ATI vs. Nvidia question

Do you like coke or pepsi better?

What do you mean by stuttering? Half of the ati cards you list are very low end, the only one that would compete with the 8800, 9800, or 250 (all effectively the same card) is the 4870. If you had a 3870 when it was new it would not have competed with the highest end 8800's of the time.

Though really, your issue is not with ati or nvidia, but with not knowing which cards to compare... You can't compare a 4550 to a 9800... that is beyond insane.

Also, try not to word the post so much like a troll/flame bait thread, will get more answers.. Might want to look things up as well...

I wasn't trying to bait, flame or troll or whatever you want to call it.. Just wondering if anyone else has had the same experiences. And what is there to look up? I actually owned all of these cards first hand, sir. I don't have beef with either company. I have just noticed first hand that Nvidia has been more reliable for me than ATI. Thanks.

sigh...

You don't see a problem with comparing the 8800/9800/250 to a 4550??

Might want to attend some classes on reason and logic.

Beyond that, you didn't even state your issue other than to say "one was less reliable." What does that even mean? Your card broke? The fps was not as high on one?

Without a comparison of a specific card to a specific card your oppinion means noting, as I stated if your problem is that one group of cards was slower it is because you are comparing some of the lowest end ati cards of the time, to the highest nvidia cards of the time, which is powerfully unscientific(read: stupid). You come off like a silly little troll.

Well if I come off as a troll then you come off as a prick. And isn't a 4870 1gig a decent card to compare to a 250?? I am just stating, that overall, I had stuttering and lower FPS on ATI cards vs. Nvidia. Nothing personal towards ATI.

Prick aside; I value useful opinions, not hearsay and subjective BS.

If you want to complain about ati or nvidia you have to compare the cards one to one. You can't say that a general group of cards was worse than another general group of cards when every card in the first group is far far inferior to the second but for one.

Yes, a 4870 should perform clearly better than a gts250, but there are a million of things you could have done to keep that from happening. Without knowing absolutely any of your set up, or your results all you are doing is trolling the forum, complaining about something absolutely no one can verify. In the real world we call things that are unverifiable BS.

If you want to make a real post you have to actually present your ideas properly, or you will be made fun of. Sure, I have had trouble with ati and nvida at times (generally not many issues though, if one knows how to install things issues are often avoided) but given that I know absolutely nothing about your set up I can't have any idea if that has anything to do with yours.

Enough of the BS posts from folks claiming, "Company A has bad drivers/bad products because Company B works better for me." They are profound wastes of time.

The HD4870 1 gig is the best card you listed by a decent bit. If it was causing you stuttering(whatever that means precisely) then either your card was defective or it wasn't installed properly(you didn't remove the old drivers first?)
Daedelus is correct though. Without any information on when you used these cards, in what system, on what games, at what resolution and what precisely the nature of the issues you had were your post is kind of pointless. From your list of cards it seems like you choose them at random(4550 and 8400 are both horrible cards for gaming, a lot of those nvidia cards could in fact be the same, ect.)

Ati still has hit or miss drivers, whereas nvidia takes shortcuts with their rendering, ATI has buggy drivers at times (ex catalyst 9.7)

The 2 machines are as follows: (Dell)

Intel® Core i7-920 Processor1 (2.66GHz Quad-Core w/ Intel Hyper-Threading & Turbo Speed Technology)9
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Memory 3072MB DDR3 1066MHz T
700 Watt OCZ PSU
Vista 64-bit

Second machine: (Custom Build)

Phenom X4 Quad Core
Processor Number: 9100e
Processor Speed: 1.80GHz
Memory DDR2 6 gigs PC 6400
Vista Ultimate 64-bit
700 Watt Ultra PSU

To be fair the last nvidia release slowed most peoples alt tabbing down 10fold in many many applications (primarily WOW).

Drivers in general are hit or miss, no company can forsee 100% of situations that may come up. Nature of the beast. I don't think that any one gpu company has better or worse drivers in this day and age. That may have been true for both at one time, not so much any more. You are really stretching back ages to find a time whe ATI really did have absolute crap drivers.. it really only made for a big issues for the 8500. Every driver release now a days brings up bugs from time to time for every company.

I don't agree and here is why: I just got rid of my 8800gts 512 from my rig, received my 4890 on wed last week and took out the 8800 to give a friend. Using drivers from both companies, there just seems to be more problems with ATI, such as crashing and flaky rendering (ccc is horrible for this at times), to be fair, I am currently running cat. 9.6 and seems to be stable, except ccc did not install correctly.

With Nvidia, I never had a problem driver wise except weird rendering in Stormreach online in dx10 high settings ( weird polygons), I do have an issue with AOC in Dx10 on ultra with the 8800 also, BUT I ALSO have that with the 4890 and both drivers (bad shadowing, prob AOC and not drivers tho)

I have had issues, not saying they don't exist, but personal experiences rarely translate into proof one way or another. I have not had an issues with the latest 9.7 drivers as of yet, but over the last couple of years I have sure had issues.. but I have had just as many random errors on my 8800. Neither had issues particularly bad.

Depending on your set up you may have an issue that noone else has, that is the nature of drivers. But you ahve to realise that there are going to be many people that don't have that issue, and even many people that have the opposite. Just because you can't get your rig to work does not mean teh drivers are really at fault, and even if they are it is more than likely because of something a bit unique in your rig, which isn't specific to either driver manufacturer.

While that may be true...there can certainly exist baseline hardware configurations on average (that the majority of people have) that tend to exhibit more problems within the scope of the software that is commonly used. I'd find it highly suspect if it was 50 50 or 55-45.

I give my opinion from personal experience over 3 computers spanning single core to x2 to e8400, and video cards and drivers from both sides, as well as 3d mark scandals from both sides.

I will say this...older cards seemed to have less rendering glitches no matter who made them. Makes me miss software rendering sometimes.

I know neither company is anywhere close to perfect. But over the years I have not heard of statistics where a large group of people had the exact same issue since the 8500 era for ati, or the 5800 era for Nvidia, for either company. Back then you lost almost 20% of your performance because of the drivers, or lost that much of the image quality. Since, while both companies have had hit or miss mistakes, nothing particularly more than an indevidual here or there has come up from either side. Other than of course the image quality hacks for 3dmark that have gone back and forth a couple times.

Drivers have come along way, the days of ATI releasing a driver where 80% of the user base end up BSODing after the isntall are over.. so are the days of nvidia crippling the image quality in quake to try and bogus some extra fps in.

We don't, afterall, see many posts here from either side complaining that a new driver broke something for everyone. Indicating to me that, for the most part, and for most people, drivers seem to work well.

Keep aqn eye on catalyst 9.7 and I think you'll see the return of BSOD and crashing for a large group.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3609#comm...

wait a cpl more weeks and see  

I think the question would be better stated, I cant do the qurter mile in under 10 seconds with a vw bug, a chevy vega and a yugo vs a ferrari and a corvette.
It seems that the OP didnt explain his in game settings, his resolution at the time, or anything along that line, and having varying degrees of cards, whether its nvidia or ATI plays directly into those settings/res. If you ask too much from anything it wont work properly. Then to blame it on drivers? Since when is stuttering a driver issue?
We need to ask ourselves that.
Come back with a better question next time, not some obscure , potentially flamebaiting experience

I defintely agree that as cards age, teh problems start to go away. At least to some degree (until teh acrds are no longer supported). This is the way with most things in the world thouh.

I wish I had time to draw up pie graphs and record video blogs about my personal experiences with the cards, but I just don't. Next I am going to purchase a 4890 and a 285 and see if I have any troubles with either. Then I'll come here and flame and troll about it....

Enjoy. This has been done by a few members who actually knew what they are talking about though.. you may get an equally warm reception.

+1 daedalus. total flamebait. and you cant compare 3 decent nvidia cards to a handful of lowend ati cards. its fn ridiculous.

Just throw out the low end cards. What do we have left? The 7600 by nVidia was possibly the second best mid range card ever, under the 4850 IMO, while the rest were questionable. The 8800/9800/250 and 4870, now those should all be acceptable cards within a certain range, using a certian res, with certain setup etc. Much more comparable

Don't get me wrong, I love my 4890 and think ATI takes a more elegant approach and favors image quality, whereas Nvidia goes for brute force and raw speed and is of the opinion that you won't really notice minor things when you are jumping around being fragged.

I think nvidia tries to keep their drivers functional, but less complex, with adjustments comming later. ATI it seems, is more complex from the get go, but that leaves more room for little idiosyncrasies and bugs to pop up. Perhaps driver issues stem from their differing hardware philosophies.

IMO, ATI has more major glitches, do they suck, no...are their drivers more temperamental, yes.

Just like my Intel gigabyte vs, my Biostar AMD board, Gigabyte more cutting edge and more temperamental, vs Biostar...more reference and less options, but less temperamental.

Does this make my gigabyte unstable most times , no (just a bit more quirks, the other 98 percent = fine)

royal, nvidia would not take kindly to you saying such things.

what about ambient occlusion?

(lol tho i agree with you, ati is better for anti aliasing without taking a performance hit. except nvidia cards have higher quality AA, i think. 16xqmsaa or whatever, im pretty sure ati cards dont have that.)

OP, look at this post, it seens a 295 wont cover the stuttering either
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/267901-33-something-s...

nice rig ! I was thinking of q9550 in the future unless I go I7. Did you go with an 8.5 vs 400 x 9 multiplier due to a bootstrap issue...or is it a ram ratio thing ?

royal, feel free to mail me your e8500.

The q9550 only supports an 8.5 multiplier. The q9650 is 9.

I have it 425*8.5 as that is the highest I can get the CPU to be stable and provide me the temperatures I want. I have not found any difference on what strap I use as far as performance goes.

AFAIK ATI has that too, look in their froblins demo under developer tools, they call it occlusion culling or some such, will run it and see. yep "occlusion culling".

I'll trade you for your 285  ...straight up.

darn 10 multi should be standard on all 775's...lol.

Duh...my math is off, my multi is 9.5

Bottom line is its much much more likley that its something you are doing wrond than it being either an ATI card or driver issue, but as others say there are so many variables to consider to make a considered call on what your issue may be but if i were to guess i would say its your installing and un installing cards improperly that would cause this kind of thing.
Again just from personal experiance so it could be very differant for others but i found that Nvidia drivers were more forgiving than Ati drivers when it came to conflicts and i used to install clean over the top of the old drivers with Nvidia, that was years ago and i have used ATI for the last probably 8 years without any issues.

Mactronix

Well, it only installs 2 ways, correctly or incorrectly. I actually did a clean install of vista 64 and cat 9.7 from the 8800 gts and win 7 rc candidate. Wanted to test the FPS in DX 10 vs the 8800 and win 7 doesn't do dx 10 till oct 22.

Just a Conspiracy but i bet Games that Nvidia Sponsored had the makers tweak it so it runs better on Nvidia Drivers possible? probably just like the Vista dx10 Crysis VeryHigh settings B.S. marketing scams i dont trust any corporate Co. they just want your money..........

But like i said Just a Conspiracy