ATI vs NVIDIA

[KewlAzMe]

I have been an Nvidia user for the past few years and have never had a problem on games that require a 32MB card. I hear lots of good things about the ATI 9700 Radeon but my Dad has that and that card gave nothing but problems when it was first released. less than 50% of the games he had (war and flying simulators mostly) would work on the 9700 without crashing. We found a beta patch that fixed most of the problems, and then recently a released patch from the ATI website that didnt seem to change anything. He still has a problem with NHL 2003 from EA Sports though. Every 3 seconds there is a hesitation and it gets really annoying. He has a 2.53 GHz, with 1Gig RAM, (all the top of the line stuff). He also had an ATI Rage back in the day and again that was nothing but problems on a lot of his games.

I had a 32MB Geforce2 MMX that worked great for me but i figured it was time to upgrade to a 64MB card for the hell of it. So I purchased the ATI 7000 64MB (im not made of money to get a 9700) and installed it. So far I am very un-impressed.

1) Now all games that load take this extra 8 seconds of blackscreen before loading, Thievery, SplinterCell, Tony hawk... all games..

2) In Thievery when looking at the Team Select screen i get these wavy lines in the back ground.. also when looking at the Objectives screen. But during game play it seems fine until I get hit.. then the wavy lines come back momentarily.

3) In Thief 2, I alt-tabbed to the desktop and back to the game and the menu screen dimmed way down. Then when I exited Thief2 after I was done playing, my desktop was set at this annoyingly High brightness and contrast level that wouldnt change until I rebooted my computer.

I have the latest drivers for the ATI so I dont know what the problem is. I do however have a 450Mhz with 384MB Ram so Im waiting for my motherboard and my 750Mhz processor to see if that changes anything.. but as for right now.. Im about to pull this piece of sh!t out of my computer and go buy a GeForce 64MB.

I've read the reviews and every one of the tech pros seems to think that the 9700 radeon is the best card they've ever seen.. but I've yet to be impressed by an ATI product.

What do you guys have to say about this?

[Bloody-Reaper]

Erm... Does 7000 vs 9xxx ring a little bell?? Perhaps there was a small upgraded in between the numbers?

Anyways, before getting a new videocard you should always check some reviews.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/index.html
There's a list of most gfx card, incl. that 7000 thingi... It gets 14fps in Ut2003, where the Geforce 2mx 64mb gets 16... Those 2 cards are the worst scoring cards.
the 7500 and 9000 gets around 43-45, and the 8500 goes all the way up to 65fps... beating the Geforce 3.
Also, looking there you will see that Ati owns Nvidia with the 9500 and 9700 cards.

And dont expect Splinter Cell to round good on 450mhz regardless of the videocard. :roll:

[KewlAzMe]

Bloody.. that was the more insightful thing you have ever posted!! Thank you.. I may have to lookinto the ATi 7500+ but most likely i will be looking at the Nvidia cards that get good FPS ratings.. But thank you for your help. However.. like I said.. my Dad has the ATI 9700 and he too has problems still.. but we've never done any comparisons to the Nvidia side of things so it may not be any better.

[Bloody-Reaper]

I got 9700pro... do i look like i got problems?

Might as well be the computer it self that has problems....


Hey! What do you mean with "The more insightfull thing"?!

[KewlAzMe]

LOL bloody..u have problems that your Video card will never help! in fact..you got problems no one can help. :lol:

[Bloody-Reaper]

LOL bloody..u have problems that your Video card will never help! in fact..you got problems no one can help. :lol:

<--- We (I) NEED this smiley!!!

[KewlAzMe]

I am really surprised at the outcome of this post. Everyone raves about the 9700pro but Nvidia seems to be more popular.

In related news.. I was going through my ThAux.ini file and i came across some graphic settings in the D3Ddriver section.. and I played with a few of the Falses and made them true (i forget which ones). Anyway.. the lines in my screen are gone now and everything is like 10times more clearer. Caltrops appear gray instead of black so i can see them in pitch black! So yay

[Bloody-Reaper]

Because is Nvidia is more popular... but not better. :roll:

[BrokenArts]

Well I haven't had any problems with my GForce4 Ti 4200 128 Megabyte card.

[LeatherMan]

The reason Nvidia is better than ATI is because of their history with 1) Great products and 2) Better drivers. There have been many poor sets of drivers in ATI's past, as well as Nvidia's, but Nvidia releases updated drivers more often than ATI. Also, Nvidia's drivers still support older cards, much older than the cards ATI's drivers support.

The most important thing about the graphics card is that it must work properly with the games you play and on the OS you use. Look back at the launch of the Radeon 8500 and you will see that the initial drivers were pathetic and a lot of customers were pissed (I won't even go into the Quake 3 controversy). While the Radeon 9700 and 9500 are great cards (as was the 8500 ... eventually), without proper drivers they are useless.

Nvidia will continue to get my hard earned loot.

[Lurox]

I haven't read through the whole thread... but do update drivers for both your video card and your motherboard.

[Ghostly apparition]

Well I haven't had any problems with my GForce4 Ti 4200 128 Megabyte card.

Ditto.
You can get a geforce 4 ti4200 128 mb for less than 200 dollars and runs
nearly as well as the ti4600

Of late ATI has had some problems with the drivers on thier cards, I have
heard alot of people have problems with them.

UT runs great on nvidia, so its your call.

[Microwave Oven]

I gots me a question: I have a 1.1 GHz Athlon with 640M ram and a ti4200, and my score in 3DMark is 5600. Is that what is supposed to be? The scores I've seen for the ti are much higher, but I can never get them.

[LeatherMan]

I haven't read through the whole thread... but do update drivers for both your video card and your motherboard.

Definitely. Don't underestimate the necessity for motherboard drivers, as many are updated to fix problems with newer graphics cards.

Also, if you replaced a graphics card without reinstalling Windows, then you probably have a registry full of invalid settings and games optimized for the wrong card. Running the "Change Video Settings" option included with Thievery might help as well.

I gots me a question: I have a 1.1 GHz Athlon with 640M ram and a ti4200, and my score in 3DMark is 5600. Is that what is supposed to be? The scores I've seen for the ti are much higher, but I can never get them.

Disable Vertical Sync, close background apps, and try again. You should be getting close to 7000 points.

[[E.D.G]Chief]

There's a list of most gfx card, incl. that 7000 thingi... It gets 14fps in Ut2003, where the Geforce 2mx 64mb gets 16...[/quote]

weird my geforce2mx 32mb gets me 30-35 (sometimes more) in ut2k3 with all settings set to max-both online and offline games 8) But i'm not complaining undefined