Chris Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 Time for another ATi vs. nVidia debate. I don't think I mentioned it but I'm in the middle of building my brand new PC, I have everything apart from the CPU, RAM, and graphics card. I'm now looking at what graphics card to buy, and can't decide between nvidia or ati, now I can't afford any top of the range stuff, however I don't want low range either, something fairly decent, and something that supports DirectX 10 too. I would say my budget is really, around £150 (€225 / $300) If I go with nvidia's geForce, it'll probably have to be one in the 8 series, since they support directx 10, and if ati's radeon, well I'm not sure, there's too many to look through and compare. So what do you guys think I should get? FYI: The specs of my current ati card Oh and it needs to be PCI-Express interface, not AGP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbanoutlaw Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 I think one of the few things Sony did right lately is go w/ the Nvidia Graphics for the PS3. I don't have a complaint against ATI, just my experience is w/ Nvidia & they've done well for me. Granted I've gone for older (read that cheaper) models, but except for a virus wiping out my drivers a while back, they've been brick reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 Yeah. I've only ever had one GeForce card, and 2 ATi cards throughout my PC history. I can't really say much for nvidia because it was so many years ago ( I had a GeForce 4! ), but my two ATi radeons I've had since then have been pretty good. But now I'm not really sure who to go with. Hopefully some people who have either a current gen decent ATI or nVidia card will post about them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gycu Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 (edited) I say nVidia, and my advice is grab one of those 320 MB 8800 GT ( if you don`t have money for the 768 MB version ) ... Edited June 25, 2007 by Gycu Brun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 The entire 8800 range is so expensive in the UK, I can't really justify a 320mb one. I have found a 512mb 8600GTS though, even though nvidia's page says it has 256mb standard, Gainward must have added an extra 256mb to it. That's £158.61 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gycu Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 I found at 155 pounds a gfx card ( 512MB ATI Sapphire X1950XT Graphic Card ) on the net ... Here is the Link Think that site is from UK Good luck ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 I'm thinking this 512MB 8600GTS at the moment, but it's got no specs so I don't really know much about it other than the fact 256MB has been added. If not that then this 256MB 8600GTS is looking pretty good, it's slightly overclocked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris82 Posted June 25, 2007 Share Posted June 25, 2007 Ugh, nVidia sucks, get a 1900xt 512mb and you wont regret it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted June 25, 2007 Author Share Posted June 25, 2007 How exactly do they suck? I'll take a look at the 1900's though. Also if I increased my budget a little I could stretch to a 8800 GTS 320MB. Hmm... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris82 Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 Well, from personal experience, nVidia support is very bad, even with adequate cooling and low temps I got so many artifacts and random colors in games, plus bad performance. I mean, an 8800 would seem like a good card to get if there were more DirectX 10 games but Vista is fail and since very few people have it, and the Vista drivers suck too, nobody wants to game on Vista. So buy what you like, but I've always gotten better performance and an all-around better card with ATi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 I say nVidia™, and my advice is grab one of those 320 MB 8800 GT ( if you don`t have money for the 768 MB version ) ... Doesn't exist Anyway, I have a nVidia Graphic card and it's never had any problems. I'd go for one of those 8600 cards. And ATi's specs of the card what has to compete with the 8800 serie is rather disappointing imo.. Edit: And Crysis and World in Conflict look exilent, one of the reasons I'm getting Vista. The OEM's are damn cheap anyway, just 130 EUR for Ultimate here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris82 Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 You don't need to get Vista, it's already been proven that DirectX 10 games work on Windows XP. Vista is useless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted July 3, 2007 Author Share Posted July 3, 2007 Oops forgot to update you all, last night I ordered an EVGA nVidia 8800GTS 320MB SuperClocked. Should be awesome. Switching from ATi to nvidia is a risk I'm willing to take. Obviously if I get problems I'll simply send the card back and probably go for an equivalent ATi. So yeah, bash me all you want, but that's what I've chosen this time round. I'm no fanboy, this is my 2nd nvidia, and I've had 2 Ati's before... so there This PC should last me quite some time I'm hoping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbanoutlaw Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 Which ever card you go w/, get the most memory on it you can. If you can afford it, you'll be glad you did. When was the last time you ran a game & had too MUCH memory? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 Perfect. EVGA's cards can be overclocked pretty good and the card itself is already pre-overclocked quite a bit. One little downside: If I'm not mistaken the drivers for the card are still in beta stages. But that's not really going to be a big prob. And now you'll be able to play almost all games on max setting If you're ever going to overclock it even a little further you should be able to reach 650 for the GPU and 1050 for the memory giving you a 3d mark score of more then thousand more. I think most games on normal reso will have a fps higher then 100. And @ Chris82: Well, they haven't yet been able to fully port it to XP, just a part of it. It's still in development. The link you had was irrelevant to DX10, but just to the Vista only stuff. I think Vista is pretty good, it just needs some time to get good driver support and stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbanoutlaw Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 Remember the early days of XP? I'd say wait a year or so on Vista. How do the cards hold up to overclocking? Do they overheat or anything like that? Sounds like leaning out your fuel mixture in a car. Sure you get more horsepower, but if not careful, you tear up your engine. Since I don't know much about overclocking, I leave that bit alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 Life time mainly goes down. But EVGA's cards have pretty good coolers on them. And I don't want to wait. I'd rather just buy a product once instead of first XP and then Vista. And I don't really really have a reason to take XP now.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris82 Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 And @ Chris82: Well, they haven't yet been able to fully port it to XP, just a part of it. It's still in development. The link you had was irrelevant to DX10, but just to the Vista only stuff.I think Vista is pretty good, it just needs some time to get good driver support and stuff. What? That article clearly says multiple times that Shadowrun will run fully on Windows XP by replacing a few .dll files. That is full implementation. How is an OS that takes this long to get industry support "pretty good?" You know why Halo 2 PC failed? Because it was for Vista, and since so few people have Vista, nobody plays it. Now if MS had done been pricks about it and gave XP support to the game, it would be popular like Halo 1 for PC. Windows Vista takes up significantly more memory (RAM) and executes typical applications slower than Windows XP, for the same hardware configuration. With no processes running other than system processes, Windows Vista with Aero enabled consumes ~425 MB of physical memory, and with Aero disabled, only ~25 MB less; compared to Windows XP, which consumes ~120 MB of memory. Wow, 3.5x the amount of memory consumed for a "cool-looking" UI with little to no new practical features. Unless you count searching your computer like what Spotlight in OSX does. But Google Desktop does that in XP without such a steep memory increase. Due to the resource use of Vista, many games including games using the Source engine (Half Life 2, Counter Strike: Source, etc.), and games using the Doom 3 Engine (Doom 3, Quake 4, etc.) show a significant drop in frame rate compared to that experienced in Windows XP. This effect is mostly a problem if the computer running Vista has less than 2 GB of memory. However, hardware surveys show that very few gamers have 2 GB of RAM or more available on their hardware (less than 0.1% on Steam November 2006 hardware survey). System requirements are a bitch, aren't they MS? Additionally, even with 2 GB of system memory, video games benchmarks with Vista show a framerate drop compared with XP, with some benchmarks showing a significant drop with similar configurations. Of course, as some articles point out, these results are also the consequence of the current lack of maturity of Vista Graphics processing units drivers, and even maturity of Vista itself. Wow, Vista's been out for about eight months, and nVidia nor ATi can pump out a decent driver that fixes these performance issues? That would be a big problem for sure. Sauce Anyway good for you Chris, as long as you're upgrading it won't hurt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 What? That article clearly says multiple times that Shadowrun will run fully on Windows XP by replacing a few .dll files. That is full implementation. Shadowrun (honestly never heard of it) uses DX 10? If so, then you're right. But I think it's just a Vista only game, nog DX10 game. All the other problems, I don't think they're really going to bother me. And I'll use Vista and XP dual boot stuff, for if Vista ever has a prob with some program. And infact, Vista has sold far more copies then XP did in the same time, so there. They're actually doing pretty good, even with all those "high" specs needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted July 3, 2007 Author Share Posted July 3, 2007 Perfect. EVGA's cards can be overclocked pretty good and the card itself is already pre-overclocked quite a bit.One little downside: If I'm not mistaken the drivers for the card are still in beta stages. But that's not really going to be a big prob. And now you'll be able to play almost all games on max setting No fucking way am I using Vista, not until they fix it, that'll be a few years yet. (IMO, until service packs are released). So yeah I won't have trouble with drivers. If you're ever going to overclock it even a little further you should be able to reach 650 for the GPU and 1050 for the memory giving you a 3d mark score of more then thousand more. I think most games on normal reso will have a fps higher then 100. Yeah it is already overclocked, here's where (standard in brackets): Core Clock - 575MHz (500) Shader Clock - 1350MHz (1200) Memory Clock - 1700MHz (800) That's actually pretty impressive how they added almost 1ghz to the memory clock. Guess I could overclock it a little more in other places, though I'll only do that if I need to. Also if I manage to get 3DMark06 actually working on my current PC I could do some before and after comparisons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbanoutlaw Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 Now I don't feel so dumb, Chris just said what I think about Vista. Had same issues w/ XP when it was new. Suggestion - Start a debate topic on XP vs Vista (if there isn't one already). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted July 3, 2007 Share Posted July 3, 2007 Holy fuck, that memory is just awesome, probably higher then the GTX has. Gotta look the super-clocked version up. So when you get it, make some pics of the card, k? I'd want to see some good pics of that black cooler thing they put on it, it looks wicked. And I'll have XP and Vista at the same time. As soon as Vista is really the standard and there aren't really any driver problems with it I'll get rid of XP. I've got XP lying here. Just 4 steps to get the installation disc. Though the key has already been used once.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alistair Posted July 5, 2007 Share Posted July 5, 2007 You made the right choice Chris. I'll never forgot the ATI card I bought a couple years back, it was top of the range, expensive as hell, and after a couple months of running it (NOT overclocked) the bastard burnt itself out because they put inadequate heating on the board (well to put it simply, the heatsink broke itself off of the card), totally idiocy and I'll never trust ATI ever again. My laptop uses an ATI but it's always running too hot, NVIDIA and Intel just feel, I dunno, like the safe decent option, and I've never had troubles with them, but always had ATI and AMD troubles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandora Posted July 5, 2007 Share Posted July 5, 2007 I somehow always compare ATi with mac/apple. Dunno why, but they match IMO. Trying to match the big guys who do it better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted July 5, 2007 Author Share Posted July 5, 2007 Holy fuck, that memory is just awesome, probably higher then the GTX has.Gotta look the super-clocked version up. So when you get it, make some pics of the card, k? I'd want to see some good pics of that black cooler thing they put on it, it looks wicked. Sure, I'll put them all on my flickr page. I've now ordered the RAM too, so now I'm just waiting for the RAM, Graphics card and CPU to arrive, then I can begin building it as I have all the other parts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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