OT: ATI or NVidia

[Glaucus]

Well, here at work, one of the top graphics programmers tells me that the best card (from a programmer's point of view) is the top of the line nVidia GeForce 6800 cards. The reason is they support Shader Model 3.0 (and from what I understand, no ATI card currently does). From a gamer's point of view, few (if any, in fact, I don't think there are any) games use Shader 3.0, but if you've got your eye set on the next generation of games which will use shader 3.0, then this might be important to you.

But aside from that, both companies are very good. Only a few weeks ago I bought myself an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB card, which I felt was better then all nVidia cards below the GeForce series 6 cards. Before this, I had an nVidia GeForce 2 TI which was also very good for it's time (but it couldn't play Battlefield Vietnam, so I had to upgrade ;-) ). I personally wouldn't waste my time with any nVidia series 5 cards, except for perhaps the FX5900 & FX5950, but I find those lag behind in hi-res scenarios while the 9800's pull ahead.

At any rate, check out Tom's Hardware: VGA Charts IV

  - Mike

[Glaucus]

Another thing to consider is that the high-end Geforce cards usually have such large fans that they occupy a PCI slot aswell, only to allow the heatsink/fan to fit, whereas the ATI don´t need as much cooling ( I figure )...

That's what I hear, or at least, that's what one of the 3D programmers here tells me. ATI seems to have always been better in the cooling department, and as a side-effect, don't require as big a fan. The nVidia FX series were the first mainstream GFX card to take up a PCI slot just for cooling - and they were loud. I know nVidia has come a long way since the initial release of the FX line, but ATI is still ahead of the game here. Just as an example, My GeForce 2 card (which is several generations old now) has a fan that was only marginally smaller then my Radeon 9800 Pro's fan (only one generation old).

  - Mike

[Glaucus]

Also Nvidia killed 3dfx (which was a cool company imho) and they refuse to freely release information about their cards to developers. So I would go for an Ati card, but thats of course only my personal opinion.

3dfx was swallowed by nVidia. The old 3dFX team was assigned to make the GeForce 5 series of cards, formally known as the FX line. See the link? So 3dFX is still around in spirit. unfortunately, the FX line was considered a failure by many enthusiasts, and nVidia is trying to get away from the line as fast as possible. That may be the last "FX" series we'll see.

  - Mike

[Glaucus]

Hammer wrote:

Yeah, I've heard that too. Reminds me of AMD vs. Intel somehow.

It should be i.e. refer to http://news.cens.com/php/getnews.php?file=/news/2004/11/30/20041130013.htm&d

Graphics-chip supplier Nvida Corp. and microprocessor giant Intel Corp. recently entered into alliance while ATI Technologies Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices struck a similar deal.

To bring balance to Intel+NVIDIA alliance, ATI and AMD responded with their own alliance.

You gotta admit it seems rather backwards. AMD has always been considered the gamer's choice (especially today with their amazing 64bit chips), and nVidia's nForce have also been the number one chipset amungst gamers (which as far as I know, is not offered on Petium motherboards). Why would nVidia want to partner up with a CPU and associated chipsets which are not considered number 1 in the gaming market?

  - Mike

[Glaucus]

Yeah, nVidia had issues with their drivers as well. The latest version of their drivers caused Battlefield 1942 to display all water lime green. It was kinda weird always swimming around in a large lake of battery acid. :-) That was fixed when I upgraded to my R9800Pro. :-D

  - Mike