So which one is better? AMD (ATI) or nVidia?

[Uberfuhrer]

Let's answer this question once and for all. Who makes the better GPUs? AMD/ATI or nVidia?

[Latte]

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[HackerX]

Does that x2 mean twin cards running in SLI? i'm not up with the latest cards.

IMO, nvidia have always been the most consistant and stable.

[Uberfuhrer]

Does that x2 mean twin cards running in SLI? i'm not up with the latest cards.

X2 video cards are basically two video cards that go into a single slot. So 2 X2 cards running in dual Crossfire/SLI would be like a quad single card setup.

[allenlam]

Let's answer this question once and for all. Who makes the better GPUs? AMD/ATI or nVidia?

Surely nVidia. It seems there are insufficient supports for ATI in terms of drivers. I have a fedora server that could not run xwindow because there is no video driver for ATI display. :(

[HackerX]

X2 video cards are basically two video cards that go into a single slot. So 2 X2 cards running in dual Crossfire/SLI would be like a quad single card setup.

So like a dual core style set up?

The graph seems latte posted seems rigged in amd's favour, tis all. While I don't doubt the ability of either brand's cards, with the ease at which a programmer can favour one card over another, it's hard to take a card's performance on face value.

[Uberfuhrer]

So like a dual core style set up?

The graph seems latte posted seems rigged in amd's favour, tis all. While I don't doubt the ability of either brand's cards, with the ease at which a programmer can favour one card over another, it's hard to take a card's performance on face value.

Yeah, it's pretty much a dual core kind of deal.

The latest ATI video cards are supposedly better and cheaper than their nVidia equivalents. ATI had the same edge, I believe, with the X1000 series, which were said to be better than the nVidia 7000 series.

Personally, I like ATI better. Not once have I had a problem with their cards. ATI also has better drivers, from what I've read.

[ScottH]

I think maybe some better scoping to the question is in order?

Let's define (for the sake of my post, at least) "Better" to mean faster, on average, in terms of performance per dollar. Of course, a free card that does 1/1000th the speed of any other would be a winner with that, so let's further clarify that we only consider cards that do today's work acceptably well (GPGPU runs fast, games are playable).

Given that, my choice is ATI. They clearly give far more performance for each dollar.

But there's more... I've followed the battle between them for many years, and as one would expect, the "fastest card" distinction bounces back and forth.

But, in about 2002 nVidia was caught cheating by putting optimizations in their drivers that would occlude some of the geometry in 3D Mark so their card would "appear" faster on synthetic metrics. I'm not sure if they do anything like this today, but I"m suspicious.

But, on a more factual basis... no card today gives the highest frame rates on EVERY game; the 4870x2 appears to give more than the nVidia, but that will change.

ATI supports double-precision for GPGPU, but nVidia doesn't (though they will soon).
nVidia gives their top cards more memory bandwidth on average.

Also, nVidia has spent a lot more money putting nVidia specific extensions in their products. Judge for yourself, but I say this is bad because it helps them, but not the market in general.

On "standards-based" stuff like SM 4.0, ATI is currently on top.

In a year we'll be asking "Is Intel's Larabee better than both ATI and nVidia???"

[Uberfuhrer]

In a year we'll be asking "Is Intel's Larabee better than both ATI and nVidia???"

Damn, I forgot about Intel getting into the GPU competition. The only thing left now is nVidia to get into the CPU competition...although, I do believe they bought PhysX from Ageia, which is, in my opinion, among the more useless pieces of hardware on the market. My guess is that they'll eventually start reworking it to be a full-blown CPU.

[ScottH]

Damn, I forgot about Intel getting into the GPU competition...

What I've read of Larabee, it will be DirectX [backwards] compatible, but it will also support future extensions to DirectX. I think what they're doing is a bit more than just getting into the GPU market; they're going to try to fundamentally change GPU's--for the good, IMO.

[Explaination follows that is probably boring or redundant to some]

GPUs are designed for SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) only. ATI's 4870, for example, has 10 processing cores, each with 16 execution units capable of 5 simultaneous floating point operations (hence, 800 stream processors).

But, those cores have a limitation: a core must execute the same instruction on all 16 processing units at the same time.

That's great for things like short pixels shaders, but very bad for "general purpose" computing, where those 16 threads may have very different work to do.

It turns out that Ray Tracing (something Intel is investing heavily in) scales MUCH better on general purpose CPUs than on GPU's. This is because coloring a single pixel can require a very complex set of reflections and model-geometry traversals. On a GPU, much of the hardware parallelism (and hence much of the power) would be lost doing this work.

So, Intel's architecture is a wide array of modernized Pentium processors. Each processor has a dual pipeline, supports up to four hardware threads, and has its own cache. Larabee will probably BLOW the GPU's away at ray tracing and a few other things, but the initial version probably will not outperform the GPUs on modern video games. IMO

[Jakalwarrior]

ATI 9xxx series => Nvidia 5xxx series
ATI x1XXX series == Nvidia 7xxx series (roughly)
ATI hd2xxx series =< Nvidia 8xxx
ATI hd3xxx series =< Nvidia 9xxx series
ATI hd4xxx series =? Nvidia GTXXX series (still trading blows)

I go wherever the bang for buck is ;) screw loyalty!
I had:
Riva TNT (Free)
Geforce 2
MX440 (mistake, i was young!)
9800pro
7600gt
2900pro ($159 after 3xxx release)
4850

[burazekun]

I beleive that they both have their ups and downs. Just like AMD and Intel. You have to make your desicion based COMPLETELY, and I will not stress that point more, based on what is currently out verse what you need.

I beleive at this point AMD/ATI has the best card for your money on the market. It offers great performance, and happens to be the first card to break the TeraFlop boundry. However, if you asked me this question about 6 months earlier. I would have told you. Get a Geforce 8800GT or a 9600gt. Both around 130-200 dollars.

In fact, one of the things you should ask yourself is "how much money do I NEED to spend?" The truth be told, not as much as we pay. It's our insecurities that we buy more then we need.

I personally plan to make the purchase of a ATI 4850 from MSI with their custom heatsinc solution. (192.99 on newegg.com) When you spend for about 12%-30% more performance about 100 dollars mroe for the 4870. This is a purchase for a long term solution for my current computer. Though as building computers is:
A: A hobby of mine.
B: A bussiness I run

I see many more solutions coming to my attention in the future and many more builds. The exsistance of both AMD/ATI and NVIDIA tells us, that if there wasn't a feirce compition, we wouldn't have the great products we do now. It also tells us, both groups give us reliable hardware consistantly enough that this is actually a subject we shouldn't be having in general and that this is spurred from the commercial preasure that is placed, to take a side.

Now it is fun to discus things like this so I am not here to ruin such an event, but if I had to say anything, I wanted to say that I can not take sides and that what card I use does not reflect my position on whoes side I took. I went with the most secure choice I could make when the purchase was made.

[Jakalwarrior]

I personally plan to make the purchase of a ATI 4850 from MSI with their custom heatsinc solution. (192.99 on newegg.com) When you spend for about 12%-30% more performance about 100 dollars mroe for the 4870. This is a purchase for a long term solution for my current computer. Though as building computers is:
.

eWIZ had 4870s for 193 shipped AR this morning ;)
I bought a 150 dollar 4850 and i find that the stock cooler really isnt that bad. If you arent scared of a little sound it can keep em at about 65*C. Otherwise a 30 dollar cooler after market cooler can keep it in the 40s while staying quiet.

[Caramel]

ATI 9xxx series => Nvidia 5xxx series
ATI x1XXX series == Nvidia 7xxx series (roughly)
ATI hd2xxx series =< Nvidia 8xxx
ATI hd3xxx series =< Nvidia 9xxx series
ATI hd4xxx series =? Nvidia GTXXX series (still trading blows)


Lets see.. ;)

ATI Rage 128, Nvidia Riva TNT2 and Voodoo 3 were all equalish.
ATI Radeon 7xxx and 8xxx <-- Nvidia Geforce 2xxx/3xxx/4xxx series.
ATI Radeon 9xxx series --> Nvidia Geforce FXxxx series.
ATI Radeon x8xx series <-- Nvidia Geforce 6xxx series.
ATI Radeon x1xxx series == Nvidia Geforce 7xxx series.
ATI Radeon HD2xxx series <-- Nvidia Geforce 8xxx series.
ATI Radeon HD3xxx series <-- Nvidia Geforce 9xxx series.
ATI Radeon HD4xxx series -->? Nvidia GTXxxx series.*

I think ATI will win this round. The GTX 260/280 outperforms the HD4850/HD4870 at lower resolutions and with AA/AF turned off, but the HD4870 outperforms all at higher resolutions and with AA/AF turned on.

And then there is the pricing of the cards. Those GTX cards are just insanely ovepriced:
HD4870 - 200 euro's. HD4850 - 130 euro's. GTX 280 - 350 euro's. GTX 260 - 250 euro's.

So in conclusion, who's better? Neither. Just individual series are better than their competition.

I'm getting an ATI card this time around. Performance/price = win. ^_^

[burazekun]

eWIZ had 4870s for 193 shipped AR this morning ;)
I bought a 150 dollar 4850 and i find that the stock cooler really isnt that bad. If you arent scared of a little sound it can keep em at about 65*C. Otherwise a 30 dollar cooler after market cooler can keep it in the 40s while staying quiet.

I thank you for informing me of that information. But I would like to state that the information provided sounds like a good idea. But I would rather keep to the MSRP (4850=190, newegg.com = 175) (4870 = 290 newegg.com = 289) I choose one standard retailer as to only complain to one when dealing with computer parts. I dont use ewiz. But please allow this to not insult the idea, but the basis of one single occurance of 193 at this point is not my concern till this information is avalable for purchase when I need it.

[Ytterbium]

I'm sitting on a ATI Radeon 9600pro. Heck it's still works for those games I've tried.

[glaz]

If you question the brands everyone will vote for their favorite. For every price range both manufacturers compete with products of similar performance. So you can't really say that nVidia is better than ATI or the opposite. They go at each others throat using the well known performance/ price edge.