expansion capabilities and such. This of course comes at quite a cost to gaming however: the drivers and engines for those workstation cards are designed purely for pixel precision (i.e., in a CAD environment, a pixel or two can mean that a window is no longer connected to the wall) etc. Furthermore, DirectX support for them is spotty at best and if one does manage to get it to work for mainstream games, enough of that horsepower is delegated to running the card in DirectX-compatibility mode.