ATI or NVIDIA?

[glockjs]

SLI isnt even all that. its still in its early stages and still quite buggy. they showed some test that SLI actually slowed the game down compared to a regular setup its all hype right now....ill be ready for it as soon as its at a reasonable price

[redwudz]

I really want to put together a AMD 64 system with the Nvidia chipset and PCI-E Nvida video card. I know I need to wait for at least six months to a year to get the combo I want with the features I want at the price I want. ASUS hurry up!

I hate to wait.

[rallynavvie]

There's more to it than just having two video cards. The old-school variants of SLI with multiple PCI graphics cards and only one output weren't anything like what they're doing now with it. However the only reason I'm interested in it is for the workstation application of it. Can you imagine what two PCI-E Quadro cards in an SLI system could do with 3D applications? Those are likely the only places able to afford SLI systems, yet they're touting it as the next big thing for gaming. WTF! Gaming, are you ******* nuts!? Like I'm going to be expected to drop $1000 on two high-end gaming cards, not to mention whatever board supports SLI on top of that, to get the best performance from a game? What sort of twisted **** came up with that idea? Sorry for the harsh language, but it just seems like GPU technology is becoming a runaway freight train of a money-sink.

I'm imagining this silver-spoon 1337-kiddy bugging his parents to get him the latest Alienware SLI system with 15k SCSI RAID (bollocks to mirroring, just striping to 8 drives on a PCI-X HBA), dual Opteron 250s, and two 6800 Ultras, all with phase-change cooling powering either a giant plasma display with DVI input or one of those big LCDs with DL-DVI or whatever the heck that new dual-DVI tech is. All this so he can play HL2 with 16x FSAA at only 240 fps. At what point does it become just plain silly?

[glockjs]

dang rally...2 quadro's? i dont know what your doin right but maybe you could throw some paper my way. quadro's are just stupid silly on the price right now and it just makes me

[ViRaL1]

On a non-professional level, gamers are the most lucrative market for PC manufacturers and VARs. Most people would settle for a beige box that's fast enough to run Office and not lock up on Solitaire and they're definitely not concerned as to whether it lights up or if the fans glow.

[888888]

Personally, I find paying more than $100 for any video card is ridiculous... but keep in mind that to hardcore gamers, this is their hobby and they spend a lot of money on it. Some people spend a ton of money on cars that can do triple the speed limit. Other people buy a $3000 guitar because it has a special flamed top. Still others people buy $200 sneakers. And (some) gamers spend $400+ on video cards. A lot of people have one thing in their life that they splurge on. I guess to some people, it is computers.

[ZAPPER]

PC came with a nVidi TNT2 Vanta. I guess it did what it was supposed to do. I moved to an ATIAIW 7500 which was about the biggest baddest thing out there at the time (except maybe Matrox which I didn't find out about until afterwards) I picked the ATIAIW because of the multi-monitor out and all of the different jacks. Every thing that I had read about it at the time was written by ATI and I could not find any independent reveiws until after I bought it. All of the tech heads that I know say that the ATI hardware is the best that there is, but none of them know anything about the software.(I would like to see someone else make software for the MMC. I think that there is room for some improvement) If I had it to do over again I would consider Matrox (including Premeir is the kicker!)

[888888]

Thanks for everybody's input. I bought an ATI video card yesterday, in part because of this thread.

[shelbyGT]

Mine looks like this, except the sticker says "256mb" instead of 128.



a little much? probably, but o well!

[AlinaVastag84]

I like N-VIDIA. Works well and costs less then Radeon at the same power. Simple ! Those who said they love Radeon to death, said the same thing about VOO-DOO years ago...

[ViRaL1]

Nice spekers. :P

[yoda313]

Hello,

Well I orderd the 256mb vision tek ATI Radeon 9200 from tigerdirect.

I know it's not the latest in the ATI series but I got a pretty good deal on it (under $100). I'm not going to spend more than $150 for a video card

Kevin

[ViRaL1]

How does that compare to the PowerColor Radeon9250?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1603

[yoda313]

How does that compare to the PowerColor Radeon9250?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1603

Hello,

About twenty bucks more

And I figure I can live with slightly out of date 3d power since it still has way more horsepower than I've had in a long time. It'll still handle doom 3

Kevin

[ViRaL1]

...whenever you get your rebate. It's $20 more up front.

[Faustus]

So wow ATI does a little better one week on the benches. Don't care. I've owned both and had far fewer problems with nVidia chipsets. Same with their mobo chipsets. After my last ATI 9600Pro I said screw 'em and will not touch them again.

[Poppa_Meth]

I still remember when my STB Velocity was all the shit.

Regardless most of what I've used in ATI and I've never had issues with them so far. The few nVidias I've used have had some minor issues. I'd stick with ATI just because of that. Of course I don't do a lot of tweaking either and video games aren't something I play a great deal on my PC. I leave that for the PS2.