ATI Radeon or NVidia GeForce?

Hey I noticed that mostly or all of Dell's notebooks have the ATI Radeon graphics card, as opposed to the one I normally use, which is the GeForce. Any input as to which one's better or which models of each are equivalent to each other?

 

Atm nvidia is running behind ati's cards which also have direct x11 capabilities (though direct x11 isn't really such a big bonus since very few games will use it, and by the time that they will, the gpu will be too weak anyway to run them smoothly).

 

ATI is also 2-3x as fast per watt in their mobile GPUs. You'll get more performance and more battery life from an ATI GPU than you will with an Nvidia one.

 

To answer the OP's question, use this site as a (rough) guide: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

It's true that Nvidia cards tend to eat more power, and ATI cards tend to be better for the price (which is why most Dells and most other brands are using ATI at the moment), but that doesn't mean there aren't systems with Nvidia cards that are still worth their salt.

However, I'd stay away from Nvidia's mid-range cards (GT325, GT330, any GTxxx card), since ATI's mid-range cards are way better (5650 and above, or even the old 4650).

 

As far as I know, the GT 335M is actually pretty close to the HD 5650, though.

 

ATI cards are mopping the floor with nVidia cards, watt for watt. I would do your research though because some nVidia cards are alright for the money...

 

I'm not saying that Nvidia cards don't perform well. There are many that do, especially the top end, and they don't cost too much for the relative performance either. I'm just saying that they need 2-3X the heat dissipation to do so, and that means a very big laptop that chews through batteries. My Envy with a Radeon 5830 will get 2-3 hours on a 6 cell battery, no switchable GPU. There's no Nvidia 260 or 280 that will get that kind of battery life on the same size battery and still perform at the same level. It just doesn't happen. And there's no way they could be shoehorned into a 5.2lb laptop and adequately cooled.

 

I agree that ATI gives superior performance per Watt as well as superior performance per $ spent in many market segments.

Be that as it may, I still take NVIDIA graphics over ATI graphics any day of the week. NVIDIA's software and drivers are just so much better than ATI's.

 

I actually prefer ATI's catalyst drivers over nVidia's. You can do so much more with them and it has a more user friendly interface.

However, nVidia cards also have the switchable element to them in some notebooks, which ATI doesn't have anything like it right now.

 

if you are a TOP END gamer nvidia cards definitely have better drivers, their drivers come out with the new games.

Cant argue with that I dont think. If only they werent selling an inferior product. If they were selling the same product Id prefer them. But theyre a couple steps behind now

 

It all comes down to what you want to do with the notebook you are getting and for what price. Get the best GPU, either ATI or NVIDIA for your budget range.

 

ati or nvidia, a question far more popular than 'to be or not to be' since 2001

 

What exactly are you talking about? Because right now, the 5870 outscores the 285M GTX pretty consistently and by a good margin in game benchmarks (BFBC2, The 285 gets 26fps in ultra, and the 5870 gets 33. That's HUGE.) And the 5870 has got a TDP of 60 vs 75W for the 285.

 

The Nvidia has better drivers argument is an old and inconsequential one.

 

If your only use of the card is gaming, maybe. But if we're talking GPGPU (including hardware-accelerated video encoding) or Linux support, I would have to disagree.

 

The best drivers for any Nvidia GeForce card are 186.81/.82, which are over half a year old. And no matter how much more "efficient" (or whatever) they are than whatever ATI drivers are out now, the high-end ATI cards still have better average frame rates and higher minimum frame rates. I'd say ATI's "top-end gamer" material probably has better drivers in that regard.

 

I don't think nVidia's going to be recovering anytime soon from its Fermi disaster.

 

What is this?
Did you take a ride here on a time machine??

+1 for both
CUDA is far more developed than ATi offerrings and I never had issues with Nvidia's binary blob.
They support FreeBSD,Solaris and GNU/Linux
Not everyone buys good GPU for gaming in Windows.

 

I've always thought that NVIDIA cards have better software support (for example, like someone pointed out, GPGPU) and ATI cards have better value.

I got a question:
dm3z (specs in signature) vs. dm3t with Intel SP9300 2.26Ghz proc. and NVIDIA G 105M in CoD:MW2 and StarCraft II?

 

Come again? There's no support for custom profiles. That's a huge omission.

 

Although I own ATI card, I would have to agree nvidia has much more capabilities inside the software center

 

Its 50W TDP and the 5870 is like 30% faster in benchmarks.

I don't think this will be better... ur dm3z should be good enough... if u really want something great , wait for those acer timelines comming out with core i5/7 CULV processors...

 

There are other areas where NVIDIA has an edge: Optimus comes to mind. This weakens the argument that ATI cards are more power-efficient. Yes, they are, but do the owners of dedicated ATI video cards game on battery power? (Most don't.)

 

There aren't many laptops with hybrid graphics as far as I know.

At least until Intel finally starts enabling Arrandale IGPs, but meh.

 

If the Alienware m11x can run SC2, your dm3z should perform better than the dm3t.