Radeon or GeForce

[odysseus]

So it has been awhile since I rebuilt a new workstation for myself and I thought on top of bouncing through the usual spots I look at, I would also ask people on here: who right now has the better hotness in pci-express 2 cards? Radeon or GeForce? What would you get?

[Sugacookie]

How much money you got?

[Merc1138]

How much money you got?

And what do you plan on doing with it? What resolution do you run? Do you want a multi-monitor configuration? Do you want crossfire/SLI? Do you have any restrictions on power consumption or heat output? Do you have a limitation on dimensions of the card?

[shooterfpga]

ive bought and used both, when i used to build gaming server towers. honestly, radeon was always ahead in performance and quality of graphics, not to mention driver stability. im so glad, i dont spend $500 every couple months on the latest graphics card anymore.

[odysseus]

No crossfire, no sli, no need for multi-monitor for now - but most all cards support 2 anyway. Standard higher end gaming/graphic system. I am not thinking of putting more than 5 bills for the card. I don't need an uber-system of dual weld cards and overclocked cooling systems.

Just more focused though on asking about chipsets right now between Radeon and GeForce and who has the better edge, if any right now? I am rocking an old Geforce 8800 GT on a fun workstation, and it has lasted a long time, but it has met the wall awhile ago.

[Merc1138]

No crossfire, no sli, no need for multi-monitor for now - but most all cards support 2 anyway. Standard higher end gaming/graphic system. I am not thinking of putting more than 5 bills for the card. I don't need an uber-system of dual weld cards and overclocked cooling systems.

Just more focused though on asking about chipsets right now between Radeon and GeForce and who has the better edge, if any right now? I am rocking an old Geforce 8800 GT on a fun workstation, and it has lasted a long time, but it has met the wall awhile ago.

I didn't mean 2 monitors when I mentioned multi-monitor. There are people who do 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 monitor configurations these days.

For a single card around $500, the GTX 580. ATI kinda skips the 350-450 price range for anything worth a darn(they didn't make a 6980 model) and the next step up would be the GTX 590 or radeon 6990 for $700(not worth it).

Otherwise I'd say gtx 570 or radeon 6970.

AMD finally took care of ATI's crappy drivers a while back when they bought them out, other than that they're going to perform similar within the same "class" of cards. It really boils down to specifics like multi-card, multi-monitor, or 3d support if you care about any of that.

[shooterfpga]

thats good to hear, i always ran third party drivers anyways, but definately for the radeons.

[Scratch705]

if you care for warranty, evga has lifetime support, and they only build geforce cards. that is why i'm going with for my next build.

[orangeglo]

Just picked up a eVGA GTX 580 a couple weeks ago. Ran BF3 beta like butter.

[nick]

GeForce. ATI makes pretty good video cards, but really crappy drivers.

[ironhiide]

GeForce. ATI makes pretty good video cards, but really crappy drivers.

They took care of their driver quality ages ago.

@OP, shop by your dollar limit. Atm, ati has the best performance to dollar ratio, but nvidia still has the fastest card but it costs a pretty penny too.

I personally like the Ati 6970, at $350 its a good buy. At $500 you can get a 580 gtx, its faster than Ati's, but not night and day difference.

[nick]

They took care of their driver quality ages ago.

@OP, shop by your dollar limit. Atm, ati has the best performance to dollar ratio, but nvidia still has the fastest card but it costs a pretty penny too.

I personally like the Ati 6970, at $350 its a good buy. At $500 you can get a 580 gtx, its faster than Ati's, but not night and day difference.

Could've fooled me, given the grief we had when we were forced to use ATI cards earlier this year (the Dell servers we ended up using as workstations for developers were only compatible with a few ATI models).

[Merc1138]

Could've fooled me, given the grief we had when we were forced to use ATI cards earlier this year (the Dell servers we ended up using as workstations for developers were only compatible with a few ATI models).

The radeon drivers have improved drastically compared to the nightmare they were 10 years ago, and just about all of those improvements have been since they got bought by AMD.

However, the CCC application still kind of sucks, and the chipset switching functionality for laptops with multiple video chipsets(like low power intel, and radeon mobility) is still terrible.

[Syst3m Ov3rrid3]

Nvidia apparently makes good graphics cards if you want to watch movies but I'm an ATI AMD Radeon fan. I've never had trouble with their graphics cards. I used to have a Nvidia GeForce 4 Series, worked good for about 2 years then just crapped out. On my Asus laptop, it had an ATI Radeon HD3650. It was a 1GB Graphics Card. That laptop was beast.

[resident-shooter]

Just picked up a eVGA GTX 580 a couple weeks ago. Ran BF3 beta like butter.

Good. Its a great but expensive azz card.

Nvidia apparently makes good graphics cards if you want to watch movies but I'm an ATI AMD Radeon fan. I've never had trouble with their graphics cards. I used to have a Nvidia GeForce 4 Series, worked good for about 2 years then just crapped out. On my Asus laptop, it had an ATI Radeon HD3650. It was a 1GB Graphics Card. That laptop was beast.

Normally, for top performance i would saz nvidia and for value AMD. However now amd puts out 6990 which is the fastest single card and 6970 is a great value GPU.

As for reliability, the only nvidia card that i have owned failed on me after a year, but i would give it another try. I am now using 3rd ati or amd card and they are reliable...

Given modern performance, u dont need to spend more than $150 unless u plan on heavy FPS gaming