ATI vs. NVIDIA

[D-Bone]

Well, unless you've been in stasis for the last couple weeks, you should know about the ATI vs. nVidia battle that has been brewing. There is a fantastic article over at Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1890&p=1) talking about current and next rev cards from both camps. Here's a couple quotes from the article:
<blockquote>Just over two weeks ago the graphics industry was shook by some very hard hitting comments from Gabe Newell of Valve, primarily relating to the poor performance of NVIDIA cards under Half Life 2. All of the sudden ATI had finally done what they had worked feverishly for years to do, they were finally, seemingly overnight, crowned the king of graphics and more importantly ? drivers. There were no comments on Half Life 2 day about ATI having poor drivers, compatibility problems or anything even remotely resembling discussions about ATI from the Radeon 8500 days.</blockquote>
<blockquote>So today we bring you quite a few new things, some may surprise you, some may not. ATI has released their Fall refresh product ? the Radeon 9800XT and they are announcing their Radeon 9600XT. NVIDIA has counterattacked by letting us publish benchmarks from their forthcoming NV38 GPU (the successor to the NV35 based GeForce FX 5900 Ultra). But quite possibly more important than any of those announcements is the suite of benchmarks we?re testing these cards in; how does a total of 15 popular games sound? This is the first installment of a multipart series that will help you decide what video card is best for you, and hopefully it will do a better job than we have ever in the past.</blockquote>
I would recommend at least reading the first and last page, I know its a long article, but it is worth it. So, with that... is ATI the new king of graphics? Is nVidia dead? Will they make a comeback? Is it all speculation? What do you guys think?

[Dante]

ATI king? At the moment. Nvidia dead? I don't think so.

I'll paraphrase what I told D-bone earlier.

It would seem that ATI is finally reaping the rewards for their hard work to win back the crown. What I admire about them is that they have not used that overly abused hype machine that Nvidia fell victim of. The Nvidia FX line is just such an example. In fact, it's still going on with the forth coming NV40. ATI snuck in with their 9600, 9700, and 9800 family of cards. Granted, ATI has used the much expected advertising (as they should) but correct me if I'm wrong, I never really saw any hyping of the product. If you consider the Half-Life 2/DOOM3 hoopla, then I stand corrected.

I'm still a Nvidia fanatic, but the crown really needs to be handed to ATI at this time.

[D-Bone]

I'm not sure I would call what ATI does "hard work". I think they have gotten lucky and that there is more to the Valve/ATI partnership than what is being said. I would bet that ATI has been working very closely with Valve and their new engine for quite some time and that is what has allowed them to develop a "faster" card than nVidia. For ATI to get a deal that allows them to bundle Half-Life 2 with their new cards... I mean there has to be all kinds of stuff we don't know about. It just means nVidia is going to have to step it up a notch now and I think they are quite capable of doing so.

[Dante]

It's more than the Valve/ATI partnership. In that article ATI took the lead in 6 games and Nvidia only lead in 4. That says a little more than Valve/ATI after hour, hidden in the closet to stroke each other, activities. :wink:

[D-Bone]

No one else has any thoughts on this?

[Ghost]

ATI = OK hardware, poor drivers
NVIDIA = OK hardware, excellent driver developers

[Kyraath]

from what i've been reading, ati has really tried to turn around their driver support. If they can pull that off and do as well with drivers as nvidia has done in the past, they'll get my vote.

[D-Bone]

It only costs 6 million dollars to become "the king of graphics"

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11934

[Malice]

Heh, see I told you they paid a shitload for it. It's just business though, I don't fault them for it. Probably was a really good move for them too.