Posted: 10/29/2005 5:19:42 PM EDT
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I am currently using a NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 W/ 16 MB graphics memory...... I recently become an owner of a PC that has a 2X AGP ATI Rage LT Pro w/ 8 MB memory..... I am assuming that I need to stick with the NVIDIA......can someone please confirm.... Thanks. BG |
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With those two cards, I know for damn sure they arent used for gaming, or at least anything that has been released in the last 6 years. If this isnt for gaming at all, then it doesnt really matter which you use. Nvidia drivers are light years ahead of ATIs though. |
Sorry to arise a dead thread but... ATi's drivers are very much on par with nVidia nVidia just has better hardware ATM |
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Yep, ATI driver support is much much better compared to what they used to be. I think they have great driver support now. They pretty much have a general update a month. They keep adding and improving features. They are just behind approx 4-6 months behind on getting their cards X1?00 series out. They had a defective gate in the chipset that was causing random crashes, and it took them months to locate, remedy, and redesign the chipset. Their Multi media cards have no comparison. I love the ATI AIW series. |
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Try using ATI drivers with Linux. Then you will see why the driver techs at nvidia have forgotten more about the subject than the dolts at ATI will ever know. I will admit that they are pretty quick at getting updates for their win9x drivers, which generally arent bad. Omegas ATI drivers are still light years ahead of the reference. |
AIT drivers are the reason I will never own an ATI card again. I have had 3 different ATI cards and the drivers SUCKED. Nice hardware on paper, but getting reliable drivers was a pain. I think I had to change drivers 3x with my 9700Pro  I am sure they got better now but I am not going to spend another dime to take the chance. |
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The current leader is the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX SLI (2 of them together). PCI for video is dead. AGP is slowly dwindling. PCI Express is the latest and greatest for video cards. SLI motherboards must be purchased if you want to slap together two SLI-capable video cards. Also upgrade your CPU and RAM. AMD's DDR2 capable mobos should be out next year. Get a Creative X-Fi sound card when they come out, as they have more processing power (less CPU utilization) with better 3D sound positioning with headphones. It won't necessarily cost you a LOT of money if you settle for a GeForce 6800 GT and don't get dual-everything. I'd say get $2000 ready to build a good system taht you can upgrade for at least another 2-3 years. DDR2, SLI, SATA/SATA II/SATA 2.5 are somethings you will be needing to play the latest and greatest games in the next 1-2 years. based on my opinion, nothing less than 4GB of RAM should be used when Windows Vista is released. |
Currently upgraded to a GE-FORCE 6600 with PCI-EXPRESS. Running AMD 64 at 2 gigs and 1.5 gigs of RAM. Nice card. Had a ATI on my previous system playing DOOM III. That card was ok but would lock up. Playing F.E.A.R. now and have had only one lock up and i would say this game is as graphic intensive as DOOM III if not more. |
What's funny? Currently the high end RAM for the Asus P5ND2-SLI (Pentium 4 Socket 775) mobo is DDR2 PC2-5300. AMD doesn't have support for DDR2 yet. Expect it sometime next year. Currently the Asus A8N-SLI (Socket 939 Athlon 64) still uses DDR PC3200. They ran some tests showing more RAM actually yielded faster frame rates with intensive games. There was a significant difference between 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB when playing Doom 3. If 2005 games run faster with 2GB RAM, I expect 2006-2007 games to run well with 4GB RAM. |
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I explained it already. AMD 64-based mobos do not currently support DDR2 RAM, it's only with Intel mobos. However, there are plans to unveil AMD 64 based mobos that support DDR2. Does this make any sense to you? Regardless of DDR vs DDR2, you want at least 1GB-2GB of RAM when playing the latest (2004-up) games. It's going to jack up the price of your rig but it depends on what you want to do. I usually buy the "latest" games about 2 years after its released so all the hoopla is gone (bunny hoppers and cheaters, etc...) from multiplayer gaming. |
You have a link to info on DDR2? I haven't stayed up with the latest and greatest on ram, and would like to know more. BTW, wasn't saying you were on crack. |
I know. I have had the chance to play with quite a few DDR2 memory modules myself, and all of it so far, compared to standard DDR, just sucks - especially for latencies. Here is some info for ya to read over - www.digit-life.com/articles2/ddr2-market/ddr2-market.html Hopefully, just like BTX, DDR2 will go the way of the Dodo, or in this case, go the way of RAMBUS, and just die off |
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BTX is dying off. AMD isn't adopting it and Intel is going to drop it due to the newer cores that run at slower frequencies. I think we'll be seeing multiple cores (more than 2) per chip in the future. Right now I've seen a few quad-core setups. I think that is only the tip of the iceberg. RAMBUS was a good idea except it was poorly implemented and wasn't any better than regular DDR. I have a gut feeling DDR2 is the same, but if AMD is adopting it next year, then there may be something to it. |
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Thus far, most haven't seen that much of an improvement from DDR2 vs DDR. You can find a lot of tests, reviews, comparisons and opinions on DDR2. Google it... Most find that there is not much gained from DDR2 vs DDR. www.overclockercafe.com/Articles/DDR_vs_DDR2/ |
Maxim magazine even did a review on building a PC. They FREQUENTLY referred to AMD and DDR2 combinations. I.e. CPU? AMD Athlon 64. Mobo? ASUS AMD based mobo. Ram? DDR2.  I have plenty of other sources pointing to AMD/DDR2 combinations next year.I'm not sure what programmers can do to take advantage of DDR2 but DDR isn't exactly cheap at the capacities I want. Now, assume DDR2/AMD 64 combinations are available next year and its only a few bux more, guess which I will buy assuming prices are comparable? AMD 64 / DDR2. If DDR2 is significantly (2-3x) the cost of DDR and the performance gains with Vista and the newest games are nil, I may stick with AMD 64 / DDR. in the meantime, I'm playing circa-2003 games with my Athlon XP 2100+ and GeForce FX5600. It's a relic but it works OK. I'm not sure if X-Fi is going to be worth it but the processor on the soundcard seems impressive. It may very well be necessary for even better 3D sound positioning and multiple sound sources. |
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The piece of sh** GeForce 5700 card I just beat with a hammer last night convinced me never, EVER, to buy another nVidia card. My buddy had problems with his 5600, and after constant lockups through every game I played and 5 different drivers with this damn 5700, I've had enough, and the 5700 is no more lol. The 3 and 4 series GeForces all ran great, but the 5xxx series blows camel cock. In the mid range these days, I think ATI give a little more bang for the buck...I don't have $1000 to blow on a SLI rig...did that in the 3DFX days. My Radeon 9800pro has been as trouble/hassle free as the OLD nVidia cards are...never had any driver issues at all. |
The GeForce 5xxx series doesnt suck, just the card you bought is. Real gamers dont live in the mid-range video card world. 
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That's a BIG +1. ATI is trailing big time. Their new first gen Crossfire lags behind the now 2nd Gen Nvidia SLI series of cards. My 5600 is working great, but it isn't as fast as the GeForce 3 in non-DX9 games. In DX9 games, the 256MB 5600 seems to work quite well at low details/low resolution! lol. The ATI 9800 Pro is now a low to mid-range video card. Time to upgrade! |
On the gaming system in the office, Battlefield2 crashes more often when playing with the nVidia 6800 in it versus the ATI 9800 that's also in it. It appears ATI has fixed many of their driver problems. Also, the output quality of the ATI is night and day better than the nVidia cards I've used. For reading text or doing graphics, in other words real work, the ATI cards are the best. If you have a good monitor, you want an ATI card. Even the seven year-old ATI cards I have look better than the new nVidia's. I know because I've used them with the same model monitor side by side. The nVidia's beat them on performance, but unless you spend all of your time playing games, the ATI is simply a better choice for most people.z |
The new PC i have at work has an ATI x300. The quality is the same as any of my Nvidia cards. I have an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 in the Dell laptop and its a real POS. The quality sucks when you play games (starts to overheat and scramble up the images), and frequently starts jumping around from 32MB to 64MB. I had two replacement cards do the same thing. IMHO I don't see any significant difference other than performance when comparing ATI to Nvidia cards of the same caliber. I'll buy the fastest card there is for gaming. For Microshift Windoze and Office or e-mail, anything will work well even crappy on-board video. |
I was talking about the quality of the output signal.
No. If you use a new $1,000 SLI nVidia card as compared to even a seven year-old ATI, the ATI simply looks better. I've had them side by side. The DAC's in the ATI's are better. Also, the voltage output is higher. The new nVidia card we have doesn't have a high enough output voltage to drive our monitors to full brightness. The three output voltages (red, green, blue) are also very close to even with the ATI cards I've color-calibrated. Gray, like on the last three cards with nVidia chipsets I color-calibrated, had a red tint with the nVidia's. When showing gray on all of the ATI cards, the three colors were very close to perfectly even. There was no tint. There's a reason why all of the graphics professionals I've seen the past several years have used ATI cards.z |
Ok then keep using ATI cards. I would like the fastest video card for gaming. I could care less if Windows displays Gray 129 too dimly. But I've never had a problem with Nvidia cards being too dim with my monitors though, and I have a slew of CRTs and LCDs in my arsenal. Displaying all of the colors perfectly is useless if it cannot render objects very quickly in a gaming environment. That is why I choose " HIGH PERFORMANCE" all the time with my Omega Nvidia drivers. |
"Graphics Professionals " - nvidia Quadro cards. Quadro > FireGL |
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I didn't realize it but my PC at work has DDR2 (2GB) and it isn't much faster than with DDR although the work pc is an Optiplex GX280 (P4 3.2 GHz, HT not enabled in XP, DDR2 2GB) , it FLIES for Windows apps versus my Dimension 8300 (P4 3 GHz w/ HT enabled, PC3200 DDR 1GB). The Dimension 8300 is a bit sluggish compared to the Optiplex GX280. The PC at work flies when opening large files, Adobe Acrobat, and office apps in general. The main difference is an extra 200 MHz and an extra 1GB of DDR2. |
95% of computer users would not know the difference between using an Onboard video card compared to something from ATI/Nvidia for email, office software and the internet. As far as "all graphics professionals" using the ATI's... At the two local art colleges here, all of their PC's run Nvidia cards. Not sure about their Mac's, but I do know all of their pc's are running Nvidia cards. The two systems I built for a graphics dept at a local company specifically asked for Nvidia based cards in their sytems. -d |
It really depends on what game your playing. A friend of mine has a 6800GT and i have an X800XL, now overall the 6800GT is better BUT I get more FPS on CSS then him with the same settings (Yes, we basicly have the same rig) |