Poll: ATI and Nvidia

[havass]

I've heard differing views on the graphic cards that're out in the market right now so I thought I'd put this out to you Escapists.

I'm buying a laptop next week and I can't decide between ATI and Nvidia. I'm gonna be using the laptop for school and some gaming too so I need a reasonable graphic card. So, which brand would you recommend and what series should I buy?

 

[Broken Boy]

Nvidia is my brand of choice I have had just to many problems with ATI.

 

[Snork Maiden]

I don't know anything about performance vs cost when it comes to graphics cards, but I can give you my personal experiences. I've generally always used NVidia and it's been fine, although right now I have an ATI card. It's great, but I have a dual monitor setup and every so often if you move from one monitor to the other the mouse cursor turns into a blocky mess. The ATI forums suggest that this is a known bug, but last time I checked (in December) it still wasn't fixed.

I doubt dual monitor problems will affect you, but it's just an example - never had problems with Nvidia, have problems with ATI that they know about and they aren't fixing it.

 

[Kabutos]

ATI/AMD are generally better performance for price, but are notorious for driver issues.

NVIDIA cards tend to cost more, but they have reliable software. Also CUDA and PhysX if you're into that sort of thing.


It depends on what you're looking for.

This is based on desktop cards, however; I don't really know much about laptop hardware.

 

[pezwitch]

It's green apples vs red apples. They both put video on your screen, which you choose is purely personal preference.

I've worked with them both. In my current rig I started with NVIDIA and upgraded last summer with an ATI/AMD.

I'm running Eyefinity at the moment and I've only had a couple of small hiccups, however, a coworker got the infamous grey screen of death with his 5870 (he did not run Eyefinity) so he went to a 460 and is very happy with that.

The last gaming laptop I used had a 460m and it was very nice, but it was an Intel and was recalled in the Sandy Bridge debacle and I returned it, so, personally, I would either go AMD/ATI or wait a few months for the fallout from the Intel recall to settle down.

I've chosen to wait because I really don't need a gaming laptop right now.

 

[MrTub]

Atm Amd scale better in crossfire then nvidia in Sli and is often more performance for the price, but nvidia is more stable but generally drains more watt per performance.

 

[Retronana]

They're pretty much equal to be honest, I've never had any driver issues with my AMD card. Just search for benchmarks and go for whichever one is stronger

 

[Chani07]

Meh, it's a personal choice, really. I prefer ATI, but you can go just as well with nVidia. To tell you the truth though, i did have some problems with nVidia, but that was a while ago.
So, basically, it just depends on how much you wanna spend.

 

[LetalisK]

Go with which ever gives you the best power : cost ratio. When I built my computer, it happened to be AMD.