Who really does offer better quality?

I am looking to upgrade my 8600 GT and I was all set to purchase a Radeon 4850 because pound-for-pound it appears to be the best value of any new gen card, until I saw this...

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/i [...] &Itemid=27

I am NOT a gamer! I use my PC for movies, streaming video, converting video tapes to DVD and SVCDs and occasionally other formats too. For me quality matters, and by the looks of it ATi has a long way to go.

So am I right? For video and digital quality is nVidia really the best?

There is absolutely no reason to ugrade your card!

the badaboom transcoder works great. im very pleased with it.

my only complaint about cuda is that it doesnt take advantage of how powerful your videocard is.

a 9800 with cuda pretty much performs the same as a gtx285 with cuda. in cuda apps.
kind of dissappointing when you buy a gtx285. ;p

i have a 4850 i love it no problems drivers all work good except the 9.6 i had a problem but 1 out of 10 or how ever many they got it very good... they seem to keep coming out with new 1ns every month so there not slackin

if your going to be gaming go for the New 4890 its lookin good so Far if not going from a 8600 to a 4850 wont be worth it go Big or go home LOL just kiddin its up to you ATI Nvidia there both Awesome company's i switch back and forth every few years i picked ATI this time cause they are Holding there ground thought i would support them a little cause Nvidia was trying to take over like Microsoft

you would be better off with the ATI card, it will walk all over the 8600gt plus the image is better, and cuda will be a short foot knot in the history of nvidia

Generally, visual quality is subjective when the output of both cards look good.

ATI used to be the leader, but nVidia has caught up. Both are so good, that you need to have both to determine which is subjectively better.

For now I would say stick with what you have.