Best Graphic card??

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by TteFAboB

I have no idea.

I have an ATI, but I came from a GeForce 3 trash, well, I still have that on another machine.

It's not fair for me to compare this super ATI card with that nVidia junk, it would have to be super versus super or junk vs. junk, so I'll just end this post now and let SUBMAN have a go at it.

Hahahah! Don't make me laugh!

I'm partial to ATI still (So you know, but I do own boards from both sides of the fence), though both companies make good cards. We all know that both top end cards from each manufacturer can deliver good average frame rates (per any benchmark), so I start to look at minimum frame rates, which are what really pop up to effect your play quality from time to time. ATI's minimum frame rates are constantly better than NVidia in almost all fronts.

As for the 7950 GTX hack job (The more I look at this card, the less I like it since you might as well get yourself a 1500 watt room heater and mount it in your case, and then add some small fans which equals big noise to remove the heat from the card itself - I like custom silent video card cooling devices instead - I can't hear the ATI in my case anymore - you can't do that with the 7950), I'd pass. If you're looking at NVidia, you're better off getting 2x 7900 GTX's instead, if you can afford it. Besides 2x 7900 GTX's are faster that the 7950, and if you overclock the 7900 GTX's, you will have considerably more performance than the single 7950.

One thing of note, SLI, and even SLI as found on the 7950 does not always give you a performance boost in games. This can lead to a 7950 being slower than a single 7900 GTX at times.

On the video quality front you have a mixed bag. ATI has held the crown through the 9800 series, but lost out when NVidia released the 6000 and 7000 series which had better video quality and better AA settings. So the entire time practically that the x800 cards were out from ATI, NVidia had the better quality. ATI came back swinging with the x1000 series and their adaptive AA is again the best which is a form of AA that effectively doubles the quality of AA with almost no performnce hit. So if you are running 6x AA and enable adaptive AA, you will effectively get 12x AA with nearly no FPS loss. It does this by randomizing the patterns so they alternate. The only down side is that you mus maintain 60 FPS or better for it to work right (Both pics need to alternate at greater than 30 FPS to fool your brain correctly)

If you want, I can post an article or two to show off the differences in picture quality. All in all though, both manufacturers look good though and it will be hard to tell the difference on image quality alone. The only difference that I can see with my eyes is that the ATI has a 'sharper' AA look while still killing the jaggies. The NVidia has a more blurry look under high AA settings, but some people like the blurry effect. I don't.

Drivers - ATI is more bloatware due to .NET, but they have improved over the years. Task manager is reproting only like 5 MB used now though, so its not bad, but you have to install at least .NET 1.1. This doesn't bother me though since I use .NET for other things, and I bet a lot of people do too, but don't realize it.

Power consumption between a 7900 GTX, x1900 XTX, and 7950 GTX. Obviously the 7950 is going to have the max power draw, but between the non SLI boards boards, the 7900 GTX will have the least power draw, which means it will also generate less heat that you need to remove from your case. Both boards come with loud stock fans though (Do not even get me started on the 7950's fans), but both boards can have a fan swap for a silent fan that actually cools better, so this is not a problem. Arctic Cooling is what I use on the ATI and at .4 sone, you can't hear it. They make an identical one that fits the 7900 too.

http://www.arcticcooling.com/vga1.php

One thing to note - as soon as I write this, Murphey's law states that NVidia or ATI will come back with something that will kill the the other guy, so all this only holds true for today, not tomorrow. This is why I love competition - I get good product for less money - Maybe Microsoft can take a note here.

-S

Oblivion:

Oblivion is the most GPU demanding app right now. The gate benchmark is the most demanding too. Both top top cards from ATI and NVidia do good on the average, so pay particular mention to the minimum frame rates. The 7950 GTX would be about 40 FPS on this list, but its minimum FPS would drop well below that of a single x1900 XTX - since you can see a 7900 GTX in SLI drops way down to about the same as a single x1900 XTX.

Of particular note - only the x1900 XT is tested in Crossfire here. My card is an x1900 XTX that is crossfire capable so I would probably top 48 to 49 FPS here if I added a second board since the XTX is about 5% faster than an XT. On top of that, the XTX has a built in temp sensor for safe overclocking, so if you wanted, you could boost FPS to over 50 FPS in my rig and still have 30 degrees C of headroom to go even farther.

The white bars represent minimum FPS. Notice what the NVidia does in that regard. Notice a single 7900 GTX will drop below 20 on this benchmark.

[SUBMAN1]

But if you only have a budget of $17,500, Nvidia will probably beat ATI:

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/01/nv...dro_plex_1000/

[SUBMAN1]

NVidia 7950 to enable quad SLI in their driver. Seems they are releasing it to the masses. Hope you have some big fans to move that air, and some earplugs to boot! Also - Don't expect staggering performance for your $$$ - quad SLI has already shown that the improvement is negligable, at least so far.

Notice the PSU req! I may be at the very edge even with my monster PSU!

-S

PS. I have the ASUS Crossfire MB that this article mentions.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33418

EACH GeForce 7950 GX2 boards still costs around $600 plus but on August the 9th Nvidia will officially release a new driver that supports a Quad SLI configuration, along with the list of verified motherboards and accompanied with an extensive do-it-yourself guide. This should allow users to complete their custom build Quad SLI systems or buy another 7950GX2 card and jump on the quad train.

Until now Nvidia’s Quad SLI was supported only through "trained professional system integrators", due to Nvidia's gut feeling, that "Quad SLI is too complex a product to release to public without proper support". Nvidia obviously managed to massage its drivers, due to the fact that beta driver for Quad SLI slipped to public at the end of July.


Quad SLI should work on both, AMD and Intel platforms, on any SLI motherboard - even CrossFire ones - with the basic requirement, that it has two PCIe x16 slots. Power requirement? The answer is hidden not in the small print, but in the verified PSU list - there is not one with less than 700W and they go up to 1 KW and beyond.

One odd thing we noticed on the verified motherboard list is that it opens with ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe, which builds on ATI's CrossFire 3200 chipset. It looks like Nvidia has no more bad feelings for its now ex-competitor.


Quad SLI allows 32x anti-aliasing, the maximum level possible today, and offers in supported games the world's fastest performance in any given resolution.
More info, including beta ForceWare 91.37 driver and checklist can be found here. µ

[tycho102]

I have a 6800GT and a 850PE.

The 850 has noticably better image quality. The 850 with all the "performance" options turned on looks better than the 6800GT with all the "quality" options turned on. Unreal Tournament 2004, Silent Hunter 3, Pirates, Deus Ex 2, Neverwinter Nights.

The 6800GT is too smooth. It's hazy. The difference between the two cards is really noticable on UT2004. In fact, the 850 with all of it's options turned to quality is too "grainy" in most games. Some smoothness is desirable on UT2004 so that you can pick out an enemy on a cliff. My processor isn't fast enough to fully use the 850 on it's "quality" settings, but I still keep it set on "performance" just because it makes the game easier to play.

There are some HDR effects that stand out in Half-Life 2 (with the 6800GT, obviously), really obvious on the waterboat levels. On HL2, it's a real tossup between the cards becase the Nvidia one does things the ATI can't, but the ATI is more sharp and detailed.



meh. They're both playable and enjoyable. Truth be told I'd probably be using 850's, but my primary computer has an incompatibility with ATI cards, so I'm stuck with Nvidia. Nvidia has drivers for Linux which are readily available, but the ATI drivers requires you to run a busload of nuns off a cliff. It's absolutely horrible.

[SUBMAN1]

Anyone get the feeling that things are a bit out of control? :hmm: Going to need an air conditioned datacenter to run our PC's in the future.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by tycho102

I have a 6800GT and a 850PE.

The 850 has noticably better image quality. The 850 with all the "performance" options turned on looks better than the 6800GT with all the "quality" options turned on. Unreal Tournament 2004, Silent Hunter 3, Pirates, Deus Ex 2, Neverwinter Nights.

The 6800GT is too smooth. It's hazy. The difference between the two cards is really noticable on UT2004. In fact, the 850 with all of it's options turned to quality is too "grainy" in most games. Some smoothness is desirable on UT2004 so that you can pick out an enemy on a cliff. My processor isn't fast enough to fully use the 850 on it's "quality" settings, but I still keep it set on "performance" just because it makes the game easier to play.

There are some HDR effects that stand out in Half-Life 2 (with the 6800GT, obviously), really obvious on the waterboat levels. On HL2, it's a real tossup between the cards becase the Nvidia one does things the ATI can't, but the ATI is more sharp and detailed.



meh. They're both playable and enjoyable. Truth be told I'd probably be using 850's, but my primary computer has an incompatibility with ATI cards, so I'm stuck with Nvidia. Nvidia has drivers for Linux which are readily available, but the ATI drivers requires you to run a busload of nuns off a cliff. It's absolutely horrible.

Latest gen of ATI drivers for Linux were easy to install. Just typed emerge ATIdriver from Gentoo and all was good. ALso had to selct it as the primary driver, but you'd have to do that with NVidia too. Overall though, NVidia has had better Linux support with more driver revs, but ATI's latest rev is not all that old - WOw - they are releasing them monthly lately with another released on the 28th of July!

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=300

-S

[bookworm_020]

Hmmm!:hmm: I've unleashed a monster!

Thanks for all the imput, I just wanted some feedback before buying one.

At least I didn't ask about AMD v Intel

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

Hmmm!:hmm: I've unleashed a monster!

Thanks for all the imput, I just wanted some feedback before buying one.

At least I didn't ask about AMD v Intel

Don't even get me started!

[CWorth]

I could not care a less what card I personally buy..as long as it fits my budget and plays the game I want to play.Nothing else matters a bit.

[shegeek72]

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
--

[TteFAboB]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Anyone get the feeling that things are a bit out of control? :hmm: Going to need an air conditioned datacenter to run our PC's in the future.

Considering on an old poll Subsimmers voted the internet was most usefull for Porn (or not, I don't really remember nor searched for the old poll), I think it would be quite a challenge to, well, enjoy the Porn in a sub-artic frozen enviroment. But I would't know, ask an Eskimo I guess. Hmm, ask an esk, that's so pornographic.

But really, how about a really big PSU-radiator-Air Conditioner combo thing, something massive that stood at the rear or side of the case, the case at hand being sealed from the external atmosphere, don't ask me how CD/DVD drives and cables and etc. would work, ask an Eskimo. So we'd have an Ice Age only inside the computer cabinet, and not in the whole room. You should know, you have probably been to datacenters in the winter. Cold outside, cold inside, it's all cold, you can't barely use the mouse with your hand sha-sha-sha-kk-kk-ing out of co-co-ontrol.

Brrrrr.

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by LoBlo

You sure about that. I'm on my 3rd ATI 9800 Pro is three years (the previous two not even lasting a year). The first burned out randomly. The 2nd had poor fan quality and went into fan failure and burned out. I'm on the 3rd right now, and doubt it will make a year before burnout.

The good thing though is that the ATI cards (at least the one I've bought) come with a 3 year warranty and replacement if they become fried, and so far ATI has held good on that. You have to register the card as soon as you buy it for the warrant to be valid though. And it only pertains to cards bought directly, not pre-installed on a prebuilt computer (like DELL, Gateway, etc.)

I probably wasnt clear in my statement. ATI has better IMAGE quality than Nvidia

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by McBeck

I probably wasnt clear in my statement. ATI has better IMAGE quality than Nvidia

True, but not enough to where you'd notice much, if anything.

-S

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

True, but not enough to where you'd notice much, if anything.

-S

That might or might not be true.

Some months ago a guy on this forum tested SH3 with both a tope line ATI and Nvidia card. There was a clear difference in the way .f.ex. the water looked.

[McBeck]

On a side note....AMD has just purchased ATI