OT: ATI or NVidia

[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

[DethKnight]

I know which one Im hoping to purchase in the future,(assuming the price drops),the Parhelia PH-A8X256

Already have an nvidia card for gaming, now need to get a card for "productivity"

[Damion]

A few months back I also purchased a R9800P, mainly because I only had a maximum budget of $200 to spend on both a card and cooler, and the Radeon was simply the best option in my price range. Plus, I'm building a new A64 rig next year, so no need to go wild on another AGP card when PCI-E will be "mainstream"..

Doom3 and FarCry will choke this card if I crank the settings to the max and jack the resolution up past
1024x768, but thaaaaaat's about it.. not bad for $150 (Sapphire refurb from newegg).

[Hammer]

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).

Factor in XBOX1(P6 + nForce IGP).

It’s probable that the AMD64’s PCI-Ex motherboard market maybe too competitive for NVIDIA i.e. early release of ATI’s Xpress motherboard has potential dethrone NVIDIA and resurgent VIA (K8T890) can be dangerous. VIA doesn't have to handled memory controller issues in the AMD64 market.

There are at least six core logic builders in AMD64 and performance deltas doesn’t vary much due to common AMD NB. These are SIS, ULI, VIA, NVIDIA, ATI and AMD.

[Hammer]

@Wayne

There’s an interesting article from http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=838630
about for Valve's HL-2/HL-CS and reasons why FX has “issues” with it.

As a side note...
It seems that somebody has imported HL2’s near photo realistic textures into DOOM3 RT shadow and lighting engine...  

[Waccoon]

Hardware is so close it doesn't really matter.  ATI's coolers are large, but still less noisy than nVidia, IMO.

My beef is driver quality.  nVidia used to have top-flite drivers but after the FX fiasco, their drivers have turned to cheese as they tried to ramp up the speed.  My dad has a GeForce 4 and no matter what version of the drivers he uses, it's BSOD's all day with an nVidia DLL as the culprit.  Once he goes back to ancient drivers released a couple years ago, all the problems disappear.

ATI's drivers are very, very colid, save for a minor screwup in 4.9 that gave me lots of screen garbage in Photoshop and Explorer.

What ticks me off, though, is ATI's new Control Center.  It adds a context item to EVERY menu in the system, which is an enormous pain, and you can't get rid of it.  It keeps thousands of records in the registry -- a complete calalog of everything installed on your system from programs to DLLs.  That may be useful for diagnostics, but I don't like programs keeping a database of my machine -- especially in the registry, as if it wasn't bloated enough.

If you do go ATI, get the drivers with the Control Panels, not the Control Center.  Trust me.

[orange]

But Control Center is needed to turn ON the TV OUT. Do you know better way?

BTW, I hate registry  :pissed:  :pissed:  :pissed:
There ought to be some program that could COMPARE two registries. For instance it should give a list of all entries that are not essential (that didn't exist after clean install + drivers) so that it would be easy to remove !@#?remains. Yes, I know there are trackers and uninstallers, but they all make just even bigger mess  :-(

[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