NVidia vs Radeon

[DsoS]

I would like to get some suggestions about the Radeon video cards.

I've never used Radeon in the past and just wondering if they are comparable to or better than the Nvidia cards?

I do gaming, watch hi-def 1080 videos, some video editting, and of course modding for Oblivion (and eventually Skyrim)

(I might be starting a war with this question, so behave like adults please )

[HeyYou]

WWWWAAAAHHHH I don't WANNA behave like an adult. That's no fun..... C'mon, can't I be just a little bit childish? Pwease?????

Ok, now that I have that out of my system....... If you take two vid cards of the same basic performance level, one from each manufacturer, the nvidia card will have a bit of an edge on performance, but, you get to pay a premium price for that too. For the dollars/performance ratio, ATI cards are hard to beat.

That said, if you don't have to have the 'latest and greatest'...... buying a card from the previous generation will save you a boatload of money...... When I built my system, I got my 4890 for less than half what the 5800 series cards were going for, and the performance difference really isn't that great.

[DsoS]

silly HY, sure you can... oh wait you used it up already

Thank you HY. I've always hated trying to figure out what new video card I want always hard, I think the hardest part of building/upgrading a computer

[Arthmoor]

You can do pretty well building around the ATI 6950 or 6970 cards. They're top tier and considerably cheaper than their nVidia counterparts. Plus you won't have to deal with nVidia's nasty habit of putting out junk drivers.

[_echo]

Its a back and forth game. Since they never release cards along side one another, it shifts from ATI and Nvidia being "The best".

From experience, Nvidia has never done me wrong. And that premium, IMO is woth it because you get quality in workmanship of the graphics card. Again, that is IMO.

It really comes down to how much you want to spend.

$0 - $100 = budget workstation class cards.

$100 - $150 = low level gaming cards.

$150 - $200 = mid level gaming cards. (Overall best bang for your buck)

$200 - $300 = "Enthusiasts" cards. More power then you really need, but if you want longevity of your overall system, then the $250 range is good for that, but not necessary.

$300+ = Waste of money. The performance gain over cheaper cards is minimal. The cost per performance ration goes up exponentially and by this point its pointless since the card will be "outdated" within a few months.

[DsoS]

Thank you all.

I've ran Nvidia's forever and just trying to open my mind a little bit to the Radeon's.

I'll compare the ATI 6950 or 6970 cards to some of the Nvidia's I was looking at.

I try to keep in the price range of 250-350. I don't see the point in paying 400+ for a card, as echo said, to be outdated in a few months

Thank you all again

[AndalayBay]

We have both Nvidia and Radeon. We made the jump to Radeon for my husband's PC and got the 5970. That's the beast that's dual GPU on one card. He was finally able to play Crysis at ultra mode when he OC'd the card, but our cooling isn't good enough to keep it running at that level. Ironically the problem he's had is getting a Catalyst driver that behaves. It's getting better, but he's definitely had some issues.

So as suggested, have a look at the specs and do some comparisons. Price for performance and availability might turn out to be more important points than whether it's a Radeon or Nvidia. I'm not sure there's one clear cut winner anymore.

[DarkWarrior]

Like previous people have mentioned, you get more bang for your buck with the Radeons. Now, the nVidia cards are the best when it comes to a card versus card matchup, but they start losing a lot of performance when you go into multi-gpu setups. Nvidia SLi is only 60% efficient, AMD Crossfire is around the 80% mark. So AMD Radeons are considerably better when it comes to mutli-gpu. I personally prefer Nvidia, as I usually buy the top end card and then run with it for about 4 or 5 years, and I only run with a single card.

Now AMD has something cool going with their graphics drivers on systems that have onboard video. The AMD drivers will actually switch between the onboard Intel graphics and the dedicated Radeon graphics on demand. When your computer is idling, or you're surfing the net, the computer uses the Intel graphics. Start up Oblivion, and the Radeon fires up.