Radeon vs GeForce

Here's the rub.

ATI and Nvidia both have great offerings. Let me sum them up.

Nvidia holds the single card crown with the new 7950 GX2 (dual-core GPU). It requires an SLI mobo (I believe) and kills any other single card by alot. This card is also $699 or so.

ATI holds the single card/single-core crown with its X1900XTX. This card is superior in engineering to the competitive 7900GTX. Both are great cards, but ATI has better visual qualitys with High Quality Ansiotropic Filtering, and High-Dynamic-Range Lighting with Anti-Aliasing.

In the Crossfire/SLI two card setups, ATI is also the king, primarily because of the afformentioned higher visual quality (
Performance). Nvidia's SLI is a easier to use setup however, and a no-hassle two card setup (Usability). Also, having a "Crossfire Edition" card is not a problem SLI has. Just need the same GPU's to be able to match the cards in SLI (both 7600GTs or both 7900GTX's).

In the budget conscience range, the 7600 cards are superior to the X1600 cards. Though X1600's have the great image quality of the x1800/x1900's, they are to slow to capitalize on these strengths. 7600GT would do any PC gamer well. (article here)

If you want a cheap card, go X1300. The AVIVO platform, Catalyst Control Center, h.264 decoding, etc make the ATI more the way to go.

WHAT I WOULD DO.

Plan to buy a X1900XT (standard or crossfire) and wait until you buy your system. Both ATI and Nvidia should have some newer stuff rolling out near Sept-Nov, so you might want to wait to catch a current gen card at a deal, or get the latest and greatest.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yep you would. And in fact, I would guess with the crossfire mobo you are getting, you could easily upgrade to a dual-card configuration. You might consider picking up a X1900 Crossfire card, if you think you might upgrade to dual-card in the future. I'm sure it will be easier to find any X1900 card than it would be to pick up a crossfire card.

You might consider that.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, I've used Nvidia drivers and ATI drivers and they both are not without problems.

Sabbey, alot of people aren't very found of ATI's Catalyst Control Center. It's a very graphical user interface (GUI), and also requires the installation of MS's NET 2.0 Framework. So say the GUI bogs down the system. I have had no problems with CCC at all, because I actually take time to figure out the GUI. Very few people realize that you can customize CCC to your liking. As to the MS Net 2.0 Framework, it is not a big deal to install this software. All it does is give Windows new ways to display custom windows. It's not an intrusive program like alot of people think. The only other complaint people have is that they have trouble installing the drivers. This is only because they don't truly uninstall old drivers first, LIKE IT SAYS TO IN THE README's!!!

That said, ATI has had great drivers IMHO. They update about every month. If you follow the directions for installation, and you take a bit of time with the CCC's customizations, I bet you will love the ATI drivers.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Well, I've used Nvidia drivers and ATI drivers and they both are not without problems.

Sabbey, alot of people aren't very found of ATI's Catalyst Control Center. It's a very graphical user interface (GUI), and also requires the installation of MS's NET 2.0 Framework. Some say the GUI bogs down the system. I have had no problems with CCC at all, because I actually take time to figure out the GUI. Very few people realize that you can customize CCC to your liking. As to the MS Net 2.0 Framework, it is not a big deal to install this software. All it does is give Windows new ways to display custom windows. It's not an intrusive program like alot of people think. The only other complaint people have is that they have trouble installing the drivers. This is only because they don't truly uninstall old drivers first, LIKE IT SAYS TO IN THE README's!!!

That said, ATI has had great drivers IMHO. They update about every month. If you follow the directions for installation, and you take a bit of time with the CCC's customizations, I bet you will love the ATI drivers.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by sabbey

Though, I never bothered to uninstall previous versions of Nvidia's, so that is one thing to change for ATI's once I need to update it.

Yeah, this part can't be overstated. You MUST uninstall, reboot, then reinstall, reboot. It works everytime beautifully, but most are to impatient to do so and then they complain that CCC doesn't work .

One tip that many people don't know is that ATI provides a nice little "uninstall-all" utility file that obliterates any drivers/apps of ATI origin. It's easily found here.

C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\UninstallAll\AtiCimUn.exe

How ya doing, buddy?