ATi or Nvidia?

[Twigsoffury]

Do you own a ATi or Nvidia video card?

[Trace]

What if you have both?
I have a pair of 9800GTX+s in the main rig, but my laptop has a 5450 and my bro has a 5870...

[crenn]

They both have good cards, but ATi seem to have lower power and thermal requirements. However I'm a bit of an NVidia fanboy.... althought I'm not happy with NVidia of late with PhysX being disadvantaged on CPUs, and NVidia refusing to even allow PhysX with another GPU in your system. That being said.... I'm probably going to sell off my 9800GTX+ and get a GTX460.

[PauL]

I go for whichever offers the best price for performance which was ATI.

[diluzio91]

mmm... i own a 9800gt, but i picked it up for a song and a dance, the next one will probably be ati, or nvidia, i dont really care, ill get the best card in my budget for performance...

[Spawn-Inc]

own nvidia and have always been partial to them, but wouldn't mind having an ati and actually recommended them for 3 builds that i did for friends. the price point is a big reason why.

[d_stilgar]

I have dual 9800gt cards right now, but I'd really like to go with an ATI card next. It all really depends on what will be best and offer what I want when I upgrade. What I want is,

1) Simple 3600x1920 triple monitor set up (eyefinity does it well now)
2) Possibility for 3d in that setup (anyone?)

Physx support would be nice, but unless I find some good reviews on Nvidia cards doing three monitors in portrait easily I won't be swayed. #1 is most important to me right now.

[FuzzyPlushroom]

I have dual 9800gt cards right now, but I'd really like to go with an ATI card next. It all really depends on what will be best and offer what I want when I upgrade.

I'm in agreement - I lean toward ATi, but got a good deal on a pair of 8800GT/512s last autumn. My next build will most likely have an ATi card again - usually better value, once their drivers get worked out, and lower power consumption on average - but it's impossible to say right now.

[Locum51]

ATi 4550....it's perfect for my uses. I'll probably get a stronger card (5000 series) for my new build.

[silverdemon]

Have nVidia 9600GT, and I am kind of a nV fanboy... for my next build I'll probably go for nV again

[Timlander]

I use a 5870 and 9600GSO atm. If I were in the market for a new GFX card right now, I would probably go with Nvidia.

[Konrad]

Although I've used and compared many products (with an open mind) from both companies, I generally choose ATI these days because ...

From what I've read, ATI's products tend to generally benchmark better than nVidia's on most GPGPU applications (though there are some exceptions, of course).
Maybe this means the GPGPU applications are just coded to run a bit better on ATI GPUs (maybe because ATI provides better developer support?), or maybe it means that ATI's GPU hardware is somehow faster, more efficient, or more robust at general stream processing. Maybe there's just an unspoken pro-ATI/anti-nVidia bias among the foremost GPGPU developers.
Regardless, it ultimately suggests (to me) that normal graphic processing will probably be better (and certainly no worse) when using the ATI product.

CrossFireX and SLI are nearly equivalent, but each has some quirks.
1) SLI always allows rendering mode for any game/app to be set manually.
CrossFire allows the same for any game/app running DirectX 3D, but a game/app running OpenGL without a Catalyst AI Profile defaults to SFR (often not as good as AFR). So nVidia is the better choice here, but I don't find this to actually be a real problem since few (if any) modern OpenGL games ever hit the market without these profiles.
2) CFX and SLI both suffer from the same disadvantages which can in fact reduce fps when not properly software supported. This is really only an issue on older games (new games always support multi-GPU rendering), but when it is, I find I that standalone ATI cards often (though not always) render better and faster 3D than their nVidia counterparts.
3) CFX allows a lot more options for multi-display support. GPUs can be allocated to separate displays, to focus on one display alone, or several balancing options in between. SLI provides more of an "all or nothing" style. The vast majority of people will game on only one display, but some of us have multiple displays and really appreciate these options.
4) CFX is a lot more tolerant than SLI when using mismatched cards; there's just more compatibility and fewer performance limitations when mixing (current- and older-generation) CFX cards. Not all of us can afford to drop $$$ on 2-4 identically matched top-end PCIe cards all at once.

AMD owns the ATI brand (along with ATI's intellectual properties, engineering teams, facilities, etc).
In practical terms, ATI is essentially a sort of subsidiary of AMD. This means that they're very intimate, they constantly communicate, they share their dreams and secrets, they lend each other money. It's a no-brainer that any AMD CPU and ATI GPU will be engineered at all levels to work flawlessly. ATI has no special advantage or disadvantage over nVidia when Intel systems are considered, but I personally believe that the smartest choice in any AMD system is clearly ATI, not nVidia.

Havok Physics
Both ATI and nVidia put a lot of emphasis on integrating and optimizing this engine. I wouldn't be the first to note that integrated hardware support for Havok APIs are almost becoming as standard as DirectX or OpenGL. In any case, as I understand things, ATI was the first to implement Havok and is always just half a step ahead of nVidia when it comes to introducing new bits of Havok in their high-end products.

ATI is a Canadian company (although AMD and nVidia are both American).
I shouldn't even mention this because it doesn't substantially affect my decisions about which brand makes better products (specs and benchmark data are what really matter).
But it's always nice to have a little bit of patriotic loyalty, and - more importantly - to know that products and support can be obtained locally. Fewer shipping costs and delays, reduced long-distance calling.

ATI completely pwns nVidia when it comes to AGP cards.
This isn't the usual flocking "ATI rox / nV sux" fanboy statement. The modern PCIe bus is technologically superior to AGP; yet AGP cards (and the motherboards that support them) have stubbornly refused to die, still clawing away while teetering on the edge of extinction. nVidia abandoned the AGP market years ago, allowing ATI to dominate the AGP-niche without opposition. ATI's main focus is going head-to-head against nVidia in the PCIe arena, but every now and then they trickle out an AGP-capable chipset which blows away all the existing (old) AGP products with newer technologies. Even this trickle is drying up, as ATI's Radeon HD 3850 chipset essentially achieved the maximum fps rates possible - the motherboard processor and chipset become the bottlenecks. Better AGP solutions are possible (and still appearing), but require stupidly expensive amounts of high-speed graphic memory to squeeze out a few more fps; it's far more economical to upgrade to a PCIe motherboard and a middling-PCIe GPU card than to keep getting diminishing returns while upgrading old tech to old tech.

Just sayin'