Ati 3650 or nividia 8600 gt

I couldnt find comparison between
-ati radeon 3650 (toshiba p300)
-nividia gforce 8600gt (dell xps1530).
-nividia gforce 8600 gs (hp dv9700t).
Just need to know which better...

 

2, 1, then 3.

 

2 is only tiny bit better than 1, they are almost identical in terms of performance. that's what i heard.

 

8600M GT, better driver support.
Heck, they release 2-3 a month

 

most are beta, we are guinea pigs.

 

Yes,but it's more than we can say about the ATI counterparts...

 

We can say that ATI doesn't come out with beta drivers . Also Nvidia doesn't release mobile drivers, neither does ATI.

 

Well, actually the drivers come from nvidia, but they need hacking and slashing and chopping and etc.

However,a lot of new drivers come out simply to improve performance for an X or Y game. And I like that.

 

I'd strongly disagree. The fact that they throw a lot of drivers out there means basically nothing.

Nvidia's drivers are unstable and the number one cause of Vista crashes:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/
People on the forums are also having problems:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=259247
They release relatively untested beta drivers each month and expect consumers to be their beta testers. I wouldn't call beta drivers a proper driver release. The beta drivers are unpredictable.
Nvidia driver support has been very bad on the desktop front; it took them nearly six months to come out with a new driver set for their desktop cards:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-geforce-drivers,5262.html

ATI, on the other hand, releases one tested and stable driver pack every month - they have an actual schedule for driver releases. Nvidia needs to get their act together when it comes to driver support.

I'd take the ATI HD 3650 over the 8600M-GT given a choice. They're very close in performance and ATI has better driver support.

 

See, even Chaz agrees with me

 

Yeah reading this I was a little split. I love Nvidia, only buy Nvidia. But still all these damn drivers are a headache. I have tried a INSANE amount of drivers. I mean it is kind of cool that there are so many, and our techie self's and play with them. But still, I would like it if they would just release one driver a month or so. Keep my mind right ya know?

 

I agree that nVidia pumps out way too many drivers which leads to confusion. However, I still prefer "way too many" over "too few". I've switched around drivers a few times in the last few weeks, from 169.09 to 174.xx to 175.xx, but went back to 169, as from my experience, the newer drivers all had one issue or another (stuttering, failing to render fog of war).

Even though nVidia does pump out so many drivers, the good thing is that you can choose which ones to use - it's not like nVidia's forcing you to beta test them all.

I would advise against going to ATI cards unless you know that all your games run fine on them. From my experience, nVidia has better support for a wider variety of games. Take for instance Age of Conan - a widely known issue is that the ATI 3870 heavily downclocks when playing that game. However, on a side note, AoC also tells me that my 169.09 drivers are known to cause issues with the game, even though my personal experience states otherwise.

 

Since your personal issue states otherwise, someone with an ATi gpu could state otherwise as well. And as for mobile cards are concerned, nividia doesn't care about them. Neither does ATi.