Ati VS Nvidia... what brand do you prefer?

I dunno about dominent but IMO ATi for sure. They make better drivers and solid cards. Also better image quality.

Nvidia for one reason: Linux.

nvidia because of personal familiarity dealing with drivers, and support for linux thus far as was mentioned... but from an overall performance perspective, it could go either way depending on price/performance and availability.

ATi. They know how to make drivers and dont just throw **** out there to be the "best". As much as I used to love nvidia, they are just getting real **** lately.

Which brand do I prefer? AMD for the most part. It actually matters on how much I have to spend. I prefer to buy the fastest part for my price point, regardless of who made it. If I run an AMD + Nvidia this month, and an Intel + AMD the next, as long as it was the fastest that my money could buy, then I'm happy.

For example, if I can get a 7900GS for my $110, then I'll buy that because the cheapest x1950pro I could find was $145. If I have $175, then i'm buying the x1950pro because I can't afford the 8800GTS. If I have tons of money and don't care how much things cost, then you'll find an 8800GTX in my system. (I didn't say Ultra because I'm rich, not dumb...)

For me its all about how much I can get for my limited dough. I don't care who made it as long as its the fastest that I can get, at the time I'm buying, without going over budget.

ATi, i think this hd2900 has a lot left in it we have not yet seen, and if you think that Ati lost the image quality trophy... Lost coast...

But i am a fanboi....

a poor one.

DITTO!!!!

For gaming I am using nVidia, but for my HTPC it's ATI. It's hard to beat the All In Wonder series just don't use the ATI software.

I personally preferr nvidia because of prior bad experience with ati cards. (3 bad cards in a row, how unlucky can one be?)
So, even if nvidia doesnt deliver the absolute highest performance I get a good working card and that makes me happy

both of the drivers suck but I pick Nvidia b/c I didn't have to wait 9 months for a high-end card!

I've mostly owned Nvidia cards, along with a couple ATIs, an STB, a VooDoo 2, a Hercules. At the moment, I have Nvidia cards in two of my three computers, but the 8800 GTS has been a PITA, so if I were to replace it, I'd get an ATI again.

ATI. Last card I had of NVidia's blew up! Now my laptop is a great expensive coaster for my coffee table.

I guess I'm all in for NVIDIA; my first card was a 7950GTX and it performed very well but when the PSU failed it wiped out the motherboard and the 7950...
I didn't mind the catastrophe as DX/10 was upon us and i wanted to upgrade the system; after the RMA's were handled i settled on the 8800GTS 320 and never looked back.
The GTS is easier on the 12V rail, overclocks nicely with included software and provides the most bang for the buck.
Stock cooling was weak with temperatures @ 65C during gameplay; removed the stock heatsink and installed Thermalright HR-03+; the modified GPU runs @ 52C now, a 13C degree improvement...

I got to favor ATI, and I use to be a person who loved Nvidia for years.

The quality of color and texture between the ATI X19XX series vs Nvidia 79XX series is noticable.

From what I hear the Nvidia 8 Series caught up with the ATI X19XX series in color quality, however ATI moved even further ahead with the 2900 Series.

Tom’s Hardware gave the 2900 Pro great reviews in there “Best Gaming Graphic cards for the Money” Segment for the month of October.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/1 [...] rd_for_280

However for all of you thinking about getting a 2900 Pro I would hold off.
I just saw another post indicating that the 2950 Pro is suppose to launch Mid-November
The thread states that it is a LOT less power hungry than the current 2900 Pro and will be built on the 55nm fabrication process.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] 0-november

I think I lean toward NV for two reasons. 1) I've owned 3 NV cards (MX400, 6800, 7950GTX) and liked how they performed. 2) The only ATi card I have owned is an X300 and quite frankly, it sucks both driver wise and performance wise. I know that's not fair to ATi since it was never intended to be a good card, but it's my experience. Would I not buy an ATi card because of that? Of course not, I'd go with what was cheaper. If it was a tie though, I think NV would get my vote.

For price, ATI; for power, nVidia. For Linux, I don't care; one of them just release a decent driver for goodness sake! ATI, innovate a little faster. nVidia, release a dual-card setup for Intel chipsets.

I use omega drivers so it doesn't matter 2 me

Tough choice, but I would have to pick nvidia. Why? They release vidcards faster than ATI. I know ATI cards are usually better than nvidia, but 6 to release it like 6 months later...it's pretty disappointing. Also I really hate the ATI's drivers, they are inefficient and huge in size.

I almost used that one the other day. I like the one I ended up with better.

Smart

Agreed for theatre definately Ati. I dunno happened though they use to be neck and neck, now Nvidia is yards ahead:S could it be because of AMD? :| lol

Isn't this the same discussion we had the other day? Where the 2 cards in question were a 7900gs and a x1950pro, the 7900 having a $30 rebate? At the time I said I preferred nvidia, and would recommend that. Well, it seems that when I suggested that nvidia based cards had been dominating the market for awhile ( I believe its been about two years, others suggested it had been only a year) there was a general consensus that in the marketplace, yes nvidia's technologies have been dominant.

However, I noticed in the latest video card charts that ati seems to be making up ground. In fact, it looks like in some areas ati is really giving them a run for the money. Currently, I think this market is anybody's game and it looks like there will be plenty of competition. Which from a consumers perpective, is a great thing! Hope they really do heat up the competition, especially in the midrange market which would be benificial for many of us.

Really? How? Perhaps we should move this to PM so we don't side track the thread? If I tried to watch a video on my 7800 the video would play correctly on whichever monitor was selected as the "primary" and the other monitor would be black where the video would normally be. Both monitors would display 2d pictures and/or the desktop just fine in clone mode but video or 3d games would only show up on the primary monitor?

I'm not making this up. My inablity to get the 7800 working on 2 displays was a part of the reason I replaced the 7800 with an ATI 1950.

Why do you say that the HD 2900XT is the most forward thinking? 512bit memory? 320 Stream Processors? 1GB of onboard ram?

What good is forward thinking with out practical application?

I'd prefer ATI as their image quality is a lot better. They also release their drivers monthly which is very good, Nvidia used to be woeful at this but seem to be copping on now a bit.
At present I'm using an Nvidia card, my last card was also a Nvidia 7950GX2, previous cards then was ATI's X1900XTX, X1800XTX, X850XT-PE/9800 Pro.
But overall if they both had the same specs I'd plump for ATI