What speaks for Radeon ? What speaks for GeForce ?

Alrik Fassbauer

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Hello, everyone,

the rift between NVidia and ATI is almost like … a rift between PC users and Mac users.

But, seriously, what does actually speak for both sides ?

And what against ?

What do you think ?

Three things that come into my mind rather spontaneously are :

- Radeons don't have PhysX built-in. But : CPUs should be capable of handling this. Or I could try looking for a physical card via ebay.

- Radeons are in general cheaper that GeForce cards.

- Radeons were notorious for having a bad driver quality. How are things today ?

I'm just looking for … well, rather facts than opinions.

I'd like to read what pro's and con's both families of cards have.

Alrik
 
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A loud fan.
 
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Radeon did have driver problems (for those who'll say "nay" lemme remind you on months when IWD2 was not playable on Radeons waiting for the driver fix) but recently I can't remember seeing they need ages to address the possible issue, after AMD bought ATI, drivers are better and quickly updated if a problem occurs.
On the other hand nVidia STILL has problems with drivers on laptops. I'm serious.
Means if you're buying a laptop which you'll use also for playing games, I can only suggest skipping ones with nVidia gfx card but if you'll buy a desktop PC, do grab nVidia card for it.

PhysX shouldn't be a big influence on your decision. Yes, some current games can use it, however ATI went with OpenCL, which can basically do the same stuff that PhysX does. And since both nVidia and ATI support OpenCL with DX11 hardware, we'll probably see the same thing that happened with Firewire and USB - USB survived and is evolving, who cares about firewire today, although it was initially better only Apple pushed it and noone else.
You can check if your card supports DX11, OpenCL and/or PhysX, plus you get info on Pixel Shader version and other stuff with this software:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2157/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.6.4.html

A loud fan Jemy mentions is not about nVidia or ATI, there are many manufacturers who's cards are very silent.
 
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On IT sites that I seen people generally say that Radeons have better performance/cost ratio but nvidia is better at high end.If you are aiming at high end graphic you should know that only nvidia supports 3D,for low/mid class performance and price are not much different bettwen radeon and nvidia equivalents so it doesn't matter much who you chose.
 
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Oh this reminds me... In my country ALL computer newspapers and magazines were yelling "buy ATI as it's better" for years. Noone ever proved it better, I think they were payed to make such articles.
The real truth is that they're not much different in fact, both are equally good and thank god they both exist as their competition is moving GPU technology forward.
 
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A loud fan Jemy mentions is not about nVidia or ATI, there are many manufacturers who's cards are very silent.

It was actually a joke. What speaks for Radeon? A loud "fan". What speaks for GeForce? A loud "fan".
 
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:lol:

I must admit that I didn't get it at first, either. ;) Only after your explanation. ;)

My current PC is

- Win XP , still
- not high-end at all

so this remains unneeded for me. I really don't plan to buy any high-end card. I'd really have better uses for that money.

A mid-range card is what I'm probably getting.

And Directx 10 or 11 is something Win XP can't "play with", right ? ;)

If I'd buy a wholly new PC, it'd be Win7, though.


On a more serious note, I often read that Radeon has a bit more power for the money, compared to GeForce - is that right ?
 
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For me, the brands themselves don't differ much to alter a decision. It should come down to performance and, if you're going for higher end, Nvidia has the crown right now. At a medium performance level, they're comparable to one another.

Lack of Physx support is forgettable 99% of the time on an AMD card, but when a game you're interested in requires that for full graphical eye candy, it can be quite annoying not to have in your back pocket. As a current AMD customer, that is the case with Borderlands II for me.
CPUs should be capable of handling this. Or I could try looking for a physical card via ebay.
That's unfortunately not the case; the cpu won't be adequate to handle all the particles that would normally be funneled to the GPU. And adding in a secondary Nvidia card to supplement your primary AMD card is not supported by NVidia - you will have to run a hack/patch and customize it for each game you wish to use Physx on.
 
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I'll support what most people in this thread said:
In the low and mid budget segments ATI and nVidia cards are positioned against each other. The performance difference is negligible. Quality is no problem for either.

How fast is your CPU and how big your monitor? If both are outdated it could make sense to buy a used card for cheap and save the money for a real upgrade. The CPU is often a bottleneck, and low resolutions are no challenge for mainstream cards.
 
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Well, things are still like in this discussion : http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17830

The monitor I'm using for both my "office PC" (VGA input) and my "gaming PC" (DVI input, I think) is an LG Flatron W2242T.

By the way, what I really need to find out is the power the gaming PC is able to provide.

This is in short what I could pull out of it via the use of DxDiag :

—————————
System Information
—————————
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.120504-1619)
Language: English (Regional Setting: German)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 08/14/08 16:18:35 Ver: 08.00.12
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 369MB used, 3570MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode
 
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Last four cards in my main pc have all been nvidia allthough I did have two 580m in my alienware laptop. I dont think there is anything that speaks for either brand. Just buy whatever is the best when you are upgrading. Nowadays I usually skip buying (i.e GTX480) if ATI is better so I guess Im little biased towards Nvidia. However physx doesnt impress me and I didnt like the nvidia 3d vision2 when I tested it.

Tseng Labs 1MB
S3
S3 & voodoo
Nvidia Riva TNT 16MB
Geforce 2 MX400
geforce 4200 ti
ATI RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB
Radeon X800XL 256MB Heatpipe
8800GTS640
GTX280
GTX580
GTX680

Worst cards I ever had were Geforce 2 MX400 (bad performance), Radeon 9800 Pro (poor noisy fan), Radeon X800XL Heatpipe (serious overheating problems). The fact that my best experience was with nvidia card (Nvidia Riva TNT) and two worst on row with ATI could have something to do with me becoming a bit biased towards Nvidia.

I have never had a card break down. Geforce 4200 broke its fan but I didnt need to fix it (no overheat). Radeon 9800 pro broke its noisy fan too and I had to replace it due to overheat (with even noisier copper fan).
 
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I am not much of an enthusiast, and have owned cards from both. My personal impression though: I would agree that ATI cards may generally be the "better deals" looking purely at performance for money, while Nvidia cards may justify the slightly higher price by offering a bit more of a "fool-proof" or "care-free" experience. The few times I had any notable Gfx problems (e.g.: missing shadows in Gothic 3 CP), it was with ATI, but nothing really major.
Overall though, the decision for a specific GPU generation or even a specific brand probably has much more impact than the choice between the two chip manufacturers.
 
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To me i find that Nvidia cards are better for main stream games and Ati are better for indie games. Nvidia have like the worst global code, stuff like risen games work better on ATI cards because of less glitches. Just my opinion of course.
 
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Thanks.

I myself have a slight bias towards NVidia myself, partly because I've been using only GeForce-based cards so far, and partly because of the PhysX-Thing.
 
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