ATI or Nvidia?

[Nihilist]

So with the tax refund due to land her shortly the wife has given me the go-ahead to (finally) upgrade my rig.

Its pretty old - AMD socket 939 with a 7600GT.... Needless to say I am trashing everything. The cooling fan for the chipset (not the processor) died awhile back, so I doubt it will last much longer.

I am a AMD fan, so that is a forgone conclusion.

However I am having trouble deciding what video card brand to go with.

I understand Nvidia has pushed back the release of their new cards, and the current ATI cards appear to be pretty decent and have Directx 11 support.

Any opinions will be appreciated, even if its just to say I am a homo for not going intel, haha.

[Darkest]

I currently run an Nvidia 260 gtx 896mb. It is the shizbombie! I built an AMd rig for a buddy a while back and he got a newer ATI card (Forget the model at this moment) and was rather impressed. He picked up a new quad core black edition with 4 gb of ram to start. Though I had not loaded any games, he uses the rig for design and work for screenprinting. It does everything he wants and more. So to me, I would think it would come down to preference. I was an ATI fanboy until my 7900 gt SLi rig, been with nvidia ever since!

[SRVsCopticCross]

I'm runnin 2 BFG 260 GTX MaxCore 55 896MB in SLI........So far very solid and stable. But I've read that ATI has captured the crown with the current lineup so the fact that your an AMD CPU guy, I think it should be a no brainer for ya. Either way its a nice delima to be faced with, good luck with your new build.

PS ----Stop buy TS3 server and let us know your still kickin.

[Black_Dingo]

Well, right now is a difficult time for picking a card. I've been pondering an upgrade myself, as I am running a meager (by today's hardware standards) 8600GTS (well below the minimum specs for Bioshock 2). I still haven't made my decision. The best place to start considering is: what resolution do you game in, or hope to be gaming in?

I have liked my Nvidia card, but Nvidia is lagging (badly)- main reason I like them: their driver support is so much better than ATI. That said, mainstream Nvidia Fermi cards won't be coming out until summer probably. So unless you're dying to wait for their big overprice hardware, I can't see the purpose on waiting. ATI has been having some issues with their drivers for the 5X00 series cards, but they supposedly fixed the grey screen issue with latest patch. I haven't read anything about the black band issue though!

DirectX 11 right now is moot point. There's a couple games trickling out with DirectX 11 support, but as I've heard so many times before, as long as the current generation of consoles live, and every developer is making a game to run on it- DirectX 9 will still be the mainstay. Current comparisons show about a 20-30% FPS (Dirt 2 for example) hit when using DX11 over 9. However, the latest batch of AA optimization for the newer hardware really doesn't dent it's performance like previous lineups did.

If you're leaning towards ATI cards for 1920x1200 resolution you may want to wait two weeks (there's rumors of a 4890 replacement, a so-called 5830) that may be shipping around that time and cost around $220-230. Otherwise, you might find a decent price on an Nvidia 260, which currently seems to be hovering in the $200 range, and may drop if 5830s debut. HD5770 should stay firm around $170.


Side note: I have read comparisons that also show ATI graphics run better than Nvidia, and Nvidia graphics run better on AMD hardware. Somewhat unexpected, right? (I believe it was on Techreport)

[Nihilist]

Thanks guys - lots of good information.

Well right now I have everything dumbed down in ETQW to get a solid 60fps at 800x600. So any resolution higher than that will likely blow my mind, haha. Having a single core (and slow) processor is a bigger handicap than the video card from what I understand.

@Dingo - That 5830 sounds intriguing. It sound like it will match or exceed the Nvidia 260's in performance and price.

I am Nvidia fan, but I won't hesitate to jump ship if ATi has the upper hand, which seem to the case right now.

Thanks again for the info guys. I appreciate it.

[Black_Dingo]

Well, most benchmarking shows show that you can get by with a budget dual core and higher class graphics power and not hit too hard of a bottleneck for most games. All depends on your budget. Classic example:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469.html
Where CPU really does make a difference is in your day-to-day application use. There's really a lot to consider if you want to knit-pick.

The performance gain is HUGE going from single to dual core, less dramatic but still big when going up to three cores vs. two, and only a small step from three to four. This will probably change slightly overtime (especially as single cores are pretty much a thing of the past and software is optimized for threading). This should be what I'm thinking of:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280-11.html


What kind of CPU were you eyeballing?

[Nihilist]

Thanks for the links - excellent reading and answered alot of my questions. Its been a looong time since I have had the time and the opportunity to upgrade, and my research has shown me that I know... nothing...

I was thinking of using an AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition (dual core) for my processor. Alas I am on a budget, so my thinking was that a dual core with a nice video card will suffice for most games... and would be such a quantum leap over my current rig I will likely jizz in my pants. The afore mentioned link seemed to support my theory.

I like the new Intels, but they are spendy...

[Black_Dingo]

Ah, well, in case you're unaware on certain motherboards there is the BIOS toggle for ACC (advanced clock control if I recall correctly), and you can try to enable the disabled cores on the dual core phenom II, provided the yield on your chip was good and they just had to shell out a full fledged version to fulfill demand. I would expect this to be more feasible on Athlon varieties (since defective L3 cache would be more likely than 4 good cores being dumbed to a dualcore), but you could be lucky. It'd just be an added bonus.

[Black_Dingo]

550 is spitting distance from the x3 720 in price. Also check to see if you spy a 555 for the same price (released as of last week). Might as well get the 100mhz speed bump if it's the same price- I didn't see it on newegg or amazon though. As for more cores vs. faster megahertz it's a close race. Over time the extra core might be more beneficial, but I'll leave it up to you to decide what works for you and your budget. Read around, check some benchmarks (just never trust the synthetics).

Do black edition processors ship with a cooler these days? I think they didn't use to; however I've never owned a BE since I don't overclock. 965x4 seems to have a cooler, so I am unsure.

I do find this chart to be an interesting representation for "value":
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17023/14

[Nihilist]

Yeah, I'm still eying that triple core... As you mentioned with the right motherboard you can unlock the sleeping 4th one. I believe all the processors in oem boxes come with a cooler.

Man, so many choices, and the prices change almost daily.

[Black_Dingo]

When the time comes, this might prove an interesting article to give a read regarding ACC unlocking. Also in the comments there seems to be a link to a forum thread about related information.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3730&cp=3

[Nihilist]

As always an excellent find. Good stuff.

I've also spent quite a bit of time reading all the articles on tomshardware.com. Loads of good info there!

Thanks again for all the tips Dingo. Much appreciated.

[Black_Dingo]

Minor update to the value chart posted above, though does not include the previous data, to my knowledge. phenomx2 550 is on it, but x3 720 isn't.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/17

[Nihilist]

Thanks for the link. Interesting how stuff compares cost vs performance vs efficiency. Cheaper isnt always better.

Since I am going back to school (Repro is DEAD), there is some tuition that grants and student loans aren't covering... So my budget shrank even more.

Its not all fail however. I just had to make due with my current (no pun intended) power supply. Its 450 watts, so I had to be careful about the wattage requirements of the components. This of course eliminated Nvidia cards from the mix - those things are hungry!

My stuff should be here tommorrow from Newegg. I will let you guys know about what I got and how it works.

Thanks to everyone for your input, and of course Dingo for his informative links.

[Black_Dingo]

Good to hear you got components figured out. You hopefully won't have any build snags.

Component list demanded- after you get your childish glee of unboxing everything like a kid at x-mas out of your system, of course.