NVidia or ATI graphics card, which is better?

Question

Im not talking about one card in particular, but the whole brand when it ocmes to video cards!

Answer 1

Hi Sam

Ati make the best graphic card and not to be confused with NVidia who make the drivers for most video cards etc...

ATI specialize in video cards and are well renowned for their speed and the ability to have a lot of ram and also, a nice cooling built-in fan.

Answer 2

you cant generalise acorss the brands. Up until a few months ago nvidia had the market because of the 8x which was a range of cards than any of the 3x series radoens for a comparable price. since july this year the 4x series radeons have come out and they are beating the 8x and 9x series nvidias and giving the gtx 260 and 280 a run for their money.

Historically a lot of people have had issues with the catalyst drivers. There is a lot of bad press about them and there have been some weak driver releases from ati justifying the criticism.

Having said that, there doesnt appear to be any current driver issues and the 4x series are getting superb reviews, and a big chunk of the market over nvidia.

One of the factors behind this may have been the acquisition of ati by amd. amd has a lot of resources to throw into ati and if the current range of cards is anything to go by, the acquisition has been very positive for the competitiveness of their hardware against nvidia.

right now nvidia is in dire straights as a number of their chipsets are faulty. this was initially reported as a problem relating only to mobile chipsets, but recent news indicates it may also be affecting their desktop boards, and a broader range of hardware than they had let on.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/n...

So its kind of short-sighted to try and generalise across either brand. Right now I wouldnt go near an Nvidia with a 10-foot pole because of the fault issues. 6 months ago they were walking all over ati.

The video card release cycle is about every 6 months. at each cycle of releases there's a battle between the two gpu giants for market supremacy and this comes down fundamentally to a price/performance equation. Right now, nvidia is down, and have a lot of lost ground to make up for with these faulty chipsets. Ati is gaining ground because of the acquisition from amd and the recent superb 4x series release.

In 4-5 months time there'll be another round of releases, and the whole contest will ramp up again.

So which is better, ATI or Nvidia?

Answer 3

Nvidia has had better history and better graphics cards which generally surpassed ati cards, both quality wise and speed wise, with cards which deliver top of the line performances, not to mention a much better way of playing with duel sli cards. ATI on the other hand, has not felt that they needed or felt threatened enough by the success of nvidia to create graphic cards which would surpass nvidia.

Answer 4

ATI infamous for its drivers. But on the other hand Nvidia is always ahead when it comes to video card driver updates. If you buy an ATI graphics card that recently comes out, the chances are you will have overheating problems with it since you won't be able to increase the fan speed until ATI releases the new update. But Nvidia always has programs such as Rivatuner or Evga precision for increasing fan speed especially when overclocking. The downside of Nvidia is that it's video cards are priced higher than ATI cards.