Status update: Nvidia or ATI

[Psychotic_god]

For some reason, Ive always trusted Nvidia. Any computer with an ATI felt like something was wrong for some reason. Unfortunatly, the only info ive really been able to find was biased by fanboys and such or the information was misguided. Can somebody give me numbers on recent performance of Nvidia Vs. ATI? Which is the best way to go for gaming right now? single VS dual for each company?

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

-Xsikotic

[kingdingeling]

8800GTX/Ultra is the best right now, no questions asked.

2900XT 512MB/1GB rules the 8800GTS 640MB/320MB pretty much

X1950Pro is better than any type of 7900 series card NVIDIA sent out into the battle

 

that's a ranking, top to bottom, below that is out of interest I think...

[Puck]

8800GTX/Ultra is the best right now, no questions asked.

2900XT 512MB/1GB rules the 8800GTS 640MB/320MB pretty much

X1950Pro is better than any type of 7900 series card NVIDIA sent out into the battle

 

that's a ranking, top to bottom, below that is out of interest I think...

Forgot to mention dual cards. Crossfire scales better and more efficiently then SLI, and with dual cards in super high resolutions crossfire takes the lead over SLI.

 

At high res Crossfire 2900XT > SLI 8800 Ultra.

[Psychotic_god]

8800GTX/Ultra is the best right now, no questions asked.

2900XT 512MB/1GB rules the 8800GTS 640MB/320MB pretty much

X1950Pro is better than any type of 7900 series card NVIDIA sent out into the battle

 

that's a ranking, top to bottom, below that is out of interest I think...

 

 

Forgot to mention dual cards. Crossfire scales better and more efficiently then SLI, and with dual cards in super high resolutions crossfire takes the lead over SLI.

 

At high res Crossfire 2900XT > SLI 8800 Ultra.

 

Excellent, thank you.

 

Btw, project Toxic Shock has been put off until I go to Germany, normally in february, but you can all look forward to some smaller jobs, like "Disruption" which I just finished. Checkem out @ Myspace.com/xikotic.

[bigred]

but there's still the 2 different 2900xt cards. the 1gb and 512mb are not the same card except in name.

[kingdingeling]

That's right bigred, the 1GB has GDDR4 memory and the 512MB 'only' GDDR3

 

@ Puck, forgot that, but why would you buy a dual card rig to begin with? Buy one, drop another in later!

[Bleeble]

If you're looking for a general idea of how the cards perform compared to one another, take a look at Tom's Hardware's VGA Charts.

[Waco]

My 2900XT 1 gig holds it's own pretty damn well against my brother's 8800GTX and he's got a C2D versus my "lowly" Opteron 165.

 

As I understand it kingdingeling is correct except that the 1 GB 2900XT trades blows with the 8800GTX in Vista...the Vista drivers are actually faster for the 2900s than the XP versions.

[Urwinn]

With a single 2900xt 1GB card I averaged around 13,500 on 3dmark06. My friend with a very similar system but using the 8800 averaged somewhere around 12,000.

 

I added a second identical card in crossfire and my score shot up to 19,400. My friend added a second identical 8800 and his score shot up to around 17,000'ish. Sorry I can't remember the exact figures, but these are close. Isn't healthy competition fun! And profitible for both manufacturers!

[Puck]

With a single 2900xt 1GB card I averaged around 13,500 on 3dmark06. My friend with a very similar system but using the 8800 averaged somewhere around 12,000.

 

I added a second identical card in crossfire and my score shot up to 19,400. My friend added a second identical 8800 and his score shot up to around 17,000'ish. Sorry I can't remember the exact figures, but these are close. Isn't healthy competition fun! And profitible for both manufacturers!

Thats due to the severe architecture differences. ATI's cards are, in a way, more future proof since ever since they went the route of massive pixel shader and memory interface capabilities instead of brute clockspeeds - which is the direction most games are headed. Single card vs Single card in current games the powerful Nvidia 8800 Ultra still cannot be touched by any other single card - but it comes in at a steep 600-800 bucks(depending on brand and model), and you can almost get TWO 2900XT's for that much and thoroughly spank the best from Nvidia for not much more cash. Then, with dual cards in extreme resolutions and in the future games the ATI Crossfire scales much better then SLI. The intial problems with crossfire were wierd quirks - max resolution of 1600x1200 @60hz, awkward setup, driver troubles, etc - are for the most part gone now, and it is starting to show its true potential. Even though they are slower card vs card, they hold their own when it is two vs two - while being hundreds of dollars cheaper. That shows the efficiency of Crossfire.

 

I hate to throw synthetic benches around, but being a "retired" benchmarker the first thing I notice is that two out of the top three overall ORB scores are done with crossfire 2900XTs - which are still around $500 bucks less then an SLI 8800 Ultra setup. The other spot is a pair of LN2 cooled 8800 Ultras.

 

If you want the fastest single card around, the 8800 Ultra is the current King. Best Flagship price/performance though goes to Crossfire 2900XTs.

[kingdingeling]

Speaking of a retired benchmarker, did you every reach that first place with your 9800Pro puck?

 

/thread hijack

[Psydotek]

So here's a question which i've never been sure of...

 

I've seen SLI and Crossfire specific motherboards.

 

I have an nVidia SLI setup right now. If i wanted to switch back to ATI with a Crossfire setup in the future, would i need to replace the motherboard in addition to the videocards?