Do you prefer NVIDIA or ATI??

...and why, I'd love to know. Thinkpads have traditionally always had ATI cards, including the current lineup with the *only* exception being the W700, Lenovo's first 17" screen, and overall powerhouse.

Is NVIDIA or ATI better for professional graphics solutions, or gaming, or none of the above?

Thanks everyone!

 

I want to state that my Nvidia vote was issued grudgingly. I much prefer ATI hardware personally, but Nvidia actually produces mobile drivers. On the desktop I'm an ATI guy, and I do love the ATI Mobility 4600s...but come on, can we get some mobile drivers already?

 

ATI mobile supports sucks. So, I hate it.
But ATI on Desktop is great and cheaper than Nvidia.
ATI uses higher technology than Nvidia which is GDDR5.
Nvidia uses lower technology than ATI which is GDDR3. However, Nvidia uses a lot of technique/modification/software/drivers support to increase the performance. Moreover, many Games out there are Nvidia sponsored or supported. So, it is better(higher FPS) to have Nvidia GPUs to play those Games.
But, in Benchmarking, ATI will be better(higher score) I guess.

 

who ever gives me better hardware for cheap.

 

yes, best performance for the cheapest price , NVIDIA or ATI, I dont care about the name.

 

ATI at the moment, I don't give a damn for mobile driver support right now, I just play my games and they work fine. That's all I need. Actuallly, probably the only reason I chose ATI over NVIDIA is because I've never had a problem with my 3650 (which coincidentally performs better than my 8600 GTS), and the 8600 GTS has had some driver issues, and PSU troubles.

Lol, I really hate my 8600 GTS. Mainly because it's a crap card.

 

i also dont care about the name but think if im spending good money on a machine and more specifically on a decent gpu i really expect that company to support that gpu with drivers, so as long as ATI ignore the mobile community i will continue to ignore them.

 

I'm also on the "best performance for cheapest price" side. Currently, ATI seems to be doing better at that than Nvidia, but I hvae no personal preference.

As said, they both have pros and cons. ATI has little mobile driver support(only for Windows 7 currently) while Nvidia has had a bad habit of re-branding and renaming its mobile GPUs.

 

I've been a supporter of Nvidia ever since I got one of the first 8800 GTS 640 desktop cards in a new PC. The performance was unreal. I remember being all giddy at 100+ FPS in Half-Life 2 and such. They've never let me down since. My 8800m GTX at the moment hasn't let me down either. So I'm happy. But really, I'll go where the maximum power is when I'm looking to buy something brand new.

 

best bang for your buck... and lately that's been Nvidia... years back I loved ATI 'cause their AA was such a small performance hit you could use it on all your games back then...

 

I flip between the two. My first big desktop graphics card was ATI (850 or something like that - can't remember...). Then I had a pair of Nvidia cards - 7800 and an 8800 GTS (the older model).

When the 8800 died after 2+ years, I picked up a Radeon 4870 because at the time if was the best bang for the buck.

I've never really had a problem with any of the cards. The 8800 did die, but that was after 2+ years of very heavy use.

Mobility-wise, both seem to have support issues. I generally don't play with the drivers unless I need to. I know with one of my old Nvidia chips, Dell and Nvidia were always pointing the finger at one another for the lack of driver support.

Mobility drivers are a lot trickier than desktop drivers because each notebook manufacturer requires its own specific tweaks, so you're not just revving one driver version.

 

ATI any day of the week. The 5xxx series is gunna take nVidia for a ride.

 

I've historically used nVidia cards in my desktop builds (old AGP FX5200, AGP 6600GT, and currently a PCIe 8800GT) because they've had a tendency to be more powerful than competing ATi cards, although of course at a cost. I've used a few ATi cards and have generally not been terribly impressed. The ATi 4570 in my Studio 15 is the first ATi card I've owned in quite a while, although I must admit it does its job quite nicely.

 

Because I don't want my mobile GPU to blow up like the 8600m gt

 

I've been a fan of ATi ever since the release of the Radeon 9700 card. That card was legendary, throughly trashing nVidia and every other competitor.

Then the Mobility 9600 video card came, finally giving amazing gaming performance for laptops, also thrashing nvidia's mobile GPUs. I have been mainly a laptop gamer, so I tend to have good memories of both my mobility 9600 and my X700 video cards.

After that, competition has been getting the better out of both, helping us consumers get amazing products for cheap prices. I prefer ATi yeah but I also use nVidia because they perform just as well, and the 8800 series GPU was, and still is, amazing.

I also like nVidia, because they were my first high performance mobile GPU, in the form of 9800m GS. A great video card.

I love my GTX 260m card right now, but believe me, I would much rather have an HD4800 series on my laptop

 

I've almost always exclusively stuck with ATI since close to a decade ago. Though I may just consider a change for my next system. Not having any driver support for the mobility versions really miffed me.

 

I love 3dfx.

 

i prefer Intel over AMD, so most of the time, nVidia comes with the Intel

 

As a serious and exclusively mobile gamer, I've had no choice but Nvidia for years, so I've naturally developed a trust in Nvidia products, but I'd have no issue with buying an ATI equipped product in the future, if the price and performance were in line with my expectations.

 

For notebooks, I prever nVidia mainly for driver support. Otherwise for desktop, I'm impartial. Best bang for the buck.

 

Monster 3D FTW!

 

nvidia until ati gets their driver game going

 

i also alternate.

 

Ah..my first 3D card, for my ancient Power Mac 7600. Awesome!

Like many I root for both ATI and nVidia..competion is good and better for us.

 

For desktops I pretty much buy only ATI cards. But for notebooks I really don't care as long is it's not integrated.

 

I love Nvidia. No matter what.

 

How could you say ATI drivers suck, wasn't the 9.9 catalyst just released? As you can see I have nvidia in my gateway and ati in my asus. I don't care but I really want something that's a great improvement over the pitiful 260m gtx

 

I voted Nvidia but that's for laptops mainly. Actually I like them both really.

 

NVDIA... only good GPU i ever had in my comp... it was always intel integrated crap untill i got this laptop...

 

I never understood the driver complaints. I always found ati modded drivers, and recently ati has also been releasing mobile drivers each month.

I never used Nvidia stock mobile drivers, always used the modded drivers or Dox ones.

That is why I never saw any superior driver anything from both.

 

I'm not biased towards either, but ever since the 4890 came out I'm a ati fan, been a evga nvidia fan for as long as I can remember before. 6 or so years ago I favored ati because they were top of the top. 9200 and all of them, because in halo pc they gave liquid camo.

 

ATI because cheaper for the performance

 

ATi has always been my first option, but I've always been forced to go nVidia due to a lack of ATi cards on the market. I've only had one ATi desktop card ever since my move towards laptops and it sucked, but I got what I payed for so I didn't have any room to complain.

What I find interesting is that every time someone posts one of these threads, the gap between nVidia and ATi is closing closer. Of course, many factors decide into this so it may not be accurate at all, but still interesting.

 

Always been a diehard nvidia fan, that is until the last year !
1st, the nvidia 7600go that was in my HP DV9035nr, finally took a dump , after only 1 year and 5 months. Come to find out the this gpu was one of the defective ones, but since my warranty had run out, HP told me to cough up close to $400 to repair it or take a hike............I told them to kiss my azz goodbye and that I would never purchase or recommend another HP product.

So.................I decide to go less mainstream and buy a Sager, with a 512 9800GTS, within one week the card took a dump and I had to send in for repair ! Of course by now I'm really pissed at nvidia.................and still at HP !
I pay an extra $80 and bump up to the 1gb 9800GTS, so far so good, but if this one dies before its time, I'll be moving my money ATI's way !

 

NVidia, but only because I got burned repeatedly by ATI due to the aspect ratio bug that ATI let go for so long. Now that it's fixed, I'd probably be happy to rejoin the ATI fold. They both make great hardware, but ATI tends to be more economical.

I'm still not happy with the 8400/8600 Nvidia fiasco in laptops. That's a massive black mark on them, as is their inability to release anything new.