ATI vs Nvida

[agronick]

Who makes better cards? Who has the best card for less then $300?

 

[Vigilante]

lol, thems fighting words.

Really, they both make good cards, it all comes down to one's own personal experience. I lean towards ATI right now, others lean towards Nvidia. No matter what card you pick, a few more bucks gets a better card from the opposite manufacturer. Then a few bucks more gets a better card from the other. etc...

Also, are you talking AGP or PCI-E? Would you ever want to run in SLI or Crossfire? Or in other words run two cards in the motherboard?

If $300 is the budget, run a search on newegg and browse around in that price area, compare the pipelines, ram speed/type, clock speeds. Then head over to www.tomshardware.com and look at some of their charts:

PCI-E:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/page18.html

AGP:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/page4.html

For the most part, if you don't get a cheap budget version card, but a "Pro" card or one of the higher-end types, you should be fine either way. Or get an "OC", or, Overclock version.

If you spend $300 or even more, take a quick survey of your power supply and post the specs here, you don't want an underpowered power supply when running a fast video card.

 

[agronick]

Sry. I'm looking for a pci-e x16. I do not want sli. My power supply is 500watts. I can not test it yet because my system is half built. Thanks for those links. They really helped a lot. Here is the card I was going to get.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130256

But then I found ATIs with 4 less pixel pipelines and double the memory for a little bit more.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102003

 

[Tedster]

from personal experience I cannot recommend ATI. Their drivers are flakey. I have had nothing but good experience with NVIDIA. I have owned several cards from both companies.

 

[agronick]

I just found out that Direct X 10 is not supported by any of today's graphics cards. I am going to wait for them to come out.

 

[mailpup]

For DirectX 10 you're also going to need Vista.

 

[agronick]

I know I will need vista. Does anybody know when we will see the first DX10 cards?

 

[Ruben]

does newegg operate 30-day-product-return-no-questions-asked policy?
That would be cool :slurp:
I guess neither nvidia nor Ati has substantial edge, so buy one that
1) gets better FPS in your rig
2) is cheaper

 

[Cartz]

I know I will need vista. Does anybody know when we will see the first DX10 cards?

Less then a year...

I would say go ahead and buy now, because even when DX10 comes out, games that REQUIRE DX10 are going to be a year or two off, and by then, the first gen DX10 card you bought won't be up to the task...

Basically, there is ALWAYS going to be something better on the horizon, you just gotta jump in and go for it.

 

[oxeyereed]

ATI just cut their prices because Nvidia is releasing G71.

in the ~$300 category now look into the ATI X1800 and the Nvidia 7800GT/7900GT.

As far as who is better? It changes at different price points and with every new product release. Both companies stay competative with eachother.

 

[agronick]

Less then a year...

I would say go ahead and buy now, because even when DX10 comes out, games that REQUIRE DX10 are going to be a year or two off, and by then, the first gen DX10 card you bought won't be up to the task...

Basically, there is ALWAYS going to be something better on the horizon, you just gotta jump in and go for it.

Yea I know. But I am building this machine for Vista. I want it to be 100% compatible. A big part of vista is DX10. So I'll just put in a crap sub $50 graphics card until then.

 

[2pies]

Nvidia is the one for me.

Being one of a dieing breed who still uses an AGP graphics card, I consider Nvidia to be the superior manufacturer, they did adapt a top notch PCI-E card to AGP (7800), making it possible for us dinosaurs to sill keep up to date (sort of). The card I am using is a 6600, and to be honest I find my system handles games like FEAR and Quake 4 with no problem.
However I will soon be upgrading from an Athlon xp to an Athlon 64, and face the decision as weather to use a motherboard with an AGP slot or to go for a full blown upgrade and get one with a PCI-E slot. The latter would mean me having to buy a new graphics card, if so it will definitely be an Nvidia one or even two. :slurp:

 

[PanicX]

I've recently become an nVidia fanboy. I think ATi does make some high speed cards, but as Tedster pointed out, ATi's driver support is really quite horrible. And as Vigilante pointed out, the staggered pricing of the cards allows you to be comfortable in your purchase as you could always spend a few more bucks to get a better card from the other company. So basically, I'd determine my price point and if the best card I could by would be an ATi, I'd save for another 2 weeks and get a better nVidia.