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

No offense dude but you are searching for the unicorn. There hasnt and never was a perfect working dual card setup, NVIDIA or ATI. Everything from 8600GTSLI to 5870xfire has had problems running two cards at once.

The 260/280GTX were notorius for a proven increase in latency and audio/video stuttering. The closest time we've come to perfection of running two cards at once was the 4870x2 on the M17x R1, which had the lowest amount of complaints I've seen in dual cards since I began studying the 8800GTXSLI here on the forums. If you are already so worried about running dual cards, just dont do it. It almost took me a full month of reinstalls of windows, drivers, BIOS experimentation, gone through 10 NVIDIA drivers, 1 bridge reseat and so forth before I'm finally comfortable with my 9800GTXSLI. Dual cards are not for the weak or the squemish, the more parts the more can go wrong, simple math. I can guarentee you no matter what company you fork over $3k to for dual card setups, you will have problems unless you are one of the lucky few.

 

Might be true as there is no perfect system but with ATI I had the past experience and read now in this forum the chances for problems is higher.
The question about SLI/Xfire is - is it necessary - I have the problem of investing 3500Euro in a notebook and in one year I can't play actual games as the notebook is to weak in performance - and upgrading a notebook is not really easy/possible/cheap. Therefore my thoughts of getting a SLI/Xfire notebook.
Greets

 

What game are you playing where you notebook can't play at the end of one year?

These must be some powerhouse games, I'd like to know what these are.

 

If you want to play games on a notebook, look at the DIY ViDock, since it will smoke most (if not all) notebook GPUs at a fraction of the price. Most of the users here who are just saying "company X is better than Y" without any sort of logical explanation makes those comments quite useless.

 

This is simply not true. If you read through 260/280 SLI equipped systems (M980NU, x8100, M17x R1) the problems are consistent and very wide scale. You may want to wait to see how 480SLI performs, but I have a sinking feeling stuttering will not be gone. I would say neither ATI nor Nvidia has an upper hand in running less problematic dual card solutions.

Again you sound overly worried, you have to be prepared to put in sweat and labor into making your dual card system work, or wait until drivers correct the problems. I would just buy a single GPU system if you really expect a system to work like magic out of the box. There is always a chance you receive a perfect working xfire/SLI system but I wouldn't put my chances on it

 

Yep and prices on high performance notebooks seem to become more reasonable with MSI, Asus and Acer offering affordable alternatives. And Gateway obviously.

Plenty of users with 8800, 9800, 260, HD4xxx series are enjoying their notebooks for gaming still and getting good performances.

These cost half the 3K, and can easily upgrade later.

Plus upgrading is more finicky as technology changing. As others have said with current i7 and upcoming sandy bridge no matter, since they won't be compatible. And likely after this generation, Nvidia 4xx and ATi 6xxx, there will be a new MXM anyways. Upgrading to another new notebook in 2-4 years makes more sense to me.

 

460M IS based on the 460 GTX, 480M is based on the 465 GTX, which is G100F. Also, playing a video of 480 GTX fan noise is of no point whatsoever, considering that no mobile nvidia GPU is based on the 480 GTX desktop.

 

My choices have been defined by the laptop I buy. My original Acer Aspire 6920G came with a nVidia GeForce 9500m GS and I loved it (going from an Intel GMA 945) but since then my laptops have been ATi 3670, 4670, and 5730. Right now I'd prefer ATi over nVidia in any gaming situation (the only GPU-intensive thing I do).

 

This poll needs a third option.

It doesn't matter who is "in the lead", just buy the best card you can find in your price range depending on your particular needs and what's on sale.

 

For me i lost all faith in Nvidia and HP when my dv6875se's 8400GS died due to the whole lineup of products failing. And how HP refused to fix it even tho they put out a bios that all it did was change the fans to 100% all the time to get the card past warranty. So when in died literally a week after my warranty they said no dice and refused to fix it.

And how Nvidia left the repairs upto the company that sold the laptop rather then doing the work themselves. So i never got anything out of that $400 million retainer they put out just to repair them...

 

For me I am going with ATI, at least for now.

 

Hm but even with a single solution the ATI driver and gaming support is poor. Damn why can't I have an ATI 5870 with the nVidia driver support
GTX480M is a dead end product - my hopes are with the GTX460M and if this gpu is also not ok I will go with a ATI 5870.

 

Driver support for mobile cards is poor? You get an official ATI driver each month, what's wrong with that?
ATI support is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, and Nvidia rather seem to be getting worse. Admittedly there are good and bad drivers, but the same can be said for both manufacturers; neither are perfect and have bits and pieces to fix, or break things sometimes.

And this is coming from someone who's used Nvidia setups in his last few machines. The 4850m crossfire setup and experience I got was far less troublesome til Alienware messed me around when I had a part fail!
Not saying ATI are perfect here btw, I know they're not!

 

For now, in the laptop world, as far as having the most powerful GPU, I'd say nVidia.

 

Aye, single most powerful GPU is the 480m, most powerful setup currently on the market is 5870m crossfire however.

 

In terms of absolute gaming performance, the 480M > HD 5870, and the 480M SLI > HD 5870 CrossFire.

 

Which, right now, is an ATI card

The upcoming 460m might put nv back in the race or possibly the lead, but ATI has the 6x series to followup fairly soon too.

 

Well that's the point and always will be at the top end. At the very top ATI and Nvidia have been switching places every 2 months or so. You might as well just throw their top end cards into a barrel with a blindfold, no matter which you pick the other company will top it in about 2 months.

What is more clear however ATI is definately leading price/performance on a broad basis, and we see the 480 is actually almost even with the 5870 when matched on equal terms of both cards having a desktop CPU. Most review sites have been pitting a 480 + desktop CPU vs 5870 + mobile i7. Considering how well both cards seem to scale it is a bit unfair.

 

Well yes SLI is faster or should be than the crossfire set, BUT no machine out right now on the open market has them, whereas crossfire 5870 is actually purchasable.
Hence my comment.

 

I wouldnt say ever 2 months, but give it 6, or 12 heck yea.

 

True ... I meant 2 months speculation side. Usually when early news, specs and benchmarks are released of a card that is months from being out its usually pre-crowned no matter what. More like 4-6 months from an actual user dominance.

The 480 hasnt even topped the 5870 in single GPU benchmark records yet but its already been crowned, I have no doubts someone will eventually get it to topple the 5870, its only like 20-30 points shy of the single GPU record ATM.

 

What I'm saying is you shouldn't go into the market with a pre-conceived notion that you have to be buying something with an ATI or an Nvidia card. For most people it shouldn't matter who currently has the single most powerful card.

Buying the absolutely most powerful card out there does sound pretty cool, but from a budget standpoint it's not a very sound investment unless you have a lot of money to throw around because it's usually a hell of a lot more expensive than something slightly less powerful and won't be the most powerful for long.

 

More troubles for nVidia - Rambus victorious in patent fight with NVIDIA, can expect neat wad of cash for its troubles
Rambus victorious in patent fight with NVIDIA, can expect neat wad of cash for its troubles -- Engadget

 

Rambus is one of those companies that randomly make patents for tech and launches a lawsuit whenever some other company uses that tech (accidentally or not). I hate companies like those, they shouldn't be legal at all.

Anyway, I like both companies (ATI and nVidia), but whenever I see nVidia's "way its mean to be played" or whatever logo at the start of a game it makes me hate them a little. I hate ads in general.

 

I feel the same way, i don't want to see any games affiliated with either ATI or Nvidia. Just let the games speak for themselves.

 

The G73h and the Sager NP8760 have shattered this notion. You can get either laptop in the $1350 range with a discount or promotion with a 5870.

Nvidia with an almost exact same performing card is charging $600 more, it hurts both consumers and laptop manufacturers with that level of overpricing.

 

Also, finding "slightly less powerful" is sometimes difficult. I guess right now a GTS360m or HD5830 are in that category, but they're pretty big steps down from an HD5870 or GTX280m, and they don't come a lot cheaper. An HD5730 is about half as powerful as a 5870, but the laptops it comes in aren't half the price of a W860CU.

 

Well the laptop is made of more than the graphics card. So the total price is only minutely dependant on the gpu.

 

gayti prolly the best