[haloboy100]

What's the competition like with these guys right now? I've heard ATI just released a new card a long while back that everybody was talking about, but I forgot what most of the technical stuff meant when I looked at the specs.

Seeing as my current setup is:

Nvidia 8800 GTS (256 MB)
2.66 Intel Duo Core CPU (E6750)
2GB RAM
Windows 7 64 bit.

and I still can't run Mass Effect 2 with more than a few minutes of more than 50 FPS performance, I'm considering upgrading the GPU the upcoming Christmas. I've also been looking forward to the day where I can run all of the most gorgeous games like Crysis at ultra quality with negligible performance loss (like my rich-ass friends and their alienware computers ).
I would get it sooner, with my own money, but I'm saving my ~200$ cash for Rock Band 3 and Halo Reach Limited edition.
Yeah, I'm too lazy for a job, and obviously this isn't the highest priority for me, which is why I'm not asking for particular device on an actual card upgrade.

My first card was this thing called the ATI All-In-Wonder radeon, which was some kind of hybrid video capture card and some supposedly enthusiast-level GPU. It worked so far back then, but at the time It couldn't run much more than Halo and FS2. It couldn't even do UT2004 above 30 fps.
Next, after switching to my old nvidia 6700 and then to my current 8800 GTS, I never thought twice about going back to ATI; it seems their cards always have compatibility and durability issues (judging from my friend's experiences). Though it seems nowadays that Nvidia is moving away from the gaming market and more towards the media industry in general, making cards for video effects processing and movie production and all that stuff. I chose nvidia because their marketing is easier to understand (the names are multiples of 100, unlike whatever ATI's setup is. Frankly, I just get alienated by card names like HD 5750) but now I'm thinking about going back to ATI, mostly because all my friends use them now, they're shiny black and red, and they're a Canadian-based company.

See, those are pretty stupid reasons to switch, which is why I'm here. I'm wondering what the difference in the two companies' cards are. Obviously I doubt those differences will be more than driver software and compatibility, but I'm hoping to find more compelling reasons. So, can you guys help me draw a comparison between the two? It's been months since I looked up the GPU competition.

[Admiral LSD]

Long story short: nVidia dropped the ball after the 8-series GeForces allowing ATi to move in, first with the 4000-series and now with the 5000-series. I mention it in a little more detail in my post in Battutas thread.

It's funny you find nVidia's naming less confusing than ATi's, because it's actually the opposite. With ATi you have clear indicators to where a given GPU sits in relation to all the others within the same series. You can tell at a glance that the 5770 is better than the 5750, but inferior to the 5850. nVidia are infinitely more confusing because not only do they badge the same GPU under multiple different names (9800GT for example, is virtually identical to the 8800GT and the GTS250 is identical to the 9800GTX+), but they also release vastly different products under the same name (192 and 216 shader GPUs both marketed under the name GTX 260). They're slowly getting the message, but they're still a long way from ATi's XYZ0 Series/Family/Model structure.

[haloboy100]

Yeah, nvidia's naming scheme was confusing at first, and I agree it's rather unnecessary. I thought ATI had something similar, but it seems the numbers are all that's needed to understand relative performance.

What about bug/compatibility issues with games? I always see tech problems crop up on video game forums regarding some kind if texture or shading related problem with ATI cards.

But what I'm more interested in is the software support; Nvidia has it's control panel, which I find alright but I heard ATI has cool features like Eyefinity that would certainly help with my dual-monitor setup (though, that's only an example). Are ATI's software utilities very useful?

[Klaustrophobia]

for a while NVIDIA was a good ways ahead in terms of raw horsepower.  they got the most 3DMarks for a long time and consequently became the "best" cards according to reviewers and benchmarkers, who a great deal of the gaming mainstream blindly follow.  they then proceeded to sit on this name brand while ATI actually started cranking out fundamentally improved designs rather than just run the clocks higher.  at a cheaper price (usually) none the less.  

edit:  i haven't used NVIDIA drivers since the days of FS1 and my old MX440, but from what i remember they weren't exactly friendly.  i've never had a problem with ATI's catalyst, and from what i can see they are continually improving.  i don't use eyefinity or any of that extra stuff though. 

(well i actually did have one problem with catalyst, which was when they stopped AGP support for my 9800pro in whatever the latest update was, but that was sorted out in a day via support ticket)

[BloodEagle]

I'd like to note here that 3DMark is (or was, at least) complete bull****, for actual benchmarking.

[haloboy100]

I don't even know what 3DMark is.

[Admiral LSD]

I've been running ATi cards for something like 6 years now (They've always had the better value option when I've been in the market for a video card) and the only issue I've ever really had with the Catalysts was the AGP mess a couple of years ago and even that was forgiveable because AGP was long obsolete at that point. A large chunk of the negative attitudes toward ATi's drivers stems from before they instituted the Catalyst program, when their drivers were quite terrible. Even though that's changed, people's attitudes haven't. I'd be almost willing to bet that, if you went back through both companies drivers, you'd find they'd be fairly closely matched when it came to number of issues. At one point MS were saying that 25% of Vista crashes were the result of the nVidia drivers, a statistic AMD/ATi were more than happy to take and run with.

As for the control panel, I have to say I much prefer ATi's (despite it being a .NET app) over nVidia's. It may be light on options, but at least they're arranged in a somewhat logical and easy to follow manner. Trying to make head or tail of the nTune-styled nVidia one was a nightmare.

Yeah, nvidia's naming scheme was confusing at first, and I agree it's rather unnecessary. I thought ATI had something similar, but it seems the numbers are all that's needed to understand relative performance.

They used to, prior to the 3000-series they had a whole mess of suffixes: Pro, XT, SE, GT, GTO, XTX and probably others I can't remember. nVidia and ATi also played a game where one would give a higher end card a certain suffix only to have the other attach the same suffix to a lower end card to confuse people even further. The series/family/model numbering ATi started using in the 3000-series is far, far simpler. nVidia are slowly going in a similar direction with their numbering, but it's still not as simple as ATi's system.

[Klaustrophobia]

i don't remember ATI ever having a GT or GTO.  they did get a bit confusing ala NVIDIA briefly, but in the olden days it used to be "pro" for the more or less stanard high end (like the --70 now) and "XT" for the overclocked (--90).  i think the XTX was the doing of a manufacturer, not ATI.

anywho, drivers are hardly worth debating one way or the other, because 90% of the bashings handed out to either side are from fanboys of the other.  neither are bad enough to be deal breakers, that's for damn sure. 

[General Battuta]

You an get an HD 4870 for a very reasonable price (between $100 and $200) and be able to play any game released to this date at a very reasonable framerate.

There is no reason to buy NVIDIA right now.

[haloboy100]

So, I'm looking at ATI cards right now at my local retailer. Thinking I might save Rock Band 3 for the christmas gift and get the video card first.
Thoughts on this HD 5670?

[Admiral LSD]

There were GT and GTO versions of the X800, the latter being one of the chips that ATi like to throw out every now and again (and nVidia traditionally lack the balls to) that performs well above its price bracket (others being the 9500 Pro, the X1950 Pro and the 4670). The GT was a lower spec card than nVidia's GTs, which were the range toppers at the time (they didn't add GTX until the 7-series iirc), and was meant to take the shine off nVidia's offerings. Around the same time, nVidia started using the "XT" suffix, which was the top of ATi's range at the time, on lower spec cards to do the same thing.

anywho, drivers are hardly worth debating one way or the other, because 90% of the bashings handed out to either side are from fanboys of the other.  neither are bad enough to be deal breakers, that's for damn sure.

That's what I was getting at. There was a time when ATi's drivers were terrible, but they've long since cleaned up their act with the Catalyst program. Most of the people still doing the bashing either never owned an ATi product at all, never owned one since the shift to Catalyst 6-7 years ago or if they've owned one in that time, either go out of their way to look for problems or get their panties in a bunch the moment they even think they see one (it may not be serious and it may not even be real, but when they're looking for an excuse to bash the drivers, they'll take what they can get).

You an get an HD 4870 5770 or 5850 for a very reasonable price (between $100 and $200) and be able to play any game released to this date at a very reasonable framerate.

There is no reason to buy NVIDIA right now.

There, fixed

So, I'm looking at ATI cards right now at my local retailer. Thinking I might save Rock Band 3 for the christmas gift and get the video card first.
Thoughts on this HD 5670?

I prefer Sapphire for ATi cards, but it really doesn't matter so long as the price is right. Since everyone mostly just copies the reference designs laid out by ATi or nVidia, there's next to no differentiation in performance between (stock clocked, overclocked cards are another story, you need to factor that in when shopping around) cards all sharing a common GPU. The 5670 isn't a bad choice if you game at less than 1680x1050 but if you can afford it, consider stepping up to the 5750 or 5770 which offer better performance at higher resolutions and stand a better chance of staying useful if/when DX11 becomes more common place.

[Bobboau]

I got a recent 'good' ATI card, like all other ATI cards I've owned it's had, what I am assuming is, driver issues, I can't get video to play in full screen reliably and games randomly grey screen, were the GPU puts it's self into a reset loop and I have to turn the computer off to get it working again.

[CP5670]

As others have said, ATI has had the best cards at almost every price point ever since the 5000 series was released. Mass Effect 2 is not that demanding though, and almost any decent card from the last two years can handle that game fine.

I think both companies' driver control panels are useless. The third party utilities out there put them to shame. However, I prefer the nVidia utilities (nHancer and Rivatuner) over the ATI ones (ATI Tray Tools), and they tend to be more frequently updated too. As for driver bugs, both drivers have issues in a handful of older games, but generally work well otherwise.

I'd like to note here that 3DMark is (or was, at least) complete bull****, for actual benchmarking.

It's even more so today than it once was. It doesn't even look that good anymore.

I got a recent 'good' ATI card, like all other ATI cards I've owned it's had, what I am assuming is, driver issues, I can't get video to play in full screen reliably and games randomly grey screen, were the GPU puts it's self into a reset loop and I have to turn the computer off to get it working again.

That sounds more like a hardware problem with the card itself. You might have gotten a bad one.

[haloboy100]

I prefer Sapphire for ATi cards, but it really doesn't matter so long as the price is right. Since everyone mostly just copies the reference designs laid out by ATi or nVidia, there's next to no differentiation in performance between (stock clocked, overclocked cards are another story, you need to factor that in when shopping around) cards all sharing a common GPU. The 5670 isn't a bad choice if you game at less than 1680x1050 but if you can afford it, consider stepping up to the 5750 or 5770 which offer better performance at higher resolutions and stand a better chance of staying useful if/when DX11 becomes more common place.

The highest my television can support is 720p, so resolution won't go higher than that (anything higher than 720p with 2x AA is more than necessary, IMHO). I just need a card that can run me Crysis on ultra with negligible performance loss - or is that too much to ask from 100-200$ cards these days, still?
You mentioned Sapphire, that brand is avaliable for this card at the same price, but it's sold out all over the city.

This 5750 is available for the extra 50 bucks. Think that's good? Has a cool looking fan on it.

Mass Effect 2 is not that demanding though, and almost any decent card from the last two years can handle that game fine.

My current 8800 GTS can, but only when I first start it up. After a few minutes of gameplay, the FPS drops to the high twenties; low twenties for intensive parts like talking with the illusive man. I notice after minimizing the game for 10 minutes (for lunch or something) performance goes back to ~55 FPS before dropping down again over time. I thought it was a heating issue, but after testing it with my fan and various other ways I found out it's not. I think this card is just getting old from constant abuse.
This is of course with all unnecessary processes turned off, including windows 7 gadgets, which i find to be a big slowdown during games.

[General Battuta]

Unless I'm badly mistaken, won't the 57 series somewhat underperform the 48 series? 

[Admiral LSD]

Unless I'm badly mistaken, won't the 57 series somewhat underperform the 48 series? 

As I said in the other thread, the 5770 performs somewhere in between the 4870 and 4890. It's not worth it if you had either of those cards (or even a 4850) before, but a decent upgrade from a 46-- or 47-- card. The other advantage of the 5000-series is the 40nm process results in much lower power consumption and heat output than the 55nm 4000-series cards. For the kind of price range you were suggesting, it's not really worth going for the last-gen stuff.

I got a recent 'good' ATI card, like all other ATI cards I've owned it's had, what I am assuming is, driver issues, I can't get video to play in full screen reliably and games randomly grey screen, were the GPU puts it's self into a reset loop and I have to turn the computer off to get it working again.

I can't say I've seen anything like that with any of the ATi cards I've owned over the years, at least under Windows. I've had various issues in Linux (some of which are Linux' fault, others ATi's. It's never only been just ATi at fault), but even that's getting better now and you don't by a high-end card with the intention of using it under Linux anyway.

[haloboy100]

As I said in the other thread, the 5770 performs somewhere in between the 4870 and 4890. It's not worth it if you had either of those cards (or even a 4850) before, but a decent upgrade from a 46-- or 47-- card. The other advantage of the 5000-series is the 40nm process results in much lower power consumption and heat output than the 55nm 4000-series cards. For the kind of price range you were suggesting, it's not really worth going for the last-gen stuff.

The older series actually out-performs the new? Though, I think that happens a lot in the video card market.
But I should stick with buying 56/57 cards, still?

[Admiral LSD]

The older series actually out-performs the new? Though, I think that happens a lot in the video card market.
But I should stick with buying 56/57 cards, still?

This highlights the one problem in ATi's model numbering scheme: It works best when you're looking at cards within the same series or comparing a given card in one series with its predecessor in the previous series. Trying to map out where each card is in relation to others in other series muddies the waters a whole lot (not that it's ever been easy to begin with...). For example, the 5870 will be faster than the 5850, the 5850 will be faster than the 5770 and the 5770 will be faster than the 5670, and each of those will be faster than their respective predecessors in the 4000-series (4870, 4850, 4770 and 4670), but because of the overall speed bump of the 5000-series over the 4000-series, you find the 5770, a mid range part in this generation, performing around the same as last-generations high-end.

If you're looking to replace a 4800-series Radeon, then the 5770 is more a sidegrade than an upgrade, you'd need to look at the 5800-series before you would start seeing decent performance improvements. If, however, you're on something slower than that like an 8 or 9-series GeForce, 4700-series Radeon or lower, then the 5770 would net you a decent performance improvement. A 4800-series Radeon would too, but the savings in power consumption and heat output the 40nm process brings to the table make the 5770 are better choice.

[haloboy100]

Yeah, I suspected something like that.
What I'm worried about most is exactly what performance I'll get; is expecting a 100-150 dollar card these days to run games such as Crysis and Bioshock 2 smoothly on ultra settings (with my 720p resolution) too much?

[General Battuta]

Yeah, I suspected something like that.
What I'm worried about most is exactly what performance I'll get; is expecting a 100-150 dollar card these days to run games such as Crysis and Bioshock 2 smoothly on ultra settings (with my 720p resolution) too much?

A 4870 running on a rig with a slightly better processor than yours can run Crysis on maximum settings at a playable though not excellent framerate.

Presumably a 5770 would do so as well or better.