Why you guys always recommend ATI cards?

donfarrell

I'm just curious.
Like nvidia has features such as PhysX support, Pure Video, GPU Direct, 3D Vision Surround and CUDA.
What had ATI got besides but slightly cheaper?

Nothingbetter2d

ATI cards cost half as much as Nvidia do

Nvidia cards only show better performance if the game was optimised for nvidia cards... otherwise ati do just as good and in some cases better

ShadowHearth

Because it fits better price wise.

Low end pc: 6670 6770

Mid/highish: 6850 6870

High end: 7950 7970

Just ati is better bang for your money and generally lower on power requirments.

I personally own system with 6870 and gtx 570. I am not a fanboy as you can see, but I stil think 6870 is better product.

deconduo

donfarrell wrote: »

I'm just curious.
Like nvidia has features such as PhysX support, Pure Video, GPU Direct, 3D Vision Surround and CUDA.
What had ATI got besides but slightly cheaper?

About a year ago it was much closer but in general AMD offer better value for money. The 6670, 6770 and 6870 outperform all of NVidia's similarly priced cards. The Dirt3 and TF III 6950s can be unlocked which gives it the edge over the 560 Ti. The GTX 570 is the only NVidia card that can compete. Above that the 7950 makes the GTX 580 obsolete, and the 7970 is unopposed.

Everything you mentioned, while nice, mostly just amounts to gimmicks. CUDA is nice for people who would actual use it, but is useless for a gaming PC. On top of that AMD cards are less power hungry and scale better in crossfire.

If Nvidia priced their cards more competitively then it would be a lot closer, but for now AMD are just better value. Its the same with CPUs, Intel's offerings are better than AMD's price for price across the board.

nesf

It's to make up for all the Intel chip recommendations they make.

Serephucus

^ LOL.

If the 7770's price is any indication though, they might not be value leaders in three month's time.

uncle_sam_ie

deconduo wrote: »

Everything you mentioned, while nice, mostly just amounts to gimmicks.

PhysX is cool though if the game supports it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=M2LsFIPIYok

deconduo

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

PhysX is cool though if the game supports it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=M2LsFIPIYok

There's only 3 decent games that use it, and it doesn't add much. Its a gimmick.

briany

Serephucus wrote: »

^ LOL.

If the 7770's price is any indication though, they might not be value leaders in three month's time.

The 7770's current price point vs. it's reported performance don't really tempt me. The 6850 is still tipped to be ATI's leader in the mid end price performance category. The 7770 does have some efficiency and crossfire plus points though so it could be closer if you're going by price/power/performance.

glynf

I switched to from green to red for one reason-Eyefinity. Havent looked back since, dont think I could get used to one screen again. Was at a friends house & was playing Burnout paradise on his TV (he's a console only type:o), and it felt weird, like I was playing with blinkers on.

Far as I know, Nvidia surround requires two GPU's, while Eyefinity can be ran off anything from a 5770 up without the requirement of a second card.

deceit

glynf wrote: »

I switched to from green to red for one reason-Eyefinity. Havent looked back since, dont think I could get used to one screen again. Was at a friends house & was playing Burnout paradise on his TV (he's a console only type:o), and it felt weird, like I was playing with blinkers on.

Far as I know, Nvidia surround requires two GPU's, while Eyefinity can be ran off anything from a 5770 up without the requirement of a second card.

This is the same for me, I switched Amd and since the hd5870 havent changed back but the next lot of nvidia gpus will support 3 screens on one gpu. I will see by then which are better before I buy. There is only one issue with Amd cards (Drivers), other than that they are fine.

glynf

deceit wrote: »

This is the same for me, I switched Amd and since the hd5870 havent changed back but the next lot of nvidia gpus will support 3 screens on one gpu. I will see by then which are better before I buy. There is only one issue with Amd cards (Drivers), other than that they are fine.

True, drivers are a bit slack, esp. re. crossfire. Single cards are not an issue though, been using eyefinity off the last 3 cards I've had (5970, 6970 & 7970) and no problems except one.

Thats getting CCC to recognise some displayport to DVI converters can be a pain in the arse, occasionally an issue when i install new drivers.

deceit

glynf wrote: »

True, drivers are a bit slack, esp. re. crossfire. Single cards are not an issue though, been using eyefinity off the last 3 cards I've had (5970, 6970 & 7970) and no problems except one.

Thats getting CCC to recognise some displayport to DVI converters can be a pain in the arse, occasionally an issue when i install new drivers.

Once you use an active display cable then there isnt really any issues. I bought three of them so never run short of them :P. Yea only in eyefinity have I ever had issues (little line on movement on screen sometimes.) other than that its perfect. I wish they would fix it though as its been there for ages.

Dublin_Gunner

I find people give drivers a lot more grief than warranted in general. There might be the odd issue that effects you or your setup, but drivers from both AMD and Nvidia are about as good / bad as each other TBH so I would never let drivers be a deciding factor.

Price / Performance AMD have had the edge IMO. If the 560/560ti could be had for the same price as the 6850/6870 Nvidia would get a whole lot more recommendations.

As for the new 7750/7770 - they are currently pointless due to the price range they occupy, and the relatively low performance level they give.

I would never recommend one of those over a 6850/6870 which give far better performance for a similar price.

And Nvidia have nothing competitive in that lucrative 150 price range.

The 560 is hit and miss depending on the price you can get one for, and the 560ti is just too expensive for what you get - on price it competes with the 6950, and TBH the 6950 is a no brainer.

Nothingbetter2d

my dad's has a single ati 6970 card that has 3 screens running off it.

uncle_sam_ie

The Nvida 570 GTX is a great card and priced about the same as the 6970. It's also a good card to overclock.

ShadowHearth

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

The Nvida 570 GTX is a great card and priced about the same as the 6970. It's also a good card to overclock.

I got one and I am sort of kicking myself for not taking 6970 instead. 570 is still nice card, but I wanted to go sli or cf on a future. With gtx 570 is very crap. I will be pushing it with 750w psu even at stock speed, where's 6870 CF will draw waaaaaay less power and better scale at CF.

Still good card for single gpu setup, not south for sli. Plus 6970 has an advantage of eyefinity.

Monotype

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I got one and I am sort of kicking myself for not taking 6970 instead. 570 is still nice card, but I wanted to go sli or cf on a future. With gtx 570 is very crap. I will be pushing it with 750w psu even at stock speed, where's 6870 CF will draw waaaaaay less power and better scale at CF.

Still good card for single gpu setup, not south for sli. Plus 6970 has an advantage of eyefinity.

Is that a typo? Crossfire 6870s would be less but the power consumption of the 6970 is pretty much level with the 570.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_570_Direct_Cu_II/21.html
All the results are within a few watts of each other, with the 570 having a lower maximum. It also uses less power in HD video tests.

Here's some other sites which demonstrate similar results. A little higher in the second one but the xbitlabs one demonstrates HD video again.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/geforce-gtx-570-oc_5.html#sect0
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/39912-evga-geforce-gtx-570-superclocked-review-19.html

ShadowHearth

Sorry, it is typo. I ment 6970 CF

I've always used Nvidia cards myself and was never happy with the image quality on ATI/AMD cards, any time I had one I didn't like it.

Nonetheless, Nvidia cards have taken a serious slide in reliability. There's the well known GeForce 8 failures, but even recently I bought a GT440 for a PC and started getting "Driver stopped responding and recovered" errors. Replaced the card and it's now fine. My cousin also got a GTX460 for a new build - same issue. Even Firefox's GPU acceleration was causing timeout errors.

ShadowHearth

Interesting chart m8. The one I checked 6970 CF had way better power consumption then gtx 570 sli.

Maybe multi gpu setups would differ alot from single gpu power consumption?

Monotype

It could happen that certain tasks will be better optimised in SLI or crossfire and have lower power consumption. Average power draws could change too and for one or the other and be related to drivers.
The maximum is still going to stay the same (x2) and this is what you should always consider when picking a PSU to suit.

It's hard to find a review directly comparing SLI 570 directly to crossfire 6970. It would be foolish to compare two reviews too as they could be measuring them at different points, with different applications and with different motherboards/CPUs/configurations.

I find that techpowerup are one of the most reliable for actual graphics card consumption as they test the consumption of the card itself and not the whole system at the wall (which adds in PSU inefficiencies and everything).

deconduo

Monotype wrote: »

It could happen that certain tasks will be better optimised in SLI or crossfire and have lower power consumption. Average power draws could change too and for one or the other and be related to drivers.
The maximum is still going to stay the same (x2) and this is what you should always consider when picking a PSU to suit.

It's hard to find a review directly comparing SLI 570 directly to crossfire 6970. It would be foolish to compare two reviews too as they could be measuring them at different points, with different applications and with different motherboards/CPUs/configurations.

I find that techpowerup are one of the most reliable for actual graphics card consumption as they test the consumption of the card itself and not the whole system at the wall (which adds in PSU inefficiencies and everything).

Its strange, some reviews seem to put them close together, yet others show the 570 having a much higher consumption:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4239/36072.png
http://cdn5.tweaktown.com/content/3/7/3741_42.png

I wonder why there's such a large variance between reviews.

ShadowHearth

deconduo wrote: »

Its strange, some reviews seem to put them close together, yet others show the 570 having a much higher consumption:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4239/36072.png
http://cdn5.tweaktown.com/content/3/7/3741_42.png

I wonder why there's such a large variance between reviews.

that it m8. there is a huge gap between 600W and 770W :eek:

Monotype

Wow, that's a fairly big chuck of a gap.

I'm not sure I'd trust anandtech entirely with some of their charts. I previously tracked some of their figures back to reviews where they had taken them from and it seems that they don't use the same systems to test, and they measure at the wall. I suppose it's a lot to ask them to test them all on the exact same system as they probably don't have the cards in their hands all at the same time. The test equipment that techpowerup refers to is most likely expensive as well.

I wouldn't rule out bias in any of these sites either. We'll have to get our own testing equipment to be sure!

deconduo

Monotype wrote: »

I wouldn't rule out bias in any of these sites either. We'll have to get our own testing equipment to be sure!

Coming soon: Boards.ie tech reviews :pac::pac::pac:

Serephucus

I actually really like that idea...

donfarrell

deconduo wrote: »

Monotype wrote: »

I wouldn't rule out bias in any of these sites either. We'll have to get our own testing equipment to be sure!

Coming soon: Boards.ie tech reviews :pac::pac::pac:

I'd read the **** out of them

Tea_Bag

NTMK has 2 6970s, and headshot has 2 gtx570s. I'd donate a PC as a test bench, and throw in my 6990 to show what real power consumption is all about . this could actually work.

sure I've been looking into getting a power meter for a while now.

ShadowHearth

Like I said lads. It's weird with how much power gtx 570 sli takes. Way less then 6970 in some reviews... I sow on YouTube fella having safe setup on 650w 2xgtx 570.

Genghiz Cohen

deconduo wrote: »

Coming soon: Boards.ie tech reviews :pac::pac::pac:

A wise man once said not to trust site reviews...