So who's the leader right now? ATI or nVidia?

I was just wondering who you thought was the current leader in laptop gfx cards nowadays, ATI or nVidia?

 

Neither. Since AMD takeover of ATi and the HD4xxx series, ATi IMO no longer competes with Nvidia as they did in the past. ATi is more like Intel, their focus isn't in the most powerful, although their products are very impressive. They are looking at market share and doing it well. Believe almost 50% of all notebooks/computers soon be equiped with an ATi.

Nvidia seems to have some odd agenda of their own leaving myself and I think many others scratching heads. I am not sure what Nvidia is, Nvidia is like Apple and ATi is trying to be more like Windows.

 

A useless poll IMO unless you're making a purchase today and depending on your specific needs. Things can change even next week. As of today, if I were a gamer, I'd choose ATI, but nVidia's GF104 is a great performer and will definitely give the ATI 5xxx and 6xxx series a run for its money. nVidia would still be my pick though if I needed a workstation card on a desktop replacement notebook.

 

Is this a personal opinion question? I have no idea which one is, but for me Nvidia still, despite being late for DX10.1 and DX11 Nvidia still has PhysX and I love it. XD

 

wait, nvidia has DX10.1?

 

LOL I hate 10 Chars :|

 

honest question. I was under the impression 10.1 was ATI only.

 

Its really what you are looking for. No issues with mobility/power requirement and have a huge budget? Go with nvidia. Want the better price/performance option get the ATI.

over the years each has had its issues and bright spots. But ATI is ahead of the game right now. And nvidia doesnt seem to wanna change.

 

I'm not looking to buy anything lol. I was just wondering who was the leader, and me and a group of classmates were actually having this discussion last week, so I though about asking on these forums.

 

Well as it stands ATI holds the records in benchmarking on a broad basis and price to performance. I have a Nvidia SLI setup myself and was a little troubled finding games that use PhysX for my cards and found this list PhysX Games List

IMO a pretty pathetic list, and a pretty useless feature to me. I also want to state finding good drivers for my cards (9800GTXSLI) was a nightmare, it seems neither ATI nor Nvidia are stepping up to the plate with good driver support as it stands (had to revert to 186.81), I think none can be called the leader there.

 

That's a truly pathetic list :|

 

Should probably show the complete list for accuracy, the list you showed was PC only titles, there are more than just PC only titles. The list is also not complete.

All Titles (PC/Console/Mobile)

 

What relevance is that to notebook forum? I've already seen that list, I'm only interested in what this computer can do. I don't care about whether PS3 or Xbox supports it, I don't own either.

 

As stated in my above post, your question is vague and not really useful to answer since you're comparing entire companies with many different products and many different consumers. So maybe you should clarify in what way you mean when you say "current leader in laptop GPUs". If you need some specific questions, some examples could be: what is the best performing GPU in games, best performing GPU for workstation applications (such as AutoCAD), best GPU performance per Watt, or best GPU performance per cost. Each of these questions will have a different answer...

 

The other list didn't have cross platform titles? Maybe that is what is relevant? Maybe you need reading comprehension classes rather than games?

 

Sigh....I've already done research on this for what games I should buy.

The PC physX games listed are ones that actually use NVIDIA GPU acceleration, the other console "physx" games are just games that offload rendering to the CPU VIA an SDK program E.G. through PS3's cell processor with no actual bearing of what card is being used. Might be time to do some reading for yourself on what physx actually is and why it differs in console support.

 

Oh.... Pawned hard! Don't mess with the hero!

 

Pawned? Is that like getting the pawn to the end of the board and getting a second queen? Normal speak isn't hard and makes you sound intelligent too....

As for the best.I think its personal preference really. I used to like nvidia. but am currently buying ati products (in terms of gpu's).

 

So much hostility!
I can only afford a mid-range GPU right now and I think ATI is leading in that area. I'd rather go for ATI unless someone can correct me.

 

You should go for whatever is in the laptop that you want. If your laptop decision is based on graphics, then get whatever gives you the best performance for the cost.

By and large that's ATI right now, with how many laptops are sold with 5650/5730s, which are the best in their class in this generation of cards. But the GT335m isn't far behind.

 

I really wish the new Sager NP5125 had the 5650 but they decided to go with the Geforce 330M (Not even 335M). At full HD resolution gaming, the performance difference is minimal anyway, right?

 

Clevo and Nvidia have contracts, unfortunately. The 330m is basically a 240m, which is a 230m with slightly higher clock speeds. The 240m was noticeably behind the 4650, which is noticeably behind the 5650, which is a down-clocked 5730. So you'll probably notice the difference between a 330m and a 5730.

 

nvidia -> top performance
ati -> midrange + gpgpu later on...

I think ati/amd has a better longterm outlook as a company

 

Definitely NVIDIA. ATI doesn't have advanced GPU features like PhysX and CUDA (which many people say are useless - they're lying, to make themselves feel better about their ATI card).

NVIDIA is also smashing ATI in the high end desktop overclocking and benchmarking market, and the high end notebook market, as the GTX 480/M is currently the BEST performing card on the market. And contrary to what people say, it isn't and incredibly hot running card, most reaching about 75C on load, in both desktops and laptops. ATI's desktop 4850 was much hotter.

I won't even get started on how much ATI's drivers support pales in comparison to NVIDIA's. ATI should be ashamed of themselves.

Also, ATI is close to non-existent in the high end market for CAD and other industrial users. ATI has absolutely no answer to Tesla, and Quadro is beating FireGL into pulp.

With that said, I have no problems at all with my MR 5870. It's a lovely card for the price, and a solid performer.

However, I cant deny that in the lower

 

Well, in my opinion and CUDA and PhysX aside (PhysX being useless to me and if it wasn't I would have bought an Nvidia GPU), and going by the more important factor of general user price/performance and power efficiency laptop and desktop GPU's, ATI is the leader as of right now. Nvidia has made an attempt to get back in the desktop game with the new GTX 460, but IMO it's too little too late and with the Radeon 6000 series coming soon I can see ATI further widening the lead, even if the new GPU's are moderate performance increases with more focus on optimization and power efficiency than anything else.

In the mobile market Nvidia is the current GPU raw power leader with the GTX 480M, but it still sits relatively close performance wise to the MR5870 and the MR5870 costs far less thus giving the price/performance crown to ATI in the mobile sector as well. In terms of workstation graphics for AutoCAD and those kinds of things, Nvidia is the current leader there.

 

Yeah I'm lying PhysX is just about useless, just go look at the list of PhysX PC supported games. Facts speak louder words. Speaking of facts the 5870 still holds the single and dual benchmark records, I don't see the 480 "smashing" the 5870 yet. Why are you bringing in desktops into this debate? It's a notebook forum.

 

At what point did this discussion become about Workstations and Cad and 3d rendering? I'd really like to meet the professional that purely on only uses a laptop for his Autocad work...

your point is completly pointless.

The jist is the 480m is the biggest powerhouse in the mobile market at the moment. But it comes with a hefty price tag and power requirements. Nvidia frankly isnt adjusting to the market where ATI is gaining ground every single day. And lets not forget the whole 8400/8600GS fiasco with a whole generation of failed cards.

Also the driver support thing is really subjective. And more hardware specific then anything. Some people have problems and others dont. Plus i dont see Nvidia pushing out driver updates every month or so.

In addition, the list of physx games that actually use the hardware is limited. The majority of them dont. That seems to be the only thing they really push. And personally for me i could careless. Not enough games to really warrant its use.

 

It's not pointless, maybe you should re-read my post, because making a statement like that shows you clearly didn't absorb the idea behind the post. The OP didn't specify what exactly it was he wanted to know that either was the leader of, so I gave my opinion as an overall overview of the current situations. As for the rest of your post, you're pretty much on the same page with me.

 

Still you get my point that any serious cad/3d professional is prob not using a laptop to do his work on right?

 

That depends on the user. I would say the large majority use a desktop for that, but there are people who do use mobile variants for their work.

 

the question is too broad to answer.

but if your talking about notebooks:
price/performance gaming=ati
price/performance non-gaming=nvidia hand down

imho of course

 

You think PhysX is useless? At least there are games that actually support it, and make use of it. It would be useless if there were no games that supported it.

And the question, while focusing on notebooks, has a broad spectrum, so who really cares whether I bring desktops into this or not. If it's inappropriate for the discussion here, feel free to report it to the moderators. I'm sure they have better judgment than both of us.

 

Well ATi is definitely the price/performance leader in the mobile market right now. Nvidia is right where ATi is in the desktop market with the GTX460 released and priced very competitively. ATi is more secure financially though, and Nvidia has much ground to cover in order to get to ATi's stability.

Nvidia does have an immense lead in developer relations, getting PhysX and CUDA implemented in some games, as well as 3D Vision. While ATi has failed to garner such support for STREAM, there is light at the end of the tunnel with OpenCL and Direct Compute. GPU specific general purpose programming might finally go the way of the dinosaur.

I like both companies. Now that the GTX460 is out and being competitive with what ATi has, I feel enticed to get one so I can get my PhysX and CUDA enabled features in games that make use of them. However, after spending $300 on a Radeon 5850 in December, it's sort of a hard sell for me, especially when it's for something that really doesn't change the game all too much. Also it's been well documented that PhysX is intentionally tweaked to run badly on CPUs on purpose in order to make the CPU implementation that much worse than on Nvidia GPU hardware. It's make to run on a single CPU thread, not to scale with multiple cores at all. What's ironic though, is how much time I haven't spent lately playing games, and if I do, it's on older titles that need a quarter of the power of a Radeon 5850 to run well at 1080p (Battlefield 2/2142 ). I guess that's one reason why I like the 5570 in my slimline desktop so much, as well as the 4670 I used to have in my main desktop. They were excellent solutions for what I needed.

I do hope that ATi comes out with a 640-800 shader GPU with GDDR5 in a slimline flavor the next round though.

 

Nvidia is more oriented to the professional IMO. Their chips perform significantly better in certain programs than ATI, while ATI is just pure gaming.

 

and you would be off, both the archetectual company my wife works for and the cabinet shop she subcontracts to the hard core designer guys and gals use use their laptops alot and just head back to the " farm " for massive renders and such, she herself has a nice new shiny HP elitebook 8740w with a fire GL card.

disagree the ATI FirePro M7820 sure lays the boots to the Quadro 3800 at the moment in Maya, CAD, and 3dsMAX.

BOTH companies seem to enjoy sucking the cash out of gamers for that meger 2% speed increase, in the big leagues were talking anywhere from 30-200% speed differences here

now if nvidia could git its act together and release an acual fermi based Quadro card, im guessing we may be back to neck and neck as usual on workstation cards

 

fermi was an absolute let down. it was hyped beyond belief, and didn't produce any astonishing results. ATI is clearly leading for current gen cards as the 5000 series is too good for the money, not to mention, the power consumption from those cards are low as well.

regardless, this is from a gaming perspective anyways. i don't think that gaming graphics cards really bring in the cash for either of the companies anyways.

 

For providing accessible gaming experience, ATi is the winner. I don't think gaming should be about who has the most money and ATi seems to agree. Only Nvidia wants to continue to cater to those who want to throw the most money away for polygons. They are making high end notebook gaming at least accessible. Few people can afford a high end Nvidia gaming notebook, there were exceptions like the Gateway 8800 equipped. But a Nvidia 460-480M is going to cost signficantly more than their ATi counterpart.

I mean c'mon a 15.6" MSI notebook with a HD5870 for $1,400? A 17.3" Asus with HD5870 for $1,200 at Best Buy? That's ridiculous as the GTX 285M still costs more than an HD5870M.

 

EDIT: Didn't read the post properly.

 

Hi,
I am in the process of buying a new notebook and thinking about the Alienware M17x. What still keeps me from ordering is the distrust in ATI because of there poor driver support especially for games. I completely agree with you guys that for "best value for money" reasons ATI is on top of Nvidia but in the past I had one Notebook with an ATI card and the driver support as well as the compatibility with games were horrible with the ATI gpu.
For performance reasons I want my M17x with 2 GPUs and in every forum I visit I am reading about the problems with the ATI5870CF because of the drivers. Now I think I am waiting for a nVidia GTX460M SLI solution on the M17x because some tests show that the GTX460M is really close or evens the performance of the ATI5870 - because again - in my opinion and experience nVidia has the better driver and gaming support - take eg. Fireaxis and their Civilization series which are optimized on Nvidia GPUs and with the ATI card I only had problems with this game (Civ 4).
So I still think in total for gamers the Nvidia GPUs are still the better solution regardless the fact that Fermi (espec. the GTX480) is a bad joke.

Greets

 

In pure figures the ATI5870 might be faster but in actual gaming I think the GTX460M might even the ATI5870. But this opinion is based on one test:
GeForce GTX 460: Fermi, richtig gemacht : GeForce GTX 460 mit 1 GB und 768 MB
Sorry is in German as I am from Austria.
But there you can see that the desktop GTX460 slightly outperforms the desktop ATI 5770 which is the basis for the mobile ATI 5870 - so from this I would asume that the mobil GTX460 also "can" outperform the mobile ATI 5870. But proof I have none as there still is no test of the mobile GTX460. And in the end espec. for gaming it comes down to the support in games and the driver support - and there I only hear bad things about ATI. Their CF solution still is not working properly as there are still no working drivers from ATI themselves and their mobile cataclyst driver also lacks stability (all based on information I read on various boards as I am uncertain what to buy).

Greets

 

Yeah problem for you is the 460M isn't a GTX 460. The GTX 460 is the 480M. And the 480M literally costs about 3X the HD5870M, so if the 480M didn't beat a HD5870M for 1/3 the cost, that's just incredible failure.

In terms of cost vs performance, that would be like the HD5750 keeping up with the GTX 480. So it's kinda hard to say, oh yeah, Nvidia is better when you realize this. Better but at what cost?
- There are many other factors into comparison of two cards, not just pure performance.

Hehe, sorry, but this video is just too funny.

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HD5870 fans stay around 30-40% from what I've gathered online running Furmark in comparison to above.

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Ati is leading for now. But once nvidia releases their dual-core video cards, it's going to be different.

 

ASUS released a dual PCIE Desktop card and its a nightmare for thermal issues and power consumption ( and no faster than the 5970 ), I cant see SLI in a laptop being any better

 

Ziddy don't get me wrong - I am no fanboy of Nvidida or ATI I just want the best solution for my Alienware M17x because when I am paying 3500 Euro it should work properly. And when I read in the AW thread I often still read the same problems with the ATI cards I personally experienced with my IBM THinkpad with ATI graphics card and back than I swore never again to buy a notebook with ATI GPU because half the games didn't work or had graphic display errors. THats why I am so suspicious about ATI.
And the GTX460 is NOT based on the GTX480 because GTX480 is Fermi GF100 and GTX460 is Fermi GF104 therefore a newer version with less power and heat.
But lets see - I hope the mobile GTX460 will be available soon as well as benchmarks with it.
Greets

 

You should re-read my post, cause you did not comprehend what I wrote.

 

Well, I think ATI beats NVIDIA at the moment. ATI got cheaper cards and better performance than NVIDIA. Same goes to the dekstop cards - ATI is dominating with their 5XXX-series vs NVIDIAS 400-series.

But I'm sure that NVIDIA will come with their big great battleship and take the lead again. We will see

 

But what about the "software" factor ?? I completely agree that the ATI cards are the better piece of hardware but when I read in this forum and others I again see the typical ATI driver and driver support problems (still no working Xfire drivers from ATI, Cataclyst hard to install with mobile cards) as well as the specific gaming software support for NVidia. Both factors often compensate more than equally for the hardware disadvantages and so I again ask if in "total" the Nvidia is not already the better solution.

Greets

 

I can't speak to the Xfire drivers, but Catalyst was really straightforward. I was nervous as all get out about doing it at first, but with just a little help, thanks again Revelator, I found it straightforward. I updated 10.5 to .6 by myself no problem after that.

Anyway, I think Ati is winning as a company, they have a better business model and a superior product/price ratio, but Nvidia has the driver support, as already mentioned a thousand times, and the better company affiliations, how many times have you seen "Nvidia, the way it is meant to be played," at the start up of a game? Nvidia may have the big guns, but Ati is packing more heat.

 

ATI is creaming NVIDIA... but NVIDIA trying to come back... but really doesn't look good for them..

 

I have experienced many software-issues with the ATI-drivers. I remember a bug on my brothers computer, where his computer froze everytime he tried to run a YouTube video in full screen. I went to the forums and found a couple of people who had experienced the same problem. Therefore, I wrote to ATI about the problem, and they claimed that my card was defective. I just thought "no way dudes!". A month later they released a new driver where they fixed it.

Personally I think NVIDIAS drivers are so much better than ATIs. They are more stable and the interface is so much easier to navigate in. I remember I should fix a problem for a friend. Many old games he played was shown in 4:3 and it wouldn't strech to 16:9. It was so hard to find an option in the Catalyst Control Center that could fix it. It took a long time, and I had to search on the internet to figure it out. In NVIDIAs control panel, you can change it in a few seconds!

If I should choose between the ATIs software and NVIDIAS software, I would definitely choose NVIDIAs, and that's one of the reasons why I bought a Nvidia card instead of an ATI.

Peace out!

Kind Regards,
Peter