Aqua-Soft ForumsI thought It wasent going to happen but it did! ATI's Radeon Serries is beating the pants off Nvidia's GeForce FX serries! This is a very big dissappointment to me because I have been a long time crusader for Nivida and its line of cards. Not that ATI makes bad cards, thats BY FAR what im NOT saying, its just that I always liked having Nvidia be the top of thier game. With the new GeForce FX, i was expecting a card that was going to be phoenominal, and instead, its extra power just leaves more to the imagination! Looks like ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro is what is gonna win it out. What im basically saying is that im rather dissappointed with Nvidia. And the basic thing I would like to hear about this post is what you guys think of the GPU wars.
Ati Vs. Nvidia
I don't play games so my main concern is 2D not 3D graphics. I switched from NVidia to an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB and it kick's butt. ObjectDock, WindowFX, Windowblinds are significantly faster. ObjectDock looks as good or better than the real dock.
In what ways does ATI beat Nvidia?
Both companies play the game of outdoing eachother every 3-4mo. so if it is a matter of speed it is meaningless. What is important is compatibility, picture quality, and what is the road to improvement for that given card. Nvidia wins hands down everytime including the speed game when they are ready to release their response to ATI.
Yeah, neither company stays on top of speed for a while. Driver wise, Nvidia is Golden. I like intel.
I have to go with ATI on this one...
I just picked up my 4th radeon ( 9500 non pro, that I will be hacking into a 9700 pro). And soon to be picking up a 9800 pro.
I had got a Geforce 256 when they came out... and I will never touch another Nvidia card again. I have Backed the Radeon line since it was introduced, and have yet to be disappointed.
As far as IQ (image quality), I'm sorry but ATI has had Nvidia beat for quite a while... And it is no longer a matter of how fast the Maximum FPS are in a game... It's now a matter of how fast the Minimum FPS with everything turned on is. And ATI has it...
Sorry but 9700 pro tanks the Geforce FX in that area, and now ATI's refresh line solidifies thier lead... which will be out at the end of the month in mass distrobution... Hmm where are those FX's? Mainstream lineup still delayed after and already 6 month delay, you have some limited Ultra edition in the market but thats it, and it sounds like a lawn blower.
Nvidia might as well take another 6 months and go back to the drawing board... Hmm this is the best those 3DFX engineers they picked up, when they bought up 3DFX, could muster? Infact they seemed to have inherit some of the flaws 3DFX had that ended thier company... ie: the Geforce FX is the Voodoo 6000 of today, its enough to ruin a company.
And I really recommend that you all read up on the graphics game. Check out Anandtech.com, Hardocp.com, 2 of my favs... avoid Tom's Hardware at all costs.
Have you seen Nvidias new FX5200 and 5600. The 5600 looks promising. A pumped up ti4200 DX9 card for less money. I cant wait for Tom's to put out Benchmarks. I guess im hoping Nvidia can come out with some nice mid/lower range cards, cause I cant afford a $300 card right now.
A geforce256 is pretty old, have you tried RECENT cards. I have an ATI rage or something with 8MB, do i use it to compare modern ATI cards?
I think Nvidias multiple monitor support is better too (opinion of course 
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I think Nvidias multiple monitor support is better too
No way...
ATI rox
Nvidia sux in 2D and rox in 3D. Is a board made it for gamers.
Radeon is the best 2D board and it's enought faster in 3D: 150 fps, 200 fps, 70 fps BAH! the human eye cant see more than 40 fps!
In DVD's playback, Desktop, programs like Photoshop, video edition ATI is the winner.
I think ATI made Radeon thinking in professional enviroment first. Games are secondary... and rox too 
ATI cards are traditionally incompatiple with many top of the line video processing and capture components. While ATI has good video capture and DVD features it is not recommended at all in computers used for video or DVD authoring running Windows2000/NT/XP. I disagree that ATI is a professional card.
Nvidia on the otherhand is one of the most compatible and stable cards.
Originally posted by VideoMann@Mar 9 2003, 09:35 AMATI cards are traditionally incompatiple with many top of the line video processing and capture components.
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Nvidia on the otherhand is one of the most compatible and stable cards.
nvidia is(was...) more compatible because it WAS the faster card and many people played only with nvidias boards and the programmer also.
my radeon 9700 kicks ass the fx with aa and filtering on. and that for lower price. and i love the silent exhausting .. hear a fx.. lol. its like a starting jet when you launch a game and the the clock speed raises...
this time ati has won.
Videoman...
Where you getting your info...
Radeon's not recommended and incompatible for highend video and 3d applications...
LOL thats the funniest thing I have heard all week.
First off... Usually for this sorda thing, companies are going to go with something like a Wildcat (a $5000 video card), from 3dLabs... BTW 3dlabs and ATI just signed an agreement to use ATI HW in future products. Also ATI does have the FireGL line now... which owns any nvidia quadro in terms of 3D animation apps.
Now I have been using Lightwave, SI, and Maya for several years, and I do lots of video editing... (I have a degree in Graphic/Multimedia design). I would never use a Nvidia card for this work. Nvidia can't even get a decent Tuner put on thier cards... ie... All-in-Wonder style. ATI's AIW products easily keep up with Pinnicle, Hauppauge, and I dare say Targa capture HW, I know, I have used them all...
BTW, |2uso, your 40FPS comment is wrong its actually 72-85fps... read this article The 30fps vs. 60fps Argument.
That article also backs what I said about Max FPS not being as important as Min FPS, in todays world. (BTW some reviewer's like Anand are now including Min FPS as a benchmark, cause this is really where lag comes into play.)
I wouldn't say either company necassarily beats the other one out. They both make excellent cards. As for very good mainstream cards, Nvidia's new FX line is going to be a blast. They have 3 cards, the cheapest one having basically the same chipset as the most expensive performance model.
These cards pack 256mb of on-board memory just for the gpu! Most computers today have that much for the main cpu. Don't jump to conclusions guys.
Smell that? mmmmm......flame war.
actually, only the 5800 will have 256 of DDR, the lower models with have 128 of DDR1.
Im not a professional, so I can only talk by my experiences and Ive been happier with Nvidia, but I might give in a get a 9700Pro.
the real professional card is not ATI nor Nvidia. If you want the best 2D performance take a MATROX. I own an ATI radeon 9000 pro BTW.
heh try ati for driver support, man i still have a rage pro somewhere, all you ati owners,...
i wish you all the best with your ati product i really do, its a great card i'm sure.
But I hate ati's guts, when i switched to nvidia i was for once happy with my video setup.
I dont mean to flame you but i personally in my opinion if you ask me my 2 cents hate ati, and all their products. For me geforce ti4600 rules
MageGuru, u r right in all u said..
My experience: Maya, 3DStudio in 3D world (just a little), Photoshop/Corel/FreeHand/Illustrator in 2D world (ATI Radeon own best colors ever, calibrating colors on Nvidia SUX!, signaling generated by this board is very inacurate, well, the monitor brand/quality is most important)
I have a friend who program in opengl and he switched to ATI cause Nvidia suX! (I ever mentioned that Nvidia sux? )
Premiere, Avit in non-linear-video edition and ATI rox.
As simple as capturing video in VirtualDub ATI perform much better than Nvidia.
Of course, if you want turn ur machine in a pro machine then switch to Canopus or something like that. I own both: ATI and Nvidia, ATI in my home and Nvidia at the workplace, I know what I am saying...
BTW ATI have serious troubles in drivers that Nvidia fix some time ago. If u want to work buy an ATI, if u want to play an make non serious work Nvidia rox (fastest board ever, doesnt matter the benchmarks, Nvidia is faster, belive me). And if u want to be a real proffesional **** urselve and spend $5000 in a real board just kidding...
This is not a war I thing. For those of u that have the posibility to spend some money trying brands, do some tests and ask yourselves. The questions: what I will do with my video? How many $ may I spend? How faster is my machine? I know ppl that own a SUPERBIGESTMEGA board running on a 2x agp pc. You know what I mean.... Try to ask those questions and be happy. Let the war for those companies, not betwen us 
Try the Matrox ,Canopus, Avid, and Pinnacle websites and try integrating an ATI with their products, it's usually a no go! If you go to professional people that build computers for editing video/DVD authoring the lower price range of Nvidia cards is the overwhelming choice. It has nothing to do with the speed which is what gamers and 3D animators need but the way the chips in the board handle video. ATI sucks when integrating them with other video components. In fact you can't get them to work in most cases.
I used to use a Gforce 3 Ti card and just recently got ATI's 9700 Pro AIW.
The ATI board kicks absoloute butt.
I play a ton of flight sim type games and the 9700 will pump out everything the games can throw at it.
Capturing video is cake and I've yet to come across any driver related issues.
The only thing that bugged me was that I had to upgrade my power supply to use the card.
I only had a 350 watt and ATI requires a 400 watt. 
I also noticed that ATI calls the processor on their 8500, 9000, 9500 and 9700 a VPU, not a GPU.
Well I devote a great deal of time to a 3D Astronomy program called Celestia. Celestia works hands down better on NVidia graphics cards. Many of the features of the program don't even work on an ATI Radeon based card. So I won't touch one. My next purchase will be a GeForce FX based card. And we all have to keep in mind that the drivers for the GeForce FX series cards is in its infancy here. It takes a few months before we really start to see the cards speed up. If everyone remembers the Radeons were not really that much faster than the GeForce4 Ti 4600 when it first came out. It gained in speed as the drivers matured. This has always been the case. It just means NVidia is going to have to work harder and faster on there drivers. I think in the end its going to be a draw between the 2 companies. Each cards features are a little diferent and for diferent jobs so we are all going to have to wait and see what happpens.
If everyone remembers the Radeons were not really that much faster than the GeForce4 Ti 4600 when it first came out.
Im sorry, I read this and I just could not just let it go. I guess 5x quicker isnt enough for you? Ive never seen a card have that much over the former generation (Not even the V2 SLI's vs. the Voodoo's), but the 9700 Pro did over the Ti4600 in JK2.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.htm...tml?i=1683&p=20
Jedi Knight 2 w/ AA & Aniso'demo jk2ffa' @ 1600x1200
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro - 101.2
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 - 21.6
All before the card came out. And just read the rest of the review, the Radeon hammered the Ti4600 all throughout every single test, except the CPU limited ones.
And BTW, the current limit of the eye in FPS is unknown. We dont perceive things in frames, but we can see well over 500fps, but what monitor has a refresh rate above even 120hz in a decent resolution? Technology is limiting the current FPS that we can see atm, moreso monitor technology.
9700 Pro - $250-300
Ti4600 - $180-200.
Sure, the 9700 Pro is better, but does price not matter, the Ti4200 is better than the MX440, but......
Hhhhmmmm.....
Do I hear the ring of "OS X is better than WinXP" or "Atari ST is better than AMIGA" or "OS/2 is better than Win95" or "Atari 800 is better than C64" in this thread?
Oh, wait, this is ATI vs. Nvidia, and of course this is something completely different!
Does anyone else recognize a pattern there?
McTrinsic
OS/2 was MUCH better than 95.