[Hades]

I can't really say much for ATI cards, having never owned one, but I can say a few things about nvidia cards.

Despite what people say, I tend to have troubles with their drivers, such as them randomly crashing for no real reason and that gets fixed by reinstalling the driver.

Older cards have been ****ed over in the newer drivers. I used to use a 270 driver and was having ****ty performance and control panel options like AA not working then I downgraded to 160 something and got much, much better performance and the control panel worked as it should.

Nvidia stopped making new cards years ago. (since all of the 'new' ones are based off of 8000 series chips)

[pecenipicek]

Nvidia stopped making new cards years ago. (since all of the 'new' ones are based off of 8000 series chips)

GTX4xx and and GTX5XX series would like to smack you over the head.

[Nuke]

I can't really say much for ATI cards, having never owned one, but I can say a few things about nvidia cards.

Despite what people say, I tend to have troubles with their drivers, such as them randomly crashing for no real reason and that gets fixed by reinstalling the driver.

Older cards have been ****ed over in the newer drivers. I used to use a 270 driver and was having ****ty performance and control panel options like AA not working then I downgraded to 160 something and got much, much better performance and the control panel worked as it should.

Nvidia stopped making new cards years ago. (since all of the 'new' ones are based off of 8000 series chips)

are you sure the crashes are because of the card and not an overheating chipset?
driver issues exist with every video card, though id say ive had better luck with nvidia drivers.

[newman]

(since all of the 'new' ones are based off of 8000 series chips)[/size]

Might be time to update your info, it's been out of date for a while now.

[Nuke]

gonna build a new comp in a couple months (maybe). lookin at a gtx560, though i may just recycle my 260 since it still runs most games quite well.

[Hades]

Might be time to update your info, it's been out of date for a while now.

trollolo

are you sure the crashes are because of the card and not an overheating chipset?
driver issues exist with every video card, though id say ive had better luck with nvidia drivers.

I'm not really sure. It's happened with both my 9500m GS and my 9800 GT in what seems to be random. Seems to happen more frequent with Source games than anything though.

[Nuke]

graphics cards require a rather high speed bus to operate, and the chip on the mobo that controls said bus can get really hot really fast and not work so good. im convinced this is why i get occasional crashes when playing anything on the crytek engine (though it not the most stable engine out there), like mwll. dispite my dual 25cm fans and a mobo encrusted with heat pipes and coper heat sinks, the chipset is always in the red after a game.

[Bob-san]

I've personally found AMD/ATI cards to be the more reliable option. Performance is also typically better in Source and Battlefield games. nVidia is making compromises that I don't necessarily agree with (like pushing proprietary PhysX, easy but low performance CUDA, and slower reactions to new DirectX/OpenGL revisions). Drivers seem to "just work". I'm much happier with a once-a-month driver than nVidia's sometimes sporadic releases. Then again, I don't buy the latest games. I want to buy a new Tahiti Pro (HD 7950)... pending benchmarks. I don't want to wait until later in the generation like I did for HD 5850.

[pecenipicek]

Might be time to update your info, it's been out of date for a while now.

trollolo

are you sure the crashes are because of the card and not an overheating chipset?
driver issues exist with every video card, though id say ive had better luck with nvidia drivers.

I'm not really sure. It's happened with both my 9500m GS and my 9800 GT in what seems to be random. Seems to happen more frequent with Source games than anything though.

if its an acer laptop, dont be surprised. acer's overheat like nobody's bussiness.

[Hades]

if its an acer laptop, dont be surprised. acer's overheat like nobody's bussiness.

never had a problem with it, and the 9800 GT is my desktop

graphics cards require a rather high speed bus to operate, and the chip on the mobo that controls said bus can get really hot really fast and not work so good. im convinced this is why i get occasional crashes when playing anything on the crytek engine (though it not the most stable engine out there), like mwll. dispite my dual 25cm fans and a mobo encrusted with heat pipes and coper heat sinks, the chipset is always in the red after a game.

actually, I tend to get the opposite. rarely happens in a game like Crysis and the like but happens very ****ing often in source.

[Bob-san]

Acer is a POS. Don't worry so much about AMD A-series though: the IGP is a lot cooler than a dedicated card. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion#.22Llano.22_.2832nm.29_2

Source was and is optimized for ATI/AMD. Ask Valve why they haven't fixed code for nVidia cards. They'll probably point the finger at nVidia instead.

[The E]

Might be time to update your info, it's been out of date for a while now.

trollolo

Care to elaborate on that? Want to get muted again?

Source was and is optimized for ATI/AMD. Ask Valve why they haven't fixed code for nVidia cards. They'll probably point the finger at nVidia instead.

Citation needed.

In short, no, there's no reason to avoid any particular brand of video card. As has been pointed out in this thread. And, as always, keep in mind that all hardware sucks and all software sucks. Accept it, and move on. Do not believe that your favourite vendor is without fault in all things.

[Rodo]

I've been looking into new video cards for two weeks now, I'm getting a EVGA GTX570 this weekend if everything goes ok.

I had a hard time choosing between HD and GTX counterparts, HD6950 had me interested for a while but then I checked the overall framerate performance vs price and decided to spend a few more $$ and go a hole step up the nvidia way.

I'm not a fanboy, but I must say recent threads in the scp forum got me thinking that ATI drivers suck, and since I don't have another pc to play fs2 well... I wanna go with the safest choice.

[Bob-san]

Might be time to update your info, it's been out of date for a while now.

trollolo

Care to elaborate on that? Want to get muted again?

Care to keep the threats between big scary moderator and Hades a little bit more private? Thanks.

Source was and is optimized for ATI/AMD. Ask Valve why they haven't fixed code for nVidia cards. They'll probably point the finger at nVidia instead.

Citation needed.

In short, no, there's no reason to avoid any particular brand of video card. As has been pointed out in this thread. And, as always, keep in mind that all hardware sucks and all software sucks. Accept it, and move on. Do not believe that your favourite vendor is without fault in all things.

For ATI/ADM graphics cards. I didn't necessarily mean for AMD processors. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU/104 http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2010-gaming-graphics-charts-high-quality/Left4Dead-2,2474.html Keep in mind the price differences between the cards. For example, the GTX 470 was more accurately the rival for the HD 5870.

[CP5670]

I have seen both brands of cards have their fair share of problems over the years. They both run most current games nicely (which are console ports that don't stress modern cards in the first place), have occasional issues with old games, and require third party software to get the best out of.

if its an acer laptop, dont be surprised. acer's overheat like nobody's bussiness.

Acer has gotten a lot better with this lately. The Timeline series routinely gets 20% GPU overclocks while remaining cool, which is a lot more than you can say about most of the large-market OEMs.

[QuantumDelta]

If you're buying a top-range card of any generation you will be fine with either companies cards, however in such a comparison typically ATI are slightly better cost effectiveness, they are also closing the gap on nV's OGL support.

If you're looking at anything even remotely not-top-range STAY THE **** AWAY FROM NV.

[Nuke]

are you sure the crashes are because of the card and not an overheating chipset?
driver issues exist with every video card, though id say ive had better luck with nvidia drivers.

I'm not really sure. It's happened with both my 9500m GS and my 9800 GT in what seems to be random. Seems to happen more frequent with Source games than anything though.

hardly surprising, since driver manufacturers often have to include dirty hacks to make their drivers play nice with various games. never played anything in the source engine though. starcraft 2 is likely the largest performance hog i run and it is rock solid 99.9% of the time. with crytek i always get the green (not blue) screen of death every 3rd game, which is apparently very common in that engine.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Not that it matters, but gonna chime in with my own personal anecdote. I've had nothing but trouble with ATi's software (@#$% you, Catalyst Control Center), and even though their hardware is extremely solid and great value for the price, I just can't bring myself to recommend buying an ATi card until they fix whatever is wrong with their control software. The 5750 that I have also tends to cook itself without third-party fan control. My best friend has the same problems with his ATi software (we both run Win7 Ultimate 64 bit, it's probably OS-specific).

My laptop and past two desktops ran NVIDIA cards and they're all still going strong, and I've never expressly had problems with their software. Laptop has a 9500M, oldest desktop has an 8500 GT, second-oldest has a 9800 GTX+. I've had at least 8 years of uptime on these rigs without problems from the GPU/drivers. They just cost more than a comparable ATi card and they suck a bit more power from the PSU, so that's something to pay attention to if you build your own rig.

[KyadCK]

The 5750 that I have also tends to cook itself without third-party fan control. My best friend has the same problems with his ATi software (we both run Win7 Ultimate 64 bit, it's probably Specific).

ATI just runs hot, it isn't Win7's fault. Use CCC to manualy control the fan, it can do that. Not that I've had any temp concerns (using Win7 Ultimate 64-bit).


Anyway, I've used a few ATI and nVidia cards, all low end (sub $150 range) and so far the drivers are not bad at all for either side, in this aspect I really don't see a difference, they both have problems now and again.

A big pro I have for ATI is on-board and dedicated vid cards working together in non-crossfire. I have a 4290 on my motherboard and the above stated 5570. They run off the same driver. As a result I can have 2 monitors on my 4290 and 2 on my 5570, run youtube in 1080 on the 4290 and not have it effect my game on the 5570. (nVidia might do this too, but I haven't seen it and onboard nVidia seems rare now)

Another pro for both sides would be if your dedicated card dies and your onboard uses the same driver, you don't have to go through 800x600 hell to install its driver while you get a new card just to install your old driver back again.


For those who cant understand ATI's naming, its really not that hard. I have a HD 5570, lets break it down:

HD (the series name)
5 (current generation of card, higher = newer)
5 (class of card, 5 is probably low-mid range, higher number = higher class)
7 (level of the class, higher = stronger/faster)
0 (because everything is more awesome with a 0 on the end)

To this end, I have a 5th generation HD series in the strong low-end class.

[newman]

In short, no, there's no reason to avoid any particular brand of video card. As has been pointed out in this thread. And, as always, keep in mind that all hardware sucks and all software sucks. Accept it, and move on. Do not believe that your favourite vendor is without fault in all things.

In short, this is the bottom line. I'd just like to play the devil's advocate for a moment and point out that it's actually tough industry; you need to constantly churn out bleeding edge tech you had little time to properly test, that needs to be compatible with a constant supply of new features, a wide array of different machines, operating systems and software, and backwards compatible with god knows what. You fall back on the specs a bit, the competition will eat you alive. You don't support the latest shiny features, ditto. The only factor that levels the playing field is that the competition is having the exact same problems and can't really deliver a stable product most of the time.
So yes, the hardware and software suck. But quite frankly it would be a wonder if they didn't; fact of the matter is the end user is a spoiled brat that absolutely must have the latest shiny graphical feature at 120 FPS, and if he doesn't get it he'll go somewhere else.